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Interview - Afghans won't tolerate more civilian deaths in raids
By Sanjeev Miglani
KABUL Sept 10 (Reuters) - Afghans are seething with anger over a spate of civilian deaths in air strikes mounted by U.S.-led coalition forces, a top Afghan defence official said on Wednesday, calling for greater involvement of the Afghan army in operations.
Seven years on, Afghanistan again 'war on terror' frontline
by Francis Curta September 10, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - Seven years after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Afghanistan is again the frontline of the US-led "war on terror" with extremist unrest intensifying and a new focus on Pakistan's tribal areas.
Afghans hail Bush's move to send more troops
Wed Sep 10, 3:59 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan welcomed on Wednesday a U.S. decision to send more troops but reiterated that the strengthening of Afghan security forces was the long-term answer to defeat militants.
U.S. to include Pakistan in Afghanistan strategy
Wed Sep 10, 11:04 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military, faced with rising insurgent violence in Afghanistan, will revise its strategy for region to include militant safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday.
FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan, Sept 10
Sept 10 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1100 GMT on Wednesday:
Afghanistan: Taliban conducting a "defensive war" says leader
Karachi, 10 Sept. (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - The Taliban was fighting a "defensive war" in Afghanistan and had no desire to conduct violent attacks in other countries, a key Taliban leader said on Wednesday.
Aid, lack of security imperil Kabul opium progress: experts
by Nina Larson
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Afghanistan has dramatically reduced poppy production across large swathes of the country, but lack of security and aid for farmers threatens to eclipse Kabul's progress, experts warned Wednesday.
Facing Drug Trial, Afghan Says He Aided U.S.
By BENJAMIN WEISER September 9, 2008 The New York Times
In May 2005, about a month after coming to New York and then being arrested on federal narcotics charges, an Afghan tribal leader, Haji Bashir Noorzai, sat down with United States prosecutors and offered some critical information.
US's 'good' war hits Pakistan hard
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / September 10, 2008
KARACHI - Seven years after the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan in search of al-Qaeda and to topple the Taliban government, US President George W Bush has added neighboring Pakistan
Bush's shift in forces to Afghanistan less than requested
September 10, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The modest shift in US forces to Afganistan announced by President George W. Bush falls short of his commanders' requests despite signs the seven year-old US-NATO project there is at risk.
Obama: Bush plan for Afghanistan not enough
By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press Tue Sep 9, 8:01 PM ET
RIVERSIDE, Ohio - Barack Obama said President Bush isn't acting quickly or forcefully enough to get more U.S. forces into Afghanistan and out of Iraq.
Merkel: No end in sight in Afghanistan
September 10, 2008
BERLIN, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is not willing to provide an exit strategy for Germany's military contribution in Afghanistan.
"I can't give you a time frame
Dutch defense minister does not rule out longer mission in Afghanistan
BRUSSELS, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Dutch Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop has spoke of the possibility of keeping some Dutch troops in Afghanistan after the Dutch mission expires in 2010 as planned.
Canada PM: Troops home from Afghanistan in 2011
By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 10, 12:26 PM ET
TORONTO - Canada's prime minister vowed Wednesday to pull troops from Afghanistan in 2011, the first time he has said Canadian forces will leave the country.
Afghanistan's army to double to 134,000: UN
KABUL (AFP) - The Afghan government and its international partners agreed Wednesday to expand the national army to 134,000 soldiers, almost double its current strength, the United Nations said.
ANALYSIS-Britain and NATO struggle for Afghanistan numbers
By Luke Baker
LONDON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Two-and-a-half years into an operation to secure vast desert reaches of Afghanistan from the Taliban, British commanders quietly admit they are seriously undermanned.
Party leaders blast Taliban remarks on Canadian election
September 10, 2008 CBC News
Canadian party leaders are talking tough in reaction to Taliban claims that insurgents have stepped up their attacks on Canadian troops in Afghanistan in an attempt to influence the Canadian election.
Pak, Afghan decide to hold a joint jirga after Eid
New Kerala
Islamabad, Sept 10 : Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that a joint 'jirga' between Pakistan and Afghanistan will be held soon after Eid, ostensibly to resolve the issues relating to the Pak-Afghan border area.
‘I just need peace’
In Logar, Afghans want an end to decades of war, regardless of who wins
Stars and Stripes Mideast By Michael Gisick Tuesday, September 9, 2008
LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - It had been two or three months since the U.S. platoon had visited the village at the north end of the province, backed up against the dry mountains that separate Logar
Terror of a different kind
Across Afghanistan, women are setting fire to themselves. What drives them to this level of desperation?
The Guardian (UK) September 9, 2008
When Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc set fire to himself at a busy intersection in Saigon in 1963, few of the Afghan women who later followed his example were even born. Most of them had probably never heard
Rockets land in Kabul; no casualties
www.quqnoos.com Written by Abdullah Anwari Tuesday, 09 September 2008
Police discover two more rockets pointed at the capital, ministry says
Police kill two inmates in failed prison break
www.quqnoos.com Written by Abdullah Anwari Tuesday, 09 September 2008
Hunger-strike in southern jail ends as prisoners try to escape
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Interview - Afghans won't tolerate more civilian deaths in raids
By Sanjeev Miglani
KABUL Sept 10 (Reuters) - Afghans are seething with anger over a spate of civilian deaths in air strikes mounted by U.S.-led coalition forces, a top Afghan defence official said on Wednesday, calling for greater involvement of the Afghan army in operations.
Major-General Zaher Azimi said there was no military justification for an air strike in western Herat last month in which the government says more than 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed, a figure backed by the United Nations.
"It is difficult for the Afghan people to tolerate any more. Civilian casualties happen in war, but they are now so much on the rise," said Azimi, a former mujahideen commander and now an adviser and spokesman at the Afghan defence ministry.
The U.S. military, which plans to reinvestigate the Aug. 22 bombing in Herat's Shindand district, says the air strike was called after coalition and Afghan army forces came under intense fire during an operation against suspected Taliban militants in the area.
It said 30 to 35 militants were killed in the raid.
But Azimi said the operation was flawed from the beginning because it was launched on the basis of intelligence input that was not coordinated with the Afghan National Army.
"If they had coordinated with the Afghan troops it wouldn't have ended up in an air strike," he said. "I mean, what justification is there to kill 100 people because 10 rounds were fired at you?"
He said coalition and Afghan troops could have surrounded the village and forced out the Taliban if they were there. "There wasn't really any immediate need for bombardment."
Violence has mounted in Afghanistan in the past three years with a resurgent Taliban carrying out suicide bombings and ambushes, forcing the over-stretched Western coalition forces to rely more and more on air strikes.
Twice as many tonnes of bombs were dropped in 2007 than in 2006, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this week, citing U.S. Air Force data. More people were killed by air strikes in 2007 than by U.S. or NATO ground fire.
This year as violence hit its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 with more than 2,500 people killed, there has been a surge in the use of air power. More bombs have been dropped in the months of June and July than in the whole of 2006.
GIVE US PLANES
Azimi said given Afghanistan's harsh and rugged terrain, the use of air power was inevitable in tackling a full-blown insurgency.
But even here if the Afghans were conducting the operations, the chances of inflicting civilian casualties would be less because they were more likely to know a particular area better than foreign forces.
"We know people by name in our country, and we know their homes. We have pilots who know the villages and can identify targets themselves so that we hit our enemies, not civilians."
Afghanistan's fledgling air force has a fleet of five Soviet-era transport planes, and a few helicopters but no combat aircraft.
Unlike the Afghan army, the rebuilding of the air force, which lost all its 500 aircraft in the Soviet invasion and the civil war later on, has been slow.
"No army in the world can have successful operations unless it has an air force to give it logistics, transport and firepower support," he said. "But especially in the kind of environment we are in Afghanistan, we need a strong Afghan air force.
(Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fogarty)
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Seven years on, Afghanistan again 'war on terror' frontline
by Francis Curta September 10, 2008
KABUL (AFP) - Seven years after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Afghanistan is again the frontline of the US-led "war on terror" with extremist unrest intensifying and a new focus on Pakistan's tribal areas.
Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States and its allies had ousted the Taliban regime which had refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
But today bin Laden is still on the run, the Taliban have regrouped -- notably in the south and in border tribal areas of Pakistan -- while the government in Kabul struggles to assert its authority.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is among those who say the United States was distracted by its venture into Iraq and did not finish up in Afghanistan.
"One of the biggest mistakes we've made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here," Obama said recently.
"We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we are on the wrong battlefield," he said, calling, as does his Republican rival John McCain, for more US reinforcements for international forces in Afghanistan.
The rise of violence in Afghanistan and relative calming of Iraq have opened the way for such reinforcements, and the Pentagon has already spoken of a first deployment of 4,500 soldiers by the end of the year.
A US commander in Afghanistan, General Jeffrey Schloesser, last week called for extra soldiers, warning of a possible winter offensive by the Taliban and said the militants were preparing "spectacular attacks".
Admiral Michael Mullen, the most senior US military officer, also warned last month of the growth of the Taliban and attacks that would get "more and more sophisticated", as seen with recent ambushes on foreign soldiers.
"We saw that just this month (August) near Kabul, where French troops were attacked, and we saw it last month in the Wanat Valley, where nine of our own troops were killed," he told reporters.
"The safe havens in the border regions provide launching pads for these sorts of attacks, and they need to be shut down," he said, referring to militant sanctuaries along the border in neighbouring Pakistan.
US forces have increasingly turned their focus on the lawless frontier belt, stepping up missile strikes and this month helicopters even dropped ground troops into a village, angering Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, which has a long history of resistance to outsiders, international forces are making steady progress but "victory is slow," Schloesser acknowledged.
US allies are meanwhile concerned about their own growing casualties, and the difficulty of winning "hearts and minds" as Afghans grow weary of reports of civilians killed in error by military air strikes.
An Afghan investigation found that one such strike late August in the west of the country killed more than 90 civilians. The US military has said only five to seven civilians were killed along with 30-35 Taliban, but agreed Sunday to reopen an inquiry.
Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday that the number of Afghan civilians killed by air strikes had tripled between 2006 and 2007, from 116 to 321.
And nearly 200 were killed by foreign troops, including during air strikes, in the first seven months of this year, it said.
The killings are alienating locals and helping the Taliban to recruit, said the watchdog's Asian director Brad Adams.
They are also fodder for Taliban propaganda aimed at eroding support for the government and its allies.
"The enemy routinely exaggerates the number of civilian casualties as propaganda, just pure and simple," said Schloesser.
"They use lies and deceit ...They seek to wear away our partnership with the international community, with NATO and with the Afghan people."
But the security situation is not the only problem facing Afghanistan seven years after the ouster of the Taliban.
Presidential elections in 2004 and a parliament set up in 2005 have not succeeded in uniting the country, which is smaller than Texas but divided among several ethnic groups and tribes.
Corruption fed by drug trafficking -- Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium -- is rampant, and aid promised by the international community has not always been been delivered.
According to a report by the British charity Oxfam, for every 100 dollars the international community spends on maintaining the military in Afghanistan, it spends only seven on aid.
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Afghans hail Bush's move to send more troops
Wed Sep 10, 3:59 AM ET
KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan welcomed on Wednesday a U.S. decision to send more troops but reiterated that the strengthening of Afghan security forces was the long-term answer to defeat militants.
President George W. Bush announced on Tuesday the United States would withdraw about 8,000 combat and support personnel from Iraq by February 2009.
He said a fresh Marine battalion and an Army combat brigade would go to Afghanistan by January, in response to soaring attacks by Islamist militants nearly seven years after the al Qaeda-backed Taliban were ousted.
"The government has a common stance on this: we need and welcome more foreign troops to tackle the war along with local forces," said chief presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada.
"In the long term, the strengthening of national entities, their training and equipping, is the solution," he added.
The United States has 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, about half the total number of foreign troops in the country.
U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban in late 2001 after they failed to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.
But bin Laden and other al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are still at large and there is growing anger among Afghans and the government about civilian casualties caused by foreign forces, mostly in air strikes on suspected militants.
President Hamid Karzai, who has led Afghanistan since shortly after the Taliban were ousted, said last month the presence of foreign troops had not led to the success of the war but had resulted to civilian casualties.
The Taliban said sending more troops would not solve Afghanistan's ills.
"Sending troops to Afghanistan won't solve problems but intensify fighting and provide more opportunities for Taliban fighters to attack their enemy," a spokesman for the group, Zabihullah Mujahid, told the Pakistan-baed AIP news agency.
"We know the casualties of American forces will increase with the arrival of more troops. If they want a solution, all foreign troops need to leave Afghanistan," he said.
(Writing by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by David Fogarty)
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U.S. to include Pakistan in Afghanistan strategy
Wed Sep 10, 11:04 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military, faced with rising insurgent violence in Afghanistan, will revise its strategy for region to include militant safe havens in neighboring Pakistan, the top U.S. military officer said on Wednesday.
"I'm not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan. I am convinced we can," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a congressional hearing. He said he was "looking at a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region" that would cover both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
"In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said. Mullen was speaking after the United States stepped up attacks on militant targets inside Pakistan, including a raid by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos last week.
(Reporting by David Morgan)
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FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan, Sept 10
Sept 10 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 1100 GMT on Wednesday:
PAKTIA - Afghan and coalition forces killed 12 insurgents during an operation in Waza Zadran district in southeastern Paktia province, the Defence Ministry said. All those killed were of Pakistani or Chechen origin, it said.
KAPISA - U.S.-led coalition forces killed two militants during a search operation in the Tagab district of Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul, on Tuesday, the U.S. military said.
(Compiled by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)
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Afghanistan: Taliban conducting a "defensive war" says leader
Karachi, 10 Sept. (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - The Taliban was fighting a "defensive war" in Afghanistan and had no desire to conduct violent attacks in other countries, a key Taliban leader said on Wednesday.
Mullah Abdul Jalil, former Afghan foreign minister under the Taliban and pioneer of the movement in the 1990s, also told Adnkronos International (AKI) that it had nothing to do with Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban or its violent attacks.
"The Taliban are fighting a defensive war in Afghanistan and we don’t have any aggressive agenda against any nation," Mullah Jalil told AKI.
"We have nothing to do with Al-Qaeda or any other group's agenda. We abide by our own code of conduct known as Asasi Qanoon (Basic Law) which clearly says that we would not disrupt the normal life in any country of the world.
"Even tomorrow, if NATO forces withdrew as a result of our resistance, we would keep a peaceful co-existence with all nations of the world,” Mullah Jalil elaborated.
Mullah Jalil has always been part of the inner circle of Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan and the country's de facto head of state from 1996 to 2001.
He was deputy foreign minister during the Taliban regime removed in December 2001 and once served as foreign minister.
Like many other Taliban, he has reservations about Al-Qaeda. But he preferred not to comment on the issue as Mullah Omar supported Pushtunwali, a tribal code of honor, which defends anyone who seeks protection.
Abdul Jalil said that the Afghan Taliban had nothing to with Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban, the main Taliban militant umbrella group in Pakistan and never approved of violence in Pakistan.
“We never approved suicide attacks in Pakistan or Gulf countries," he said.
"This strategy is only for Afghanistan because of western occupation forces. People were often confused between the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban (led by Baitullah Mehsud) and the Taliban.
"We have nothing to do with them. In fact, we individually spoke to every group engaged in violence in Pakistan to stop them fighting against the Pakistani security troops and we don’t allow them to come into our areas,” Mullah Jalil said.
Mullah Abdul Jalil said that whatever the Taliban did during its rule in Afghanistan was merely upholding Islamic law.
On Tuesday, US President George W. Bush, announced 8,000 troops would be withdrawn from Iraq while an extra 4,500 would be sent to Afghanistan within the next few months to counter an increasing number of attacks by the Taliban.
Bush said Afghan soldiers were "courageous" but needed help and that it was important to rebuild education and infrastructure in the country.
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Aid, lack of security imperil Kabul opium progress: experts
by Nina Larson
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Afghanistan has dramatically reduced poppy production across large swathes of the country, but lack of security and aid for farmers threatens to eclipse Kabul's progress, experts warned Wednesday.
Afghanistan, the producer of 90 percent of the world's opium, which is used to make heroin for European and Central Asian markets, has seen a 19 percent drop in poppy cultivation this year, according to a recent United Nations study.
And 18 of the destitute country's 34 provinces are now considered poppy-free, compared with 13 last year and only six in 2006, according to the UN figures.
While experts at the conference, which wrapped up Wednesday, hailed the progress made, they pointed out that nearly all the remaining production in Afghanistan is concentrated in the lawless south, meaning that failing to get a handle on security could mean losing the fight against the booming drug trade.
"There is a very large overlap between the lack of security and poppy cultivation," Christina Oguz, of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told the World Forum Against Drugs conference in the Swedish capital.
"This is not an Afghan problem anymore. This is a problem of the south," she added.
John Walters, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, agreed.
"The problem is in the parts of the country that are not as secure," Walters, who has been dubbed the US "Drugs Czar," told reporters at the conference.
"We have to do a better job on security more rapidly," he said, adding however that getting rid of the drugs trade was an important part of securing different Afghan provinces.
Contrary to the wide-spread belief when the US-led coalition first entered Afghanistan that you first had to secure the country before tackling the problem of poppy production, "there is a much bigger consensus now that not only do we need to do something about the opium, but we have and should do it now," he said.
"It is not antithetical to security (to reduce production). It's a critical helper in maintaining security," he said, adding that "we can walk and chew gum at the same time ... and we've learned that if we don't do that we're not going to get where we need to be."
The Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics, General Khodaidad, said the problem of opium production was complex and multi-faceted.
"We are fighting many types of war," he said, pointing out that efforts to conquer the debilitating drugs trade were hampered by drug traffickers, terrorists, warlords and corrupt officials alike.
The main obstacle however, he stressed, was lacking aid to poor Afghan farmers who had no alternative livelihood if they decided to give up poppy cultivation.
"The communities, farmers and labourers are expecting assistance. This year, Afghanistan faced drought and high food prices, which threaten a possible relapse next season if enough support is not delivered to the target communities," he said.
Despite the fact that around 80 percent of the Afghan population still lives in rural areas, "a relatively tiny amount" of aid in the country goes to agriculture, according to Mohammad Shah Rauf of the Danish Committee for Aid to Afghan Refugees (DACAAR).
"If farmers have no alternative eradication is pointless," he said, adding that "the vital aspect of the livelihoods of Afghans should not be ignored."
The issue of aid to farmers is a pressing one, UNODC's Oguz concurred, pointing out that many farmers who had agreed to swap poppies for wheat for instance this year had faced drought and sudden cold spells that had ruined their harvest.
"If we don't get there with emergency aid, it could very well get worse next year," she said, adding that "what we have now achieved may very well be reversed."
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Facing Drug Trial, Afghan Says He Aided U.S.
By BENJAMIN WEISER September 9, 2008 The New York Times
In May 2005, about a month after coming to New York and then being arrested on federal narcotics charges, an Afghan tribal leader, Haji Bashir Noorzai, sat down with United States prosecutors and offered some critical information.
Mr. Noorzai, whom President Bush had designated one of the world’s most wanted drug kingpins, said he knew a lot about a man the American authorities had been seeking for years: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed cleric and reclusive leader of the Taliban who has been in hiding since the 2001 terror attacks.
“He changes locations on a daily basis to avoid capture,” a federal summary of Mr. Noorzai’s comments quoted him as saying. Mr. Noorzai added that Mr. Omar traveled with a small entourage of four or five people to avoid detection, and that he used an intermediary, a bodyguard, to carry letters and taped messages to the Taliban.
Mr. Noorzai described the bodyguard and the pharmacist who supplied the bodyguard’s seizure medication, and said the bodyguard even had a phone number for the elusive Mr. Omar.
Mr. Noorzai apparently wanted to trade his information to avoid prosecution. The government has not said what it did with Mr. Noorzai’s information, or how accurate or valuable it was.
But as far as anyone knows, Mr. Omar is still a free man, and Mr. Noorzai goes on trial Tuesday morning in Manhattan, charged with conspiring to import tens of millions of dollars worth of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan into New York and elsewhere in the United States and other countries. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison, prosecutors say. The trial in Federal District Court has been widely anticipated because it may offer a window into the shadowy Afghan opium industry, where skyrocketing production and corrupt Afghan officials have turned the country into a kind of narco-state, American officials say.
But the case has also raised questions about the murky tactics that were used to lure Mr. Noorzai into captivity.
The defense has argued in court papers that the government relied on private contractors who bribed foreign officials to gain access to Mr. Noorzai, and then promised Mr. Noorzai that he would not be arrested if he agreed to meet with American officials and provide information about terrorism financing.
The court has ruled that even if such tactics occurred, they did not invalidate the charges and could not be used as a defense during the trial. But the details of the operation, as laid out in court papers, show a side of the government’s counterterrorism effort that is not often revealed publicly.
The indictment says that from 1990 to 2004, Mr. Noorzai led an international heroin trafficking group in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
He also provided weapons and manpower to the Taliban, the indictment says. In exchange, the indictment says, the Taliban provided him with protection for his opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug-transportation routes.
At the time of his arrest, Karen Tandy, then chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the operation had “removed one of the world’s top drug traffickers,” and someone, she added, who “for too long, devastated the country of Afghanistan.”
Ivan S. Fisher, Mr. Noorzai’s defense lawyer, has painted a different picture of his client, who has pleaded not guilty and has been held for more than three years pending trial.
In papers filed by the defense, Mr. Noorzai repeatedly denies that he was involved in the drug business. He also says that a claim by a D.E.A. agent that he admitted to such a role during a discussion are wrong, and he blamed a faulty translation by the interpreter.
Federal prosecutors declined to respond to questions about the defense allegations.
Mr. Noorzai, who is in his 40s, was the chief of the Noorzai tribe, which has more than a million members and extends throughout southern and western Afghanistan and into the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, court documents filed by the defense show.
Mr. Fisher wrote that Mr. Noorzai was an ardent supporter of the United States-supported government in Afghanistan, and cooperated with American military and intelligence agencies in the years before and after the 2001 terror attacks.
Mr. Noorzai, in his own affidavit, said that in 1982 he began to lead a small force that grew to 1,000 mujahedeen fighters in the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.
In 1990, he said, he used his network of tribal contacts to help the C.I.A. recover Stinger missiles that the United States had provided to the Afghan rebels. He eventually turned over about 12 missiles, he said.
After 9/11, Mr. Noorzai said, he was detained by the United States military at Kandahar airport, where he talked with the Americans about the Taliban’s military and political structure and its financial sources.
After his release, he said, he and his tribe collected more than 3,000 Taliban weapons, loaded them onto 15 trucks and turned them over to American officials. “We did not ask for and did not receive any payment,” Mr. Noorzai wrote.
He said he continued to work with American military commanders, who wanted to capture Taliban leaders. He said that after he persuaded one former Taliban official to meet with the Americans, the man “then disappeared into one of their confinement centers for two years.”
After he persuaded another tribal leader, who was hiding in Pakistan, to return home to Kandahar, he said, American forces attacked the man’s home and killed him. Afraid for his own safety, Mr. Noorzai went into hiding, he said.
In August 2004, Mr. Noorzai agreed to travel to Dubai, where he met with the two contractors, who are identified only as Mike and Brian in court papers filed by the defense. The two men had worked in the Defense Department and the F.B.I. respectively, the papers say, and were associated with a firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting.
Rosetta’s goal, the defense papers say, was to collect important information about terrorist activities worldwide, and to sell that information, along with providing security services, to governments and private entities, like banks, airlines and security firms.
The court documents say the firm had “developed relationships” with high-level F.B.I. and Defense Department officials, including Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.
The firm developed a list of names, which became known as the “the Kill” or “Key Informant List,” according to the defense papers. Mr. Noorzai’s name was on that list, the papers say.
In that first meeting in Dubai, the documents assert, Mike told Mr. Noorzai that “the project had nothing to do with arresting anyone or apprehending anyone.”
In September 2004, the papers say, Mr. Noorzai met again with Mike and Brian, in Pakistan, where they asked him about various Taliban commanders and Afghan officials. They also discussed their project to study and impede the flow of money to the Taliban resistance and al Qaeda, and sought Mr. Noorzai’s help, the documents contend.
Mr. Noorzai again asked whether he was being set up.
Mike and Brian assured him that he would be “allowed to come to the United States, meet with important government officials, and then return to Pakistan,” the documents say.
About six months later, the Drug Enforcement Administration began working with Mike and Brian as confidential sources in connection with what officials say was the investigation into Mr. Noorzai’s drug trafficking organization, documents show.
In April 2005, Mr. Noorzai came to New York, where he met with D.E.A. agents in the Embassy Suites Hotel for 11 days. On April 23, he was arrested.
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US's 'good' war hits Pakistan hard
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / September 10, 2008
KARACHI - Seven years after the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan in search of al-Qaeda and to topple the Taliban government, US President George W Bush has added neighboring Pakistan to the list of countries that are "a major 'war on terror' battleground", while also announcing a "quiet surge" of troops into Afghanistan.
Bush, in remarks prepared for delivery to the US National Defense University and released by the White House late on Monday, said Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan "pose unique challenges for our country" in the worldwide conflict against terror and that it is in Pakistan's interests to "defeat terrorists and extremists".
What Bush didn't spell out is that it is also in the US's interests that Pakistan get tough on militants, and that the US is increasingly taking matters into its own hands inside Pakistan. In the the latest incident on Monday, at least 25 people were killed in a missile attack by unmanned Predator drones on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border.
The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier has moved into the Persian Gulf. Contrary to comments by US officials that it is to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, Asia Times Online has learned it is part of a new task force, separate from the Lincoln, which will allow the US to increase air sorties in the South Asian war theater. The Bush administration, critics say, is desperate to notch up a major terror success ahead of the presidential elections in November.
Pakistan, under president-elect Asif Ali Zardari, is on board with the US's war strategy, but, to the surprise of Islamabad and with potentially devastating consequences for Pakistan, the US has trained its guns on the "good" Taliban based in Pakistan with deep connections to the Pakistani establishment.
In Monday's drone attack, several missiles were fired at an Islamic madrassa (seminary) and the house of powerful Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Dandi Darpa Khail in the North Waziristan tribal area near the border with Afghanistan.
Jalaluddin, the spiritual leader of the Haqqani network and legendary figure in the Afghan mujahideen in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s, and his son, Sirajuddin, the operational head of the most powerful component of the present Afghan resistance, had left the area. Most of those killed were woman and children from the families of the Haqqanis.
Earlier, three strikes, two on South Waziristan and one on North Waziristan, targeted Pakistan-friendly commander Haji Nazeer's area. Haji Nazeer operates the biggest Taliban network in the neighboring Afghan province of Paktika.
Monday's was the fourth attack this month inside Pakistan either by US drones or by US special forces and clearly indicates that the US has already opened up a war theater in Pakistan.
In the line of US fire
That the US set its sights on the Haqqanis is perplexing, and - given the failed outcome - indicates that it struck with inadequate, if any, input from Pakistan.
Although Sirajuddin Haqqani's network is the most resourceful and the strongest component of the Taliban-led Afghan national resistance, the Haqqanis - like Haji Nazeer - have long-standing links with Pakistan.
The US's information on the network was clearly sketchy. The madrassa targeted on Monday had been closed for some time and the Haqqanis are known by people in the area to have left the tribal region as they were on the US's radar.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) publishes posters saying Sirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted man, but it does not have a photograph of him - merely a portrait of his father.
NATO headquarters and US intelligence have tried to gain information on Sirajuddin by interviewing people from his Zadran tribe in Khost and Paktia provinces in Afghanistan. But the people accessible to NATO only interacted with Sirajuddin several years ago when he was militarily naive and irrelevant. (The reclusive Sirajuddin gave Asia Times Online a rare interview - see Through the eyes of the Taliban May 5, 2004.)
The Haqqanis have always been on good terms with the Pakistani security apparatus. Jalaluddin Haqqani was persuaded by Pakistan to surrender to the Taliban after the student militia emerged from southern Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and reached Khost and Paktia, Haqqani's domain.
Haqqani remained an outsider under Taliban rule, but he never betrayed them. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and the invasion of Afghanistan a few months later, the only name Pakistan discussed with Washington in terms of regime change in Afghanistan was Jalaluddin Haqqani.
He was invited to Islamabad and urged to become Taliban leader Mullah Omar's replacement in Kabul, but he declined and returned to the mountains of Paktia, Paktika and Khost to organize a guerrilla war against the Americans.
After five years, Haqqani's network emerged as the leading component of the resistance and he was reckoned as Mullah Omar's rival (a charge he always denied).
This once again brought hope to Islamabad that if the Americans decided to abandon Afghanistan, Haqqani, who is friendly with top Afghan leaders, especially in the north, would be a most useful connection in Kabul.
It is most likely then that the US acted on its own in going after this key Taliban network.
However, in militant and jihadi circles the perception is that the new government in Islamabad is fully cooperating with the US, including going after the "good" Taliban. As a result, for the first time, there is a chance of enmity between the Pakistani establishment and the Haqqani network. Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the chief of the Taliban in North Waziristan and a close ally of Haqqani, was quick to announce that they would avenge the attack.
A similar backlash could occur in South Waziristan, where the US's recent attacks were aimed in Taliban commander Haji Nazeer's area, rather than at the biggest Taliban network, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban led by anti-Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud, or his associates in other tribal areas. Mehsud has been branded in the US media as the world's most dangerous person.
Haji Nazeer runs the biggest jihadi network in the Afghan province of Paktia and has always been close to the Pakistani establishment and he is a rival of Mehsud and his al-Qaeda allies. In January 2007, at Pakistan's instigation, Haji Nazeer led a massacre of Uzbek militants in South Waziristan, killing over 200 of them and forcing the remainder to flee.
Jihadis in the Haji Nazeer camp are bitter that the US has targeted them and for the first time recently carried out attacks on the Pakistani security forces in retaliation.
This American focus on "good" Taliban has blunted Pakistan's bid to create divisions within the Taliban as all groups are uniting under the umbrella of the Emirate of Mullah Omar - and all their guns are now trained on Pakistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Bush's shift in forces to Afghanistan less than requested
September 10, 2008
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The modest shift in US forces to Afganistan announced by President George W. Bush falls short of his commanders' requests despite signs the seven year-old US-NATO project there is at risk.
While conditions have improved in Iraq, Bush admitted that things have not gone so well in Afghanistan, which is being shaken by an increasingly bloody insurgency fueled from safe havens in Pakistan.
"Afghanistan's success is critical to the security of America and our partners in the free world. And for all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," Bush said in a speech to the National Defense University.
His remedy: 4,500 more troops by early next year to bolster what Bush described as a "quiet surge" in US and NATO forces in Afghanistan over the past two years. Bush also called for doubling the size of the Afghan army in five years.
The US troops will include the deployment of a Marine battalion before year-end to replace another battalion due to come home, and an army combat brigade in January that originally was supposed to go to Iraq.
Critics said it was not enough, however, warning that the next attack on the United States was more likely to come from the Afghan-Pakistani border regions than Iraq.
"The effort in Afghanistan must move to the forefront and once again become our top priority," said Representative Ike Skelton, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Both US presidential candidates weighed in on the plans for troop deployments, with Republican John McCain praising Bush's move but Democrat Barack Obama saying much more needed to be done.
While welcoming more forces for Afghanistan, Democrat Barack Obama said: "His plan comes up short -- it is not enough troops, and not enough resources, with not enough urgency."
Currently there are 33,000 US troops in Afghanistan, about 14,000 of them in a 53,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
US commanders have said they need at least three more brigades, about 10,000 combat troops, to confront a better trained, increasingly sophisticated "syndicate" of Islamic militants able to move across a rugged, open border.
"To protect the 10 million Afghans, plus the three or so million that are in Kabul, given the numbers that we have here, they just don't work out totally," Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, the number two US commander in Afghanistan, told reporters on Friday.
"You know, it's very difficult for us to be able to do that, given the numbers we have, given the terrain we have," he said.
US forces are not losing the war, but it is "a slow win," Schloesser said.
Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, observed that the Taliban and other insurgent groups have dramatically expanded their presence in Afghanistan since 2004.
Declassified US intelligence and UN maps show that the area of Taliban and insurgent influence or presence doubled between 2004 and 2005, quadrupled between 2005 and 2006, and rose sharply again between 2006 and 2007, Cordesman said.
"At this point in time, US-NATO/ISAF-Afghan forces are simply too weak to deal with a multi-faceted insurgency with a de facto sanctuary along the entire Afghan-Pakistan border," Cordesman wrote in a paper posted on the CSIS website.
Schloesser said there were areas of his sector of eastern Afghanistan where he had "very low numbers of troops."
"I can come in and I can clobber the enemy, but then I can't hold it and stay with the people," he said.
Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has acknowleged commanders' requests for three more brigades but has linked meeting them to deeper troop cuts in Iraq.
Insurgent attacks, meanwhile, have risen sharply and tactics have expanded to include suicide bombings, roadside explosions, and more recently complex assaults involving larger forces.
With relatively few troops on the ground, US and NATO forces have had to rely on airpower and armed surveillance drones to protect small US and Afghan units operating in treacherous, sometimes unfamiliar terrain.
An unintended consequence has been a series of high-profile incidents in which civilians have been killed in air strikes, taking a toll on public support for the US and international military presence in Afghanistan.
General David McKiernan, ISAF's American commander, asked this week for a review of a military investigation into one such incident in western Afghanistan where Afghan officials said 90 civilians were killed.
The US military, which initially said no civilians were killed in the air strike, later insisted after investigating that no more than seven civilians were killed, along with 30 to 35 Taliban fighters.
Cellphone imagery that surfaced later, and was broadly televised, put that into question.
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Obama: Bush plan for Afghanistan not enough
By NEDRA PICKLER Associated Press Tue Sep 9, 8:01 PM ET
RIVERSIDE, Ohio - Barack Obama said President Bush isn't acting quickly or forcefully enough to get more U.S. forces into Afghanistan and out of Iraq.
Bush "is tinkering around the edges and kicking the can down the road to the next president" with his decision Tuesday to bring home only 8,000 combat and support troops from Iraq by February, said Obama, who hopes to be that next president.
Bush said a Marine battalion scheduled to be sent to Iraq in November will instead be deployed to Afghanistan, followed by an Army combat brigade early next year. In all, that would add 4,500 to 4,700 combat troops in Afghanistan.
Less than two hours later, Obama went before reporters during a campaign stop in this Midwestern battleground to respond.
"His plan comes up short — it is not enough troops, not enough resources, with not enough urgency," Obama said. "The next president will inherit a status quo that is still unstable."
The Democratic presidential nominee said Bush doesn't understand that Afghanistan and Pakistan are the central front in the war on terrorism, not Iraq. He said his Republican White House rival, John McCain, doesn't get that, either.
Obama said if elected in November, he will remove troops from Iraq in a measured but methodical way and send more into Afghanistan. He recently proposed sending two brigades, or about more 7,000 troops, into Afghanistan, while withdrawing one or two brigades a month from Iraq.
Except for bringing home the 8,000 troops, Bush said, he'll keep the U.S. force strength in Iraq intact until the next president takes over. He said more U.S. forces could be withdrawn if conditions allow in the first half of 2009, but that will be the call of his successor. About 146,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq.
McCain spoke at a rally in Lebanon, Ohio, just after Bush made the announcement. The Republican presidential nominee's only acknowledgment of Iraq was to tell the crowd that the U.S. is winning and Obama was wrong about the war.
Later, McCain issued a statement, saying Bush's announcement of troop withdrawals next year "demonstrates what success in our efforts there can look like," and argued that it "stands in clear contrast to the reckless approach long advocated by Senator Obama."
McCain also backed additional forces in Afghanistan, and said, "Senator Obama believes we must lose in Iraq to win in Afghanistan." Obama has said Bush and McCain don't understand that the central front in the war on terror is Afghanistan and Pakistan, not Iraq.
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Merkel: No end in sight in Afghanistan
September 10, 2008
BERLIN, Sept. 10 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is not willing to provide an exit strategy for Germany's military contribution in Afghanistan.
"I can't give you a time frame, but what I can tell you is that the Afghan police and soldiers are making progress," she said in a television interview with German TV channel RTL, adding that the areas around Kabul would soon be secured by Afghan soldiers.
"Of course, our goal is to hand over control over the security of Afghanistan back into domestic hands … but I can't give you a date … and that wouldn't make sense anyway; we have to bring it to a successful end."
Germany has more than 3,000 troops in northern Afghanistan, where security has deteriorated over the past months. Germans have been increasingly targeted by terror attacks, most recently on Saturday, when a convoy of German special forces was bombed on its way from Kunduz to Mazar-i-Sharif. Moreover, a rocket hit a German camp in Kunduz. Both incidents passed without injuries or damages.
Meanwhile, Germany's Cabinet agreed to increase the maximum number of German troops in Afghanistan by 1,000 to 4,500 soldiers.
Reconstruction aid will be upped by $42 million to $200 million to counter a food shortage currently burdening Afghans, a government spokesman said Tuesday. Germany also will more than triple financial support for rebuilding Afghanistan's police and security force to roughly $50 million.
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Dutch defense minister does not rule out longer mission in Afghanistan
BRUSSELS, Sept. 10 (Xinhua) -- Dutch Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop has spoke of the possibility of keeping some Dutch troops in Afghanistan after the Dutch mission expires in 2010 as planned.
The minister told a TV talk show on Tuesday night that he does not rule out leaving some troops behind after the mission ends, Dutch media reported Wednesday. The last soldiers of the 1,700 Dutch troops in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan are scheduled to pull out by the end of 2010.
Although the Netherlands will no longer be a "leading nation" in the NATO mission in Afghanistan, "we will still be a member of NATO in three years time," he was quoted as saying in the show.
Seventeen Dutch soldiers have been killed since Dutch troops were deployed in Uruzgan in August 2006 as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
Despite the opposition against the Afghan mission among a majority of the Dutch public, the Dutch government decided at the end of last year to extend the mission by two years to 2010.
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Canada PM: Troops home from Afghanistan in 2011
By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 10, 12:26 PM ET
TORONTO - Canada's prime minister vowed Wednesday to pull troops from Afghanistan in 2011, the first time he has said Canadian forces will leave the country.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Canadians do not want to keep soldiers in Afghanistan beyond then and that 10 years of war is enough.
"You have to put an end date on these things," Harper told reporters during a breakfast briefing. "We intend to end it."
Harper's comments go beyond the agreement Parliament passed in March, which only stipulated that Canada would remove troops from Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar in 2011.
The prime minister's vow to leave comes as the death toll for Canadians approaches 100 in Afghanistan. Canada has lost 97 soldiers and one diplomat in Afghanistan.
The Taliban also have warned they plan to step up attacks during Canada's federal election campaign.
Harper triggered an early election Sunday, dissolving Parliament in a bid to bolster his party's grip on power in an Oct. 14 vote. Harper says he expects the vote to produce another minority government but recent polls show the Conservatives could win the majority they need to rule without help from opposition parties.
Harper said Wednesday it is not a realistic goal to eradicate the insurgency by 2011.
Development assistance for the country will continue, Harper added, and a relative handful of troops would likely stay behind to offer technical support to those coalition countries that remain, Harper said.
Canada has 2,500 soldiers stationed in Kandahar province, the former Taliban stronghold that has again emerged as the epicenter of violence. The country first sent troops to Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks and increased the deployment after declining a U.S. request to dispatch troops to Iraq.
Harper said the Afghan mission has been the hardest part of his job as prime minister, during which time he has personally called the family of every Canadian soldier that has died.
The first time he had to do it, "I cried," he said.
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Afghanistan's army to double to 134,000: UN
KABUL (AFP) - The Afghan government and its international partners agreed Wednesday to expand the national army to 134,000 soldiers, almost double its current strength, the United Nations said.
The decision, already announced by the US military last week, was adopted at a meeting in Kabul of the Afghan government and its partners, including the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
It comes as the country battles a wave of violence by Taliban-led insurgents and other Islamic factions that has put Afghanistan on the frontline of the US-led "war on terror."
"This increase is a huge step towards ensuring the Afghan government has the number of soldiers it needs and that it can gradually take over the responsibility for the security of the country," UNAMA chief Kai Eide said.
"We all know that ensuring security for all Afghans is of paramount importance," Eide said in a statement.
The Afghan army, which was destroyed during the civil war of the 1990s which was followed by the 1996-2001 rule of the Taliban, is being trained and equipped with international help and has reached about 80,000.
It is projected to reach 134,000 within three years and is needed to tackle the insurgent threat with the help of a NATO-led deployment, defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.
"The figure will resolve internal threats with the presence of NATO forces," he said.
But another defence official, who did not want to be identified, said even the new figure would be not enough to allow Afghanistan to defend itself without international help.
Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak has said previously the army should number at least 200,000.
There is new emphasis on training the Afghan security forces so they can take over from their international allies, who are often viewed with suspicion in Afghanistan.
Commanders of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which numbers about 53,000 soldiers from around 40 countries, have long called for more manpower and equipment to tackle the insurgent threat.
President George W. Bush announced Tuesday 4,500 more US soldiers for Afghanistan in the coming months.
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ANALYSIS-Britain and NATO struggle for Afghanistan numbers
By Luke Baker
LONDON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Two-and-a-half years into an operation to secure vast desert reaches of Afghanistan from the Taliban, British commanders quietly admit they are seriously undermanned.
While the official line is that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must decide if more troops are needed, officers on the ground in the southern Afghan province of Helmand concede privately that they do not have enough men or helicopters to seize and hold the territory they oversee.
With nearly 60,000 square kilometres (22,000 square miles) of desert, mountains, a dense river valley and lush poppy fields to patrol, Britain has a little over 8,000 troops and just eight Chinook transport helicopters at its disposal. "There's only so much we can do," a colonel in the Parachute Regiment said with exasperation last week, comparing the number of troops unfavourably to some small countries, where he said more than 8,000 police were usually available to keep the peace.
When asked if additional troops are needed, Brown and his defence minister Des Browne tend to say that they listen to their commanders on the ground, and if they do not ask for more, then no more will be sent.
When asked on the record, commanders, of course, defer to the government, creating a classic Catch-22.
The pressure is on, with Britain's troops and equipment pulled to remote corners of Helmand, trying to keep as much of it stable as possible. Hunkered down in small forts, resupplied occasionally, the Taliban are aware of the constraints.
At a small base in northern Helmand, a squad of British troops protects a dam and hydroelectric plant. They say they cannot go more than 3 km (2 miles) beyond their perimeter to take on the Taliban because otherwise they are overstretched.
"The Taliban know it. If we attack them, they go just over 3 km away and we have to come back," explained a junior officer commanding around 100 troops at the remote mountain base.
LONG-TERM MISSION
Seven years into a conflict that shows no sign of abating and with the Taliban resurgent, the undermanning comes at a bad time. And it may get worse before it gets better for the 53,000-strong NATO-led coalition.
Last month was the deadliest for foreign troops since the conflict began, according to independent website icasualties.org. Forty-three troops were killed, including 10 French soldiers hit in a single Taliban ambush. There will be a special vote in the French parliament this month to decide if the deployment should continue. While no pull-out is expected, the debate is a sign of the times.
Canada and the Netherlands, which have a combined 4,000 troops in Afghanistan and have both suffered sustained casualties, are both considering ending their deployments when their mandates expire over the next two years. NATO has struggled to get major nations to contribute more to its Afghan force, and as the death toll rises the challenge only gets greater. A NATO summit in April generated some increased commitment, but that momentum has since been lost as issues such as Georgia and Russia have filled the agenda.
The United States this week stepped into the breach, promising to send an extra Marine battalion and army brigade -- around 5,000 troops -- by January as it draws down in Iraq.
That would raise the overall number of troops in Afghanistan to nearly 80,000, still a long way short of the numbers in Iraq, a country that is a third smaller than Afghanistan and now widely considered to be more secure.
Afghanistan lacks strong security forces of its own, the government is under pressure and the Taliban resurgent. Neighbouring Pakistan is also turbulent and militants have hideouts there. A strong foreign presence is essential, the U.S. argues.
Britain is expected to send more forces next year, but it is still some months off and may not be substantial. What concerns commanders more is whether the long-term commitment is there.
"We must expect to invest military capability in Afghanistan certainly for the next three to five years," Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of British forces in Helmand, said last week as he skirted the issue of more troops.
"The most important thing is that the international community demonstrate both strategic discipline and patience to endure. Maybe the greatest threat is that the durability is occasionally questioned." (Additional reporting by Mark John in Brussels and Sanjeev Miglani in Kabul; editing by Keith Weir)
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Party leaders blast Taliban remarks on Canadian election
September 10, 2008 CBC News
Canadian party leaders are talking tough in reaction to Taliban claims that insurgents have stepped up their attacks on Canadian troops in Afghanistan in an attempt to influence the Canadian election.
The militant group wants the next government to stop sending troops to Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman told CBC News on Tuesday.
The Taliban threat is "reprehensible," NDP Leader Jack Layton said, adding that Canadians will decide Canadian policies.
Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion told reporters he refuses to be intimidated by the Taliban, and that the Liberals would keep troops in Afghanistan until 2011.
"All party leaders should put partisan politics aside and rally behind our troops and their mission. And Parliament has made a decision on this matter," said Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Afghanistan will be troop 'graveyard,' says Taliban
The Taliban spokesman said earlier that Canada has come under U.S. influence.
"Our message to the Canadian leaders, the Canadian people, the Canadian government and all the Canadians is that they should not send their sons to Afghanistan, where they will die for the benefit of the Americans," Qari Muhammad Yussef told CBC News in Kandahar.
If Canadian forces do not withdraw, he said, "Afghanistan will be a graveyard for them — as it was for them in the past."
Yussef said he's familiar with Harper but isn't sure about the other candidates or parties running in the election.
With files from the Canadian Press
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Pak, Afghan decide to hold a joint jirga after Eid
New Kerala
Islamabad, Sept 10 : Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said that a joint 'jirga' between Pakistan and Afghanistan will be held soon after Eid, ostensibly to resolve the issues relating to the Pak-Afghan border area.
Afghanistan has time and again accused Pakistan of fanning terrorism into Afghanistan from across the border.
"Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed to initiate the Jirga process and hopefully a joint Jirga will take place in Islamabad immediately after Eid," he said.
A list of Jirga participants had already been exchanged between the two governments, he said and added "All important figures have been included in the Jirga."
To a question, the minister said Pakistan also gave importance to the peace process with India. The composite dialogue between Pakistan and India had been useful and Pakistan wanted to remain engaged in a constructive manner, he added.
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‘I just need peace’
In Logar, Afghans want an end to decades of war, regardless of who wins
Stars and Stripes Mideast By Michael Gisick Tuesday, September 9, 2008
LOGAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan - It had been two or three months since the U.S. platoon had visited the village at the north end of the province, backed up against the dry mountains that separate Logar from the outskirts of Kabul to the north. And this would be a short visit.
Second Lt. Richard Sposito, the 23-year-old platoon leader, hands out some toothbrushes, notebooks and pens to the children, trying to keep the presents out of the hands of the village’s older men.
The Afghan soldiers who accompanied the Americans, meanwhile, begin agitating to head home for afternoon prayers — it being the second day of Ramadan and already late morning, with a long bumpy drive ahead. So Sposito wraps it up with a few questions.
Everything is fine, the villagers respond. They are poor. They need jobs. But security, one offers, is "perfect."
A few minutes later, perhaps 5 kilometers down the bumpy road home, a bomb explodes underneath a truck in the middle of the American-led convoy. No one is seriously injured, but the blast is another sign of the times in Logar.
It is hardly the most violent province in Afghanistan — U.S. commanders see it mainly as a staging ground for insurgent attacks on the capital.
Probably because they have bigger ambitions, officers say, the insurgents prefer to keep a relatively low profile within Logar, shying away from direct confrontation with the Americans.
But if the insurgency operates at a relatively low level within the province, then so do the Americans, whose tactics are defined by the limitations of their force as by anything else.
Sposito’s platoon of military police officers, fewer than 40 U.S. soldiers, patrol a roughly 700-square-mile area of northern Logar.
And aside from a Czech reconstruction team and a handful of French soldiers who work with the Afghan army, they are the only coalition presence in the area.
It is "not even close" to enough troops, says Capt. Boe Faircloth, who commands the headquarters company that includes the MP Platoon, part of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division.
Faircloth says it would take at least four platoons to secure the northern part of the province, but the brigade is spread thin across a vast area that stretches southeast from Logar to the restive border with Pakistan.
"We try to establish a presence and gather intelligence," Faircloth says.
"We try to spread the message to the people to support their Afghan forces, because we can’t do it all. We tell people to call them."
‘Tell us or the ANA’
Sgt. Susana Lovko is one of the platoon’s medics, but as they move through a market along the main road one morning, the first day of Ramadan, she’s at the front of the patrol, extending a hand to the bearded old men, striking up conversations. She’s just about the only woman on the street, and the rest are wearing burqas.
She stops at a small bookstore, asking whether they have any texts for children trying to learn Pashto. She stops at a fruit stall and buys some grapes. "Tashakor," she says, Pashto for "thank you."
Sposito drops in at a few shops, trying to spread the message.
"We know there are some bad guys out in Baraki-Barak," he tells one shop owner who hails from that village. "If [you] hear anything or see anything, just please let us know, so that way we can try to help support you."
The man protests: He’s not a bad guy. How would he know anything?
"I know, I know," Sposito tells his interpreter. "I’m just saying, if he sees anything, he should tell us or the ANA."
Nobody is talking, which, Sposito says, is understandable.
"They’re at the point where they have to be careful what they say and what they put out," he says.
In some ways, the sense of deteriorating security here is a result of the arrival of the Americans. In a bid to disrupt an escalating series of rocket attacks and suicide bombing in Kabul, a platoon from the 82d Airborne arrived in northern Logar over the winter. Sposito’s platoon replaced them in the spring.
Before that, there were no Americans to challenge the insurgents.
But now, a man who approaches Lovko says after the soldiers have moved on, people feel caught in the middle of a war that no one seems to be winning.
The Taliban pressures us for support, the man says, and so do the Americans. Both have guns.
"The people are afraid of the Taliban, and they are also afraid of you people," he says.
Asked which side he hopes will win, the man, who gives his name as Abdullah, just shrugs.
"I just need peace," he says. "If America wants to bring it, or if Taliban, I just need peace."
It’s an ambivalence that the American troops find frustrating, even if some say it is understandable.
Faircloth says he has not received a single report of the Taliban doing anything positive — building a single school, providing a single meal. Yet still, he says, there’s this apathy.
"As long as they can have their farm, put food on the table, a lot of people could care less who wins," he says. "If you ask them why, they’ll talk about how they’ve had 35 years of war. People are just beat down, tired. A lot of them, all they’ve ever known is war."
Even if there were a whole American brigade in Logar, Faircloth thinks it would be slow going.
"You can go up to somebody and lay out the whole IED (improvised explosive device) that you just found in his neighbor’s house, and he’ll still insist that his neighbor is a good guy," he says.
But then, you can’t just let a bunch of terrorists take over the country again, Faircloth muses.
Others are more optimistic.
"I think people definitely want the government to succeed," Sposito says. "I think 85, 90 percent of the people support what we’re trying to do. But people are afraid."
After the roadside bomb on the second day of Ramadan, the patrol hooks up the damaged vehicle to another truck and pushes on south.
They get stuck in the next village when one of the Humvees has a mechanical issue.
The Afghan soldiers decamp to the shade of an orchard, the time for prayers having come and gone.
Villagers gather by the side of the road, impassively watching the Americans work.
The soldiers who have stayed in their trucks watch back, but everyone seems tired. No one has eaten.
Maybe someone in this village just tried to kill them, maybe someone in the last village, maybe someone somewhere else.
But, nobody got hurt. Staring out the window of his Humvee, one soldier offers a benediction to the faces by the side of the road.
"Nice try," he says, adding an expletive.
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Terror of a different kind
Across Afghanistan, women are setting fire to themselves. What drives them to this level of desperation?
The Guardian (UK) September 9, 2008
When Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Duc set fire to himself at a busy intersection in Saigon in 1963, few of the Afghan women who later followed his example were even born. Most of them had probably never heard of the burning Buddhist monk, of the way pictures of his spectacular protest made the then US president, John F Kennedy, famously shriek "Jesus Christ!", or of the way, as some say, his self-immolation speeded up the downfall of the regime against which the monk was protesting.
His death triggered many questions and interpretations. In the words of one commentator at the time: "To set oneself on fire is to prove that what one is saying is of the utmost importance." Thinking of the Afghan women who set light to themselves, just what is this thing of utmost importance that they are trying to say? Since March 2008, there have been a hundred cases of self-immolation in southwestern Afghanistan alone; 100 women who got hold of fuel, soaked themselves in the liquid and lit the match to stage a small-scale domestic revolution of a spectacular nature. If they wanted to say something, they wanted to say it with vehemence. If they wanted to leave this world, they didn't want to leave quietly. But what is their motivation? And who or what is the subject of their protest?
Unlike the burning monk, who wrote down all his hopes, wishes and complaints prior to his death, little is known about what motivates the Afghan women. Few of them survive to tell the tale and those who do survive are unwilling to talk. Afghan documentary film maker Olga Sadat spent months at a hospital which specialises in treating burns. She waited patiently but persistently to win the trust of the women she interviewed for her film Yak, Do, Seh (One, Two, Three). The film is a documentary cautionary tale the aim of which is to discourage self-immolation. In an interview with Germany's Deutsche Welle international radio, Sadat said,
"Unfortunately, in the eight months that I was working on the film, only one of the many women who had set themselves on fire and were brought to the hospital managed to survive. But even that woman is in a bad state."
The woman had set fire to herself in protest against maltreatment on the part of her husband.
Sadat told Deutsche Welle that she believes that the women who set themselves on fire are confident that someone will come to their rescue while they are in the process of catching fire. Those she did manage to interview for her film said that when they lit the match, their aim was not suicide. They just wanted the people who maltreated them to take notice of the suffering they had caused.
Forced marriages and maltreatment by husbands and fathers is often cited as the cause of the despair that leads women to use household fuel to set fire to themselves. But a closer look reveals a more complex picture.
Sometimes the protest is directed against other women, such as an unkind mother-in-law. Other times girls have set fire to themselves for the love of a man they could not marry. And then there's protest against institutions, like case of the woman in Laghman, northern Afghanistan, who came to the court hiding petrol under her burqa. She had petitioned for divorce and was awaiting the verdict when she set fire to herself.
Female drug addiction is an equally powerful trigger that has led to self-immolation in places like Ghore, in western Afghanistan. But the fact remains that the women themselves are usually silent on the meaning of their own suicides and the meaning of their acts remains essentially ambiguous.
In a recent statement, the Afghan women's affairs minister said:
"As long as all individuals, but especially the families, fail to ensure women's social and human rights, it's impossible for the government or the related offices to have any notable success in reducing violence against women."
Other officials, like Sima Shir Mohammadi, the head of the women's affairs department in Herat, blame the war. They say violence stops government offices and aid agencies from reaching remote areas. That's why cases of self-immolation have fallen in the cities but increased in rural areas.
Earlier, in an interview with an Iranian feminist website, Shir Mohammadi said her department had worked hard to tackle the problem: "We had meetings with religious scholars and asked them to make use of religious texts, Qur'anic verses and the prophet's sayings in their Friday sermons and in radio and television speeches to tell the people in rural areas that suicide is not the solution." The clerics also tell worshippers that maltreatment of girls and women is not allowed in Islam. Both Shir Mohammadi and the women's affairs minister believe that the cooperation of religious scholars is essential in solving this problem. This society is traditional and the people respect the clerics and follow their advice.
Time will tell whether the preachers' message will prove effective and discourage women from resorting to fuel and matches to get their message across. What's certain is that the traditional path of "patience and forbearance" has lost its appeal to Afghan women.
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Rockets land in Kabul; no casualties
www.quqnoos.com Written by Abdullah Anwari Tuesday, 09 September 2008
Police discover two more rockets pointed at the capital, ministry says
TWO ROCKETS landed in Kabul on Tuesday, inflicting no casualties, the Interior Ministry said.
A spokesman for the ministry, Zemarai Bashari, said the rockets struck the Shashdarak area near the NATO-led ISAF compound at about 4am.
Police later discovered two more rockets aimed at Kabul in the Chahar Asyab district of Kabul province, Bashari said.
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Police kill two inmates in failed prison break
www.quqnoos.com Written by Abdullah Anwari Tuesday, 09 September 2008
Hunger-strike in southern jail ends as prisoners try to escape
POLICE have killed two prisoners and injured another during a foiled jail break in the southern province of Helmand, the prison’s chief said.
Head of Helmand’s prisons, Ghulam Ali, said the prisoners tried to escape on Monday night, two days after inmates went on hunger-strike in protest over conditions in the jail.
Earlier in the year, hundreds of Taliban militants and prisoners escaped from a large jail in neighbouring Kandahar province after militants rammed an explosives-packed water truck into the jail’s front gates.
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