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U.S. understated Afghan deaths, videos suggest
Military said only seven civilians died in an August raid, but cellphone footage shows several dozen bodies lying on a mosque floor
FISNIK ABRASHI Associated Press September 9, 2008
KABUL -- The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos made public yesterday, lending weight to Afghan and UN allegations that a U.S.-led raid
2 Afghan civilians killed, 10 wounded by NATO bomb
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press September 9, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - A NATO bomb missed its target by more than 1 1/2 miles and hit a house Tuesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding 10 at a time of rising tension between the Afghan government
HRW criticises US, NATO for 'collateral damage' in Afghanistan
New York, Sept 9 (PTI) Concerned over continuing civilian casualties in the airstrikes by the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, a leading human rights watchdog has criticised them for major 'collateral damage' and asked to fix the issue.
Three US-led soldiers, 28 rebels killed in Afghanistan
Tue Sep 9, 6:40 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Three US-led soldiers and an Afghan working with them were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan Tuesday as government officials reported that 28 rebels, some of them foreigners, were killed in air strikes.
FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan, Sep 09
September 09 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1130 GMT on Tuesday.
Bush reshuffles war-zone troops
Tuesday, 9 September 2008 BBC News
US President George W Bush has ordered the withdrawal of about 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and the dispatch of additional forces to Afghanistan.
Countering the Taleban's 20-year war
By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website Tuesday, 9 September 2008
The Taleban is planning for a 20-year war in Afghanistan - and the US and its allies are now having to develop policies to match.
Pakistan's Zardari vows to work with neighbors
By Kamran Haider September 9, 2008
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Asif Ali Zardari was sworn in as president of Pakistan on Tuesday and vowed to work with neighbors, particularly Afghanistan, after a period of strained relations between the two U.S. allies over Taliban violence.
Militancy dogs Pakistan's new president
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / September 9, 2008
KARACHI - Asif Ali Zardari, who convincingly won presidential elections at the weekend, brings to the office a distinctly checkered past, but he has the potential to become Pakistan's most powerful president ever - unless militants have their way.
Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right
U.S. Mentors Confront a Tricky Mission; Oft-Asked Question: Will There Be Lunch?
The Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS September 9, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan-In the spring, Afghan air force helicopter door-gunners went on strike over pay and rank. The flight engineers, who sit in the cockpit with pilots, refused to take their place, sniffing that they were
Ex-envoy attacks Afghan strategy
Tuesday, 9 September 2008 BBC News
The West has no coherent strategy for victory in Afghanistan, according to the former EU envoy Francesc Vendrell.
Karzai arrives in UAE for talks with the country's leadership
Press Trust of India Tuesday, September 09, 2008, (Abu Dhabi)
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday arrived in Abu Dhabi on an official visit, during which he is expected to ask the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to continue its aid to the war-ravaged country.
Self-immolation on the rise among women
HERAT, 9 September 2008 (IRIN) - Sarah, 20, set herself ablaze in a desperate bid to end her life after four years of marriage to a drug addict in Sheendand District in western Afghanistan.
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
Germany pledges additional ?30m for reconstruction in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle September 9, 2008
Germany has pledged to boost funding for civilian reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul promised an additional 30 million euros. She said this would raise German
India completes strategic road in Afghanistan
Reuters September 9, 2008
KABUL: India has completed construction of a strategic road linking landlocked Afghanistan with a port in Iran, India’s envoy said, reflecting New Delhi’s resolve to remain engaged despite a deadly embassy bombing in July.
Nato tightens rules of engagement to limit further civilian casualties in Afghanistan
• Video footage shows bodies of children
• Report says victims have nearly tripled in past year
guardian.co.uk, UK Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian BorgerThe Guardian Tuesday September 9 2008
Nato has issued new military rules of engagement in Afghanistan in an attempt to limit civilian deaths, after the air strike last month which reportedly killed 90 people, including 60 children, it emerged yesterday.
Blasphemy case shows Afghan divide
Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Tuesday, 9 September 2008
In Kabul's grim and crowded central prison, a 23-year-old student from northern Afghanistan spends each day wondering if and when he will be put to death.
Glass palaces 'not earthquake resistant'
www.quqnoos.com Written by Zabiullah Jhanmal Monday, 08 September 2008
Thousands of houses constructed illegally in capital Kabul
MORE than 2,000 buildings have been constructed illegally in Kabul over the last six years, the city council’s planning department said.
Police arrest Buddha smugglers
www.quqnoos.com Written by Noorullah Rahmani Monday, 08 September 2008
Statue dating back more than one thousand years found in village
Karzai sets free inmates to honour Ramadan
www.quqnoos.com Written by M Reza Sher Mohammadi Monday, 08 September 2008
Women and children among 72 inmates released in Herat
PRESIDENT Karzai has released 72 prisoners from a jail in the western province of Herat to mark the holy month of Ramadan.
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U.S. understated Afghan deaths, videos suggest
Military said only seven civilians died in an August raid, but cellphone footage shows several dozen bodies lying on a mosque floor
FISNIK ABRASHI Associated Press September 9, 2008
KABUL -- The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos made public yesterday, lending weight to Afghan and UN allegations that a U.S.-led raid last month killed more civilians than the United States reported.
The sounds of wailing women mix with the voices of men shouting inside a white-walled mosque in the western Afghan village of Azizabad, where an Afghan government commission and United Nations report said some 90 civilians - including 60 children and 15 women - were killed.
The two grainy videos, apparently taken on cellphones, show bodies lying side by side on the mosque floor, covered with floral-patterned blankets and black-and-white checkered shawls.
One young boy lies in a fetal position; others look as though they are asleep. Half the head of one child is blown off.
Turbaned men walk around, gently lifting the blankets covering the faces of the dead. At least two elderly men are among the dead.
There appear to be several dozen bodies lying on the mosque floor, though a precise count was difficult because of the poor quality of the images.
It was impossible to verify conclusively that the videos show the aftermath of the Azizabad attack, but the contents appear to back assertions by Afghan and UN officials that the U.S. operation killed far more civilians than the military has acknowledged. The initial U.S. military investigation found that only seven civilians were killed in Azizabad, along with up to 35 militants.
The U.S. said Sunday it will reopen the investigation because of emerging new evidence.
Yesterday, a Pentagon spokesman said new "imagery evidence" came to his attention over the weekend.
With violence spiralling in Afghanistan, Washington is becoming more aggressive about insurgent havens in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. Missiles fired yesterday from U.S. drone aircraft hit a seminary and houses in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, associated with a Taliban commander. At least nine people were hit, including militants and civilians, officials and witnesses said. The targets were associated with Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s. U.S. commanders now count him among their most dangerous foes.
A spokesman for the U.S. military coalition in Afghanistan said he had no information that he could release on the matter. He did not deny coalition involvement.
The U.S. is sending more soldiers to Afghanistan as it draws some out of Iraq. One Marine battalion will go to Afghanistan in November instead of Iraq and a U.S. Army brigade will go in January, for an estimated total of 4,500 more troops in what U.S. President George W. Bush called a "quiet surge" in a speech to be given today. The new troops will bring the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to nearly 31,000, compared with about 146,000 in Iraq.
"For all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," Mr. Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Washington, which the White House released yesterday.
Commanders repeatedly have asked for more troops in Afghanistan, where there has been a resurgence of the Taliban and a growth in violence. Mr. Bush acknowledged the challenges there remain huge.
"Unlike Iraq, it has few natural resources and has an underdeveloped infrastructure. Its democratic institutions are fragile," he said. "And its enemies are some of the most hardened terrorists and extremists in the world. With their brutal attacks, the Taliban and the terrorists have made some progress in shaking the confidence of the Afghan people."
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2 Afghan civilians killed, 10 wounded by NATO bomb
By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press September 9, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan - A NATO bomb missed its target by more than 1 1/2 miles and hit a house Tuesday, killing two Afghan civilians and wounding 10 at a time of rising tension between the Afghan government and international troops over the use of airstrikes.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed three U.S. coalition soldiers and an Afghan contractor, the coalition said.
NATO said its weapon malfunctioned Tuesday in the eastern Khost province. The bomb's target was a spot used by insurgents to fire rockets.
"An immediate investigation into the cause of the incident has been launched and further details will be forthcoming once established," the statement said.
Because of Afghanistan's mountainous terrain and few roads, U.S. and other foreign forces rely heavily on the use of airpower in their fight against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. But the use of airstrikes in civilian areas have been blamed for a series of civilian deaths, which caused President Hamid Karzai to ask for a review of the use of U.S. and NATO air power.
"The war against terrorism will only be won if we have the people with us. There is no other way," Karzai said after attending the inauguration ceremony for Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari. "In order for us to have the people with us, we must avoid civilian casualties."
Afghan and U.N. officials say some 90 civilians were killed in a U.S. special forces operation in the village of Azizabad on Aug. 22. The U.S. has said up to seven civilians were killed but is reinvestigating the incident after video images of victims came to light.
The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos obtained by The Associated Press on Monday.
The two grainy videos, apparently taken by cell phones, showed bodies lying side-by-side on the mosque floor, covered by floral-patterned blankets and black-and-white checkered shawls. One young boy lay curled in a fetal position; others looked as though they were asleep. One child had half its head blown off.
It was impossible to verify conclusively that the videos showed the aftermath of the Azizabad attack, but the contents appeared to back claims by Afghan and U.N. officials that the U.S. operation killed far more civilians than the military has acknowledged.
Karzai said Tuesday that he was pleased that the investigation into the Azizabad incident had been reopened. He said Afghan authorities had received "messages of regrets and condolences from as high as the president of the United States."
"While we say 'no civilian casualties,' we reiterate ... that we are dedicated in the war against terrorism because it brings our people safety and security that we so much need," Karzai said.
Karzai has said that the Azizabad bombings have brought relations between the Afghan government and the U.S. to one of its lowest points since the ouster of the Islamic militia from power in 2001.
Shortly after the Azizabad attack, he ordered a review of whether the U.S. and NATO should be allowed to use airstrikes or carry out raids in villages. He also called for an updated "status of force" agreement between the Afghan government and foreign militaries. That review has not yet been completed.
Meanwhile, two separate airstrikes in Afghanistan's south and east killed more than 27 militants, including Chechen fighters, Afghan officials said Tuesday.
Authorities clashed with Taliban fighters and requested airstrikes from foreign troops in the southern Uruzgan province on Tuesday, which killed 15 militants, said provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat.
In the eastern Paktika province, meanwhile, another airstrike hit a group of foreign fighters and killed 12 militants, including nine Chechen fighters, said Ruhulla Samon, the spokesman for the provincial governor.
There were no casualties among Afghan forces in either clash.
Afghan and Western officials have warned that higher numbers of foreign militants have joined the fight inside Afghanistan, which is seeing record levels of violence nearly seven years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the fundamentalist Taliban from power over its sheltering of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
More than 4,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western and Afghan officials.
___
Associated Press writers Fisnik Abrashi in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.
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HRW criticises US, NATO for 'collateral damage' in Afghanistan
New York, Sept 9 (PTI) Concerned over continuing civilian casualties in the airstrikes by the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, a leading human rights watchdog has criticised them for major 'collateral damage' and asked to fix the issue.
In a 43-page report, "Troops in Contact: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan", released yesterday, estimates that in 2006, at least 929 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting.
Of these, 699 died during Taliban attacks (including suicide bombings and other bombings unlawfully targeting civilians) while at least 230 in US or NATO attacks.
It also criticised the "poor response" by US officials when civilian deaths occur." Prior to conducting investigations into airstrikes causing civilian loss, US officials often immediately deny responsibility for civilian deaths or place all blame on the Taliban, the report stated.
Warning that such incidents erode the confidence of people in both the government and international forces, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said more civilian casualties occured during rapid response operations than planned airstrike on the Taliban targets.
In 2007, at least 1,633 Afghan civilians were killed in the armed conflict. Of those, some 950 died during attacks by the various insurgent forces, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Whereas, a total of 321 were killed by the US or NATO airstrikes. Thus, civilian deaths from US and NATO airstrikes nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007, it said.
In the first seven months of 2008, as many as 540 Afghan civilians were killed. At least 367 of them died during attacks by the various insurgent forces and 173 during US or NATO attacks, the report said.
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Three US-led soldiers, 28 rebels killed in Afghanistan
Tue Sep 9, 6:40 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Three US-led soldiers and an Afghan working with them were killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan Tuesday as government officials reported that 28 rebels, some of them foreigners, were killed in air strikes.
The soldiers were killed in the east of Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said. It did not give the nationalities of the troops but most international soldiers in the east are US nationals.
"Three coalition service members and one local-national contractor were killed today during an IED (improvised explosive device) attack in eastern Afghanistan," the coalition said in a statement that gave no further details.
The new deaths take to 201 the number of international soldiers to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements.
Most died in a wave of insurgent unrest, particularly bomb blasts.
An Afghan soldier was meanwhile killed by a remote-controlled bomb that had been fixed to a bicycle in the southern city of Kandahar, the defence ministry said.
"One military policeman in the vehicle was martyred and two others were wounded," spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told AFP.
In the southern province of Uruzgan meanwhile, troops were tipped off about a Taliban gathering in a garden on the outskirts of the town of Tirin Kot and sent in a strike early Tuesday, provincial police chief Juma Gul Himat said.
"The coalition forces bombed them and killed 16 Taliban and wounded another nine," Himat said.
Afghan forces arrested two of the wounded and others were able to flee, he said.
And late Monday aircraft bombed a group of Taliban militants who had attacked a district centre in eastern Paktia province, a spokesman for the provincial government, Rohullah Samoon, told AFP.
"Twelve Taliban were killed in the NATO air strike. Nine of them are Chechens and three are Afghans and Pakistanis," he said.
A Taliban-led insurgency has been on the rise since the hardliners' late 2001 ouster in a US-led invasion with most incidents in the south and east, claiming several thousand lives.
US and other generals leading the battle against insurgents say there are an increasing number of foreign Islamists, including Arabs and Central Asians, involved in the fighting.
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FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan, Sep 09
September 09 (Reuters) - Following are security developments in Afghanistan reported until 1130 GMT on Tuesday.
URUZGAN - Foreign forces in Afghanistan killed or wounded around 50 Taliban insurgents in the Tarin Kot district of Uruzgan province on Monday, a senior official in the province said.
KHOST - U.S.-led coalition targeted a network of veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and detained two suspected militants in eastern Khost province on Monday, the U.S. military said in a statement on Tuesday.
EASTERN AFGHANISTAN - A roadside bomb killed three U.S.-led coalition soldiers and a local contractor in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a U.S. military statement said. The statement did not specify where the incident happened.
PAKTIA - 12 Taliban foreign fighters, mostly from Chechnya, were killed during an air strike in the eastern Afghan province of Paktia on Monday, a provincial spokesman said.
KABUL - Two rockets landed in a diplomatic part of Kabul city close to the U.S. embassy and the NATO headquarters in the early morning on Tuesday but caused no casualties, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
GHAZNI - Five Taliban insurgents were killed when a convoy supplying equipment for foreign troops came under attack in the Qarabagh district on Monday, a provincial official said.
WARDAK - Afghan forces killed four Taliban militants during a battle in the southwest of the capital Kabul on Monday, a provincial spokesman said. One Afghan soldier also died during the fighting.
KANDAHAR - Explosives planted on a motor-bike killed one Afghan soldier and wounded four others in the southern Kandahar province on Tuesday, a senior Afghan army official said.
(Compiled by Hamid Shalizi, Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Jerry Norton)
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Bush reshuffles war-zone troops
Tuesday, 9 September 2008 BBC News
US President George W Bush has ordered the withdrawal of about 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and the dispatch of additional forces to Afghanistan.
He argued in a speech that reduced levels of violence in Iraq allowed for a "quiet surge" of troops in Afghanistan in the coming months.
Marine and army units will be sent to Afghanistan with a likely combined strength of about 4,500 men.
There are currently 146,000 US troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan.
Any long-term decision about their future deployment will be left to Mr Bush's successor, who will take office in January.
The BBC's Jonathan Beale says the continued decline in violence in Iraq since last year's US troop "surge" has given President Bush a chance to ease the growing strain on his country's military.
Meanwhile, the European Union's former envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, has accused the Bush administration of "misleading itself" in its approach to the country.
Mr Vendrell told the BBC's HARDtalk programme that the West's strategy in Afghanistan was "incoherent" and needed a complete overhaul.
He predicted this would not happen while President Bush remained in office.
'Degree of durability'
Acting on the advice of his generals, Mr Bush announced that a marine battalion of about 1,000 troops, which is scheduled to leave Iraq's Anbar province in November, will return home as planned without being replaced.
An army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops will also leave in February, accompanied by about 3,400 support forces.
"While the progress in Iraq is still fragile and reversible, Gen [David] Petraeus and Ambassador [Ryan] Crocker report that there now appears to be a 'degree of durability' to the gains we have made," Mr Bush said in his speech at the National Defense University.
"And if the progress in Iraq continues to hold, Gen Petraeus and our military leaders believe additional reductions will be possible in the first half of 2009."
Our correspondent says the withdrawals announced on Tuesday will mark the start of a slow and limited draw-down based on what Mr Bush calls "return on success". However, it will still leave the bulk of US forces behind in Iraq.
Last month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki said that although a timetable for the withdrawal of the remaining troops did not exist, he had tentatively agreed with the US military to end the presence of foreign combat troops by 2011.
The Iraqi government is currently negotiating a security agreement on the future of US forces in Iraq before a UN mandate expires.
Afghan challenge
Mr Bush also signalled the US would make increases in the strength of its forces in Afghanistan to combat the growing threat posed by the Taleban.
Afghanistan, he said, faced "some of the most hardened terrorists and extremists in the world".
A marine battalion due to go to Iraq in November will be sent to Afghanistan, followed by an army combat brigade in January, Mr Bush said.
Based on typical battalion and brigade strengths, this would total some 4,500 troops.
The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said last month that violence in Afghanistan had reached its worst level since 2001, when US-led forces overthrew the Taleban, with more than 260 civilians killed in July alone.
Afghanistan's government said the bloodshed was connected to peace deals Pakistan's government had sought with Islamist militants in the north-western tribal areas along the border.
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Countering the Taleban's 20-year war
By Paul Reynolds World affairs correspondent, BBC News website Tuesday, 9 September 2008
The Taleban is planning for a 20-year war in Afghanistan - and the US and its allies are now having to develop policies to match.
The problem is that the policies carried out up till now - a combination of military operations and civilian development in the hope that in due course the Afghan government will be strong enough on its own - have led to a deteriorating security situation.
The issue beyond that though is whether the strategy is right. The former European Union envoy to Afghanistan Francesc Vedrell thinks not. He told the BBC that the current strategy would not bring success and that President Bush's administration was misleading itself on the issue. He said that many mistakes had been made.
In the meantime, reinforcements are now needed and a gradual shake-up in security planning is underway.
The new head of US Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East and Afghanistan, is to be David Petraeus, the general who is credited with turning the war in Iraq around. Can a "mini surge" work in Afghanistan?
President Bush is announcing that a drawdown of troops from Iraq will enable the US to send an extra combat brigade to Afghanistan early next year.
Presidential candidates, the successful one of which will face difficult decisions in the years ahead if the war continues to be hard, are weighing in.
Senator John McCain is promising three extra brigades, Senator Barack Obama two.
The US is sending a senior counterinsurgency expert, Gen John Nicholson, to the south to invigorate operations there.
It is interesting to note that one of his forebears was a British brigadier who raised the siege of Delhi in 1857 - with a deserved reputation for great brutality that the current Nicholson will want to avoid.
Gen Nicholson's mission might herald a greater role for the US military in the south.
There is also to be streamlining of the command arrangements between the Nato-led Isaf forces and the separate US forces operating under the banner of "Enduring Freedom".
Military tactics are also under question, especially the widespread use of air power, which is needed to make up for the lack of troops on the ground. This has led to numerous disasters among the civilian population.
Few Western diplomats have any faith that the Pakistani army is in a position to stop the Taleban crossing the border. Some military figures believe that Pakistani elements still favour the Taleban and there is now a lowered expectation that, at best, Pakistan can play a role in targeting individuals.
Taleban resilient
The basic situation is that the Taleban itself is proving to be resilient. A journalist held by the Taleban recently said he had been told by a senior commander that, unlike the 1990s, the Taleban now knew it could not win the war in a few months, or indeed a few years.
It was expecting to take 20 years to evict the foreign forces.
The renewed concentration on Afghanistan comes at a time of political weakness in the Afghan government. President Hamid Karzai is seen by Western leaders as well-meaning but weak. Efforts are underway to encourage him to assert himself.
And not all Nato allies seem to have the stomach for the fight. Nato planners in Afghanistan now assume that the Dutch and Canadians will withdraw from combat operations by 2010/11, concentrating instead on training the Afghan army.
This itself is to double in size to 120,000 and some expectations are being placed on it for the long term.
The Dutch and Canadian transition might put pressure on Britain (and a new election has to be held by 2010) to reconsider, or at least justify, its level of commitment.
For the moment, British planners seem quite pleased that in Helmand province there are signs, they say, of improvement in some areas.
This is put down to counter insurgency tactics that stress the need for better civilian rule (the British are great supporters of Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal, an ex-communist, who is seen as an efficient administrator) as well as military pressure.
But it is going to be a long haul at best.
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Pakistan's Zardari vows to work with neighbors
By Kamran Haider September 9, 2008
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Asif Ali Zardari was sworn in as president of Pakistan on Tuesday and vowed to work with neighbors, particularly Afghanistan, after a period of strained relations between the two U.S. allies over Taliban violence.
Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, swept an election by legislators on Saturday for a replacement for former army chief Pervez Musharraf, who resigned last month under threat of impeachment.
Investors and Pakistan's allies, led by the United States, hope the election will bring some stability after months of political turmoil and rising militant violence.
Zardari's three children and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan attended the swearing-in at the Presidency in Islamabad.
Karzai later held a news conference with Zardari at which both leaders stressed their intention to work together to solve problems, including militant violence.
"We shall stand with our neighbors ... and look the problems in the eye and tell the world that we are bigger than the problems," Zardari said.
The United States and Afghanistan say al Qaeda and Taliban militants lurk in sanctuaries in northwest Pakistani border areas, from where they orchestrate war in Afghanistan and Pakistan and plot violence in the West.
But Pakistan has played down the importance of the sanctuaries, saying the Afghan war is an Afghan problem.
Karzai reiterated his call to go after militants in their sanctuaries, whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, and for international forces to avoid civilian casualties after a spate of such incidents in which scores of Afghans have been killed.
"The war against terrorism will only be won if we have the people with us. In order to have the people with us we must avoid civilian casualties," Karzai said.
"NEED TO TIGHTEN BELT"
Zardari is taking office as many Pakistanis are furious with the United States after a bloody incursion by U.S. ground troops into a remote village on the Afghan border last week and a string of missile strikes by CIA-operated drone aircraft.
Zardari told the news conference the government had protested to the United States, adding: "Casualties of war are taking place. We cannot deny that innocents are dying."
Investors are hoping Zardari's election win will end political uncertainty that has dragged stocks and the rupee sharply lower. But markets were flat on Tuesday.
The Karachi Stock Exchange benchmark share index ended marginally lower, with analysts saying investors wanted to see concrete action to bolster the economy.
The index rose for six consecutive years from 2002 and was one of the top performers in Asia during that period, but it has plunged 41 percent from a lifetime high in April.
The rupee closed at 76.45/55 to the dollar, unchanged from Monday's closing. It hit a record low of 77.45 on September 3 and has lost about 20 percent this year.
Zardari said the government would not seek an International Monetary Fund program but it would take IMF advice. "They will follow measures because we need to tighten our belt," he said.
Zardari also said he hoped his first foreign trip would be to China and he would go to the U.N. General Assembly session in New York.
Zardari's decision in August to begin impeachment proceedings against Musharraf led to the former army chief's resignation.
Zardari said parliament would decide on whether Musharraf should get an indemnity from any prosecution.
(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony, Sahar Ahmed; Editing by Paul Tait)
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Militancy dogs Pakistan's new president
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / September 9, 2008
KARACHI - Asif Ali Zardari, who convincingly won presidential elections at the weekend, brings to the office a distinctly checkered past, but he has the potential to become Pakistan's most powerful president ever - unless militants have their way.
Zardari will have his finger on the nuclear button, he will be supreme commander of the armed forces and have the power to dissolve parliament and the provincial assemblies, besides being leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the lead party in the ruling coalition government in Islamabad and in two provinces.
Pro-Western Zardari's rapid rise to power followed active mediation by London and Washington, which raises serious
doubts over whether the process was meant for the benefit of US designs in the South Asian "war on terror" theater at the expense of the domestic affairs of the country.
Zardari shot into prominence when his wife, former premier Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated last December and he took over her PPP as co-chairman. He subsequently spearheaded the drive to oust former president Pervez Musharraf and led the PPP to victory in national polls in February.
As Zardari looks to the future, he will put behind him immediate allegations of electoral fraud at the weekend and the longer-standing stigma that hangs over his head through allegations of business malpratices during the two terms of Bhutto's premiership (1988-1990; 1993-1996). For these he spent 11 years in prison, and although he was never convicted he is still widely referred to as "Mr 10%".
All that matters now is that Zardari is the man of the hour and as president is destined to play a significant role not only in the "war on terror" but also in building peaceful relations with India. And along with Turkey, Pakistan wants to play a leading role in the Organization of Islamic Countries in developing a peace formula for the recognition of and peaceful coexistence with Israel.
The author of this broader role for Pakistan is Professor Husain Haqqani, the country's ambassador to Washington, a role Bhutto had chosen for him as a loyal colleague. Haqqani is also campaigning for Zalmay Khalilzad, currently the US ambassador to the United Nations, to become the next president of Afghanistan.
Haqqani has served as director of the Institute for International Relations at Boston University and as co-director of the Hudson Institute's Project on the Future of the Muslim World. He has testified in congressional committees and worked with former US president Jimmy Carter on Middle Eastern issues. He also actively engages the Department of State, the Pentagon, the National Security Council and the US Central Command.
Zardari, Haqqani and their colleagues might have a fine vision for their country and the world in general, but the crucial issue is whether Pakistan's military establishment will ever allow Zardari to play a key role in which it is not involved.
During the nearly nine years of Musharraf's presidency, the Foreign Office and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) would draft policies concerning Afghanistan, Kashmir and the Middle East and officials would (hopefully) carry them out. Now, most policies will come directly through Washington via the Pakistani ambassador.
However, given the margin of Zardari's presidential victory (he won 481 votes out of 702), the military is expected to remain under his thumb. Significantly, this poll marked the end of the former "king's party" that once backed Musharraf - the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-i-Azam fragmented, with major defections to the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and even to the PPP.
One of Zardari's first moves after being sworn in on Tuesday is likely to be to change the director general of the ISI, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj, as well as the directors of internal and external security and regional ISI heads.
Bringing the ISI under civilian rather than military authority is one of Washington's long-standing desires as the agency often has a mind of its own and elements in it sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaeda have acted against the aims of the "war on terror".
The PPP-led government did try to bring the ISI under the Ministry of Interior two months ago, but following a strong reaction from the army the government backed off. This time, given Zardari's landslide victory, the army is unlikely to confront the government.
Militants, however, will confront the government, with another sharp reminder on Saturday of the difficult road ahead. More than 30 people were killed and dozens injured when an explosives-laden truck blew up at a police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province.
The timing of this attack on election day, the latest in a string of bombings over the past few months, sends a clear message to Zardari, who, as president, will also oversee the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in which the militants have strong bases and from where the Taliban launch operations into Afghanistan.
A top security official told Asia Times Online that the actual plan was a massive attack on the provincial assembly in Peshawar where voting was taking place for the new president, but the truck, carrying 60 kilograms of explosives, was held up at the check point.
Apart from fighting militancy, Zardari's government has a struggle on its hands in the form of an ailing economy. Well before Zardari's election, the US transferred US$365 million to Pakistan as reimbursement for its efforts in fighting terrorism in the FATA. The country's foreign reserves have dropped to $9 billion; in April they stood at $16 billion. Saudi Arabia has expressed its willingness to grant a one-year extension in oil credit facilities to enable Pakistan to import oil on deferred payments, or to accept a grant worth $500 million.
Zardari's real test, though, will be in fighting militancy and it is through this war that he will stand or fall, carrying with him all of Washington's hopes and expectations.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
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Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right
U.S. Mentors Confront a Tricky Mission; Oft-Asked Question: Will There Be Lunch?
The Wall Street Journal By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS September 9, 2008
KABUL, Afghanistan-In the spring, Afghan air force helicopter door-gunners went on strike over pay and rank. The flight engineers, who sit in the cockpit with pilots, refused to take their place, sniffing that they were officers and shouldn't have to shoot. They went on strike, too.
In the end, the Afghans compromised: If there's no gunner on duty, the helicopters would fly unarmed.
Such are the birthing pains of the new Afghan National Army Air Corps.
The U.S. has spent more than $7 billion training the Afghan National Army, Afghan Border Police and Afghan National Police to beat back the resurgent Taliban and its militant allies. The newcomer is the Air Corps, a vital weapon in a country of soaring mountains and featureless deserts. It has a new fleet of refurbished Soviet bloc aircraft, an $800 million U.S. aid budget for two years and 100 coalition advisers.
With U.S. help, the Afghans have turned a shambles of a Soviet-trained air force into an Air Corps that, on a good day, can transport Afghan troops to the battlefield, haul the supplies they need to fight and evacuate the fallen.
But the effort has been plagued by red tape, uneven competence and the wide cultural gap between by-the-book American mentors and damn-the-checklist Afghan flight crews.
One Afghan pilot flew his Mi-17, an East bloc transport helicopter, to 15,000 feet, unaware that the reduced oxygen at that altitude could cause the crew to lose consciousness.
The Air Corps doctor, an Afghan obstetrician, insists on taking the Afghan and American pilots' blood pressure and pulse before every mission. He's worried that the crews, like the Soviets before them, might be drunk.
The U.S. flight surgeon advising Afghan medevac crews rarely takes off unless he has arranged for a kebab lunch at their destination. One of the first questions the Afghans ask him when assigned a new mission: Will there be lunch?
"They're really good stick-and-rudder pilots -- it's not like they don't know anything," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jeff Robinson, one of the American advisers. The main problems, he said, are "cultural differences." The Afghans have a casual attitude toward flying, while "we fall back on the way we're used to doing things," he said.
The American mentors share the cockpit only with what they call the "A team," the 10 or 15 best Afghan helicopter pilots. "You get down to the B team and you're getting into people who taxi into fences," said Lt. Col. Todd Burt Lancaster, one of the three coalition helicopter instructors.
Stool in the Cockpit
Unlike the Afghan National Army, which relies on veterans of the 1980s guerrilla campaign to oust the Soviets, the Air Corps is led by men who fought on the Soviet side.
The Air Corps chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Barat, flew Mi-17s for the Soviet-backed regime and later for the Taliban. "I got orders, and I executed the mission," the 56-year-old explained.
During the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, he flew an Mi-17 to his home province of Wardak, landed in a valley and covered the plane with a tarp to conceal it from U.S. bombers. After the Taliban fell, he discovered someone had stolen the pilot's seat. He put a stool in the cockpit and flew back to Kabul to report for duty.
One day recently, he got a call from an army commander telling him that nomads and Hazara farmers were fighting over land west of Kabul. The army needed the Air Corps to ferry 50 soldiers to the spot. "We're ready to do any kind of operation," Gen. Barat said. "It's a point of national pride. It's like the rebirth of the Air Corps."
At the moment, the Air Corps has six Antonov transport planes, 17 Mi-17 transport helicopters and four Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters, fearsome-looking craft that in Soviet hands terrorized Afghan villagers. The Afghan Hind pilots are allowed to fire their weapons only in self-defense.
"We are not employing them in offensive operations," said U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jay Lindell, commander of the coalition entity charged with rebuilding the Air Corps. The Afghans and their supporters don't want to risk an accidental strike on civilians or friendly troops.
That worry highlights the central paradox of the new Air Corps: Should the Afghans conduct combat missions immediately? Or should they stick to training until they can operate to U.S. standards?
"We hope we can build them capability in six to 12 months for a variety of operations," including medevac, air assaults, night flights, and landing under fire, said Lt. Col. Lancaster, who went to Ukraine to learn to fly Soviet helicopters. "But there's pressure to do something that feels like a success now."
Minor Mishaps
The Afghan pilots have suffered minor mishaps. One Mi-17 crashed into the side of a mountain, but there were no fatalities. Mechanics repaired the aircraft where it went down. It crashed again on the way back to base.
One pilot swiped a fence with his spinning tail rotor. When the pilot flew his Mi-17 at an unsafe altitude, U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Al Davis, who mentors Afghan flight engineers, was on board and urged the commander to descend.
At times, coalition advisers find the rank-conscious Afghans frustratingly slow. A three-star Afghan general has to approve every major helicopter movement in writing, except medevac missions. One day in July, the general was at a funeral, so a long-awaited mission to Jalalabad was scrubbed.
At other times, the advisers try to subdue Afghan spontaneity. The Americans spend about three hours planning for every hour in the air; the Afghans reverse the ratio, according to the advisers. Traditionally, Afghan pilots gather at the front of the aircraft, look at a map, hop in and go.
"If we don't get them in the habit, they won't do it when we cut them free," Master Sgt. Davis said at a coalition staff meeting.
Lt. Col. Robinson warned the others that the Afghans might rebel against such rigorous procedures. "We'll lose their buy-in," he warned the other advisers.
In the end, the advisers agreed to try to enforce a strict routine.
The Air Corps has 66 fixed-wing pilots and 139 helicopter pilots, of a total force of 2,000. Next year, the U.S. will begin sending Afghan pilots to the U.S. for English-language and flight classes. By 2016, the Americans hope the Air Corps will number 7,000 men. The U.S. is building a major Air Corps base in Kabul, on a cleared minefield, complete with new hangars, housing, community center, stores, mess halls and a mosque.
Despite the stumbles, the Air Corps is beginning to chalk up a record of successful missions. When fighting broke out north of Kandahar in June, Air Corps planes transported 200 commandos and other soldiers to the front in a single day.
"For the first time, with minimal [coalition] support, they've taken the fight to the enemy," said Gen. Lindell.
Write to Michael M. Phillips at michael.phillips@wsj.com
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Ex-envoy attacks Afghan strategy
Tuesday, 9 September 2008 BBC News
The West has no coherent strategy for victory in Afghanistan, according to the former EU envoy Francesc Vendrell.
Mr Vendrell told BBC TV's HARDtalk programme the Afghan plan needed an overhaul - but this was not possible under the current US administration.
Mr Vendrell, who left office in August, lamented "many mistakes" made in Afghanistan and called for fast action against corruption rife in the country.
The US is set to announce a modest boost to its Afghan troop contingent.
US President George W Bush is expected to reveal plans for a "quiet surge" in troop levels in Afghanistan, coinciding with the withdrawal of some 8,000 US troops from Iraq.
Impossible to change
Mr Vendrell was asked on HARDtalk if the West had a coherent strategy to bring peace to Afghanistan.
"No," was his reply. "Because for as long as the Bush administration is in office it is impossible to change the Bush administration's approach to Afghanistan.
"They don't want to see any changes because they still hope to present Afghanistan as a success story," Mr Vendrell said.
"We will need to wait, not for very long, for a new administration to be established and at that point we need to reveal our strategy, not only a US strategy but the overall strategy, because clearly what we are doing so far is not going to lead to success."
Mr Vendrell, a veteran Spanish diplomat, left the EU post in Afghanistan at the end of August.
"I don't leave with a sense of failure," he said.
"But I do leave with a sense of regret that we made so many mistakes. I don't believe the situation will lead to failure but we have got to do a hell of a lot to get things right."
Mr Vendrell added his voice to the criticism of civilian deaths in Afghanistan from aerial bombings. "It is doing us an enormous amount of harm with the public," he warned.
"In 2002, we were being welcomed almost as liberators by the Afghans. Now we are being seen as a necessary evil, perhaps something that they need to put up with because our departure would probably mean a civil war, but these kinds of actions completely undermine the efforts to win hearts and minds."
Mr Vendrell's successor as EU envoy to Afghanistan is the Italian diplomat, Ettore Francesco Sequi.
HARDtalk is broadcast on BBC World News at 03:30 GMT, 08:30 GMT, 14:30 GMT, 20:30 GMT and 22:30 GMT.
HARDtalk can also be seen on BBC News at 04:30 BST & 23:30 BST.
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Karzai arrives in UAE for talks with the country's leadership
Press Trust of India Tuesday, September 09, 2008, (Abu Dhabi)
Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday arrived in Abu Dhabi on an official visit, during which he is expected to ask the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to continue its aid to the war-ravaged country.
Karzai's visit follows an invitation to the Afghan President by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi emirate.
A statement released by the Afghan embassy in Abu Dhabi said the President will ask his UAE counterpart to maintain the Emirati "assistance for Afghanistan's economic development and to promote investment and trade".
According to officials, the two leaders will also discuss means to further strengthen "the existing brotherly relationship between the two countries in addition to discussing the regional issues".
Karzai is also expected to give a briefing on the situation in Afghanistan during the visit, which is likely to last several days.
"The UAE's participation in the reconstruction process of Afghanistan is greatly appreciated. The generous pledge made by the UAE in the Paris Conference has taken the existing strong bonds between our two countries a step further," a statement from Abdul Farid Zikria, Afghanistan's ambassador to the UAE said.
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Self-immolation on the rise among women
HERAT, 9 September 2008 (IRIN) - Sarah, 20, set herself ablaze in a desperate bid to end her life after four years of marriage to a drug addict in Sheendand District in western Afghanistan.
Her family extinguished the fire and took her to the hospital.
"I was sad when I opened my eyes in the hospital," the severely burnt woman told IRIN. Sarah's husband is a jobless drug addict who often beat her for alleged "insubordination".
"I wanted to die and never come back to this life," she told IRIN from her bed in the Herat city hospital.
Doctors said up to 40 percent of her body was severely burnt and it would take her months to recover.
Ninety percent deaths
Over the past six months, at least 47 self-immolation cases have been recorded by Herat city hospital alone, of whom seven were saved but 40 died.
"Ninety percent of the women who commit self-immolation die at hospital due to deep burns and fatal injuries," said Arif Jalai, a dermatologist at the Herat hospital.
Almost all the women had doused themselves with petrol and set themselves alight, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
A growing phenomenon
More than six years after the ousting of the Taliban regime in 2001 when all women were denied the right to work and education, many women suffer domestic and social violence, discrimination and lack of access to unbiased justice and other services, women's rights activists say.
"Domestic violence against women not only has serious physical and mental effects on women but also causes other grave problems such as self-immolation, suicide, escape from home, forced prostitution and addiction to narcotics," according to a study by the AIHRC in 2007 [http://www.aihrc.org.af/Evaluation_Rep_Gen_Sit_Wom.htm].
At least 184 cases of self-immolation were registered by the AIHRC in 2007 against 106 in 2006.
The phenomenon is feared to have increased further in 2008, women's rights activists said.
"We have been unable to collect data and information about all incidents of self-burning due to a number of reasons, but overall the situation is not promising," said Homa Sultani, a researcher on the rights of women at the AIHRC in Kabul.
The AIHRC in Herat and Kandahar confirmed a marked increase in reported cases of self-immolation.
Sultani's concerns were echoed by Seema Shir Mohammadi, director of the women's affairs department in Herat Province: "Women are increasingly paying back the violence they receive at home and outside by self-immolation and suicide."
However, some people say the increase in the reported incidents could also indicate the improved capacity of rights watchdogs, the media and other civil society actors to report them.
No legal repercussions
The police and judiciary do not launch any formal investigations to determine the causes and motivations of suicide and self-burning by women, according to the AIHRC.
As a result, men who force and provoke women to self-immolation and other forms of suicide remain immune from all legal and penal repercussions.
"The government must ensure proper investigations into cases of suicide among women and where needed bring those responsible to justice," said Sultani of the AIHRC.
In Afghanistan's patriarchal culture, however, it will be difficult to indict the men who force women to commit suicide, specialists say.
"There is a culture of impunity for those who push women to self-immolation and suicide," Sultani said.
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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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Germany pledges additional €30m for reconstruction in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle September 9, 2008
Germany has pledged to boost funding for civilian reconstruction projects in Afghanistan. Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul promised an additional 30 million euros. She said this would raise German aid to the embattled country to 170 million euros for 2008. Wiezcorek-Zeul made the announcement in Berlin during a visit by Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta. She said Germany was committed to provide longterm aid for Afghanistan's poorest citizens.
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India completes strategic road in Afghanistan
Reuters September 9, 2008
KABUL: India has completed construction of a strategic road linking landlocked Afghanistan with a port in Iran, India’s envoy said, reflecting New Delhi’s resolve to remain engaged despite a deadly embassy bombing in July.
The 220-km road in the southwest Afghan province of Nimroz is the centrepiece of New Delhi’s $1.1bn reconstruction effort, which has drawn sniping from Pakistan, worried about its rival’s growing influence in Afghanistan.
“We are in the process of handing over the road to the Afghan government,” said ambassador Jayant Prasad in an interview, adding this was a project in which India had invested blood and treasure.
Ten workers have died in attacks, including seven this year, during the construction of the road from Delaram to Zaranj on the Iranian border which connects to the port of Chahbahar.
The road opens up an alternative access route into landlocked Afghanistan, which at the moment relies mostly on Pakistan with goods coming through from ports there and then overland via the Khyber pass.
More than $1.2bn worth of goods were imported into Afghanistan through Pakistan last year.
New Delhi, denied access through Pakistan, itself hopes to be able to deliver goods to Afghanistan through the Iranian port, and this has triggered fears in Pakistan it is being encircled.
“The road is part of a long-running commitment to the people of Afghanistan and it is something that has been welcomed by the people,” Prasad said, citing a survey done by a foreign consultancy which ranked India high among foreign nations operating in Afghanistan because of its involvement in reconstruction work.
New Delhi has no troops and very little involvement in Afghan security except for hosting Afghan National Army officers for courses in military institutions in India.
But the suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul in July in which at least 58 people, including two Indian diplomats, were killed, underscored the tensions that lay beneath.
New Delhi and the Afghan government blamed Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence for the blast, an allegation backed by the US which said there was evidence of involvement. Pakistan angrily rejected the charges.
The attack also stirred fears South Asia’s nuclear-armed neighbours had taken their rivalry to Afghanistan in a proxy war.
“Our response to the attack is we will carry on doing what we have been,” Prasad said.
“We were attacked for that reason, we were certainly not attacked because people were hostile to us here.”
He said there had been an outpouring of sympathy from Afghans following the bombings, with one provincial governor calling him to say Afghans and Indians, “united by a bond of sweat earlier, were now united in blood.”
The envoy also defended India’s decision on running missions in Mazar-I-Sharif, Herat, Kandahar and Jalalabad, which Islamabad says have been established to carry out hostile activities.
“Can five or six people in a consulate de-stabilise a whole nation, is that possible?” Prasad countered.
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Nato tightens rules of engagement to limit further civilian casualties in Afghanistan
• Video footage shows bodies of children
• Report says victims have nearly tripled in past year
guardian.co.uk, UK Richard Norton-Taylor and Julian BorgerThe Guardian Tuesday September 9 2008
Nato has issued new military rules of engagement in Afghanistan in an attempt to limit civilian deaths, after the air strike last month which reportedly killed 90 people, including 60 children, it emerged yesterday.
The orders were issued by General David McKiernan, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, who also asked the US central command to reopen an inquiry into the air strike in the western district of Shindand, as video footage surfaced showing the bodies of child victims.
US drone air strikes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are meanwhile reported to have hit a house and madrasa linked to a Taliban commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani. Taliban officials claimed Haqqani was not there at the time of the attack and that 20 people had been killed in the attacks.
The rules of engagement for Nato troops will focus on house searches, saying they should be led by Afghan forces, and that permission from homeowners should first be sought. A limit on the size and weight of bombs used in air strikes was imposed last year, but there is continuing anxiety in Nato about the counterproductive impact of civilian casualties on the majority Pashtun population.
The new directives seek to "sharpen tactical directives, to give more clarity to commanders on the ground", one official said. It was an attempt "to re-educate commanders, to re-emphasise how careful everyone should be" in carrying out air strikes and air support for ground troops.
"Killing civilians is not the best way to attract hearts and minds," one European official noted sarcastically yesterday. But western officials also say that troops on the ground have to rely on air support because they often find themselves outnumbered.
A report by the independent New York-based group Human Rights Watch said yesterday that civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and Nato air strikes nearly tripled in the past year and recent bombings have led to more killings, fuelling a public backlash.
It said that despite earlier changes in the rules of engagement which had reduced the rate of civilian casualties since they peaked in July last year, continuing air strikes had greatly undermined local support for the efforts of international forces in the country.
There is general alarm in Washington and London about the worsening security situation, particularly along the principal roads across the country. Route 1 from Kabul to Kandahar has become far more dangerous over the past few months, particularly for Afghan government employees.
There is also trepidation over the expected withdrawal from combat of Dutch and Canadian forces in the next 18 months.
Western officials say that the counter-insurgency effort against the Taliban should be strengthened by the unification of the Nato and US missions in Afghanistan under the single command of McKiernan, which is due to be confirmed by Congress later this month.
Officials and diplomats in Kabul will also be carefully watching the presidential election in the US. John McCain, the Republican candidate, has said he would send three extra US brigades to Afghanistan, while the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, has said he would send two.
US forces have already reinforced their headquarters in southern Afghanistan, and are expected to send an expert on counterinsurgency, Brigadier General John Nicholson, in the next few weeks.
British officials are also upbeat about the role of the governor of the southern province of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, a former communist commissar in the Afghan army, whom British officers praise for being businesslike and efficient.
However, there is deepening concern in western capitals about the weakening position of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has been unable to project his authority much beyond Kabul, and has been criticised for failing to deal with ministers accused of corruption and incompetence. He faces elections next August, and he is being urged by London and Washington to take his campaign outside the capital and into the countryside, to persuade ordinary Afghans he is working for their benefit.
British officials believe they have stabilised the opium cultivation in Helmand province, questioning UN figures suggesting it has increased over the past year. They have clashed in the past with American officials who have called for aerial spraying. British officers in Afghanistan believe the opium problem will only be solved by long term economic development, which in turn requires greater security.
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Blasphemy case shows Afghan divide
Alastair Leithead BBC News, Kabul Tuesday, 9 September 2008
In Kabul's grim and crowded central prison, a 23-year-old student from northern Afghanistan spends each day wondering if and when he will be put to death.
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh was sentenced in January, in five minutes, at a local court in Mazar-e-Sharif, with no legal representation to defend charges of blasphemy after reports he had downloaded from the internet un-Islamic material on women's rights.
"I don't know what will happen to me," he said from the prison office where we were allowed half an hour to interview him.
"My trial was unfair from the beginning. From day one, they have been treating me very harshly as a criminal, not a suspect, and I don't know who has done this to me.
"My case has been politicised - my lawyer has been threatened. I have lost nine months of my life now in four prisons," he said.
'Deviated from religion'
There is an appeals process but his family have little faith in it - there have been many delays and little information.
The international community has raised the issue and asked for Sayed Pervez Kambaksh to be pardoned or released, but the case is a glaring example of the conflict between conservative Islam and the liberal Western views of Afghanistan's international backers.
"Kambaksh has deviated from religion, and Islam orders that he must be executed," said Enayatullah Baleegh, a member of the Islamic ulema council and a popular and well-respected Muslim scholar.
"The courts of Afghanistan, as per the constitution, have sentenced him to death and we certify this 100%," he said.
This is not the voice of an extremist minority, Enayatullah Baleegh delivers his religious guidance at one of Kabul's main mosques and on state-run television every week.
He advised against us visiting the mosque to hear his message at Friday prayers, as he said some of those present might object to our presence.
But an Afghan BBC cameraman recorded the speech a few days before the country's national day, and Mr Baleegh began with a history lesson.
"The English were cruel and invaded Afghanistan, but the brave people of this country repulsed the British forces with the power of their strong belief in Allah," he said.
"Islam is the religion of peace, but if a human attacks you and invades your land the Koran has another order.
"It says when the infidel attacks you, you should not think yourself weak... you should behead them... you should hold them hostage and should intensify the war and break their morale."
Complex mix
It's not what the UK, or other countries pumping in money to help rebuild Afghanistan, will want to hear from influential mullahs instructing the people in the capital city.
But it goes a long way to illustrate the pressures on President Hamid Karzai, who is keen to portray himself as independent from the international community on which he depends.
Afghanistan has been a fiercely conservative Islamic country for centuries - from well before the Taleban imposed their interpretation of how people should live.
"President Karzai is a deeply conservative Pashtun who understands the traditions - his wife never appears in public and he prays five times a day," said Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Afghanistan.
"He understands perhaps better than anyone that one of his jobs is to reconcile these traditions - the call for modernism, the call for openness and at the same time respect for sincerely and devoutly-held religious traditions.
"In many ways we need to understand that the Taleban are the violent expression of an authentic and legitimate strain of deeply conservative, religious Pashtun nationalism that needs to be accommodated in any enduring political settlement in this country," Sir Sherard said.
The balance is not easy to achieve - the Bonn conference in late 2001 created the complex mix when it agreed on a constitution combining Western and Sharia law.
It's unlikely Sayed Pervez Kambaksh will be put to death, but the way his case is handled is incredibly sensitive and important for President Karzai to get right and he could be in prison a while longer.
It's also a reminder that dissatisfaction over progress in Afghanistan, particularly with justice and security, will only encourage the voices of extremism and conservatism.
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Glass palaces 'not earthquake resistant'
www.quqnoos.com Written by Zabiullah Jhanmal Monday, 08 September 2008
Thousands of houses constructed illegally in capital Kabul
MORE than 2,000 buildings have been constructed illegally in Kabul over the last six years, the city council’s planning department said.
The city is located in an earthquake zone and so buildings must follow the standards laid out by the council, the department said.
The construction of tall buildings, business centres in residential areas and low-quality materials imported from abroad are among the main problems facing the department.
Deputy head of Kabul council, Wahabuddin Sadat, said: "There are problems. We have one plan for Kabul, but something different is being implemented in the city.
"We know about the illegal building constructions in Kabul. In most parts of the city, we have allowed the constructors to build two story houses, which is the international standard for residential homes, but we have seen that some people have built more than two storey houses."
Engineer Aminullah Amin, head of the council’s planning department, said: "The buildings which are constructed according to foreign designs are not accepted by us.
"The plans which our department has given to the people satisfy international standards. These maps have been inspected by another commission, and they are totally reliable."
Fardin, a construction engineer said: "All buildings which are more than two stories must be built with loading systems that make them resistant against earthquakes."
Some engineers say that newly built buildings covered in glass are not earthquake resistant.
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Police arrest Buddha smugglers
www.quqnoos.com Written by Noorullah Rahmani Monday, 08 September 2008
Statue dating back more than one thousand years found in village
A BUDDHA statue dating back between 1,500 to 1,800 years has been discovered in the southern province of Kandahar.
Head of Kandahar's information and culture department, Abdul Majeed Babai, said the valuable monument, which smugglers were trying to carry out of the country, was being kept in a house in Sanzai village.
He said the smugglers had been arrested.
Mr Babai said: "The smugglers wanted to sell the statue for $200,000, and if it was smuggled abroad, it would have been sold at a much higher price."
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Karzai sets free inmates to honour Ramadan
www.quqnoos.com Written by M Reza Sher Mohammadi Monday, 08 September 2008
Women and children among 72 inmates released in Herat
PRESIDENT Karzai has released 72 prisoners from a jail in the western province of Herat to mark the holy month of Ramadan.
Karzai, who released the inmates on Sunday, said 62 of the prisoners were men and 10 were women.
Four children under the age of 18 were also among those released.
The prisoners were selected for release because they had all completed one third of their sentences.
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