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Afghanistan bets on peace with first national park
By Emma Graham-harrison – Wed Apr 22, 1:34 am ET
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A unique cascade of turquoise lakes nestled in bleak mountains near the heart of Afghanistan was touted as a national park in the 1970s, long before three decades of war drove the tourists away.
Obama to Host Talks With Afghan, Pakistani Presidents
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan will travel to Washington early next month for meetings with President Obama as the administration struggles against daunting hurdles to implement its new strategy for the region.
Afghan Taliban say claim of talks is "propaganda"
By Sayed Salahuddin April 22, 2009
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan's Taliban denied on Wednesday that they were holding peace talks with the government, saying such claims were propaganda aimed at creating a schism among the militants.
US military chief visits troops in Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) – The top US military commander Admiral Michael Mullen met American soldiers deployed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, kickstarting his second visit to the war-torn country in just weeks, an official said.
US shares plans with Afghans to avoid deaths
Tue Apr 21, 7:42 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States has begun sharing sensitive information about military operations with the Afghan government in a bid to avoid civilian casualties, a top US defense official said on Tuesday.
UN warns of new highs for Afghan drug production
by Sharif Khoram Tue Apr 21, 11:36 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – With authorities concentrating on Afghanistan's substantial trade in opium, officials admit there is not the time, money or inclination to worry as much about the production of hashish, which the United Nations warns is climbing.
Top US officials shaped 'torture' policy: report
Wed Apr 22, 1:27 am ET
WASHINGTON, (AFP) – Top US officials, not a "few bad apples" of low rank, were behind harsh military interrogation tactics that spread from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq, a new Senate report said.
Afghan Charged In New York With Financing Taliban
April 22, 2009
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- U.S. prosecutors have unveiled new charges against an Afghan man accused of conspiring to finance Taliban terrorist activities.
Pentagon preps for years in Afghanistan
David S. Cloud Politico via Yahoo! News - Apr 21 6:53 PM
The Pentagon’s senior military leaders are worried that the security situation in Afghanistan is stalemated or deteriorating, and now are preparing a far-reaching plan that would prepare the U.S. military for a war that could last three to five more years, officials said.
Afghan law just age-old power grab
AMIRA ELGHAWABY From Wednesday's Globe and Mail April 22, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
"Hey, her bag is almost exactly like mine," I told my five-year-old daughter as we gazed at the arresting images of protesting women, their hijabs framing contorted faces on the front page of the newspaper.
Afghan presidential candidates hope to conjure up Obama magic
Politicians are trying out his name and his Web-savvy tactics in their nascent campaigns
JESSICA LEEDER Globe and Mail (Canada) April 22, 2009
KANDAHAR -- On paper, the "Obama of Afghanistan" is not unlike the Obama of America: He advocates for change, for empowerment of the poor and exploited minorities, and for reformed democracy.
In Canada, Afghanistan not 'forgotten'
By Manav Tanneeru
(CNN) -- Afghanistan has been called "the forgotten war" but for Canadians, it is the war.
Taliban tighten their grip on Pakistan's northwest
By Nahal Toosi Associated Press April 22, 2009
ISLAMABAD – Taliban militants from Pakistan's Swat Valley are tightening their grip on a neighboring northwest district closer to the capital — patrolling roads, broadcasting sermons and spreading fear in another sign
Czech troops 'abandoned British soldiers' in Afghanistan
Czech troops abandoned British soldiers during fighting in Afghanistan because it was deemed "too dangerous", a Czech newspaper has claimed.
By Matthew Day in Warsaw 22 Apr 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The daily Mlada fronta Dnes wrote that members of the Czech Republic's elite Special Operation Group lost the trust of British forces after withdrawing from several operations because of the heavy fighting involved,
Tajik-Afghan Drug Trade Breeds Kidnapping
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
When Tajik drug traffickers default on payment, their Afghan business partners wreak vengeance by abducting locals in cross-border raids.
Opposition grows to Pakistan's Taliban pact
By Zeeshan Haider – Wed Apr 22, 7:28 am ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Opposition is building among Pakistani politicians and media to a peace deal aimed at ending Taliban violence in a northwestern region after the Islamists challenged democratic rule and started taking over new areas.
Millions for textbooks bogged down in Afghanistan
By Heidi Vogt Associated Press Wed Apr 22, 6:03 am ET
KABUL – Day laborer Sayed Sekander spent more than half a day's pay on textbooks for his third-grade son, stuffing them into a dirty rice sack to take home. He will wait before buying any for his two daughters.
Looted Afghan treasure to go on show
Afghan archaeological treasures thousands of years old are to go on display in Kabul after being rescued from smugglers passing through British airports.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 22 Apr 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
More than 3,000 antiquities have been returned to Afghanistan after being confiscated by British customs officers and identified by the British Museum.
Taliban Threat Afghan Voters
www.quqnoos.com Written by Wali Arian Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Taliban militants intimidation will impact on Afghan voters in the upcomming elections, Afghan MPs said
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Afghanistan bets on peace with first national park
By Emma Graham-harrison – Wed Apr 22, 1:34 am ET
BAMIYAN, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A unique cascade of turquoise lakes nestled in bleak mountains near the heart of Afghanistan was touted as a national park in the 1970s, long before three decades of war drove the tourists away.
Wednesday, Afghanistan at last declared Band-e-Amir its first conservation area, hoping nature-lovers will return.
For decades, the area deteriorated along with so much else in a country consumed by war. The last of Band-e-Amir's magnificent snow leopards was hunted down some time in the 1980s while Soviet troops were battling mujahideen guerrillas.
Spectacular ancient giant Buddha statues in the nearby Bamiyan valley were blown up by the Taliban in 2001.
But today the area is far from any fighting and Afghan tourists have begun to return. Authorities hope foreigners who made Afghanistan a stop on the "hippie trail" in the 1970s will one day come back too.
The chain of lakes are a bone-jarring day's drive from Kabul over dirt roads that are currently considered unsafe for foreigners. There is only a dirt airstrip at the nearest town.
But the giant natural dams, formed from slow-growing deposits of travertine stone that hold back each pool of startlingly blue water are a unique natural treasure.
"There is nothing else in the world that looks like that," said Peter Smallwood, Afghanistan Country Director for the Wildlife Conservation Society, which has helped set up the park. "There are some travertine dams that are bigger but nothing so vertically sheer. It is so thin and tall it looks almost unreal."
Wetlands at the edge of the lake are a haven for migrating birds in an arid zone, boasting a rare species which lives only in the area, the Afghan snowfinch. Although the Buddhas are gone, the nearby Bamiyan valley is still breathtakingly beautiful and scattered with other historic sights.
Local entrepreneurs are hoping that official national park status will bring a steadier stream of Afghan tourists to their doors in the summer months.
"We are very poor people. If this opens a gate for the rich people to come visit, at very least we will have a chance to see what they look like," said Sayid Abdul Jafar, a villager from inside the park said with a grin.
TROUBLE AHEAD?
Persuading the 20,000 people who live in what is now Band-e-Amir park to support the project has been a challenge.
Park rangers now try to control overgrazing of the shrubs around the lake edge which poor local farmers rely on.
"Their life is almost entirely dependent on the natural resources, so it is a big deal for them to make this commitment, especially when they are still not entirely sure it will benefit them," said Jafar, who was selected to represent his neighbors on the park management committee.
Among the local practices that are now banned: no more fishing with hand grenades.
Four rangers enforce the unpopular rules for salaries of under $60 a month, often on duty for 24 hours. They were decked out in new uniforms when interviewed before the park's launch, but grumbled that they don't yet have everything they need.
"We feel that after a year and a half on the job, we are at the same place we started -- with a lack of equipment, expertise and government support," said ranger Haji Zahir.
Always lurking is the possibility that increased unrest in other parts of Afghanistan may spill over into Bamiyan.
"The risk is not trivial," acknowledged the Wildlife Conservation Society's Smallwood.
"But if the whole situation does devolve, afterwards there will be another rebuilding. In some ways the most important thing we're doing is not any laws we get passed or policies or institutions, it's the ideas we are planting."
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Obama to Host Talks With Afghan, Pakistani Presidents
By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan will travel to Washington early next month for meetings with President Obama as the administration struggles against daunting hurdles to implement its new strategy for the region.
The visits, on May 6 and 7, will elevate to summit level a trilateral exchange begun by the administration with senior aides from each government in late February. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai will meet separately with Obama, and the three will also sit down together, officials said yesterday.
The administration considers cooperation between the two often-estranged governments crucial to the success of its Afghanistan-Pakistan policy. The Pakistani side of their shared border harbors a growing network of extremist groups, including al-Qaeda and the Taliban, providing sanctuary for fighters combating U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and launching terrorist attacks inside Pakistan itself.
Obama has emphasized that the two countries should be considered in a single strategic framework. But administration officials have made clear that their deepest and most immediate concern is Pakistan, where the stability of the civilian government and its ability to withstand the extremist onslaught is increasingly in doubt. Worries were heightened last week when Zardari approved an agreement authorizing sharia, or Islamic law, in the Swat Valley -- just 100 miles west of the capital, Islamabad -- after the Pakistani military failed to rout Taliban fighters there.
With no U.S. military forces on the ground in Pakistan, the administration has fashioned a policy based on diplomatic backing for the civilian government, close mentoring and support of the Pakistani military, aerial-drone-launched missile attacks on terrorism targets, and vastly increased economic assistance focused on the western Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
At a Pakistan donors conference in Tokyo on Friday, the administration pledged $1 billion in economic aid in anticipation that Congress will approve a $7.5 billion, five-year package of assistance along with $3 billion in military equipment and training. A bill authorizing the aid has already been introduced in the House, although with conditions that the administration and the Pakistanis find too restrictive.
In what administration officials considered a bright spot at the conference, Iran also pledged $350 million. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the gathering that his country was worried about the deteriorating situation in the region, echoing the Obama administration's charge that its predecessor failed to develop a coherent strategy for the Afghan war. "We would not have been witnessing the current situation in Pakistan if appropriate policies had been pursued in Afghanistan over the last seven years," Mottaki said.
The administration is facing the beginning of the spring fighting season against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, as well as presidential elections there in August. Obama has already authorized the deployment of 21,000 additional U.S. troops and hundreds of new diplomatic and other civilian officials.
In an effort to centralize control over uncoordinated U.S. development, counter-narcotics and governance efforts in Afghanistan, the administration also plans to appoint an overseer of all U.S. civilian assistance programs there. The choice for the post, Earl Anthony Wayne, is currently the U.S. ambassador to Argentina and previously served as assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week also ordered her department to review all U.S. Agency for International Development contracts in Afghanistan before they can be signed. Last week, the department opened an investigation of its largest Afghanistan contractor, Falls Church-based DynCorp International, following allegations of drug abuse among its employees.
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Afghan Taliban say claim of talks is "propaganda"
By Sayed Salahuddin April 22, 2009
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan's Taliban denied on Wednesday that they were holding peace talks with the government, saying such claims were propaganda aimed at creating a schism among the militants.
The insurgents, who have made a comeback in recent years and carried out a number of high-profile attacks despite the growing number of Western troops, once again pledged to fight until all foreign troops pulled out of Afghanistan.
The spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday the government had made progress in talks with the Taliban and was asking foreign allies to remove the names of some militants from wanted lists.
U.S. President Barack Obama has also spoken of the possibility of talking to some Taliban members as a way of ending a war that has become a priority for his administration.
"There have been no talks with the Taliban. This is just propaganda to influence public opinion, to show that 'we (the government) are interested in peace, but they (the Taliban) are not'," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman said.
"This issue is clear that their intention is to create disunity and split among the Taliban. We will not engage in talks as long as foreign troops are here," Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Karzai's spokesman Humayoun Hamidzada told a briefing on Tuesday the government was in contact "at various levels" with opposition forces, but declined to give details or names.
U.S.-backed Afghan forces drove the Taliban from power in 2001 after its leadership refused to hand over al Qaeda leaders wanted by Washington for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Taliban attacks have increased in recent years along with the number of foreign troops sent to fight them. The militants have also spread their influence in neighboring Pakistan, where their senior leaders are believed to be based.
Obama has said he would consider talking to moderate Taliban and has ordered the dispatch of 21,000 extra soldiers this year to join more than 70,000 Western troops in Afghanistan. He has also pledged to boost U.S. aid to both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Taliban have refused Obama's offer of talks.
(Editing by Dean Yates)
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US military chief visits troops in Afghanistan
KABUL (AFP) – The top US military commander Admiral Michael Mullen met American soldiers deployed in Afghanistan on Wednesday, kickstarting his second visit to the war-torn country in just weeks, an official said.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived early in the morning and travelled to eastern Wardak province to meet newly deployed US forces and Afghan police, said a spokeswoman for the US-led coalition, Elizabeth Mathais.
"They went down to Jalrez district (Wardak province) and met with governor (Haleem) Fadayee and some of the Afghan public protection force," she told AFP.
Specific details of Mullen's itinerary were not released for security reasons, but military officials said he would travel to troubled Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan on Friday during his three-day visit.
Mullen is also scheduled to meet regional leaders, Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Alayne Conway said.
"He'll be meeting with various US military leaders, as well as various Afghan leaders," said Conway.
Conway could not rule out that the top military officer might make a side trip to neighbouring Pakistan or another country in the region.
The United States last month unveiled a sweeping new strategy designed to turn around the flagging war in Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency last year reached its deadliest proportions since the 2001 US-led invasion.
The plan puts Pakistan at the heart of the fight against Al-Qaeda, but dispatches thousands of extra troops to Afghanistan and boosts civilian efforts to build the impoverished country, notably in the key agriculture sector.
US President Barack Obama is expected to decide later in the year whether to approve the deployment of a further 10,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Mullen said earlier this month that he expected Taliban militant activity to rise during 2009 in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send an extra 21,000 troops in the coming months to counter the bloody insurgency.
"I am convinced that the additional military capacity will certainly start to allow us to turn the tide in the south where it has not gone well," Mullen told reporters in Kabul earlier this month.
The extra American soldiers will join 70,000 foreign troops already in Afghanistan, including about 38,000 US troops.
The new reinforcements include 17,000 combat forces and 4,000 mentors who will train new Afghan security force recruits.
Mathais said Mullen's visit was routine.
"He is the senior officer for everyone so he likes to come here and see what we are up to," Mathais said.
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US shares plans with Afghans to avoid deaths
Tue Apr 21, 7:42 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States has begun sharing sensitive information about military operations with the Afghan government in a bid to avoid civilian casualties, a top US defense official said on Tuesday.
The effort was designed to ensure close cooperation with Afghan military officers amid rising concern over civilian deaths from the US-led fight against insurgents, said Michele Flournoy, US undersecretary of defense for policy.
"One of the things that's happened in recent weeks is a number of steps that we have worked out with the Afghan ministry of defense and the Afghan military to try to more fully integrate Afghans into every aspect of our operations, from intelligence, to planning, to actual execution," Flournoy told an audience at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The closer coordination was meant to draw on "Afghan expertise, knowledge, sensitivities," she said.
"And that includes the most sensitive kinds of direct action that we're undertaking against extremist elements," said Flournoy, who helped shape President Barack Obama's new strategy for the Afghan war.
The US military was now "working hand-in-glove with our Afghan counterparts in every possible element of the planning and conduct of operations," she added.
Flournoy did not offer more details or indicate how the US military had addressed the risk that cooperation with Afghan authorities could result in sensitive intelligence possibly falling into the hands of insurgents.
The mounting toll of civilian casualties has been a source of tension between Kabul and Washington, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai charging NATO operations and air strikes have been careless.
Karzai last week asked the commander of US-led forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, to explain recent civilian casualties from air strikes in the Kunar province and a US raid in Khost province.
"I think the US military is deeply concerned about this (civilian casualties), as is the Department of Defense," Flournoy said.
She said Taliban insurgents tried to "inflame the situation" by overstating civilian deaths from foreign troops.
"There are many situations where when we've actually investigated, we found that the casualties were not what they were said to be, that there had been a propaganda effort developed by the Taliban to inflame the situation, to make it worse," she said.
"There's an information problem too here."
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UN warns of new highs for Afghan drug production
by Sharif Khoram Tue Apr 21, 11:36 pm ET
KABUL (AFP) – With authorities concentrating on Afghanistan's substantial trade in opium, officials admit there is not the time, money or inclination to worry as much about the production of hashish, which the United Nations warns is climbing.
Dishevelled and blind in one eye, the 57-year-old hashish dealer has no fear that police might try to stop the trade he conducts from a petrol station on the edge of the dirty Kabul River.
"If you give them 100 afghani (two dollars) and a joint, they would say carry on," said the man who gives his name as Mahtaabudin.
"I am not afraid of anyone," he said gruffly, only agreeing to talk after he has lit a cigarette of heady hashish made from cannabis resin which he shares with some of his customers on the station's verandah.
He admits to some precautions, such as only selling to people he knows, but Mahtaabudin probably does not really need to be too careful.
And anyway, Afghan security forces, especially the police, are notorious users of the drug.
"I don't know how many but there are people using hashish working with army and other organisations," said deputy counter narcotics minister Mohammad Zafar.
"We have a big problem with opium poppy. This is why we don't have good data as regards hashish," he said.
Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, most of it refined into heroin inside the country, an enterprise that earns the extremist Taliban millions of dollars a year for their insurgency against the government.
It is also the world's second largest source of cannabis resin, producing 1,603 metric tonnes in 2006 after Morocco's 1,915 tonnes, according to the UN's World Drug Report 2008.
Afghanistan became famous for its hashish during the 1960s and 1970s when hippies trailed in from Europe en route to Asia, stopping in places now off-limits because of the insurgency, like the southern city of Kandahar.
Cannabis was declared illegal here in the early 1970s but it remains the intoxicant of choice for Afghans, favoured over opium and alcohol.
All are forbidden by Islam and widely frowned on by Afghan society.
The latest UN drug survey in 2005 said 2.2 percent of the population, which it put at 23.8 million, use hashish compared to 0.7 percent for alcohol, 0.6 percent for opium and 0.2 percent for heroin.
The numbers are believed to be considerably higher today with officials regularly warning of growing drug use.
"It was Eid, and we were seven or eight young boys. We went to see an old man in our village who prepared the shisha with hash," recalled a 51-year-old labourer who has been smoking for 35 years. "We laughed so much."
Now the sallow-faced man, who gives his name as Abdul Latif, says he cannot cope without hashish.
"I have to smoke. If I don't, I get a headache and stomach pains," he said, adding that without hashish he cannot sleep.
Latif said he realised at the age of 25 that he had a problem. "I was losing money, my nerves and my position in society."
But like many other smokers in Afghanistan, he believes there may be health benefits, including controlling diabetes and lowering cholesterol.
He is also among those who believe smokers are more pious and well-behaved, saying: "If I smoke hash, I know I will not steal, quarrel or be sexually violent."
But non-users say smokers are moody, short-tempered and violent.
"His eyes were turning red and no one could speak to him," recalled a woman named only Arifa, in her 50s, referring to an addicted brother-in-law.
"Everyone, small or big, was terrified by him. He was beating his wife so much that she would be unconscious."
This man first bought his hash but later planted his own, she said, and it was up to his wife to care for the plants.
Most of Afghanistan's cannabis is grown in the largely lawless south, also the main opium-growing area, where authorities are battling to assert control.
In 2007 the area under cannabis cultivation (70,000 hectares/173,00 acres) was equal to more than a third of the area planted with opium poppies, both following similar routes to foreign markets, according to the UN.
With Morocco's production dropping, Afghanistan could take the world's top spot for cannabis resin supply, the World Drug Report 2008 says.
"There is thought to be vast over-supply of opiates, and prices could fall further any time, prompting a shift to cannabis cultivation," it says, referring to Afghanistan.
"In addition, there is a functioning illicit drugs market in existence which may be able to accommodate another product efficiently."
The resin is extracted by rubbing the plant and is pressed in the palm of the hands with water or tea to form small balls or slabs which are transported for sale. Less scrupulous producers are said to add soil or chemicals.
Mahtaabudin said he buys a kilogramme of processed hash for 5,500 afghani (110 dollars) and sells it for 8,000 afghani (160 dollars), most often in small chunks that cost 20 afghani each.
"I sell it to people I know. People send their children. Police buy it," he said on the verandah, adding of the merits of hashish: "It can make a person generous and honest."
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Top US officials shaped 'torture' policy: report
Wed Apr 22, 1:27 am ET
WASHINGTON, (AFP) – Top US officials, not a "few bad apples" of low rank, were behind harsh military interrogation tactics that spread from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq, a new Senate report said.
The Senate Armed Services Committee's 261-page report, the fruit of its investigation into US treatment of "war on terror" detainees, is likely to stoke the ongoing debate over US techniques widely seen as torture.
The panel, led by Democratic Senator Carl Levin, released its chief conclusions in December 2008, but its detailed findings had been kept under wraps during US Defense Department declassification proceedings.
Levin said in a statement that the report showed that claims by top aides to then-president George W. Bush "that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a 'few bad apples,' were simply false."
The report is "a condemnation of both the Bush administration's interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse -- such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan -- to low ranking soldiers," said Levin.
The report says US officials began preparing for what came to be known as "enhanced interrogation" techniques just a few months after the September 11, 2001 attacks and before a series of memos declaring such practices legal.
The approach harnessed a US military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which aims to train US military personnel to resist questioning by foes who do not follow international bans on torture.
The resulting program included tactics like stripping a detainee, slapping, as well as "waterboarding," a notorious kind of near-drowning.
The report also says that one suspected terrorist was forced "to bark and perform dog tricks" while another was "forced to wear a dog collar and perform dog tricks" in a bid to break down their resistance.
Interrogation tactics also included "religious disgrace" and "invasion of space by a female."
One of the officials quoted in the report says some of the harsh tactics were used before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq amid frustration in Washington at the lack of evidence linking Al-Qaeda and Baghdad.
"Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq," the report quoted US Army psychiatrist Major Paul Burney as saying of some Guantanamo Bay interrogations.
"We were not being successful in establishing a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results," said Burney.
Others did not recall such pressure, the report said.
The report also details repeated warnings from military and other experts, almost from the outset, that harsh questioning was likely to yield "less reliable" intelligence results than less aggressive approaches.
One July 2002 memo from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency that oversees the SERE program warned "if an interrogator produces information that resulted from the application of physical and psychological duress, the reliability and accuracy of this information is in doubt.
"In other words, a subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," it said.
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Afghan Charged In New York With Financing Taliban
April 22, 2009
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- U.S. prosecutors have unveiled new charges against an Afghan man accused of conspiring to finance Taliban terrorist activities.
Haji Juma Khan was charged with narco-terrorism, conspiracy to fund, and financing terrorism in a superseding indictment unsealed by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan.
Khan, 55, was handed over to U.S. officials by Indonesia and brought to the United States in October. He initially faced a single charge of conspiring to distribute narcotics with intent to support a terrorist organization.
U.S. authorities say he is among the first defendants to be prosecuted under a 2006 federal narco-terrorism statute.
Since 1999, Khan has led an international opium, morphine, and heroin trafficking group that arranged to sell morphine base, an opium derivative that is processed into heroin, in quantities as large as 40 tons -- enough to supply the U.S. heroin market for two years, prosecutors say.
Prosecutors say Khan is closely aligned with the Taliban, designated by the United States as a global terrorist group since 2002.
"After the United States military intervention in Afghanistan, Khan has supported the Taliban's efforts to forcibly remove the United States and its allies from Afghanistan," the indictment said.
If convicted, he faces a maximum of life in prison.
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Pentagon preps for years in Afghanistan
David S. Cloud Politico via Yahoo! News - Apr 21 6:53 PM
The Pentagon’s senior military leaders are worried that the security situation in Afghanistan is stalemated or deteriorating, and now are preparing a far-reaching plan that would prepare the U.S. military for a war that could last three to five more years, officials said.
The effort, which is being coordinated by the Joint Staff and is still in its early stages, is designed to create an experienced cadre of officers and senior enlisted soldiers, who would rotate between assignments in Afghanistan and at their home stations until the end of hostilities.
By doing so, the Pentagon hopes to end a problem that has plagued the effort in Afghanistan—the lack of familiarity with local conditions by U.S. forces who rotate in and then depart after a year, just when they are beginning to understand the area or the mission where they are assigned.
“These would be small groups who would deploy together for shorter periods, going back and forth to the same place and the same mission again and again, so they would know the culture and the terrain,” said a senior Pentagon official briefed on the plan, who said the teams could be asked to conduct training or other specialized counterinsurgency missions.
Until now, officers involved say, the Afghanistan war has been a secondary concern for the Pentagon, which has tended to view it as a short-term mission that took a back seat to the war in Iraq. “This is about finding an alternative scheme that allows us to provide continuity in Afghanistan without burning people out,” said the senior military official.
The plan envisions adding hundreds of personnel to the effort – on top of the 21,000 additional troops that President Barack Obama has ordered to Afghanistan.
But the Joint Staff ideas may conflict to some degree with Obama’s timetable. He has seemed reluctant about getting involved in a long-term effort in Afghanistan, though he not yet to made explicit his own timetable for the war. In announcing his strategy last month, he made clear his desire for turning over the lead combat role as quickly as possible to Afghan Army and police units.
When the plan was briefed to military services and combatant commands earlier this month, senior Joint Staff officers bluntly declared that the security situation across Afghanistan is “poor, stalemated, or deteriorating,” according to an official who was present. They also warned that the military ought to prepare for the conflict to last another three to five years.
That message—that winning in Afghanistan will require a long-term commitment—was intentionally blunt and meant to make clear to the hidebound Pentagon that changes in the way it has conducted the war will be required, officers involved said.
The idea of using shorter tours and returning to the same places repeatedly has been used for years by Marines and Special Forces units operated in Iraq. But the Joint Staff plan would clash with longstanding practices in the Army and other services, disrupting promotion schedules and normal deployment practices.
In the Army, for example, most officers do a tour in a combat unit, and then are reassigned to a new unit in an entirely different job. The Joint staff plan would change those practices, at least for the officers and enlisted soldiers chosen as members of these new teams.
One of the issues still to be resolved is how to restructure promotion system so that top-flight officers would not worry their careers could suffer if they spend multiple years in the same assignment, officials said.
“If we don’t do this, it will show we’re still not serious,” about the war in Afghanistan, said a Pentagon official briefed on the plan.
The architect of the new approach is General Stan McCrystal, who commanded the Special Forces effort in Iraq and now is the head of the Joint Staff, officials said. The concept is also supported by Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
Mullen returned recently from a trip to the region in which he heard repeated complaints that U.S. officers assigned to the war finish their tours and rotate out just as they are finally becoming familiar enough with Afghanistan to be truly effective.
One of the factors driving the Pentagon to step up its effort is concern that public support for the war both in the U.S. and Europe could wane, forcing a withdrawal before the security situation has stabilized, officials said. Obama has also called for greater civilian effort in Afghanistan, but the Pentagon, with its massive resources, is in some ways in a better position to expand its effort than the State Departtment and other civilian agencies.
Until now, officers involved say, the Afghanistan war has been a secondary concern for the Pentagon, which has tended to view it as a short-term mission that took a back seat to the war in Iraq. “This is about finding an alternative scheme that allows us to provide continuity in Afghanistan without burning people out,” said the senior military official.
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Afghan law just age-old power grab
AMIRA ELGHAWABY From Wednesday's Globe and Mail April 22, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
"Hey, her bag is almost exactly like mine," I told my five-year-old daughter as we gazed at the arresting images of protesting women, their hijabs framing contorted faces on the front page of the newspaper.
Finding commonality in something as simple as the style of bag hanging off the shoulders of one of the many young women who had gathered to protest against a discriminating law in Kabul reminded me how easily I could have been one of them. After all, not only did we share the same religion, in whose name oppression was being legislated, but the same fashion sense.
But the bag was more significant in something else it represented, the realization dawning on me as I read an obscure statement made by a woman who was as far apart from the reality of the Afghan protesters as a woman could be - a former CNN correspondent who had penned a book on how to charm a man and keep him from straying.
"The [large] bag implies I can do everything," the author is quoted as saying. Instead, women should keep their purses small, she advises, so as not to threaten the male species.
And therein lies the secret of the maelstrom.
This latest conflict over women's roles and responsibilities isn't totally about Islam but about the age-old struggle over power - power that even Western men may sometimes want (or so suggests Whitney Casey, author of The Man Plan: Drive Men Wil d - Not Away, quoted above). Some men just don't want to see women "do everything," and this latest outrage in Afghanistan is about reminding everyone who's boss.
And just as this legislation is contrary to modern-day notions about women's roles and rights, it is also contrary to the spirit of Islam that it tries to co-opt. Believe it or not, Islam actually encourages positive relationships between husbands and wives, and aims to promote societies based on mutual co-operation and education of the sexes. It is this that can neutralize oppressive values, not a Western-imposed world view.
Afghan scholars who have (willingly?) forgotten some key points about women's rights in Islam need to be reminded of the faith's ideals (Koran 30:21): "And among His signs is this: That He created mates for you from yourselves that you may find rest, peace of mind in them, and He ordained between you love and mercy. Lo, herein indeed are signs for people who reflect."
The Prophet Mohammed said: "The most perfect believers are the best in conduct and best of you are those who are best to their wives." And "seeking knowledge is mandatory for every Muslim."
He also said: "It is the generous [in character] who is good to women, and it is the wicked who insults them."
Girls and women are even guaranteed the right to refuse marriage in Islam, according to prophetic tradition.
And while there are contentious teachings in sacred texts, they should never be taken at face value. There are important caveats when it comes to controversial issues such as polygamy, giving witness and inheritance.
And no one steeped in Islamic jurisprudence would ever condone a law that legislates violence in the home, or a strictness that makes home life ugly. This was not and could never be the aim of a faith that teaches that "paradise is at the feet of mothers," or so said the Prophet.
Afghan women can find much in their own heritage to mount a serious and legitimate challenge to all forms of patriarchy.
As for backup? Armies of trained Muslim scholars from across the Western and Muslim worlds are long overdue in lands that fear oversized bags.
Amira Elghawaby is an Ottawa-based writer.
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Afghan presidential candidates hope to conjure up Obama magic
Politicians are trying out his name and his Web-savvy tactics in their nascent campaigns
JESSICA LEEDER Globe and Mail (Canada) April 22, 2009
KANDAHAR -- On paper, the "Obama of Afghanistan" is not unlike the Obama of America: He advocates for change, for empowerment of the poor and exploited minorities, and for reformed democracy. Having been elected to government office once before, he has proven himself committed to serving his country and people.
The similarities pretty much end there, but that has not stopped presidential candidate Ramazan Bashardost from billing himself as "Afghanistan's Obama," attaching the U.S. President's name to his fledgling campaign.
In fact, with several months to go before campaigning can officially begin, several politicians vying for Afghanistan's top office appear to be channelling Barack Obama, either in name or by emulating his campaign's trademark Internet strategies in an effort to start a buzz among the critical mass of young voters.
It seems to be working. Thousands of young people, many of whom have never cast ballots, have already pledged their support online for a handful of politicians expected to run in the country's second direct presidential election. The names are not yet official because Afghan law prevents politicians from declaring their candidacy until April 25.
Using the social networking website Facebook - the free service Mr. Obama's campaign team demonstrated was vital in shoring up backing - potential candidate Ashraf Ghani has gathered 2,500 supporters, most of them young. Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former government minister, has three separate pages promoting his policies. And Mr. Bashardost, the "Obama of Afghanistan" and widely considered an underdog, has an expanding list of 1,000 backers.
"We do not hope he will have the same politics as Obama," explained Javid Reza, a student who has been voluntarily marketing Mr. Bashardost. "The comparison between Bashardost and Obama is their courage to stand against the mainstream ideas and tell about what they think."
Experts monitoring the runup to the election say it is unlikely that the candidates will be able to harness Internet-related strategies to build support or raise funds at a scale comparable with Mr. Obama. His Internet-savvy campaign architects have been credited with forever altering the way politicians communicate with and organize constituents.
However, in a country unaccustomed to democracy, barren of pedigreed campaign strategists and unpractised in democratic political strategy, the candidates' early copycatting is a positive signal that they understand the need to be creative, and aggressive, to secure votes, particularly among the critical youth demographic. About two-thirds of Afghanistan's population is under 25 years of age.
"It's a very difficult job. They have to start with the basics," explained Abdullah Ahmadzai, an official with the Asia Foundation's elections program in Afghanistan. "The candidates have to do a lot of civic education before they go and campaign for themselves. People will certainly try to do their best and be as innovative as possible."
Anticipating that the candidates will have their hands full when campaigning begins - legally they may start only one month before the Aug. 20 election - some young people, including Afghans living in the United States and Canada, have begun nudging the campaigns along by setting up additional websites and conducting their own voter information seminars.
"We have been studying about all this for a long time, how to actually build support, how to explain who to vote for," said Turaj Rais, a 22-year-old student at American University in Kabul who began a Facebook page for Mr. Jalali.
While Mr. Rais does support Mr. Jalali, he got involved in the campaign largely because he found the first presidential election in 2004 confusing.
"I didn't vote in the last election. I didn't know anything about [the candidates]," he said. In addition to not understanding the process, Mr. Rais was bothered that many of his fellow students simply voted for the candidate their village elders insisted on.
"That's what happens in Afghanistan," he said, adding that his mission is to persuade the thousands of young Afghans on Facebook to figure out for themselves how to evaluate candidates. "It should be about how you feel about a person, what you know about the person."
For the candidate Mr. Jalali, all of this is welcome news. In an interview from his home in Washington, the Afghan-American said he is glad for any help.
"The majority of Afghans believe in peace, stability, accountable government and transparency," he said. "However, it's very difficult to mobilize in a country where security is a problem."
Using the Internet is a good solution to that problem, particularly if it also attracts youth, he said.
"Young people are a solid block of the electorate," he said. "Anybody who can enjoy the support of the young has a good chance to win."
***
FEMALE POLITICAL JUNKIES FIND VOICE ONLINE
Nazia Jaan has many hurdles to jump before she can achieve her dream of becoming president of Afghanistan. The first one involves convincing her father that she should be allowed to participate in politics - period.
"All in all, my family does not have a good memory from politics," she said, explaining that her father was inexplicably jailed during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and her uncle assassinated.
"I respect their feelings," she said, adding, "I won't hurt them."
So, instead of attempting to run in the election in August, Ms. Jaan is settling for simply casting her vote, the prospect of which has the 21-year-old law student ecstatic. Not that she's willing to talk much about it. "Families hate it when their children, especially girls, talk on the phone, certainly about politics," she said in an e-mail, explaining why she feels she can write, but not speak, about her political passion.
At school in Kabul, where she is studying civil rights, she feels she must also stay silent.
"At the university, there are groups of different races, ethnicities, political groups - and I would hate to get into trouble by showing public support to a certain politician or group," she said.
Online though, it's a different story. Ms. Jaan said she and her fellow female political junkies feel free to express their opinions on Internet campaign sites, where they engage in fervent debates about who the next president should be, and why.
For Ms. Jaan, the choice is obvious. She's planning to vote for Ali Ahmad Jalali, a well-known Afghan-American who is scheduled to return to the country from Washington next week.
Ms. Jaan met Mr. Jalali in 2003, when he had a brief stint in Kabul serving as interior minister with the interim government.
"I saw a hope in his eyes," Ms. Jaan explained, adding that she's long been studying his policy positions and doing her part to increase his popularity with other young people. "All I can do for now is to hope for a better future. ... We the voters will be responsible."
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In Canada, Afghanistan not 'forgotten'
By Manav Tanneeru
(CNN) -- Afghanistan has been called "the forgotten war" but for Canadians, it is the war.
As U.S. troops begin increased deployments to Afghanistan, the United States can look to its northern neighbor for insights on the frontlines and the home front.
Canada's involvement began in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "There was a feeling in Canada that it had to be done," said Alan Henrikson, a professor of diplomatic history at Tufts University.
Canadian forces increased their numbers in 2006. And last year, following a national debate, the Canadian government extended the mission -- which was to end this February -- until the end of 2011.
More than 2,800 Canadian troops and dozens of civilians are currently in Afghanistan. Most of them are based in the Kandahar province in the southern part of the country, home to some of the worst violence and instability. At least 117 Canadian troops have been killed in Afghanistan as of Wednesday. Canada has had no troops in Iraq.
Afghanistan is the largest recipient of development aid from Canada. According to the government, Canada will have authorized $1.2 billion in aid to Afghanistan from 2002 through 2011.
"Relative to other involvements of Canada around the world, it's an enormous commitment," Henrikson said. "It is proportionally larger than the stake the United States has in Afghanistan."
But some recent polling suggests that the increasing violence and slow pace of progress are taking a toll on support for the war.
More than half -- 55 percent -- oppose having Canadian troops in Afghanistan, according to a Harris/Decima poll released in April. Forty percent support the policy.
"Afghanistan continues to be a lightning-rod for controversy among Canadians," said Jeff Walker of Harris/Decima in a statement.
In a March poll conducted by Angus Reid Strategies, 48 percent of those surveyed said they'd like the bulk of Canadian troops to be withdrawn before 2011. Another 35 percent said they should be withdrawn as scheduled.
Mario Blais, godfather of a female Canadian soldier recently killed in Afghanistan, told the Canadian Press it's time to pull the troops out.
"I think she did this for absolutely nothing," Blais told the news agency. "The Russians were in Afghanistan for many years and they couldn't push them back. I ask myself what Canada is doing."
Jonathon Narvey, a founding member of the Vancouver-based Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, said this is precisely when the Canadian mission needs public support.
Arguing that the mission was consistent with Canadian foreign policy traditions, Narvey said pulling Canadian troops out of the conflict could lead to more violence and possibly a civil war.
"We're for a robust involvement, and if [Afghanistan] is going to get back on its feet after decades of war, it's only going to do so with huge international involvement. So, more, not less," he said.
The Canadian interest
Before the vote that extended the mission, the Canadian government commissioned an independent panel to study its future role in Afghanistan.
Though the report concluded that "our interests do not seem self-evident," it listed several reasons for a continuing role in Afghanistan: Global and Canadian security, preserving Canada's international reputation and the "well-being of some of the world's most impoverished and vulnerable people."
The policy's philosophical foundation lies in Canada's sense of responsibility to the international community, some observers say.
"Canadians tend to think more in terms of what might be called the 'international interest of Canada,'" Henrikson said. "They never really have focused, in any kind of narrow sense, on what the distinct national interest of Canada is."
That self-image dates back to the 1950s, said Patrick James, a professor of international studies at the University of Southern California.
Though Canada had no direct interest in the Suez crisis of 1956, Lester Pearson, a Canadian diplomat, won a Nobel Prize for helping pull together the world's first international peacekeeping force to mediate the conflict and avert a wider war.
"[The experience] entrenched in the Canadian mind that 'we are the peacekeepers and the peacemakers,'" James said. Hence, "due to its reputation and self-image, bailing on Afghanistan ... would strike people as being damn irresponsible," he said.
Observers say another compelling motive for Canada to continue its involvement is its relationship with the United States.
"In the background, there's always the sense of keeping the United States happy," James said.
Transformed mission
During the past year, the Canadian mission has increasingly focused on rebuilding Afghanistan.
Canadians military forces were partnered with civilian experts -- police, corrections officers, development experts -- said Elissa Golberg, who served as the Canadian Representative in Kandahar last year. She was the civilian counterpart to the brigadier general on the military side.
Some core priorities: Building up the capacity of the Afghan military and police, providing basic services like education and water, managing and securing the Afghan border with Pakistan and helping build institutions that forge political reconciliation.
The United States now seems to be taking a similar approach. In February, President Obama approved the increase in U.S. troops, in part to help bolster security, train the Afghan army and assist in rebuilding efforts.
Hundreds of nonmilitary specialists -- such as agricultural experts, educators and engineers -- also are headed to the region.
U.S. Brigadier Gen. John Nicholson, who is implementing the increase of American forces in southern Afghanistan, said they would take advantage of the Canadian experience.
"[They] are the ones who built the relationships, made the investments in the Kandahar provincial government and have the mechanisms in place. We will simply plug into the existing Canadian mechanisms," he said in an April 5 interview with the Canwest News Service.
Understanding tribal dynamics is key, Golberg said. For example, ethnic Pashtuns dominate southern Afghanistan, and there "are some districts in Kandahar that have 19 different tribes," she said.
When it comes to practical matters like allocating money and contracts, those dynamics and historical ties have an "impact on everything," she said.
Golberg also noted that a bottom-up approach of empowering local communities was important. "People see their district leaders, their cop at the end of the street as the first face of government, so those are things we need to strengthen," she said.
Meanwhile, she said, government ministries in Kabul and regional governors need to be held accountable. "This is new for a country that, in the past, has had very limited central government," she said.
"The whole objective of this is that you have an Afghan government that is viable and capable of providing basic services and basic security to its population," Golberg said. "That's the endgame."
The Canadian leadership, however, is modest about what it can accomplish in Afghanistan.
"We are not ever going to ever defeat the insurgency. Afghanistan has probably had -- [based on] my reading of history -- an insurgency forever of some kind," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in March.
"We have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance."
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Taliban tighten their grip on Pakistan's northwest
By Nahal Toosi Associated Press April 22, 2009
ISLAMABAD – Taliban militants from Pakistan's Swat Valley are tightening their grip on a neighboring northwest district closer to the capital — patrolling roads, broadcasting sermons and spreading fear in another sign that a government-backed peace deal has emboldened the extremists to spread their reign.
Pakistan's president signed off on the peace pact last week in hopes of calming Swat, where some two years worth of clashes between the Taliban and security forces have killed hundreds and displaced up to a third of the one-time tourist haven's 1.5 million residents.
The agreement covers Swat and other districts in the Malakand Division, a huge chunk of Pakistan's northwest that borders Afghanistan and the tribal areas where al-Qaida and the Taliban have strongholds. Under the deal, the provincial government agreed to impose Islamic law in Malakand, and the Taliban agreed to a cease-fire.
Supporters say the deal will allow the government to reassert control by taking away the militants' rallying cry for Islamic law.
But critics, including U.S. officials, have warned that Swat could be the first domino to fall to the Taliban — and that Islamabad, capital of the nuclear-armed nation less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away, could eventually follow.
In recent days, the Swat militants have set their sights on Buner, a district just south of the valley, sparking at least one major clash with residents. The moves indicate the militants want to expand their presence beyond Swat to other parts of Malakand at the very least, under the guise of enforcing Islamic law.
Many in Buner are now too frightened to speak to reporters. However, a lawmaker from the area told The Associated Press that the militants had entered the district in "large numbers" and started setting up checkpoints at main roads and strategic positions.
"They are patrolling in Buner, and local elders and clerics are negotiating with them to resolve this issue through talks," Istiqbal Khan said.
The militants in Buner also are using radio airwaves to broadcast sermons about Islam, and have occupied the homes of some prominent landowners, said a police official who insisted on anonymity because he was afraid of retaliation. He said the militants have also warned barbers to stop shaving men's beards and stores to stop selling music and movies.
The militants have established a major base in the village of Sultanwas and have set up positions in the nearby hills, the police official said. Militants also have taken over the shrine of a famed Sufi saint known as Pir Baba, he said.
The provincial government's chief executive warned that authorities would eventually take action if the militants didn't leave Buner.
"They must pack up and go home," Amir Haider Khan Hoti told state-run television.
Since the provincial government agreed to the deal in February, Taliban fighters had adopted a lower profile and stopped openly displaying weapons in Swat as part of a cease-fire.
But on Tuesday, upon the radio-broadcast orders of Swat Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah, the militants began roaming parts of the valley with rifles and other weapons. An AP reporter saw the patrols in Mingora, the valley's main city.
Residents from nearby towns in Swat said militants were setting up checkpoints on several roads. The residents requested anonymity out of fear for their lives.
Fazlullah ordered his fighters to withdraw again in a broadcast on Wednesday. He didn't explain why.
Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan could not immediately be reached for comment.
In a recent interview, Khan said al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other militants aiming to oust the U.S. from Afghanistan would be welcome and protected in Swat — a statement the government condemned. He said the militants want to see all of Pakistan under Islamic law.
Pakistani officials complain that India and other regional rivals are fomenting trouble in its border regions.
On Wednesday, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik accused Afghanistan of harboring a separatist leader from Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province. Malik claimed that Bramdagh Bugti was living in Kabul and that phone taps implicated him in the kidnapping in Baluchistan of an American U.N. worker freed earlier this month.
Speaking in Parliament, Malik also alleged that Baluch rebels were being trained at camps in Afghanistan and implied that they were supported by India and Russia.
American officials acknowledge that such tension and mistrust is hampering efforts to combat the Taliban.
___
Associated Press Writer Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
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Czech troops 'abandoned British soldiers' in Afghanistan
Czech troops abandoned British soldiers during fighting in Afghanistan because it was deemed "too dangerous", a Czech newspaper has claimed.
By Matthew Day in Warsaw 22 Apr 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
The daily Mlada fronta Dnes wrote that members of the Czech Republic's elite Special Operation Group lost the trust of British forces after withdrawing from several operations because of the heavy fighting involved, and on another occasion refused to take part, saying that too many of them were on leave.
After their experience with the Czechs, British commanders preferred to co-operate with a Danish contingent, the paper claimed.
Prague's defence minister, Vlasta Parkanova, has launched an investigation into the unit's behaviour, saying that some of its personnel could be dismissed. But its commanding officer, Petr Krcmar, has claimed that the accusations are nothing more than an excuse to dissolve the group, which operated under British command during a tour of Afghanistan that ended last year.
The scandal, which has damaged the reputation of the Czech armed forces, apparently reflects deep-seated problems within the Special Operations Group and its relationship with the defence ministry. Some of its members have complained that they lacked clear rules for their Afghan deployment, and others have threatened to return decorations they won while serving in Afghanistan.
The Czech defence ministry has also come under attack for its handling of the affair.
Used on close-protection duties, the Special Operations Group comes under the command of the defence ministry as opposed to the Czech general staff.
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Tajik-Afghan Drug Trade Breeds Kidnapping
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
When Tajik drug traffickers default on payment, their Afghan business partners wreak vengeance by abducting locals in cross-border raids.
By Turko Dikaev in Shuroabad and Mukammal Odinaeva in Dushanbe (RCA, No. 573, 22-Apr-09)
While out grazing his livestock near the ruins of the Bardara fortress, Sherzamon Manonov was abducted by two armed men. Eyewitnesses were sure the raiders who spirited Manonov away across the border were members of an Afghan drug gang.
Manonov’s parents were close to desperation when they heard the news, and his wife was out of her mind with worry.
The herder, who comes from the village of Odinaboi in the Shuroabad district of south-western Tajikistan, was only the latest in a series of Tajik nationals abducted by raiders from over the border.
These are not random attacks, but deliberate tactics employed when a business debt remains unpaid. The business involved is the high-return and high-risk trade in heroin produced from opium poppies in Afghanistan and shipped north through Central Asia on its way to destinations in Europe.
That does not mean Manonov or his relatives were enmeshed in trafficking, as there are frequent reports that the Afghan suppliers will target anyone in order to pressure a whole community into repaying a debt left by a defaulting client.
Manonov was fortunate – Tajik security forces secured his release after just one week. The head of Shuroabad’s district government, Ibrahim Azizov, told IWPR that all security agencies in the areas, border guards as well as police, sprang into action and negotiated with the kidnappers. He did not say whether a deal had been struck with them.
His mother still bursts into tears every time she remembers the day he was taken. “I am happy everything turned out well. But if he hadn’t been released, who would have raised his five children?” she said.
ROUGH JUSTICE ON LAWLESS FRONTIER
The border strip in Shiroabad district lies in a particularly remote mountainous part of the country, where Tajikistan’s frontier guards have limited ability to patrol the tortuous landscape. The porous nature of this section of the frontier have made it a magnet for drug smugglers shifting consignments of heroin over the river Panj, which is easily crossed here, to sell to Tajik gangs who will move it on and out of the country.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, economic decline and a five-year civil war, coupled with chaos as rival mujahedin warlords battled each other in Afghanistan, created all the preconditions for a thriving drug trade.
Afghan traffickers were soon on the lookout for locals poor enough to consider doing the legwork of getting drugs from the border to the interior of the country.
“At first, they were polite and didn’t insult anyone, but they were persistent in looking for middlemen to dispose of the drugs,” recalled one local resident who gave his first name as Alikhon. “Many people agreed to it since there were no other jobs to be had in those days.”
Alikhon explained how there was an air of unreality to the trade at that time, “Drugs were handed out freely to anyone who wanted to get involved in selling them, without any payment up front. The idea was that accounts were settled after the sale went through.”
Another local man, Nurkhon, added, “It was as if people went mad when they saw how easy it was to make money from drugs. You’d see elderly couples leading a donkey or horse loaded with saddlebags full of hashish.”
In the years since the United States-led Coalition ousted the Taleban government in Kabul in late 2001, opium production has boomed, despite various eradication campaigns led by the international community. With Iran still the main exit for processed heroin, with two-fifths, the Central Asian states and Tajikistan in particular are the second most important transit route, accounting for perhaps another fifth.
Russia maintained troops along the Afghan border until 2005, when the Tajiks took over, but neither force proved capable of intercepting the massive quantities of heroin coming into the country, although Tajikistan intercepts more than any other Central Asian country.
A retired Tajik border guard who requested anonymity said adjoining parts of the Afghan province of Badakhshan were not under the control of Kabul or of the international troops stationed in the country.
He said the drug trade in this part of Afghanistan was under the control of ex-members of the mujahedin faction Jamiat-e Islami, part of the “Northern Alliance” that battled the Taleban regime prior to 2001.
“The remnants of these troops make up the majority of the local drug traffickers,” he said.
With more money at stake than ever, the rules of this illicit game are tough, especially for those who take the goods and renege on payment.
“Afghans used to hand out narcotics to almost anyone. The people here were neither sophisticated nor familiar with the drugs business, so they didn’t imagine that debts would be collected in this way,” said Nurkhon.
Lieutenant-Colonel Abdurahim Buzmakov, former head of Shuroabad’s criminal investigation department, knows a thing or two about the crime network that spread in the area. He says that although police have broken up 14 trafficking gangs in the district, a similar number are still operating there, well-armed and consisting of up to 60 members each.
The more successful Tajik traffickers often relocated permanently to urban areas such as the capital Dushanbe, or even abroad, to enjoy their newfound wealth. If they left any outstanding debts behind, their relatives or others in the village pay the consequences.
“Many fled their homes, but the Afghan traffickers found a way to squeeze them for money,” said Nurkhon.
“When our villagers grew so poor and did not have anything to pay the debts, the Afghans started taking hostages,” says another villager Faizullo Ismoilov.
According to Asliddin Dostiev, a journalist in Shuroabad district who specialises in covering the drugs trade, “the Afghan drug smugglers conduct a raid over the border, grab hostages and bring them back to Afghanistan”.
The attackers are well aware that family ties are strong in Tajikistan, so taking relatives is an effective way of pressuring defaulters. The captives seem to be used as serfs, performing manual work for their captors until they are ransomed.
The border guards service says five Tajik nationals were kidnapped last year and 12 in 2007. These figures are lower than in previous years; in 2004, for example, there were 44 Tajiks recorded as being held captive in Afghanistan. However, members of the security services accept that the official figures may underestimate the scale of the problem.
Lt-Col Buzmakov recalled how two of the five people abducted last year were young men from the village of Sebandi.
“The Afghans seized these two young men because they allegedly took drugs from them and tried to pay them in counterfeit dollars,” said Buzmakov.
The two men were released, only to be arrested back in Tajikistan on charges of drug trafficking and counterfeiting.
Because the negotiations and sometimes transactions involved in securing a release are confidential, former captives are reluctant to talk to the press about their experiences.
Zoir Niezov, 63, from the village of Mulev in the Shuroabad district, spent several months in captivity in Afghanistan in 2005, held by a gang who claimed his nephew owed them money for drugs. They threatened to seize other family members if he died in captivity.
Like others, Niezov will not discuss how much money changed hands to free him, although he says the Afghans were demanding 170,000 US dollars in payment for the drugs.
Residents of Shuroabad told IWPR that traffickers sometimes engaged in plain extortion these days, beating up villagers and robbing them of livestock and valuables.
Another worrying trend is that the wives and sisters of defaulting drug customers are carried off and forced to become concubines of the minor warlords who run the drug gangs in the Afghan province of Badakhshan. The kidnappers often send the women home when they feel they have become a burden, for example when they bear children.
It is not known how many cases of this kind there are, but residents say there are many women living alone in border areas with children born from Afghan fathers.
EKING OUT A LIVING
Apart from the few Tajik drug runners who make a lot of money, the illegal trade has not brought wealth to the local population.
Most people in these border areas are living close to or below the national minimum, set at 60 somoni or 16 dollars a month. With few sources of paid employment, villagers in Odinaboi survive on what they can grow – peas, beans, lentils and wheat. They also keep livestock, but have to sell most of the meat, keeping only enough for special occasions.
Odinaboi has no mains water supply so villagers have to use nearby springs. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the local hospital closed for lack of staff and funding. There is a midwife in the village, but anyone who falls ill has to travel to the town of Shuroabad.
Many villages in the mountains along the border are all but inaccessible by car because Soviet-era roads have fallen into a state of disrepair, and are nearly impassible due to thick snow and mud from autumn to spring.
LARGE GAPS IN BORDER PROTECTION
Life under these harsh conditions is made worse by the ever-present threat of cross-border incursions.
The 169-kilometre stretch of border in Shuroabad is the most vulnerable section of the 1,300 km frontier with Afghanistan, because it runs around numerous gorges and ravines. The Panj river which marks the border is very easy to ford at this point, unlike lower downstream, where it grows to become the Amu Darya, one of Central Asia’s two great waterways.
Former border guards say this area was poorly protected even in the Soviet period, when the USSR was generally a well-defended fortress.
Lt-Col Buzmakov says the frontier post nearest the border is actually seven km away from it, and the furthest is 25 km from Afghan territory. The intervening strips of land are impossible to patrol properly.
“Since Soviet times, over 32,000 hectares of territory in Shuroabad district have never had frontier posts,” he said. “Something needs to be done about it. Afghan drug smugglers take advantage of this situation.”
Tajikistan only began guarding its southern border in 2006, taking over from Russian troops who had stayed on after 1991. Although at the time some doubted that the Tajik force would cope as well as the Russians, three years on observers say the level of border control has not deteriorated, although it has not shown much of an improvement either.
Officials say one thing that has got better is that the number of Tajik nationals kidnapped and taken to Afghanistan has declined steadily since 1996.
“We need to lay 154 km of new roads… to connect villages and the frontier posts. We need to have well-equipped posts, and to shift them closer to the border,” said Buzmakov. “None of this is currently in place, which is to the advantage of the drug smugglers.”
Officers with the Tajik border guards in the Shuroabad sector readily admit that the force is under-funded and under-resourced.
On patrol, the service’s armed units lack adequate communications to stay in touch with base or call for back-up when they need it. Often, a local command centre will discover there is a problem only from the sound of shots as a patrol unit engages a band of armed smugglers.
A serving major with the border guards, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said most of his men’s kit dated from the Soviet era, and they lacked night vision equipment.
Another problem, he said, was that units were short of local men who knew the lay of the land.
“Afghan drug smugglers know this area better than border guards who were drafted in from various regions of the country. We are prohibited [by law] from conscripting only locals,” he said.
Tajikistan has received assistance from the international community, mainly the United States and the European Union, to strengthen border protection and narcotics interdiction, but this does not seem to have reached units stationed in remoter locations.
The Tajik authorities have recognised that Shuroabad is a special case, and set up a commission to make recommendations for improved border protection arrangements there. One of the recommendations was that two battalions of the regular army should be deployed to offer a rapid response when necessary.
Last year, the government also ordered local authorities to help with the running costs of the border forces stationed in their area, both in cash and by providing land where they could grow fruit and vegetables.
The head of Shuroabad district, Ibrahim Azizov, told IWPR that his administration was doing everything it could, although since nearly 80 per cent of its budget was subsidised by central government, it was hardly in a position to make a substantial contribution.
He insisted that life was slowly getting better in the district, adding that “Securing the border… is paramount importance if people are to live and work in peace.
Turko Dikaev and Mukammal Odinaeva are journalists based in Tajikistan.
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Opposition grows to Pakistan's Taliban pact
By Zeeshan Haider – Wed Apr 22, 7:28 am ET
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Opposition is building among Pakistani politicians and media to a peace deal aimed at ending Taliban violence in a northwestern region after the Islamists challenged democratic rule and started taking over new areas.
Pakistan is struggling to come up with a coherent strategy to stop the spread of militant violence and influence, raising fears that the country could slowly slide into Taliban hands.
After failing to quell the Taliban through force, President Asif Ali Zardari last week approved enforcement of Islamic sharia law in the Swat valley and adjoining areas despite criticism from Western governments and Pakistani liberals and rights groups.
Critics said the approval of sharia law in the valley, 125 km (80 miles) northwest of Islamabad, was akin to appeasing the militants.
Within days they forced their way into a new district closer to the capital, refused to lay down their arms and said their aim was to push their harsh version of Islam across the country.
"They are now threatening to get out of Swat and take other areas into their custody. So we've got to avoid that situation," former prime minister Nawaz Sharif said in an interview with USA Today published Wednesday.
Sharif is seen as the most popular politician in Pakistan after he forced Zardari to give in on a confrontation over the independence of the judiciary last month.
His party backed a resolution in parliament calling for the enforcement of sharia law in Swat to secure peace.
But a radical pro-Taliban Islamic cleric, Sufi Mohammad, who brokered the agreement in Swat, set off alarm bells across the country when he told his followers recently that democracy, elections and the judiciary were "un-Islamic."
Sharif said any deal with militants should include commitments that "democracy will not be allowed to deteriorate and the writ of the government will be honored."
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said the government consented to the regulation enforcing sharia law in Swat on the advice of a secular party that leads the provincial government, but it could review the pact if peace was not restored.
"The regulation is bracketed with the restoration of peace ... if peace is not restored one can rethink and revisit," he told reporters in Islamabad.
OVERTHROWING THE STATE
Pakistani commentators have become increasingly skeptical about Taliban aims and have urged the government to stand up to them.
"Sufi, Taliban must be fenced in" the News newspaper said in a headline on a front-page commentary Wednesday, referring to the radical cleric.
The Dawn newspaper called for action against the cleric and his Taliban followers instead of trying to appease them.
"Sufi Mohammad ... the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda are all committed to overthrowing the state," Dawn said in an editorial. "We must resist this onslaught."
Effective Pakistani action against militants in its northwest is vital to U.S. plans to stabiles neighboring Afghanistan.
The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) government, led by the secular ethnic Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP), pushed for the introduction of sharia in Swat to bring peace.
Critics say the ANP caved in to the Taliban and betrayed the people of Swat who shunned Islamist parties and backed the ANP in a general election last year.
Munawar Hassan, chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, a major Islamic party, criticized Sufi Mohammad for "unrealistic" statements.
"They are based on ignorance," Hassan said.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel and Dean Yates)
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Millions for textbooks bogged down in Afghanistan
By Heidi Vogt Associated Press Wed Apr 22, 6:03 am ET
KABUL – Day laborer Sayed Sekander spent more than half a day's pay on textbooks for his third-grade son, stuffing them into a dirty rice sack to take home. He will wait before buying any for his two daughters.
Only a handful of students in Sekander's son's class received books this year, so everyone else is buying copies, sometimes illegal, from market stalls in Afghanistan's capital, even when they can hardly afford them.
"My son told me, 'I have to have books so that I can pass the tests,'" Sekander said.
Like so much else lost to corruption and bureaucracy in this tumultuous country, millions of new books promised and paid for by donors were never delivered to schools, The Associated Press has found. Other books were so poorly made that they may not last a second year.
About a third of the textbooks ordered for 2008 were never delivered to the provinces, the AP found through interviews with officials from all 34 provinces, Education Ministry records and contract documents.
The fiasco shows how difficult it is to get even the most straightforward aid project done in the troubled country.
At the Mir Bacha Kot school for girls outside Kabul, there can be no sixth-grade English class, because there are no sixth-grade English textbooks. Students pore over worn-out fifth-grade books instead.
"It's like we're starting out a building with a bad foundation, and we're going to end up with a leaning, crooked structure," says Reza Adda, education director for Bamiyan province, which is missing 40 percent of the books it expected last year.
If they don't come soon, families might give up on the schools, Adda says.
The missing textbooks only compound the troubles of the education system in Afghanistan, which is already suffering from a shortage of trained teachers. In Bamiyan, Adda says, some teachers just graduated from sixth or seventh grade themselves.
Those textbooks that do make it to classrooms are too often printed on thin paper, glued instead of stitched, and full of errors, school officials say.
"Sometimes when a child tries to turn the page, it tears off in his hand," says Fida Mohammad Qurishi, the education director for eastern Nuristan province.
Teachers, Qurishi said, are advised to tell students, "When you are turning the page, turn it very slowly. Otherwise it will tear and you will miss something and not be able to do your homework." The Education Ministry says the books are supposed to last at least three years.
About 45 million books were supposed to arrive before classes started in March last year from the United Nations and American and Danish aid agencies, at a total cost of about $15.4 million.
But there were delays even before a printing contract was signed. And that was just the beginning of the problems.
"The editing process took more than a year," says Anita Anastacio, whose community education program uses government books. The books were edited and re-edited because a 2006 print run had produced copies full of mistakes, she says.
Some book templates weren't finished until about May, says Abdul Zahir Gulistani, director of curriculum development.
About 600,000 sixth-grade social studies books were delayed so long that the Education Ministry canceled the print order, according to Angel Allied, the Indian company contracted to print the books.
As it became clear the books would come very late, the Education Ministry asked the U.S. military to help.
U.S. forces delivered 13.5 million books in July, at a cost of $7 million. But many of those books didn't make it to schools until students were starting final exams three months later.
Meanwhile, some of the other printers missed deadlines, and about 170,000 books that had been badly glued had to be redone, according to Danish officials. As books arrived in Kabul, the Education Ministry found many were printed with pages upside down or parts of different textbooks in one. Errors like that led the government to reject 1 million books outright, spokesman Asif Nang says.
About 500,000 books are still sitting in seven shipping containers in Pakistan awaiting customs clearance by the Afghan government, according to Angel Allied. The Education Ministry says another 20 million books are stuck in a warehouse in Kabul while a distribution plan is worked out.
The donors — the U.S., Denmark and the U.N. — say their job is to provide the money, and the Education Ministry is supposed to look after distribution.
U.S. directors of the program say the idea is to put the ministry and the government in charge on education. USAID, the U.S. government aid agency, has received a report saying the 12.7 million books it paid $5.2 million for were printed, but that doesn't mean they have reached schools.
Part of the problem is safety. The Afghan army escorts trucks of books into areas controlled by the Taliban, sometimes hidden under sacks of rice or vegetables, says Eng Mohammad Zia of the Danish government aid agency, known by its acronym DANIDA. But books also get stuck in provincial capitals because there is no coherent distribution plan of distribution or because money gets lost somewhere along the line, according to Danish and U.S. military consultants.
On the complaints about quality, education spokesman Nang says the printers produced good-quality samples, then used lower-quality paper or binding on the actual books. Nang and many teachers say not all the books are of poor quality, but some are very bad.
Nang says donor countries send the money directly to the printers, so they are responsible for checking quality. But DANIDA, the U.S. military and the U.N. all say they count on the ministry for inspections, though the U.N. has just started following up with a review.
About 1 million of the books the ministry returned were from a batch contracted to a single print shop, an Afghan company called Baheer. Baheer's executive director, Shirbaz Kaminzada, says the poor-quality books are from print runs where the funders or the Education Ministry told him to use lower-quality materials.
Mir Bacha Kot school finally received long-awaited high school textbooks over the winter break, but they are printed on flimsy newsprint and full of grammatical mistakes. Principal Meliha Haidar says she prefers to use earlier books, displaying one printed in 2004 and re-stapled, with its beaten-up cover wrapped in plastic from a grocery bag.
Haidar says she's recruited foreign donors, put $100 of her own money into repairing benches, paid for gravel on the road leading up to the school and trained inexperienced teachers. What she can't do, she says, is generate quality textbooks.
Once the books come, the next problem is to figure out where to put them. Some books have been ruined by rain and snow because schools had nowhere to store them and sat them outside under a plastic tarp, Zia says. Sometimes they take up classroom space instead.
"There are schools full of textbooks that can't be used for teaching, because they're being used to store the textbooks," says Maj. Gary Jozens, a U.S. military liaison to the Education Ministry.
For all the complaints, school officials emphasize how happy they are to receive books at all. Before, some say, there were only three books for a class of 30 or 40 and students had to copy down the lesson.
As Education Ministry spokesman Nang explains, students are thirsty for education.
"If the material is written on paper, or on animal skin, it doesn't matter, as long as it is provided," he says.
___
Associated Press Writers Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah contributed to this report in Kabul, along with Noor Khan in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
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Looted Afghan treasure to go on show
Afghan archaeological treasures thousands of years old are to go on display in Kabul after being rescued from smugglers passing through British airports.
By Ben Farmer in Kabul 22 Apr 2009 Daily Telegraph (UK)
More than 3,000 antiquities have been returned to Afghanistan after being confiscated by British customs officers and identified by the British Museum.
Situated at the crossroads of Asia and washed by centuries of trade, migration and invasion, Afghanistan has one of the richest archaeological heritages in the world.
The country has played host to invaders from Alexander the Great, to the Arab armies of the seventh century and Ghengis Khan in 1220.
Alexander spent approximately three years in what is now modern-day Afghanistan after invading in 330BC and several Afghan cities claim to have been founded by his armies.
However treasure hunters and looters have taken advantage of three decades of war and civil chaos to dig up and steal large numbers of antiquities.
As main hubs for flights from the Gulf and Pakistan, many have then passed through Heathrow and Gatwick and been spotted by customs officials.
Omara Khan Masoudi, general director of museums at the Kabul National Museum, said half the repatriated artefacts dated from before the Islamic period which began more than 1,300 years go.
He said: "Unfortunately in the past two or three decades of war, the central government was not able to control Afghanistan's illegal excavations. It is still a big problem for us." The national museum itself was repeatedly looted by the Mujaheddin during the civil war of the 1990s and exhibits were damaged by rocket attacks.
In 2001, Taliban fighters smashed many of the museum's pre- Islamic Buddhist figures that they considered idolatrous.
While none of the three and a half tonnes of artefacts found by customs are thought to have been taken from the museum, curators hope they could begin to restock the ransacked Islamic and Bronze Age collections.
Staff are currently unpacking the crates and the best specimens for will go on display at the museum on the outskirts of the Afghan capital later this year.
Among the most important finds are several 4,000-year-old Bactrian stone artefacts believed to have been looted from northern Afghanistan.
Metal basins and candlesticks and a peacock-shaped brazier from the Ghaznavid empire of the 10th to 12th century are said to be in excellent condition. More recent treasures include a carved, wooden pen box filled with handwritten Persian poems and curses dating back more than a century.
Mr Masoudi said a further 4,000 artefacts had been sent back to the museum after being found in Denmark in 2007.
The British-found artefacts were flown back to Afghanistan with the help of the British Red Cross.
A spokeswoman for the British embassy in Kabul said: "We are delighted that so many people came together to make the significant joint effort necessary to return these pieces of Afghanistan's history to the Afghan people.
"Afghanistan's cultural heritage reflects a particularly vivid history and is especially rich.
"It is unacceptable for anyone to deprive Afghans of their heritage and, for its part, the UK will do all that it can to support the Afghan Government and people in preventing this sort of criminal profiteering."
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Taliban Threat Afghan Voters
www.quqnoos.com Written by Wali Arian Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Taliban militants intimidation will impact on Afghan voters in the upcomming elections, Afghan MPs said
According to the Memebers of Parliament from the restive Afghan provinces, the Taliban warn locals to avoid going to ballot boxes in the crucial Afghan presidential election this August.
MPs from voilitile Afghan region, south in particular, have warned further deteriorated security condition during the elections in the country.
“I have accurate information that Taliban do exist in border areas as well as in the villages,” said Ahmad Shah Khan Achikzai, MPs from Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
Afghan MPs said they know the facts that the Taliban militants indimidate local residents to not vote for the elections – less participation of Afghan eligiable voters will undermine a fair polling.
Sahera Sharif, another Afghan lawmaker who represent Khost province in the Lower House said, it is obvious that people cannot dare to go polling sites if militants threaten their lives.
People would not endanger their lives for just a vote,” she said. If people use their right and vote in case they are warned, Gul Pacha Majidi, MP from Khost saying, who will ensure their security after the polls.
Afghan Defense Ministry confirms the widespead Taliban presence in the Afghan south, exclusivly in Kandahar, Helmand and Urozgan, said they are trying to improvince the security in the region to pave the ground for a free of fear elections.
Four-round checkpoints will be established to guard some 7,000 voting centres across the country, said Afghan Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak.
Afghan Police, Army, Intellgence and Nato forces will protect the poll centres.
According to a recent New York Times article, 10 Afghan districts are entirely under the Taliban ruling, some 156 are under threat of the milinats out of the entire 364 districts.
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