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Hamid Karzai's election decree overturned by Afghanistan parliament
Afghan president's attempt to seize control of electoral watchdog is overwhelmingly rejected
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 March 2010
Hamid Karzai's attempt to seize control of Afghanistan's electoral watchdog was overturned this morning by the country's parliament, which voted overwhelmingly to throw out a presidential order that enraged diplomats.
Afghan president denied more control of vote body
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – Afghanistan's parliament rejected a bid Wednesday by President Hamid Karzai to tighten his control over a key electoral watchdog body, after concerns he was reneging on promises to clean up corruption.
Afghan peace talks end with no headway, more expected
By Sayed Salahuddin – Wed Mar 31, 5:18 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A guerrilla group has met Afghan President Hamid Karzai a second time, bringing an initial round of peace talks to a close with no breakthrough but with a commitment to continue, a member of the team said on Wednesday.
Afghan militant Hekmatyar packs a surprise
After the insurgent's fighters sought Kabul's protection from the Taliban, he sent envoys to talk peace.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 31, 2010
Reporting from Pul-I-Khumri, Afghanistan - The battle raged for two days, rocket and mortar duels hopscotching across the flat farmlands, gunfire rattling through market villages. At first the combatants seemed equally matched,
Bicycle bomb kills 13 in southern Afghanistan
By Amir Shah And Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writers
KABUL – A bomb concealed on a bicycle killed 13 people Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, as the Pentagon's top military officer said NATO forces hope to reverse the Taliban's momentum in the south with an upcoming offensive in Kandahar.
U.S. forces set sights on Taliban bastion of Kandahar
By Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, March 31, 2010; A01
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. forces have begun the initial phases of a political-military offensive in this Taliban bastion and hope to control the city and surrounding areas by late summer, according to senior U.S. military officials.
Kandahar is 'cornerstone' of Afghan war: Mullen
Wed Mar 31, 2:39 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Military operations against the Taliban in their heartland of southern Afghanistan are the "cornerstone" of the war, the top US military commander said Wednesday.
Operation against Taliban in Kandahar to be led by Afghan forces: U.S. official
KABUL, March 31 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led forces will begin their operation in Taliban birthplace Kandahar, south Afghanistan in near future but it would be Afghan-led as it happened in Helmand, Michael Mullen, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday.
This Time We Really Mean It
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist March 31, 2010
This newspaper carried a very troubling article on the front page on Monday. It detailed how President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul — in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration
U.N.: Afghanistan 'world's biggest producer of hashish'
By the CNN Wire Staff March 31, 2010 8:04 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- A U.N. report says Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of opium, is also a "major producer of cannabis" and "the world's biggest producer of hashish."
Afghanistan: Taliban bomb attack targets anti-opium drive
A bomb attack in southern Afghanistan killed at least 8 people today, according to reports. It appeared aimed at a Western anti-drug program targeting the world's largest opium production by encouraging farmers to plant alternative crops.
By Jonathan Adams, The Christian Science Monitor Correspondent March 31, 2010 at 8:39 am EDT
A bicycle bomb attack today in southern Afghanistan appeared aimed at a Western anti-opium program.
Indians scale down in Afghanistan, fearing attacks
by Lynne O'donnell – Wed Mar 31, 3:05 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – India has suspended medical aid and teaching programmes in Afghanistan, where Indian businesses and charities are slashing staff over fears they are increasingly targeted by militants.
U.S. says weapons from Iran sent to Afghanistan
31 Mar 2010 14:27:22 GMT
KABUL, March 31 (Reuters) - Iran is having a growing, negative influence in its neighbour Afghanistan, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said on Wednesday, citing what he said was a shipment of Iranian arms to fighters.
G8 ministers pressure Iran, Afghanistan
by Michel Comte
GATINEAU, Canada (AFP) – Group of Eight foreign ministers have called for stepped-up pressure against Iran to abandon its suspect nuclear program and urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rein in militants.
Clinton expresses caution, optimism on Afghanistan
Tue Mar 30, 5:01 pm ET
GATINEAU, Canada (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday voiced cautious optimism about Afghanistan's prospects for peace, saying progress on military and civilian fronts needed to be sustained.
Refugees pay price of Pakistan's Taliban war
By Paula Newton, CNN March 30, 2010 9:58 a.m. EDT
Jalozai Camp, Pakistan (CNN) -- There is a frontline here in this dusty corner of Pakistan, but not the kind where guns blaze and tanks roar. On this frontline U.N. tarps flutter in the breeze and wheelbarrows full of food rations roll down dirt pathways. But make no mistake, they are as much a part of Pakistan's war on the Taliban as any battle front.
Spanish defense minister thanks military for Afghanistan work
MADRID, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Defense Minister Carme Chacon on Wednesday thanked the Spanish military for its work at Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan.
Taliban attack checkpoint, kill 6 Pakistani troops
By Riaz Khan, Associated Press Writer – Wed Mar 31, 6:17 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistani troops repulsed an attack by dozens of armed Taliban militants on a checkpoint close to the Afghan border Wednesday in fighting that killed six soldiers and at least 20 insurgents, the armed forces said.
Kabul's only rock band pushes Afghanistan's cultural frontiers
Inspired by British indie bands, Kabul Dreams are proving a hit with expats and – increasingly – with young Afghans
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 March 2010 16.21 BST
The soundproofing in the home-made studio is not quite up to the job of muffling the din of Kabul's traffic, as a baby-faced 20-year-old called Suleman Qardash blasts out the catchy lyrics of Crack in the Radio, soon to feature on the first album by Afghanistan's only rock band.
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Hamid Karzai's election decree overturned by Afghanistan parliament
Afghan president's attempt to seize control of electoral watchdog is overwhelmingly rejected
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 March 2010
Hamid Karzai's attempt to seize control of Afghanistan's electoral watchdog was overturned this morning by the country's parliament, which voted overwhelmingly to throw out a presidential order that enraged diplomats.
In what one observer described as a "sea of red cards", MPs in the lower house rejected a controversial decree by Karzai in February which unilaterally rewrote Afghan election law in advance of parliamentary poll in September.
The part of the decree that gave him the right to appoint all five members of the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) also upset foreign diplomats who were still reeling from last summer's presidential election, the credibility of which was undermined by widespread fraud.
After that poll, the three international members of the ECC appointed by the UN chief in Afghanistan denied Karzai a first round victory after ordering an investigation which discovered that almost 1m of his votes were invalid.
According to a report this week in the New York Times, Karzai's February decree so angered the White House that US officials cancelled his trip to Washington to meet Barack Obama. Relations between the two men have since improved after Obama's flying visit to Kabul this week, when it was announced that Karzai's trip to Washington was back on.
Legal experts said that today's vote by Afghan MPs cancels out the decree – which Karzai passed while parliament was on winter recess – and that the parliamentary elections would take place under the old rules, with the majority of ECC commissioners appointed by the UN.
Shukria Barakzai, an MP who backed Karzai in last year's election, said she was surprised to see parliament vote overwhelmingly to revoke the decree when the institution is usually far more divided.
She said: "It showed that no one is prepared to accept this election decree and that we want more transparent elections and we cannot accept something that the president has decided on his own."
Barakzai added that MPs, many of whom will stand for re-election in September, had other concerns, including a new requirement to collect 1,000 signatures in order to register as a candidate.
Peter Lepsch, who was chief legal officer for the ECC during the 2009 elections, said: "This is a great day for democratic processes in Afghanistan and I think that this is a moment that the Afghan legislator has stood up to provide a check on the executive branch."
Diplomats say MPs were also motivated by wider political issues, including dissatisfaction with Karzai and fears that the president is moving too rapidly towards a peace deal with insurgents.
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Afghan president denied more control of vote body
By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press Writer
KABUL – Afghanistan's parliament rejected a bid Wednesday by President Hamid Karzai to tighten his control over a key electoral watchdog body, after concerns he was reneging on promises to clean up corruption.
The lower house voted down a proposal to allow Karzai to appoint three of the five members the Electoral Complaints Commission that monitors election fraud and had stripped Karzai of nearly one-third of his votes in last year's presidential election. Karzai was declared the victor after his challenger dropped out of a runoff.
In February, Karzai signed a decree allowing him to appoint all five members of the body, but agreed later to allow two foreigners on the commission.
Previously, the United Nations appointed the chairman and two other commissioners. The Afghan human rights commission and the Supreme Court named one commissioner each.
Karzai issued the decree when parliament was not in session. Afghan law gives parliament the option of reviewing — and possibly rejecting_ such decrees after it reconvenes.
Wednesday's rejection follows concerns among many at home and in the West that Karzai is backing away form commitments to clean up the graft, cronysim, and vote fraud — often cited as among the reasons many Afghans have turned to the Taliban. Western diplomats and the U.N. had pushed Karzai hard not to force through the changes to the commission.
Independent legislator Fatama Aziz said many lawmakers believed Karzai had no intention on consulting independent voices on the makeup of the commission.
"A very important commission whose decisions are very important for the fate of the country should not be discussed only among certain people," said Aziz, who represents the northern province of Kunduz.
Mohammed Nazir Hanafi said its provisions limited consultation mainly to presidential appointees such as the attorney general and supreme court chief justice.
"Who would decide on appointees? Only those connected to the government. This is unacceptable," said Hanafi.
Hanafi was a member of the parliamentary committee that studied the proposed changes to the electoral law that included the move to alter the makeup of the complaints commission.
He said the committee found a total of 35 points of dispute in the law over issues including representation for women, asset declaration by candidates, and required education standards for members of parliament and the president.
The rejection rules out any changes to the electoral law ahead of parliamentary polls due in September.
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Afghan peace talks end with no headway, more expected
By Sayed Salahuddin – Wed Mar 31, 5:18 am ET
KABUL (Reuters) – A guerrilla group has met Afghan President Hamid Karzai a second time, bringing an initial round of peace talks to a close with no breakthrough but with a commitment to continue, a member of the team said on Wednesday.
With the insurgency at the most violent since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, despite the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops, Western leaders say the conflict cannot be won militarily and talks must be held with some rebels.
Afghan officials said last week that Karzai met a senior delegation from Hezb-i-Islami, one of the three main groups fighting the government and foreign forces, his first confirmed talks with the group which in some ways rivals the Taliban.
Although the talks were preliminary, the public acknowledgement of the meeting was itself a milestone after many months of furtive efforts by Karzai to reach out to militants.
Qaribur Rahman Saeed, a member of the Hezb-i-Islami delegation, said the team had wrapped up its mission after meeting the president for a second time on Tuesday, and would now report back to fugitive leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
"We are sending Mr. Karzai's viewpoints to our leader and will get his response on it after several weeks and then we will come to Kabul to resume a second round of talks," he said.
The group presented Karzai with a 15-point plan that includes a demand that Western troops begin pulling out from Afghanistan in July this year and withdraw completely within six months, although delegates have said the time-frame is negotiable.
"The draft plan may will be reformed. We are flexible. We want this process to continue and saw that feeling on the part of the government too. We are sure that there is sincerity on both sides," Saeed told Reuters.
Setting a firm time-table for the exit of foreign forces could also prompt the Taliban to join in the peace talks, he added.
U.S. President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing forces in July 2011, although the pace of the pace of the withdrawal will depend on conditions on the ground.
The Hezb-i-Islami talks come amid a bid by Karzai to reach out to insurgents that he hopes will eventually yield talks with the Taliban themselves.
Washington has been cautious, saying it backs Afghan efforts to reconcile with senior insurgents, but they must lay down their weapons and repudiate al Qaeda. U.S. officials say talks with the Taliban themselves are unlikely to yield fruit until a "surge" of 30,000 extra troops this year yields gains on the battlefield.
"We're moving to a position of strength," the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told reporters during a visit to Kabul on Wednesday when asked about the prospect of talks. "But I just don't think we're there yet."
On Tuesday, Karzai's chief spokesman Waheed Omer said the Hezb-i-Islami talks were making progress, but played down the chances of a quick breakthrough, saying he did not want to raise expectations and describing the contacts as in the early stage.
Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and the largest recipient of U.S. aid during the war against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, has shared some of the aims of the Taliban, but has led a separate insurgency, mainly in Afghanistan's east and north.
Hezb-i-Islami is not considered as big a threat by NATO forces as the Taliban or the network of followers of insurgent commander Jalaluddin Haqqani based mainly in the southeast.
(Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Adam Entous)
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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Afghan militant Hekmatyar packs a surprise
After the insurgent's fighters sought Kabul's protection from the Taliban, he sent envoys to talk peace.
Los Angeles Times By Laura King March 31, 2010
Reporting from Pul-I-Khumri, Afghanistan - The battle raged for two days, rocket and mortar duels hopscotching across the flat farmlands, gunfire rattling through market villages. At first the combatants seemed equally matched, but when one side rushed in reinforcements, the other's lines broke and its fighters scattered. When the smoke and dust had cleared, dozens from the two sides lay dead.
Warfare is an everyday event across Afghanistan, but the confrontation this month on the fertile plains of Baghlan province, in the country's north, marked a sharp departure from battlefield norms. Rather than pitting Western and Afghan troops against the Taliban or other militants, this was insurgent-on-insurgent fighting -- signaling a schism that could hasten or hamper the first significant peace moves in more than eight years of conflict.
The Taliban and its allies are the West's main adversaries in Afghanistan. But smaller militant factions such as Hezb-i-Islami, led by veteran commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, are likely to play a pivotal role in any Afghan endgame.
It was Hekmatyar's loyalists who squared off against the Taliban in Baghlan in early March, fighting for turf and lucrative extortion rackets, including the "taxing" of local farmers.
With Taliban forces poised to overrun them, nearly 50 of Hekmatyar's men sought protection under the government rather than risk being captured by the Taliban. Others managed to slip away.
"We fought hard, but we ran out of ammunition, and there were too many of them," said Mohammad Diyan, a Hezb-i-Islami field commander who was one of those to surrender to Afghan authorities. "There was no choice."
Like so many seemingly local disputes in Afghanistan, this one carried potentially far-reaching implications.
The Obama administration has expressed hopes that this year's U.S. military buildup, if successful, will push insurgents toward a political settlement, paving the way for an eventual Western withdrawal. So far, most of the attention has centered on the question of whether Taliban rank-and-file fighters can be wooed away from the battlefield. But last week it was Hezb-i-Islami that seized the initiative.
Hekmatyar dispatched a senior delegation to the capital, Kabul, for his militia's first publicly acknowledged talks with President Hamid Karzai -- preempting, in the view of some, the indirect contacts that have been taking place for months between the Taliban and the Karzai administration.
It was a characteristically bold move. Hekmatyar, now in his early 60s, has for decades threaded a deft path through Afghanistan's violent geopolitical labyrinth, switching sides whenever it suited his purposes, reinventing himself along with the changing times.
Over the years, he has been a CIA asset, a feared mujahedin commander in the war against the Soviets, a wily politician who rose to the rank of prime minister, a warlord notorious for raining rockets on his own capital during the country's savage civil war.
More recently, his trademark long beard gone gray-white and grizzled, Hekmatyar has been a sometime ally of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, fielding fighters to attack U.S. and other Western troops. Those alliances, though often strained, earned him a place on a U.S. blacklist of global terrorists.
During their days in the capital, Hekmatyar's envoys were warmly received in the presidential palace, even though he allegedly once tried to have Karzai killed. Delegation members also held their first publicly disclosed talks with a senior Western diplomat: Staffan de Mistura, the Swedish head of the U.N. mission to Afghanistan.
Human rights groups looked on in dismay, pointing to Hekmatyar's culpability in thousands of Afghan civilian deaths. But American diplomats and military officials, while not taking part in the talks, struck a low-key stance, characterizing political dialogue with any insurgents willing to lay down their weapons as positive.
Among longtime Hekmatyar watchers, opinion about his true aims is divided. Almost no one believes his motives are straightforward; those who know him well call opportunism his salient trait.
"He is a dishonest person, and very egocentric," said Afghan political analyst Haroun Mir, who believes Hekmatyar is trying to engineer a political comeback as his faction's military influence wanes. "But he is also a very smart guy."
Lawmaker Daoud Sultanzoy, a college classmate of Hekmatyar's, recalls him as charismatic but rigidly fundamentalist in his religious views.
"He doesn't do anything that isn't calculated -- he holds his cards very close," said Sultanzoy, who sat in on some of the Kabul meetings. He theorized that Hekmatyar, in entering talks, is trying by whatever means to stay a step ahead of the Taliban.
"Hezb-i-Islami and the Taliban have different goals -- there have been problems between them from the beginning," said Diyan, the Hezb-i-Islami commander who gave himself up to the government in Baghlan. "Each group has its own vision, its own ideology, its own agenda."
If Hekmatyar's intention is to rattle the Taliban with his overtures to the government, the tactic may be working. After the Kabul talks, a statement posted on the Taliban website described the negotiations as "a trap laid by the enemies of Islam" and insisted that there should be no parley until Western troops had left Afghanistan.
But Hekmatyar, a master of the double game, may also be working behind the scenes with the Taliban to formulate strategy. Wahid Mozhda, a former Taliban official who sometimes serves as an intermediary, said some of the Hezb-i- Islami demands presented to the government represented common aims of the two movements.
Militarily, Hekmatyar's forces are considerably weaker than the Taliban. They are concentrated in northern provinces such as Baghlan and neighboring Kunduz, which have been recent trouble spots for Western forces but are not regarded with the same urgency as the Taliban heartland of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
But Hezb-i-Islami, in its political incarnation, is a powerful movement across Afghanistan. Its onetime allied party, which has publicly distanced itself from Hekmatyar, holds a number of governorships and Cabinet posts, with dozens of members or sympathizers in parliament.
If there were some accord in place, many analysts believe Hekmatyar could draw on that base to reinsert himself into national politics. No one considers any agreement imminent. Some elements of the 15-point plan presented by Hekmatyar's representatives are considered non-starters -- for instance, a demand that foreign troops leave Afghanistan this year. But those familiar with the talks, including lawmaker Sultanzoy, said they detected a degree of flexibility on the part of Hekmatyar's envoys.
"Their attitude, their body language, was very pragmatic," he said.
Hekmatyar loyalists say they will do as he tells them -- whether that turns out to be accepting reconciliation or redoubling attacks against Western troops.
"If the government accepts our demands, we will stop fighting," said Diyan, the ex-commander. "But if our demands are not accepted, we will never, never stop."
Either way, Hekmatyar will probably exploit the current climate of uncertainty for maximum gain, said Abdullah Nahzatiyar, party chief in Baghlan of Hezb-i-Islami's erstwhile political ally.
"He wants one thing," Nahzatiyar said. "All the power for himself."
laura.king@latimes.com
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Bicycle bomb kills 13 in southern Afghanistan
By Amir Shah And Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writers
KABUL – A bomb concealed on a bicycle killed 13 people Wednesday in southern Afghanistan, as the Pentagon's top military officer said NATO forces hope to reverse the Taliban's momentum in the south with an upcoming offensive in Kandahar.
Forty-five people, including eight children, were wounded in the blast, which occurred in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district just north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, deputy provincial police chief Kamaluddin, who uses one name, said.
The bomb exploded near a crowd gathered to receive free vegetable seeds provided by the British government as part of a program to encourage them not to plant opium poppy, provincial government spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said.
Casualty figures fluctuated several times during the day because of communications problems in the area, Kamaluddin said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which President Hamid Karzai blamed on "enemies of the Afghan people who are against peace."
The acting provincial head of agriculture, Ghulam Sahki, said the blast could have been the work of drug dealers trying to stop the alternative crop program. NATO and the Afghan government hope poppy farmers in the south, where most of the world's opium is grown, will adopt legal crops with the help of cash incentives and programs like the seed distribution. The narcotics trade helps fund the Taliban insurgency.
A recent NATO operation in the Helmand town of Marjah, south of Lashkar Gah, struck at the heart of the Taliban opium business. NATO, U.S. and Afghan forces took control of the town in a three-week offensive in February and early March but face a fearful and mistrustful population as they work to set up a functioning government.
In Kabul, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday the operation in Marjah was moving forward successfully and that an upcoming offensive in and around the main southern city of Kandahar would be key to stopping the Taliban's growing influence in the south.
Kandahar remains the spiritual heartland of the insurgency. Mullen told reporters it would be military's main focus going into the summer when the operation there kicks into high gear.
"It is a cornerstone in reversing the momentum for the Taliban," Mullen said.
He said that about half of the 30,000 new troops promised by President Barack Obama have yet to arrive and said most of those will be headed to Kandahar city and the surrounding province.
As in Marjah, the Kandahar offensive will focus on winning over the population and installing government as quickly as possible, he said.
But Mullen stressed that Kandahar will be more difficult to take and hold because of the size of the city — about a half million in the urban area and another half million in the area around it — and the entrenched Taliban presence.
"Kandahar is not Marjah, we understand that. It is a much bigger challenge and in that regard has much greater potential to achieve this goal of reversing the momentum," Mullen said.
Seizing control of Kandahar would help to put the Afghan government in a position of strength to pursue reconciliation talks with insurgents, Mullen said.
But, he said, those talks would be premature right now.
"This must be done from a position of strength," Mullen said. "I don't think we're in that position of strength right now."
Mullen said that a number of power brokers and foreign governments wield influence in the Kandahar area. The admiral said he was briefed Tuesday about "a significant shipment of weapons" for insurgents from Iran into Kandahar "not too long ago." He declined to provide further details.
Also Wednesday, Karzai visited the Salang Pass where an avalanche killed at least 171 people in February. The 12,700-foot- (3,800-meter-) high Salang Pass is the major route through the Hindu Kush mountains that connects the Afghan capital of Kabul to the north of the country. He discussed with officials the need to build retaining walls to prevent snow slides onto the road and to construct shelters for stranded travelers.
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U.S. forces set sights on Taliban bastion of Kandahar
By Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, March 31, 2010; A01
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. forces have begun the initial phases of a political-military offensive in this Taliban bastion and hope to control the city and surrounding areas by late summer, according to senior U.S. military officials.
Officials have pressed local leaders and tribal elders over the past several weeks to begin holding shuras, or conferences, in Kandahar city and outlying districts, telling them that they must improve governance, address corruption and eject the Taliban. Otherwise, their areas will be the focus of expanding military operations scheduled to begin in June with the arrival of 10,000 new U.S. troops, the officials have said.
Among those specifically warned by U.S. military commanders is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the elected head of Kandahar's provincial council. American officials have for years accused Karzai, the unquestioned power broker in the province and brother of President Hamid Karzai, of administering a corrupt regime and protecting narcotics traffickers. He was also accused of orchestrating voter fraud in August's presidential election.
On a visit here Tuesday, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Kandahar the "center of gravity" for U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and compared the importance of the offensive to the 2007 "surge" of U.S. troops that helped turn the tide in the Iraq war.
In interviews, senior U.S. military and civilian officials stressed the difference between the operations in Kandahar, an urban area that is the Taliban's heartland, and operations in neighboring Helmand province, where Marines have taken control of the Marja district and installed government officials appointed by the central government in Kabul.
"Marja is rural and was ungoverned," said Frank Ruggiero, the senior U.S. civilian official in southern Afghanistan. "Kandahar city is controlled by the Afghan government." But 80 percent of the Zhari district to the west is controlled by the Taliban, as is 40 percent of the Panjwayi district, to the southwest. There are scattered insurgent operations in the Arghandab district to the northwest, Ruggiero and other officials said.
Together, the three districts and the city proper have a population of 2 million, making Kandahar Afghanistan's second-largest population center, after Kabul.
U.S. officials, including President Obama during a surprise visit last weekend, have pressed the Afghan president to take long-promised action against his brother and other allegedly corrupt officials. But they acknowledge that their limited knowledge of tribal politics here, the power wielded by Ahmed Wali Karzai and a few others and President Karzai's reluctance to act have made it an uphill battle.
Senior administration officials in Washington said overall transition to stability and vastly improved governance in Kandahar must be completed by December, when Obama has asked Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, for an overall review of how the new strategy he announced last fall is faring. The strategy calls for U.S. military withdrawals to begin in July 2011.
"We really don't have much time," said a senior military official on McChrystal's staff of the Kandahar operation.
The political side of the offensive began in earnest last week with a shura in Arghandab organized by the provincial governor, Tooryalai Wesa. When an unrepresentative group of tribal leaders showed up, Ruggiero said, Wesa sent them home with instructions to widen the net of participation. Similar meetings are scheduled throughout the region over the next several weeks.
U.S. officials have urged President Karzai to travel here next month for a provincial shura. The pitch they have made to him, one official said, is "Mr. President, we've got to get going on Kandahar, and we need your help."
As they constructed the operational timeline for the Kandahar offensive, officials said, they undertook a "deep dive" into the collected intelligence on the area and concluded that "it's amazing what we don't know," a senior military official said. "Our knowledge of the enemy is pretty darn good." But the key to success, he said, "is understanding the tribal nature of what's going on in Kandahar, and we're not there yet."
Ahmed Wali Karzai "presents a huge challenge for us, that's for sure," another senior military official said. Added a Western diplomat in Kabul: "Is it a campaign to liberate Kandahar city from the Taliban or to liberate it from Wali Karzai? The two come together."
One senior U.S. military official described a personal visit he said he made two weeks ago to Karzai in Kandahar to threaten him with arrest or worse. "I told him, 'I'm going to be watching every step you take. If I catch you meeting an insurgent, I'm going to put you on the JPEL,' " the Joint Prioritized Engagement List, reserved for the most wanted insurgents. "That means," the official said he told Karzai, "that I can capture or kill you."
But this official and others acknowledged that they have no real evidence to back up allegations that Karzai has contacts with insurgents and that the threat is largely an empty one.
"We'd rather not have him," the military official said, "but there's nothing we can do unless we can link him to the insurgency." As an elected official, Karzai cannot simply be removed from office, and officials said the only option is to persuade his brother to ease him out of office by sending him to an overseas embassy, something the president has thus far refused to do. He has said that he has repeatedly demanded U.S. officials provide him with proof of specific wrongdoing by his brother, but that none has been forthcoming.
Ahmed Wali Karzai has proved to be a deft political operator, both within Afghanistan's complicated tribal networks and inside the U.S. government.
While he has earned the ire of U.S. military officials and diplomats, he has reportedly cultivated a longtime relationship with the CIA. The New York Times reported last fall that he had received regular payments from the CIA for several years and helped recruit a Kandahar-based militia that works on behalf of the U.S. spy agency.
"No intelligence organization discusses publicly who it may or may not deal with overseas," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said Tuesday. "But if anyone thinks this agency is supporting drug dealers, they're wrong."
A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that allegations of Ahmed Wali Karzai's ties to narcotics traffickers had never been proved. "He's a key tribal leader," the official said. "If you take out Karzai, you don't have good governance, you have no governance. He's done very good things for the United States. He's effective."
Karzai has also consistently denied allegations of corruption and wrongdoing. He did not return phone calls and text messages seeking comments for this report. Other senior officials in Kandahar also have refused to take a stand against him, either from conviction or fear.
"He's the guy who will keep Kandahar stable," Wesa, the governor, said Tuesday after holding a shura of tribal leaders with Mullen. "If he's not here on the scene," Wesa said of Karzai, "you don't want to see what's going to happen."
For now, the strategy is to try to reduce the influence of Karzai and other power brokers by increasing that of other tribal and political leaders and providing them with the economic and good-governance tools to succeed.
The military aspects of the operation began about two months ago with targeted operations leading to the detention of about 70 mid- and senior-level Taliban leaders, with a slightly smaller number killed, according to U.S. officials. The next stage, an official said, will involve a "body blow" to areas under Taliban control, with the arrival of two U.S. combat brigades and Special Forces contingents that will move quickly to take control of the main highway into the city, through Zhari, to the west.
The bulk of U.S. troops will remain outside the city, while a trained and uncorrupt police force -- yet nonexistent -- will be installed inside Kandahar city.
"We have about four months," a military official said. "In that time, we have to flow our forces in and stay on that timeline." If U.S. and Afghan officials have retained and expanded security control in Helmand, while "moving toward a solution in Kandahar that the people support . . . then we've got the momentum," the official said.
The timeline also has larger goals, including a new police training structure and increased recruitment, as well as continued growth in the strength and competence of the Afghan army.
By fall, an additional 5,000 U.S. troops will be deployed to eastern and northern Afghanistan, for a total of 98,000 in the country, with about 40,000 from international partners. At the same time, the four-region command structure under McChrystal, with a U.S. command in the east, British in the south, Italian in the west and German in the north, is to be grown to five regions.
Helmand and the rest of the southwest will be broken off to form a new U.S. command with the Marines and British troops. The British commander in the south, scheduled to depart in November, will be replaced by a U.S. general, leaving the United States in command of three of the five regions.
Whitlock reported from Washington. Correspondent Keith Richburg and special correspondent Javed Hamdard in Kabul and staff writer Greg Miller in Washington contributed to this report.
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Kandahar is 'cornerstone' of Afghan war: Mullen
Wed Mar 31, 2:39 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – Military operations against the Taliban in their heartland of southern Afghanistan are the "cornerstone" of the war, the top US military commander said Wednesday.
"Kandahar is what we're looking into now. It is a cornerstone in reversing the momentum for the Taliban," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Kabul.
"The next operations are there," he added.
Military planners say operations against the Taliban in Kandahar province have already begun and will escalate in coming months as thousands more US and NATO forces deploy to Afghanistan under escalated counter-insurgency tactics.
Mullen was speaking a day after touring the Marjah region of Helmand province, which neighbours Kandahar, and where a massive offensive is under way in the first major test of the new strategy.
"Kandahar is not Marjah and we understand that," Mullen said, in a reference to differences in the way the anti-Taliban operations are unfolding in the separate locations.
Marjah is a rural poppy-growing plain that was under the control of insurgents and drug gangs for years. Kandahar city -- capital of the province and focus of the operations -- is densely populated and well-developed.
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Operation against Taliban in Kandahar to be led by Afghan forces: U.S. official
KABUL, March 31 (Xinhua) -- The NATO-led forces will begin their operation in Taliban birthplace Kandahar, south Afghanistan in near future but it would be Afghan-led as it happened in Helmand, Michael Mullen, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Wednesday.
"This is an operation that will be done by Afghan leadership," Mullen told a press conference here after visiting Taliban former bastion Marja of Helmand province on Tuesday.
"But it is not Marja, we understand that it is much bigger challenge," he noted.
In my opinion much big potential will be needed to achieve the goal and reverse Taliban momentum there in Kandahar," he said, adding"that was why we focus it right now."
Kandahar, the former spiritual capital of Taliban outfit has been the scene of increasing militancy over the past four years as militants are in control of parts of far-flanged areas.
In efforts to ensure lasting peace and consolidate government control there, the NATO-led troops and Afghan security forces are getting ready to launch a major offensive there.
Responding to a query regarding the exact date of the operation, the top U.S. commander said that he could not be very specific to say when the operation begin by saying,"it is difficult to say the exact time, but you will see the approach of Kandahar operation, you will see a similar to Marja with the local leadership."
He also said that Kandahar was the cornerstone of their surge efforts and key to shifting the momentum of the enemies.
Over 15,000 Afghan and NATO-led troops launched an operation in Marja district on Feb. 13 and regained the control of the district from Taliban.
Mullen who paid a visit to Marja on Tuesday said that he was confident with the situation in Marja. Operation in Kandahar, according to officials will be bigger than operation in Marja.
Meantime, local reports said that operation against Taliban militants in Kandahar would be launched in June.
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This Time We Really Mean It
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN The New York Times Op-Ed Columnist March 31, 2010
This newspaper carried a very troubling article on the front page on Monday. It detailed how President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had invited Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Kabul — in order to stick a thumb in the eye of the Obama administration — after the White House had rescinded an invitation to Mr. Karzai to come to Washington because the Afghan president had gutted an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in his re-election last year.
The article, written by two of our best reporters, Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler, noted that “according to Afghan associates, Mr. Karzai recently told lunch guests at the presidential palace that he believes the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region, and that they pose an obstacle to striking a peace deal with the Taliban.”
The article added about Karzai: “ ‘He has developed a complete theory of American power,’ said an Afghan who attended the lunch and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. ‘He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.’ ”
That is what we’re getting for risking thousands of U.S. soldiers and having spent $200 billion already. This news is a flashing red light, warning that the Obama team is violating at least three cardinal rules of Middle East diplomacy.
Rule No. 1: When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. Karzai brazenly stole last year’s presidential election. But the Obama foreign policy team turned a blind eye, basically saying, he’s the best we could get, so just let it go. See dictionary for Vietnam: Air Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky.
When you can steal an election, you can steal anything. How will we get this guy to curb corruption when his whole election, and previous tour in office, were built on corruption? How can we be operating a clear, build-and-hold strategy that depends on us bringing good governance to Afghans when the head of the government is so duplicitous?
Our envoy in Kabul warned us of this before the election, but in his case, too, we were told to look the other way. On Nov. 6, the ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, wrote to Washington in a cable that was leaked: “President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner,” he warned. “Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further. They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”
One reason you violate Rule No. 1 is because you’ve already violated Rule No. 2: “Never want it more than they do.”
If we want good governance in Afghanistan more than Karzai, he will sell us that carpet over and over. How many U.S. officials have flown to Kabul — the latest being President Obama himself — to lecture Karzai on the need to root out corruption in his administration? Do we think he has a hearing problem? Or do we think he believes he has us over a barrel and, in the end, he can and will do whatever serves his personal power needs because he believes that we believe that he is indispensable for confronting Al Qaeda?
This rule applies equally to the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. There is something wrong when we are chasing them — two men who live in biking distance from one another — begging, cajoling and pressuring them to come to a peace negotiation that should ostensibly serve their interests as much as our own.
Which leads to Rule No. 3: In the Middle East, what leaders tell you in private in English is irrelevant. All that matters is what they will defend in public in their own language.
When Karzai believes that the way to punish America for snubbing him is by inviting Iran’s president to Kabul — who delivered a virulently anti-U.S. speech from inside the presidential palace — you have to pay close attention to that. It means Karzai must think that anti-Americanism plays well on the streets of Afghanistan and that by dabbling in it himself — as he did during his presidential campaign — he will strengthen himself politically. That is not a good sign.
As Filkins and Landler noted, “During the recent American-dominated military offensive in the town of Marja — the largest of the war — Mr. Karzai stood mostly in the shadows.” And if Karzai behaves like this when he needs us, when we’re there fighting for him, how is he going to treat our interests when we’re gone?
We have thousands of U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan and more heading there. Love it or hate it, we’re now deep in it, so you have to want our engagement there to build something that is both decent and self-sustaining — so we can get out. But I still fear that Karzai is ready to fight to the last U.S. soldier. And once we clear, hold and build Afghanistan for him, he is going to break our hearts.
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U.N.: Afghanistan 'world's biggest producer of hashish'
By the CNN Wire Staff March 31, 2010 8:04 a.m. EDT
(CNN) -- A U.N. report says Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer of opium, is also a "major producer of cannabis" and "the world's biggest producer of hashish."
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime issued its Afghanistan Cannabis Survey on Wednesday, documenting large-scale cannabis cultivation in half of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.
"While other countries have even larger cannabis cultivation, the astonishing yield of the Afghan cannabis crop -- 145 kilograms per hectare of hashish, the resin produced from cannabis, as compared to around 40 kilograms per hectare in Morocco -- makes Afghanistan the world's biggest producer of hashish, estimated at between 1,500 and 3,500 tons a year," said Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC's executive director, in a report issued at the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
The survey results reflect the significance of Afghanistan's illicit drug trade, exploited by militants to fund their operations in unstable areas, such as the country's war-torn southern region. In 2008, "a massive seizure of cannabis -- 245,000 kilograms -- was made in Kandahar near the Pakistan border."
"All drugs in Afghanistan, whether opium or cannabis, are taxed by those who control the territory, providing an additional source of revenue for insurgents," Costa said.
The study said the high concentration of cannabis cultivation in the south "marks a shift away from the north, which even five years ago, was the main cannabis-growing region. Illustrative of this trend is the steep increase in cannabis prices in Balkh province" because of a crackdown since 2007.
The report says money "is one of the main reasons" for large-scale cannabis cultivation.
"The gross income per hectare of cannabis (US$ 3,900) is higher than from opium (US$ 3,600). Cannabis does not need much labor cost: in Afghanistan it is three times cheaper to cultivate a hectare of cannabis than a hectare of opium.
"As a result, the net income of a hectare of cannabis is US$ 3,341 compared to US$ 2,005 per hectare of opium. In the aggregate, however, because opium cultivation far exceeds cannabis cultivation, in 2009 the value of cannabis resin production in Afghanistan was estimated at between US$ 39-94 million, about 10-20 percent of the farmgate value of opium production."
Costa said the report shows that Afghanistan's drug problem "is even more complex than just the opium trade."
"Reducing Afghanistan's cannabis supply should be dealt with more seriously, as part of the national drug control strategy. As with opium, the bottom line is to improve security and development in drug-producing regions in order to wean farmers off of illicit crops and into sustainable, licit livelihoods, and to deny insurgents another source of illicit income."
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Afghanistan: Taliban bomb attack targets anti-opium drive
A bomb attack in southern Afghanistan killed at least 8 people today, according to reports. It appeared aimed at a Western anti-drug program targeting the world's largest opium production by encouraging farmers to plant alternative crops.
By Jonathan Adams, The Christian Science Monitor Correspondent March 31, 2010 at 8:39 am EDT
A bicycle bomb attack today in southern Afghanistan appeared aimed at a Western anti-opium program.
The Associated Press, citing local police, reported at least eight killed in the attack in the Nahr-e-Sarraj district just north of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province. The New York Times and Reuters reported at least 13 killed and 40 wounded. The dead were farmers who had gathered to receive free seeds, fertilizer, and other supplies as part of a British program to encourage farmers to grow crops like wheat.
The New York Times reported that the bomb was hidden on a bicycle in a crowded bazaar. The paper quoted a provincial government spokesman on the perpetrators and intended target.
“The Taliban and narcotics smugglers were behind this attack,” said Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for the Helmand provincial governor, Gulab Mangal, who has been a strong supporter of the [anti-opium growing] program and other western-backed efforts to reduce the poppy cultivation industry that dominates Helmand’s economy.
“This was an attempt at intimidating people and stopping the process of development and peace building in the province,” Mr. Ahmadi said.
An ongoing NATO campaign currently targets both the Taliban insurgency and the opium trade that funds it. The campaign employs the stick of military force and the carrot of incentives to farmers to grow crops other than opium.
Tuesday's bombing comes after a NATO military push into the Taliban-controlled opium-growing area of Marjah in February, and ahead of a planned push this summer into the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. But as has been reported, American and NATO commanders are willing to overlook opium production when necessary to win over the local populations. “Marja is a special case right now,” a member of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's top advisory body recently told The New York Times. “We don’t trample the livelihood of those we’re trying to win over.”
Separately, the UN announced today that Afghanistan is now the world's largest producer of cannabis, showing that the country's drug problem goes beyond opium, according to a Reuters report.
The UN said that the Taliban also raises funds by taxing cannabis cultivation, Reuters reported.
A 2008 report from the United Nations' Office of Drugs and Crime said that a decline in opium prices and production had shrunk the crop's role in the broader Afghan economy. But it still provides important revenues for the Taliban, the report said.
"Despite the drop in opium cultivation, production and prices, the Taliban and other anti-government forces are making massive amounts of money from the drug business. ...
"With so much drug-related revenue, it is not surprising that the insurgents' war machine has proven so resilient, despite the heavy pounding by Afghan and allied forces", said the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa.
In a report last year for the United States Institute of Peace, journalist and author Gretchen Peters examined the close ties between the opium trade and Afghan politics over three decades of conflict in the war-wracked country.
"Understanding the nexus between traffickers and the Taliban could help build strategies to weaken the insurgents and to extend governance," Peters wrote. "This report argues that it is no longer possible to treat the insurgency and the drug trade as separate matters, to be handled by military and law enforcement, respectively."
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Indians scale down in Afghanistan, fearing attacks
by Lynne O'donnell – Wed Mar 31, 3:05 am ET
KABUL (AFP) – India has suspended medical aid and teaching programmes in Afghanistan, where Indian businesses and charities are slashing staff over fears they are increasingly targeted by militants.
Kabul-based Indians believe they were the specific targets of three recent attacks in the Afghan capital, including a February 26 bomb and gun assault on a guesthouse that killed 17 people, among them seven Indians.
Indian charity Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA), which promoted economic independence for Afghan women, said it had pulled all staff from Afghanistan.
"At the moment there is no one on behalf of SEWA in Kabul because after the 26 February disaster we were advised to come back (to India)," said SEWA's Afghanistan coordinator Pratibha Pandiya.
Indian officials said a December 15 suicide car bombing that killed eight people also targeted Indians, although former Afghan first vice president Ahmad Zia Massoud had a home in the same street.
The manager of an IT company that many Indians believe was the target, said his Indian staff had since halved to 11.
"We cannot stop people from leaving and we cannot guarantee anyone's safety," the manager, also an Indian, said on condition of anonymity and asking that his company also not be named.
"Our office and residences are like fortresses," he said, adding that extra security promised by the Afghan government had yet to materialise.
Indians in Kabul told AFP they see themselves as victims of a struggle with Pakistan for influence in Afghanistan, which is fuelling attacks on Indian interests in the country.
The Indian embassy was hit on October 8 last year, with the deaths of 17 people, and on July 7, 2008 when more than 60 people were killed.
The Pakistan government denies supporting militants, pointing to its own fight against the Taliban, and says it is committed to peace in Afghanistan.
Since a US-led invasion ended the Taliban's 1996-2001 regime, India has committed 1.2 billion dollars to Afghanistan, mainly aid for social services including health and education, making it one of the biggest regional donors.
The two countries are historically close and many urban Afghans speak Hindi and Urdu learned watching Bollywood movies.
About 4,000 Indians are building roads, sanitation projects and power lines in the volatile country. India is building the new Afghan parliament.
Doctors were recruited from the Indian military for India's medical mission (IMM) to Afghanistan, which focused on five cities, providing free treatment and medicine for 30,000 Afghans each month, an embassy official said.
The IMM had been temporarily suspended, he said, as those members of the 11-man team who survived the attack were repatriated for treatment.
The IMM had 25 doctors and paramedics in Kabul, Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabd and Mazar-I-Sharif, said Indian foreign ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash, adding the programme provided free treatment to 300,000 Afghans in 2008-2009.
IMM would resume as soon as new staff could be recruited, another ministry official said.
"There is no question of scaling down any aid and or development activity," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The head of the Indira Ghandi Children's Hospital in Kabul, run by IMM, said sick Afghan children were the main victims.
"The attack has done nothing but deprive people coming from far provinces of free treatment and medicine," said Noorulhaq Yousufzai.
English-teaching programmes had been also suspended, the embassy official said, as two of three Indian teachers died as a result of the February attack.
India brings in hundreds of Afghans on scholarships each year.
Another Indian official, also speaking anonymously, said Pakistani militants had been caught casing diplomatic residences before the February attack.
"The professional manner of the planning, the fact that the Taliban did not know about it for three or four hours, that the attackers were speaking Urdu -- all these things make us conclude it was Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)," he said.
LeT was also blamed for the Mumbai attacks in late 2008, although it denied any involvement in that assault or the February Kabul bombing.
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U.S. says weapons from Iran sent to Afghanistan
31 Mar 2010 14:27:22 GMT
KABUL, March 31 (Reuters) - Iran is having a growing, negative influence in its neighbour Afghanistan, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen said on Wednesday, citing what he said was a shipment of Iranian arms to fighters.
The United States has frequently accused Iran of providing some assistance to insurgents in Afghanistan, although Washington says it has not been nearly as important a factor as in Iraq, Iran's other neighbour where U.S. troops are waging war.
"Iran is working to increase its influence in the area. On the one hand, that's not surprising, she is a neighbour state, a neighbour country. On the other hand, the influence I see is all too often negative," Mullen told a news conference during a visit to Kabul, in response to a question about Tehran's influence.
"I was advised last night about a significant shipment of weapons from Iran into Kandahar, for example," Mullen said.
"I have seen them over the last several years -- the last couple of years anyway, certainly be more than just interested, provide some capabilities," Mullen added. "I am also concerned that that desire to be influential is increasing."
Pentagon officials declined to give further details about the Iranian arms shipment. Asked later if it represented an important development, Mullen said: "I was taken aback. It wasn't insignificant."
Tehran denies supporting militant groups opposed to President Hamid Karzai's government, and blames the presence of Western troops in Afghanistan for causing instability.
Mainly Shi'ite Muslim Iran was strongly opposed to the strict Sunni Muslim Taliban when they ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001.
Iran has had rapidly growing economic influence in Afghanistan, especially in the West, where cross-border trade is brisk. A dialect of Iran's Farsi language is one of two state languages in Afghanistan, and Iran hosted millions of Afghan refugees during decades of war.
(Reporting by Peter Graff and Adam Entous; writing by Peter Graff)
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G8 ministers pressure Iran, Afghanistan
by Michel Comte
GATINEAU, Canada (AFP) – Group of Eight foreign ministers have called for stepped-up pressure against Iran to abandon its suspect nuclear program and urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to rein in militants.
"While G8 ministers agreed to remain open to dialogue with Iran, they also called on the international community to take appropriate steps to put pressure on Iran," Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Tuesday at the end of two days of talks in the Canadian town of Gatineau.
Iran's defiance, lack of transparency in the construction of an uranium enrichment facility near Qom and refusal to engage the international community are of "serious concern" to the G8, Cannon said.
G8 foreign ministers urged "in the strongest possible terms" that Iran cooperate with five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, amid fears that Tehran is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb.
With international momentum building for new sanctions, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that if Iran continued to ignore global pleas the UN Security Council would soon reach a consensus on further sanctions.
"The last 15 months have demonstrated clearly the unwillingness of Iran to fulfill its international obligations," Clinton said, flanked by her G8 counterparts.
She predicted "the next weeks will be ones of intense negotiation" among Security Council members and many interested countries.
In Washington, US President Barack Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy also upped the pressure on the Islamic republic, which has hotly denied the accusations, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Obama said he hoped to impose new international nuclear sanctions on Iran within "weeks" but admitted Washington did "not yet" have global agreement to do so.
"And that's something that we have to work on," Obama said, admitting that Iran was a major oil producer and had a plethora of commercial partners.
"The time has come to take decisions. Iran cannot continue its mad race," agreed Sarkozy at a White House press conference, saying he had worked with British and German leaders "to ensure that Europe as a whole engages in the sanctions regime."
Clinton affirmed late Monday that China would participate in Iranian sanctions talks, aimed at imposing a fourth set of UN sanctions on the country.
Beijing has been seen as the most hesitant member of the so-called "P5-plus-1" group who are negotiating with Tehran.
The group of eight most developed nations -- Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- also agreed to roll out a "robust" counter-terrorism plan at the G8 leaders summit in Muskoka in June.
They also called on Afghanistan to make swift reforms and clamp down on terrorism.
"All of us have invested heavily, and at considerable cost in lives, in helping Afghanistan to build a peaceful and stable state that will never again be a haven for terrorists," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.
He and G8 foreign ministers called on Kabul to "assume greater responsibility for its own security," as well as live up to its promises to deliver good governance and basic services to its population.
"We at this table must continue to provide support, while ensuring the Afghan government lives up to its commitments," Harper told G8 ministers, who urged Karzai to outline "bold" moves to deliver on promises he made in January.
"The government of Afghanistan should take concrete and transparent steps to deliver on its commitments... to ensure the integrity of parliamentary elections in 2010," the ministers said.
Striking a tone of impatience at the meeting, G8 ministers said they expected Karzai to clarify his government's "vision for the country" at an Afghan conference in Kabul in May.
Obama said on US television: "I think that the progress is too slow, and what we've been trying to emphasize is the fierce urgency of now."
In February, NATO-led troops launched their biggest offensive in southern Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Another major offensive is planned for June in Kandahar. The moves are seen as the first real tests in Obama's military strategy to restore stability there.
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Clinton expresses caution, optimism on Afghanistan
Tue Mar 30, 5:01 pm ET
GATINEAU, Canada (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Tuesday voiced cautious optimism about Afghanistan's prospects for peace, saying progress on military and civilian fronts needed to be sustained.
"I think the situation in Afghanistan about which we spoke at some length during our meeting in the last two days is cause for both optimism and caution," she said after two days of talks among G8 foreign ministers.
"On the optimism side, I believe that we are employing a strategy that is working," she said in the Canadian town of Gatineau.
"It is working on both the military and the civilian front," Clinton said, noting recent military gains in Marjah in southwestern Afghanistan.
But she warned "there has to be a political element that will lead to a resolution of the conflict."
This included "taking soldiers, Taliban fighters off the battlefield, and also looking for those political leaders who are willing to renounce violence and Al-Qaeda, follow the constitution of Afghanistan, and re-enter society."
What was needed was "sustainable progress and development that leads to stability," Clinton said.
"The most important player in this is not any of us or other members of the international community but the government and people of Afghanistan," she added.
"I think we can look back over the last several months and see that the new government headed by a re-elected President (Hamid) Karzai has done a number of things that had been promised and delivered on for the international community, but the jury is still out on other issues,"
On Tuesday Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged the Karzai government to stem terrorism and make necessary political reforms, saying countries had paid a heavy price in blood and money to bring stability to the war torn country.
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Refugees pay price of Pakistan's Taliban war
By Paula Newton, CNN March 30, 2010 9:58 a.m. EDT
Jalozai Camp, Pakistan (CNN) -- There is a frontline here in this dusty corner of Pakistan, but not the kind where guns blaze and tanks roar. On this frontline U.N. tarps flutter in the breeze and wheelbarrows full of food rations roll down dirt pathways. But make no mistake, they are as much a part of Pakistan's war on the Taliban as any battle front.
Those who shelter in this sprawling camp, near Pakistan's northwestern frontier city of Peshawar, have the wounds to prove it. Bullet holes, shrapnel lacerations and resignation are commonplace.
Hazrat Khan says the Taliban targeted him and his family and destroyed their home. He parts his hair to show the scars from shrapnel cutting into his scalp. Living under Taliban rule was becoming more and more dangerous, he says.
"If living under the Taliban was tolerable, do you think we would be living here?" says Khan adding, "We aren't happy here but what can we do? Our homes were destroyed. At least we are in our own country. We believe that only the government can straighten out the Taliban."
Indeed, the Pakistani government is winning praise in Washington and other foreign capitals for its yearlong assault on the Taliban. But as the war rages, people here continue to lose their loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods.
More than 1.2 million displaced Pakistanis are scattered around the country today, down from last year's peak of just over 3 million. But Jalozai, which shelters more than 100,000 homeless, remains the largest displacement camp in Asia according to the U.N..
"It's still one of the largest displacement crises in the world, and it has been forgotten," says Kilian Kleinschmidt, of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
"It's a challenge for all of us and it cannot be that we leave the human aspect of this war aside. We cannot neglect these people. If we want these people to understand that the future is in peace and stability, rather than turmoil, they need to be assisted properly" adds Kleinschmidt.
The war on terror may be global, but for most here in this camp, it's an intimate affair. With every Pakistani success on the battlefield there are devastating civilian losses.
Ghulam Noor is an earnest man of 25 from Bajaur in Pakistan. While he once cared for a wife and son, now he must rely on his father for every vital need. He has shrapnel lodged in his brain and he is partially paralyzed.
"The (Pakistani) army's helicopters were patrolling above, and they made no distinction between us and the militants. Right or wrong target -- they didn't discriminate," says Noor, adding that he was injured by shelling during the airstrikes.
But he says he does not consider this Pakistan's war, even if it does manage to deal a mortal blow to the Taliban.
"They have started this war because of America's bidding. Pakistan has no war within it. They get their orders from America and carry them out here," he said.
And yet the international community seems to have moved on, assuming the Pakistani Taliban is under control and the consequences dealt with. While international donors contributed hundreds of million of dollars last year in aid when the Pakistani assault on militants began, the U.N. says aid money is only trickling in this year.
"Nothing has come so far -- very little. Some governments have responded, but the same solidarity we saw last year is now not there anymore because for many international players, this is over," said the U.N.'s Kleinschmidt. "There are people being displaced every day, operations are ongoing, it has become very complex," he added.
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Spanish defense minister thanks military for Afghanistan work
MADRID, March 31 (Xinhua) -- Spanish Defense Minister Carme Chacon on Wednesday thanked the Spanish military for its work at Kabul International Airport in Afghanistan.
"You have worked with discretion and brilliance... Nobody is giving better publicity to Spain than you are," said Chacon at a videoconference, published on the official Spanish government website.
The 70 Spanish troops have spent the past six months helping coordinate about 330 flights and 34,000 tons of cargo a day.
Spain took over the control and management of Kabul International Airport on October 1, 2009, following six months of Polish control. Spain was expected to transfer the control to Greece on April 1.
Chacon also highlighted the excellent cooperation the Spanish had enjoyed with the Afghan authorities and praised the humanitarian work carried out in local schools and villages.
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Taliban attack checkpoint, kill 6 Pakistani troops
By Riaz Khan, Associated Press Writer – Wed Mar 31, 6:17 am ET
PESHAWAR, Pakistan – Pakistani troops repulsed an attack by dozens of armed Taliban militants on a checkpoint close to the Afghan border Wednesday in fighting that killed six soldiers and at least 20 insurgents, the armed forces said.
Pakistan has carried out a series of operations in the border region over the last 18 months, but the militants have proved resilient foes. The U.S. has pushed Islamabad to keep up its offensives, arguing that militants on its side of the border are involved in attacks on American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
Wednesday's attack by up to 100 militants occurred in the Bara area of Khyber, a tribal region home to a top supply route for troops across the border.
A statement from Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps said the attackers used several suicide car bombs, but that soldiers fought back, destroying the vehicles during the clash. At least 15 soldiers also were wounded in the attack, the statement said.
There were conflicting accounts about how many militants were killed. The Frontier Corp said 25 insurgents died, but the army put the number at "about 20." An additional 30 militants were wounded, the army said in a statement.
The information is nearly impossible to verify independently. Access to Khyber and other tribal regions is restricted, and the border area as a whole is remote and dangerous.
Also Wednesday, at least six alleged insurgents were killed by suspected U.S. missiles in the nearby tribal region of North Waziristan, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.
Two missile attacks one hour apart destroyed an abandoned school near the town of Mir Ali, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.
The U.S. rarely discusses its missile campaign. Pakistan publicly protests it as a violation of its sovereignty, though it is believed to secretly assist in the strikes.
North Waziristan has been the target of the majority of recent missile attacks. It is home to several militant groups who focus on battling U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
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Associated Press writer Rasool Dawar in Mir Ali contributed to this report.
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Kabul's only rock band pushes Afghanistan's cultural frontiers
Inspired by British indie bands, Kabul Dreams are proving a hit with expats and – increasingly – with young Afghans
Jon Boone in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 31 March 2010 16.21 BST
The soundproofing in the home-made studio is not quite up to the job of muffling the din of Kabul's traffic, as a baby-faced 20-year-old called Suleman Qardash blasts out the catchy lyrics of Crack in the Radio, soon to feature on the first album by Afghanistan's only rock band.
With a dedicated following of expats and early signs of an appetite among young Afghans for English-language indie rock, Kabul Dreams are starting to show promise after less than a year together.
The band's existence is something of an oddity in a city where the diplomatic mood is increasingly turning to a negotiated settlement with the fundamentalist armed opposition.
The "crack" in the radio is a reference to the woman who inspired the song, a kooky girl who works at Kabul Rock Radio. Both the music station and its female employees would have been unthinkable during Taliban control.
When not in the studio, Kabul Dreams vocalist Qardash does his "day job" – presenting the evening news on the country's Uzbek-language television station. The young news anchor is only interested in television for the money it pays, which he puts towards building up the band.
"We are aiming for big things," says Siddique Ahmed, the bass player. "A record label, an international tour."
"And a Grammy!" interjects Qardash, sitting in a studio office filled with bits of equipment donated by some Danes.
Kabul Dreams were formed less than a year ago and earlier this month performed in the capital's only nightclub to an audience of bopping aid workers and one or two diplomats who had ignored their embassies' intelligence reports warning of a supposedly imminent insurgent attack on the venue (it didn't happen).
For those UK diplomats who dare not sneak outside the wire, the British embassy bar has also hosted the band.
But there are signs that the group are also starting to gain popularity among young Afghans, 500 of whom turned out to see them play a gig at the American University even though "none of them had a clue about rock music", says Ahmed.
They performed a mixture of their own songs and covers, including a particularly good version of Oasis's Wonderwall.
Their own compositions are recorded in English, though Qardash is not a strong speaker of the language, despite his love of the music of Oasis, Radiohead and the Beatles.
Ahmed says English feels right for an ethnically mixed band comprising a Tajik, a Pashtun and an Uzbek.
"If we sing in Dari, why not Pashtu? If we do both why not in Uzbek, where Suleman comes from?"
Given their mixed background, it is only fitting that the group should be named after Afghanistan's most ethnically mixed city. Not only could such a band only happen in Kabul; it is no coincidence that the three band members did not grow up under the Taliban, but in the relatively liberal environments of neighbouring countries.
Qardash fell in love with British indie bands he discovered on the internet while living in Tashkent. Ahmed, the bass player, grew up in Islamabad and Mujtaba Habibi, the drummer, lived in Mashhad in Iran until he returned to Afghanistan in 2002.
"Each of us played with local bands in Pakistan, Iran and Uzbekistan but it was nothing serious," says Ahmed. "We always thought it would be really nice to have a band here. When it finally happened in Kabul we thought this was a dream come true for us."
They have already made a small inroad into India when they played to an audience of a thousand at the South Asia Bands Festival in Delhi and in Jaipur.
It is an inauspicious time for western-inspired youth culture to be getting off the ground in Kabul. On Tuesday, even as the band were recording their debut album, a delegation representing the notorious warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar had its second face-to-face meeting in a week with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, who has presided over a boom in relatively liberal media in the last nine years.
Hekmatyar is currently thought to be somewhere in Pakistan from where he masterminds attacks against Nato and Afghan government forces.
In the 1990s, when he held sway in various areas, Hekmatyar banned the playing of music in shops, restaurants and cars and forced businesses to close down during prayer time.
Ahmed says the low profile of the young band has protected it so far, although it has always expected resistance to "something different that's never been done before". And he is worried about what the future might hold.
"They are talking about pulling out foreign troops. Nobody likes troops from another country in their country, but everybody knows that if the troops leave, the [Afghan factions] will start fighting each other again because that's their nature, that's what they do."
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