Fri Apr 22, 7:44
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, meets with Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi during the Asia-Africa Summit in Jakarta, Friday, April 22, 2005. Leaders from Asia and Africa were gathered in Indonesia to discuss ways to boost economic and security ties, though a row between Asian giants China and Japan threatened to overshadow the summit. (AP Photo/Suzanne Plunkett)

Senate OKs $81B for Iraq, Afghanistan - By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - House and Senate negotiators are expected to act quickly to sort out differences — from a new U.S. embassy in Iraq to an overhaul of immigration laws — between their versions of an $81 billion spending bill for combat and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Senate overwhelmingly approved its measure Thursday. The Pentagon says it needs the money by the first week of May, meaning President Bush hopes to sign the final legislation in the next two weeks.

In a statement after the vote, Bush urged lawmakers to keep their focus on the government's pressing needs.

"I urge the House and Senate to reach a final agreement that focuses taxpayer dollars on providing the tools our troops and diplomats need now, so that I can sign a bill into law as soon as possible," Bush said.

Both the Senate and House versions would push the total cost of combat and reconstruction past $300 billion since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and give the president much of the money he requested. But the bills differ slightly over what portion should go to military operations and how much should go to foreign aid.

Other issues to be resolved include immigration changes, a U.S. embassy in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, military death benefits and the fate of an aircraft carrier.

"I'm confident we will be able to come back with a product, in the form of a conference report, which the Senate can support," said Sen. Thad Cochran (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He said the bill gives strong support to troops and critical dollars to the State Department.

Overall, the Senate version would cost $81.3 billion, compared with the $81.4 billion the House approved last month and the $81.9 billion that Bush requested.

Congress has passed four similar emergency spending measures for the wars since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says lawmakers have previously approved $228 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, reconstruction there, and for U.S. efforts against terrorism elsewhere. The funds are in addition to the Pentagon's annual budget, which exceeds $400 billion.

The latest money is to last through Sept. 30, the end of the current budget year. Pentagon officials have said they will have to ask for more money for 2006.

In both bills, about $75 billion would go to the Pentagon. The Army and the Marine Corps, the two service branches doing most of the fighting, would get the largest portion.

The House bill would add money to the president's request for defense expenses; the Senate's would not. The Senate version would restore some money the House cut for foreign aid and State Department programs.

The Senate bill also would provide $592 million to build a U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The House bill does not fund the construction of a fortified diplomatic compound.

The Senate added a requirement that the Pentagon report every three months to Congress on how many Iraqi security forces are trained and how many U.S. troops are needed. And, the Senate put in requirement that the Pentagon keep the Navy's fleet of 12 aircraft carriers intact. The Pentagon had proposed scrapping one carrier to save money.

The Senate also version would increase a one-time benefit for the families of soldiers killed to $100,000 from $12,000, regardless of whether the deaths occurred in combat, and increase life insurance as well. The House version limits the extra money to survivors of those killed in combat-related duty.

One of the most contentious issues facing congressional negotiators is whether to include an immigration overhaul in the final bill. The Senate decided to take up immigration later.

Osama hiding in Pak-Afghan terrain: Mush - Times of India 4/21/05

WASHINGTON: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf is sure that Osama Bin Laden is not only alive, but is residing in the Pak-Afghan tribal area.

"Osama is alive and I am cent percent sure that he is hiding in Pak-Afghan tribal belt", Online News quoted him as saying during an interview with CNN, which is due to be telecast on Saturday.

The impassable mountain ranges, where he thinks Osama is, would make it very tough to locate him due to the rugged nature of the terrain and the poor communication infrastructure existing therein.

“Government is developing this infrastructure to hunt down Osama and cleanse the area from remnants or Al-Qaeda”, he added.

Former Taliban official surrenders in Afghanistan

KHOST, Afghanistan, April 22 (AFP) - A former senior Taliban official has surrendered to authorities in Afghanistan, the fourth in the past month to give himself up as part of an amnesty offer, an official said Friday.

Habib-ur Rehman headed the criminal investigation department at the ministry of interior under the Islamic extremist Taliban regime. He handed himself over to authorities Thursday in southeastern Khost province, the province's intelligence director said.

"Habib-ur Rehman, who used to live in the tribal areas of Pakistan, joined the national reconciliation process yesterday with a commitment to live in peace," the intelligence director, Sadiq Tarakhil, said.

Karzai offered an olive branch to rank and file Taliban fighters last year and said all but a hardcore of 150 militants wanted for human rights violations would be able to rejoin the political process.

On Wednesday two other top former Taliban members surrendered in southern Helmand province. Earlier in March, key Taliban commander Abdul Wahid also gave himself up in Helmand.

Three years after the ouster of the Taliban by a US-led international coalition force, the remnants of the regime are still waging a guerrilla insurgency in the south and southeast of the country.

Afghan Battles Heat Up in Spring - Los Angeles Times 04/22/05 Halima Kazem

KABUL — U.S. troops fired artillery and called in airstrikes as they battled Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters this week, another sign that spring weather might bring stepped-up attacks against American forces.

The fighting occurred late Tuesday as militants fired four rockets at the U.S. military base near the southeastern city of Khowst. The clash left at least 12 insurgents dead. There were no American casualties, the military said.

"They shot at us with rockets and we responded with artillery, fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft," Army Maj. J.R. Mendoza said in a statement. "We were able to see the launching point of the rockets and we brought everything we had to bear on it."

The military said two 500-pound bombs, 10 rockets and hundreds of artillery shells were fired at the rebels. "We are on the border of Pakistan, and the rockets could have easily been fired from there. We could see more of these types of attacks," a security official from Khowst province said.

Tuesday's clash was preceded by fighting in Zabol province on Monday that left 17 rebels dead. Last week, U.S. forces reportedly killed a dozen militants near the city of Khowst.

Over the weekend, Army Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, commander of the 17,000-strong U.S. force in Afghanistan, warned that militants might launch a large-scale attack in the coming months.

Such a surge in violence may be tied in part to the warm spring weather, which has allowed militants to leave the mountain hide-outs they use during the freezing winter.

Another sign Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants could be reorganizing was the recent announcement the Taliban had started a pirate radio station airing commentaries condemning the Afghan government.

Shariat Shagh, or the Voice of Islamic Law, reportedly has been on the air in several southern provinces, including Kandahar, the group's stronghold when it ruled the country.

"We have all heard that the radio is broadcasting for two hours a day, but no one I know has actually heard the station on the air," said Khalid Pashtun, a spokesman for Kandahar's governor.

Officials in the province say the announcement may be part of a publicity effort as the rebels try to rebuild support in southern Afghanistan. Meanwhile, two former Taliban leaders returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan, taking up Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offer of amnesty.

The pair — identified by the Associated Press as Mohammed Nazim, a former governor, and Akhtar Mohammed, a former police chief — swore allegiance to the Afghan government during a ceremony in Helmand province.

New rail, road links between Pakistan, Afghanistan in Offing - Pakistan Times Wire Service

ISLAMABAD: The bilateral trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan will touch US $ one billion mark this year and will be further enhanced by opening new rail and road links, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Thursday.

He was speaking at a ceremony to hand over first batch of 35 brand-new Hino-Pak buses and 20,000 school bags to Afghanistan's Minister for Public Works, Sohrab Ali Safri here at Pakistan Sports Complex.

"Pakistan and Afghanistan have already forged a model relationship and we will further contribute in the reconstruction of our neighbouring country as we strongly believe that a stable and progressing Afghanistan is in our interest," he said.

Pakistan had pledged to donate 100 buses, besides 300,000 school bags to Afghanistan. The remaining 65 buses and school bags will be given away by September. These donations will be in addition to 200 trucks presented to Afghanistan last year.

"Our donations will certainly ease the problem of transportation in Afghanistan to a great extent and will provide relief to commuters," said the Prime Minister who also got aboard a bus alongwith the Afghan Minister and other dignitaries.

"The school bags are symbolic of efforts to promote education in that country, which is necessary for development and reconstruction of our neighbour," he remarked.

He said that the two countries enjoyed deep historical, cultural and ethnic relations and have a long border. Pakistan is also giving refuge to three million Afghans, he added.

"Pakistan was among the first countries, as part of a global effort, to provide aid to its neighbour in its hour of need", the prime minister said. "Though, we are not an aid-giving country, the President of Pakistan pledged US $ 100 million for the reconstruction of Afghanistan with projects worth US $ 44 million already executed from this amount", he said.

Shaukat said about 50,000 Pakistani personnel were engaged in development projects in Afghanistan and expressed confidence that Pakistani entrepreneurs would further contribute towards investment in that country. "Given continued improvement in security and stability in the region, we expect this part of the globe to become hub of economic activities in the near future," the prime minister said.

He said the governments of the two countries had already concluded agreements in the areas of information, broadcasting, culture, and tourism including plying of bus services en routes Peshawar-Torkham-Jalalabad and Kandhar-Quetta during the recent visit of President Hamid Karzai. Construction of Torkham-Jalalabad Road by Frontier Works Organization will further boost bilateral trade and provide a trade transit for Central Asian Republics, benefiting both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"We are also actively considering Turkemanistan-Afghanistan- Pakistan gas pipeline as one of the options to support increased level of trade and passenger traffic," he said. Besides, he said, Chaman-Spinboldak rail project would also be completed by December next year while there were also plans to raise the number of border points between the two countries to 10 from current four.

The Afghanistan Minister for Public Works, Sohrab Ali Safri, said that Pakistan was the gateway for Afghanistan and likewise his country was the highway for Pakistan to Central Asian Republics.

He said Pak-Afghan trade should be increased further even from the mark of one billion dollar. "We are grateful to Pakistan for contributing generously towards reconstruction of Afghanistan".

"We have close relations with Pakistan", he said. "Nearly 50,000 Pakistanis are working in different projects in Afghanistan while there were a million-plus Afghan refugees still living in Pakistan".

Afghan police retreat under fire from suspected drug smugglers near Tajik border - April 21, 2005 Associated Press

Police retreated from a village in a heartland of Afghanistan's drug industry after coming under fire by militiamen accused of trafficking opium into neighboring Tajikistan, an official said Thursday.

About 150 police pulled back overnight from Chergan Shahr, a village in Badakhshan province 320 kilometers (200 miles) northwest of the capital, Kabul, mayor Mohammed Nabi Bayan told The Associated Press. No casualties were reported.

Officials have appealed in vain for gunmen holed up in the hills surrounding the area to surrender their weapons under a government plan to dismantle Afghanistan's illegal militias and clamp down on its narcotics business, the world's largest.

Bayan said police faced 250 militiamen armed with assault rifles and machine guns and that they had pulled back to Ab Ganda, another village in Shahr-e-Buzurg district, after spending two days under sporadic fire.

Civilians had also fled the fighting, he said. He said officials in Kabul had yet to authorize the police to return fire or send reinforcements.

Reports of abuses by US, Afghan forces undermine security: UN expert

KABUL (AFP) - A United Nations human rights official says he has received reports of torture and other abuses by US-led and Afghan forces which undermine the country's security and stability.

Cherif Bassiouni, the UN's independent expert on human rights in Afghanistan, said in a new report that he had received reports that US-led forces and Afghan security agencies "act above and beyond the reach of the law by engaging in arbitrary arrests and detentions" and torturing their detainees.

"The independent expert has received reports of serious violations by the coalition forces from victims, AIHRC (Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission), NGOs and others," he said in a report on human rights in Afghanistan published on the Internet this week.

The UN expert said it was difficult to confirm many of the allegations, but a number of incidents had been publicly reported. he denounced reports "of sexual abuse, beatings, torture and use of force resulting in death" by the 18,000-strong US-led coalition forces.

"When these forces directly engage in practices that violate... international human rights and international humanitarian law, they undermine the national project of establishing a legal basis for the use of force," he said.

While Afghan officials had cooperated with the UN and AIHRC, neither UN nor commission officials had been granted access to US detention facilities where at least eight people have died in custody since 2001, the report said.

International non-governmental agencies estimated that "over 1,000 individuals have been detained, often after being arrested with excessive or indiscriminate force," by coalition forces in Afghanistan, it added.

While the US military has made efforts to improve troop conduct, an internal Pentagon investigation of detentions in Afghanistan remains classified, unlike similar abuses in Iraq, it said.

Human rights abuses have also been committed by unregulated foreign private security contractors and poorly-paid, inadequately trained police linked with local factional commanders.

"There are multiple security institutions managed by the National Security Directorate, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Defence, which function in an uncoordinated manner, lack central control," or formal accountability, the report noted.

Bassiouni also pointed to rampant human rights violations, including abuse of women and children and land seizures, by regional warlords who are estimated to command about 80,000 illegally armed men and who are tightly linked with the country's booming drugs trade.

"If corruption continues to intensify, as is likely with the growing power of drug traffickers and organised crime, it will become virtually impossible to establish and sustain a meaningful commitment to the rule of law in Afghanistan," the report said.

US-based Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said the UN should strengthen its monitoring of human rights in Afghanistan as the situation in the country remains "perilous."

It said there were "indications" that the US delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva has opposed continued monitoring by Bassiouni, who last year criticized the United States for its policies of holding detainees in Afghanistan without legal protection.

Herat University construction suspended due to lack of funds - Pajhwok Afghan News 04/22/2005 By Khalid Khorsand

HERAT - Shortage of funds has halted the construction of the new Herat university campus, leaving students and faculty frustrated. Despite official assurances that the work would be resumed soon there is no clear indicator of when that will be. The construction of the university was brought to a halt a month ago due to the lack of resources after completion of only 20% of the construction work.

Since the university has no campus, different faculties and departments of the university are scattered in different parts of the city. The university has 3700 students and 40% of the students are women.

Professor Abdul Ruf Mukhlis the director of the university said that the construction of the university could be completed within a year whenever the higher education ministry sent them the necessary funds.

Meanwhile officials of the ministry of higher education ministry say that money for resumption of the construction will be made available after checking and evaluation of the construction already completed so far.

Mukhlis said $40 million was needed for the construction of the university in a 50 acre area. He said at present students had to study in different faculties in rented locations many of then hundreds and thousands of meters apart. He said the finished campus would have 10 faculties, central library, mosque, gymnasium, two hostels for the students and a central laboratory.

The foundation of the new campus was laid two year ago after the then interim government passed a decree in the cabinet.

Meanwhile, Professor Masood, director of planning in the ministry of higher education told Pajhwok Afghan News that a delegation of engineers had been sent from the ministry of urban development for checking the ongoing construction and attempts were being made to restart the construction soon.

He added, "The ministry of higher education has not stopped the construction of Heart University and we will try to give part of the loan from World Bank. The World Bank loan is $40 million and it is for six universities in Afghanistan including Herat University and we will give part of this fund so that the construction of the university can start."

He added that they have not yet got this money but they will try to start the construction work of university with the ministry's own budget.

Students of the university are angry about the halt to the construction of the university. Mansura who is 22 years old and a third year student of law faculty claimed" International aid is used like water in Kabul and important projects like Herat University are left incomplete."

Malalai a fourth year student of journalism said," If Ismail Khan was here the construction of the university would have been completed."

EU snub draws Pakistani protest – BBC 4/21/05

Islamabad has lodged a strong protest after the European Parliament refused to meet a hardline Islamist included in a Pakistani Senate delegation. The foreign ministry in Islamabad summoned the EU and Belgian ambassadors to deliver the protest.

The EU parliament had said it would not meet an individual who did not meet its "ideals of democracy and equality". The senator, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, also says he was held for questioning for three hours at Brussels airport. Mr ul-Haq also heads a seminary in Pakistan that has been called the "University of Jihad".

Pakistan's minister of state for foreign affairs, Khusro Bakhtiyar, told the country's lower house of parliament of the protest. The house then unanimously passed a resolution condemning the "undiplomatic treatment" afforded the eight-strong Senate delegation by the European Parliament.

Opposition religious party leaders said the EU's attitude showed that Pakistan's foreign policy was a failure. Mr ul-Haq told the Associated Press he was detained on arrival at Brussels airport on Wednesday.

"I was told by the authorities that I could not go along with other members and I would have to stay for some discussions at the airport. "They told me that they had received instruction from their interior minister that I should not be allowed in."

Mr ul-Haq said he was allowed to rejoin his party after three hours. The EU said it would receive the Senate delegation without Mr ul-Haq, but the delegation declined. It is now in Germany.

British Labour MEP, Neena Gill, leader of the EU parliament's South Asia inter-parliamentary committee, said on Wednesday: "While we have members who represent all shades of the political spectrum, we are all working within the framework of a fully functioning democracy. "We cannot condone therefore individuals who place themselves outside these parameters, for they represent everything we stand against."

Mr ul-Haq is part of the hardline Islamist alliance that forms a strong bloc in Pakistan's parliament. The BBC's Haroon Rashid visited his seminary in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in 2003.

Our correspondent witnessed the graduation of 600 students pledged to fighting a jihad, or holy war, against enemies of their religion. The convocation was full of slogans in support of Afghanistan's ousted Taleban regime, al-Qaeda's leader Osama Bin Laden and jihad, he reported. Mr ul-Haq's advice for the Pakistani and Afghan students was to wage holy war until the "evil force" is defeated.

Afghan heart surgery boy ill again: report – CBC

HAMILTON, ONT. – An Afghan boy who came to Canada for emergency heart surgery last year is ill again and his family can't afford treatment, according to a report.

Djamshid Popal has lost weight, and can't walk far or breathe properly, Ontario filmmaker Narges Osman told the Hamilton Spectator. Osman had travelled to Afghanistan to make a documentary about the 10-year-old boy, who came to Canada last July for surgery to replace two of his heart valves and repair a third. A Canadian military doctor had discovered Djamshid, who once had rheumatic fever, in his mud hut village.

Popal arrived in Ottawa, but was eventually sent to Toronto because his condition was far more complicated than expected.

After the successful surgery, Djamshid returned to his village outside of Kabul in November. But he has now run out of medication and his family doesn't have enough money to buy more, said Osman.

The Guelph-based filmmaker said Djamshid needs medical treatment in Pakistan, but can't afford to go. Adding to their woes, no one in the family can find work and must depend on selling eggs and milk to survive.

Djamshid and his father left Canada in the midst of a dispute over $15,000 raised by the Muslim Association of Hamilton. The money was left over from $46,000 raised to pay for the child's medical expenses.

Djamshid's father, Shafiullah, wanted to take the money back to Afghanistan, while members of the association decided to donate the money to Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

Afghan teenager wins memoir contest - (AP) 22 April 2005 Khaleej Times

NEW YORK - An Afghan girl whose father and two sisters were killed in a 1998 bombing attack in Kabul will have her memoir published after winning a contest co-sponsored by “Good Morning America” and Simon & Schuster.

Farah Ahmedi’s “The Story of My Life” was released Friday with a first printing of more than 175,000 copies. Ahmedi, whose victory was announced on “Good Morning America,” was to appear Friday night on ABC-TV’s “20-20” and then go on a 10-city tour.

Now 17 and a resident of Carol Streams, Illinois, Ahmedi will also receive $10,000 (Ð7,658). She and her mother fled Afghanistan for Pakistan, where they lived in dire conditions. They were admitted to the United States in 2002.

The contest was launched last fall on “Good Morning America,” with contestants asked to submit 600-word essays about their lives. A panel of judges that included authors Mary Karr and Mary Higgins Clark narrowed nearly 6,000 submissions down to three finalists, “based on quality and persuasiveness of the entrant’s story and overall potential of this life story for both on-air and book appeal.”

The finalists’ stories were aired last month on “Good Morning America,” with the winner decided by viewer e-mails.

Ahmedi’s book is 250 pages long and was written by Tamim Ansary, author of “West of Kabul, East of New York.” Manuscripts for the other finalists, Betty Ferguson and Mercedes Florencia Brudnicki, also were prepared, but no decision has been made on whether they will be published.

Ferguson is a resident of Erie, Pennsylvania, who came to forgive the killer of her daughter. Brudnicki, from Roselle Park, New Jersey, has a brother who was trying to get out of Cuba.

Afghan officers complete counterintelligence course

By U.S. Army Master Sgt. D. Keith Johnson - Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan Public Affairs

KABUL, Afghanistan – Officers assigned to the Afghan National Army’s new Counterintelligence Directorate have completed a six-month course in the fundamentals of counterintelligence operations for their country’s new army.

The training, planned and conducted by the Office of Military Cooperation-Afghanistan, started with the basics. According to U.S. Army Capt. Jay Iannacito, lead mentor to the ANA’s CI directorate, the OMC-A trainers “had to come up with some fundamentals” since a few of the basics that would be considered intuitive for U.S. troops, such as security-classification levels, were initially lacking.

Given that the officers of the CI directorate will quickly require appropriate clearance levels to gain access to classified information, the instruction initially focused on personnel security and security-classification levels for information and documents.

The CI directorate, led by Col. Abdul Ghuyar, has four sub-directorates: Special Operations, CI Analysis, Personnel Security and Foreign Disclosure.

Ghuyar was pleased with the results of the course, calling it “very positive training. It really helped our officers upgrade their professionalism in the intelligence field. It has been very helpful to them.”

The classes expanded as the training progressed and the students showed an increased understanding of the course material. Starting with a single two-hour session per week, it soon increased to two three-hour sessions.

While counterintelligence and personnel security may sound exciting and bring to mind images of James Bond movies, according to Iannacito their foundation begins with the simple task of learning to conduct intelligence interviews.

Interview techniques integrated into the training included how to conduct walk-in interviews, source interviews, and subject interviews.

“It’s a little bit different on a background investigation where someone has committed a national security crime,” explained Iannacito, “than it is for a background investigation when you’re just trying to find out if someone is trustworthy and reliable.”

The ANA’s CI directorate is similar in structure to the U.S. Army’s model, but there are a few major differences. While most of the sub-directorates within ANA CI typically fall under CI in the U.S. Army, some do not.

That was a challenge, according to Iannacito. “Foreign disclosure and leadership protection are not part of CI in the U.S. Army,” he said. “So we had to go to outside sources to get the support we were lacking in those areas.”

U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Tuan Nguyen, the foreign disclosure officer for Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, assisted in that part of the training. Presenting a class on cover sheets and document marking, Nguyen’s instruction prepared the officers to work with classified documents and to know what cover sheets are required.

The training was as rewarding for Iannacito as it was for the ANA officers. “What was fantastic about working with the ANA officers is that the ‘light bulb’ would come on every day,” said Iannacito. “I would explain something and they would get it and put it in place.”

More important to Ghuyar was what the knowledge meant to the future security of Afghanistan.

”When the professionalism of our officers is increased, they can fulfill the missions that are given to them,” said Ghuyar. “The lessons they have learned in this training will help our officers to get information about Al Qaeda and use that information for the destruction of those elements.”

US detained innocent German – Al Jazeera

A German citizen suspected of being a "terrorist" has been whisked by the CIA out of Macedonia in 2003 and imprisoned in Afghanistan for six months even though half way through his detention it became clear he was innocent, NBC News has said.

Khalid al-Masri was held in secret at an Afghani prison nicknamed the "Salt Pit" for three months while Central Intelligence Agency agents considered what to do with him until Condoleezza Rice, who was then National Security Adviser to President George Bush, ordered him set free.

Al-Masri's case highlights the highly controversial practice of so-called "rendition" used by US officials to capture suspected "terrorists" and jail them in countries where their treatment is unconstrained by US laws.

NBC News said on Thursday night that Macedonian authorities first detained al-Masri in late December 2002, because his name matched someone who had trained in an al-Qaida camp and he had a fake passport.

The Macedonians contacted the CIA and al-Masri said he was kidnapped and flow by US officials to Afghanistan where he was kept in harsh conditions until his release in late May 2004.

The report said CIA officials in Kabul in February suspected

al-Masri was the wrong man, and that in March the CIA determined that his passport was not fake and he was an innocent person.

In April, sources told NBC, then CIA Director George Tenet was briefed of al-Masri's situation and said he should be released from prison. However, it took another month and two direct orders, two weeks apart, from Rice before al-Masri was finally set free in late May.

"It's very deeply troublesome," CIA general counsel Jeffrey Smith told NBC News when he was told al-Masri's story. He said the German should not have been kept in jail when it became clear he was innocent. "It's wrong morally, it's wrong legally, and it violates the basic principles of the United States," the CIA official added.

Controversial textbook topics cleared by U. Nebraska - Daily Nebraskan

04/22/2005 By Jenna Johnson
LINCOLN, Neb. - Amid the pages of Afghan textbooks are drawings of tanks and machine guns. The long twirls and quick dots of the Dari and Pashto languages translate into definitions of jihad and anti-Soviet sentiment.

Turn to the back cover of one of several million of these books, published in the late 1980s, and see a familiar logo -- that of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Paul Olson, a Nebraskans for Peace member and University of Nebraska-Lincoln English professor, uses the words "propaganda," "covert" "operations," "terrorism" and "violence-and-jihad-promoting" when describing these textbooks.

At the University of Nebraska Board of Regents' meeting on Friday, Olson said these textbooks were used to educate grade-school children and UNO's involvement indicates a lack of ethics. "We provided the violence-laden propaganda to the Taliban-era Afghan children," Olson said. "The 9/11 terrorists emerged from this context."

Nebraskans for Peace, a statewide peace group, has asked the board to conduct an investigation of these textbooks, develop a university-wide ethics policy and strengthen existing policies on the matter.

Regent Howard Hawks of Omaha, chairman of the board, said the center followed university policy at the time, and there is no need to change those policies now.

Thomas Gouttierre has been the director of the UNO Center for Afghan Studies since 1974 and said historical context has to be taken into consideration when looking at these textbooks. "While their intentions may be good," he said in a phone interview, "their interpretation of history is out of context."

Since 1974, the center has received three contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help develop education in Afghanistan. The most controversial books were produced at UNO between 1986 and 1989, using USAID's funds and rules -- which said all content of the textbooks was left up to the Afghans.

"We were told explicitly that we were not to have any input into the content," he said, adding that the center has never denied that several of these books were militantly anti-Soviet. But those books were only used in adult education, he said.

The majority of the textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Gouttierre said.

When Afghanistan was occupied in the late 1980s, seven million people were forced out of the country and one million were killed -- leading to a countrywide fear of the Soviets that permeated into the textbook writings, Gouttierre said.

"I think it's important to understand why the Afghans might have felt that way," he said. "They were concerned they would never have their country back."

And the "jihad" the textbooks allude to is much different than the jihad the Western world came to know following 9/11, he said. Back then jihad was known for more positive connotations, such as the quest to be a good Muslim.

Hawks said in a letter to Nebraskans for Peace that the textbooks the group is referring to were not published in Nebraska -- the final books were published in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Later, those same books were defaced by the Taliban and redistributed to Afghan schools, he said.

Although more than 50 UNL and UNO faculty and staff worked as consultants on these book-publishing projects, Hawks said the books were the creation of the Afghans and guided by the rules of the USAID.
"Just as school boards in America have control over the content of curriculum, so too did the Afghan Ministry of Education have control over its curriculum and textbooks," Hawks wrote. "The presumption that UNO through its actions could dictate Afghan policy is flawed."

Any qualms about the guidelines for the books' content should be directed to the USAID, not UNO, Hawks said.

Peggy O'Ban, USAID senior public affairs adviser, said the official in charge of the textbook projects was out of the office Tuesday. O'Ban said the controversy over the books was an old issue, and she was surprised it was being brought up yet again.

In 2002, the center signed another contract with USAID and produced 15 million textbooks for the reopening of Afghan schools, Hawks said. All of the books produced by UNO since 1989 have been revised by the Afghan Ministry of Education and approved by USAID, United Nations Children's Fund, Save the Children, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and similar agencies, he said.
Nebraskans for Peace President Mark Vasina could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon. But a letter published in the group's April newsletter said he was not satisfied with Hawks' response and will continue to press for a university policy change.

"Such a policy should ... prohibit university involvement in militant, religious and gender-based propaganda at home or abroad -- whether targeted at children or adults," he wrote.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]