Afghan National Army soldiers parade during the ceremony to mark the 86th anniversary of Afghan Independence Day at the Kabul stadium, Afghanistan on Friday Aug. 19, 2005. Thousands Afghans gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the independence day that marks its liberation from Britain in 1919 after The Third Anglo-Afghan War. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Karzai calls on Afghans to vote for honest candidates

KABUL, Aug 19 (AFP) - Afghan president Hamid Karzai urged his countrymen on Friday to vote for candidates who were honest and would uphold the law in the war-torn country's parliamentary elections next month.

Speaking to thousands of citizens and officials at a ceremony marking independence from Britain in 1919, Karzai said: "I want my countrymen and women to vote for those who are good Muslims and lovers of Afghanistan."

"The people should vote for those who are the most honest and want the rule of law," he said. He also called on candidates to "not forget their responsibility before God and history".

Afghanistan will hold parliamentary and provincial council elections on September 18 in the face of rising violence by Taliban-led militants and their Al-Qaeda allies.

A month of official campaigning began on Wednesday. The new US ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, on Thursday said the Taliban had "no chance" of disrupting the polls.

INTERVIEW - Taliban will not stop Afghanistan poll – FM - August 18, 2005

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A violently resurgent Taliban will not hamper Afghanistan's historic elections next month and local enthusiasm will ensure the polls are a success, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said on Thursday.

Abdullah said the environment in most of Afghanistan would be conducive to free and fair elections on Sept. 18 despite increased attacks by the Taliban, who were ousted by U.S.-led forces for hiding leaders of terrorist network al Qaeda.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday that Afghanistan was facing a worrying resurgence of violence, in some areas the worst since the overthrow of the Taliban, despite the presence of 8,000 NATO peacekeepers and 18,000 U.S. troops.

"But it will not hamper or prevent us from moving ahead to parliamentary elections and I think that despite all the difficulties the people will contribute to the success of the elections," Abdullah told Reuters during a visit to Australia.

Annan said there were troubling indications extremist groups were reorganising in Afghanistan, with the level of insecurity worst in the south of the country and parts of the east.

Although the main target for the Taliban remains the U.S.-led forces, the hardline Islamist group has already murdered several election candidates and poll workers.

Abdullah acknowledged that the Taliban, the rampant drug trade and persistent corruption were long-term challenges for Afghanistan, but that the country was committed to overcoming them with the help of the international community. Around 11 million of Afghanistan's estimated 25 million people have registered to vote.

Abdullah said since U.S.-led forces entered Afghanistan after the deadly Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which were blamed on al Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, enormous progress had been made in weakening the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"Four years ago 40 percent of the country was under the Taliban," said Abdullah in Canberra where he met Prime Minister John Howard ahead of a redeployment of 190 Australian special forces to Afghanistan next month.

"Today it's in tiny areas where they have managed to create security problems, but it is not under their control, they come and go, they hit and run. Four years ago al Qaeda had established its world-wide capital in our country, that's not there anymore." Al Qaeda was a "global phenomenon and menace", Abdullah said, adding that he does not believe bin Laden remains in Afghanistan.

But he said foreign troops would need to remain in Afghanistan for a few more years to come until the country had its own security forces and could stand on its own two feet.

"As we move in the process of stabilisation of the country and reconstruction of Afghanistan and the democratic process the environment will become less and less conducive to allow those terrorists, al Qaeda, taking advantage of it," Abdullah said.

Afghanistan is the world's largest opium producer, supplying nearly 87 percent of the world's supply, according to the United Nations. The drug trade accounts for 60 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product, hampering legitimate economic growth.

With the Afghan elections just weeks away, the United Nations said some $31 million is needed to avoid any slippage in the technical preparations for the elections. Australia pledged A$7 million ($5.3 million) on Thursday for the polls.

Envoy Predicts Tough Times in Afghanistan - By DANIEL COONEY AP

KABUL, Afghanistan - A reinvigorated insurgency killed two U.S. soldiers Thursday when a roadside bomb hit a military convoy protecting road workers, and the new American ambassador warned that violence by Afghan rebels would not end soon.

But the envoy, Ronald Neumann, played down fears the Taliban-led militants could prevent next month's legislative elections. "When millions of people want to go vote, they will go vote," he said at his first news conference after arriving in Kabul.

A surge of violence since winter has killed about 1,000 people — 59 American soldiers among them. Militants have stepped up assaults in the south and east trying to sabotage the U.S.-backed recovery, while U.S. and Afghan troops answer with their own offensives.

On Thursday, a homemade bomb hit a convoy of U.S. troops supporting crews improving a road from the main southern city of Kandahar to outlying mountains. Two soldiers in an armored vehicle were killed and two were wounded, the military said in a statement.

The recent loss of life pales next to the casualties suffered in Iraq but it has dampened some of the optimism that prevailed after Afghanistan' inaugural presidential election passed off peacefully last fall and insurgent attacks dropped off during the winter.

"There is certainly more violence and there are violent elements trying to come back," Neumann said. "I think this is a situation that will probably be difficult for some time."

But he said there are enough troops — 21,000 U.S.-led coalition soldiers and a separate 10,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force — as well as Afghanistan's new police and army to safeguard the polls.

"There are people who will try to kill candidates and who will try to stop the election," Neumann said. "They will fail. They have absolutely no chance of stopping this election."

The diplomat, who previously worked in Baghdad, drew a comparison to the run-up to the legislative elections in Iraq on Jan. 30, saying the situation there was "10 times more violent," but still the elections went ahead.

"What you have here is already so much better," Neumann said. His comments came a day after the start of the official one-month campaigning period for the Sept. 18 elections.

The surge of violence and militant threats to kill candidates and voters have discouraged many political hopefuls from stumping for the election that is the next important step toward democracy since the hard-line Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led offensive.

Despite their worries about the bloodshed, officials are upbeat that there won't be any major disruptions.

A "majority of the candidates will move forward with their candidatures, and the environment in most parts of the country will be conducive to free and fair elections," Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah told reporters on an official visit to Australia. Nevertheless, he said, the elections "will not be without any challenge for us."

Part of the effort to safeguard the vote has been an aggressive campaign by Afghan and coalition forces to go after militants in the south and east.

In their latest attack, American and Afghan troops, backed by U.S. warplanes, raided a suspected Taliban camp in Kandahar province's Khakrez district, killing five militants, said the commander of the Afghan National Army, Gen. Muslim Amid.

Preparations to protect the polls also have caused fatalities for NATO's force. Two helicopters crashed in a western desert Tuesday while training to provide security for the vote, killing 17 Spanish soldiers in the deadliest blow suffered by the NATO force in Afghanistan.

Their bodies were flown home Thursday on a C-130 transport plane after an emotional ceremony at the airport in the western city of Herat. The crash was believed to have been an accident.

Amnesty for Taliban fighters fails to remove sting from Afghan insurgency - by Rachel Morarjee

NAKA DISTRICT, Afghanistan (AFP – Aug. 19) - With a black and silver turban and an assault rifle over one shoulder, former Taliban commander turned Afghan police chief Jon Baz should be a poster boy for Afghanistan's amnesty offer to former militants. He is not.

The former mid-ranking Taliban commander surrendered as part of an Afghan government offer to the estimated 2,000 Taliban rank-and-file fighters who are still conducting a guerrilla campaign against US-led coalition and Afghan government forces.

One month before landmark parliamentary elections on September 18, the amnesty offer has attracted around 200 fighters including Baz. But it has failed to remove the sting from a mounting insurgency.

In return for promising to give up violence and pledging support to the government of President Hamid Karzai, they are granted an amnesty. Officials are trying to find government jobs for the best qualified of the former militants.

"The general plan is... the ones who want to serve the national interests of the country be offered a job," said Sayed Sharif Yosofi, spokesman for the commission heading the amnesty program.

Naka district where Baz is police chief lies 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the rugged and remote Afghan-Pakistan border in southeastern Paktika province, which has long been a haven for Taliban fighters.

The district has been the scene of frequent bomb attacks on US and Afghan government troop convoys in recent months, raising questions among US forces about which side Baz is actually backing -- the government or the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban whose regime the US helped to overthrow almost four years ago.

Naka's district headquarters are filthy and chaotic, and the perilous security situation has stalled reconstruction in the area. "Even if he was pure of heart and wanted to be a good police chief he would be under a lot of pressure because enemy commanders are still in the area," said US Army Captain Joseph Geraci, of 1-508 Battalion, 173rd Airborne. He recently lead a 55-man Afghan-US patrol from their base in the town of Urgun out to Naka.

Most aid agencies no longer venture down to southeastern Paktika province and US troops who have made headway building schools, roads and clinics in inland parts of the province can't carry out development work in Naka because of the security situation.

Baz is adamant that poor security in his district is not his fault. "I've handed in rockets and weapons caches. It's not true that I am working with the Taliban anymore. Anyone who says that is my enemy and I have a lot of enemies," he tells Geraci during a meeting.

By contrast, in neighbouring Zuruk district just 30 minutes' drive away, US troops have funded the construction of a girls' school and say their cordial ties with local leaders have enabled them to do reconstruction work.

More than 900 people have been killed across the country since the start of the year, most of them militants in southern and eastern Afghanistan, compared with 850 for the whole of 2004.

And with more than 40 US soldiers killed in action, this has been the worst year for US troops in Afghanistan since 2001. Six of the US deaths have come in Paktika province of which Naka is a part.

Taliban loyalists and their Al-Qaeda allies have no hope of toppling the government and little chance of derailing the country's first parliamentary polls in nearly 30 years, but their presence remains an irritant to the US-led coalition force of about 20,000 troops.

Frequent hit-and-run attacks or homemade bombs can stall reconstruction in the worst-hit areas which are badly in need of development after 23 years of war. US and Afghan officials say Taliban surrenders reflect how tired the commanders are of fighting, and the futility of their cause.

But once the former fighters have surrendered, finding them an honest living can be a challenge. After years of battling the US and flegling Afghan authorities, many former Taliban have few other skills. Some maintain close links with militant commanders in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Making a living is difficult in Paktika, a poor province without even the opium crops which hold up 60 percent of the Afghan economy.

Mohammed Akbar, another mid-ranking commander from Paktika, surrendered in mid-June along with 16 of his men. He told AFP that he laid down his gun because he no longer agreed with the Taliban cause.

"I came back from Pakistan because people in Pakistan had commanded me to kill school teachers and parliamentary candidates and burn schools. I did not believe in this. I thought it was wrong because I had wanted to make jihad against the Americans," he told AFP.

But Akbar has few skills, and instead of wanting to kill Americans has now turned to them for help. "I offered to come and help the Americans but I need support. I don't have anything here. I don't have much money so I need them to pay me," Akbar said at the US base in Orgun.

A new Taliban has re-emerged in Afghanistan - By Jonathan S. Landay - Knight Ridder Newspapers

KABUL, Afghanistan - Nearly four years after a U.S.-led military intervention toppled them from power, the Taliban has re-emerged as a potent threat to stability in Afghanistan.

Though it's a far cry from the mass movement that overran most of the country in the 1990s, today's Taliban is fighting a guerrilla war with new weapons, including portable anti-aircraft missiles, and equipment bought with cash sent through Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, according to Afghan and Western officials. While it was in power, the Taliban provided safe haven to bin Laden and al-Qaida.

The money is coming from "rogue elements and factional elements living in the Middle East," Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak asserted in an interview with Knight Ridder.

"Al-Qaida is channeling money and equipment," said Lt. George Hughbanks, a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Zabul province, one of the worst hit by the Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban is now a disparate assemblage of radical groups estimated to number several thousand, far fewer than when it was in power before November 2001. The fighters operate in small cells that occasionally come together for specific missions. They're unable to hold territory or defeat coalition troops.

They're linked by a loose command structure and an aim of driving out U.S.-led coalition and NATO troops, toppling U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai and reimposing hard-line Islamic rule on Afghanistan, according to Afghan and Western officials and experts.

The Taliban insurgents have adopted some of the terrorist tactics that their Iraqi counterparts have used to stoke popular anger at the Iraqi government and the U.S. military. They've stalled reconstruction and fomented sectarian tensions in a country that remains mired in poverty and corruption, illegal drugs and ethnic and political hatred.

Their tactics include attacks with homemade explosives, and beheadings, assassinations and kidnappings targeting public officials and others who cooperate in international democracy-building efforts and reconstruction.

The violence continued Thursday. A homemade bomb planted by the Taliban killed two U.S. soldiers near the southern city of Kandahar, bringing to at least 44 the number killed in hostile actions in the past six months.

The new American ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald E. Neumann, said Thursday that the Taliban had "absolutely no chance" of derailing Sept. 18's parliamentary and provincial council polls because security would be too tight.

The Taliban's new tactics, however, suggest to some experts that the surge in violence that began five months ago is more than an effort to impede the elections. These experts fear that the Taliban's resurgence may be part of an al-Qaida strategy aimed at keeping the U.S. military stressed and bleeding not only in Iraq, but also in Afghanistan.

"I think they (al-Qaida) are opening a second front," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst who's now at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "I don't think the elections are really the focus."

"These are people who see this in broader terms," he said. A Western diplomat in Kabul agreed, saying Taliban propaganda links the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"They themselves will often make the linkage between Afghanistan and Iraq and, in a sense, putting it out there in terms of a whole," he said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

U.S. officials in Washington said they had no proof of such an al-Qaida-coordinated strategy. But an American defense official said he couldn't exclude it, and that he and other U.S. officials were concerned about the lessons the Taliban was drawing from Iraq.

"It would be extremely naive of us not to believe that the enemy is a thinking, learning, adapting enemy," said the American defense official, who requested anonymity because the issue is an intelligence matter. "There is certainly learning that is going on and we have to remind ourselves of not falling into the trap of not understanding it."

"It's potentially much larger than Iraq and Afghanistan," he added. What some of the experts now dub the "neo-Taliban" is said to comprise four components:

- Most of the original top leaders who were never captured, including Mullah Omar, who founded the movement among members of Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group. Other senior leaders include Mullah Dadullah, the former Taliban intelligence chief; Maulavi Obaidullah, the former defense minister; and Jalalludin Haqqani, a prominent commander of the struggle to drive Soviet troops out of the country in the 1980s and former Taliban minister of tribal affairs. Their fighters are said to include loyalists from the original movement and newly indoctrinated Afghan students from radical Islamic schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Great numbers of Muslims support us in spite of (President) Bush's wish," Dadullah asserted in an interview July 20 with Al-Jazeera. "We have continued to receive support from our Muslim brothers across the globe." "Cooperation between us and al-Qaida is very strong," he said.

- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hizb-e-Islami party, the main recipients of U.S.- funded weapons that Pakistan funneled to the mujahedeen groups that fought the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Hekmatyar, a fervent Islamist, was prime minister in the government of the mujahedeen parties that took power in 1992 and then began fighting among themselves. He fled to Iran after the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Returning after it fell, he called on his former foes to join him in battling the U.S.-led coalition and Karzai.

- Pakistani Islamic extremists, foreign jihadis and al-Qaida fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and Arab countries whom sympathetic Pashtun tribes in Pakistan's tribal belt sheltered after the U.S.-led intervention.

- Afghan drug merchants, lumber and gem smugglers, and criminal gangs who cover their activities by portraying themselves as defending Afghanistan from non-Muslims.

The Taliban seized power in the 1990s after decades of civil war and imposed an Islamist regime. Many of its followers died in the U.S.-led intervention, and others, including several senior leaders, switched sides under a government amnesty program.

Instead of collapsing, however, the movement transformed itself. When the snows melted this past spring, the Taliban surprised Afghan and U.S. commanders with its renewed insurgency.

"We were all under the assumption that things in the country were under control," Defense Minister Wardak said.

Afghan and Western officials alleged that the escalating insurgency is being aided by Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

Islamabad, they charged, seeks a weak government in Kabul that it can influence. It also wants to keep tensions boiling in Pashtun-dominated areas on the frontier to block a settlement of a decades-old border dispute that the new Afghan Parliament is expected to try to end, they said.

"Pakistan is ... fanning the flames," charged Latfullah Maashal, the chief spokesman of the Afghan Interior Ministry. "The Pakistanis ... do not want to see a strong, peaceful and prosperous country (Afghanistan)."

The Taliban is being allowed to maintain arms depots, training camps and sanctuaries in the lawless tribal belt on Pakistan's side of the frontier, he said.

Islamabad denies the charge, saying it stopped supporting the Taliban after al-Qaida's Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. In the Al-Jazeera interview, Dadullah denied receiving Pakistani help.

The group emerged from Afghanistan's southeastern Pashtun heartland, bordering Pakistan, as a ragtag Islamic militia in 1994. With support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, it became a mass movement of Islamic zealots who took on the feuding anti-Soviet mujahedeen groups that were running the government.

The militants overran most of the country by 1998, at first welcomed for imposing order after years of chaos and bloodshed. But they became despised for their stern brand of Islam, which banned music and dancing, required men to grow untrimmed beards and prohibited women from working. They hosted Osama bin Laden until they were driven from power by a U.S.-led coalition in November 2001. Since then, the Taliban leaders have been fugitives with prices on their heads, and remain hated in much of Afghanistan.

Terrorism threat to Central Asia comes from Afghanistan: CIS

ALMA-ATA, Aug.17 (Xinhua)-- The situation in Afghanistan is far from stable and the biggest terrorist threat to Central Asian countries comes mainly from that country, a spokesman for the secretariat of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) said on Wednesday.

Gen. Eduard Melnikov made the remarks at a meeting of leaders of anti-terror forces of the CIS countries in Kazakhstan. Despite the stern measures by the international anti-terror coalition led by the United States, remnants of the al-Qaida and Taliban are still active in Afghanistan, he said.

What's more, drug trafficking is on the rise in Afghanistan and conflicts between tribes still exist and the country remains on the verge of a civil war. All these pose a huge threat to the security situation in Central Asia, said Melnikov.

The al-Qaida decided to regroup as early as 2002 and began infiltrating into the Central Asian countries. Evidence showed that the Islamic Liberation Party, a terrorist group which has close links with the al-Qaida, was involved in the riots that erupted in the Uzbek city of Andijan in May.

On May 13, riots plunged Andizhan, Uzbekistan's fourth largest city, into chaos after thousands of armed protesters set free prisoners and clashed with security forces.

The three-day meeting of leaders of the anti-terror forces of the CIS countries is being held in the port city of of Ala-too in west Kazakhstan. During the meeting, security services of Kazakhstan, Russia andUkraine will hold a joint anti-terror drill. Enditem

A nation that is even worse than postwar Iraq - Foreign Editor's Briefing - By Bronwen Maddox / The Times (UK) / August 18, 2005

FOR all Iraq’s bloody troubles, it is surely still better off than Afghanistan.

The partial peace in Afghanistan for three years is not just a figment of US and British spin, although there has been no shortage of that. It is not an illusion. It does represent success. But its scope is limited. Afghanistan is in danger of going backwards towards the lawlessness of the past, when warlords ruled over a jumble of violent fiefdoms that could barely be called a single country.

First, the success. Hamid Karzai is still President, and still in control of a stable government that is broadly representative of Afghanistan’s people. Next month’s elections for parliament and provincial councils will be a crucial next step.

Come to that, it is some achievement that he is still alive. There is a cost in the suffocating degree of security. Just to travel around Kabul is a formidable exercise. He is isolated. But he is still there, and that is more than many predicted.

The gibes that he is no more than “Mayor of Kabul” are unfair. He has had enough command outside the capital to dislodge key warlords, neutering them by giving them bureaucratic jobs, and to persuade provincial governors to pay him some revenue by way of tax. Much of the foreign aid that was promised has been delivered — and spent, say British officials. Many foreign troops in the country are organised into “provincial reconstruction teams” — helping local government rather than tied down in keeping the peace.

These are huge steps. They are signs that Afghanistan might be capable of functioning like a normal country. So the pleasure and relief that the US and Britain have expressed at Afghanistan’s progress since the war — and at its peacefulness compared with Iraq — are not fraudulent. But the roots are shallow. Warlords are still powerful, particularly in the southeast. If they grab many seats in the elections, it will be unfortunate.

The resurgence of the Taleban in the southeast is not a passing phenomenon which will trouble a few US special forces teams and then dissolve. Its strength reflects sustained help from Pakistan’s tribal areas, in money and men. Rather than asking when Osama bin Laden will be caught, it seems better to ask why he should ever be caught, given the depth of support for his Taleban hosts which is now apparent. The drugs trade on its own is one of the worst problems, delivering a powerful current of cash to Karzai’s enemies. As recently as June British officials said they hoped that next year would show a drop in the opium crop. No longer, it seems.

You can still sketch out the distant hope for Afghanistan that it becomes a hub of trade in Central Asia. But it lacks the educated workforce and the oil which Iraq, for all its troubles, does have, while the Tajik north and the Pashtun south sometimes seem to match Iraq’s factions in the depth of their rivalry. It is more peaceful than Iraq, for now, but that is not enough.

Bodies of 17 Spaniards arrive home from Afghanistan - August 19

MADRID (Reuters) - Mourning relatives were joined by Spain's King, Crown Prince and prime minister on Thursday for the arrival of the bodies of 17 Spanish peacekeepers killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan this week.

The helicopter crashed on Tuesday during an exercise near Herat city in the west of the country.

Spanish government officials said on Wednesday it was suspected to have been an accident, although military officials declined to comment on their investigation of the crash.

Relatives of the victims, flown in from around Spain, sobbed as the coffins were unloaded from the plane and King Juan Carlos and Crown Prince Felipe looked on as military band played funereal music. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Defence Minister Jose Bono also attended the ceremony in a show of support for the armed forces.

The Spanish troops with the NATO-led peacekeeping operation were on an exercise near Herat when their helicopter went down in a flat area surrounded by mountains. Spanish troops have sealed off the crash site.

A second helicopter flying nearby spotted a column of black smoke rising from the scene and, suspecting there may have been hostile fire, made an emergency landing that slightly wounded five Spanish soldiers.

Herat is in a relatively secure part of Afghanistan. The Taliban and their Islamic allies are less active there than in eastern and southern parts of the country.

Afghanistan's NATO-led International Security Assistance Force says the crash was an accident. A Taliban commander said guerrillas had shot down the helicopter but offered no proof.

Crash bodies flown back to Spain - BBC News 18 August 2005

The bodies of 17 Spanish soldiers killed in a Puma helicopter crash in Afghanistan are on their way home. Defence Minister Jose Bono, who visited the scene of the crash, is returning with the bodies on a flight from the western city of Herat.

Investigators say strong winds probably caused the crash. Some press reports quoting a soldier on board said the helicopters had come under fire, and a Taleban commander said his men shot the helicopter down.

Five soldiers were hurt when a second Puma crashed. The troops were on a training exercise ahead of parliamentary elections in September. Prayers were said for the victims in a large tent at the airport before the coffins were carried on to a C-130 military transport aircraft.

The flight is expected to arrive at Getafe military air base, just south of Madrid at 2100 (1900 GMT). Mr Bono telephoned Spanish news agency Efe to emphasise that the bodies had been correctly identified.

The BBC's Danny Wood, in Madrid, says the government is very mindful of the scandal caused by a similar military disaster two years ago when a Russian-built YAK-42 plane crashed in Turkey, leaving 62 Spanish soldiers dead. Thirty of those bodies were misidentified.

Mr Bono said that "no hypothesis can be ruled out" to explain the Afghanistan crash, but strong winds were the "most likely" cause. A senior Afghan military official said the helicopters were not shot down.
"We suspect one of the helicopters may have accidentally hit the other while flying. The other possibility is that the choppers had technical problems," Maj Gen Shar Mohammed Karimi told the Associated Press news agency.

A top Taleban commander, Mullah Dadullah, told Reuters their fighters had shot down the helicopter but his claims could not be verified. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero sent his condolences to the families of those killed.

Spain has about 850 troops deployed in the country. The area around Herat is generally considered more stable than areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan where the Taleban are more active. There are currently more than 8,000 troops serving with Isaf, which is largely concentrated around Kabul.

A Lebanese company has said it will suspend its operations in Afghanistan in return for the release of an employee who was kidnapped on Sunday. The employee, engineer Mohammad Reza, was freed on Thursday morning in the southern province of Zabul.

The Afghan government denies that any deal was struck with the kidnappers. In a separate incident, two US soldiers were killed and two others were wounded when their vehicle was hit by a bomb in the city of Kandahar. Violence has increased in Afghanistan ahead of parliamentary elections, which are due next month.

Anwar Fahid, the owner of Sofan Industries - which sells generator and air-conditioning units - told the BBC that the decision to suspend operations had been a simple one. Mr Reza's life was worth more than his company's operations in Afghanistan, he said.

A Taleban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, also told the BBC the hostage was released after his company agreed to leave the country. But Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Jalali has said he knew of no deal.

"To my knowledge no concession has been given to the terrorists," he told a news conference. "If somebody wants to come or leave the country that is a different matter. However, as a principle the Afghan government never submits to the demands of the terrorists."

He said that the engineer was freed after Afghan security forces had seized control of the area where he was being held. Speaking to the BBC immediately after his release, Mr Reza said he felt "very healthy and very good". Mr Reza says his kidnappers had spoken to him about a deal but added that he was unable to confirm it.

"The Taleban told me this morning: 'You are free.' They took me to the main road. There I saw a police check post and went there," he said. There have been deals in the past to resolve kidnapping incidents, but rarely have the terms been so apparently clear, the BBC's Andrew North in Kabul says.

Describing his capture, Mr Reza said that his vehicle came under fire in Zabul province while on its way from Kandahar to Kabul. "Bullets were coming from every direction. The car seats were hit by bullets." He said he was then taken away by armed men. Mr Reza had earlier telephoned his family from captivity to say he was "in the hands of the mujahideen", the ministry said.

The US soldiers who were killed were the victims of an improvised explosive device, the US military said. The vehicle which was hit by the bomb was part of a convoy operating in the area in support of the Tarin Kowt road construction project, which aims to connect Tarin Kowt with Kandahar.

US ambassador Ronald Neumann said the insurgents would not be able to disrupt the elections. "There is violence and there are people who will try to kill candidates and will try to stop the elections," he admitted. "They will not stop the election. When millions of people want to vote, they will go vote," he said.

Afghanistan 'at risk of failure' - The Australian

ALMOST four years after the defeat of the Taliban, efforts to rebuild Afghanistan face a "real and worrying risk of failure", the British Government has warned.

Terrorism remains an ever-present threat and opium production is spreading, it says, while large parts of the country's infrastructure are in tatters and UN targets for improving basic services such as education and water will not be met.

The assessment, by the Department for International Development, says that unless the Afghan Government delivers improvements, the people could lose faith in their nascent democracy. The report was published shortly before the start in Kabul of the campaign for next month's national assembly and provincial council elections. A total of 5800 candidates are running for office, of whom 582 are women, and a huge security operation is planned to stop terrorists disrupting the process.

Officials hope the elections will lead to a more stable and peaceful Afghanistan, but the British report on Afghanistan says the obstacles are immense.

"The political consensus is unstable, with continued insurgency in parts of the country and terrorism an ever-present threat," it says. "Governance problems - notably high corruption, limited capacity and dysfunctional institutions - affect everything.

"The drugs trade is a major threat to the rule of law. "Afghanistan's security, reconstruction and political challenges are inextricably interlinked. The risks of failure are real and worrying."

A UN drug report in June said cultivation of the opium poppy had risen from 80,000ha to 131,000ha last year, and the British fear a bumper harvest next year. The report says: "Cultivation is moving to new provinces and without a sustained and integrated Afghan-led effort to consolidate progress, may increase further in 2006."

Britain is in charge of the international poppy eradication drive. However, one British intelligence anti-narcotics specialist said that it could take 20 years to break the back of the country's heroin business.

"If we fail to deal with the drugs challenge, it will spread terrorism and regional instability, which will undermine all the work the international community is trying to do in Afghanistan," the specialist said.
According to the report, Afghanistan "is unlikely to achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015" -- a reference to eight UN targets that include universal primary education and the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.

It says there has been "remarkable progress" since 2001, with 3.5million returned refugees, 60,000 former combatants disarmed and almost 2000 schools built or refurbished. But three out of five Afghan girls do not attend school, life expectancy is 45 and one in five children dies before five years of age.

The report adds: "Large parts of Afghanistan's infrastructure are in tatters; in rural areas it has never been developed. "The vast majority of Afghans do not have access to electricity or safe water. For some mountainous villages, the nearest road is two weeks' walk away."

Economic growth has slowed from the initial surge of 29per cent in 2002 to 16per cent in 2003 and 8 per cent last year. Britain is spending pound stg. 500million ($1.19billion) from 2002-07 on Afghanistan's development.

Policies in short supply as election campaigning begins

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) - [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
KABUL, 17 Aug 2005 (IRIN) - Standing in a printing house in a dusty Kabul street, Ghani Mohamad, a 45-year-old candidate standing in Afghanistan's first democratic parliamentary elections slated for 18 September, pondered what to put on his campaign poster that would capture the electorate's attention as campaigning began officially on Wednesday.

But like many of the 6,000 candidates eager to be elected to the lower house of parliament and provincial councils, he's scratching his head to think of an appropriate message that will win the heart and minds of voters in a country very new to elections, political parties and manifestoes.

In desperation he was forced to consult the printer for ideas: "What would be an attractive message to put on my poster?" he asked the teenage layout designer at the shop. "Why don't you say, 'I will secure Afghanistan's borders' or 'I will work for a fair and just Afghanistan'?" replied the youth.

With campaigning now officially underway, candidates from this week will now be able to access more than 70 radio and television stations to spread their messages to the nation. The media campaign will last for about a month.

"We have already put in place a mechanism to ensure equal media coverage for all the candidates," Bissmillah Bissmil, chairman of the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB) said.

According to the JEMB - a joint UN and Afghan government body -each candidate for the national legislature will be allocated a five minute spot to be broadcast twice on radio or two minutes to be broadcast twice on television.

To monitor the coverage of the electoral campaign by the mass media, electoral bodies have composed a media commission comprising five national and international members.

"The media commission will monitor fair reporting and coverage of the electoral campaign period and will deal with any complaints concerning breaches of the media code of conduct," Bissmil said.

A look at some of the candidates' election campaigns suggest many have little knowledge of what a parliament is expected to do. One candidate interviewed by IRIN confessed he had no idea what his job would be if elected and was vague about the notion of a politician as a responsible public servant.

Other candidates interviewed also appear to go no further than sloganeering, with not substantive policies to back up their campaigns. Unsurprising perhaps in a nation emerging from three decades of war and totalitarianism.

This hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of more than 400 people in Kabul who have put themselves up election. Their faces adorn thousands of poster pasted or tied on to walls, cars, sign boards, shops and road signs, brightening up the drab streets of the capital.

According to the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), busy training political parties and independent candidates in the art of electioneering, even the established political parties lack substantive policies.

"We have found in our trainings and working with independent candidates that they really lack the understanding of the duties of a member of parliament and the greater problem is they don't have an idea of what a Wolesi Jirga [lower house of parliament] is supposed to do," Peter Dimitroff, country director of NDI, said in Kabul.

"It's all very well having a slogan like 'Building a Fair and Just Afghanistan' but candidates have to take much more time to make voters understand what is going to happen at the local level if they are elected," he said.

According to the NDI, only 12 -15 percent of all candidates are affiliated with one of the 70 registered political parities, the rest are all independent candidates. Because party affiliation is not indicated on ballot papers, making an informed choice will be tough for voters, observers say.

"The candidates should think about their messages and practical policies, not just some brand announcements about freedom and democracy," said an Afghan analyst, on condition of anonymity.

"I think we as voters want candidates to address very local problems for example, get the roads of Kabul fixed, ensure security for women on the streets and other very local issues," one man on the streets of the capital said, bewildered by the sea of election posters before him.

According to the JEMB, of the 2,900 people who have already registered to run for the 249-seat parliament, nearly 350 are women. Afghan electoral law requires that at least 68 seats in the general assembly be reserved for women.

But many female candidates have suffered intimidation and physical violence, particularly in rural areas where women are often not allowed out of their homes unaccompanied.

On Wednesday, the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Kabul and international organisations involved in the poll to take special measures to protect women from attacks and intimidation by the Taliban and powerful regional warlords.

Afghan Boxer Steps Into the Political Ring - By Paul Watson, The Los Angeles Times Wed, Aug 17, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Shekeib Sattari can take a blur of heavy punches and stay on his feet, which makes him a prime candidate for Afghan politics.

Kabul's former light heavyweight champion is running as an independent in the country's first parliamentary election since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government four years ago.

Campaigning for the Sept. 18 vote officially begins today, but Sattari has been getting death threats for weeks from people who don't like political free agents.

"I am not afraid of anything now that I am in politics, just as I wasn't afraid in boxing even though I broke my nose, my teeth and my fingers," said Sattari, 28, a soft-spoken man known to his fans as Master Shekeib. The boxer is one of 5,800 candidates from 72 political parties vying for seats on provincial councils and the lower house of parliament.

The largest party is headed by Younis Qanooni, a former minister of the interior and education, who ran a distant second to President Hamid Karzai in October's presidential election.

Competition for votes is especially tough in Kabul, the capital, where Sattari is struggling for name recognition as one of 400 candidates on a seven-page ballot. Kabul will elect 33 of parliament's 249-member lower house, which is called the Wolesi Jirga, or House of the People.

Under a new electoral system, Afghan voters will each cast a single ballot in constituencies that send several candidates to parliament. Ballots will be counted for individual candidates, not according to party lists, so independents such as Sattari should have a fair chance of getting elected.

To get in shape for politics, Sattari has studied the movies of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and old clips of boxing great Muhammad Ali, who briefly got in the ring with Sattari during a 2002 visit to the small, mud-walled Kabul gym where he trains.

The two fighters exchanged boxing gloves. Sattari still takes strength from Ali's gift, and the thought that the former heavyweight champion of the world was also a political freethinker not afraid to speak his mind.

"I know a lot about Arnold Schwarzenegger," Sattari said. "I have seen a lot of his best films and his bodybuilding matches. I'm his fan. "I also know about Muhammad Ali's policies and his way in politics," he added.

One of Sattari's main political goals is to rescue Afghanistan's Olympic training program from what he and other athletes insist are crooked officials. The fighter had no political ambitions until an informal convention of trainers from various sports drafted him as its candidate last year.

"These other politicians do not support sport. They support their own pockets," said Mohammed Marouf Raghbat, the national team's chief trainer. "We need somebody to help sports in Afghanistan, and that is why we have our own candidate for parliament."

The light heavyweight, whose campaign slogan is "defend the rights of youth and athletes," is counting on his boxing fame to make him stand out from the pack, which is dominated by old-guard politicians whom many Afghans blame for the country's widespread corruption and ruin.

"I don't like dealers and those who like to line their pockets and think only about their own benefit," Sattari said. "I will be tough and honest in my politics."

Sattari retired from boxing last year after his appendix was removed. But he still helps train the Afghan national team. Sattari trains with about 50 boys and young men in the Public Health Boxing Club, a dark, cramped gym. Foreign donors, including Ali, have given money to improve training facilities for various sports, but corrupt officials have stolen most of it, Sattari said.

Sattari estimates that his campaign will cost $30,000, but so far he's only raised $10,000, most of it by trading in his car for a clunker and spending his savings. Political parties have offered him cash to join their ranks, but he insists on staying independent.

Last week, two black SUVs with no license plates stopped while two members of the national volleyball team were putting up Sattari's campaign posters. Men inside the vehicles warned them not to do it again — if they wanted to stay alive.

"I get death threats on my cellphone," he said. "They warn me to drop out of the elections. But I have decided that I will not step back. I will always step forward."

No extension in relocation of Afghan refugees from Islamabad Islamabad - Aug 18, IRNA

Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao has stressed that the date set for the relocation of Afghan refugees camps will not be extended. The Government has fixed September 15 for the evacuation of Afghan refugees camp based in slum areas of Islamabad.

During a meeting with Shura members of Afghan refugees living in camps in Islamabad, who called on him here Wednesday, the minister said earlier the deadline was extended several times at the request of the refugees.

Later, a member of the Shura Muhammad Khalil said that their hour long meeting with Mr Sherpao had no result and the minister did not agree to extend the deadline given by the government to the refugees.

He said that they informed the minister about their problems which they would face to evacuate the camps or shift to other places in such a short time but the minister said that the decision was taken at high level which could not be changed.

He pointed out that the minister told that the decision was taken due to the security reasons and said that two options were given to the refugees to return to Afghanistan either to shift to other refugee camps in Mianwali.

Kachi Abadi was established at I-9 sector in Islamabad in 1982. About thirty thousand Afghan refugees have been living at the camp in Islamabad for the last twenty three years.

The federal government also gave deadline of August 31 to the Afghan refugees to evacuate camps in Bajour and Kurram agencies. According to the UNHCR's current year survey, there are still three millions Afghan refugees living in Pakistan.

Envoy Urged Osama's Expulsion Before 9/11 - By ANNE GEARAN, AP Aug 18

WASHINGTON - A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a U.S. diplomat assured a top official of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime that international sanctions on that country would be lifted if it expelled Osama bin Laden, newly declassified documents show.

A State Department memo dated September 2000 also said the United States did not seek to topple the Taliban despite its record of human rights abuses.

The memo was among documents obtained by the National Security Archive, a private research group based at George Washington University, under a Freedom of Information Act request. The group posted the documents on its Web site Thursday.

"The ambassador added that the U.S. was not against the Taliban, per se," and "was not out to destroy the Taliban," Ambassador William B. Milam wrote in the secret cable to Washington. Milam told the Taliban official, whose name is excised from the declassified document, that bin Laden was the main impediment to better relations between the Taliban and the United States.

"If the U.S. and the Taliban could get past bin Laden, we would have a different kind of relationship," Milam said he told the official. At the time, Washington had no formal diplomatic relations with Afghanistan because concerns over human rights and other abuses by the militant Islamist Taliban regime.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration has no comment on the meeting, which took place before President Bush took office.

In his 2000 diplomatic cable, Milam told his bosses that the Taliban official had adopted a "far less obstreperous" tone than usually heard from the Taliban and suggested that the United States do some small favor for Afghanistan to show good will.

The meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, produced no promise from the Taliban to turn over bin Laden, and it is not clear from the material released Thursday what the Clinton administration did next.

Other documents released by the National Security Archive on Thursday chart several years of unsuccessful U.S. attempts to drive bin Laden out of Afghanistan.

At the time of Milam's cable, the United States knew that bin Laden was living under Taliban protection along the Afghan-Pakistani border and running his al-Qaida terror network from Afghanistan. U.S. diplomats had periodic contact with the Taliban to urge his ouster.

The United States had accused bin Laden of orchestrating two embassy bombings that killed Americans in East Africa, but neither he nor his terror network were the household names they became after the jetliner attacks on New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001.

Shortly after the attacks, U.S. forces helped the Afghan opposition Northern Alliance overthrow the Taliban government and hunt down its leaders. The Bush administration's goal was twofold: Rout bin Laden's protectors and capture bin Laden himself.

Nearly four years after the invasion, a 21,000-member U.S.-led coalition force remains to fight Taliban remnants and keep order despite the emergence of a new U.S.-allied government. Bin Laden is still presumed to be hiding in the same border region.

A surge of violence since winter has killed about 1,000 people — 59 American soldiers among them. Militants have stepped up assaults in the south and east trying to sabotage the country's U.S.-backed recovery.

Six foreign restaurants sealed in Kabul

KABUL, August 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Afghan government Thursday sealed six foreign restaurants in the central capital for alleged involvement in wine selling and other illicit practices. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, Interior Ministry's legal advisor, told Pajhwok Afghan News the ministry banned the restaurants as these were used as prostitution dens.

"After receiving solid proofs, we ordered the police to seal the restaurants," said Sabit, adding they were located in Wazir Akbar Khan, Sher Pur and Shar-i-Naw areas.

When contacted by this news agency, crime branch chief Abdul Jamil said the harsh step was taken after reports of immoral activities in the restaurants. "Drink and prostitution was common in those places," said the official.

Article 57 of the Afghan Constitutional says the state guarantees the rights and liberties of foreign citizens residing in the country provided they live within parameters of the basic law.

[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.]