News Bulletin Headlines:

• Suicide blast near US-led troops, one Afghan hurt
• Taliban issue decree urging death for Karzai
• Former Afghan PM Predicts US Withdrawal in 2006
• Al-Qaeda deputy praises Taliban gains in Afghanistan in new tape
• Taliban exploit drug trade to step up Afghan attacks
• Nine percent of Afghanistan's population grow opium
• Key Afghan role goes to Canadians
• IMF praises Afghan reconstruction
• Coke fizz back in Afghanistan
• Iran prepares to enter Afghanistan’s IT market
• ‘Taliban’ action in Miramshah: toll 21
• Mystery of Afghan governor’s killing resolved
• Aga Khan's Dealings Stir Questions of Financial Transparency

Suicide blast near US-led troops, one Afghan hurt

Kandahar (Reuters) - A suicide attacker blew up his car near a convoy of U.S.-led troops in the Afghan city of Kandahar on Sunday but no soldiers were hurt, police said. A passerby was seriously wounded, police and witnesses said.

The attack happened during the morning rush hour not far from the office of Kandahar's governor in the heart of the city. Sunday is a working day in Afghanistan. "The attack happened just after the convoy passed," Kandahar city police chief Mohammad Hakim told reporters near the scene.

"There were no casualties among the troops and only one window of a vehicle in the convoy was broken," he said. Hakim said there were no deaths in the blast, apart from the attacker. One person was wounded, he said, referring to a passerby who had a leg blown off.

U.S.-led forces were seen blocking off the site of the attack. The United States leads an international force of about 20,000 battling the Taliban and hunting militant leaders. The nationality of the troops attacked on Sunday was not immediately known but most members of the force are American.

U.S. military officials were not immediately available for comment. Kandahar was the main stronghold of the Taliban, who were forced from power in late 2001, and has been the scene of raids and several suicide attacks against U.S.-led forces recently.

Nine policemen were killed in Taliban attacks in Helmand province also in the south, on Friday. More than 1,100 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this year, including nearly 60 U.S. troops, making it the bloodiest period for them in Afghanistan since 2001.

U.S. and Afghan opposition troops forced the Taliban from power in late 2001 after they refused to give up Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States. Taliban fighters and allied militants have been waging an insurgency against the U.S.-backed government and U.S. and other foreign forces since then.

Taliban issue decree urging death for Karzai - Dec 11

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan's Taliban guerrillas have issued an Islamic decree calling for President Hamid Karzai to be killed for serving American and British "infidels."

The decree, or fatwa, came in a 12-page, Pashto-language booklet distributed in the Afghan south. It reiterated a call for jihad, or religious war, against infidels and their slaves. "It should be remembered that there is no difference between infidels and their agents and jihad against them has become incumbent," the fatwa said.

The document, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters at the weekend, was written by three Taliban Muslim scholars and approved buy a council of about 100, a Taliban spokesman said.

"Jihad against all the slaves of Americans and the British including Hamid Karzai has become incumbent and they deserve to be killed," it said. U.S. and Afghan opposition troops forced the Taliban from power in late 2001 after they refused to give up Osama bin Laden, architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Taliban fighters have been waging an insurgency against U.S.-backed Karzai's government and U.S. forces since then. More than 1,100 people have been killed in violence this year, including nearly 60 U.S. troops.

The fatwa described British and Americans as "Jewish and Christian ... infidels who cannot be friends of Muslims." It also called on Afghan Muslims "not to be misled by the infidels' sweet talk and temptation" and to join the Taliban fight to force them to leave Afghanistan.

The United States leads a force of about 20,000 battling the Taliban and hunting for militant leaders. British troops are part of a 10,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force, mostly based in central, northern and eastern areas.

Britain is set to play a leading role in an expansion of the NATO force into the more volatile south next year. Karzai, who has tried to appeal to Taliban fighters to give up their fight and rejoin society, has survived at least two attempts to kill him.

Former Afghan PM Predicts US Withdrawal in 2006 - December 12

PESHAWAR, Dec 12 Asia Pulse - Rejoicing the pullout of US forces from Khanabad airbase in Uzbekistan, former Afghan prime minister Gulbadin Hekmatyar predicted 2006 would be the year of liberation for Afghanistan.

In a 30-minute videotape, a copy of which was received by Pajhwok Afghan News in Torkham, the fugitive Hezb-i-Islami leader said the emerging situation revealed the US would quit Afghanistan next year. He recalled the Soviet troops withdrawal from the landlocked country in 1988, saying they used the same airbase while retreating from Afghanistan.

"I wish to convey the good news to my Afghan brethren that the US troops could neither crush al-Qaeda nor defeat Taliban nor other resistance forces." The shifting military scene suggested that 2006 would be the year of retreat for foreigners based in Afghanistan, he claimed.

He urged the mujahidin leaders to unite on one platform and launch a joint struggle for the establishment of a true Islamic government in their country. Like the former USSR, economic and ethnic divisions were visible in the United States, which Hekmatayar believed, would lead to the superpower's disintegration.

About a week back, Hekmatyar had rejected an offer of compromise from Afghan President Hamid Karzai while pledging to continue his struggle against foreign forces in Afghanistan. (Pajhwok Afghan News)

Al-Qaeda deputy praises Taliban gains in Afghanistan in new tape - Associated Press / December 11, 2005

CAIRO (AP) — Al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri has praised Taliban leader Mullah Omar for winning back control of large regions of Afghanistan and urged Muslims to wage holy war against the West, according to a tape that surfaced on Sunday.

The tape, which is about 48 minutes long, was believed to have been made at about the same time as the last tape attributed to al-Zawahri — a Sept. 19 video.

The latest tape, which could not be immediately authenticated, was obtained by IntelCenter, a government contractor that does support work for the U.S. intelligence community.

In it, al-Zawahri credited Mullah Omar with leading a three-year campaign "against the Crusaders and apostates in Afghanistan" and taking control of "extensive parts of eastern and western Afghanistan."

The hard-line Taliban regime was toppled by U.S.-led forces in late 2001 when it refused to turn over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and stop offering a haven to the group following the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.

The latest tape was also a rallying call to Muslims to attack Western interests. "The key to victory is in our hands, and in turn, the primary cause of defeat is in ourselves," it said.

Taliban exploit drug trade to step up Afghan attacks - Declan Walsh in Khanishin, December 12, 2005 The Guardian

Resurgent Taliban forces have forged an alliance with drug smugglers in the lawless Afghan province of Helmand, underscoring a worrying slide in security just months before thousands of British troops are due to take control in the spring.

Community elders and police officials said the Taliban has flooded remote villages with "night letters" ordering farmers to grow poppies. The notices are pinned to mosque doors or shop windows, said community leader Haji Nazaraullah. "They say 'cultivate the poppy or we will come and kill you,'" he said in Khanishin, a remote village bordering a vast desert criss-crossed with smuggling tracks. "A lot of people are very scared."

The intimidation suggests the Taliban, which had condemned opium as "unIslamic", has turned to the billion-pound drugs trade to earn money and undermine the fragile authority of President Hamid's Karzai's Kabul-based government.

Last week Nato ministers agreed to deploy an extra 6,000 soldiers to the south, allowing the US to withdraw 4,000 troops. Nato's exact mandate remains unclear - until now the forces have been purely peacekeepers - and a rise in Taliban attacks has caused jitters among UK allies.

The Dutch have demanded guarantees of US military back-up in the event of any serious attack before committing 1,000 troops to troubled Uruzgan province. In Helmand, a small British team has arrived in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, to prepare for expected deployment. Its members have already witnessed the insecurity.

British officer Major Shawn Pendry was part of a US convoy ambushed twice in an hour on November 30 in northern Helmand. The convoy returned safely. But like other British officers Maj Pendry was under orders not to discuss the mission in the increasingly unstable province.

One of the most critical decisions the UK commander will take is how to tackle the burgeoning narcotics trade. Last year Helmand grew more opium than any other province. Its deserts are the hub of a smuggling network that stretches into Pakistan and Iran. Smugglers and militants have a history of cooperation along the lawless border said Lt Col Jim Hogberg, the US commander in Helmand.

But the most powerful drug lords are widely believed to include top officials in the provincial government and senior police officers. US forces have so far avoided confrontation. "We've adopted a devil-you-know approach," said one US official. Britain must decide whether to wield a stronger hand.

Nine percent of Afghanistan's population grow opium

Kabul (AFP) - Two million people, or nearly nine percent of Afghanistan's population, are involved in the cultivation of illegal opium, according to a government and UN survey. The farmers however received less than 20 percent of the profits from the illicit crop used to make heroin, the annual survey said on Sunday. War-ravaged and destitute Afghanistan is the world's leading supplier of opium, accounting for an estimated 80 percent of the global total.

Initial results of the survey were released in August showing that the area under poppy cultivation in 2005 had dropped by 21 percent compared to 2004. Potential opium production was however estimated to fall by only 2.4 percent compared to 2004, to reach about 4,100 tons, in part because of favourable weather.

In line with the decrease in cultivation, the number of households involved in poppy cultivation fell by 13 percent to 309,000 in 2005, the UN and government office on fighting drugs said in a statement about the survey. "The total number of people involved in cultivation has been estimated at two million, or 8.7 percent of the population," they said.

Traffickers made most of the profit from the country's illicit drugs trade, amounting to about 2.14 billion dollars, while less than 20 percent (560 million dollars) went to the farmers, the survey found.

The total export value of opium in 2005 was estimated at 2.7 billion dollars, similar to last year's 2.8 billion dollars and equivalent to 52 percent of Afghanistan licit gross domestic product. Income from the crop was "vital" to the farmers, the report said. Per hectare (2.47 acres) income from opium was estimated at 5,400 dollars this year compared with about 550 dollars for wheat.

The stark difference in the income has in part been blamed for a lack of enthusiasm among farmers for a government push for them to drop opium in favour of other crops. The UN and government survey was based on satellite images and field visits, including interviews with 5,700 farmers.

Key Afghan role goes to Canadians - By Carlotta Gall The New York Times
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2005

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - F oreign soldiers in desert fatigues and helmets sealed off the main road of this southern city to inspect the site where a suicide bomber, wrapped in a blanket, had thrown himself at a convoy of military jeeps, killing himself and an Afghan civilian.

To the Afghans watching, the soldiers looked the same as the U.S. troops that have been a constant presence in Kandahar since the departure of the Taliban four years ago. But these were Canadians, whose forces have quietly begun an important shift in the international military presence in Afghanistan.

Canadian troops will take over responsibility for the turbulent southern province of Kandahar in February; by spring, British troops also will have deployed in Kandahar and the other large province in southern Afghanistan, Helmand.

The Canadian and British forces will conduct military operations as well as run the civil affairs program created by provincial reconstruction teams. More than 1,000 Dutch troops are expected to join them in the south, possibly in Uruzgan Province.

On Dec. 8, NATO foreign ministers met in Brussels and endorsed a plan for expanding the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, which operates under a peacekeeping mandate from the United Nations. The force's 10,000 troops, now operating in northern and western Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul, will grow by 6,000 and move into southern Afghanistan.

By June or July, the international force will take over from the U.S.-led Regional Command South, the military district headquartered at Kandahar Air Base and stretching over five provinces. The shift will allow some 4,000 of the 6,000 U.S. troops in the south to leave and reduce the overall U.S. presence to about 14,000 troops. The international force will then become the main military force in Afghanistan, with responsibility for three-quarters of the country.

The U.S.-led command will remain in charge of the provinces of eastern Afghanistan that border Pakistan's unruly North-West Frontier Province. But in 2007, the U.S. forces there will also move under the NATO flag, making the international force the country's sole military command.

These changes are under way even as some NATO countries have noted with concern the sharp rise in U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan this year - and new, deadly tactics by insurgents.

The new tactics include suicide bombings and the downing of helicopters - two were shot down by enemy fire earlier this month. Afghans also report a larger presence of Taliban supporters in the villages than at any time since the Taliban government was expelled.

"It's a major undertaking under NATO," said Colonel Steve Noonan, commander of the Canadian task force at Kandahar Air Base, as he prepared for the arrival of more than 2,200 Canadian soldiers in the coming months.

"ISAF has had success in the north and west, but there is a difference between the north and south," he said.

The governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khalid, observed that "the British and Canadians will come in the place of the Americans, which is very important for us." But he added, "We are very concerned and afraid that the international community will go and forget us."

IMF praises Afghan reconstruction

KABUL – Pakistan Online: Afghanistan’s efforts to revive its economy have prompted praise from the International Monetary Fund, although it warned the success could be threatened by the drugs trade, insecurity and slow reform.

In a report issued after a fact-finding mission last month, the IMF said that four years after the removal of the Taliban, Afghanistan could see gross domestic product (GDP) growth of "about 14%" between 2005 and 2006 and saluted the "commendable" economic performance of the country.

Good rainfall had seen a "rebound" in the agriculture sector, which represents a third of the economy, although this is largely in the production of illegal opium poppies used to make heroin.

The reconstruction effort continued to drive the construction, trade, transport and telecommunication sectors, it said. Notwithstanding risks such as changes in the oil market or property rental markets, annual inflation was expected to decline to about 10%.

In a challenging environment, the authorities had "implemented sound macroeconomic policies and an ambitious reform agenda which have contributed to sustained growth and to the stabilisation of the economy", the report said.

The country still faced "formidable challenges, such as lingering insecurity, the effects of the illegal opium industry activities, and poor infrastructure and institutions".

Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries due to 25 years of war and is reliant on international aid, which made up 90% of its 2005 budget.

The IMF cited a UN report showing that opium production had dropped this year, but Afghanistan is still the world’s leading producer. In 2004, it produced 90% of the world’s opium, and the 21% decline in the area producing opium this year can be mainly attributed to concerted eradication efforts in the region around Jalalabad.

This year saw a sharp rise in attacks carried out by insurgents and criminal gangs. The violence has killed close to 1600 people, almost double last year’s toll.

The IMF report noted that development spending had been lower than expected this year. This reflected capacity constraints common in post-conflict countries, including unrealistic expectations on the pace of reform.

As a result of these continuing concerns, institutional reform is likely to be a major theme of a conference of international donors to Afghanistan in London next month.

The IMF report did not specifically mention corruption, but even the government has admitted it is a key obstacle to reform and a concern for international partners.

In September, the UN’s special representative to Afghanistan, Jean Arnault, called for "new governance", saying reconstruction was being held back by widespread corruption among officials, many of whom lacked the skills their jobs required or had links to drugs trafficking.

The IMF said it was ready to help Afghanistan focus on a reform agenda through its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility, which is reserved for the world’s neediest nations. The programme should be in place by April, it said.

Coke fizz back in Afghanistan - Hindustan Times - Indo-Asian News Service

Kabul, December 11, 2005 - After 15 long years, Coca-Cola is back in Afghanistan with the commissioning of a $25 million bottling plant on the outskirts of Kabul. It represents a major investment for the troubled country.

The soft drink giant operated in Afghanistan earlier but it withdrew in the wake of the anti-Soviet and later civil war. The new plant will create direct jobs for 600 people and possibly for another 8,000 through allied industries.

Currently, Coca-Cola is imported from Pakistan, making a can cost 40 US cents (18 Afghani). Locally produced Coke cost three times less.

"We are very optimistic about Afghanistan. We are looking at huge growth because of the affordability," says Ali-us-Sajjad Khan of the Habib Gulzar Non-Alcoholic Beverages Firm, the franchisee of Coca-Cola.

Iran prepares to enter Afghanistan’s IT market

TEHRAN – Pakistan Online: Chairman of the Association of Iran’s Informatics Companies Soheil Mazlum said here that his organization in collaboration with the Iranian Ministry of Mines and Industries was ready to give required assistance and supports to the Iranian companies willing to enter Afghanistan’s Information Technology (IT) market.

Association of Iran’s Informatics Companies has been considering Iranian companies’ presence in the IT markets of the neighboring country Afghanistan, noted the chairman of the association adding that, pertinent and fruitful studies have been made to that effect. He also added that the association had earlier dispatched a delegation to that country to negotiate the issue with the related officials there.

He stated that the Iranian delegation had succeeded in signing three memoranda of understanding (MOU) with officials from the Afghan ministries of justice, commerce and communications, the Persian service of Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) said on Saturday.

He further explained that following the holding of three seminars participated by over twenty large Iranian IT companies, a plan had been devised based on which the timetables, scheduling, plan implementation costs, the amount of capital returns, the nature of activities and measures to be taken as well as the ways of providing the required resources were all identified

‘Taliban’ action in Miramshah: toll 21 – Pak News

MIRAMSHAH, Dec 8: The death toll from Wednesday’s bloody clash rose to 21 as militants continued their hunt for members of a group that locals said was involved in extortion. Armed with rockets and other heavy weapons, groups of militants, known as Taliban, riding pick-up trucks searched houses in Miramshah looking for associates of the ringleader, Muhammad Hakim.

Witnesses said that two members of the Hakim group were captured and executed summarily by the Taliban on Wednesday evening. Bullet-riddled bodies of four others, who had been captured on Wednesday night, were thrown into the open in Miramshah on Thursday morning.

With the latest killings, the figure of those killed in the bloody clash since Wednesday shot up to 21. Hakim, the alleged ringleader, has been under government’s custody for quite some time.

Three houses belonging to members of the Hakim group were also set on fire while warnings have been issued to local residents against giving shelter to members of this group who are still at large. “A house-to-house search is going on,” one witness said.

Local clerics and elected representatives, affiliated with the JUI (F), have backed the action, accusing the administration of prompting the Taliban to take action after failing to put an end to the gang’s high-handedness.

Khasadars, who were withdrawn by political authorities to save them from reprisals, remained off-duty. There was no indication that the authorities planned any action to re-establish its writ.

Militants who had thronged Eidgah dispersed on Thursday morning and allowed the administration to pick up the bodies. The bodies were bundled into a tractor and taken to a local graveyard for burial without any funeral.

There were unconfirmed reports that the Taliban shura had a meeting at Angar Kalli, 5km to the south of Miramshah, to take stock of the situation and work out future course of action. No details were available of the secret meeting.

Mystery of Afghan governor’s killing resolved

PESHAWAR – The News International: Investigation into the murder of two persons, including a former governor of Afghanistan, near Badhber revealed that the incident was not a robbery attempt but a target killing. Abdul Mannan Hanafi and his friend Mulla Muhammad Akbar were shot dead in Badhber village in the late hours of November 8 while they were on their way from Chaman to Peshawar.

"The angle of the bullet shows that the incident was not an attempted robbery but a planned shooting," a senior police investigator told The News. He added that no signs of crouching from the nearby area were found that shows the killers were in a hurry and they fled soon after they targeted the two persons.

The Peshawar police soon after the incident declared the deceased as arms dealers who were on their way to the provincial capital in connection with a business deal. The JUI-F claimed through a statement that the two were its party workers in Chaman and asked the authorities to take steps for immediate arrest of the killers.

However, some sources disclosed later that the deceased had served thrice as governor in the neighbouring Afghanistan at the time when Taliban were ruling the war-ravaged country. He, sources disclosed, headed the provinces of Samangan, Saripul and Badghis and had also remained the military commander of the central Bamyan province when Taliban demolished the two Budha carvings there.

The investigators had to give weight to the reports that the deceased has served as senior official in Afghanistan after recovery of some documents from the clothes and vehicle of Abdul Mannan Hanafi.

The possessions of the deceased, besides passport and a national identity card, also included some pamphlets and a location certificate, issued by the Chaman authorities. "Such documents are obtained only by foreigners that is why we also probed from that angle, especially after news reports published in this regard. As far as the relatives are concerned they don’t agree with the idea that the deceased has served as governor in Afghanistan," a senior police officer disclosed.

Police investigators also disclosed there were signs of previous bullet injuries on the body of Abdul Mannan. "The family of the deceased told us that these were of firing with some rivals near border area of Spin Boldak in Chaman," a police officer said. He said the force has handed over the vehicle of the deceased to his relatives.

Aga Khan's Dealings Stir Questions of Financial Transparency - Bloomberg 12/07/2005 By Simon Clark in London

As 50,000 followers watched, Sultan Mohamed Shah Aga Khan III, wearing a silk coat and blue turban, hefted his 243.5 pounds onto a brocade chair connected to a scale loaded with diamonds. The event in India in 1946 was to mark the 60th anniversary of his role as spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims and to raise cash from his followers.

Shah's grandson and successor, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, still collects cash from his followers, who typically tithe 12.5 percent of their income to the imam. He has chosen a quieter approach than his ancestor.

``The Western world saw this as a Muslim leader being weighed in a very public ceremony and all that money going into his pocket,'' the Aga Khan, 68, says. That's incorrect, he says. ``I don't think any reasonably educated Western individual would think that all the assets of the Vatican belong personally to the pope,'' he says.

Unlike the pope, who received $51.7 million in 2004 from Catholic contributions known as Peter's Pence, the Aga Khan won't say how much he raises from his followers each year or break out how the money is spent. Nor will he disclose all the sources of the $325 million that his development network, which has diplomatic status in 10 countries, plowed into projects last year.

And he won't give performance figures for the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development SA, a Geneva-based holding company that owns stakes in 90 companies. All profits and dividends from the companies and projects are reinvested, he says.

Transparency - Such secrecy about finances isn't warranted, says Jermyn Brooks, a Berlin-based director of Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization that monitors corruption and promotes accountability.

``They are engaged in the public sphere, they claim special status, they collect funds from members of the public and governments, so they should publish their accounts,'' Brooks, 66, says. ``Accountability and transparency are the other side of the coin of trust and credibility.''

The scarce information about Ismaili finances bothers Akbarally Meherally, 77, whose father helped load diamonds onto the scales in 1946 after making a large cash donation. ``He has never submitted any proof of what he's doing with Ismaili tithes,'' Meherally says of the Aga Khan. He quit the sect in 1988. ``The lack of transparency was one of the reasons,'' he says.

Private Tithes - The Aga Khan says Ismaili tithes are a private, religious matter. His institutions disclose relevant information to donors, lenders and investors on individual projects, says John Ferguson, a spokesman for the Aga Khan. Unlike aid organizations such as Oxford, England-based Oxfam, the Aga Khan doesn't actively solicit funds from the general public, Ferguson says. Any donations are accounted for, he says.

In addition to money from his Ismaili followers, the Aga Khan obtains bank loans and grants from Western governments and aid organizations to finance his empire. The Aga Khan's companies, with total sales in 2004 of $1.36 billion, stretch from Pakistan's No. 2 lender, Habib Bank Ltd., to Kenyan bean farms, to the just-opened Serena Hotel in Kabul, where rooms start at $250 a night -- about what the average Afghan makes in a year.

He also owns stakes in two car dealerships in Edmonton, Alberta: Mayfield Toyota Ltd. and T&T Honda Ltd.

The Aga Khan has also expanded the institutions started by his grandfather into a nondenominational network of 325 schools, two universities, 11 hospitals and 195 health clinics in 30 countries, mostly where poorer Ismailis live, from Tajikistan to Uganda.

Fees - Most of the institutions charge their clients -- even the poorest -- fees. A 74-acre (30-hectare) public park he opened in March 2005 in Cairo charges three Egyptian pounds (52 U.S. cents) to enter.

The Aga Khan says his goal is to create schools and hospitals that can support themselves, while fostering economic growth in the world's poorest countries.

``They're fee paying because in the long run, what you're trying to do is to create self-sustaining institutions,'' says the Aga Khan, a British citizen who travels with a French diplomatic passport and lives in a chateau 26 miles (42 kilometers) north of Paris. ``You've got to get the economy moving.''

`Philanthropy, Not Charity' - Outsiders say that approach makes sense. ``The Aga Khan is promoting self-reliance,'' says Vartan Gregorian, 71, president of New York-based Carnegie Corp., which awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy to the Aga Khan in October. ``It's philanthropy, not charity.''

Adds Paul Kaiser, 43, associate director of the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center, who has studied Ismaili health services in East Africa, ``Services can be expensive for locals, but that doesn't undermine that the expertise wouldn't be there otherwise.''

Such efforts aren't always welcome, particularly among more conservative proponents of Islam. In 2003, the Karachi-based Aga Khan University got $4.5 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development to start a new, Western-style exam board for schools. That angered conservative clerics and politicians who view the U.S. with suspicion. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, president of Pakistan's Jamaat-e- Islami, a religious opposition party, urged the university to scrap the plan.

Looting and Burning - In May, a mob looted and burned the Aga Khan Development Network office in the northeastern Afghanistan town of Baharak. ``We're seen as key implementers of projects undermining the mullahs, and they hate it,'' says Aly Mawji, 36, a British Ismaili who is the Aga Khan's representative in Kabul, with diplomatic status. ``If we don't take action, we are leaving these places to turn into breeding grounds for extremism.''

In Afghanistan, the development network, the Aga Khan's umbrella organization, has built schools, hospitals, roads and bridges and owns 51 percent of Roshan, the country's biggest cell-phone service company.

The Aga Khan's lifestyle -- he owns stables of Thoroughbreds and races speedboats, and his second divorce is being dissected in Europe's gossip pages -- is criticized by some Muslims. ``Racehorses involve gambling, a major sin in Islam,'' says Azzam Tamimi, 50, a spokesman for the London-based Muslim Association of Britain. ``His hotels sell alcoholic drinks, which Islam prohibits. You cannot as an imam be associated with any of this.''

Divorce - James Wolfensohn, 71, former head of the World Bank who has known the Aga Khan for 20 years, says he regards him as two people. ``One is the public face, who sustains the highest standards in the developing world,'' he says. ``The other is the gossip stuff, and I have no comment on that.''

A French court is hearing his second divorce, from Gabriele zu Leiningen, a German-born former pop singer and law graduate who's 26 years his junior. His first wife, British former model Sally Croker-Poole, auctioned $27.7 million of jewels, including the 13.78-carat Begum Blue diamond, after their divorce in 1995. Both wives took Arabic names and converted to Islam when they wed.

``She is a woman scorned,'' says Tim Bell, a London-based media adviser hired by Begum Inaara, as zu Leiningen, 42, is now known. ``She wishes to get a financial settlement and move on.''

The Aga Khan's personal fortune includes stud farms in France and Ireland that have yielded four English Derby and three Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winners since 1981. In the 1960s and 1970s, he developed a virgin strip of coast on the Italian island of Sardinia into Costa Smeralda, where Italy's billionaire prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and others have vacation homes.

Malta, Ibiza - And in 1992, the Aga Khan and his friend Gianni Agnelli, the late Fiat SpA chairman, smashed the transatlantic speed record with their 220-foot (67-meter), 50,000-horsepower speedboat Destriero.

The Aga Khan currently owns an undeveloped piece of coast on the Spanish island of Ibiza, and he's considering plans for a luxury development on Malta and a project to transform a military arsenal on the Italian island of La Maddalena into a harbor for big yachts, says Enzo Satta, 60, a Sardinian architect who says he has worked for the Aga Khan on the ventures.

Ismailis dismiss questions about the Aga Khan's wealth and private life. ``What's important is the guidance he gives and the development of the unique network he has created,'' says Naguib Kheraj, 41, a British Ismaili who's chief financial officer of Barclays Plc, the U.K.'s third-biggest bank.

Prophet Muhammad - Born in Geneva to an English mother and half-Indian, half- Italian father, the Aga Khan claims descent from Fatima, the daughter of Islam's prophet Muhammad, via the Fatimid rulers, who founded Cairo in 969 A.D. They later transferred to Syria and Iran, where they were known and feared by medieval European crusaders as the Assassins.

The Aga Khan's great-great-grandfather moved the family to India in 1842 after leading an unsuccessful revolt in Iran and then assisting British officers on military campaigns in Afghanistan.

Sultan Mahomed Shah, the Aga Khan's grandfather, became imam in 1885 and served as president of the League of Nations, the doomed forerunner of the United Nations, from 1937 to 1939. During his lifetime, Indian-born Ismailis built communities in East African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania, which were also part of the British Empire.

Rita Hayworth's Stepson - Shah unsuccessfully petitioned the British government for land for his own state. Following World War II, many Ismailis, whose numbers are estimated at 15 million by the Aga Khan's secretariat in France, moved to Europe and North America.

Shah, who was married four times, skipped his eldest son, Aly Khan, and anointed his grandson Karim to succeed him. Karim became the Aga Khan at age 20 in 1957, when Shah died at age 79. Karim's younger brother Prince Amyn, 68, is now a director of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development. Hollywood's Rita Hayworth was Aly Khan's second wife and Karim's stepmother. They had a daughter, Yasmin.

Educated at Switzerland's Le Rosey private school after spending World War II in Kenya, the current Aga Khan studied Islamic history at Harvard, where he earned a bachelor's degree, with honors, in 1959.

As the imam approaches the 50th year of his reign, he says he wants to be known for his philanthropy and his faith. ``The facts are there, but they're not very visible in the Western world because it's all happening in the developing world,'' he says.

Kenyan Farmers - One example of how his program works can be found among the 20,000 subsistence farmers in Kenya's central highlands who are under contract to the Aga Khan's Frigoken Ltd.

Farmer Jane Njeri, a 25-year-old mother of four, picks ripe beans and places them into a cracked, white plastic beaker tied around her waist. Frigoken supplies her with seeds and fertilizer, guarantees a purchase price for the beans and packages them for export to Europe.

Frigoken pays Njeri about 10,000 Kenyan shillings ($132) a year for her beans, more than three times what she earns from the sale of other crops such as bananas and sugar cane. ``I'll use the money to pay my children's school fees,'' she says.

Frigoken is owned through the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, which aims to develop profitable companies that bring jobs and services to some of the world's poorest countries, says Anwar Poonawala, 59, a French Ismaili who's a director of the fund.

Aga Khan Fund - Its companies currently employ 30,242 people, he says. The Canadian car dealerships are a legacy from the 1980s, when the fund helped Ismailis settling there, he says. Poonawala declines to disclose the fund's profits, citing its status as a private company.

The Aga Khan owns all but seven of the fund's 175,000 shares, according to the Registre du Commerce in Geneva. The fund is the economic arm of the Aga Khan Development Network, which also has units covering culture and social development projects such as schools and hospitals. The network employs 20,000 people.

The Aga Khan, who travels the world in a Bombardier Global Express jet, declines to comment on how much of the money for his philanthropy comes from his own personal wealth and how much from followers.

``I've never discussed my personal income, and I wouldn't do that,'' he says. ``Every generation of the family has made its investments, and fortunately, some of them have been very, very good indeed.''

Money Laundering - In ``The Memoirs of Aga Khan,'' published by Cassel & Co. in London in 1954, the present imam's grandfather wrote that he kept a ``small fraction'' of his followers' offerings for himself.

Lack of transparency got an Ismaili leader into jail in the U.S. On May 18, 1987, Nizamudin Alibhai, an Ismaili community leader in Texas, boarded an American Airlines flight from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to London's Gatwick Airport with $1.1 million stuffed in a burgundy flight bag.

Prosecutor Stewart Robinson said Alibhai took $27.3 million out of the U.S. on a total of 33 journeys, breaking a law requiring transfers of more than $10,000 to be declared. Alibhai was charged in Dallas with money laundering for five specific transatlantic journeys, in which he took a total of $4.3 million to London from 1985 to 1987. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

`Secret Religious Duty' - Alibhai's lawyer said he was performing a secret religious duty. In his memorandum in support of the motion for a reduction of the sentence, defense lawyer Vincent Perini wrote, ``A history of persecution by repressive African governments and fundamentalist Muslim groups have required the Ismailis to keep their activities private.''

The cash was deposited in London because there were no reporting requirements in the U.K. at the time, Perini wrote. His memorandum also included a letter dated March 8, 1990, from Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, the imam's Washington-based lawyers, which said the Aga Khan had set up a U.S. bank account for Ismaili tithes following the trial.

``Our client does not direct or control the system of offerings,'' the letter said. ``The contributions, and their collection, have always been conducted by volunteers. These offerings are then primarily used by the Aga Khan to support religious activities and to support a multitude of development projects in the third world.''

Funding Sources - The Aga Khan's followers are unable to answer detailed questions about the sources of funds for their projects. Sher Lakhani, a Canadian Ismaili manager of Geneva-based Aga Khan Education Services SA, doesn't know the breakdown of the $20 million used to build a high school in Mombasa on Kenya's coast.

Mahmud Jan Mohamed, Nairobi-based managing director of Serena Hotels, doesn't know how much of the $19.3 million plowed into the Kabul hotel in the Aga Khan's name came from the imam and how much came from Ismailis. ``All I know is, construction has never been stopped for lack of funds,'' says Mohamed, 52, a Kenyan Ismaili.

Some of the money for the Aga Khan's projects comes from grants and loans from Western governments through organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development. In 2004, the Aga Khan Foundation, which kick-starts health, education and rural development projects, got commitments of $71 million from donors like the U.S. government, says Tom Kessinger, 64, the foundation's American general manager.

World Bank, Blackstone - ``The staff is among the most qualified in the region,'' says Dwight Smith, USAID's assistant mission director in Kenya. USAID granted $35 million to the Aga Khan's projects in Asia and Africa from 1999 to 2004, says Harry Edwards, a Washington-based spokesman for the organization.

The Aga Khan's companies borrow from commercial and development banks and raise funds from investors. In 2003, the World Bank's International Finance Corp. unit lent $7 million to help build the $36 million Serena Hotel in Kabul.

Development funds owned by the Norwegian and Dutch governments also invested $5 million each in the hotel. In April 2005, Afghan mobile-phone company Roshan got $35 million from the Asian Development Bank, which is owned by a group of Asian governments.

Commercial partners include Blackstone Group LP, which is raising the world's biggest buyout fund. In Uganda, the Aga Khan's Industrial Promotion Services is planning a $500 million hydroelectric dam with Blackstone's Sithe Global Power LLC, a New York-based power producer.

Risk Protection - Sithe Vice President Jason Oliver says the Aga Khan's philanthropic reputation protects them from political risks. ``If you just had a U.S. power producer coming in on its own, there wouldn't be as much interest in the deal coming off well,'' Oliver says.

In Afghanistan, the Aga Khan's partners include a company controlled by Bracknell, England-based Cable & Wireless Plc, which owns 37 percent of Roshan. The Afghan cell-phone company has raised more than $160 million of loans since 2002, with $24.5 million coming from the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, says Altaf Ladak, Roshan's chief marketing officer.

Roshan has 600,000 customers and 500 employees. The company is profitable, says Chief Executive Officer Karim Khoja, a Canadian Ismaili. He won't say how much it earned on sales of $93 million in 2004.

In remote tribal areas, where women traditionally wear head-to-toe burqas and aren't allowed out of family compounds, Roshan has found a way of boosting its sales and helping vulnerable women with no male relatives: The company uses them as sales representatives, selling them prepaid phone cards to sell to other women.

After the Taliban - ``If we had 50 companies like Roshan, we would have a solution to the drug problem, as we would raise professional standards and boost jobs,'' says Ashraf Ghani, 56, chancellor of Kabul University and a former finance minister. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium.

Since the fall of the Taliban in December 2001, the Aga Khan Development Network has channeled $380 million into Afghanistan, home to more than 300,000 Ismailis. Of that, $145 million came from the Ismaili imamate, and the balance came from donors, lenders and other investors in the Aga Khan's companies.

The network fed 500,000 during a drought in 2002; built three bridges, 12 health centers and 26 schools; and repaired cultural sites including the mausoleum of former Afghan king Timur Shah in Kabul, says Mawji, the Kabul representative. It has also extended 6,400 microloans to farmers and traders and trained 189 midwives and doctors.

Kenyan Newspapers - The Aga Khan's first company in the developing world was in Kenya, where he spent part of his childhood. In 1960, he set up Nation Media Group Ltd., a newspaper publisher in Nairobi. ``African political parties were coming into existence,'' the imam says. ``Communication about the thinking that was taking place amongst African leaders and communicating to the African, in a sense, electorate, was something which was really essential.''

Today, the company is publicly traded, with a market value of about 13 billion Kenyan shillings. Nation Media had sales of 4.8 billion shillings and a profit of 641 million shillings in 2004. The company has grown in a region where there are frequent challenges to press freedom, says Dennis Aluanga, the company's finance director.

Nation Media is one of 16 Kenyan companies in which the Aga Khan's fund for economic development owns stakes. The others include Frigoken, the bean exporter, and the Kenyan unit of Serena Hotels, Tourism Promotion Services Ltd., which is also listed on the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Beyond Companies - The Aga Khan says his mission goes beyond starting companies. ``Countries that have weak health systems, weak education systems, weak financial systems are countries that in 10, 20 years are going to be marginalized by global forces,'' he says.

In the coastal Kenyan city of Mombasa, the Aga Khan Madrasa Resource Centre provides training and support to pre-school teachers in poor Islamic communities. The program was started in 1986 when Sunni Muslim leaders complained that their children were falling behind in Kenya's schools, where English is the language of instruction.

The Sunni children were attending Islamic preschools where they were taught the Koran in Arabic and Swahili, says Najma Rashid, 41, the Sunni Muslim director of the resource center. That left the children at a disadvantage when they entered English-language state schools. The resource center trains teachers of English.

Preschool - In Majaoni, a village north of Mombasa, teacher Zenab Yusuf sits on the floor of her classroom, which is decorated with nursery rhymes and stories about Muhammad written in English.

Her class of 3-year-olds, which meets behind the village mosque, sings in English for a visitor: ``One little, two little, three little Muslims, four little, five little, six little Muslims. . .''

On the other side of Mombasa stands a $20 million school built out of white coral-rock bricks and modeled after Andover, Massachusetts-based Phillips Academy, whose alumni include U.S. President George W. Bush and the Aga Khan's son, Prince Rahim.

Religion isn't even part of the syllabus at the school, which opened in 2003 and has 525 students, ages 5 to 19. ``We'll cover that ground in personal and social development classes,'' Lakhani, 56, says.

Afghanistan to Mozambique - Fees at the academy are $2,700 a year -- more than double the average Kenyan's annual income. About 20 percent of the students will be on scholarship, Lakhani says.

The Aga Khan plans to build 17 more such academies from Afghanistan to Mozambique. He says the schools will help develop African and Asian leaders who can propel their countries to prosperity in the future. ``I'd like to see many more universities in the Islamic world, more schools, many more teaching hospitals,'' he says.

The Aga Khan also needs to prepare the next leader of the Ismaili sect, who is to be named in his will. The Aga Khan has two sons from his first marriage: Prince Rahim, 34, a director of the fund for economic development, and Prince Hussain, 31, who works on cultural projects. Another candidate is the son from his second marriage, Prince Aly Muhammad, 5.

A male has always held the title, though some Ismailis are debating whether tradition can be broken so Princess Zahra, 35, the Aga Khan's daughter, can inherit the title.

`More Trust' -She is the most visibly active of the children, working with the Aga Khan's schools and hospitals, Lakhani says, in addition to running his personal interests in racehorses.

Such a choice would be risky. ``She would be the best, but then we would have every single Wahabi on our backs,'' says Aly- Khan Satchu, an Ismaili who lives in Mombasa. Wahabism is the puritanical version of Islam that's dominant in Saudi Arabia.

[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.]