President karzai Condemns Kandahar Bombing – Press release 06/02/05

H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan strongly condemned the suicide attack at the mourning ceremony of Late Mawlawi Abdullah Fayaz and called it an act of cowardice by the enemies of Islam and the enemies of the peace of Afghan people.

At least 20 mourners were martyred and many others were injured by a suicide bomber at a gathering to mourn the death Mawlawi Abdullah Fayaz at Abdul Rab Akhund Mosque in Kandahar City this morning.

The President called the attack on a mosque an act of non-muslim and defeated terrorists. H.E. added: Mosque is a Home of God and place of worship; those attacking it are unbelievers and despicable enemies of Islam and Afghanistan.

President Karzai said: the Muslim people of Afghanistan recognize the culprits of this un-Islamic act and know that it was carried out by the enemies of Afghanistan.

“Afghanistan is passing through a sensitive period in its history, and with the parliamentary elections getting closer, the enemies attempt to sabotage the process.” said the President.

Mr. President called on the people to be vigilant to not allow foreigners to conspire against their national security.

Mr. President has established a commission consisting of representatives of the Ministry of Interior Affairs and National Defense, and National Security Directorate to carefully investigate this terrorist act and take all necessary and appropriate actions.

He offers his heartfelt condolences to the relatives and friends of the martyred and prays for the speedy recovery of the injured.

For immediate release by Office of the Spokesperson

Afghan commander killed by Taliban roadside bomb

Reuters – 6/3/05 - The commander of a pro-government Afghan militia force was killed by a roadside bomb on Friday in an attack blamed on Taliban insurgents. It was the latest in a wave of bomb attacks that have killed and wounded dozens of people in Afghanistan in the past few months.

Shadi Khan, the former chief of Deshu district police in the southern Helmand province, was killed and two of his bodyguards were wounded when his car was hit by the blast, said Haji Mohammad Wali, spokesman for the provincial governor.

He blamed Taliban insurgents but drug running and tribal and factional rivalry are known to have caused violence in the province in the past. Two Afghan deminers were killed and five wounded by a roadside bomb in Helmand on Wednesday. They were the fifth deminers to be killed in two weeks.

Twenty people, including the police chief of the capital, Kabul, were killed by a suicide bomber in nearby Kandahar province on Wednesday. The Kandahar governor blamed the al Qaeda militant network.

In a separate attack, an energy official in Zabul province, also in the south, was killed in a Taliban ambush on Thursday night as he was transporting electrical equipment, a provincial official said.

Taliban fighters have been waging an insurgency since U.S.-led forces ousted the militia in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. Government officials have blamed enemies of Afghanistan intent on disrupting a Sept. 18 parliamentary election for the recent bomb attacks.

Five killed in suspected Taliban attacks in southern Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 3 (AFP) - Suspected Taliban rebels have killed at least five people in four separate gun and explosives attacks in southern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.

A remote-controlled bomb killed a local militia commander in the provincial capital of Lashkargah in Helmand on Friday, Helmand's intelligence chief Amanullah Jan told AFP.

In another attack the same day a government driver was killed and his assistant badly injured when rebels ambushed their vehicle in neighboring Zabul province, said local police commander Qaim Jan.

The previous day, suspected Taliban gunmen killed a truck driver and another man and torched their oil tanker on the road between central Uruzgan province and Kandahar, the birthplace of the fundamentalist Islamic movement.

The tanker had been transporting fuel for US forces, local military commander General Muslim Hamid told AFP. Earlier the insurgents had stopped a taxi on the same road and killed an Afghan soldier, wounding four passengers in a shootout.

The rebels "took control of the road for several hours", Uruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan said. Hamid said the rebels had left by the time Afghan security forces arrived.

Violence has spiralled in recent weeks after a winter lull in fighting, with repeated attacks on Afghan security forces and the US-led coalition troops who toppled the Taliban in late 2001. The latest attacks came after a suicide bomb attack Wednesday killed at least 21 people and wounded more than 50 in a Kandahar mosque.

Saudi Carried Out Mosque Attack - Saya Press - AKI, Italy 06/03/2005

Kabul - A Saudi citizen was the suicide bomber who blew himself up at a mosque in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Wednesday, killing some 21 people, including the Kabul police chief, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, reported Thursday, citing the Kandahar press. The bomber was identified after his remains were analysed, the reports said.

Shortly after the attack, Afghan officials, including the governor of Kandahar, said they believed it had been carried out by a member of al-Qaeda, of Arab origin, because of the documents found on the bomber's body.

The attack happened at the end of a ceremony to pay respects to the senior anti-Taliban cleric Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, who was murdered by two men on a motorbike, as he left his office on Sunday.

Witnesses say the bomber was dressed in a police uniform and helped the police chief, General Mohammed Akram, by pretending to prepare his shoes for him as the mourners filed out of the service, before detonating his explosives. The Afghan police are now looking for possible accomplices who helped prepare the attack, which was the worst Afghanistan has suffered this year.

Italian celebrity calls for release of aid worker in Afghanistan – AFP 6/3/05

An Italian movie star known in Afghanistan for his role in a detective series has launched an appeal for the release of the Italian aid worker abducted two weeks ago, the interior ministry said.
Michele Placido, best known for his recurring role as Kamissar Cattani in the "La Piovra" movie series which was aired on Afghan television in the 1980s, called on Afghans to help free Clementina Cantoni, who was snatched from her car in Kabul by four gunmen.

"Clementina has been devoting so much to help the Afghan people. Each one of you now can help her to come back safely. Please help Clementina," Placido said in a videotaped message, according to an interior ministry press release on Thursday. Afghan officials, meanwhile, reiterated their optimism about Cantoni's release.

"We are in contact with Cantoni's kidnappers and we are optimistic for her safe release," interior ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP. Humanitarian organizations in the Afghan capital Kabul in a petition Thursday also called for Cantoni's safe release .

Cantoni, 32, who works for CARE International, had managed a project which provides food and income-generating activities for 11,000 widows and their children since September 2003.

The kidnapping appears to be linked to rising crime and deteriorating security in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan. Her kidnappers released a video Sunday showing her alive and flanked by two armed men.

Pakistan detains two suspected militants after raid near Afghan border

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - (AP)Pakistani security agents raided a home in a remote northwestern tribal region near Afghanistan and arrested two suspected Islamic militants on suspicion of links with al-Qaida, an official said Friday.

The suspects were caught late Thursday in North Waziristan, where troops have been hunting al-Qaida-linked militants and their local supporters, said Mohammed Tariq Hayyat, a government official in the region.

He gave no other details, saying the men were still being questioned. Pakistan is a key ally of the United States in its war on terror and it has deployed about 70,000 troops in the North and South Waziristan tribal regions bordering Afghanistan to flush out al-Qaida militants.

50 Iranian enterprises involved in Afghanistan's economic sector - Kabul, June 1, IRNA

Iran's Commercial Attache to Kabul Hossein Kamranfar here Wednesday said that 50 Iranian trade and service companies are currently active in Afghanistan.

He told IRNA that the companies are involved in production of potable water, medicine, polyethylene pipe, electrical switches, concrete, computer and liquid gas cylinder filling device as well as wood industry, construction of houses and restaurants and establishment of dental clinics.

He said that among 35 countries investing in Afghanistan, Iran stands fourth. "The two countries have been enjoying constant trade exchanges for a long time, with the exception of a short period during the Taliban rule.

"Since the present government took office in Afghanistan after two decades of detrimental conflicts, measures are being taken towards political stability and development of national economy," he added.

Construction of Tajikistan-Afghanistan bridge delayed for security reasons
DUSHANBE, June 1 (AFP) - Construction of a bridge linking Tajikistan and Afghanistan, paid for by the United States, has been delayed for security reasons, the Tajik ministry of foreign affairs said Wednesday.

The work on the bridge, which was supposed to begin on Thursday, will now start "around June 12," due to the need to boost security measures on the frontier with Afghanistan, Tajik officials said.
The bridge, 670 meters (2,200 feet) long, will cross the Pyandzh River, which separates the two Central Asian countries. The US will cover the cost now estimated at about 50 million dollars (40 million euros) and the work will be done by the American army.

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai are expected to take part in a ceremony laying the first stone for the bridge, which will replace a barge system. The bridge, which is scheduled to be completed in April 2007, is expected to carry more than 1,000 vehicles a day across the river border.

Press Briefing by Ariane Quentier Senior Public Information Officer And United Nations Agencies in Afghanistan - Kabul – 02 June 2005

ط Statement attributable to the spokesperson of the SRSG for Afghanistan Jean Arnault on Kandahar bomb attack

The United Nations Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) expresses its shock and outrage at the news of the attack perpetrated in the Abdul Rab Akhundzada mosque in Kandahar. While the number of casualties is not yet fully known, this already qualifies as one of the deadliest assaults against civilians in Afghanistan in several years. The gravity of the incident is further compounded by the fact that it took place in a mosque during the memorial service for Maulawi Abdullah Fayaz, assassinated two days earlier.

UNAMA condemns this odious act in the strongest terms. UNAMA expresses its solidarity with the religious community and the people of Kandahar, who have been so ruthlessly targeted, and its sympathy to the wounded and the relatives of those killed in the incident. UNAMA also expresses its conviction that the people of Afghanistan will see in this brutal attack further reason to rally against all forms of violence and their perpetrators.

In a separate statement, Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General, also expressed his outrage at this “senseless attack” and condemned this “heinous act of terrorism”.

ط Deminers killed in bomb attack

Following the bomb attack which killed two Afghan deminers from the Mine Detection Dog Centre (MDC) – and injured another five – the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan (UNMACA) is temporarily suspending all demining operations on the Kandahar to Herat section of the national ring road and on secondary connector roads in Helmand and Farah provinces. This bomb attack, which took place when the MDC was hit on the outskirts of the city of Grishk in the province of Helmand, is the third of its kind against demining organizations in the past 2 weeks.

“We condemn these targeted attacks against deminers and call on the Afghan authorities to bring to justice the perpetrators of these crimes,” said Dan Kelly, the Programme Manager of the United Nations Mine Action Centre for Afghanistan. “These brave men risk their lives in minefields every day to improve the situation for their fellow Afghans. They should not be attacked.”
The Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (MAPA) is the largest programme of its kind in the world. The MAPA has cleared over a hundred million square metres of land contaminated by mines and unexploded ordnance in the past 12 months – more than 4 square metres for every Afghan citizen.

ط DDR: over 58,000 have joined

As of today a total of 58,060 former Afghan Military Forces officers and soldiers have joined the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programme. From that figure 48,605 have entered the reintegration process.

The disarmament programme is now completed in the regions of Kandahar, Gardez, Jalalabad, Kunduz, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. As far as heavy weapons are concerned, there is no change to the figures we last reported (9,085).

The ammunition survey is also progressing. The survey has identified 474,731 boxed and 1,155,253 unboxed ammunitions throughout the country. The majority of these ammunitions were identified as unserviceable and have been destroyed by the implementing partners, HALO Trust or RONCO. The teams are now surveying the regions of Kabul, Bamyan, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz.

ط UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa visits Afghanistan

Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has just concluded a two-day visit in Afghanistan where he met with Afghan officials including President Karzai, and the Minister of Counter-Narcotics Qaderi and Minister of Interior Jalali. Antonio Costa was in Afghanistan to discuss reports on poppy cultivation and progress made in poppy reduction.

On the subject of cultivation, Costa noted that farmers have exerted a certain amount of restraint and grown a significantly smaller amount of opium than in the past, adding that “this will inject a very positive dimension to counter-narcotics in Afghanistan”.

Costa also saw a direct link between provincial governors who are committed to the counter-narcotics programme and a reduction of production by farmers.

In terms of law enforcement and progress in fighting crime, Costa singled out the work of the Afghan Special Narcotics Force (ASNF) announcing he was pleased with the number of high profile arrests in and outside of Afghanistan, also insisting on the regional dimension of the struggle against drugs and drug trafficking.

In terms of security and the rule of law, Costa said that while much of the focus has been in Kabul, there is a need to put more emphasis on the provinces. He called for NATO and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT) to play a greater role to this extent.

ط NGOs launch a Code of Conduct

Last Monday, not-for-profit organizations - also known as NGOs - have publicly launched a Code of Conduct, to help better regulate NGO activities and communicate more openly about the work performed by NGOs for the Afghan people. The Code of Conduct establishes clear standards of good conduct that signatories must follow, and will also benefit the people, the media and the Government by allowing them to better monitor and verify development work in Afghanistan. To date, 90 NGOs have signed the Code of Conduct.

In a statement, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan (SRSG), Jean Arnault, conveyed UNAMA’s - and the family of UN agencies - warm congratulations for the launching of the Code of Conduct. “There is no doubt that the reconstruction effort needs more transparency and accountability, from everyone” he said, adding that “together with the upcoming NGO legislation, the Code of Conduct paves the way for what should be a new and better framework for reconstruction, in which the respective roles of NGOs, the private sector and government entities are clearly defined, regulated and monitored”.

“The NGO community has been a pillar of Afghanistan’s survival in the past two decades, with which the UN has worked very closely and which the UN is proud to call a partner. Today’s initiative can only make this partnership stronger, and establish Afghan civil society even more firmly as a key actor in the rebuilding of its country”, Jean Arnault concluded.

ط Ministry of Women’s Affairs promoting women’s participation in politics

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) is launching a three-day national workshop on women and elections. This workshop is funded by UNAMA - with the support of UNAMA’s Gender Unit - and the Afghan Emergency Trust Fund (AETF). It is entitled “The Role of the Departments of Women’s Affairs in Promoting Women’s Political Participation” and will take place at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs training building, from Sunday, June 5th until June 7th.

The heads of the Departments of Women’s Affairs from 33 provinces will be participating in the workshop, which will be facilitated by the Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the NGO Rights and Democracy.

This workshop aims to facilitate the exchange of information among the staff of MoWA and provincial departments, engage the departments of Women’s Affairs in activities promoting women’s political participation and increase collaboration between the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, JEMB and organizations involved in promoting women’s participation in the upcoming elections.

Issues that will be covered in the workshop include: pillars of the Government, the Parliament’s position in the Afghan Constitution (parliament structure and duties), the Electoral law and the electoral process, the Media Commission, the role of Provincial Councils, the Single Non Transferable Voting system, the Electoral Complaint Commission, advocacy roles and responsibilities of the Departments of Women’s Affairs in promoting women’s participation.

The project’s upcoming activities will include regional seminars on women’s participation in the upcoming elections in three provinces, as well as skills training and capacity building workshops in five provinces.

ط Flood Update

Last Sunday in Logar province, villages in the districts of Mohammad Agha and Baraki Barak were affected by flooding. A Combined Disaster Management Team (CDMT), made up of representatives of the provincial department of Rural Rehabilitation and Development and the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) visited the areas the following day. They confirmed that some 25 jeribs of agricultural land, and 4 km of secondary road had been damaged.

There were also flooding in the village of Altamor in the Pol-e Alam district on Monday. Current assessment indicates that there is damage to 114 jeribs of agricultural land. The department of Rural Rehabilitation and Development has provided non-food items to the families in affected areas.

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) will start the National Rescue and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) in the five northern provinces of Balkh, Samangan, Jawzjan, Sari Pul, and Faryab. Five teams from WFP’s Vulnerable Analysis and Mapping unit (VAM) will leave for the respective provinces on Saturday. They will work alongside the provincial offices of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) to identify food insecure areas.

ط UNHCR helps 100,000 Afghans repatriate from Pakistan

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has assisted more than 100,000 Afghans to return from Pakistan since its voluntary repatriation programme for 2005 started in March.

Of the total of 101,224 returnees processed by the time the last truck departed on Tuesday, almost half - 48,967 - had been living in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. However, Afghans have also returned from other areas in Pakistan, namely 27,168 from Balochistan, 13,627 from Punjab and Islamabad, and 11,462 from Sindh.

Bronwyn Curran, JEMB International Spokesperson

The Joint Electoral Management Body has announced the dates for a supplemental Voter Registration exercise, which will allow us to update the Voter Registry compiled ahead of the 2004 Presidential Elections. This exercise will be known as the Voter Registry Update. Between June 25 and July 21, that’s a four week period, any Afghan citizen over the age of 18 who has not yet registered to vote is invited to do so.

In addition, Afghans who are already registered voters but now live in a different province to that registered on their Voter Registration card are invited to come and correct that detail on their card. This is important because the province listed on your Voter Registration card will determine where you can vote, that means determining which ballot paper you are given on which to cast your vote. Registration centres will be set up in each district across Afghanistan. We will notify you of the exact locations closer to the start of VR

Closer in time, the Display and Challenge period begins this Saturday June 4th and will run for six days until June 9th. Preliminary candidate lists, that is the list of every person who applied to be a candidate, will be displayed in the provincial Candidate Nomination offices, on our website, and may be posted on public noticeboards. This is a public list. Newspapers for example are welcome to publish these lists if they wish.

During these six days, any individual or organization, with a legitimate interest in the electoral process – who believes a candidate or candidates on the lsit do not meet the eligibility criteria, may formally challenge that person’s right to be a candidate. This would be done by submitting a written complaint to the Electoral Complaints Commission - a new body set up under the new Electoral Law of April 27.

The ECC will spend the rest of June, over a three-week period, assessing these challenges to determine whether they should be upheld. All challenges will be adjudicated by July 1st. If any candidates are provisionally excluded, a provisional exclusion list with their names will be sent to the JEMB Candidate Nomination office in the province concerned.

Candidates then have until July 7th to respond, if they have been excluded, and the ECC will consider all responses before making a final decision to exclude an individual from the Final Candidate list, which the JEMB is expected to certify on July 12th. The ECC is keen to explain their whole operation and mechanisms and so have invited all media to come along to their Press Conference on Sunday June 5th at the Heetal Plaza Hotel in Wazir akbar Kahn at the end of Street 14. That’s a revised date, it had initially been set for Tuesday but had to be postponed. All five Commissioners, the three international and two national commissioners, will be there. Factsheets about the ECC and its operations are available on the side-table.

The preliminary totals we announced last Sunday for Candidate Nominations are still being cross-checked with our Data Centre, there be some very slight variations, but we still are looking at more than 6,000 candidates for both elections, with a very favourable turnout of women, making up more than 10 percent of candidates.

On the subject of women candidates, I’d like to clarify the situtioanin the province of Uruzgan. More than a few media reports have said that there are no women candidates at all running in Uruzgan. In fact, two women are running for the Wolesi Jirga in Uruzgan, which has been allocated three seats including one reserved women’s seat. So there is a race there. It is only for the Provincial Council that Uruzgan has no women candidates. This is the case in three provinces only - the other two are Zabul, which has three reserved womens seats on the Provincial Council and two women candidates; and in Nooristan, where five seats on the Provincial Council have been reserved for women and four women are contesting.

In every other province more than enough women are contesting the Provincial Council seats, and in all provinces more than enough women are running for Wolesi Jirga seats. So this is certainly a favourable outcome.

Questions & Answers

Question: In the Code of Conduct it states that any interested party who wants to know and question the accountability of a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) is welcome. And there have been a lot of criticism against the NGOs…. But, thanks to this Code of Conduct, will the United Nations also welcome anyone who wants to question the UN or ask about financial processes such as donor funding to the UN - for example?
Senior Public Information Officer: This is a Code of Conduct by and for the NGOs - and obviously the United Nations is not an NGO. The Code of Conduct and the United Nations have nothing in common. As to the UN transparency? Of course the UN has developed mechanisms with the government, which will continue to be applied. But you should not make a link between these mechanisms, whereby the United Nations is being transparent and the NGO Code of Conduct, which are two different things. We are not an NGO. The NGOs have come up with a Code of Conduct, which is a major step forward in trying to respond to the criticism that has been made. But the United Nations is not an NGO.

Question: In the past two weeks there have been several incidents in Afghanistan - an Italian lady was kidnapped, there was a rocket attack in Kabul, a bomb explosion in Kabul, an attack in Kandahar. Do you think it is safe for UN and NGO international staff to be in Afghanistan and what do you think will be the situation in the coming weeks and months?
Senior Public Information Officer: There has been deterioration in the security situation and we are all aware of that - including the UN, which has always been very careful about the security situation in Afghanistan throughout the years. We have got sophisticated security mechanisms in Afghanistan, which allow us to monitor the security situation and the way we respond to it in terms of our presence in different areas. We look at the security situation with a lot of concern. That said, this has not prompted us to suspend activities. We are still working as usual, and as you know there are areas where we are not directly present, but we are working through implementing partners, which may be local or international implementing partners. So we are still there for the time being. The only suspension, which we announced earlier today, has been the temporary suspension by UNMACA in the south. This was because of a third attack, which has taken place against deminers. This is a temporary suspension, during which UNMACA is going to assess the situation in order to see whether they resume their activities or not. That said we have not suspended any of our programmes due to the security situation, which is indeed deteriorating.

Question: Do you plan to limit the number of your staff in the future?
Senior Public Information Officer: I do not want to speculate about the future. We will see what happens if the security situation worsens. For the time being we are dealing with the security situation of today. This is a situation of concern, we have had a press release by the SRSG and another by the Secretary General, which indicate our level of concern. And if the situation deteriorates, we will act accordingly.

Question: Regarding the complaints process against candidates. Can you clarify the mechanism for the complaints process system. Can anyone who has a complaint come to the candidate nomination centre? Also which sort of complaints will be accepted? How will people find out who is on the list?

JEMB International Spokesperson: People can contact the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) through an e-mail address and there is also a fax number, which is available on the side table. They can also file written complaints and drop them in at the JEMB provincial offices in every provincial capital. The ECC is looking at setting up drop-off boxes in candidate nomination offices and are considering setting up post boxes in other public places where people can drop off their written complaints. There is also going to be a public telephone number set up, which everybody can contact. Each province will have its own Provincial Election Commission (PEC) – they are the provincial branches of the ECC. They will also accept written complaints. There will be a phone line to take queries, but the main thing is that they [the complaints] should be written in hard copy. As to how will people find out who is on the list? These lists will be made public, and that is the whole purpose of the display period, which is coming up on Saturday, from June 4th to June 9th. The lists will be displayed in every Provincial Candidate Nomination Office. They will be on the JEMB website. Public buildings and governor’s offices are welcome to post the lists on their public notice boards. Also people can just come up in the street and check them. Newspapers are welcome to publish them – if they like they can download them from our website or come into the provincial offices. These are public lists for everybody to see. Radio and television stations may broadcast them, and if they like they can come into the Provincial Candidate Nomination Offices to check.

Question: How do you guarantee the secrecy of the complaint?
JEMB International Spokesperson: Complainants have the option of putting their name on the complaint or leaving it anonymous. If it is anonymous, we will not know who you are and therefore nobody will know who wrote the complaint. If you wish to put your name, but don’t want your name to be passed to the subject of the complaint, then it will not be passed on. The secrecy and privacy of complainants is absolutely upheld by the ECC and PEC’s and one of the best ways is by giving everybody the option to file anonymous complaints. Anonymous complaints will be given as much consideration as those with names on them.

Trading burqas for camouflage - By Kim Barker - Chicago Tribune, June 3 05
Faozia Mirakai grinned widely and held her gun as if she might drop it. But if threatened, she said, she could be a killer. Mirakai wore a green camouflage uniform and tan boots. The young woman punchd her fists into the air alongside the Afghan men training to

e anti-drug officers. She walked with a slight swagger. She jumped with the men, tried to do one-armed push-ups with them and marched with them. She made faces at the men and joked around.
"Don't try to hit me," Mirakai said, pointing a Czech rifle in their direction. In most countries, the sight of a female police officer would hardly be interesting. But this is Afghanistan, where women were banned from working for years. Many women still are forced to stay at home. Many still wear burqas, which cover everything, even a woman's eyes.

A woman such as Mirakai, brandishing a gun and wearing only a camouflage cap over her hair, is a shocking sight here. She did not cover her face or her chin-length brown hair while training in the streets of Kabul. The other woman on the training course did, wearing a black sleeve over her head and dark sunglasses. Wahida Raufi feared what might happen if someone saw her.

"I do not want to be recognized," admitted Raufi, 25. Raufi and Mirakai graduated from the anti-drug police course Wednesday after six weeks of training. Ten other women already work for Afghanistan's counternarcotics police. They wear flak vests, ride in helicopters and carry guns and handcuffs, just like the men.
They say they are prepared to arrest criminals and fire their weapons. "If enemies try to shoot me, I will fire first," says Mirakai, who probably will attend the police academy before starting as an anti-drug officer. "I will kill them, before they kill me."

These women are in some way symbols, a tentative effort at the equality between the sexes guaranteed by the new Afghan Constitution. There are, after all, 118 male anti-drug officers, officials say.

But the women also are a part of the country's fight against the growing drug trade. Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, opium poppies have blossomed into one of the largest challenges to the country's stability. In early March, the State Department warned that Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a narcotics state. Opium, heroin and marijuana move easily throughout the country.

Male police officers cannot search women or women's rooms because of Islamic rules and cultural traditions. Drug traffickers know that. They've started hiding drugs and weapons with women.

"It's really embarrassing if a man touches the clothes of another man's wife, or of any woman," says Gen. Mohammad Asif Jabarkhil, who is in charge of the operations unit of the Afghan counternarcotics police. "It's a shameful thing."

Police have arrested more than 20 women who have hidden drugs under their burqas, Jabarkhil says. The women tape the drugs around their bellies or hide them in cooking pots or purses.

The female anti-drug officers now are being sent on raids, where they search the women and interrogate them. Eventually they may work undercover, where they could pass largely unnoticed under burqas.

"The women can do things that the men can't do," says Ricky Chambers, regional program director for the Blackwater Training Center, a division of the North Carolina-based Blackwater USA global security company that trains the Afghan anti-narcotics police.

Two of the female officers are married, older women who gained police experience before the rise of the Taliban. But most are young, in their late teens and 20s. Some of those young women stayed in Afghanistan during the Taliban's rule. They attended hidden schools, or they wove carpets at home, or they just sat. Others fled to Pakistan or Iran.

The younger women were recruited to be police officers from high school or by relatives. Two, including Mirakai, were the daughters of police officers.

Several women struggled through training. They complained about the heavy guns and intense exercise. A few still speak in whispers, as if they're afraid that somebody might hear them.

"In the beginning, it was so hard for me, to be dressed like this, to carry a gun," said Sgt. Meena Akrami, 19, in her camouflage. "Before the shooting exam, I was about to cry."

She passed, though. Another woman was even named an honors student in her class, for her marksmanship and other skills. The women now speak with conviction of their duty to Afghanistan and to stop drugs from ruining it.

Maj. Habiba Sultani, 40, helped find about 150 pounds of marijuana in a raid on the outskirts of Kabul. She found guns and ammunition hidden in women's storage boxes on another raid in Logar province.

"They didn't want me to search them," Sultani said. "They thought I was a man. But I explained to them I was a woman."

Mirakai looks forward to such raids. Her ID card says she's 16; most likely, she's older. In Afghanistan, plagued by years of conflict, many people do not know their age.

A recent day of training began with a march through the streets of Kabul. Mirakai and Raufi lingered at the rear, keeping in step with the trainer's calls of "left, left, left, right, left." They marched over rubble, past goats and into a playground, where children stopped to watch. Women in burqas, mostly widows, walked by on their way to a literacy class, full of thoughts about a country where women can carry guns.

"I'd be very happy to join the police," said Maryam Sima, 50. "But they would look at me and say, `No. You are too old.'" Mirakai decided she wanted to be a police officer while she was a child, watching her father get ready for work. She even tried on his uniform.
Her family moved to Pakistan when the Taliban took over and returned a month after the Taliban fled. Last fall her father, Ghulamhazrat Mirakai, graduated from the first training course for anti-drug officers.

Now he works for the counternarcotics police and helps with training. His neighbors know he is a policeman, but they have no idea what his daughter does. "We don't want anybody to know she's going to be a police officer," he says. "It's still not safe for her."

Ghulamhazrat Mirakai, about 42, rides his bike to work, carrying his daughter on the back. She wears a head scarf and the typical long clothes of an Afghan woman.

He watches his daughter as she trains. He corrects her mistakes, like when Faozia punches with her palms facing up instead of down. "You made a mistake again," her father tells her.

"It's so hard," she responds. But behind her back, he tells strangers how proud he is. "When I see her in the column of boys, I think she's one of them," he says. "She looks tough and strong, like a man.

Musharraf is losing his grip - Ahmed Rashid International Herald Tribune THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2005

LAHORE, Pakistan When Pakistan announced the arrest of a senior Al Qaeda operative last month, it was another feather in the cap of President Pervez Musharraf, with President George W. Bush describing the capture as "a critical victory in the war on terror." Musharraf's peace overtures toward India and criticism of Islamic extremism have also won high praise abroad, especially in Washington, which in March awarded him with a supply of F-16 fighter jets. But Musharraf's growing international standing is at odds with his faltering position at home.

His government is unraveling under the twin pressures of Islamic fundamentalists whom he refuses to resist and political opponents whom he harasses and jails. In April, thousands of members of the Pakistan People's Party were arrested to prevent big rallies for one of the party's leaders, Asif Ali Zardari. The Pakistan People's Party has been effectively sidelined since Musharraf took over in a military coup in 1999. Zardari - here for a visit from Dubai, where he lives in exile with his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto - says he wants to test Musharraf's promises to restore genuine democracy.

The crackdown on the party is in sharp contrast to the extent to which the government has bowed to the demands of a coalition of six Islamic fundamentalist parties, even though many of these same fundamentalists consider Musharraf too secular and demand his resignation. The government has recently accepted the fundamentalists' demands that it stop men and women from running marathons together, and that it delay reform of the Islamic schools called madrassas, as well as efforts to amend laws on blasphemy and to curb honor killings.

Meanwhile, the civilian government brought to power by the military in 2002 after what many international monitors considered to be a rigged election has failed to deliver what Musharraf desired - a coherent and effective civilian facade for the military, which actually runs the country. Instead, the ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League, is riven by factionalism, and Parliament is often forced to suspend business because it lacks a quorum.

Shaukat Aziz, the third prime minister since 2002, is a former finance minister who has no political experience and is too beholden to the army to be an effective political leader. Challenged by its own ineptitude and by those parties demanding democracy, the Muslim League finds it convenient to pander to the fundamentalists, who are strong enough to keep the democrats at bay.

Musharraf's problems are compounded by insurgencies in the provinces. In Baluchistan, separatists are demanding greater autonomy and control over their natural resources. For the past three months the country's largest gas fields have been besieged by the separatists.

In North-West Frontier Province, a neo-Taliban resistance against the army continues with the return of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban who have been recently trained in Iraq. In the southern province of Sind there is growing alienation because of interethnic strife, increased criminality and corruption and tensions between the majority Sindhis and the central government.

The only answer to the domestic problems now tearing the country apart is more democracy - in particular a free and fair election in which the political elements that have been disenfranchised since 1999 get a political stake in determining the country's future. The next few months will be crunch time for the army, the Americans, the mullahs and the political parties. All the major players know that the present political situation under Musharraf is unsustainable.

It is time that the world sat up and took notice of events in Pakistan, because with 160 million people, nuclear weapons and a myriad of Islamic extremist groups still operating openly, Pakistan remains critical to regional and global stability. (Ahmed Rashid is the author of ''Taliban'' and, most recently, ''Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia.'')

Rumsfeld sees stronger ties with India, says China's course uncertain

AFP – 6/3/05 - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he expects US military ties with India to strengthen over the coming years and predicted that China's influence will decline unless it moves to a freer political system.

"It's pretty clear where India's going, and one would anticipate the relationship with India will continue to strengthen as we go through the period ahead," Rumsfeld said before he arrived here Friday afternoon.

"With respect to China, it's not completely clear which way they're going because of the tension... between the nature of their political system and the nature of their economic system," he told reporters.

Rumsfeld compared and contrasted the prospects of the two Asian giants as he flew here from Washington to attend an annual international security conference that draws defense ministers from around the region.

In remarks to reporters traveling with him, he would not be drawn on the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program and alluded only glancingly to a Chinese military buildup that has caused concern in Washington.

But he was expected to air US concerns on both North Korea and China's military spending in a keynote speech Saturday to the conference organized by the International Institute of Strategic Studies as well as in one-on-one meetings with other defense ministers.

His comments to reporters made clear that the Pentagon is looking to India as an anchor in its security relationships in the region. Rumsfeld recalled that he made the first overtures to India within weeks of becoming defense secretary in 2001.

"We have what I would characterize as an excellent relationship with India. From a military-to-military standpoint it has improved in strength every year over the past four and a half years," he said.

The military relationship, which has included joint excercises, "has been very much leading the other aspects of the relationship, which is a good thing," he said. "We are finding many things to cooperate on," he said.

Calling India a "major power," the secretary highlighted its standing as the world's largest democracy, its "relatively free economic system," and its educated population. "With respect to the Peoples Republic of China, it is what it is. It's a big country, with a fairly rapid growth rate," he said.

"Its defense budget is growing apace with their economy, and they are a major weapons purchaser in the world, largely from Russia but from other countries as well, and have been deploying a great many ballistic missiles and ships and other military capabilities over a period of years now," he said.

"The tension will grow as they move through the years," he said. "To the extent that the Republic of China leans toward a freer political system they will be a considerably more successful country and a more influential country in the world," he said.

"To the extent they don't do that there will be pressures against their economy, they will grow less fast, and they will be a less influential country in the world," he said.

This is only Rumsfeld's third trip to Asia during his current tenure as defense minister. He is scheduled to travel to Thailand on Sunday, and then to Norway early next week for talks before a NATO defense minister's meeting in Brussels.

China, Russia and India bid for strengthened Asia security

AFP – 06/2/05 - Foreign ministers of Russia, China and India met here and vowed to coordinate efforts to fight terrorism and boost their economic ties with the unstated aim of creating a counterweight to US influence in Asia.

"We have decided... to combat new threats and new challenges, primarily from international terrorism, the drug trade and other forms of international criminality," the meeting's host, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, said after the talks on Thursday.

In a joint statement, the ministers said terrorism should be fought "without double standards." The discussions, which encompassed security in the Middle East and North Korea, also touched on India's bid to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In the statement, Russia and China, both already permanent members, appeared to support India's candidacy.

Energy was also a central topic of discussion among the ministers. Russia is one of the world's largest oil producers while both China and India have rapidly-expanding economies and are in the market for increased energy imports.

"Our requirements in the realm of energy are considerable... and we are looking to your country for assistance," Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said, addressing Russia. China, too, has requested increased energy supplies from Russian reserves.

Apart from the specific issues on the agenda however, experts said the three-way meeting was in itself significant as it marked the first time the three ministers had met independent of another international forum.

"The idea of a collaboration between Russia, India and China was based on anti-Western, anti-American ideas," said Vasily Mikheyev, vice-president of the Far East Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.

The three countries began holding their own meetings on the sidelines of major international meetings in the late 1990s, driven by Russia's opposition to both NATO enlargement and US plans for a national missile defence system.

But China's Li Zhaoxing said Thursday that this meeting was not intended to counter any one country in particular. "All three of our countries are important, with significant influence on the world stage, and we share similar views on regional and international levels," Li said.

Business cooperation was also on the agenda and the ministers have scheduled a meeting between Russian, Chinese and Indian businesses for early 2006 in the Indian capital New Delhi.

India has a 20 percent stake in an ExxonMobil-led consortium to develop energy reserves on the island of Sakhalin in Russia's far east and trade turnover between Russia and China amounts to some 20 billion US dollars. India's Singh pointed out that the three countries have 40 percent of the world's population and account for some 20 percent of the global economy.

[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.]