Fighting in Afghanistan Leaves 14 Dead - 15 June 2005 By NOOR KHAN, AP

Fighting between about 90 suspected Taliban rebels and hundreds of Afghan soldiers and U.S.-led coalition troops left seven insurgents dead and 10 wounded, while a rebel attack on a medical clinic killed a doctor and six others, officials said Wednesday.

The clash broke out on the border between Kandahar and Uruzgan, two southern provinces, on Tuesday after the rebels attacked a joint Afghan-coalition patrol, army commander Gen. Muslim Amid said.

Four Afghan soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which ended with the insurgents fleeing into nearby mountains, carrying their injured, he said.

Two rebels were captured. Troops pursued the rebels into the mountains and were still hunting them on Wednesday, Amid added.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara confirmed that coalition troops were involved in the fighting, but declined to comment on it, saying an assessment was still going on. He said there were no coalition casualties.

The attack on the independently run clinic occurred in Khost province, which is next to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, said Almar Gul Mungle, commander of a frontier security force. Suspected Taliban rebels broke into the building and shot the seven late Tuesday night, he said.

Mungle said the motive for the killing was not clear, though he suggested the insurgents may have murdered them because they thought they were working for the government.

Even though U.S. military commanders are upbeat about progress in making Afghanistan secure, there has been a sharp rise in violence since spring. President Hamid Karzai's administration has warned that Taliban-led rebels and al-Qaida militants are trying to subvert crucial legislative elections
in September.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's Geo television broadcast an interview with a man it identified as Taliban military commander Mullah Akhtar Usmani, who said the group's fugitive chief Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden are alive and well.

With an AK-47 rifle next to him and a black turban on his head, which covered most of his face, the man said Omar was leading the rebellion in Afghanistan from a hideout. He said discipline among the rebels was strong and that they had regular meetings.

Asked to comment on whether bin Laden was hiding in Afghanistan, the man said "He is absolutely fine ... (but) I will not say where he is." Geo said the interview was recorded last week, but declined to say where.

Afghan leader predicts violence, NATO pledges troops - By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL, June 15 (Reuters) - Afghanistan will face more violence ahead of September elections, President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday as the NATO-led peacekeeping force announced plans for 2,000 extra troops to protect the polls.

"Until the elections, this country will have difficulties, attacks will increase on us, terrorism will rise ... conspiracy will increase against our country," he told a function in Kabul.

"But without any doubt, our nation will succeed, as it did during the presidential elections." Karzai did not identify the threat, but when referring to terrorism, Afghan officials mean the Taliban guerrillas and their al Qaeda allies who have stepped up attacks in recent months.

Detailing plans for the additional troops, a spokeswoman for NATO's 8,300-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said a Dutch battalion would be stationed in Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, one from Romania in Kabul and another from Spain in the western city of Herat.

"Over two thousand additional ISAF troops will be brought in as Election Support Forces," Major Karen Tissot Van Patot told a news briefing. More aircraft would also be sent to ensure that troops were able to respond quickly to any breaking situation. She said the aim was to have the additional troops on the ground six to eight weeks before the Sept. 18 polls.

The separate 20,000-strong U.S.-led force pursuing Taliban and al Qaeda militants will have a battalion of 500-700 troops standing by outside Afghanistan and ready to be deployed if needed, spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore told the briefing.

The Taliban failed in their vow to derail the presidential polls, which were easily won by Karzai, but more than a dozen election workers were killed before the voting and the risks to the more complex parliamentary polls are substantially higher.

In an interview with Pakistan's Geo Television broadcast on Wednesday, Mullah Akhtar Usmani, a member of the Taliban's 10-man leadership council, said U.S.-led forces could expect more attacks this year.

Last week, the Taliban killed an election worker, and dozens of government troops, some aid workers and 13 U.S. soldiers have died in violence since March. More than 150 insurgents have been killed, according to government and U.S. military figures.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. and Afghan forces killed another nine Taliban fighters and detained 21 during operations in southern Afghanistan aimed at containing rising guerrilla violence, a senior Afghan army officer said.

Key to the success of the election will be Pakistan, which sealed off its border at the time of the presidential poll to prevent militants crossing into Afghanistan to launch attacks. Pakistan has promised to take similar steps this year.

Regional military strongmen are also seen as a threat for the elections, which has been delayed several times and were supposed to have been held at the same time as the presidential polls.

Osama Bin Laden is alive and well, says Taliban commander - by Masroor Gilani
ISLAMABAD, June 15 (AFP) - Al-Qaeda terror network chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are both alive and in good health after more than three years on the run, a key Taliban commander said.

"He is absolutely fine, praise be to Allah," Mullah Akhtar Usmani said when asked about bin Laden's fate in an interview broadcast Wednesday by Pakistan's private GEO television. There is no problem, but I will not tell where he is," he added.

One-eyed Taliban supremo Mullah Omar remained in command of the hardline Islamic militia which formerly ruled Afghanistan, added Usmani. The militants have launched a fresh onslaught in recent months against the US-led forces who ousted them in late 2001.

The commander, said to be Omar's former deputy and now the head of Taliban operations, held a Kalashnikov assault rifle and partly covered his face with a black turban during the interview.

Omar was "alive and healthy and there is no trouble," Usmani said, adding: "He is still our commander and issuing directions." "I would not tell whether or not I have met him, but I listen to his voice, he gives us directions," he said.

Bin Laden and other wanted Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders are thought to be hiding in the rugged tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan. His health has been the subject of speculation amid reports that he was suffering from kidney disease. However in a video aired late last year before the US presidential election he appeared to be in good condition.

Bin Laden has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head while Washington has offered 10 million for the capture of Omar for his role in sheltering Al-Qaeda before and after September 11.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday during a visit to Australia that bin Laden was alive, while Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador to Kabul, said he was disappointed the Saudi had not been captured.

The Afghan government has accused the Taliban and Al-Qaeda of jointly mounting a concerted offensive to disrupt legislative elections due to be held in the war-shattered country on September 18.
Usmani said he was in constant contact with the military and political leadership of the Taliban, adding that they hold regular meetings. "There are regular meetings but Mullah Omar does not attend. For decisions, contacts are made with him," Usmani said.

The toppled militia had lost around 400 to 500 men since late 2001, Usmani said, but it was still active in all parts of Afghanistan, particularly in eastern, southern and southwestern provinces. He added that "80 percent of the Afghan people are with us."

Pakistani journalist Nazir Leghari, who interviewed Usmani, said that while being taken to meet him he was blindfolded after reaching the northwestern city of Peshawar and did not know where it was carried out.

"The interview was conducted in a tent with mountains around and armed guards remained alert through the interview," said Leghari, editor of the Pakistani Urdu-language newspaper Awam, a sister company of GEO.

"He was very relaxed throughout the interview and gave no impression or sign of defeat," Leghari said. Violence linked to the Taliban continues to blight Afghanistan.

Suspected Taliban militants killed a doctor and six medical attendants on Tuesday in the southeast, while two people died in a landmine blast and a police chief's bodyguard was killed by a roadside bomb on the same day. At least seven alleged Taliban were killed and 10 were injured in an operation by Afghan soldiers in the southern province of Kandahar, also on Tuesday.

Eight US soldiers have been wounded this week in attacks blamed on the toppled regime, four of them by a suicide car bomber in Kandahar on Monday. The United States leads a coalition of 18,000 troops in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's US envoy disappointed bin Laden still at large

Kabul (AFP 6/14/05) - The outgoing US ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad said he was "disappointed" that Osama bin Laden remained at large but pledged the Al-Qaeda leader would be captured.

The Afghan-born US diplomat who is preparing to leave Afghanistan as President George W. Bush's special envoy and ambassador for a similar job in Iraq said the hunt for bin Laden continued.

"Well, I'm disappointed that he has not been captured," he told reporters in Kabul at a ceremony where he handed over books to the Afghan foreign ministry as part of a drive to promote American culture.

"But our military and intelligence are working very hard on this issue. Sooner or later he will be caught or he will be found dead," he said, without giving any dateline. "You know looking for one person in a vast area is not easy but eventually he will be found," he added.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terror, said Tuesday during a visit to Australia that bin Laden was alive and probably hiding somewhere in the rugged border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Three-and-half years after a US-led military offensive toppled the fundamentalist Taliban regime for sheltering bin Laden, the alleged architect of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington remains free as does the Taliban's fugitive leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

US military officials suspect that both men could be hiding along the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border, using territory on both sides of the border to elude arrest. Over 18,000 US-led soldiers are hunting militants from both groups in the restive south and east of Afghanistan.

Despite an arms-for-amnesty program offered by the Afghan government to the remnants of the Taliban an insurgency by the ousted militia still ongoing and hampered the reconstruction efforts in many parts of the war-torn country.

Khalilzad renewed his calls for rank and file Taliban guerrillas to lay down their arms and join the peace process. “The time has come for young Taliban to lay down their arms. Afghanistan needs reconciliation. Afghans should not let themselves be cannon fodder in the hands of the enemies," Khalilzad said.

Four US soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were wounded Tuesday by a roadside bomb in southeastern Ghazni province. The attack came a day after four other American soldiers were injured by a suicide car bomb in southern Kandahar less than two weeks after a suicide bomb attack at a mosque killed 21 people.

Seven including two senior Taliban figures freed

PESHAWAR, June 15 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Seven Afghan nationals including two senior Taliban members were released on Wednesday from the Peshawar Central Jail in compliance with a verdict of the Peshawar High Court (PHC).

Among those freed by orders of the top provincial court are Mullah Suleman, a famous commander of then Nangarhar governor Maulvi Kabir, and Mullah Yahya, administrative chief of Khewa and Darinoor districts, during the Taliban rule.

The court, while granting the bail applications of the Afghans arrested last year on suspicion of having links to Taliban, received bonds worth Rs200,000 from each of the seven men, a PHC official told this scribe.

A senior government functionary, requesting not to be named, said Mullah Yahya, Mullah Suleman, Qari Samiullah, Mirza Mohammad, Abdul Karim, Faizullah and Farooq Khan were handed over to the Khyber Agency political agent.

After meeting requisite formalities, the political agent would let them cross the border into Afghanistan, said the source, who was unwilling to give further details about the seven men.

Defence lawyer Javed Ibrahim Piracha confirmed the court, disposing of their petitions, had bailed out the accused. "Yes, I appeared in the high court on behalf of the Afghan prisoners, who were freed from the jail this morning."

A former member of Taliban movement confided to Pajhwok Afghan News Mullah Suleman was a front-line commander of Maulvi Kabir during the militia rule. He was based north of the Afghan capital.

Similarly, he claimed, Mullah Yahya was administrative head of Khewa and Dari Noor districts in the eastern Nangarhar province during the Taliban government, overthrown as a result of a sustained American military campaign in 2001.

Men carrying posters of Osama detained in Afghanistan – Xinhua 06/15/2005

KABUL - Afghan police have arrested four people including two women on charge of carrying arms, pamphlets and posters of al-Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden and former Prime Minister Gulbudin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan's southern province of Kandahar, a local newspaper reported Wednesday.

Police of Kandahar on Tuesday took into custody these four people, and discovered three Kalashnikoves, some letters and pictures of Bin Laden and Hekmatyar from their possession, daily Cheragh reported.

The arrest took place just one day after a powerful explosion in Kandahar city, the former stronghold of Taliban, in which, according to US military, four American soldiers got wounded.

Osama, the alleged mastermind of Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Hekmatyar, the leader of his own radical group Hizb-e-Islami or Islamic party, both wanted by the United States, according to officials have been moving in border areas between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

Both wanted men, and their ally, Taliban's chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has escaped the US man hunt, have been leading an insurgency against the US-dominated foreign troops in Afghanistan, the report said.

Bin Laden and his host Omar, according to a Taliban commander, are alive and conducting their activities in the region, according to Pakistan-based private television channel Geo report on Tuesday.

EU grants 11.5 million euros for Afghan polls

KABUL, June 14 (Reuters) - The European Union has granted 11.5 million euros to help hold parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in September.

An agreement signed with the U.N. Development Programme would bring the total funding for polls from the European Commission and member states to 34 million euros, a statement from the Commission said on Tuesday.

The Commission has allocated another four million euros for an Election Observation Mission which will begin work in July and deploy more than 100 observers in the provinces.

The Sept. 18 election is the next big step on Afghanistan's difficult path to stability but worries about security have mounted after a wave of clashes between Taliban insurgents and U.S.-led forces.

The Taliban failed in their vow to disrupt presidential elections held last October and won by U.S.-backed incumbent Hamid Karzai, but analysts say the risks to the more complex parliamentary polls are substantially higher.

In all, 2,884 people, 342 of them women, have signed up to run for the 249-seat lower house of parliament, known as the Wolesi Jirga. Provincial council elections will be held on the same day and 3,186 people have registered for them.

Study of Postwar Afghan Finds Improvements - By WILLIAM C. MANN, Associated Press / June 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - Afghans are praising changes in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 but think improvements are coming too slowly and for too few people, a study by a Washington think tank found.

It said reconstruction from the latest fighting and almost continual civil turmoil of the last decade of the 20th century is being hampered largely by corrupt and predatory local officials in President Hamid Karzai's government.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies said the study, "Voices of a New Afghanistan," released Tuesday, represented "an integrated method to measure progress in stabilization and reconstruction ... that draws heavily on ordinary citizens' perceptions of progress and where their country is heading."

It was based on 1,060 conversations that 12 Afghan researchers had April 16-28 with 1,609 Afghans in 20 of the country's 34 provinces. In retaliation for the Sept. 11, attacks, soldiers from the United States and other countries invaded in late 2001. With the cooperation of tribal militias in northern Afghanistan, it routed the ruling Taliban militia and the al-Qaida terror headquarters the Taliban had sheltered.

The study found that security remains a major problem, although it is crime rather than terror that is the most troublesome security problem. Kidnapping, robbery and murder were cited as most worrying.
"Taliban and al-Qaida are seen as less of a threat, and largely discredited," it said, although "people throughout the country fear that without the international military presence Afghanistan will erupt into violence."

As for governance, corruption among local and provincial officials keeps Afghans from trusting or relying on them, the report said. It said, however, "Afghans support the central government and equate it with President Karzai," even though criticism is widespread that the government has produced too few visible results.

Afghans still resort to existing traditional mechanisms for justice and accountability, but they "do not provide justice for many Afghans. Bribery and corruption are rampant in the formal justice sector. Individual rights are poorly understood and poorly protected, especially for women."

Economic opportunity for the average Afghan is weak. Illegal poppy growing provides livelihoods for some, "but a majority of Afghans believe poppy is bad for the development of their country." Corruption springs from inadequate salaries for government workers and the police forces.

Health care, education, services and infrastructure are improved in many communities, the study found, but significant gaps remain. "There is no clear consensus among Afghans ... about which needs are priorities," the report said. "Afghan expectations remain high."

Graft impeding Afghanistan's reconstruction: US survey - Agence France-Presse; 14 June 2005

Corruption has emerged as a major impediment to Afghanistan's
reconstruction efforts, according to a recent US-commissioned survey across
the war-ravaged nation.

Although Afghans support the central government of President Hamid Karzai,
they "do not trust or rely on local and provincial government due to widespread corruption," said the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which commissioned the poll in April.

The center's "Voices of a New Afghanistan" report, based on 1,609 interviews conducted by a dozen Afghan researchers, said "local warlords, particularly in the west, south, and east of Afghanistan, continue to flout the rule of law and undermine governance."

The CSIS, an independent public policy organization, said "the presence of
corruption and predatory local government officials is viewed as a major
impediment to progress in the reconstruction efforts."

Afghans viewed security as "a major concern" and "people throughout the country fear that without the international military presence, Afghanistan will erupt into violence," the center said in a statement.

Three years have passed since the Taliban regime was ousted by Afghan militias and US troops, but loyalists of the Islamic hardline regime continue to wage a violent guerrilla campaign against US and Afghan government targets.

An 18,000-strong coalition force led by the United States is hunting the militants. The CSIS survey also said there was "no functioning, formal justice system" in Afghanistan, adding that "individual rights are poorly understood and poorly protected, especially for women."

Reconstruction efforts had not succeeded in creating enough jobs for Afghans, it said. "Poppy growing provides a viable livelihood for some, but a majority of Afghans believe poppy growing is bad for the development of their country," the report said. Afghanistan is the world largest opium producer, accounting for almost 90 percent of the world's opium in 2004.

Afghan police chief arrested over aid-worker killings

KABUL, June 15 (AFP) - Afghan authorities have detained a police chief for questioning over the killing of five Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid workers one year ago, the government said Wednesday.

The head of police in Qadis district, in the northwestern province of Badghis, was held last week by the Afghan interior ministry, said the ministry's spokesman Lutfullah Mashal. "The police chief of Qadis district is a suspect of the murder of MSF staff and has been detained for questioning," Mashal told AFP.

Three foreign and two Afghan aid workers were killed in an apparently targeted attack in Badghis on June 2 last year. The attack was the worst on MSF staff in a quarter century of work in the troubled country.

Belgian project coordinator Helene de Beir, Norwegian doctor Egil Tynaes, Dutch logistician Willem Kwint, Afghan translator Fasil Ahmad and driver Besmillah died when their Toyota Landcruiser was hit by grenades and gunfire.

The following month the Nobel Prize-winning medical relief agency pulled out of Afghanistan after 24 years, citing poor security and the government's failure to launch a "credible" investigation into the killings.

The aid group said Afghan government investigators had evidence that local militia commanders were involved in the attack but did not detain or even publicly denounce them.

The charity was one of the biggest in Afghanistan, employing 1,400 Afghans and 80 volunteers in 13 provinces around the country. MSF, which in English means Doctors Without Borders, worked in Afghanistan throughout the Russian occupation, the ensuing civil war and even under the hardline Taliban regime.

Afghans catch Taliban wanted for cleric's murder - June 14, 2005

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan authorities have captured a Taliban regional commander wanted for the assassination of a leading anti-militant cleric last month, police said on Tuesday.

Haji Atiqullah was wounded and captured during a shootout in the southern city of Kandahar on Monday night after attempting to assassinate a local militia commander, a senior police officer in the city said.

Atiqullah, who was in charge of foreign relations in Kandahar during the Taliban's rule, was wanted for the assassination of Mawlavi Abdullah Fayaz, a prominent critic of the Taliban shot dead last month by gunmen riding on a motorcycle. Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi confirmed the arrest and said Atiqullah had been an important commander in Kandahar.

A local militia commander named Mandoi was wounded along with a bodyguard in the attack on Monday night in which Atiqullah opened fire on them from a motorcycle, the police said.

Authorities have accused the Taliban of being behind a suicide bombing of a mosque in Kandahar during a memorial service for Fayaz on June 1 which killed 20 people.

The Taliban have denied involvement in the attack, part of a surge in militant violence seen in the run-up to parliamentary elections due in September. Earlier on Tuesday, the U.S. military said U.S. and Afghan forces had killed two militants and detained 12 others after a clash north of Kandahar on Sunday.

On Monday, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a U.S. military vehicle near the city, killing himself and wounding four American soldiers, one seriously.

Goverment spokesman Jawed Ludin told a news briefing the attack on the Americans, which was claimed by the Taliban, was under investigation. He said the head of the suicide attacker had been found and from his appearance, he may have been a foreigner.

About 150 insurgents have been killed in violence this year, according to U.S. and Afghan government figures. Dozens of government security men have also died in the fighting, as well as 13 U.S. soldiers since March.

U.S.-led forces have been hunting the Taliban and their mainly foreign al Qaeda allies since overthrowing the Taliban in 2001 for sheltering al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. (Reporting by Mirwais Afghan in KANDAHAR and Yousuf Azimy and David Brunnstrom in KABUL)

Ahadi optimistic of customs revenue boost - Pajhwok Afghan News 06/14/2005 By Khalida Khursand

HERAT CITY — Finance Minister Anwarul Haq Ahadi said Tuesday the government hoped for increased custom revenues during the current fiscal year.

Ahadi's optimism stemmed from consistent government attempts at boosting border security to curb smuggling and combating corruption at all tiers. He argued that both security and graft elimination were central to jacking up state income.

Speaking to newsmen in the western city of Herat, the finance minister said: "We are in an all-out push to root out corruption at governmental level and improve security at borders."

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would train the Afghan police for secure the borders and preventing smuggling, with a view to lending stability to the country's economy.

He reckoned Herat custom's collections alone accounted for 50 percent of Afghanistan's total income under this head. The Customs Department in Herat generated up to 80 million dollar in income last year and this year's revenue is expected to be quadrupled.

Ahadi continued they were mulling a whole host of ways and means of increasing custom revenue. Having two transit ports in Islam Qala and Tor Ghundi, Herat borders Iran and Turkmenistan and thus has enormous significance in terms of customs income.

Kazakhstan ready to invest in Afghanistan - foreign minister - Kazakhstan Today news agency 06/15/2005

Kazakhstan is ready to invest in the Afghan economy, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev said at the international business conference in Almaty on 15 June, a Kazakhstan Today news agency correspondent has reported. "The Kazakh government is ready to send commercial organizations to and invest in Afghanistan," he said.

"From the economic viewpoint, we are ready to contribute to the restoration of that state and we have certain capabilities to do this," Tokayev said. He said that Kazakhstan "has already submitted a list of its proposals to the Afghan government". "Thus Kazakhstan has expressed its readiness to work in Afghanistan," the Kazakh foreign minister said.

Tokayev thinks that in order to stop drug smuggling from Afghanistan "all Central Asian partners have to unite". "On the whole, Afghanistan is the main issue that greatly concerns all the Central Asian countries," the minister said. At the same time, Tokayev said he was sure that "stability in the Central Asian region and Afghanistan will be achieved".

AFGHANISTAN: UN milestone in militia disarmament - [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

KABUL, 13 Jun 2005 (IRIN) - The disarmament demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants has passed a significant milestone, the UN announced on Monday, the programme having processed a total of 60,000 former Afghan militia force members.

The DDR, which started in November 2003, has so far cost the international community more than US $100 million and is considered a major step towards restoring national security and creating an enabling environment for further security sector reform.

According to the Afghanistan New Beginning Programme, the official name of DDR, the project has processed more than 60,000 people, but will come to and end on 28 June.

While there are another two weeks before the process ends, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said there were still military personnel from the Afghan forces needing to disarm.

“We think it won’t be more than 70,000 people who will have been disarmed by the end of June,” Ariane Quentier, a spokeswoman for UNAMA, said in the capital, Kabul, on Monday. She added the UN still had problems with militia groups like division one (01) in the northern Panjshir valley, which still needed to be disbanded.

“The problem is division one. We still have no compliance. We are in [the] negotiating process right now and we are hopeful and optimistic that by 28 of June we will have completed the process of disarmament and demobilisation [of all militias], including division one,” she noted.

The completion of militia disarmament coincides with the launch of a new Afghan government-led security initiative: the disbanding of illegal armed groups - still a huge security headache - known as DIAG.

On Saturday, Kabul ordered more than 1,000 illegal armed groups around the country to hand over their guns as the nation prepares for parliamentary elections. Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said the authorities knew many of the armed groups and they could not hide their arms.

“The first round of DIAG will address candidates with links to armed groups, the second phase would address the groups who voluntarily give up their arms and in the third phase we will use all our means to make them dismantle [their structures],” Wardak told IRIN following the launch of DIAG in Kabul.

The groups are still seen as a threat to stability more than three years after a US-led Coaition overthrew the Taliban government. There are also fears gunmen could intimidate voters in the 18 September parliamentary elections. Candidates for the 249-seat lower house of parliament are forbidden to belong to armed groups.

The new drive, which is being financed by international donors, is expected to take up to three years to complete, according to defence ministry officials.

UN prepares Afghans to return from Pakistan's troubled border area
U.N. News Service; 14 June 2005

14 June 2005 - The United Nations refugee agency is set to begin issuing repatriation documents to Afghans in refugee camps in a Pakistani border area, following a registration process that showed an overwhelming majority of the residents there wish to return to their homeland.

Teams of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had visited the camps in the troubled border region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas last week after a Pakistani announcement that all the refugee camps in North Waziristan would close at the end of June.

"The mission to North Waziristan by the UNHCR teams went very smoothly and some 83 percent of all the families in the camps opted to repatriate, which is very encouraging," said Indrika Ratwatte, head of repatriation for the UNHCR in Pakistan.

Afghans in the camps were offered a choice of returning to Afghanistan under UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme or relocating to an existing site elsewhere in Pakistan that will be announced later this month by the Government.

The final count showed that 6,471 families were interviewed, with 5,343 choosing to repatriate and 1,128 deciding to relocate. Families average about six members each.

More than 2.4 million Afghan refugees have returned from Pakistan since the agency began a voluntary repatriation programme in 2002, following the fall of the Taliban regime, making it the largest repatriation operation in the world.

Under the programme, each returning Afghan receives a cash grant for transport assistance ranging from $3 to $30 per person, depending on the destination. They are also provided with a cash grant of $12 for resettlement needs.

Afghanistan to compensate consulate damage: Pakistan - Islamabad, June 13, IRNA

The Afghan government has agreed to provide compensation for the damages to Pakistan's consulate in Jalalabad, an official said on Monday. "The Afghanistan government has already expressed regrets and agreed to provide compensation of the damages to the consulate," Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Jalil Abbas Jilani told reporters in Islamabad.

"It has also promised to provide temporary alternate accommodation for the consulate," he added. The mission was torched during riots by angry mobs who protested desecration of Holy Qur'an by US military in Guantanamo detention center.

Afghan farmers threaten to return to poppy cultivation

KABUL, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Farmers in Afghanistan's northeastern province of Badakhshan have threatened to resume poppy cultivation if not provided with an alternative source of living, a newspaper report said Tuesday.

Pleading their case, the farmers argued they did not grow poppy this year in compliance with a government decree but were not given any recompense. But they would restart growing the crop if the government dose not honor its promise to give them improved seeds and jobs, Outlook reported.

But provincial security officials, arguing the compensation issue concerns the central government, said under no circumstances would the growers be allowed to return to poppy cultivation.

A 40-year-old farmer Abdul Hafiz of the Baharak district said he sowed wheat on five acres of land last year, and if he could not be assisted with what the government had promised, even his wives would come out to cultivate poppy.

Engineer Mohammad Hassan, head of the agriculture department, confirmed the government has yet to help the growers. He said security forces had destroyed 1,700 acres of poppy crop in Jurm, Baharak and Argo districts.

The crop would be destroyed in the remaining districts as well, the newspaper quoted him as saying, and 30 percent of the eradication work had already been done in this fourth largest poppy-growing Badakhshan province.

Afghanistan with an output of 3,600 tons of opium in 2003, became the largest producer of raw material used in manufacturing heroin in the world, and it secured the same position in 2004 as more farmers devoted most of their lands for poppy cultivation.

After a UN warning in 2004 that Afghanistan might become a narco-state producing 87 percent of the world's opium, the government announced that 2005 would be observed as the year of poppy eradication. Under a strategy launched in May 2003, Afghanistan has planed to reduce drug production by 75 percent by 2008.

Priceless Carpets Stolen in Afghanistan - Associated Press; 15 June 2005
By AMIR SHAH

Three large carpets were stolen from an ancient Afghan mosque by thieves who came in the middle of the night and replaced them with cheap imitations, a local police chief said Wednesday.

The carpets, each made in the early 1900s specifically for the centuries-old Khawaja Abu Nasr Parsa mosque in northern Balkh province, were spirited away late Monday, said police chief Mir Hamza. Each of the carpets was about 30-feet long and richly woven in a deep red.

"It is the first time anything has ever been stolen from the mosque," said Hamza. "The first time we have seen looting in God's house. This is a very sad time for the people of Balkh."

The mosque is believed to be one of the oldest in Afghanistan, though its exact age is not entirely clear. It is a popular attraction for Afghan travelers and even some foreigners.

Hamza said authorities believe more than one person was involved in the heist, since the carpets were too big and heavy to be carried by a single man. There was no sign of a forced entry, so the criminals must have had a key or picked the lock, the police chief said.

Hamza said the only people with keys to the mosque are the chief cleric, his assistant and a security guard, but none of them were at the building when the theft allegedly occurred.

When the cleric's assistant arrived early Tuesday morning to prepare the mosque for prayers, he noticed a switch had been made. The carpets, which Hamza said were priceless, had been replaced by newer Iranian carpets worth only about $300 each.

Hamza said he had informed all the carpet and antique shops in the province that they should inform authorities should anybody try to sell the stolen goods.

"I told everybody that this is God's property and it must be returned,"
Hamza said. Looting of Afghan antiquities is considered a growing problem, and many items are believed to have been spirited abroad.

Pakistani Islamic teaching tradition tested by new school of thought The Financial Times (UK) By Farhan Bokhari / Published: June 14, 2005

Schools in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province broke up yesterday for a 10-week summer holiday. However, for thousands of boys aged five and upwards attending Islamic religious schools known as madrassah there will be no break. They will continue their studies of the Koran, learning about the lifestyle of the prophet Mohammed and the tenets of Sharialaw.

Traditionally, this is the moment in the year when some of these boys would have left Pakistan to complete their education. This often meant going across the border into Afghanistan for firearms training with the Taliban in preparation for jihad, or holy war. Such opportunities have all but gone with Pakistan's decision to back the US-led "war on terror" and improve relations with India over the disputed Kashmir region.

That gap has left many students wondering exactly how they would use their time this summer. It has also left Pakistan, whose previous support of the Taliban provided something of a pressure valve for Islamic militancy inside its own borders, wondering what the consequences will be if it fails to integrate the madrassah students into mainstream life.

While the 9/11 terrorist attacks prompted General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military ruler, swiftly to turn his back on the Taliban, the network of madrassah suspected by western intelligence officials to be at the centre of Islamic militancy remains intact. Their sources of funding range from donations from wealthy Muslim sponsors to returns from past investments made by their managements.

According to western intelligence estimates, there are between 7,000 and 10,000 large and small madrassah located across Pakistan - half of them in the North West Frontier Province alone. More disconcerting was their conclusion that many such students used Afghanistan as a springboard to head towards other locations with active insurgencies involving Islamic militants. "I spent three summers in Afghanistan," recalls Umar Khatab Khan, a 26-year-old shopkeeper in Peshawar, showing scars from shrapnel on his left leg received in a skirmish while fighting for the Taliban in 2001.

Mr Khan's story is typical of how many others inducted themselves first in a madrassah where Islamic teachings armed them with the ideology that taught them the virtues of jihad. Like most of his compatriots, Mr Khan's parents were too poor to send him to a regular school. A madrassah education, which came for free thanks to funds from affluent donors such as wealthy Arabs, was the obvious choice.
"When I was 13, I decided one summer to travel to Afghanistan with an Afghan boy," remembers Mr Khan. Once across the border, Mr Khan's friend introduced him to a Taliban commander who recruited him in a group of newly inducted teenage fighters.

"We would rise before sunrise and head out to a training ground for two hours of rifle training." Former fighters such as Mr Khan found themselves sent to battle, just weeks after their training began, to fight alongside regular Taliban troops assigned to crush uprisings in northern Afghanistan.

Estimates vary on the number of students educated at madrassah. Some intelligence officials believe there are no more than 100,000. Others say there could be as many as 1m.

A western official warned: "This is an unresolved problem which poses a continuing security threat to Pakistan. These guys can return to militant causes if new opportunities come up, especially because coming out of a madrassah gives them few opportunities for mainstream careers".

The madrassah was like a "college of ideology, and the battlefield worked as a practical field", says Khalid Usman Khattak, a 20-year-old carpet weaver who claims to have left a Taliban unit just a week before the New York terrorist attacks. The Pakistani government has said repeatedly it wants madrassah institutions to embrace mainstream subjects such as maths and science in addition to Islamic ones.

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