Karzai inaugurates road into anti-Taliban stronghold disgruntled at slow reconstruction - By TOMAS MUNITA

CHARIKAR, Afghanistan (AP)  President Hamid Karzai initiated the repair Monday of a road into a famed anti-Taliban stronghold, a belated gesture toward an impoverished region which voted massively against his U.S.-backed government.

Karzai inaugurated the U.S.-funded resurfacing of the 70-kilometer (45 mile) road into the Panjshir Valley, whose inhabitants defied Soviet occupiers in the 1980s as well as the Taliban and have been reluctant to disarm.

``I've been waiting for this moment for a long time,'' Karzai told more than 100 elders from the valley and neighboring provinces at a ceremony in a wheat field next to the road. ``God will help us to carry out this kind of project all over the country.''

Donors including the United States and the World Bank are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars (euros) into road reconstruction in an effort to reopen historic trade lanes between South and Central Asia and bolster the devastated Afghan economy. but progress has been slow and most secondary roads are still in appalling condition, more than three years after Western leaders promised that the fall of the Taliban marked the beginning of Afghanistan's recovery.

The Panjshir and neighboring provinces north of the capital, Kabul, were a stronghold of the Northern Alliance factions which helped American forces drive out the Taliban in late 2001. Ethnic Tajiks from the Panjshir dominated Karzai's first interim government, despite the assassination of their leader, Ahmad Shah Massood, on Sept. 9, 2001, by suspected al-Qaida suicide attackers.

But Karzai dumped former Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, Massood's heir, as his running mate before presidential elections last year and more than 90 percent of the votes in Panjshir went to another Panjshiri, Yunus Qanooni, who finished second.

Other signs of mistrust have been the reluctance of militia commanders in the area to disarm  the last tanks were brought out of the valley earlier this month  and local leaders complain that aid projects have passed them by.

Cold exposes Afghanistan's broken promises - By Ahmed Rashid – BBC 3/13/2005

The winter weather death toll in Afghanistan has exposed the country's acute lack of infrastructure, writes journalist Ahmed Rashid in his latest guest column for the BBC News website.

More than 600 people, many of them children, have died in a prolonged bout of bad winter weather in Afghanistan that has included unprecedented snowfall, heavy rain and below freezing temperatures.

In some eastern provinces ravenous wolves have been attacking equally hungry children. The United Nations is just short of declaring "a humanitarian crisis" for Afghanistan. Yet the deaths and suffering and last month's air crash near Kabul are as much to do with the still chronically slow progress in rebuilding the country's destroyed infrastructure as the weather.

With no roads or other communications it has taken more than a month for aid workers or Western military units to reach some snowbound villages in western and north-eastern Afghanistan, where the majority of deaths have occurred. Afghans are still paying with their lives for the failure of the international community to fulfil its many promises to help rebuild the country.

Flood warning - There has been no lack of response to the foul weather affecting 14 of the country's 34 provinces. More than 400,000 people have received food and other aid from the Afghan government, US-led coalition forces, Nato peacekeeping forces, UN agencies and Afghan and Western non-governmental organisations.

But they face the problem of how to get to them when snowfall has blocked mountain passes, avalanches have cut off villages, the few dirt track roads are impassable and there are no telephones to warn of impending disasters.

Even in Kabul's premier Indira Gandhi hospital, children in incubators and on respirators live or die depending on whether there are power cuts to the hospital. Heating is non-existent and at times the temperature in the hospital has dropped to minus 10 degrees Celsius.

Many of the districts have no functioning hospitals and local clinics are devoid of medicines. Now, in the first week of March, the World Food Programme has warned of unprecedented floods as the snow melts in the spring.

Nearly three and half years after the war that defeated the Taleban and despite the remarkable political progress Afghanistan has made, the lack of infrastructure continues to haunt this country.

New roads, power stations, water supplies and investment in agriculture which the majority of the population depend on, are still missing. Only one section - Kabul to Kandahar - of the national highway programme has been completed.

No new power station has been built and only an estimated 6% of Afghans receive any regular electricity. The lack of clean drinking water, especially after six years of drought, causes disease and early death.

What else has been done to rebuild the infrastructure has been patchwork at best - a generator here, a water tap there or a bulldozer flattening a dirt track road. The Kam Air crash last month that killed 104 passengers and crew on a flight from Herat to Kabul was only partially a result of bad weather.

Kabul airport has no radar and there is no up-to-standard modern airport in the country, even though thousands of Western military aircraft safely land at their military bases in Afghanistan every year. Afghanistan needs new airports as much as it needs tarred roads.

The money is there but the projects are not, due to bureaucratic bottlenecks that paralyse major aid donors such as the European Union, the US and the World Bank. The international community pledged $13.4bn at the Tokyo and Berlin reconstruction conferences for the five years starting December 2001.

This despite a needs assessment by the Afghan government of $27bn. Yet, according to the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University, until last month only $3.9bn had been given out for reconstruction projects.

Of that only $900m worth of projects has actually been completed. In comparison Iraq is receiving many times what Afghanistan is getting in funds for reconstruction. The kind of effort the US-led coalition has put into rebuilding the power grid in Baghdad has never been seen in Kabul.

'Sense of pessimism” - In the meantime the lack of investment in Afghan agriculture has led to farmers growing opium poppies, which has led to drugs generating as much as $6.8bn in income between 2002 and 2004. Drugs now account for 60% of the economy, but you cannot blame the farmers when they have nothing else to turn to in order to feed their families.

''Our team found the overwhelming majority of people hold a sense of pessimism and fear that reconstruction is bypassing them,'' says Daud Saba, one of the authors of a new UN Development Programme (UNDP) report on Afghanistan. The report ranks the country 173 out of 178 countries in development indices.

There has been rapid progress in many fields such as health and education and five million children have gone back to school. Yet the UNDP report states Afghanistan still has ''the worst education system in the world'' and it is the world leader in infant deaths, while one woman dies in pregnancy every 30 minutes.

Life expectancy for Afghans is still only 44 years - that is 20 years less than any of its neighbours. Nothing can restore Afghanistan's political unity, social viability and provide self-sustaining economic development until it has acquired at least that minimum basic infrastructure that was present in 1979 before the Soviet invasion.

Foreign donors need to take up whole projects like building new power stations and roads, cutting through their own and the Afghan government's red tape and building in a hurry. They need to put their money where their mouth is, stop promising reconstruction and actually start delivering on it.

Without this a rain or snowstorm - normal events for a people who have lived with extremes of weather for centuries - will continue to extract the lives of Afghan children and feed hungry wolves.

Aid distributed to flood victims in northern Afghanistan

KABUL, Mar. 13 (Pajhwok Afghan News) -- A joint delegation of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA), UN Children Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP) has started distributing foodstuff and other materials to over 1,000 families affected by the recent flash floods in Nimruz and Farah province.

Manoel de Almedia e Silva, a spokesman for the UNAMA in Kabul, told journalists on Sunday that 300 families living in Zaranj district, 400 in Chakhansor and the same number in Kang district, and a primary school were most affected.

He said the WFP was in charge of the distribution of food and UNICEF distributed tents. Silva added that the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Afghan Red Crescent Society have already distributed 360 blankets and 90 tents.

The UN workers and provincial emergency forces have visited Purchaman and Shaib Koh districts of Farah and classified them as high-priority. In addition, he said the ICRC office in Herat had offered to distribute 200 tents, 500 plastic sheets and 300 cooking utensils to those who suffered losses in these two districts.

US-led forces to pull out of western Afghanistan: commander

KABUL, March 14 (AFP) - The US-led military will pull out its troops from western Afghanistan this summer and move them to the restive south and east to tackle Taliban militants, a US commander said Monday. NATO-led peacekeepers who arrived early this month will then take over the American operations in the west, said Colonel Phillip Bookert, commander of coalition forces in western Afghanistan.

"I think I'm handing over a very stable situation," the colonel told reporters in Kabul, adding that the new locations for the US troops had not yet been decided. Washington has strongly pressed for the 8,300-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to expand into Afghanistan's remote and rugged west in a bid to reduce pressure on stretched American forces in Iraq and worldwide.

An initial deployment of Italian troops started to arrive on March 2 in the main western city of Herat, where they will later be joined by soldiers from Spain, Greece and Lithuania. Bookert's 2,400-strong force, which includes soldiers from Afghanistan's new national army, will hand over of reconstruction teams working in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Ghor and Badghis. All except Ghor border Iran in the west.

One team, in Farah province, will remain under the control of US forces, the colonel said. The US-dominated coalition has more than 18,000 soldiers who are hunting down Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants since it toppled the ultra-Islamic regime at the end of 2001.

ISAF has been deployed in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate for the same period of time, but only came under full NATO command in 2003. Until now its troops have been deployed in the Afghan capital Kabul and the north of the country. In February NATO defence ministers agreed at a meeting in Nice, France, to move its rebuilding efforts into the west.

Human Rights Concerns for the 61st Session of the U.N. Commission - Human Rights Watch
03/13/2005

Objective  - The Commission on Human Rights should call on the Afghan government to speed up the process of disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating illegal militia forces: to increase efforts to establish a functioning judicial system and professional police force; to increase efforts to provide education and employment to girls and women and provide the security necessary for them to participate in economic, cultural, and political activity; to take steps to ensure accountability for human rights abuses; and to cooperate fully with the United Nations human rights mechanisms.

Background - Despite some improvements, Afghanistan continued to suffer from serious instability in 2004. Warlords and armed factions, including remaining Taliban forces, dominate most of the country and routinely abuse human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. The international community has failed to contribute sufficient troops or resources to adequately address the situation, and basic human rights conditions remain poor in many parts of the country, especially outside of Kabul.  

The Elections. Progress was made in stabilizing Afghanistan's system of governance. Afghans began exercising their right to participate in the political process by approving a new constitution in January 2004, and elected Hamid Karzai to a five-year term as president in a generally peaceful election in October—the country's first universal suffrage, direct vote for the presidency. Afghans, including notable numbers of women, participated widely in both processes, but the legitimacy of both processes suffered due to inadequate election assistance from the international community and insufficient security and monitoring.  

The Role of Warlords. The marginalization of two major warlords—Marshall Fahim, the former first vice president and defense minister, and Ismail Khan, self-styled Emir of Herat—have raised hopes that President Karzai and the international community have begun to reverse their policy of relying on warlords to provide security.  

However, several key warlords remain in positions of influence. Political repression, human rights abuses, and criminal activity by warlords—the leaders of militias and remnants of past Afghan military forces, who took power with the assistance of the United States after the Taliban's defeat—are still consistently listed as the chief concerns of most Afghans. Local military and police forces, even in Kabul, have been involved in arbitrary arrests, kidnapping, extortion, torture, and extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects. Outside Kabul, warlords and their troops in many areas have been implicated in widespread rape of women and children, murder, illegal detention, forced displacement, human trafficking and forced marriage. Warlords and their troops have seized property from families and levied illegal per capita "taxes" (paid in cash or with food or goods) from local populations. In some remote areas, there are no real governmental structures or activity, only abuse and criminal enterprises by factions.  

Afghanistan was the largest worldwide producer of opium and heroin in 2004. Drug profits led to continuing insecurity in rural areas, and stifled reconstruction and development efforts, including efforts to improve rule of law.  

The Rights of Women. Women and girls continue to suffer the worst effects of Afghanistan's insecurity. Conditions are better than under the Taliban, but women and girls continue to face severe discrimination, and are struggling to take part in the political life of their country. Women who organize politically or criticize local rulers still face threats and violence. Soldiers and police routinely harass women and girls, even in Kabul city. Many women and girls continue to fear leaving their homes without wearing a burqa.  

The government of Hamid Karzai has continued to struggle to address Afghanistan's security and human rights problems, and efforts to build a new Afghan army, and a trained and professional police force, are behind schedule.  

U.N. member states have lagged in their efforts to provide an underlying security framework for reconstruction in Afghanistan, which has made it difficult for the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) to carry out many parts of its mandate, including human rights monitoring. In addition UNAMA has often limited its criticisms of Afghan warlords and its efforts to monitor human rights and security. Today, there is little detailed and comprehensive human rights reporting being conducted by the international community in Afghanistan, except by NGOs.  

The U.N.-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is still mostly limited to Kabul city, though it has now expanded several small teams in northern and western areas.  

Recommendations  

The Commission on Human Rights should call on the Afghan government to:  

• Speed up its efforts to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate illegal militia forces, and work toward improving its police forces and judicial system;  
• Provide support for efforts to design and implement systems of accountability to address Afghanistan's past record of war crimes and serious human rights abuses;  
• Increase its efforts to provide security as well as material and political support necessary to integrate girls and women more fully into the country's economic, political, and cultural life;  
• Respond promptly to informational inquiries from U.N. Rapporteurs and their requests to be invited to Afghanistan.  

  The Commission should request UNAMA to work to:  

• Increase the number of human rights monitors in the country and deploy more of them to regional centers where they can more robustly monitor human rights abuses;  
• Publish appropriately critical reports on human rights conditions in the country, identifying warlords and other leaders who are implicated in serious abuses.  

 
The Commission should request the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a key member of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, to:  

• Immediately expand its operations so as to provide much-needed security to the western, southern, and southeastern areas of Afghanistan;  
• Immediately amend its mandate to assume greater responsibility for the protection of human rights.

Afghan President Karzai approves appointment of new deputy ministers - Afghanistan Television
03/13/2005

Kabul -  At the proposal of the Martyrs and Disabled Ministry and approval of the president [Hamed Karzai], Wakil Baz Mohammad Zormati has been appointed as deputy minister in charge of martyrs affairs, Sayed Mohammad Hadi Hadi as deputy minister in charge of the disabled affairs, and Najib Fahim as deputy minister in charge of financial and administrative affairs.

According to another report, at the proposal of the Transport Ministry and approval of the president, Raz Mohammad Elmi has been appointed as deputy transport minister in charge of technical and operational affairs, Sayed Ahmad Rubin as deputy minister in charge of administrative affairs and Mohammad Hashem Waezzada as deputy minister in charge of policy.

At the proposal of the Economy Ministry, Dr Nazir Ahmad Shahidi has been appointed as deputy minister in charge of professional affairs and Abdorrashid Fakhri as deputy minister in charge of statistics.

At the proposal of the Communications Ministry and approval of the president, Engineer Hamidollah Qalandari has been appointed as deputy transport minister.

At the proposal of the Rural Development Ministry and approval of the president, Mohammad Ehsan Zia has been appointed as deputy minister in charge of programmes, Engineer Raz Mohammad has been appointed as deputy minister in charge of financial and administrative affairs, Dr Hasan Elahi has been appointed as deputy minister in charge of capacity development and Mohammad Naim Nazari has been appointed as advisor to the Rural Development Ministry on legal affairs. BBC Reporting

Pakistan hands over frequency modulation transmitters to Afghanistan - Pakistan Link

ISLAMABAD Mar 13 : Pakistan has handed over indigenously developed two frequency modulation (FM) transmitters to Afghanistan which would be installed in the cities of brotherly country by the Pakistani engineers.

Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who was the chief guest on the occasion, said Pakistan and Afghanistan enjoy brotherly relations, which were furthering with the passage of time. He said those transmitters were a gift from the people of Pakistan to their Afghan brothers and that would help draw them further closer.

Secretary Information Shahid Rafi, Director General Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) Tarique Imam and senior officers of PBC also attended the ceremony.

Ambassador of Afghanistan Dr Nanguyalai Tarzi thanked the government and people of Pakistan on this gesture and said that would go a long way to help strengthen the bilateral ties, especially, in the media sector. He acknowledged the role of Pakistan in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. In the business and trade sector, he said efforts were in the offing to carry forward bilateral trade volume up to dollar one billion per annum.

PBC director general Tarique Imam, in a brief chat with media-men, said Pakistani engineers in the cities of Afghanistan would install those transmitters. He said one of the transmitters was of 5 MW while another of 2 MW with the coverage range of 60 to 70 square kilometers. Similar transmitter, which have been given to Afghanistan, was imported by PBC some time back at a cost of around Rs 6 million.

Afghanistan will be able to produce 25% of the world’s morphine

KABUL, March 13 (Pajhowk Afghan News) -- The head of the counter narcotics ministry, Habibullah Qaderi says Afghanistan is capable of producing 25% of the morphine used by the world form its poppies, but he is not sure about legalizing the cultivation of the plant.

The suggestion to make poppy legal and use it for producing morphine in Afghanistan was proposed by a French NGO, Senlis at a conference in Vienna. The conference held on the 7th of March, represented by 56 countries was attended by the minister of counter-narcotics Habibullah Qaderi.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News on the 12th of March, Qaderi said:“If the proposal benefits the world and Afghanistan, we are prepared to go ahead but it ultimately depends on the outcome of the research we carry out.”

According to Qaderi, the world needs 100,000 tons of morphine each year and half of that is used as a painkiller for heart and kidney patients. For the time being, Canada, Australia, Turkey, India, Austria and other countries have permission to grow poppy legally for morphine production.

Japan to offer 111 million yen to shore up Afghan police - March 11, 2005

(Kyodo) _ Japan will offer Afghanistan 111 million yen ($1.06 million) so its government can reinforce the police force in Mazar-e-Sharif, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said Friday. Japan has earmarked the money for buying police vehicles and communications equipment.

The aid is aimed at improving the security situation in the northern Afghan city as more and more people from outside Afghanistan are expected to enter the city to engage in reconstruction assistance to the region, the Japanese ministry said.

Afghan Education Program Will Provide Schools for 500,000 Girls - Paul Tighe

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan is undertaking an education program to provide schooling this year for 500,000 girls who were prevented from attending schools under the Taliban regime, the United Nations children's organization said.

``Unicef and the Afghan government estimate that more than 1 million primary school age girls are still not enrolled in classes across the country,'' Edward Carwardine, a Unicef spokesman, told a briefing yesterday in the Afghan capital, Kabul. ``In five provinces, at least 90 percent of school age girls are not attending school.'' The $19 million program will provide training for 25,000 primary grade teachers and materials for 4 1/2 million children, Carwardine said, according to the UN Web site.

The Taliban militia's interpretation of Islamic law kept women out of society, included banning them from working and girls from getting an education. President Hamid Karzai, whose government took over when the Taliban were ousted in 2001, earlier this month appointed Afghanistan's first female provincial governor, Agence France-Presse reported at the time.

Afghanistan will need to build at least 5,000 schools over the next three years to cope with new students, Carwardine said. The education program will create community-based schools in villages where there are no school buildings, he said. ``The biggest obstacle for girls getting to school is the distance between their homes and the nearest school room,'' Carwardine said. ``We are trying to improve the access for girls getting to school.''

Unicef and Afghanistan's government will begin an information program tomorrow aimed at promoting education for girls among the Afghan people. The campaign ``is about getting the message across that it is a source of great pride for an Afghan family to have educated daughters,'' Carwardine said. ``The text of the holy Quran says it is the duty of every good Muslim to seek knowledge.''

Afghanistan's move to democracy began with October's first direct presidential election, won by Karzai, 46, who took 55.5 percent of the vote. Plans to hold parliamentary and local elections between April 21 and May 21 have been delayed because voting districts still have to be settled in the country. The polls are scheduled to take place later this year.

Afghan Army Receives First Shipment of Light Tactical Vehicles - Source: Defenselink.mil American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 12, 2005 – The first shipment of Ford Ranger light tactical vehicles for the Afghan National Army recently arrived at the supply depot in Kabul, Afghanistan. The delivery of 83 brand-new, 4x4 double-cab pickup trucks, produced by RM Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, was only the start of an anticipated total of 5,160 vehicles scheduled for delivery to the ANA over the next 18 months, officials said.

Shipped by U.S. Defense Transportation System carrier American President Lines, they will be distributed to the ANA to provide critical transportation for troops and cargo. “This was a significant step in meeting the ANA’s need for tactical vehicles,” said Defense Resource Sector program manager U.S. Air Force Maj. Lynnane George, of the Office of Military Cooperation Afghanistan. “Along with the need to rebuild the ANA, came a need to provide transportation for troops, so fielding the vehicles became a top priority.”

A family of light tactical vehicles was needed to perform a variety of missions -- including emergency medical transport, transportation for material and troops, and field vehicle-repair capability. The U.S. Army’s Tank-automotive and Armaments Command in Warren, Mich., awarded the first contract for 583 trucks on Dec. 30. The same day, a second contract for an additional 400 vehicles was awarded.

These first 983 vehicles are 2.5-Turbo diesel crew-cab pickup trucks, which will meet the ANA’s need for cargo vehicles. Delivery of the remaining 900 trucks is expected in the spring. These agile vehicles are dubbed “severe off-road vehicles” and are fitted with extra-heavy suspension systems, enabling them to better survive the harsh terrain and extreme conditions found in Afghanistan. Each truck also arrives complete with two years of spare parts and manufacturer-recommended maintenance.

"OMC-A, the TACOM offices and the Ford Motor Company worked closely together to tailor the SORV Ranger for the Afghan National Army,” said Len Delunas, regional manager for RM Asia. “The next steps will see Ford’s SORV Ranger platform extended to meet a wide range of specialized operational needs."

Delunas said the vehicle fleet will consist of a total of five variants, including cargo, emergency response, personnel/tactical and personnel/command trucks, as well as maintenance vans. At an anticipated delivery rate of about 415 vehicles per month, the ANA’s projected fielding requirements should be met by April 2006. (From an Office of Military Cooperation Afghanistan news release. Air Force Maj. Lynnane George contributed to this report.)

Defence ministry in Kabul increase license checks following British national's murder

Kabul, Pajhwok Afghan News. 13 March -- The national defence ministry in the capital Kabul says they have seized 4 guns and 100 cars without license plates since the 12th of March, following the recent murder of a British national Steve Blair MacQueen in central Kabul, a consultant working for the ministry of rural rehabilitation (MRRD).

Police say they have reason to believe that such murders are carried out by vehicle owners without licenses and some who claim to work for the government. Col. Abdul Satar, the head of the 717th urban brigade speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News said: "We took control of all crossroads of Kabul on March 12, to prevent acts of insecurity after an order from the defence ministry."

He says they have arrested several people in the past two days who used government vehicles and carried weapons inside them without authorization. Police dealing with the case say they arrested some men who were travelling around in vehicles with tinted glass, but released them on bail. The national security directorate, the defence ministry and the Kabul police are to introduce stricter license and identity checks to catch people, who under false pretences claim to work for the Afghan government.

Col. Abdul Satar claimed that they had stopped a car from the counter-narcotics department belonging to Gen. Daud’s office recently. He said they had seized a gun from a vehicle belonging to the counter-terrorism department of the interior ministry, which did not have number plates.

A bodyguard working for Gen Daud, who did not want to give his name rejected the claim and said: "General Daud has two white cars and no body has yet put tinted film on his cars." An official at the counter-narcotics department of the interior ministry on condition of anonymity confirmed the seizure of the gun but said the owner had left the license at the office.

The stringent checks on motor vehicles with tinted black glass has resumed again after three months, when the ministry of defence in a press release had demanded that only the minister of defence, chief of army staff and the first deputy defence minister were authorized to have tinted glass windows on their vehicles.

Mr Jalali, "No problem is solved by ineffective measures" – Rozgaran 03/13/2005

Kabul - At the centre of political change in Afghanistan, Kabul has witnessed coups and uprisings, massacres and bloodshed, political movements and clashes, and finally, flying rockets, destruction and misery for many years. Over the past three years, with the huge and relentless influx of people into the war-ravaged city, Kabul has been once again looted by unruly and powerful people. The mushrooming of high-rise buildings on the one hand, and the rage of poverty, oppression and misery on the other, show that the capital, as an exemplary Afghan city, is grappling with oppression and injustice.

The crime rate has risen so much that a lot of prosecutors are needed to investigate. Poverty and police corruption are the main reasons for this. It is said that the murderers and burglars always commit their crimes wearing police uniforms.

The interior minister has reassigned the heads of the police stations in Kabul to prevent the rise in crime, which has disgraced the government. The minister said: If the new appointees do not act sincerely, serious measures will be taken against them. How can we guarantee that the head of a district, who has been collaborating with criminals in his first district, will not do so in the new one? The aim of such ineffective measures is to silence the people, not soothe their pain. The people are the only ones who pay the price for such vain efforts, empty promises and trial-and- error approach.

The interior minister should take fundamental measures to restore security, in Kabul at least. Fundamental changes should be made in the police force. Many police officials have established such strong ties [with criminals] that cutting them off from power may require more sacrifices from the government. If senior interior ministry officials, including Mr Jalali, really want to free Kabul from organized crime, they should make such sacrifices, stand firm and embark on fundamental reforms. Otherwise, such vain efforts will not solve any problem. BBC Reporting

Kabul and security challenges – Anis 03/13/2005

Kabul - The Afghan people believe that the killing of [Steven MacQueen], a British advisor to the Ministry of Rural Development, is heinous and inhumane. Such acts are always committed by criminal and violent extremist groups. These groups are used to committing inhumane crimes.

These incidents are happening in Kabul city and its suburbs at a time when Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali says that the crime rate in Kabul has been falling. He said that over the past three months, the crime rate had fallen by 38 per cent in Kabul, and 60 per cent in the provinces. But he admitted that he is worried about the recent increase in security problems in different parts of Afghanistan. He also pointed out the efforts made by the government to reform the police and other disciplinary organizations. He used the sacking of a number of heads of police stations and the appointment of new ones as an example [to illustrate his point].

On hearing the recent remarks of the interior minister, the people wonder how the sworn enemies of Afghanistan are still able to carry out such crimes, even in Kabul. According to security experts and the interior minister himself, such problems arise because gunmen and former armed groups are still active.

Kabul is still facing a serious security challenge. And serious and coordinated measures should be taken to prevent any repetition of such cases. This goal can be achieved by reforms in security. Our society is in serious need of security. BBC Reporting

It is enough to complain one time, if somebody is there to listen - Kabul Weekly 03/13/2005 Dear President! If this is the promised cabinet, we prefer it did not exist

Positive and tangible changes were expected in ministries and other government departments when the elected president formed a government. But the government's performance over the past three months has not met the people's expectations. Not only have a number of ministries failed to even maintain the standards of the transitional government, but they have proven incapable of undertaking [routine] duties. This is unacceptable.

Over the last weeks, the security situation has so deteriorated that even the houses of the defence minister and some other government officials have been burgled. The crime rate has risen and police uniforms are still used in crimes and burglaries. There may be many other unknown cases throughout Afghanistan. It has become very hard to differentiate between good and bad people.

The wrongdoings in the [handling of the] recent Hajj pilgrimage were so striking that they prompted a government reaction. Even high-ranking Afghan officials have been accused of involvement in such aberrations. [A Dari poem] Where can we find Islam, when it cannot be found even in Mecca?

In spite of the health minister's bluff, no tangible improvement can be seen in the health service. The procrastination of the ministry, and the lack of cooperation between the health ministry and other ministries led to the deaths of hundreds of people because of the cold weather.

In addition to the Hajj transport scandal, one month after the Kam Air plane crash the Ministry of Transport and Aviation has failed to provide an acceptable explanation as to the cause of the crash.

State-run radio and television stations have been badly defeated by private radio and television. The four government-funded newspapers do nothing but publish reports about official meetings. Sometimes the same news and the same pictures are published by all four of them. And the signs hanging in front of shops and companies are evidence of how far our culture has developed.

All these malfunctions are occurring at a time when the warlords are not in charge of the cabinet, and international assistance is continuing.

Dear President! If this is the promised cabinet, we prefer it did not exist.

All these points are only the tip of the iceberg of cabinet inefficiency. If we wanted to count all the problems with the government, we would need a lot more time and space. BBC Reporting

Residents in northern Afghanistan complain of land grabbing by Kabul municipality

Kabul, Pajhwok Afghan News, March 13, 2005 --People living in the Khaja Jam area of Paghman districts in northern Afghanistan say their houses have been destroyed by the municipality, but officials at the Kabul municipality say these houses were built illegally in a conservation area.

Residents claim that over 100 houses in the Khaja Jam hill were destroyed by people working for the 14th municipality of Paghman district on the 12th of March. But they claim that there are 200 houses still standing on Khaja Jam hill, where the authorities dare not destroy these houses because they belong to powerful strong people.

Over two million Afghans returned home following the fall of the Taliban and residents of this area who have been building houses over the past three years are mainly returnees from Iran and Pakistan. Abdurrhman, a resident of Khaja Jam told Pajhwok Afghan News: "If the government has the power, then it should destroy all the houses built on the hill. Is the government powerful only against the poor?"

"We are poor and don't have a home, so we have to build our houses on hill tops and mountains. But the government doesn’t allow us to live here." Faqirullah, another resident claims that he had bought a plot of land for AFA 80,000 and now the government is destroying his house without giving him compensation.

"The government doesn’t want to let is live peacefully. If it is so, we will leave the country." But Mohammad Zaher Ahmadzai, director of the Kabul municipality buildings says that the houses were built in a conservation area without authorization.

"A number of powerful had occupied the area and built their house there, but as soon as we were informed, the houses were destroyed after the order of the Kabul mayor."

Most of the houses built in the area are not registered under the Kabul municipality plan. But Ahmad said that currently there is no program for destroying the houses built in the past. "According to our plan, we will stop the houses that are now being illegally built."

Pakistan anti-terror commander warns tribesmen to help evict foreign terrorists - Associated Press March 12, 2005

Tribal elders in northern Pakistan must work with the army to evict foreign terrorists in the region near Afghanistan or else the military will do it by force, a top counterterrorism commander warned. Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain told tribal leaders in Pakistan's North Waziristan region late Friday that the presence of foreign fighters endangers peace and stability in the country.

"Although all tribes have signed agreements not to provide safe havens to the terrorists, credible intelligence reports suggest that a number of terrorists are still present there," a military statement quoted Hussain as saying.

"The larger national interests demand that tribesmen should strengthen the hands of security forces. Otherwise, the government will be compelled to launch a military action," he said.

The warning came a week after Pakistani troops raided a suspected hideout of al-Qaida militants in North Waziristan, triggering a shootout that left two foreign suspects dead. Troops also detained 11 people, including foreigners, whose identities and nationalities were not revealed.

Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. war on terror, has deployed about 70,000 troops in the country's tribal regions to capture suspected terrorists. The army in recent months has killed or arrested hundreds of militants in the tribal region of North and South Waziristan. An unspecified number of Arab, Afghan and Central Asian militants are still hiding in the area that borders Afghanistan, the army said.

Meanwhile, Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah, the governor of North West Frontier Province who oversaw military operations against al-Qaida linked militants in northwestern tribal regions in recent years, resigned on Saturday, a news report said.

Pakistan's private Geo television said President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has accepted Shah's resignation, but gave no details. A senior official at Musharraf's office on the condition of anonymity confirmed the resignation, and said Musharraf has appointed Senate's deputy chairman Khalilur Rahman as the new governor.

Gunmen arrested for murder of tribal elder in Pakistan

TANK, Pakistan (AFP) - Two gunmen have been arrested in northwestern Pakistan for the murder of a pro-government tribal elder suspected of informing on Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police said. Mehsud tribal elder Rasool Khan was shot Saturday in the Tank district of South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous region bordering Afghanistan (news - web sites) where Pakistani forces are hunting militants.

The detainees, identified as Ehsan Ullah and Saeed Alam, told investigators they shot Khan because he had been providing information to authorities about Al-Qaeda linked militants, local police official Javed Chughtai said on Sunday.

US officials believe Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other key militants have been sheltering somewhere along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.

Pakistan's military said its troops killed 303 militants in 42 operations in the tribal region last year, destroying hideouts and training camps run by foreign Al-Qaeda militants, with the loss of 202 soldiers. Members of the dominant Mehsud tribe last week agreed to sell their heavy weapons under a government buy-back drive as part of an effort to keep arms out of the hands of militants.

Two soldiers injured in Pakistan raid against militants

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Two Pakistani soldiers were injured while launching a grenade at suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants during a raid near the Afghanistan (news - web sites) border, officials said. The grenade exploded while soldiers were trying to throw it at suspected militants hiding in Mana village near North Waziristan's main town of Miranshah, a security officials told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Both the injured soldiers had been sent to a hospital in Wana, the main town in neighbouring, semi-autonomous South Waziristan, he said. "We received information that some foreign militants were hiding in Mana and the operation to flush them out was launched Sunday morning, which is still continuing," he said on Sunday.

Pakistani security forces also conducted a raid in North Waziristan's Davorgar Saidgi village last week and killed two suspected militants and arrested 11 more. In neighbouring Tank district, meanwhile, authorities arrested two gunmen for the murder Saturday of a pro-government tribal elder suspected of informing on Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police said.

The detainees, identified as Ehsan Ullah and Saeed Alam, told investigators they shot Mehsud tribe elder Rasool Khan because he had been providing information to authorities about Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police official Javed Chughtai said.

US officials believe Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other key militants have been sheltering somewhere along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan since the fall of Afghanistan's Taliban regime in late 2001.

Pakistan's military said its troops killed 303 militants in 42 operations in the tribal region last year, destroying hideouts and training camps run by foreign Al-Qaeda militants. The military lost 202 soldiers. Members of the dominant Mehsud tribe last week agreed to sell their heavy weapons under a government buy-back drive as part of an effort to keep arms out of the hands of militants.

A World of Ways to Say 'Islamic Law' - DAVID ROHDE Published: March 13, 2005 NY Times

IRAQ'S new government will have a fateful question to address when it begins meeting later this month. What role will Islam have in the constitution? The answer could shape how well the country holds together. The Shiite religious parties that won big in the January elections have called for strict Islamic laws to govern marriage, divorce and inheritance. Secular Sunni Arabs and Kurds oppose those efforts. And the Bush administration has made it clear that its goal is not an Islamic Republic of Iraq.

But the choices may not be that stark, if experience in the broad Islamic world is any guide. Islamic law - Shariah - is a widely used label. But in a surprisingly dynamic process, many systems have emerged under it that try to strike a middle ground between Islamists, who want to stone adulterers to death, and secularists, who want a pure separation of law and religion.

At one end of this spectrum is Saudi Arabia, where only Muslims can worship. At the other is Turkey, where the law decrees secularism, and Islamist parties have to worry that the army will step in to enforce it. In between, most other nations have found ways to straddle the demands of Islamists and secularists. In fact, most of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims live in countries whose constitutions do not declare Islam the state religion. Indonesia, with more than 250 million Muslims, is the most prominent example.

One way to defuse the issue was demonstrated when Afghanistan adopted a new constitution last year. Islamic hard-liners demanded strong religious wording, notably a declaration that "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam." American officials and Muslim moderates, including President Hamid Karzai, agreed, acknowledging that it would be politically impossible to adopt a purely secular constitution because Islam is central to the culture.

But Mr. Karzai's government has made virtually no effort to enforce the wording. And language was also included to guarantee the rights of religious minorities. After it was adopted, Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Afghanistan (and now the administration's choice to be the ambassador to Iraq), called the document "one of the most enlightened constitutions in the Islamic world."

But some skeptics say American officials made an enormous mistake when they allowed the strongly religious language, because future Afghan governments could revive the practices of the Taliban, like the stoning to death of adulterers.

Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at Freedom House, a human rights group, praised Afghan leaders for not allowing a strict form of Islam. But he added: "What is actually in the constitution worries me. It can open the door to a very repressive state."

In Iraq, too, the argument for Islam's cultural influence is strong, and experts expect to see a reference to Islam's influence in the new constitution. The wording, however, is important to Iraqi Kurds, who are more secular than the Shiites and jealously guard their autonomy. Last week Shiite and Kurdish leaders were pursuing a compromise that would declare Islam a source of Iraq's law, but not the only source. Mr. Marshall said declaring Islam the principal inspiration for Iraq's laws, as the Shiites might prefer, could be dangerous. "Islam undefined," he said, would then be "the constitution behind the constitution."

Other experts argue that this fear is an over-reaction. In many Muslim lands, they say, a declaration of Islam's pre-eminence amounts to a declaration of national identity. If Americans push for their preferences, in this view, a nationalist backlash might strengthen the link to Islam. "It's very much an identity factor in most Muslim countries," said John Esposito, an Islamic studies professor at Georgetown. "The issue is that it has to be defined." A world of definitions are available.

Saudi Arabia and Iran aspire to be purely Islamic. Criminal laws specify ancient punishments, like stoning for adultery and chopping off a hand for theft. The Saudi constitution does not even declare itself a constitution, but rather a "basic law." It declares the Koran and Sunna, Islam's holy texts, the constitution.

Poor Show by Einstein Look-alikes – BBC 03/14/05

Mr Rashidzada would probably have seen off the competition...

A New York university planned to mark the 127th birthday of genius physicist Albert Einstein by bringing dozens of his look-alikes together in a room. But when the City University of New York placed an advert in an actors' newspaper, only one person turned up - a man originally from Afghanistan. However, as luck would have it, Latif Rashidzada bore a striking similarity to the scientist who discovered the theory of relativity.

The university is holding a party on Monday evening with two of Einstein's former associates who are now in their 90s. Physicist Brian Schwartz said they had hopes of bringing lots of Einstein look-alikes along as well. "Imagine a picture of 100 Einsteins all in one place at one time," he was quoted as saying on the WNYC radio station website. "But actually it seems like actors are doing better than I thought because not many showed up - although we have one gorgeous Einstein who is actually from Afghanistan." Mr Rashidzada was born in the Afghan capital Kabul but now lives in New York. A year of events is being held globally to mark 100 years of Einstein's work. –

[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.]