Three Afghans arrested for suicide blast plan in Kabul: police

KABUL (AFP) - Police have arrested three men who were planning a suicide bombing in Afghanistan's capital Kabul, the government said, a day after a suspected suicide attack was foiled in a provincial capital.

The men were arrested in Logar province near the city on Monday after intelligence reports that they were planning an attack, the interior ministry said on Tuesday. Two others escaped.

Police also seized two pistols, four kilograms (nearly nine pounds) of hashish and a vehicle which may have been intended for use in an attack, said ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai.

"Their plan was to perform a suicide attack in Kabul but before they could implement their plan police raided their house. Three were arrested and two fled," he said.

The capital is home to scores of international aid agencies that have been in Afghanistan since the hardline Taliban government was ousted in a US-led operation in 2001. A spate of suicide bombings in past weeks, most of them largely ineffectual blasts in the volatile south, have been blamed on the Taliban.

The deadliest was on September 28 when a suicide attacker in military uniform drove a motorbike into buses outside a military base in Kabul, killing eight soldiers and a civilian.

Security forces in the eastern province of Khost said Monday they foiled a suicide attack on troops in a US-led coalition force that has been in Afghanistan since 2001, arresting two men in an explosives-filled vehicle rigged up as a bomb.

Southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban movement was born before it took control of most of the country by 1996, is a hotbed of the insurgency.

In an attack on Monday militants ambushed a two-vehicle police convoy in Helmand province, Stanizai said. Two of the attackers were killed and 12 arrested, while three policemen were wounded. Eighteen police were killed in an ambush in the same province last month.

Blast aimed at U.S. convoy kills one Afghan, hurts 5

Kabul (Reuters) - blast aimed at a convoy of U.S. troops killed an Afghan civilian and wounded five others on Monday in the eastern province of Nangarhar, a government spokesman said. There was no immediate reports of casualties among U.S. troops from the blast, south of the city of Jalalabad.

Interior Ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanezai said the explosion was apparently caused by a bomb attached to a bicycle which went off as the convoy was passing. Nangarhar's deputy governor Mohammad Asef blamed the Taliban guerrillas and said the bomb could have been triggered by remote control.

Taliban officials could not be reached for comment, but insurgents from the ousted Islamic movement have been behind attacks this year in which more than 1,100 people have died.

Most of those killed have been militants, but the toll has included more than 50 U.S. soldiers, the bloodiest period for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.

2 Taliban killed, 12 captured in S. Afghanistan

KABUL, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- Two Taliban remnants were killed, 12 were arrested Monday in the firefight with Afghan police in the Afghan southern province of Helmand, a local official said Tuesday.

"Yesterday about 10 a.m., two vehicles of local police were patrolling in Nahre Seraj district when they came under ambush from a group of militants. The police fought back at once, and killed two Taliban militants including a group commander named Mullah Qadir, and arrested other 12 militants," Haji Muhaiuddin, the deputy governor of Helmand, told Xinhua.

"In our side, three police were also injured, and are now in stable condition. The investigation is going on," he added. Remnants of the former fundamentalist regime who failed to derail the landmark Sept. 18 legislative polls have intensified their activities especially in some troublesome southern provinceslike Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan.

A group of Taliban militants killed engineer Ghani, a candidatefor provincial council, on Gresk-Nawzad road in Helmand province Friday night and two others on the spot. At the same time, Afghan and US troops in the recent three offensive operations in southern Uruzgan province killed 13 Taliban militants.

About 1,500 rebels, Afghans and US troops as well as pro-government figures and even aid workers have been killed in Taliban-linked militancy since the beginning of this year. Enditem

Three injured as Dutch chopper makes emergency landing in Afghanistan

Kabul (AFP) - Three people were injured when a Dutch military helicopter made an emergency landing in Afghanistan, but the incident was not likely caused by hostile fire, the NATO-led peacekeeping force said.

The Chinook helicopter carrying 17 people was forced to land in a mountainous area 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Kabul on Monday, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

The three injured people were evacuated to Bagram, the main base for a separate US-led coalition force in Afghanistan, for medical treatment and two had already been discharged, it said in a statement late Monday.

"The Dutch Ministry of Defence has launched an investigation into the cause of the incident, however it is unlikely to have been the result of any hostile action," it said.

The helicopter had been returning from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif where Dutch forces helped provide security, including during the September 18 national assembly election.

More than 750 Dutch troops were involved in the mission, the statement said. ISAF has been based in Afghanistan since 2001 and came under the command of NATO in 2003.

The force numbers more than 11,000 troops from 26 NATO and 11 non-NATO nations who provide security assistance in Kabul and the northern and western regions of Afghanistan.

2001 journalist killings: Two more Afghans sentenced to death - October 31, 2005  

KABUL: Two more men were sentenced to death last week for killing four journalists who entered Afghanistan to cover the 2001 toppling of the fundamentalist Taliban regime, a court official said Sunday.

A third man has already been given the death sentence for the murders of the journalists — an Afghan, an Australian, an Italian and a Spaniard.. A primary court in the capital Kabul sentenced brothers Zar Jan and Abdul Wahid last week but they can still appeal, primary court director Abdul Basit Bakhtiari told AFP. The sentences have to be approved by higher courts and President Hamid Karzai.

Courts have already handed down the same sentence on a third man, Raza Khan, for the November 2001 murders days after the Taliban were overthrown in an operation led by the United States.

The journalists had crossed into Afghanistan from Pakistan and were travelling by road to Kabul when they were stopped about 90 kilometres (56 miles) from the capital by armed men claiming to be Taliban.

They were killed and their bodies left by the roadside. The only woman in the group, Italian Maria Grazia Cutuli, was “first raped and then killed by the armed men and her ears and nose were cut off,” Bakhtiari said. The other journalists were Australian cameraman Harry Burton, Afghan photographer Azizullah Haidari and Spaniard Julio Fuentes.

Six other members of the criminal gang involved in the killings have been sentenced to between 18 and 20 years in jail for highway robbery and other crimes, but not for the murders of the journalists, Bakhtiari said.

Five of the sentences were delivered last week.Journalists streamed into Afghanistan to cover the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban after they failed to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington which killed about 3,000 people. afp

AFGHANISTAN: ELECTION RESULTS DELAYED AS FRAUD PROBES CONTINUE - 10/31/05 A EurasiaNet post

The certification of final results from Afghanistan's September 18 parliamentary elections has been delayed because of fraud complaints. A spokesman for the joint UN-Afghan election commission says about 500 complaints that are still being investigated could affect the outcome of some races. The allegations of fraud include the intimidation of voters, the stuffing of ballot boxes, and questionable vote-counting procedures.

The final results from Afghanistan's parliamentary elections initially were expected to be certified by October 22. But the announcement was delayed at least until November 1 due to slow vote counting in some provinces.

Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for the UN-Afghan Joint Electoral Management Body (JEMB), now says the date has been pushed back once again because of fraud complaints. He said certification of all of the results isn't expected until the end of the first week in November, at the earliest.

"[On October 30,] the commission announced that there are about 500 complaints that could affect the outcome of the election. They should be investigated, and then a decision should be made about the final list," Baheen said.

The elections on September 18 for parliament and 34 provincial councils were the first for decades in Afghanistan. Since then, some 2,300 complaints about the vote have been officially filed with the JEMB. Hundreds of candidates and their supporters have staged protests in major cities -- including the capital, Kabul -- against fraud complaints and accusations of irregularities.

The latest delay in announcing the results marks the first time the JEMB has acknowledged that the fraud may be significant enough to affect results. In the past, commission officials had admitted there was widespread fraud. But they had insisted that the fraud would not damage the credibility of the elections.

Among them is Aleem Siddique, an international media-relations officer with the JEMB. Earlier this month, Siddique told RFE/RL that ballot boxes from about 4 percent of the polling stations across Afghanistan were put under quarantine by the JEMB due to "clear evidence" of tampering or other irregularities.

Siddique said that, to preserve the integrity of the election, the certification of official results must wait until decisions have been made about all of those polling stations -- and until all complaints about the preliminary results have been resolved.

"These are all localized incidents. There is no evidence that there has been any attempt at countrywide fraud. We're obviously dependent on the time that it takes to complete our investigation satisfactorily before we can actually certify results," Siddique said.

Eid al-Fitr, a three-day celebration marking the end of Ramadan, could further delay certification. Eid al-Fitr begins either on November 2 or 3 in Afghanistan. It is a decision made by the Afghan Supreme Court's religious commission on the basis of the sighting of the new moon.

The JEMB's Baheen said he thinks any results that aren't certified before Eid al-Fitr will probably have to wait until the end of those festivities. "[The results] of most of the provinces will be announced on [November 1]," he said. "And then it is possible, probably after [November 1], it will take two more days. If Eid [al-Fitr] is declared [during those two days], then in such case we will probably announce [the results] of the [remaining] provinces after Eid."

Provisional results announced in early October show dozens of candidates considered to be warlords or factional militia commanders appear to have won seats in the 249-member lower chamber of parliament.

USA / Afghanistan: More deaths and impun ity - AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - Public Statement - 31 October 2005

Amnesty International said today that recent revelations about deaths in custody and abuses by US troops in Afghanistan are further evidence of a culture of disrespect for fundamental rights in the “war on terror” which the US has failed to adequately address.

Earlier this month it was reported that US troops had burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and used their charred corpses to taunt villagers suspected of harbouring insurgents. Although the Pentagon announced a criminal investigation into the allegations, this is only the latest in a series of cases of abuse by US troops in Afghanistan since 2001.

Amnesty International has long expressed concerns at a pattern of impunity and military leniency as well as delays and cover-ups in the investigation of deaths in US custody and abuses in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These concerns were demonstrated in the recent trials of US soldiers accused of abusing two Afghan detainees who died in the Bagram US airbase in December 2002. The two, Dilawar and Mullah Habibullah, died from multiple blunt force injuries inflicted while they were being interrogated in an isolation section of the facility. There was evidence of initial attempts to cover up the abuses and information only came into the public domain as a result of investigative reporting and leaks.

Army investigative reports later revealed that both men were chained to a ceiling and kicked and beaten during sustained assaults by numerous military personnel. According to one medical examiner, Dilawar’s legs were so badly damaged that they would have had to be amputated had he survived. He was also forced into painful positions with water poured into his mouth so he could not breathe.

Despite the horrific, calculated nature of the assaults, no-one to date has been charged directly with causing either of the two deaths. Seven low ranking soldiers, charged variously with assault, maltreatment, dereliction of duty and making false statements, were convicted earlier this year and received sentences ranging from five months’ imprisonment to reprimand, loss of pay and reduction in rank. Trials of five other soldiers on similar charges in the case are still pending.

Given the horrendous nature of the torture and ill-treatment to which these men were subjected, Amnesty International finds it astonishing that no-one has been charged directly with the deaths – and that the charges do not go further up the chain of command.

The lack of accountability at higher levels in the Bagram deaths is particularly disturbing because the treatment was not isolated but formed part of a pattern of abuse. One of the convicted soldiers – who reportedly acknowledged inflicting more than 30 consecutive knee strikes to Dilawar as he stood shackled and chained to a ceiling – said the beatings were “standard operating procedure” for uncooperative detainees. Hooding, shackling, deprivation of food or water, and holding detainees for prolonged periods in painful stress positions – all of which played a role in the torture or ill-treatment of Dilawar and Habibullah – were techniques authorized at the time by senior military commanders and the Pentagon.

The killings of Dilawar and Habibullah form part of a pattern of torture and ill-treatment at the Bagram base, during a period in which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had no access to a crucial part of the facility. Yet no-one in central command or in the government has been held accountable in the case. The organization is also concerned that, despite the grave nature of the abuses in this and other cases, no-one has been charged with war crimes or torture.

Amnesty International is concerned that conditions in Afghanistan remain conducive to torture or ill-treatment. In a report published in June 2005, the organization noted that hundreds of detainees remained in US custody in Afghanistan without charge or trial or access to families or lawyers and that, while the ICRC had access to detainees in Bagram and Kandahar bases this was not immediately after arrest – a period in which abuses are most likely to occur. The ICRC is believed still to have no access to detainees held in an unknown number of US Forward Operating Bases in Afghanistan. There have been continuing reports of detainees being subjected to abuses, including beatings, hooding, shackling and deprivation of sleep and water.

The organization is further concerned that the CIA may still be holding people in secret detention in Afghanistan and elsewhere in situations which would amount to “disappearance”.

Amnesty International is deeply concerned by statements by senior members of the US administration that non-US nationals held in US custody outside the USA are not legally entitled to protection from “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. Earlier this month, the US Senate attempted to rectify this by passing an amendment introduced by Senator John McCain which would extend a bar on cruel treatment under existing US law to anyone held anywhere in US custody. However, the government was recently reported to be seeking an exemption from such provision with regard to the CIA.

US detention practices in Afghanistan – as well as in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay – shows that the US government still needs to take basic steps to ensure the rights of all those in custody. This should include prompt access to lawyers and the courts as well as to bodies such as the ICRC. Accepting the McCain amendment without exemption would also be a minimum step toward bringing the US into compliance with its international obligations.

Amnesty International continues to call on the US Congress to establish an independent, impartial and non-partisan commission of inquiry into all aspects of the USA’s “war on terror” detention and interrogation policies and practices, and for a Special Counsel to be appointed to carry out a criminal investigation into the possible involvement of administration officials in crimes.

Background Information - At least 27 people who died in US custody in “war on terror” detentions have had their deaths listed by the army as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides, in some cases after substantial evidence of torture. Human Rights First, a US-based international lawyers’ group, reported last week that record-keeping in such cases had been “grossly inadequate” and that delays and deficiencies in investigations had hampered prosecutions. Amnesty International also expressed concern about the way deaths in custody were investigated in its June 2005 report: United States of America: US detentions in Afghanistan, an aide-memoire for continued action (AI Index: AMR 51/093/2005).

In January 2005 then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales (now Attorney General) reported to the Senate that the Justice Department “has concluded … there is no legal prohibition under the Convention against Torture on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas”, citing US reservations to the Convention.

Afghanistan destroys dozens of drug labs - ISN 10/31/2005

Afghan authorities say they have destroyed 30 opium-processing laboratories as well as tonnes of drugs and chemicals used to make heroin, news agencies reported.

According to the Afghan Interior Ministry, police narcotics forces destroyed the drugs and equipment in a four-day operation that ended on Sunday in the eastern province of Nangarhar, on the border with Pakistan.

The ministry said the police had also destroyed over 4,000 kilograms of opiates and 5,000 kilograms of chemicals used to process opium into heroin. Afghanistan produces some 87 per cent of the world's opium.

Afghan drug lord faces U.S. trial in New York - October 25, 2005 AP

NEW YORK - An Afghan drug lord who allegedly wanted to poison U.S. streets with deadly drugs in an "American jihad" has become the first person extradited from Afghanistan to face federal charges, authorities said Monday.

Haji Baz Mohammad was "one of the world's most wanted, most powerful and most dangerous drug kingpins" and financed the Taliban with his opium trade since 1990, Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said.

 
"In return, the Taliban protected Mohammad's crops, his heroin labs, his drug transportation labs and his associates," Tandy said after an indictment unsealed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan accused Mohammad of smuggling more than $25 million of heroin into the United States and elsewhere.

At his first court appearance Monday, the defendant, who was arrested in January in Afghanistan, pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail.

He allegedly told associates that selling heroin was a form of jihad because they were taking the money of Americans while giving them something that was killing them.

Province's anti-poppy effort is an Afghan success story - T he Boston Globe 10/30/2005 By Farah Stockman But UN fears campaign faces typical pitfalls

NANGARHAR - Last year, this parched land grew more heroin-producing poppies than nearly any other place on earth. The windfall of profits reaped by local people -- estimated at $200 million -- funded a construction boom, a new car dealership, and an unprecedented whirlwind of expensive weddings and pilgrimages to Mecca.

This year, poppy cultivation dropped in this eastern province by a stunning 96 percent, largely due to the efforts of a governor and police chief who had previously been accused of tolerating the lucrative trade. The unlikely success story could hold a key to winning the larger battle against narcotics, a $2.3 billion trade that makes up the backbone of the economy here.

But UN officials worry that the province could backslide, plagued by the same pitfalls that have long characterized Western-funded campaigns against narcotics: broken promises of foreign assistance, cultural misunderstandings, and a lack of political will on the part of Afghans.

''Nangarhar has been half of a success story," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a telephone interview from Vienna. ''You have this massive reduction. But we need to maintain it."

Afghanistan is the origin of 87 percent of the world's opium and its derivative, heroin, and Nangarhar was the birthplace of the country's narcotics industry.

This year, the US government paid $40 million to set up a 500- member Afghan eradication team to destroy poppy fields across the country -- without compensating farmers. But the team began its work just as the poppy was about to be harvested. As the eradication team arrived in the southern part of the country, farmers rioted, two villagers were killed by police, and the team withdrew after destroying just 220 hectares. One hectare is equal to about 2.5 acres.

The British government, which heads the international community's antinarcotics effort in Afghanistan, has tried a different approach countrywide, but that also ended badly. In 2003, it promised to pay farmers $350 in compensation for every 2,000 square meters of poppies that authorities destroyed -- an incentive that led to a bumper crop of poppies.

Farmers contended in recent interviews that they never received the compensation owed them by the British. Haji Din Mohammad, then governor of Nangarhar, said the British government still owes about $850,000 to farmers. British antidrug officials in Kabul and London would not respond to the allegations.

Despite this difficult history, the anti-poppy effort succeeded this year in Nangarhar, the only province in the country to experience such a significant reduction.

Most attribute the success to Din Mohammad, the scion of a prominent political family with longstanding ties to the US and British governments. His family fought against the Soviet Army in the 1980s and opposed the Taliban when they came to power in 1996.

Over the years, many in Din Mohammad's family grew rich growing poppies on their vast lands. Indeed, decades of war, drought, and a lack of infrastructure have made it difficult to make money growing anything else. Poppies require little water or fertilizer, and the sale price is lucrative enough to cover the high cost of transport.

But Din Mohammad says he decided to fight against the trade when he noticed a growing number of Afghan addicts, as well as the way the country was losing the world's respect because its economy is based on drugs.

''We were the first province to grow poppies and everyone was blaming us," Din Mohammad said in a recent interview in his Kabul home.

In the past, poppy was exported to countries that turned them into narcotics, minimizing the social hazards inside Afghanistan. But since the fall of the Taliban, a large number of drug labs have opened inside the country.

In 2004, after President Hamid Karzai personally asked for his help, Din Mohammad began talking with the international community about what kind of assistance they could provide if his people stopped planting poppies.

''I asked them if they were serious about this issue," he said, adding that donor governments such as Britain and the United States convinced him that they would bring jobs, industries, electricity, and roads if Nangarhar stopped growing poppies.

He then involved the tribal elders -- a critical move in ethnic Pashtun society. He asked them to draw up lists of what kind of development projects they would like to see -- a ''carrot" to get each community to voluntarily decide not to grow poppies.

Hazrat Ali, a warlord who Karzai appointed police chief, provided the ''stick." Despite rumors that Ali's own militia members were involved in trafficking, Ali came down hard on farmers who planted poppies. According to a US official based in Kabul, Ali arrested farmers and held them in jail until their communities agreed to eradicate the fields.

To support the initiative, USAID hired Development Alternatives International, a Maryland-based consulting firm, to give the poorest farmers an alternative income. Known as Cash for Work, the project employs about 13,000 workers per day in Nangarhar, paying between $3 and $5 a day for monthlong projects digging irrigation ditches and flood- protection walls.

Many farmers say that the project employs too few people and that the wages are not even half what they could earn harvesting poppy.

Others say too much funding ends up in the hands of the Americans who run the projects. About $6 million of Cash for Work's annual $18 million budget is spent on administration. Yet the program is the most tangible proof that the international community will support Nangarhar in its decision to stop growing poppies.

Few thought the effort in Nangarhar would produce quick results. But in August, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, citing satellite images, reported that cultivation in Nangarhar had been almost completely wiped out.

A Western official who heads a major antinarcotics effort said he was mystified. ''Some say it's market correction, that they want to get rid of stockpiles," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Whatever the reason, he said, ''Haji Din Mohammad and Hazrat Ali did a great job."

Officials are less hopeful about 2006. Ali quit his post to run for parliament, a seat he is widely expected to win. And what of Din Mohammad? Karzai moved him to another province, replacing him with a governor who has blocked antinarcotics efforts in the past. Afghan officials have characterized the move as a routine reshuffle, but Din Mohammad thinks otherwise. ''There is no doubt that some of the traffickers and the smugglers put pressure on the central government to transfer me from Nangarhar," he said. ''Because I stand against the traffickers."

Small city for Afghan refugees inaugurated in Kabul - Monday October 31

KABUL: A small city was inaugurated in Kabul for the Afghan refugees. More than 30,000 Afghan refugees were allotted plots in the city. Afghan Minister for refugees Mohammad Azam said they have a plan to distribute land among the two million Afghan refugees in various cities of Afghanistan during next two days.

During the last three years more than three million Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan from Pakistan and Iran. They were facing the problems of unemployment and shelter in Afghanistan.

This is the second city during the last eight year being established for Afghan refugees. According to the report of BCC, the new city is being set up covering 30 kilometer off Kabul in Karabagh district.

One plot to each family will be allotted to refugees at a cost of four thousands Afghanis. Afghan Minister for refugee said that in the initial stage around 3000 refugees families would be allotted in the small city and later its number would be increased. Similar cities would also be set up for the refugees he added.

Karzai under pressure over editor's jailing - Middle East Times 10/31/2005

KABUL -  Afghan President Hamid Karzai was under growing pressure on Tuesday to intervene in the case of an editor jailed for two years for blasphemy after clerics accused him of questioning Islamic law.

The world's top media rights groups joined Afghan journalists in urging Karzai to intercede after a court sentenced Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, editor of the monthly magazine Haqoq-e-Zan (Women's Rights), at the weekend.

Nasab, 50, was arrested at the beginning of the month after conservative clerics complained about his magazine to the Supreme Court, which in turn asked the public prosecutor's office to arrest him.

Articles, including some by an Iranian scholar, criticized the stoning of Muslims who convert to another religion and the use of corporal punishment for offenses such as adultery, Reporters Without Borders said.

"President Karzai must intercede to obtain Nasab's release and have this miscarriage of justice corrected," the Paris-based media group said in a statement.

In an open letter to the president, the International Federation of Journalists said that it was outraged by the court's decision and believed that the judicial process had been illegal and immoral.

"The case is currently in the appeal process and we urge you to instruct the relevant authorities to follow the mandate of Afghan legislation providing for press freedom, and drop all charges against Nasab immediately," it said.

The New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists said in a statement: "We condemn this disturbing ruling and urge authorities to overturn this conviction and release Nasab at once."

The Afghanistan Independent Journalists Association has complained that the court should not have been involved in the matter as it had been ruled on by a government-appointed commission set up to try media offences.

The commission, headed by information minister Sayed Makhdom Raheen, stripped Nasab of the title of chief editor but recommended that the blasphemy charges be dropped. Raheen had told the association that he planned to meet Karzai on Tuesday about the case, the group's president Rahimullah Samander said.

The UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has also said that it is concerned about the case. "UNAMA believes the right to freedom of expression, which is enshrined in the constitution of Afghanistan as well as the universal declaration of human rights ... should be strongly defended," spokesman Adrian Edwards said on Monday.

Troops to carry miniature spy planes on their backs - By Stephen Thorne

OTTAWA (CP) -- Canada's military is buying miniature spy planes that soldiers can carry on their backs and launch anywhere to collect pictures from over the hill or around the corner in battle zones.

Reconnaissance, artillery or other troops should be packing the new units around southern Afghanistan by next August, says Maj. Keith Laughton, director of operational requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The units will supplement the work of larger unmanned aircraft scheduled to be deployed with the next contingent of troops headed for Kandahar in February or March.

"We are pushing this through," Laughton said in an interview. "It has been identified as an operational requirement for Op Archer Roto 2 in August." U.S. troops already use similar systems, called Ravens, in the area.

Most of the Americans will be moving east to the Pakistan border next year while the contingent of about 1,200 Canadians is to take over operations in Kandahar region, a largely desert province that has been a Taliban hotbed.

Initially, they will rely on the larger and more sophisticated Sperwer (SPARE-ware) aircraft that Canadians first used during their NATO mission in and around Kabul in 2003-04.

The French aircraft, about the size of a small car, were purchased and deployed within about five months in 2003. All four planes crashed -- two were written off -- due largely to heat, wind and altitude.

Laughton said the military purchased replacement planes, plus two more, then conducted extensive flight tests at Cold Lake, Alta., through the spring and summer, followed by crew training.

Military planners have reduced the number of crew inside the Sperwers' ground station and placed an airman in a chair alongside two soldiers. Air force personnel are "more hands-on in their ability to control the flight," Laughton said.

He said they hope the denser air at lower altitude -- Kandahar is at 1,500 metres compared with Kabul at 2,000 -- will help keep the planes aloft, though Kandahar is significantly dustier and hotter than Kabul in summer.

He said there will be a feeling-out period during which crews learn the capabilities and limitations of the aircraft in the new area, but he does not anticipate the degree of problems they faced in Kabul. "We obviously made some mistakes in the implementation of it," Laughton acknowledged.

"We took a system that had been developed and tested in a temperate environment and we threw it into one of the worst environments you could put it into. Not everything that we faced in Afghanistan had been tested."

The original unmanned aircraft -- Canada's first foray into the genre -- were introduced quickly. Operators had to learn as they went along. Nevertheless, the information the aircraft provided was invaluable. "I believe that we are better than we were," Laughton said, citing experience as the greatest teacher.

The newer units, known as man-portables, will weight less than 20 kilograms, including spare batteries and a ground station -- essentially a receiver and laptop computer.

While the Sperwers fly off truck-mounted catapults, some portables can be launched by throwing them; others use elastic bands or bungee-type cords. About the size of remote planes flown by hobbyists, they can fly for up to 90 minutes and provide pictures from as far away as 10 kilometres.

Typically, their programmed flights can be overridden by controllers on the ground. They cost a fraction of what the Sperwer planes cost. Laughton said the smaller planes are needed to deal with a "slightly different environment than Kabul.

"They are dealing with a greater area. In Kabul, you had a fixed distance around and a single type of UAV could cover that because of the range. "If you are dealing with an entire province with people in potentially different locations, you need something that is immediately responsive."

Cdns launch research website IGLOO - By MIKE OLIVEIRA

WATERLOO, Ont. (CP) - A team of Canadians with dreams of a better world has launched a research web portal called IGLOO in the hopes it will help bring together the world's brightest minds to solve global problems.

An acronym for International Governance Leadership Organizations Online, the website is the brainchild of the people behind CIGI, a Canadian think tank that focuses on international politics and issues.

The Centre for International Governance was founded by Research in Motion's Jim Balsillie, who teamed up with co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis to donate $30 million in seed money to help get the dream project off the ground.

Balsillie said he's hoping the think tank and new website will open the door to new research and ideas, breaking down the barriers of borders, geography, visas and costs that can hinder collaboration. Balsillie used his clout to build support for IGLOO and got Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to kick in nearly $7 million to help develop the website.

"CIGI is not about improving (Balsillie's) bottom line, it's about lending shape to a better world and for that effort we are very grateful," McGuinty said at CIGI's annual conference last week, where IGLOO was officially launched.

"They often say the most valuable commodity is a single new idea," said McGuinty, who is also the province's minister of research and innovation.

"A single idea has the power to change the world. In today's interconnected and wired world it really does just take one spark of an idea to change everything."

The CIGI conference also attracted delegates from around the world, including academics and researchers from the United States, the United Kingdom, China, India, Japan, Russia and several other nations.

One of the keynote speakers was renowned economist and activist Jeffrey Sachs, known for his work to end global poverty and named by Time magazine as one of the world's most influential people.

He praised the work of CIGI and said IGLOO has the potential to unite the world's big thinkers and solve global challenges - with or without bureaucratic government involvement. "We need a way to work around Ottawa and Washington," Sachs said during his speech.

"(IGLOO) could be the perfect instrument for how you reach a worldwide community for action. This is a thrilling concept being developed here at CIGI, potentially exactly the kind of tool that can make a profound difference."

Although IGLOO has only just launched publicly, it already has 55 partners around the world and 15 to 20 projects running in various stages of development. Among them is AfghanConnect, a resource for discussing and working on reconstruction and the revitalization of Afghanistan.

"If you were to ask any ordinary Afghan what their biggest concern was, most likely they will tell you it's the fear the international community will abandon Afghanistan," said Mirwais Nahzat (corrected), president and founder of Afghanistan Peace Ambassadors.

"What makes my group proud today is AfghanConnect will serve as a testament to Canada's long-term commitment to rebuild Afghanistan. It will be a major contribution to make the voices of the people of Afghanistan heard across the globe."

One of the great things about IGLOO is it gives free technology to those who couldn't otherwise afford it, said Dan Latendre, CIGI's chief information officer.

"We remove the technology barrier and we're also removing a huge financial barrier. Our platform alone, if you went and tried to implement it yourself, would cost hundreds of thousands a year minimum."

IGLOO's conceivers say they hope their site will one day be as synonymous with world politics as Google is with web searching.

"(I hope) this is the de facto place that people (go) to really try to solve and deliver on problems," Latendre said. "At the end of day we have to find solutions to these problems."

Pakistan 'Taleban bill' revived - By Haroon Rashid BBC News, Peshawar

A bill critics say will bring in a Taleban-style moral code has been revived in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. The bill replaces an earlier document the Supreme Court said contained clauses that were unconstitutional. The new law would appoint a watchdog to observe Islamic values in public places but its powers have now been diluted.

Opposition politicians said the bill should not be tabled at a time of devastation from the 8 October quake. However, the speaker of the provincial legislature admitted the bill for later discussion amid angry opposition shouts.

The bill was presented by the six-party religious alliance that governs in the province, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). The earlier bill calling for the creation of the watchdog called Hisba (accountability) had been passed by a majority vote in July.

But the Supreme Court, after intervention by President Pervez Musharraf, declared some clauses in contravention of the constitution. Under the revised bill, several of the controversial powers of the ombudsman have been deleted.

Provincial law minister, Malik Zafar Azam, said the earlier bill was "dead" because the governor did not sign it. He said the new draft has been prepared bearing in mind the court judgement.

The minister defended the presentation of the bill at this time, saying the earthquake was the result of God's wrath at man's misdeeds. He said the need for such a legislation was more keenly felt now given the need to save moral values by introducing God's rules.

However, the opposition benches described the tabling as an attempt to divide political parties. Opposition leader, Shahzada Gustasip, said the nation needed unity at this time of hardship.

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] ANKARA, 28 October (IRIN) -

The week in Central Asia started with a new clampdown on dissent in Uzbekistan, with an opposition leader arrested in the capital, Tashkent, following his repeated demands for reforms. Sanjar Umarov, head of the Sunshine Coalition opposition group, was arrested on Sunday on charges of embezzlement and economic crimes, but rights activists say his arrest was politically motivated. "They charge me with absurd accusations, exert psychological pressure and threaten to inject me with psychotropic drugs," Umarov, a wealthy businessman-turned-politician, said in his note from jail posted on his group's Website on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Valery Krasilovsky, Umarov's lawyer, suggested that the opposition leader had been drugged, saying he behaved erratically during his visit. Krasilovsky said that when he visited Umarov in prison on Tuesday, the jailed man was naked in his cell and was swaying back and forth. "He threw all his clothes out into the feeding slot and didn't react to my words," said Krasilovsky, who demanded that medical experts evaluate Umarov's condition.

The Sunshine Coalition was formed in April in the wake of a popular uprising in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan that ousted its long-time leader. The group gained prominence in May for denouncing the violent crackdown on a popular uprising in the eastern Uzbek city of Andijan, in which upwards of 1,000 people may have been killed, according to rights groups.

Tashkent said that the death toll was only 187. Also on Wednesday, the BBC suspended its operations in Uzbekistan due to harassment of its staff and security concerns. All local staff were being withdrawn and the office in Tashkent would close for at least six months pending a decision on its long term future, a report from the BBC said.

The BBC's regional head Behrouz Afagh said staff had been under official pressure for some time, making it difficult for them to do their job. But he said the BBC remained committed to covering events in Uzbekistan. "Over the past four months since the unrest in Andijan, BBC staff in Uzbekistan have been subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation which has made it very difficult for them to report on events in the country," Afagh said. In June, BBC World Service correspondent, Monica Whitlock, was forced to leave Tashkent under pressure from the government. Two local members of staff have since been granted refugee status by the UN's refugee agency.

The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ), a New York-based group media freedom advocacy group, on Wednesday criticised what it described as government harassment of foreign media in Uzbekistan, after the BBC closed its Tashkent office, AFP reported. "The Committee to protect journalists condemns the government harassment of foreign media in Uzbekistan, which today prompted the BBC to close its Tashkent bureau," CPJ said in a statement. According to CPJ, in recent weeks Tashkent has initiated a smear campaign in the state media accusing journalists from the BBC, Deutsche Welle (German international radio), the Associated Press (AP) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) of organising propaganda attacks against Uzbekistan and trying to use the protest in Andijan to overthrow the government and establish an Islamic state.

The US has not decided whether to impose sanctions on Uzbekistan over human rights abuses including the violent suppression of the Andijan uprising in May, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a senior US State Department official. Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia, told lawmakers the US "will consult with our European friends and evaluate whether what we are doing is sufficient".

The European Union (EU) in September imposed an arms embargo and visa bans on Uzbek officials because of what it said was disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force in Andijan. In Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov announced on Monday that he had signed a decree ordering the amnesty of more than 8,000 of some 12,000 common prisoners held in the energy-rich country. spend the holiday at home," Niyazov announced at the annual session of the People's Council, the country's main legislative body comprising 2,500 officials hand-picked by Niyazov. He was referring to the country's two-day independence day holiday on Thursday and Friday.

The prisoners amnestied include 259 foreign nationals from Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and former Soviet republics. Niyazov regularly announces amnesties for prisoners, but Monday's release was the largest of its kind that he has ordered. The measure however does not apply to political prisoners in Central Asia's most reclusive state. In Kazakhstan, the presidential election campaigned took off on Tuesday, with five candidates running for the country's top job.

The campaign will end on 2 December, two days before polling. Incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev is among the five candidates confirmed by the country's Central Election Committee (CEC), while Zharmakhan Tuyakbay, his former ally and currently opposition leader, is expected to be his main challenger. Nazarbayev has led Central Asia's largest country since 1991 when it became independent from the former Soviet Union.

The US would help oil-rich Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have free and fair elections, the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs said on Tuesday. "We must speak clearly about the need for both countries to have free elections and we must help these countries find their way forward," said Fried, who recently travelled to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

International observers aiming to monitor the election process have started arriving in Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Kazinform news agency reported on Friday. More than 600 international election observers are expected to monitor the presidential poll, with the majority of them set to arrive two weeks before polling day, according to the Kazakh foreign ministry.

In Kyrgyzstan, protesters demanding the prime minister's resignation who has been demonstrating for more than five days, dispersed on Thursday after meeting President Kurmanbek Bakiev, the Russian RIA-Novosti news agency reported. The demonstrators were demanding that the premier step down in connection with the 20 October killing of Tynychbek Aktambayev, head of the parliamentary committee on defence and law-enforcement, during an inspection of a penal colony.

But they decided to disperse after some of them met with Bakiev, who reportedly said that an investigation would find those guilty and they would face justice. A top US diplomat in Kyrgyzstan on Wednesday urged President Bakiev to investigate efforts to force the resignation of the former Soviet republic's prime minister, news agencies reported. During a meeting with investors and diplomats, acting US Ambassador Donald Lu told Bakiev that his country's reputation was suffering because criminal gang leaders appeared to be intimidating the government - a situation he called scandalous. "Nothing is more damaging to investor and donor confidence than a perception that the government is turning a blind eye to the activities of organised crime," Lu reportedly said, adding that Bakiev and his government should "transparently investigate and prosecute organised crime figures".

[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.]