US soldier charged in abuse case BBC News / Thursday, 13 October 2005

A US army soldier accused of mistreating a detainee in Afghanistan has been charged with dereliction of duty and maltreatment. Staff Sgt Brian L Doyle has been accused of ordering a soldier to beat a detainee, known as Habibullah, who later died at the Bagram air base. Sgt Doyle is also accused of not preventing mistreatment of detainees by other lower-ranking soldiers.

He is one of 10 reservist soldiers who have been accused of mistreatment. Five other soldiers have also been charged for mistreating detainees held at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.

Habibullah died after being detained by the US military in December 2002. Another detainee, Dilawar, also died in detention. No one has been charged with their deaths.

UN-Afghanistan Aid Agency Sends Emergency Aid To Pakistan –

13 October 2005 -- United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in cooperation with Afghan government have agreed to send 65 trucks loaded with emergency food and non-food supplies needed for earthquake struck Pakistan, the WFP official statement says.

WFP coordinates the relief action between its local offices based both in Afghanistan and Pakistan. "WFP Afghanistan has loaned WFP Pakistan 1000MT of wheat flour and has already provided 40 metric tones of dates that were donated by the Government of Qatar. The dates are being dispatched from the WFP's warehouse in Quetta to quake affected areas," according to the official statement.

UN World Food Program is also to set up five UN base camps in the hardest hit areas in Pakistan in order to coordinate the relief operations. Afghanistan also provided 500,000 million US dollars in assistance to help earthquake-struck Pakistan.

Relief vs. Afghan fight October 13, 2005

The US military is looking beyond Afghanistan for other resources to bring to the Pakistani quake relief effort.

MUZAFFARABAD, PAKISTAN - In the light of early morning, the crew of Miss Behavin', a Chinook from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, left behind their hide-and-seek fight with the Taliban to lend a hand in Pakistan, where their new foes - injury and deprivation - were overwhelmingly visible.

The crew dropped off supplies at Rawalakot, a Pakistani base at the center of relief operations following Saturday's devastating earthquake. There, the six-man crew picked up some of the injured and ferried them to the capital, Islamabad. Then it was off to Muzaffarabad, close to the epicenter, with a 23-member Russian disaster relief team. Within minutes of landing at a sports field the chopper was packed with some 30 severely injured survivors, with more trying in vain to get on board.

"With two Chinooks we brought back 60 [people], just a drop in the bucket of what's really out there," says Chief Warrant Officer Mark Jones, a pilot from Seattle.

With all major cities reached, and rescue teams and personnel arriving from 22 countries, the relief effort is now in full swing. The scope of the task is daunting: The quake left an estimated 23,000 dead, 51,000 injured, and affected some 3.3 million people.

US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who arrived Wednesday, said that more US resources are on the way. For now, much of the personnel and material have been drawn from Afghanistan.

But the conflict in Afghanistan shows no signs of slacking, with this year the deadliest yet for US soldiers. Mindful of the high demands on both fronts, the US military is already looking to transition the relief effort over to a US Navy team based in Bahrain.

"Eventually the US Army will go back to Afghanistan," says spokesman Col. James Yonts. "They've got to get back to that mission."

Colonel Yonts said that a handover of the relief command from Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, head of US operations in Afghanistan, to a Navy admiral was initially planned for Wednesday, but was pushed back.

"We are taking a look back into Europe and the USA and getting more helicopters from there," General Eikenberry told the Monitor. His aide, Col. Donald McGraw, says 21 helicopters had been found, and will be operating in Pakistan by Oct. 22.

"We took what we could out of Afghanistan, but there are some bad guys there who are taking advantage of this," says Colonel McGraw. "But we are willing to take some risk in Afghanistan to start up relief operations here."

SOUTH ASIAN QUAKE: NATO NOT TO SEND TROOPS FROM AFGHANISTAN

Brussels, 13 Oct. (AKI/DAWN) - NATO has ruled out moving its troops or helicopters from Afghanistan to help in the rescue operations in Pakistan but has said its aircraft would continue to ferry relief supplies from Europe to Islamabad. Officials said the first NATO aircraft would reach Pakistan on Thursday as part of a strategic airlift operation to move urgently required humanitarian aid. The operation could be followed by further actions, the organisation said, adding that heavy-duty helicopters could be sent by sea from Europe if required.

A five-member team of experts will be on board the NATO aircraft to assess emergency requirements.

The NATO-led stabilisation force in Afghanistan was stretched to its limit, said an official of the organization, and assets and soldiers were still needed on the ground in the country in a difficult post-election period, a NATO official said.

However, member states could send troops and helicopters under their national command in Afghanistan, the official said.

Five doctors killed in Kandahar

(Anis) Armed men shot dead five doctors belonging to the non-government Afghan Health Development Service in the Zirai district of the southern province of Kandahar on October 12, officials said. Dr Qadir, a manager at the organisation, said two other members of the aid organisation were wounded in the incident. Security forces in Kandahar say they have begun a search operation, but have not yet arrested anyone.

Fighting kills 21 people in Afghanistan as Karzai warns of further bloodshed (CP) October 12, 2005

KABUL (CP) - Fighting across Afghanistan killed 10 suspected rebels, six police and five medical workers, and President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday he believes the insurgents are receiving support from the country's booming drug trade.

The suspected Taliban guerrillas were killed Monday by U.S. warplanes that bombed their hideout in Uruzgan province, which has long been a hotbed of militant activity, local Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

U.S. military spokeswoman Sgt. Marina Evans confirmed the attack and said "several of the enemy had been killed." On Tuesday, six police officers were killed by suspected Taliban rebels who ambushed their convoy in mountains in Uruzgan province, the second major attack on the fledgling force in two days, local Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

One officer was still missing after the attack and feared dead, while four police vehicles were destroyed. Reinforcements have been rushed to the area "to hunt down the Taliban," Khan said.

The attack on the medical workers occurred Wednesday near Kandahar city, a former Taliban stronghold, said doctor Abdul Qadir, director of UN-sponsored Afghan Help Development Services, a local aid group that employed the five.

Gunmen opened fire on their vehicle as they drove through the desert. Two of the five dead were doctors. Three other medical workers in the vehicle were wounded, Qadir said. The eight were returning to Kandahar after treating refugees in a nearby camp.

A pre-dawn blast near the Canadian ambassador's residence on Wednesday injured two local men believed to be guards employed at the residence.

Defence Minister Bill Graham is currently in Afghanistan but "was not involved," Defence Department spokeswoman Kiersten Leus said from Ottawa. She would not say where Graham was when the rocket exploded.

The new Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan, David Sproule, has been in the country for about a week, a Canadian embassy official in Kabul told The Canadian Press. It was not known where Sproule was when the rocket exploded.

Some Canadians were in the building when the rocket, one of two to hit the city on Wednesday, exploded, said Dan McTeague, the parliamentary secretary for Canadians abroad.

"We had guards from a local company and two of them were injured," said the Canadian embassy official. "The rocket in fact struck very close to our embassy residence."

The area of the city is heavily protected because it is home to buildings housing offices and residences of foreign diplomats. It was not clear whether the Canadian building was damaged.

It also wasn't clear whether the Canadian building was the intended target of the rocket or whether it was fired in the general area because of the number of foreign offices and residences located there.

The rocket hit just seconds after another rocket exploded inside a large compound housing the Afghan government's intelligence service, said an official. Graham was scheduled to speak to reporters later Wednesday as he visits Canadian troops serving with the NATO force in the country.

About Canadian 250 troops are working in Kandahar, about four hours from Kabul, with about 1,000 more set to deploy early next year. A small special forces unit from Canada is also operating in the area, hunting and killing Taliban and al-Qaida rebels. Canada will also take command of the international operation in the region next year.

Karzai made his comments about the violence in a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When asked about an attack on police in southern Helmand province Tuesday that left at least 19 officers dead, he said there was "co-operation between the drug trade and terrorism." He said the region was well known as a centre for trafficking opium and heroin.

Afghanistan produces an estimated 87 per cent of the world's supply of both the drugs, sparking warnings the country is becoming a "narco-state" four years after a U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power.

"We will have terrorism attacking (us) ... for quite some time," he warned.

Karzai's U.S.-backed government is struggling to strengthen Afghanistan's fragile democracy while dealing with a stubborn rebellion that has left about 1,400 dead in the past half-year. Rice said the 21,000-strong U.S.-led coalition was doing its best to quash the insurgency.

"We are doing everything we can to defeat the terrorists. We cannot simply defend ourselves, we have to be on the offensive," she said.

There had been hopes that the U.S. military may have been able to reduce its number of troops here next year as a separate NATO-led peacekeeping force takes responsibility for security in volatile regions.

But Rice said U.S. forces will remain "for as long as they are needed in whatever numbers they are needed to make certain that they defeat the terrorists and Afghanistan becomes a place of stability and progress."

Confusion arises over Afghanistan visit by Canadian celebrities(CP) Oct 12, 5:20 PM ET

OTTAWA (CP) - A planned visit to Afghanistan by a group of prominent Canadians, including hockey great Guy Lafleur and comedian Rick Mercer, is beginning amid confusion over who is where.

Defence Minister Bill Graham, in a conference call Wednesday from the capital Kabul, said the trip had been put off. "They are certainly not in the region at this time," he said. "I understand their departure was delayed.

However, Rudyard Griffiths, executive director of the Dominion Institute and a participant in the tour, said in a phone interview from Kandahar that the troupe landed in Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The visit comes amid a series of violent incidents. A rocket exploded near the Canadian embassy Wednesday and two locally hired guards suffered minor injuries. Last week, a suicide bomber failed in an attack on a Canadian military convoy, leaving three soldiers with superficial burns and bruises.

The minister said safety is a key concern. "I can assure you that they would not be brought here under any circumstances where . . . lives would be put in danger." Graham said the rocket strike near the embassy was likely a random event, not a deliberate attack on the building. He added rockets are launched occasionally in the region and can land anywhere.

"They are not capable even of being directed at one specific target," Graham said. "They are very inaccurate weapons and are just launched as trouble-making."

Lafleur, Mercer and speed skater Catriona Le May Doan are among a group of sports heroes and entertainers invited to visit Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Other participants include retired general Lewis MacKenzie and retired admiral Ken Summers.

Graham said the visit, scheduled by the military, is "a great initiative."

"This is an opportunity for eminent Canadians to familiarize themselves with the nature of the mission here. It's an opportunity for the troops to meet some of them. "I got some enthusiastic comments from some of the troops this morning."

There are about 700 Canadian troops in Kabul serving with a NATO stabilization force. Another 250 are setting up a provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar, and 200 more are handling logistics and support work in the Gulf region.

Graham was in Kabul to visit the troops and meet government officials. The Canadian contingent is to expand to about 1,400 early next year with the provincial reconstruction team and a security force working out of Kandahar. It will be a tougher job than patrolling the streets of Kabul.

Graham said the Canadians are there to restore stability, which means they will have to hunt down insurgents and remnants of the former Taliban regime. "Their job is to go out and meet them in the field and destroy them and destroy their capacity to attack our troops and to attack innocent Afghan people."

It will be dangerous, Graham said, a theme he has repeated often in recent months. But the troops are prepared, he added.

Taliban play hide-and-seek with US troops

The 82nd Airborne drops in on an Afghan village, and goes door to door looking for fighters and offering aid.

KUNLALAN, AFGHANISTAN – It has not been an auspicious start to the morning. The heavy weapons squad has just been dropped into the wrong field of mung beans.
"Man, one of these days we'll be dropped in the right place," Pvt. Mike Patraw says, voicing everyone's thoughts. Being out of position means not only a longer walk, but possibly not being able to provide covering fire for units in the valley below as they search a village.

By the time they reach the village of Kunlalan, Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and other members of the US 82nd Airborne are already going house to house looking for signs of Taliban weapons or support. Any Taliban who might have been in the village would have hid their Kalashnikovs at the first sound of the Chinook helicopters.

The 40-odd men of the 82nd Airborne - on a five-day mission with ANA troops in the mountains of northern Zabul province - know that their chances of facing an armed encounter with the Taliban are not great. But from a military standpoint, it has been foot patrols and air assaults like this that have produced a year of the most serious fighting with insurgents since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001. The key, US commanders say, is sending a message to the Taliban that their havens are no longer safe, and to Afghan villagers that they can begin to trust that the Afghan Army will be there to protect them.

"Most of the people say they haven't seen anything, never saw any Taliban," says Sgt. Joseph Parker of Cleveland, Ohio, as men of 2nd Battalion, Charlie Company search the mud-walled room of an Afghan home.

Sergeant Parker nods his head toward the residents of this home, some women and children, huddling in the shady corner of the yard. "As far as going and getting to the Taliban through local intelligence, it's not going to happen. The only way to do it is to sneak up on them."

Pvt. Jacob Rutledge, a quiet, lanky kid from Washington, D.C., searches through some baskets near one of the women, who is holding an infant in her arms. A chicken darts out of the basket, as if clucking its final prayer. The infant starts to cry. "I'm sorry," Private Rutledge says gently.

Outside the compound, which sits above a very healthy field of opium poppies, a crowd of old men and children are gathering around the US soldiers. One shepherd pleads with the soldiers to arrest another shepherd who has just passed through town with his flock. "He's a thug," the shepherd says in Pashto. Another villager, an elderly man, approaches an Army medic to ask for medicine for a child. The local people may not be ready to tattle on the local Taliban, but they grasp that the US Army is a possible source of help.

"This is what I love," says Spc. "Doc" Kris Tyte, a medic from Charlotte, N.C. "You get to sit down with kids and an interpreter and just talk. And you know, kids are pretty much kids everywhere. They don't say, I want to be a Taliban. They say, I want to be a policeman, or even president. Even after all these years of war, they want to be productive members of society."

So far, this day has brought what Lt. Ben Wisnioski, of Rocky Hill, Conn., calls "the usual lies" from the villagers: No, we haven't seen the Taliban. If we have seen the Taliban, they pass the village at night. If they came during the day, we haven't seen them before, and we didn't see their faces very clearly. No, we didn't see what direction they came from or what direction they left in.

But these men know that they have to stay alert, nonetheless. Hiking between villages, they keep their heads "on a swivel," scanning for signs of movement. They also make sure they are always within 10 paces of a boulder to provide cover, in case of an ambush, which has long been the Afghan's preferred method of warfare.

Just a month ago, a few days before the national election, some Taliban fighters opened fire on a patrol near the town of Shahjoy. "We air assaulted into a village, and one guy with an AK-47 opened fire on an Apache helicopter," says Pvt. Jeremy Wier, of Douglasville, Ga. "The Apache pretty much handled him." In the next village, recalls Private Wier, two other men carrying weapons ran out of the village as soon as Wier and his team arrived. Helicopters handled those fighters too.

"We heard them talking on their radio," says Wier. "Our interpreter told us they were doing a roll call. There were three confirmed dead and one missing. There were 20 of them down in that village originally, but most fled to the mountains."

When the Taliban do fight, they are usually lousy shots, Wier adds. A few weeks ago, the Taliban fired two rocket-propelled grenades at members of this squad from just 50 yards away - and missed.

Wier pauses. "Basically, it's either zero or 100 [Taliban] here. So far today, it looks like nothing." Pvt. Shane Hahn of Rush City, Minn., smiles: "That's not necessarily a bad thing."

Still, the past two days have brought some results. In one village, men tell Charlie Company's translator, Ahmed, that they have recently slaughtered two goats for Taliban to eat. In another village, ANA soldiers discover about 100 rounds of ammo, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades. Clearly, the Taliban come to this area often.

Yet it's a game of cat and mouse. Every time the Americans enter a new valley, the Taliban radio the fighters to clear out: the Americans are coming.

At dusk, the men pause on a road and sip from the Camelback water pouches, while a few hundred sheep and donkeys belonging to the "thug" shepherd walk past. "Baaa-aaa," say some of the sheep. "Baaa-aaa," responds a chorus of exhausted soldiers.

UN aid chief warns time is short BBC News / Thursday, 13 October 2005

Attempts to get aid to remote areas cut off by the South Asia earthquake are running out of time, the man in charge of the international response has said.

Jan Egeland, the UN's top aid official, toured the badly damaged town of Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-run Kashmir.

He praised the initial world reaction, but added "we are losing a race against the clock in the small villages".Refugees are still pouring out of mountain regions where conditions are deteriorating, searching for help.

Tens of thousands are thought to have arrived in the wrecked city of Balakot, leaving their dead and some of the injured behind in the mountains. "No search team came to our village. Most people have fled and there are only the injured left. Nothing came by helicopter either," said one refugee, Zaman, 28, from Baghgia.

'Give more'

The UN says an estimated two million people need rehousing and a million are in urgent need of help. Pakistan now says Saturday's earthquake killed at least 25,000 people on its territory while India recorded at least 1,200 deaths.

Mr Egeland said: "I've never seen such devastation before. We are in the sixth day of operation, and every day the scale of devastation is getting wider.

"We have seen a much graver picture and I believe we need to triple the number of helicopters in the operation. My appeal to the world is to come up with more aid, more relief, and more resources," he said.

The US and Japan are among the countries that have lent helicopters to the aid effort, but the vast area of destruction is still stretching resources to the limit.

'Forget the divides'

Pakistani troops queued in a field in Muzaffarabad to board a helicopter on Thursday bound for isolated villages in the Neelum valley. "We are worried for them. We're taking food and supplies with us. We can't reach them by road so we have to use helicopters," an army colonel told AFP.

"The soldiers will be clearing the way for relief workers and channelling through supplies. They will also be clearing the dead bodies," he said, pointing out the face masks many of his men were wearing.

Mr Egeland called for India and Pakistan to put their differences over disputed Kashmir behind them and handle the disaster together.

"We should really forget about old divides in Kashmir and there should be a very open invitation to all assistance from everywhere," he said.

He said the aid effort was "not working as it should do" but said that was understandable considering the vast area and short timescale.

Afghan Transit Trade At Karachi Port Slumps 40 PCT- Thursday October 13,

ISLAMABAD, Oct 13 Asia Pulse - Commodities arriving at the Karachi port under the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement (ATTA) have slumped by 40 per cent owing to non-availability of goods trains in the southern Pakistani city, an official said on Wednesday.

Syed Fazl, a senior official of the Pak-Afghan Transit Trade Clearing Agents' Group, attributed the steep fall to the lethargic attitude of the Pakistan Railways and belated delivery of the goods to recipients in Afghanistan.
 
"The goods reaching the Karachi port under the ATTA are to be transported to Peshawar by trains alone but, unfortunately, the railway authorities are least bothered about the losses suffered by Afghan entrepreneurs owing to delayed shipments," he regretted.

He added Afghan traders, resentful of the Pakistan Railways' unconcern, had started transporting their goods to the strife-torn country via Iran. On average, more than 2,500 trucks cross into Pakistan every month to carry the trade items to Afghanistan but the number the containers came down to 1,600 in September as compared to 2,800 in August.

But railway officials claimed they had arranged additional trains for transferring the consignments from Karachi to northwestern border city of Peshawar. Nasir Zaidi, spokesman for the Pakistan Railways, rejected the impression transportation delays were caused by a shortage of carriages.

Zaidi Pajhwok Afghan News: "We have always tried our best to meet Afghan traders' demand for timely availability of trains."

He argued the Afghans were in the habit of seeking more and more bogies, some of which ran unfilled, inflicting unnecessary losses on the corporation.
(Pajhwok Afghan News)

A “public” church in Afghanistan? AsiaNews.it, Italy - October 12, 2005
Compared to the past, European diplomats seem less interested in spiritual assistance.

The chapel inside the Italian Embassy in Kabul is the only Catholic Church in Afghanistan. It exists thanks too a long-lasting diplomatic effort that goes back to the 1920s when Italy became the only country with this privilege after it was the first country to recognise Afghanistan’s independence in 1919. As a way to show its gratitude, the Afghan government asked how it could thank Italy. Rome responded asking for the right to build a place of spiritual assistance—in doing so it was making its own the demands of international technicians then living in the Afghan capital.

The Afghan government was much taken with the choice because Italy, instead of asking for valuable monopolies in the economic field—such as mineral exploration rights—had opted for a monopoly in matter of the spirit. Thus, a clause giving Italy the right to build a chapel within its embassy was included to Italian-Afghan treaty of 1921.

In the end, the actual pastoral work began in 1933 when the chapel international technicians had asked for was built.

Later, the first request to build a public church reached the person in charge of the missio sui iuris in Afghanistan in 1992. An official from the last pro-Communist government of Mohammad Najibullah went to see Fr Giuseppe Moretti with a sketch for a small compound that would be guaranteed immunity.

However, nothing came of it as the political situation in Afghanistan unravelled—the civil war escalated, the Talebans came to power and then lost it after the Us invasion.

Today the embassy’s chapel is too small for the many faithful who attend—on Sunday’s more than a hundred people can be seen crowding the Church.

Moreover, the current situation has raised hopes that a “public” church might be built yet. Kabul’s small international Catholic community can only hope in a greater involvement by European diplomats on the issue.

Charlie Company fights an invisible enemy

KATA SHANG, AFGHANISTAN - For the past three days, the men of the 82nd Airborne's Charlie Company have been chasing ghosts. Every time they fly into a valley in Chinook helicopters, the Taliban flee at the thumping sound of the rotors.

Every time they walk into a village, Taliban radios crackle with news of their arrival. It's frustrating, and more than one soldier grumbles this mission is "pointless."

"It's frustrating," says 2nd Lieutenant Ben Wisnioski of Rocky Hill, Conn. "It's like Vietnam, or the French in Algeria. We have the ability to beat these guys militarily, but they won't come out and fight us."

It's not that these men are itching to pull their triggers. But nobody wants to feel like they are wasting their time, particularly in a largely forgotten war where more than 80 US soldiers have been killed in the past six months alone. These men simply want to feel they're making a difference here.

The past four days of this mission have been grueling. Yet most men of the Charlie Company work without complaint. Walking up mountains beats sitting around a garrison all day, these men say. But knowing that the Taliban are so close, refusing to fight, still eats them up inside.

In the village of Kata Shang, village elder Abdul Bare tells the Americans that he's happy to see them. The Taliban never come to this village, he says. "OK," the elder alters his story a bit, "sometimes the Taliban do come to this village. But they just pass through town. They don't talk with us."

Just a few houses away, ANA soldiers discover 100 rounds of Kalashnikov ammunition, even though none of the villagers has a gun. The owner of the house says the ammo is old, probably from the time of the Soviet occupation. But it's visibly shiny, not even tarnished by one season in the elements.

In the next village, the men take a break in the shade of pomegranate trees and wait for the heat of the day to pass before they press on to their final objective of the day: the village of Spitut.

All along the way, the Taliban play mind games. They get on their radios, knowing that the Americans are listening, and boasting, "we are on the hilltops above them, we can see them, I have an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade)." The Americans used to chase up the hills when they heard such chatter; now they ignore it.

Most of the men of the weapons unit find it incredibly difficult to understand the lives that local Afghan villagers lead. "Ninety percent of the people here are good, they want their country to be good," says Pvt. Mike Patraw of Platteville, Wisc.

The problem is that it only takes a small percentage of bad people to stir things up in Iraq and Afghanistan. When he was in Fallujah, some Iraqis fired on US troops from within a crowd. The Americans returned fire, killing the gunmen and several unarmed protesters. "I feel sorry for some of them," says Private Patraw. "They were human shields."

Here in Afghanistan, he sees the same dynamic: powerless people prodded along by Taliban gunmen. If this patrol helps to encourage villagers to work a little more with the Afghan government, Patraw says, then it will be worth it.

Yet some of the men privately express doubts that their tactics are making a difference. "The problem is that back in the States, people get real upset when one of us gets killed," says one veteran soldier. "So they give us this body armor and all the stuff that keeps us from getting killed. As a result, we can't chase the Taliban up the hills if they run away."

He goes quiet a moment. "Don't quote me on this, but it's not the way I would fight a counterinsurgency." Some of the men keep their distance from Afghans. Telling the difference between friend and foe, in villages where everyone seems to be friendly but where US soldiers still get killed, can be difficult.

Yet some soldiers do reach out. Specialist Kris "Doc" Tyte of Charlotte, N.C., distributes candy to children in every village. When on base in Qalat, Pvt. Brian Martin of Trenton, Mich., and Pfc. Shain Hahn of Rush City, Minn., drink green tea at a local restaurant every morning.

"All the people in the market know us by name," says Private Martin, one of the squad's designated sharpshooters. "They're really good people ... [You] want to see things get better here."

What worries Lieutenant Wisnioski, a West Point graduate in military history, is that Afghanistan resists change, particularly imposed change. The US has tried to bring its democratic system to other countries without much success.

"At the turn of the century, the US was down in Cuba doing a lot of the same stuff, for three years," he says, referring to the placement of pro-American government officials and the training of military and police. "But as soon as they left, corruption took over. They've got to do something cultural about corruption here."

"I get worried that when we leave," he adds, "this place is going to revert" to the way things were - chaotic. At the end of the day, we hike into Spitut. ANA soldiers have already discovered a large cache of explosives in the largest home of the village. The home is abandoned, but only in the sense that no one is home. The windows are brand-new, the compound well swept. The owners have left suddenly, and recently.

In one room, the men find two powerful antitank mines, the sort that recently killed four American soldiers in a fully armored Humvee near Deh Chopan.

Sgt. First Class Jason Nelson of Charlotte, N.C., tips one of the land mines on its side to determine its age. "I think we just saved a life today," he says.

Perhaps this long trek hasn't been so pointless after all.

Dying to give life: Maternal mortality in Afghanistan (UNFPA)October 11, 2005

"One day, not so long ago, a woman showed up at the clinic showing signs of a complicated late-stage pregnancy. I asked her husband to let her come to the hospital for 10 days to deliver safely and get support, or she would die. The man told me that he did not have money for 10 days accommodation and he left the hospital with his wife. After 12 days the man transferred his wife to the hospital in a very serious condition. He had sought support of a local clinic, but there were no quality services and experts to manage this serious complication.

Then the lady was transferred by shoulder to the hospital of Faizabad after more than one day of walking. At the same time the lady had serious bleeding. When she reached the hospital, she was in terminal shock. We tried to rescue her, her husband bought two pints of blood for 20000 Afs ($408). He had to sell his only land to raise this money.

The woman died the next day and her baby died the day after that." — Dr. Hajira, a gynaecological surgeon in Faizabad BADAKHSHAN, Afghanistan — It juts like a finger, thrusting through the freezing and windswept Pamir Mountains: jabbing through the broad plateau of Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south. From there it points inexorably east to China. In Badakhshan even the border seems to be admonishing the world for a tragedy that unfolds hourly in one of the most remote and backward provinces of one of the most troubled and impoverished places on earth: the conflict-prone country of Afghanistan.

Once part of the ancient Greek kingdom of Bactria and renowned in antiquity for the quality of its gemstones, Badakhshan has now earned the dubious distinction of being home to the highest maternal mortality rate in the world. For women struggling to bring new life into this austere and merciless land, Badakhshan’s harsh landscape and lack of infrastructure too often spells disaster for both mother and child. Few trucks, cars or other means of transportation, coupled with even fewer roads, results in delays that can easily lead to life-long disability or death. In winter, snow blocks the narrow paths that link mountain villages with main thoroughfares—often for as many as seven months at a stretch.

In Badakhshan, for every 100,000 babies born, 6,500 women will lose their lives: a crisis that healthcare workers maintain has as much to do with the low social and nutritional status of its victims as it does with the remote and rugged terrain. Of the thousands of infants left motherless, fully 75 per cent will also perish either during, or soon after, giving birth. In Afghanistan as whole, a woman dies of pregnancy-related causes every 27 minutes of every day. In Badakhshan, a woman faces almost 600 times the risk of dying in childbirth than do her counterparts living in North America.

"It is terrible," says Dr. Ibrahim Shinwari, a programme director for UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, in Afghanistan. "There are no roads. There is no helicopter. There is no transportation. These people really, really suffer".

Apart from its vertiginous cliffs, poor roads and extreme weather, one of the most significant reasons behind the persistently high death rates is gender discrimination. In Afghanistan, men are considered superior to women, and sons are generally more prized than girls. In practical terms, this ‘son preference’ translates into high rates of female illiteracy, malnutrition and early marriage. Indeed, women are seen as little more than commodities who are often bought, sold or are given away to rival families or clans as a means of resolving conflicts. The strong conservative patriarchy of Afghanistan is deeply rooted in the history and culture and is justified through local interpretation of Islamic teachings. Because families are so poor, parents are more likely to pool scarce resources to send their boys to school and to ensure that they remain healthy. Girl children invariably do without.

Indeed, so entrenched is the bias against girls and women, that Afghanistan is the one of only two countries where male life expectancy exceeds that of females.

One of the more pernicious aspects discrimination, however, lies in the widespread practice of child marriage. According to Shinwari, more than 40 per cent of Badakshani women are married before the age of 15 and often long before their immature bodies can cope with both the demands of sex and the rigours of childbirth. In Afghanistan overall, 40 per cent of girls are married before they reach the age of 18.

In more outlying areas, poverty, lack of awareness and the need to "protect" young girls from premarital pregnancy, encourages many parents to marry their daughters off even younger—in some cases when they are no more than seven–years old. Many of the women and girls that eventually make it into Dr Shinwari’s clinic have been stunted by years of semi-starvation. This, coupled with poor infrastructure and the pressure to begin child bearing early, can be recipe for disaster.

Although maternal haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal death in Afghanistan, in Badakhshan prolonged and obstructed labour accounts for most (30 per cent) maternal deaths. In the absence of emergency obstetric care, this can also lead to disabling and stigmatizing conditions such as obstetric fistula. Girls under the age of 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their twenties.

Other factors include: limited access to what few health facilities are available, lack of skilled personnel, poverty, malnutrition, the low social status of women and girls and high illiteracy rates. A recent UNICEF survey revealed that of the mothers interviewed, only 3.3 per cent had given birth in a health facility. Lack of access to modern methods of family planning means many women are unable to choose when and how many children to have. Repeated pregnancies and deliveries can result in ‘maternal depletion’, which, in turn, increases the risk of complications. According to UNICEF, among married women, fully 97.6 per cent surveyed were not using any sort of contraceptive whatsoever, while 78 per cent had never even heard of family planning.

Afghanistan has one of the highest fertility rates in the world with an average birth rate of 6.75 children per woman.

Since 2003, the UNFPA has been working in Badakshan to raise awareness, train health care personnel in emergency obstetric care and educating local leaders, women and their families of the necessity of family planning and adequate pre- and antenatal care. In tandem with the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the organization has also launched a campaign, alerting both religious leaders and the public to the dangers posed by the practice. Child marriage was the focus of both Safe Motherhood and World Population Day. The UNFPA has also recently convened a conference that brought together mullahs from all over the country in an effort to persuade them to speak out against a practice that leads to the deaths of so many women each year.

In addition to supporting four regional health clinics and one hospital, UNFPA is also providing vocational training to local women in recognition of the link between economic independence and social and reproductive wellbeing. So far, local authorities have been "very co-operative" notes Shinwari, and women "eager" to learn.

Nevertheless, like the drifts that block all movement for more than half the year, obstacles are many. "Women are so dependent on men, and families are giving far more attention to their sons instead of their daughters," says Shinwari. "Until girls are educated, fed properly and women are able to participate in social and economic life, high maternal mortality will remain a problem for many, many years."

[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.]