Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks to reporters at his palace in Kabul October 21, 2005. Karzai condemned the burning of two Taliban corpses and said his government has launched a separate investigation into the issue. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

Afghan President Tries to Reduce Outrage

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Oct 21, 2005 — President Hamid Karzai said Friday he was "very unhappy" to learn that U.S. soldiers had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters, but he said mistakes happen in war and Afghans shouldn't let the incident mar their impression of the United States.

His apparent attempt to reduce Afghans' anger over the alleged desecration of the bodies came amid warnings by Islamic clerics of a possible violent anti-American backlash.

"Sometimes things happen in these sort of operations, during war. Soldiers make mistakes," he told reporters in Kabul. "We are very grateful for the international community's assistance … Their soldiers have shed their blood in our country."

But he added, "We in Afghanistan in accordance with our religion … are very unhappy and condemn the burning of the two Taliban dead bodies. I hope such incidents will not occur again."

Karzai on Thursday ordered an inquiry into television footage that purportedly shows U.S. soldiers burning the bodies of the two dead Taliban fighters to taunt other militants. The U.S. military also launched an investigation.

Cremating bodies is banned under Islam, and one Muslim leader in Afghanistan compared the video to photographs of U.S. troops abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"Abu Ghraib ruined the reputation of the Americans in Iraq and to me this is even worse," Faiz Mohammed told The Associated Press from northern Kunduz province. "This is against Islam. Afghans will be shocked by this news. It is so humiliating. There will be very, very dangerous consequences from this."

A cleric in Kabul, Said Mohammed Omar, said, "The burnings of these bodies is an offense against Muslims everywhere. Bodies are only burned in hell."

Footage of the alleged act has not been broadcast yet in Afghanistan and though the local media has reported on it, many people were still not aware of it and there have been no demonstrations like anti-American protests in May that turned violent and killed 15 people.

Abuse Charges at Bad Time for White House - AP 10/20/2005

WASHINGTON - Allegations that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of Taliban fighters couldn't have come at a worse time for the Bush administration, already fighting legislation in Congress that would impose standards on the Pentagon's treatment of detainees.

Lurid television pictures of the incident also may further tarnish the U.S. image in the Middle East. Senate Republicans said the alleged U.S. troop participation goes to the heart of why Congress must pass legislation to standardize techniques used in the detention, interrogation and prosecution of detainees in the war on terrorism.

"This is a very, very serious problem," said Sen. John Warner (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., and the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said the situation raises a question that must be answered: "What was the command and control that allowed this situation to happen?"

The video surfaced as the White House renewed efforts to kill or weaken the detainee legislation, which the administration claims could tie the president's hands during wartime.

Underscoring the stakes, Vice President Dick Cheney met Thursday with Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., in the Capitol and suggested alternative language, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.

It was the third time Cheney has discussed the detainee issue in person with McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam who sponsored the legislation.

McCain said the fresh abuse allegations serve as "another argument to make sure that our men and women in the military know exactly what the parameters are for what they can and cannot do in regards to prisoners." The intra-party fight over the legislation and the new abuse claims come at a tenuous political time for the president.

His poll numbers have been dragged down by sluggish public support for the     Iraq war and high gas prices, conservatives are in an uproar over his choice of Harriet Meirs for the Supreme Court and the president's top aides figure prominently in the investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

"This is devastating," Stephen Hess, political analyst at George Washington University, said of the video that purportedly shows U.S. soldiers scorching two dead bodies in the hills near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

In the midst of a public diplomacy campaign to repair the U.S. image abroad, the Bush administration on Thursday tried to stem the fallout from the fresh abuse allegations as Islamic clerics expressed outrage and warned of a possible violent anti-American backlash.

The U.S. military declared the abuse "repugnant" and vowed to investigate, while the State Department directed U.S. embassies to say the actions don't reflect American values.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the allegations "very serious" and, if true, "very troubling." Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that burning bodies "is not anywhere close to our standard operating procedure. It's not something that is consistent with their procedures."

Lawmakers said even the perception of abuse could further hurt the world view of the United States, already marred by the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq and claims of mistreatment of terrorism suspects at the Navy's Guantanamo Bay jail.

"This will sort of reopen wounds that may have been partially closing in regard to the previous scandals," Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy analyst at the Brookings Institution, said. Claims of torture and abuse by U.S. troops at those two facilities prompted McCain, Warner and others to draft the detainee legislation.

The White House staunchly opposed the effort, and worked with Senate Republican leaders on alternative language for the legislation right up until the Senate voted on it earlier this month. House and Senate aides say that effort was dropped when it became clear the legislation had overwhelming support.

Ignoring a veto threat, the Senate voted 90-9 to ban the use of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners and to require U.S. service members to follow the Army Field Manual when imprisoning and questioning suspects in the war on terrorism. Senators added McCain's legislation to a $445 billion defense spending bill.

The House did not include the detainee legislation in its version of the spending bill, and House-Senate negotiators will meet in coming weeks to write a final bill. Support for the detainee legislation among those negotiators is shaky.

Top House Republicans have signaled that they will try to weaken the language in part because the White House threatened a veto. And, the White House has been circulating alternative language. However, the new allegations of abuse could pressure House-Senate negotiators to retain the measure as the Senate passed it.

In the meantime, McCain is reaching out to negotiators. Last week, he sent copies of the Army Field Manual to each of them along with letters of support from former Secretary of State Colin Powell and other retired military leaders.

“Afghanistan, coalition forces must promote rights to cement progress” UN report - U.N. News Service; 19 October 2005

19 October 2005 - Afghanistan has achieved notable progress in promoting democracy and securing the human rights of its citizens, but the overnment and coalition forces there must take further measures to prevent abuses, a United Nations report published today says.

The report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)credits the Government with working to build a democratic society under difficult circumstances, and urges further support for the judicial system, the application of human rights standards, and a rights-based approach to economic and social issues.

The report also called for mechanisms to protect land and property among vulnerable people, a campaign to address violence against women, measures to prevent the involuntary recruitment of children soldiers, and efforts to increase school attendance of girls.

With respect to the activities of the Coalition Forces in Afghanistan, the report notes that some former prisoners have alleged that they were subject to abuse, "including being handcuffed, hooded, earmuffed and roughly handled while being transported to detention facilities. Others have objected to the destruction and theft of their property, forced nudity upon arrival, extended periods of isolation, sleep deprivation, a particularly harsh and arbitrary detention regime, and the inability to communicate with their families other than through an ICRC-administered exchange of censored correspondence."

So-called enemy combatants remain in indefinite incommunicado detention without formal charges and are unable to challenge the basis of their detention, according to the report.

In May, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) urged the Coalition Forces to make public measures that have been taken to eradicate mistreatment and improve conditions of detention. The report says that the Coalition Forces have recently implemented a number of initiatives to address these issues.

"The Government and the international community should ensure that the treatment of those arrested in anti-terrorists operations is fully in accordance with international human rights and humanitarian standards," the report states. Copyright © 2005, United Nations.

NATO commander says drugs Afghanistan's top threat

Washington (AFP) - litary commander on Thursday played down fears of a Taliban or al Qaeda uprising in Afghanistan and said narcotics was the chief threat to democracy in a country that is now the world's top source of heroin.

But the Atlantic alliance, working on a plan to turn over security in Afghanistan from U.S.-led forces to NATO troops, has not settled the touchy issue of how to use its troops in counter-narcotics efforts, said U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones.

"Let's be clear: that (poppy production) is the number one problem that Afghanistan has to face for its future ... so it's not the resurgence of the Taliban or al Qaeda," Jones, the supreme allied commander of NATO forces in Europe, told reporters.

U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban government and dislodge al Qaeda bases after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

British troops are scheduled to take control of the southern sector of Afghanistan as early as next year under a fledgling plan being developed by NATO, but Jones said one country could not alone handle the problem of supporting the country's government in fighting drugs.

He spoke a day after an Afghan government spokesman said in Kabul that Taliban gunmen assassinated an Afghan district chief and a school headmaster in southern Kandahar province. Separately on Wednesday, two French soldiers of the NATO-led peacekeeping force were wounded in a roadside bomb blast during a patrol north of the capital.

But Jones stressed at a meeting with reporters that drugs -- which he said were now providing at least half of Afghanistan's economic strength -- were the big problem, and that the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai wanted to take the lead in that fight.

"It has to be an Afghan lead. But the international community has to really help in this effort," Jones said. "And that goes from crop eradication, crop substitution, (alternative) crop subsidies to a more detailed understanding of the transit routes of this crop -- 90 percent of which finds its way to Europe."

Jones said violence in the country came from many groups, including the drug trade and criminal elements. Ambassadors from NATO countries to the alliance's North Atlantic Council recently visited Afghanistan and came away with a new awareness of the problem, Jones said.

"It is not a question of whether NATO troops will be involved in crop eradication," the general said. "The issue is: what's the totality of the plan, who is going to be doing what, (and) how do we make sure that the Afghans lead in this effort, and how do we wean an economy that is at least 50 to 55 percent dependent on this crop?" he added.

Bomb kills provincial Afghan police official

Kandahar (AFP) - A car bomb planted by suspected Taliban fighters killed an Afghan police chief and one of his police guards in western Afghanistan, the government said.

Another policeman and four civilians were wounded in the blast late Thursday in Zaranj, the capital of western Nimroz province, an interior ministry spokesman said.

The remotely detonated bomb killed Nimroz police director Haji Nafas Khan, the secondmost senior policeman in the province, as he was in his vehicle traveling to evening Ramadan prayers, spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said on Friday.

"The Nimroz police director and one policeman were killed. One policeman and four civilians who were around were wounded as the car bomb exploded in front of their vehicle," he told AFP.

The government blamed the attack on the "enemies of peace and stability", a term used to refer to remnants of the ousted Taliban regime.

In another incident blamed on the Taliban Thursday, an employee of the Afghan Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (CHA) organisation was killed and another wounded after they were attacked in northwestern Faryab province, the provincial governor said.

"We think it was the Taliban," governor Abdul Latif Idrahimi said. CHA is funded by a host of international donors and works to improve basic social services for needy communities.

Taliban loyalists launched an insurgency after they were removed from government in late 2001 in a US-led operation. Government officials, religious clerics, aid workers and foreign nationals have been some of their targets.

Aid worker among 4 killed in Afghan violence

A local aid worker and two senior provincial officials were among four people killed in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, in attacks blamed on Taliban militants.

The employee of the Western-funded Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (CHA) relief agency was killed in an ambush in the northwestern province of Faryab on Thursday in which his three colleagues were wounded, provincial CHA head Khan Mohammad Sameem said.

Faryab's governor, Mohammad Aamir Latif, blamed Taliban guerrillas for the attack. The ambush followed one a week ago in which five local aid workers were killed in the southern province of Kandahar.

In another attack, also on Thursday, Taliban guerrillas blew up a car, killing Nafas Khan, police chief for Zaranj, the provincial capital of Nimroz in the south. A colleague of Khan was also killed in the blast triggered by a remote device, a senior provincial official said, and accused the Taliban for it.

An intelligence official was killed in a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Kunar, officials said. Mohammad Yousuf, a spokesman for the Taliban, confirmed that militants were behind the blast in Zaranj, but had no information about the attack on CHA.

The latest surge in attacks is part of the violence that has claimed some 1,100 lives, mostly militants, but also more than 50 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan this year, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew Taliban in 2001.

The Taliban have vowed to drive out foreign forces from Afghanistan and topple President Hamid Karzai's government that was installed after the militants' ouster in 2001.

Taliban Step Up Afghan Bombings and Suicide Attacks - The New York Times 10/21/2005 By Carlotta Gall and Eric Schmitt

KABUL - Violence in southern Afghanistan has escalated in the last month as militants are increasingly taking a page from the insurgent playbook in Iraq and using more roadside bombs and suicide attacks, senior Afghan and American officials said Thursday.

American officials said they were bracing for protests throughout the Islamic world in response to allegations that American soldiers in Afghanistan had burned and desecrated the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and used the remains as propaganda. American officials voiced fears of violence after Friday Prayer services.

In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said United States embassies around the world had been issued talking points to explain to foreign journalists and officials that the alleged misconduct was an aberration that did not reflect American values. "These are very serious allegations and, if true, very troublesome," Mr. McCormack told reporters.

At a news conference at the Kandahar air base, a presidential spokesman, Khaleeq Ahmad, said the Defense Ministry and provincial governor had been directed to investigate the incident, which reportedly took place on Oct. 1 in the village of Gonbaz, 60 miles north of Kandahar, a former stronghold of the Taliban.

Maj. Gen. Jason K. Kamiya, the senior American commander for daily operations in Afghanistan, joined the Afghan officials at the news conference, and promised to conduct a serious investigation into the allegations of mistreatment of dead Afghan Taliban combatants and to punish any American soldiers found guilty of misconduct. "I want to know what happened," General Kamiya said, "and what measures we can put in place that these alleged acts never happen again."

The gruesome corpse-burning incident shown on an Australian television program on Wednesday comes as Taliban insurgents and their sympathizers have ratcheted up their campaign of violence in southern Afghanistan a month after parliamentary elections, concentrating on the province of Kandahar from where the American-led coalition forces run their combat operations in southern Afghanistan.

There have been daily attacks on American and government forces, with numerous roadside bombs, one of the most serious struck Afghan police in Helmand Province on Oct. 12, killing 18.

Militants have become more skilled in shooting down American military helicopters, including a Chinook in Zabul Province on Sept. 25, an incident that killed five soldiers.

In the most alarming development, officials said, there has been a sudden rise in suicide bomb attacks, a tactic that had not been used much in Afghanistan before, largely because it is thought Afghans do not believe suicide is permitted under Islam. Already, there have been at least 13 suicide attacks this year, more than double the number from all of last year, a defense intelligence official said in Washington.

American intelligence officials say Afghan insurgents are resorting to more spectacular attacks partly to attract financing for operations from extremist financiers in the Middle East who have been increasingly directing their funds to insurgents in Iraq, including the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Officials here are struggling to understand who the bombers are, but have only been able to identify one of them, an Afghan war invalid who was blind and an amputee, according to a senior Afghan intelligence official, who asked not be named because of the covert nature of his job.

A suicide bomb attack killed nine people outside an Afghan Army training base in Kabul last month, in the first serious violence after the largely peaceful elections. Since then five suicide car bomb attacks have hit Kandahar in the last 10 days and American, Canadian and British vehicles have been among the targets.

The governor of Kandahar Province, Asadullah Khalid, said investigators had retrieved only parts of the bodies of the bombers. In the case of the attack that killed an Afghan commander, Agha Shah, the police did find the head of the bomber, he said, and he appeared to be non-Afghan, possibly an Uzbek.

Gunmen on motorbikes have also stepped up attacks on unarmed civilians working for the government or in public services. Five medical personnel were killed and four wounded when gunmen raked their minibus with gunfire on their way to a refugee camp outside Kandahar. Three religious clerics, a government district administrator and a headmaster have also been killed in the last 10 days across the southern and eastern regions. Three people were reportedly beheaded in the province of Uruzgan, another area of intense insurgent activity.

United Nations and Afghan officials have described the insurgency as taking a new, more brutal turn this year, with beheadings, throats cut and the assassination of religious and tribal elders and of doctors. The Taliban, through spokesmen and letters, have routinely blamed the victims for spying for the American military, or working for the government.

The American military says these attacks on soft targets - usually civilians - are a sign of the desperation of the insurgents and an indication of their growing weakness. President Hamid Karzai used the same argument, saying the killing of the 18 police in Helmand had been a sign of the enemy's weakness.

That brought an angry response from the editor of the Kabul weekly newspaper Fahim Dashty, who called on the president to admit to the inability of the his security forces to contain the violence.

In Washington, Gen. James L. Jones, commander of the NATO force that now oversees security in northern and western Afghanistan and will soon take over in south, said Thursday that the country's violence stems not only from insurgent attacks but also from drug traffickers, criminals and political operatives settling scores.

"There are four or five groups of people that can bring violence to bear at any time," he said. But General Jones said poppy production "is the No. 1 problem that Afghanistan has to face for its future," not a resurgent Taliban or Al Qaeda.

Defense intelligence analysts in Washington estimate there are about 2,000 to 3,000 hard-core Taliban fighters operating in Afghanistan, and about 100 Qaeda combatants in and around Afghanistan. Carlotta Gall reported from Kabul for this article, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Ruhullah Khapalwak contributed from Kandahar.

Stoking Afghanistan's resistance - Syed Saleem Shahzad – Asia Times 10/21/05

Karachi - The onset of winter and the heavy snows that go with it have traditionally brought Afghanistan's civil wars to a halt over the past 25 years.

But in the last two years, the Taliban-led resistance has bucked the trend. Two years ago, the winter was marked by the country's first-ever suicide attacks, which took place against US bases. And last year they continued with sporadic guerrilla activities throughout the long, cold months.

This winter, the Taliban had planned to draw warlords further into their struggle, luring them with promises of protection for their drug-growing and smuggling activities. The overall aim is to spread as much chaos as possible across the country.

Now their cause has received a significant boost from an unexpected quarter following reports that US soldiers desecratedthe bodies of Taliban fighters by burning them.

Islam traditionally forbids the cremation or embalming of corpses. Further, as a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai said, "We strongly condemn any disrespect to human bodies regardless of whether they are those of enemies or friends."

An Australian television report from a journalist who had been embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, including video footage, purportedly shows US soldiers standing by the burning corpses of two suspected Taliban fighters with their bodies laid out, facing Mecca.

The footage was filmed outside the southern village of Gonbaz near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. It included a propaganda message taunting Taliban fighters to retrieve their dead and fight. In the complex tribal structure of Afghanistan, where Afghan traditions (Pakhtoon wali) compliment Islam, such an incident can be blown to exceptional proportions.

This happened in the 1980s, during the Soviet occupation, when Soviet authorities launched anti-traditionalist policies, such as discouraging the role of Muslim clerics in mosques and encouraging women to take a lead role in society.

The result was the wrath of the Afghan rural masses from north to south and among Tajiks and Pashtuns, Shi'ites and Sunnis. The reaction was far greater, and more damaging, than the intended objective, and the mujahideen resistance gained further popular support.

Both the Afghan and US governments have expressed strong revulsion over the footage, and have launched inquiries. However, the incident gives the resistance a perfect propaganda tool for rabble-raising and widening its support to create the utmost political instability. The Taliban have achieved some success on this count recently.

Two years ago, Asia Times Online wrote about the formation of the Jaishul Muslim. Jaishul Muslim was created to split the Taliban by turning some against their leader, Mullah Omar. The main purpose was to create an organization that could control those warlords and tribes siding with Mullah Omar by bringing them into the Jaishul Muslim's fold, especially in southern and southeastern Afghanistan.

Last year the Jaishul Muslim joined with the Taliban, but soon the Taliban found them to be unreliable and contact was broken off. Now Asia Times Online contacts in Afghanistan say that recently some powerful commanders who were with Jaishul Muslim have agreed to join Taliban. These commanders have each been assigned to particular regions to carry out operations against US-led forces.

Similar deals have been struck with other commanders in places such as Kunar, Ghazni, Jalalabad and Kandahar. From the resistance point of view these developments have come at a perfect time as the Pakistan Army is tied up with relief operations in the Kashmir region following the massive earthquake there last week. This means that the resistance can use Pakistani territory on the rugged border area with Afghanistan with impunity. It could be a long, cold and bloody winter. Syed Saleem Shahzad, Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online.

AFGHANISTAN: People surrender arms but want rebuilding - [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

MAIDAN WARDAK, 20 October (IRIN) - Tribal elder Mullah Saleh Mohammad stands with dozens of white-bearded men and other residents under a sparkling sun in a narrow valley in the Narkh district, listening to a government delegation asking them to surrender their arms.

Dr Fazal Rahim Bower, provincial coordinator for the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) in Maidan Wardak province, has asked the gathering to support the disarmament process in Narkh, 15 km west of the provincial capital Maidan Shar. "Fighting is over. We are in the phase of reconstruction. All our miseries are caused by arms, so I need your strong determination for surrendering arms," he told them. "All types of weapons in your houses are banned and .

would be collected. If anybody feels threatened they could get arms permits from the government," Bower added. But Mullah Saleh Mohammad's reaction to the request is mixed. "People are ready to surrender their arms but they do not rely on the promises of the government," the 57-year-old said. "Our government has done nothing for us," adding the people were suffering from unemployment, poverty and a lack of health, educational and agricultural facilities.

"If the government wants to eliminate insecurity, it should address the problems of unemployment and poverty in the urban areas [first]," he said. Another member of the delegation, Ali Ahmad Khahshie from the ministry of labour and social affairs, told the gathering those who surrendered arms would be rewarded with vocational centres, orphanages, schooling and employment opportunities.

The Maidan Wardak province, about 30 km west of the capital Kabul, was a frontline for warring factions during two decades of conflict, but the disarmament programme has enjoyed good success there, according to DIAG officials. Residents in the province's urban areas, however, complain reconstruction has been slow, although the shape of the provincial capital Maidan-Shar has changed significantly since the newly appointed provincial leadership launched several big projects. Over the past two months alone, local residents had voluntarily surrendered about 250 light and heavy weapons, provincial governor Abdul Jabbar Naeemi said.

"All people, including commanders and ordinary individuals, holding weapons in their houses, should surrender their arms," he said. Lack of awareness among local populations was the main challenge in the disarmament process, the governor added. "We are conveying the message of our president [Hamid Karzai] regarding disarmament to the people [but] with many difficulties," he added. The governor admitted reconstruction was slow in districts and appealed for international assistance. "In some of the districts, students are studying under the shadow of trees due to a lack of school buildings," he said.

Following the disarmament of Afghan militia forces under the UN-backed Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) of ex-combatants programme, completed in late June, the Afghan government and the UN are now focusing on the DIAG initiative. According to officials of the disarmament commission, more than 20,000 arms have been collected within DIAG operations across the country since its launch in early June.

Financed by the Japanese government, DIAG is run by the interior and defence ministries and the national security agency, and overseen by the UN. According to the disarmament commission, laws will soon be in force banning the unlicensed ownership of private arms and ammunitions. Only those with permits issued by the interior ministry will be allowed to bear arms.

All arms stored in caches would be collected first, while individuals keeping small arms in their houses should surrender or license them, said Ahmad Jan Nawzadi, a spokesman for Afghanistan's New Beginnings Programme (ANBP), the official name of the DDR programme. More than 60,000 former combatants had been disarmed under the DDR initiative, which took the international community almost 20 months and more than US $150 million to complete. In addition to the decommissioning of ex-combatants, about 35,000 light and medium weapons and 11,004 heavy weapons were collected across the country.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, India - Globe and Mail 10/20/2005 By Amin Saikal

The South Asian earthquake, which has devastated a large part of northern Pakistan, has generated an unprecedented degree of camaraderie in a usually-tense region. It has demonstrated Pakistan's limitations, and forced Islamabad to look to its neighbours and beyond for help. By the same token, it has provided a valuable opportunity for the neighbours to show magnanimity toward Pakistan in its hour of need.

Can this lead to major improvement in Pakistan's relations with Afghanistan and India? With regard to a weak Afghanistan, where President Hamid Karzai had lately chided Islamabad openly for not doing enough to stop cross-border operations by Taliban activists in Afghanistan, and called on the United States to change its "war on terror" strategy to focus more on Pakistan than Afghanistan as the real source of terrorism, Pakistan has now expressed gratitude to the Afghans for their humanitarian assistance.

As Islamabad becomes deeply preoccupied with its domestic situation for some time to come, Kabul could breath a bit more easily over Pakistan's help to the remnants of the Taliban. The latter's opposition activities have increasingly proved to be costly for the Afghan government and its international supporters, especially the United States.

On the other hand, Kabul cannot be too optimistic in this respect. The Taliban and its Pakistani Islamist supporters could take advantage of Pakistan's domestic preoccupations to augment rather than diminish their cross-border operations.

Besides this, the problems in Afghan-Pakistan relations have in the past been rooted in deeper issues than the Taliban factor. They essentially arise from a long-standing border dispute, and the heavy dependence of Afghanistan as a land-locked country on Pakistani goodwill.

Successive Afghan governments, with the exception of that of the Taliban, had called for a renegotiation of the border as a remnant of British colonialism, ever since the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Pakistan had rejected any discussion of the issue. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, this border became an open one, and remained so after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 and collapse of the Communist government in Kabul three years later, as well as during the Taliban rule, which Pakistan supported strongly.

The Karzai government and the U.S. have demanded greater border security against the Taliban operating out of sanctuaries in Pakistan. No doubt, the Afghan-Pakistan border is long and treacherous, and difficult to secure. However, unless this border is mutually accepted and secured, and Afghanistan's transit route is diversified, the current earthquake-driven climate of goodwill created between the two sides could dissipate very swiftly.

The same really goes for Pakistan-India relations. The earthquake has certainly created an atmosphere in which both sides could take steps toward warmer relations. New Delhi has been quick to offer not only humanitarian assistance but also security help across the Line of Control in Kashmir. Under the circumstances, Islamabad has had no choice but to welcome Indian help. This, together with Pakistan's need now to concentrate on postearthquake reconstruction, can help with the processes of confidence-building measures. But ultimately the hostilities between the two nuclear foes will be significantly diminished only if, and when, the Kashmir dispute is resolved.

However, the problem is that this is not a dispute that can be resolved overnight. It is too deeply entangled with the domestic politics and foreign-policy positions of the two countries. The leadership of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf needs the Kashmir dispute to keep legitimizing his concealed military rule, as well as his government's partnership with the United States in the war on terror as a means to shore up its position against a more powerful India.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh cannot favourably respond to Mr. Musharraf's terms for a negotiated settlement of the status of the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir because of its implications for India's political and territorial integrity.

The best way forward for Pakistan is first to have genuine democracy, whereby its leadership will be less dependent on the Kashmir issue and the war on terror for purposes of domestic legitimization, but more based on popular support to reach a historical compromise on the border problems with both India and Afghanistan. Yet this is not something that the Musharraf leadership can achieve as long as it remains committed to the institutionalized role of the military in Pakistani politics.

The present atmosphere of goodwill generated as a result of the earthquake tragedy is encouraging and should be followed by increased diplomatic steps to maintain its momentum. However, the problems between Pakistan, and Afghanistan and India have such concrete dimensions that they cannot be resolved by goodwill gestures alone. They need to be tackled at their roots, and this can happen if there are structural changes in Pakistani politics against support for forces of religious and nationalist extremism (including the Taliban and Kashmiri separatists). Only then will the conditions become ready for a lasting settlement of the Afghan-Pakistan and India-Pakistan border problems.

Amin Saikal is professor of political science and director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (the Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University, and author of Modern Afghanistan: A History of Struggle and Survival.

Remember Afghanistan? - October 20, 2005 PakTribune.com, Pakistan

KABUL: Afghanistan's impressive achievements are in danger of being lost. Donor nations aren't giving enough development funds. Western nongovernmental organisations are mismanaging reconstruction. And Pakistan has failed to arrest Al Qaida and Taliban militants in its backyard.

The optimism and hope generated by last October's presidential election and last month's legislative voting will soon fade. Afghanistan could again become a base for global terrorism, says a Gulf News report.

Four years after the US-led coalition kicked the Taliban out of power, Taliban and Al Qaida remnants continue to use Pakistan as a sanctuary, training base and staging area for attacks on coalition and Afghan soldiers.

More than 50 US soldiers and hundreds of Afghans have been killed this year. Reconstruction is stalled in Afghanistan's border provinces because of a lack of security.

Despite Pakistani military operations in Waziristan, periodic arrests of militants and announcements that the border has been "sealed", Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and his generals still play both fireman and arsonist in Afghanistan.

This will only worsen unless President Bush and Congress stop indulging Pakistan's two-track policy. The great majority of Afghans I've spoken with believe that the promises of reconstruction assistance from the Afghan government and the international community remain unfulfilled.

More than $5 billion (Dh18.35 billion) in reconstruction aid has not bought one new power plant, even though electricity is a crucial ingredient in agricultural and industrial development.

Opium production is at unacceptably high levels, with terrorist groups and warlords reaping large profits trafficking drugs. Corruption is on the rise.
A big part of the problem is the more than 1,000 Western nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) that receive and channel the aid.

Too often they perform governmental functions that elected but under-sourced Afghans should be doing. Maintaining the maze of foreign NGOs is also wasteful.

Their logistics, personnel, housing and other internal costs eat up more than 60 per cent of the assistance money (some estimates are as high as 80 per cent). Afghans joke that they suffered under the Soviets, then the Taliban and now the NGOs.

Afghanistan's governing institutions remain too weak to be effective. Little progress has been made in preparing Afghans to govern. Afghan judges and legal experts repeatedly told me that resolving the huge upsurge in property disputes left over from 20 years of war is beyond the judiciary's ability.

In judicial as well as other governmental and administrative areas, aid agencies are not devoting sufficient attention to training and deploying a professional Afghan cadre of managers and skilled civil servants essential to administering the country. Weak democratic institutions and an inadequate civil society undercut President Hamid Karzai's ability to deal with Muslim extremists and warlords.

What's to be done? First and foremost, the United States, bilateral donors and the United Nations must investigate and eliminate the inefficiency and mismanagement rampant within the NGO-administered reconstruction.

Government functions performed by non-Afghans should be transferred to Afghan institutions, both public and private, as expeditiously as possible.

To reduce corruption, donors should demand more accountability. When the new Afghan Parliament convenes, it will target this corruption. Karzai would be wise to fire some ministers and implement anti-corruption regulations before that day. Continued progress doesn't depend on more foreign troops, but on a smarter, redirected and better-funded reconstruction strategy.

Neamat Nojumi, senior fellow at the Centre for World Religion, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, was an Afghan Military commander during the anti-Soviet war in the 1980s. He recently returned from Afghanistan.

Pakistan aid 'totally inadequate' – BBC

Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf says the amount of foreign reconstruction aid pledged after the South Asia quake is "totally inadequate". Gen Musharraf told the BBC that about $620m had been promised, but that Pakistan needed about $5bn to rebuild devastated areas.

An estimated three million people in Pakistan lack adequate shelter. The UN has appealed for urgent help to avoid a massive second wave of deaths over the fierce Himalayan winter. Pakistan has confirmed 49,739 deaths, most of them in Pakistani-administered Kashmir. India says more than 1,400 have died in the sector of Kashmir it administers.

Ten thousand tents will be flown to Pakistan over the next few weeks, but the UN has warned there may not be enough winterised tents in the world to meet the needs of the earthquake victims. UN emergency relief chief Jan Egeland has asked Nato to stage a massive airlift of those without shelter, on the scale of the Berlin airlift in the 1940s.

The 26-nation alliance, which began flying in 900 tonnes of aid on Thursday, is considering the demand, but says it would need to muster more helicopters. The US said its extra helicopters would arrive in Pakistan next week, giving a significant boost to the 60 currently operating in the region. Neighbouring India has also offered to send more aircraft, but Pakistan insisted they be provided without Indian crews, which India has refused to do.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the disputed territory Kashmir, one of the regions worst-hit by the quake. Gen Musharraf recently proposed opening the line of control between the two Kashmirs, but so far there have been no signs of the proposal being put into practice.

The Indian government says it is awaiting suggestions for the practical implementation of the offer. Mr Egeland has urged the two countries to set aside differences over Kashmir and "work out a compromise immediately" to speed aid across the line of control dividing the disputed region. Mr Egeland's Nato appeal follows the UN's admission that the quake is the worst logistical nightmare it has ever faced.

The UN says the shortfall in aid for victims of the South Asian quake has made the relief situation worse than after last December's tsunami. Mr Egeland said only $86m had been pledged of the $312m the UN had asked for to fund the relief operation - and far less actually received in cash.

In an interview with the BBC, Gen Musharraf said he was confident that all areas hit by the earthquake 12 days ago would be reached by relief teams before winter, but said that there was still an urgent need for more tents and tarpaulins to help the survivors.

He said it was likely that Pakistan would need to build 500,000 new homes. The Pakistani leader also defended the country's army in the face of criticism of its response to the crisis. He said the army had managed to get aid through, despite working in very difficult conditions.

"The whole nation is helping and the army is helping, and I think we are feeling very happy with ourselves for having reacted in such a positive manner as a nation, army included," Gen Musharraf said.

US official in India for nuclear talks

New Delhi (AFP) - A senior US State Department official was to hold talks with India's foreign secretary on a nuclear deal between the two nations that breaks precedent on decades of non-proliferation policy.

US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns will meet Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran on Friday to discuss the deal, which requires New Delhi to separate civilian and military nuclear programs in exchange for advanced civilian nuclear technology.

The deal, agreed between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush in July, would give India access to technology normally reserved for nations that have signed the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

India would place its civilian nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections while Washington would lobby the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group to allow civilian nuclear sales to India.

The group normally restricts cooperation with countries, like India, that are not NPT members. "I think by the time that President Bush visits New Delhi in early 2006, we will see that both of our countries would have met our commitment in this landmark agreement," Burns said in New York before leaving.

He was instrumental in developing the partnership agreement, including civil nuclear energy cooperation, which he called the "high-water mark" of relations with India since its founding in 1947.

India last month was accused by opposition political parties of caving in to US pressure in supporting an IAEA resolution that opens the door to reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for violating international nuclear safeguards.

The move came after US legislators warned that the nuclear deal, which must be approved by the US Congress, could be jeopardized if India refused to back firm action against Iran, with which New Delhi has valuable energy ties. Burns said the vote was "a very important sign that India is a responsible nuclear power."

"Since the Indian government's very decisive and clear vote in the IAEA, that issue has disappeared in the US Congress and we now find substantial support in Congress for the agreement reached in July," he said.

[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.]