In this bulletin:

• Suicide bomber hits Afghan base
• Suicide attack near coalition compound in Afghanistan
• Three Americans Injured In Afghan Suicide Attack
• Four German soldiers injured during attacks in Afghanistan
• Afghan president, French first lady open hospital
• New French hospital a beacon in Afghanistan's ailing health system
• New cell-phone company to launch service soon
• Pashtun tribals demand withdrawal of Pakistan Army
• Kandahar's economy dives for cover
• Afghan mission in India headless for five months
• Afghan Air Force Flight Crews to Join Missions With U.S. Forces
• Afghan drugs barons flaunt their wealth and power
• Canada’s role in Afghanistan clear at Ground Zero
• The scope of clashes in the Middle East since 9/11

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, the Aga Khan foundation's Aga Khan, right, and French First Lady Bernadette Chirac, left, shake hands prior to their meeting at the Presidential palace in Kabul, Saturday, April 8, 2006. The three inaugurated a new French Medical Institute for the Children in Kabul run by a French organisation and the Aga Khan's Development Foundation. (AP Photo/Shah Marai, Pool)

Suicide bomber hits Afghan base – BBC

A suicide car bomber has attacked an Italian peacekeeper base in the Afghan city of Herat, killing a local guard and two civilians along with himself. Seven people, one of them an Italian civilian, were also injured when the bomb exploded outside the compound but no peacekeepers were hurt.

Herat has been relatively peaceful but there were a spate of bombings there over the past few days. In December, a suicide bomber injured four Italian troops in the city.

The Herat police chief told the BBC that Taleban and al-Qaeda insurgents were thought to be responsible for Saturday's attack on the International Assistance Security Force (Isaf) base.

The attacker drove up to the gates before setting off his bomb at 0830 (0400 GMT). "The blast took place outside one of the entrances to the base, at a distance of about 10m [yards]," said local Isaf spokesman Lt Col Riccardo Cristoni.

Another Italian officer, Capt Livio Cavallaro, said he had seen the remains of the attacker on the street. One of those injured received serious wounds. The Italian civilian was slightly hurt, an Isaf spokesman told the BBC.

A man claiming to be a Taleban spokesman has told AFP news agency that the bomber was a local man. "It was a suicide attack carried out by a citizen from Herat named Abdul Rahim," Yousuf Ahmadi told the agency by telephone.

"The attack was aimed at foreign troops." On Friday, a suicide car bomber attacked a US military base in the capital of the Afghan province of Helmand, Lashkar Gah.

That attack was aimed at Dyncorp, a US company training the Afghan police force in poppy eradication work. Three US nationals suffered minor injuries.

Suicide attack near coalition compound in Afghanistan - Fri Apr 7

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb and blew himself up near a compound of British and US troops in southern Afghanistan, police and a governor said.

The attack happened outside the US-led coalition base in Lashkar Gah, the capital of southern Helmand province, they said on Friday.

Provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Saber said the attack was against British troops and that first reports said some may have been wounded.

"At least one British military vehicle could be seen damaged," he said.
But the provincial governor Mohammad Daud said the blast appeared to have struck a vehicle of US-based security firm DynCorp.

"A DynCorp vehicle was passing by when the explosion occurred. According to the latest information I obtained, no one has been hurt," Daud said. He blamed the attack on "Al-Qaeda terrorists."

A spokesman for the governor also said the attack was against "a Western company". The US-led coalition could not immediately confirm the incident.

The coalition base in Lashkar Gah is home to US troops and about 150 British soldiers who are preparing for the arrival of the main force of more than 3,000 in the coming weeks.

There has been a string of suicide attacks in Afghanistan in the past week, most of them killing only the attackers.

Two suicide attackers died Thursday when their car bomb exploded early in eastern Khost province, police said. They appeared to have been targeting Afghan or foreign troops.

Helmand has seen regular attacks against coalition soldiers who have been in Afghanistan since late 2001 to fight insurgents loyal to the Taliban government ousted in a US-led attack.

The province is the main producer of Afghanistan's crop of illegal opium, which makes up around 90 percent of the world's supply. Experts have said the Taliban are tied up in the drugs trade, which many believe is funding the insurgency.

Three Americans Injured In Afghan Suicide Attack - via Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

April 7, 2006 -- A suicide car bomber in southern Afghanistan today lightly wounded two U.S. service members and one American civilian contractor.

Afghan officials had said earlier two British soldiers were wounded in the incident. The U.S. military said in a statement the attacker died in the morning attack in Lashkargar, the largest city in Helmand Province.

The bomb went off outside the main gate of the base of a British-run Provincial Reconstruction Team. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the assault.

Some 3,300 British troops are currently being deployed in Helmand, one of Afghanistan's main opium-producing regions. (Reuters, AP)

Four German soldiers injured during attacks in Afghanistan
Berlin, April 7, IRNA Germany-Afghanistan-Bombing
One Afghan civilian was killed and four German soldiers were injured during two separate attacks in northern Afghanistan, a German military official announced Friday.

The attacks took place Wednesday evening and Thursday morning in Faizabad and near Kunduz, German Defense Ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe told the press in Berlin.

The soldier, who was injured by a remote bomb near Kunduz, was transferred to Germany for medical treatment, according to Raabe.

Some 2,500 German peacekeeping soldiers are currently based in the war-torn Afghanistan as part of the 9,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Afghan president, French first lady open hospital
Sun Apr 9, 12:30 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's most sophisticated children's hospital was formally opened in the presence of President Hamid Karzai and Bernadette Chirac, wife of French President Jacques Chirac.

The eight-million-euro (9.67-million-dollar) French Medical Institute for the Child brings cutting-edge expertise and equipment to one of the world's poorest countries, still battling to recover from 25 years of war.

"We are pleased today to see Afghan children treated in their own country," Karzai said at the ceremony on Saturday. Afghans frequently travel to neighbouring Pakistan and Iran for treatment because of the inadequacy of the country's own health system. The hospital "is a symbol of the reconstruction of your country", said Chirac.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and his Afghan counterpart Abdullah Abdullah also attended the ceremony. The institute on Monday performed the country's first open heart surgery, on a 13-year-old girl.

It was set up by French nongovernment organisation "Enfants Afghans" (Afghan Children) and the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismaeli sect, has stepped in to cover the running costs, estimated to reach three million dollars this year.

The Aga Khan told the ceremony that Afghanistan faced difficult health challenges. One in four children died before the age of five while 165,000 out of one million died in the month after birth, he said.

New French hospital a beacon in Afghanistan's ailing health system - AFP
04/06/2006

KABUL - In destitute Afghanistan, where hospitals sometimes have the air of a medieval hospice, the French Medical Institute for the Child in Kabul looks like something from another world with its latest medical equipment and sparkling cleanliness.

This week a team of French doctors there performed an open heart operation on a young Afghan girl aged 13, a procedure beyond the capacity of any other hospital in the country ruined by more than 25 years of war.

The hospital -- to be formally opened Saturday by Bernadette Chirac, wife of the French president -- is the creation of a French non-government group Enfants Afghans (Afghan Children) formed in the aftermath of the Taliban regime.

The hardline Taliban were forced from power in late 2001, leaving behind a collapsed health system that is still battling to recover amid dire conditions that result, for example, in a quarter of children dying before age five.

Enfants Afghans has been building up the French Medical Institute for the Child since November: about 100 children have already been operated on in the facility, which has about 100 beds, four operating theatres, a laboratory, a pharmacy and a radiology unit.

About 150 Afghan staff, including 13 doctors, support French medical teams that rotate through the hospital and others permanently with the NGO.

In March they treated 1,200 patients, some coming from the other end of the country. Considering the need of the nation, the number of patients is expected to rise quickly.

For some, the state-of-the-art facility begs the question: in a country with so many pressing demands, would international funds not be better spent on more basic and less sophisticated facilities?

The query is rejected outright by Kate Rowlands, executive manager of the hospital. "If we are able to provide this service, then who is to say it is not appropriate? Please, go and ask those heart children if it is appropriate or not go and ask the parents of these children," she says.

The response of Alain Deloche, the chief surgeon, is that, "I am still in the simple act of saving." It does "not take away one euro dedicated to public health," he adds.

Deloche, head of the France-based Chaine de l'Espoir (Chain of Hope) group on which Enfants Afghan depends, has also opened hospitals in Cambodia, Vietnam and Africa. Besides health care, these hospitals serve to improve the skills of local doctors, he says.

The beautiful institute was in danger of becoming an empty shell because, after eight million euros (9.8 million dollars) was spent on its construction and equipment, there was not enough money for the monthly overheads of about 120,000 dollars.

After long negotiations and a detailed feasibility study, the Aga Khan foundation headed by the wealthy spiritual head of the Ismaeli community came to the rescue.

Now all medical aspects of the institute remain under French responsibility, but the management is handled by the Aga Khan. With this comes the Aga Khan philosophy: every patient must contribute to the cost of their treatment, in part to ensure the long-term viability of the project.

"The concept is we provide the care with dignity -- we don't want to make them think we are getting it as a charity," says financial director Karim Kassimali, an Aga Khan employee.

An elaborate system, that includes an interview, has been put in place to determine how much each patient can afford.

The institute is also going to launch a fund, to which Aga Khan will contribute, to help cover the costs of the most poor, with most Afghans living on less than two dollars a day.

New cell-phone company to launch service soon

KABUL, Apr 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Officials of the International Areeba cell-phone company announced on Thursday they would begin their mobile communication service in the mid of 2006.

The company was issued license last year after paying $40m to the communication ministry. Currently only two cell-phone companies Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC) and Roshan are operative in almost all major cities of the country.

Nazifullah Shaheen, public relations officer of the Areeba cell-phone company, told Pajhwok Afghan News: "The price per unit is not fixed so far, but we want to give Afghans a surprise regarding charges."

He said the company would provide 180 Afghans with jobs, as they wanted to help the country in reducing unemployment ratio. He said the company had already rendered communication facilities to eight countries around the world and had over 40 million subscribers. The company had recently got license in Afghanistan and in another country, name of which he would not mention.
Zainab Muhaqeq

Pashtun tribals demand withdrawal of Pakistan Army - PNI 04/07/2006

Peshawar - Thousands of tribesmen in Pakistan's North Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan have demanded the Pakistan military withdraw all its forces there. They made the demand at a protest rally in the small town of Mir Ali, some 30km east of Miranshah.

The leader of pro-Taleban militants in neighbouring South Waziristan made a similar demand in a telephone interview with the BBC's Urdu service. The demands come at a time when tension is running high in the region.

Pakistan has deployed nearly 80,000 troops along the border to hunt down militants who sought refuge in the rugged tribal terrain after the ousting of the Taleban in Afghanistan in late 2001.

North Waziristan has seen some of the bloodiest clashes between the security forces and local militants in the four years since the military started operations against al-Qaeda and the Taleban and their supporters.

The rally in Mir Ali to call for the army's withdrawal comes after the Pakistan military says that it killed 43 militants in fighting in North Waziristan this week. Local tribal leader Maulvi Abdul Rehman said they could take care of the area on their own as had done prior to the 2002 deployment of the military.

Meanwhile, a militant leader from South Waziristan, Baitullah Mehsud, who signed a peace deal with the government in February, 2005, accused the military of not honouring its agreement to withdraw its forces.

In an interview with the BBC Urdu Service, he accused the intelligence agency, the ISI, of threatening his life and of trying to sabotage the peace deal.

He also said that the clashes in North Waziristan this week were the result of an army ambush on a militant convoy returning from operations in Afghanistan. The government said on Thursday that the militants had come from South Waziristan in three trucks and two pick-up vehicles to attack security force positions in North Waziristan. "Why would we be travelling in such a big convoy if we were going to attack security posts?" Mr Mehsud asked. He accused the military of killing some militants after they were arrested. He disputed the government's figures, saying only eight militants had been killed.

Kandahar's economy dives for cover - The Globe and Mail 04/07/2006

Rising violence and corrupt police are hampering commerce in city

KANDAHAR — Taj Mohammed's trips across the desert have become frightening -- and more expensive -- as the insurgency in Afghanistan grows more intense.

After years without checkpoints on the roads, the 22-year-old truck driver now faces two threats on his regular route to the city of Kandahar from his home district in Helmand province: getting attacked or robbed by insurgents, and getting shaken down for bribes at police roadblocks.

The bribes he paid yesterday totalled 200 Afghanis, or $4.70 -- about six times the average daily income. "Other drivers stay at home and wait for the fighting to stop," Mr. Mohammed said.

The rising violence in recent months is disrupting trade and hurting this region's economy, according to merchants, businessmen and workers in the main city of Kandahar. Economic statistics don't exist for this year, but nearly everybody in the city has a story about how the increasingly heated struggle between troops and insurgents has cost them money. It's feeding discontent in Kandahar, at a time when Canadian troops are trying to reach out to people in the region.

Merchants say their supply routes have been squeezed, as the new police checkpoints established to catch insurgents are providing a fresh source of income for corrupt police forces. The drivers complain of greater risk of attack from bandits calling themselves Taliban, who have grown bolder and more aggressive in the past three months.

Landlords have suffered, too, as rental prices in Kandahar dropped sharply this year. Some tracts of land have lost 90 per cent of their value.

Street vendors say the downtown is unusually quiet. A marketplace that thronged with people, cars and bicycles during a reporter's visit seven months ago now seems calm by comparison, with fewer traffic jams and less of the choking diesel haze that hung over the city when it bustled with commerce.

Part of the reason for Kandahar's slowdown is that people have moved to rural areas for spring planting season, said Gulab Shah Popal, 23, who manages his family's wholesale business. But the biggest problem is rising insecurity, he said. His sales of cigarettes, batteries, tea and other dry goods has fallen by about 50 per cent in the past three or four months.

"Before, we had good customers . . . from Helmand, from Oruzgon, from Farah [provinces]," he said. "Nowadays, security is not good and people cannot come here."

Across town, Haji Umer Jan has watched his import business suffer a 35-per-cent drop this year. Like Mr. Popal's business, Mr. Jan's trade depends on shipping goods -- such as flour, sugar and soap -- across the vast, dusty provinces of southern Afghanistan.

Those provinces are increasingly bloody battlefields: More than 200 people have been killed in the Afghan conflict so far this year.

"Last year, conditions were good," Mr. Jan said. "But with these suicide attacks almost every day, we sell nothing."

The situation has escalated with the arrival of more foreign troops, he added. Canada boosted its contingent to 2,200 members earlier this year, and Britain is preparing to send an extra 3,300 troops into the volatile south.

"The people in this region are afraid of the foreign soldiers," Mr. Jan said. "Will they search our homes? Will they arrest us? So people want to defend themselves, and they attack."

The United Nations hasn't noticed any recent economic slowdown in the region, said Sonja Bachmann, deputy head of the UN mission in Kandahar.

"But security is not great these days," she said. "And we do need to support small enterprises a little better."

Canadian reconstruction efforts in Kandahar have focused on overhauling the local security forces. This has eased the problem of police corruption, merchants say. Nearly all the police who demand bribes come from local forces, and not from the Canadian-trained Afghan National Police.

But many Afghans won't understand those subtleties, locals say, and frustration about the economic slump could hurt the Canadians' efforts to win over a wary population.

"These people can't tell the difference between a Canadian soldier and an American soldier," said trader Haji Habibullah, 32. "They're afraid of them both."

Afghan mission in India headless for five months - Indo Asian News Service - 04/07/2006

New Delhi - When Afghan President Hamid Karzai comes here on a four-day state visit Sunday, one face will be missing from the welcoming throng - Kabul has not named an ambassador to India since late last year.

Masood Khalili, who was the Afghan envoy to India for a decade, left for Turkey at the end of 2005. Khalili was an old India hand who was posted here through the highs and lows of recent Afghan history, from the rise of Taliban to its overthrow and the dawn of democracy in the war-scarred country.

But Afghanistan is yet to name his successor. Abdul Hai Khurasan, charge d' affaires, is presently heading the Afghan mission.

The ambassadorial appointment has been complicated by the parliamentary elections of September. Now, all cabinet appointments have to be approved by parliament, said an Afghan diplomat who did not wish to be named.

'The government has yet to name a new ambassador. An informal shortlist is doing the rounds in Kabul. Hopefully, it will be done soon,' the diplomat told IANS.

The Afghan parliament is also yet to approve the cabinet's appointment of Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, adviser to the president who has been named foreign minister.

Khalili was popular in diplomatic and cultural circles here and admired for his deep knowledge of the country that was his home for a decade. He was badly wounded in a blast that claimed the life of legendary Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Masood, days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Afghan Air Force Flight Crews to Join Missions With U.S. Forces

April 7 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan air force crews will begin flying missions with U.S.-led coalition forces, the U.S. military command in Afghanistan said.

The airmen will join helicopter crews flying from Bagram air base outside the capital, Kabul, in a program scheduled to start April 9, the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan said on its Web site. It didn't say how many Afghan airmen are involved.

``This just one step along the way to the Afghan National Army taking responsibility for the entire country,'' Army Colonel Michael Rose, commander of the coalition's Task Force Falcon air wing, said yesterday.

The Afghan National Army, which now has about 30,000 soldiers, has joined coalition forces in expanding operations into areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan where fighters from the ousted Taliban militia and al-Qaeda have bases. The Taliban movement, which was ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001, has responded with attacks, including suicide bombings against coalition forces and Afghan officials.

Commanders of the Afghan National Army Air Corps met U.S. air force officers last month for their first discussions on building an aviation partnership to boost security operations, the military command said in its statement.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization will expand its security operations throughout Afghanistan by the end of the year involving about 21,000 soldiers, U.S. Marine General James Jones, NATO supreme allied commander, said March 6.

NATO forces in July will move into southern Afghanistan, the region where the Taliban had their stronghold before the regime was ousted.

Two suspected Taliban suicide bombers were killed yesterday when their car bomb exploded near the eastern city of Khost, Agence France-Presse reported, citing General Mohammad Ayoob, the provincial police chief. The men may have been trying to attack Afghan or coalition forces in the area, Ayoob said.

Coalition aircraft yesterday attacked suspected Taliban gunmen who fired on a military patrol of Afghan and coalition soldiers in the Deh Rawod district of the central province of Uruzgan, the Combined Forces Command said in a separate statement. One insurgent was killed, it said.

Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's fugitive leader, in a purported statement issued March 16 said fighters will intensify suicide attacks to make the country like a ``flaming oven,'' AFP reported at the time. Young people have ``filled lists'' volunteering for such attacks, he said.

Afghan drugs barons flaunt their wealth and power

International initiatives battle to end immunity for kingpins of the heroin trade Declan Walsh in Garmser - Friday April 7, 2006 - The Guardian

The smugglers' trail crosses salt-encrusted plains, scrabbly farmland and hundreds of blossoming poppy fields. Suddenly a fortress-like structure looms. The high-walled mansion belongs to Haji Adam, an opium smuggler, locals say. Tales of his wealth are legion.

"When he became sick he was flown straight to Germany," said a man in the next village, Garmser, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Even helicopters have landed at his house," said another.

Yet like every Afghan drugs lord, Haji Adam has little to fear from the law. Since the western-led war on drugs started four years ago only two major smugglers have been arrested - Haji Baz Muhammad, who was extradited to the US last October, and Bashir Noorzai, who was arrested in New York six months

earlier. But the remainder are apparently untouchable.

"Many smugglers don't even bother hiding their wealth," said a British diplomat in Kabul "It's their way of saying 'screw you' to authority."

The kingpins are wealthy as they are indiscreet, the apex of a $2.7bn (£1.5bn) trade that has dominated the Afghan economy, poisoned its politics and employs one in 10 of the workforce. The smugglers are deeply rooted in Afghanistan's tribal society yet operate with the sophistication of a criminal jet-set. Some

live in fortified rural mansions, defended by anti-aircraft guns and gangs of heavily armed clansmen.

Many strike deals during the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. "The Hajj is a good place to do business, we believe," said one western drugs official.

Every year the drug lords effortlessly export 4,000 tonnes of opium across Afghanistan's borders, plugging into the Turkish, Iranian, Pakistani and Russian gangs that refine the drug into heroin for sale in Europe. But their strongest connections are at home. Allegations of drug links have persistently dogged some of Afghanistan's most powerful figures, including several governors, ministers and the president's brother, Walid Karzai. At least 17 of the 249 newly elected parliamentarians are smugglers, said analyst Andrew Wilder.

But the most serious charges hover over General Muhammad Daud, the deputy interior minister for counter narcotics. A senior drugs official said he was "99% sure" that Gen Daud had a stake in the trade he was supposed to be dismantling. "He frustrates counter-narcotics law enforcement when it suits him," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"He moves competent officials from their jobs, locks cases up and generally ensures that nobody he is associated with will get arrested for drugs crime."

Gen Daud has denied the allegations.

Undercover Afghan policemen have tried to infiltrate the smuggling rings, the same diplomat said, but failed to net any "big fish".

The drug lords funnel their profits into construction in Kabul, where mansions and glass-fronted office blocks are springing up, and to Dubai, where American and British drug specialists are cooperating with local authorities to stem the flow of laundered money.

The daunting scale of the drugs war can be best appreciated in Helmand, the remote southern province that is the world's busiest opium smuggling route. At night high-speed convoys laden with narcotics race across the hard-packed desert towards the border with Pakistan. The frontier is effectively controlled by the Baluch, a tribe with long experience of smuggling that regards the British-demarcated border as a technicality. The main smugglers' den is in Baramcha, a rough-and-tumble village along the unmanned border. From Baramcha, about two-thirds of the contraband is spirited south towards Karachi or the more secluded Makran coast. Another third moves west by road into Iran. The final destination, after being purified into heroin, is often Britain.

The smugglers have been fortified by an informal alliance with the Taliban. Britain hopes to break their stranglehold on Helmand with a deployment of more than 3,000 British troops that starts next month.

Paratroopers will mount a week-long mission to Baramcha, said Lieutenant Colonel Henry Worsley. The fledgling Afghan forces are also trying to apply pressure. Last Monday the Afghan Special Narcotics Force, a British-trained elite paramilitary squad, raided Baramcha. Some small-scale smugglers, one

western official said, were angry that Taliban militants did not keep their promise to defend them.

Western efforts are also focused on overhauling the Afghan justice system. A new counter-narcotics law was approved last December and a special drugs court has been set up. But even when drug criminals are prosecuted, they frequently bribe their way to freedom. Britain is helping to fund a new drugs wing at Pul-i-Charki prison outside Kabul which is due to open this summer.

But anti-narcotic officials are only moderately optimistic it will be filled. "Afghanistan is a tough place to do business," said one. "We all want stuff to happen yesterday, but everyone knows it's not going to happen like that."

Canada’s role in Afghanistan clear at Ground Zero
By: Curtis Brown – Brandon Sun 4.8.06

NEW YORK — Anyone who needs to be reminded why Canadian soldiers are dying in Afghanistan need only stand in the heart of New York’s financial district and peer through the chain-link fence into the gaping hole below.

It’s hard to imagine that two of the tallest buildings in the world once stood at what now appears to be an ordinary construction site, perhaps a slightly larger one than the hole dug when they built the new Liquor Mart on 10th Street in Brandon.

However, it’s startlingly obvious this is no regular work site. The reminders — white roses, pictures of loved ones, a shrine of police badges — are everywhere as they remind us that one fall morning almost five years ago, nearly 3,000 people died here in the worst-ever terrorist attack on North American soil.

And it’s then — and only then — that you remember why our brave men and women in the Canadian military are giving their lives in Afghanistan. It’s a moment that erases all questions that may be linger about why our soldiers are halfway around the world putting their lives on the line.

Even after five years, we can all remember where we were, what we were doing and what went through our minds as the two planes slammed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. But no memory, no matter how vivid, compares to standing at Ground Zero — surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the so-called city that never sleeps — and imagining what it would have been like to suddenly see a plane hit those two buildings.

That act, plus the co-ordinated crashes of airplanes into Washington’s Pentagon complex and a Pennsylvania field, scarred our psyche. It made us realize that even if we thought we could live freely, peacefully and uninterrupted, all it can take is a split second — a New York minute — to change everything forever.

It’s become hackeneyed to say — especially as its meaning has been twisted to justify the invasion of Iraq — but freedom does have its price. And that price is that our soldiers have to be put in harm’s way to stamp out terrorists and eradicate the conditions that create terrorism.

To do that, it means we have to send troops to places like Afghanistan, the broken, war-ravaged country that gave Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network a firm base from which to operate and carry out the 9/11 attacks and other horrific acts of terrorism. We have to send troops there to not only take the fight to the terrorists on their home soil, but also to help rebuild nations that have been unable or unwilling to kick out shadowy terrorist organizations.

Some will argue that we are only creating more terrorists by doing that. If that’s true, ask yourself: do you think we’re safer now that bin Laden and his henchmen are on the run, or do you think we were safer before 9/11 when they had a base and a compliant country to work in?

Some will argue that we’re making Canada a target by participating in the Afghan mission. Ask yourself: are our cities any less safe if terrorist groups are able to establish themselves and attack us at will?

Some will say we should have no part in a “U.S.-led war on terror” or be part of “America’s imperial war machine.” That argument may hold up against fighting in Iraq, but does it hold true for 9/11 and our involvement in Afghanistan? Absolutely not.

People from more than 100 countries died that September morning, including Manitoba’s Christine Egan, a nurse who was visiting her brother in the World Trade Center when the planes hit.

One life lost on the battlefield is an incredibly steep price to pay. But if it means there will be 10,000, 100,000 or even a million fewer Christine Egans lost in future terrorist attacks, the price will have been worth paying.

Curtis Brown is the Sun’s editorial page editor.

The scope of clashes in the Middle East since 9/11

If the US had stopped with Afghanistan, its world standing might be better.

CSMonitor 6 April 06 - By Pat M. Holt

WASHINGTON – Consider the changes in the Middle East since the attack of 9/11 on the United States:

1. Afghanistan. The ultraconservative government of the Taliban has been overthrown, but the prevailing opinion in the country remains so ultraconservative that a Muslim who converted to Christianity was threatened with execution.

2. Iraq. Saddam Hussein, who was the US target, has been overthrown and is a prisoner on trial for sundry crimes. Sectarian strife, which Mr. Hussein had brutally suppressed, continues in the open with Sunnis fighting Shiites fighting Kurds. This is reminiscent of the religious sects who fought each other in the early days of the US involvement in south Vietnam.

3. Nationalism. This has reemerged as perhaps the one force as strong as religion. (During the cold war, nationalism stood out as the one force stronger than either communism or democracy.)

4. Pakistan. Shortly after 9/11, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell persuaded President Pervez Musharraf to support the US in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden, but it is doubtful how far this filtered down through the Pakistani Army. Pakistani Army Intelligence remains suspiciously sympathetic to Al Qaeda, and it's an open question as to who controls what territory along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

5. Iran. Here is the prime example of nationalism, so much so that a country without nuclear weapons is considered less than fully sovereign.

6. India. It is equally insistent on nukes as a sovereign right. A difference is that India is supported by the US while Iran is not. The Muslim world has surely noted this distinction.

7. Kurdistan. The country exists only as a nationalist dream among Kurds, but it is the stuff of nightmares among soldiers and statesmen responsible for international security.

Iraqi Kurds are feeling their oats after what can, without exaggeration, be called their liberation with the downfall of Saddam Hussein. Now, suppose these Kurds decide to carry their liberation a step further and declare an independent state of Kurdistan in the Kurdish-populated areas of northern Iraq. There are also significant Kurdish populations in adjacent areas of Syria, Iran, and especially Turkey.

What would these Kurds do if they had an independent Kurdistan next door? They might migrate and settle in it. Or they might seek its expansion to include them. It is unlikely that the Syrian, Iranian, and Turkish governments and armies would accept this latter solution. Here are the ingredients of a wider war in the Middle East. What does the US do if this happens while American troops are still in Iraq?

Historically, the US and Britain have supported Iraqi Kurds. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the CIA had covert aid programs for them. After the first Gulf War, the US and Britain enforced no-fly zones for Iraqi aircraft as a means of protecting the Kurds. What would the US and Britain do if they were

confronted with a war against the Kurds by an Iraqi-Syrian-Turkish-Iranian coalition?

On the fringes of the area, Pakistan and India have refrained from using their nuclear weapons. But what would either of them do in the face of temptations to strengthen their regional positions and perhaps grab Kashmir while they hoped no one was looking?

None of this necessarily followed 9/11. Some of it may never happen. But the US position would be much stronger, both politically and militarily, if the American government had proceeded differently.

The initial US reaction to 9/11 did not need to go beyond Afghanistan. It was Afghanistan and its Taliban government that shielded bin Laden. After the victory over the Taliban, the US should have pursued him more vigorously. His capture in those early days could have ended the whole affair, but the White House was intent on spreading democracy. There was no Iraq-Al Qaeda connection until after the US established an American presence in Iraq. Hence, there was no need to invade.

Iran would still be hard to get along with. The Pakistani-Indian and the Israeli-Palestinian standoffs would still be intractable and dangerous.

But the standing of the US in the rest of the world would be immeasurably better, not to mention the US domestic situation.

For such shreds of prestige as we have left, we can largely thank our humanitarian relief efforts following natural disasters such as the tsunami in Asia and the earthquake in Pakistan.

The worst of the scenarios outlined above may not come to pass, but those that have already happened - unnecessarily - are quite bad enough.

• Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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