In this bulletin:

• 16 Taliban killed, two commanders seized in Afghanistan
• U.S. asks Finland to command part of Afghan peacekeeping operation
• British forces to be pulled out of Bosnia for Afghan mission
• US sees Afghanistan as test of NATO role
• Taliban an Afghan phenomenon: Pak
• Pakistan urges US, UK to talk to Taliban
• US, NATO attacked Afghanistan to achieve their targets: FO
• Afghan child`s body found in govt. car in Islamabad
• 500,000 Afghan refugees registered
• Afghan food aid in peril - By AP
• Afghan Extremist Says He Regrets Bombings
• Ignatieff softens pro-Afghan stance
• Iran lends hand to Afghan neighbor
• The FM will pay an official visit to Uzbekistan from 1-3 of December
• Time is on the Taliban's side
  Afghan Journalists Live Their Dream

16 Taliban killed, two commanders seized in Afghanistan

Kandahar (AFP) - NATO and Afghan troops killed 10 Taliban rebels and captured two suspected militant leaders in a raid on an alleged suicide bomb cell in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

Separately, six Taliban were killed and two other insurgents arrested after a three-hour gunbattle with Afghan police.

One NATO soldier was lightly wounded in the operation against the suicide cell carried out early Thursday in the troubled Sangin district of Helmand province, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

The identity of the suspected commanders captured in the raid was not revealed. An ISAF statement on Friday said troops seized two suicide vests, several rocket-propelled grenades and a cache of equipment and weapons "that were ready to be used in future attacks".

Warplanes and helicopters backed up the troops in the operation, it said, adding that there were no civilian casualties. Most of the NATO troops stationed in Helmand are British.

Afghanistan suffered a wave of four suicide attacks and a bombing at the start of the week after a relative lull, leaving 22 people dead including four NATO soldiers.

Also on Thursday, police clashed with Taliban rebels in the southern province of Zabul, local police chief Mohammad Rassoul said.

"The Taliban left two bodies behind and took away four others when they fled," he said, adding that two others had been arrested and there were no police casualties.

This year has been the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001 with more than a hundred suicide bombings killing 230 Afghans and 17 foreign troops, ISAF said.

More than 3,700 people -- including a majority of insurgents as well as around 1,000 civilians plus Afghan soldiers and police -- have been killed this year, four times the toll for 2005, according to an official report.

U.S. asks Finland to command part of Afghan peacekeeping operation

The United States would like the Finnish crisis management forces in Afghanistan to take command of an administrative area in Afghanistan, Eric Edelman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, said on Thursday in Helsinki.

Edelman, who is visiting Finland, said on Finnish TV that the U. S. feels that it would be appropriate for Finland to lead one Provincial Reconstruction Team of its own.

Finland currently has about 100 soldiers in the ISAF forces in Afghanistan. They are located in two units in the north of the country, and Kabul as well.

Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen has said Finland is interested in taking command of part of the Afghan peacekeeping operation. Source: Xinhua

British forces to be pulled out of Bosnia for Afghan mission

LONDON: Britain hopes to withdraw its 700 peacekeepers from Bosnia early next year to help ease the shortage of troops for front-line duty in Afghanistan.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram flew to the Balkans to assess the security situation before a decision on future force levels, due to be taken by Christmas.

His visit coincided with a warning from Prime Minister Tony Blair, at Nato's Latvian summit in Riga, that the alliance needs to do more to underpin "critical" combat operations in Afghanistan.

Blair gave a guarded welcome to a relaxation of national rules of engagement to allow French, German, Spanish, and Italian troops to reinforce the UK, Canadian and American units fighting Taliban insurgents in Helmand province in an emergency.

But he added that gaps remained in capabilities available to commanders on the ground in what was "Nato's absolutely critical mission".

The bottom line after two days of talks is that the forces bearing the brunt of the action and sustaining 90% of the casualties in Helmand and Kandahar are still short of the 2500 fighting troops needed.

On the Dutch and the Romanians have agreed to allow their men to fight alongside their British and Canadian allies without restriction.

The UK contingent in Bosnia includes 330 men from the Welsh Guards at Banja Luka, engineering and logistics detachments and a 50-strong headquarters team in Sarajevo, the capital.

Ingram's visit follows a statement by Defence Secretary Des Browne this week that the garrison in southern Iraq could be reduced "by thousands" next year.

Military insiders say the plan is to halve the 7200-man force and pull the rest back to a brigade-sized base near Basra.

Although the Ministry of Defence denies the army is overstretched, the strain of rolling six-month deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan - which need almost 14,000 soldiers a time - has left the army short of manpower for other tasks and hit training plans.It has also stretched the RAF's ability to keep two substantial long-range commitments supplied with a fleet of ageing and breakdown-prone aircraft.

Britain has 900 soldiers in the Balkans, split between Bosnia and Kosovo, where 200 remain to keep a fragile peace in the breakaway province.

UK troops have had a presence in Bosnia for a decade and in Kosovo since 1999 after ethnic wars tore apart the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995.

The government's quest to find even 700 soldiers from the Balkan commitment underlines the desperate manpower shortage in an army which has shrunk to fewer than 100,000, and faces an open-ended commitment to Afghanistan and a long-term commitment to Iraq. Both missions are likely to last a decade and will continue to soak up front-line units on six-month tours.

US sees Afghanistan as test of NATO role

At this week's summit, the alliance's success against Taliban insurgents was seen as key to its long-term relevance.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

RIGA, LATVIA - The question looming over NATO's summit in this Baltic country this week was essentially this: What are friends for?

With the focus on the NATO-commanded counterinsurgency operation in Afghanistan, leaders from President George Bush to Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper wanted to know if just a few NATO countries would continue to carry the weight and face the worst of the danger. Or, would more of NATO's 26 members help out their partners with more troops - and fewer restrictions on how their troops can be used?

"Clearly there is still work to be done" to equalize the tasks of NATO assignments, says NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

The answer was only partially positive. At the close of the summit Wednesday, a few countries had pledged more forces for the 33,000-troop operation, while others - in particular Germany, France, Spain, and Italy - loosened restrictions on "emergency" engagement of their forces, so that they now can be used for the evacuation of injured NATO soldiers.

The controversy over who is doing the heavy lifting - and taking the worst of the fire - in Afghanistan is not just a row among friends. NATO's operation in Afghanistan, and controversy over burden-sharing in the fight against a resurgent Taliban in particular, dominated a summit originally envisioned as a venue for furthering the alliance's transformation from a cold-war institution defending Western Europe. But the Afghanistan debate largely pushed other big issues aside, with some leaders saying that success of the NATO operation there would be crucial to the alliance's long-term worth as a global force for peace and security.

"Contributing to peace and stability in Afghanistan is a just cause vital to our collective security and our shared values," Mr. De Hoop Scheffer told leaders at Riga's closing session Wednesday. "Together with other international actors, we will stand with the Afghan people for the long term to help them build a democratic country free from terror and drugs."

Employing a cautiously optimistic tone, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. James Jones said, "Many nations involved in Afghanistan reduced or eliminated many of the national restrictions imposed for the use of their forces, known as caveats, and this will now allow the commander of the mission to more effectively use troops throughout Afghanistan."

The controversy sparked in September, when European countries rejected calls from fellow NATO countries that they send part of their forces based in relatively peaceful parts of Afghanistan to reinforce efforts in the south, where the Taliban is most active. The issue was kept alive in Riga by Canadian officials, who noted that their troops in the south have suffered 36 deaths since March, while Germany, with a slightly larger force in the country, has lost no soldiers this year.

President Bush also focused on the issue, noting in a speech at Latvia University Tuesday that "this alliance was founded on a clear principle: An attack on one is an attack on all. That principle holds true," he added, "whether the attack is on our home soil or on our forces deployed on our NATO mission abroad."

French President Jacques Chirac responded Wednesday by announcing that France would allow "case by case" emergency assignment of its troops outside Kabul. But he gave a flat " non" to calls for additional troops - offering instead some additional materiel, including additional helicopters. Spain said its troops could be used in "exceptional circumstances" to evacuate wounded soldiers, but not for combat.

Bush left Riga directly after the traditional group photo Wednesday for talks in Jordan with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. But the president came away from the summit "encouraged" by the substantive discussions and "the commitment to success" in Afghanistan, according to senior White House officials.

Still, the questions over deployment "caveats" and burden-sharing in Afghanistan will continue to rattle the alliance, some experts say. "Frankly, if an alliance does not face collectively and equally the central threats to its members - and by that I mean the terrorist threat and security challenges coming out of the broader Middle East today - then that alliance will not be central to their thinking," says Ronald Asmus, director of the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Center in Brussels.

Yet such doubts have not weakened the alliance's attractiveness to other countries. As evidence of that, NATO leaders overcame their lingering resistance and invited Montenegro, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina to become "partners" of the Euro-Atlantic Council - essentially pre-membership status. Some NATO countries, including the US, had resisted this step because they consider Serbia and Bosnia less than fully cooperative with the United Nations war crimes tribunal. They wanted to see first the arrests of two former Bosnian Serb leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as goodwill gestures.

In the end, even the US lifted its opposition, with some officials citing as a deciding factor a letter from reformist Serbian President Boris Tadic, in which he called on NATO to send a signal of support to democratic forces in his country.

The NATO leaders' final communique does call on Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to "cooperate fully" with the UN tribunal and says NATO will "closely monitor" those efforts.

Offsetting to a certain degree the modest progress on deployments in Afghanistan was De Hoop Scheffer's declaration that NATO's new 25,000-strong rapid-reaction force is fully operational. The force, envisioned as a means of putting NATO quickly on the scene of security and humanitarian emergencies, was first tested last year in response to the Pakistan earthquake. The new force is expected to lead over time to increased flexibility and "interoperability" of forces from more than two dozen countries.

Taliban an Afghan phenomenon: Pak

WASHINGTON: Pakistan's ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram has said that problems plaguing Afghanistan, for example, the resurgence of the Taliban were typical Afghan in nature and ought to be resolved through reconciliation and reconstruction.

"We must seek success in Afghanistan through reconciliation and reconstruction, not by bombs and bullets. The Taliban is an Afghan phenomenon. The government should accept its responsibility rather than transfer blame on to Pakistan or others," said Akram while participating in a debate on the situation in the war-torn country.

He said military force was not the answer to the problems of alienation and insurgency. A comprehensive strategy, compromising military, political and economic elements, could be more successful, he said, adding that it would require a painstaking process of reconciliation and reconstruction, especially in the regions afflicted by insurgency and violence.

"Reconciliation will involve opening the doors to those who feel they have been excluded from political participation, power and progress. Tribal leaders and other traditional sources of influence should be incorporated into reconciliation and reconstruction process with the aim of strengthening the peacemakers and to neutralize the troublemakers," he said.

Pakistan urges US, UK to talk to Taliban- 1 Dec, 2006 1543hrs IST IANS

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is trying to persuade the US and Britain to talk to the Taliban as the two countries review their strategy in Afghanistan, partly thanks to the domestic opposition to the five-year campaign.

A group of Pakistani senators told a British delegation on Thursday that the Taliban would have to be brought into talks if NATO were to succeed in bringing stability to Afghanistan.

"We do feel the situation in Afghanistan has, of late, deteriorated, in part because of mistakes made by policy-makers in Washington and in London," said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, chairman of the Pakistani Senate's foreign affairs committee and secretary general of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Qaid).

"There have to be negotiations, a dialogue with all elements of Afghan society, ethnic or political, including members of the resistance," The Daily Times quoted him as saying.

There is also a concerted effort to disabuse the Western mind of complicity between the Taliban and the Pakistani tribals, known for their sympathy for the extremist group and foreign Islamists. The Taliban were ousted from Kabul five years back but are now reportedly in the process of resurgence.

The tribals in Pakistan "are very patriotic", Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told the seven-member Foreign Affairs Committee of the British House of Commons.

His government, however, has not been able to convince the West of the pact it signed in September with the local tribals that allows them to keep the Taliban and foreign mercenaries as "guests", as long as they are peaceful and do not cross the border with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Office denied a report in British newspaper that Foreign Minister Khurshid M Kasuri said that the Taliban were "winning the war in Afghanistan and NATO member states should not send more troops to Afghanistan".

Kasuri had only repeated what Pakistan had stressed all along, the need for a comprehensive strategy in Afghanistan. He emphasised that a military approach alone would not resolve the problem in Afghanistan, a foreign office statement said.

Kasuri had urged the international community to encourage reconciliation and undertake an extensive reconstruction programme in Afghanistan, the statement added.

On his part, Musharraf told the British delegation: "There exists a need to adopt an elaborate strategy to curb the menace of terrorism. Pakistan is engaged in the war against terror not only in the national interest but also for the sake of peace and stability in the world. It will continue its cooperation with the international community in this respect."

US, NATO attacked Afghanistan to achieve their targets: FO

ISLAMABAD: United States of America and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) attacked Afghanistan not for benefit of Pakistan but for their personal gains, said Tasneem Aslam spokesperson of the foreign office here on Thursday.

In an interview to the state run television network, the foreign office spokesperson said that Pakistan never wanted an operation at such scale in Afghanistan because it could open the flood gate of refugees once again to Pakistan.

She said Pakistan inherited Afghan crisis as a result of Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan. The Western states used their resources and technology to crush Russians in Afghanistan in 80s and as a result 3 million Afghan refuges arrived in Pakistan. We welcomed them and did every bit to come up as a good host.

The world knows that in presence of Soviet Union in Afghanistan, she said Jihad culture was promoted and Arab Mujahideen were given assistance by the western world to accomplish their agenda and when Soviet Union was brought down to knees the Mujahideen reunited as Taliban and now they are fighting against the Allied troops.

And everything we are facing today is because of the Afghan war of 80s. And even in post 9/11 scenario we were not in favour of attack on Afghanistan because we knew it will create tremendous problems for us. When US attacked Afghanistan they used Daisy Cutter missiles and every single missile costs around US$ 45,0000 and God knows how much wealth US spend on invading Afghanistan. Instead, she said the amount spend on latest Afghanistan invasion as well the wealth used for ouster of Russia from Afghanistan had been used in proper manner for reconstruction of the war stricken country it could have proved to be a good step in the right direction. If this had, had happened Afghanistan could have a different territory altogether. It could not have become a nursery for terrorism.

The foreign office spokesperson said we have deployed around 80,000 troops at Pak-Afghan border to control cross border infiltration. This is not our responsibility to go there (Afghanistan) and control the situation.

Tasneem Aslam went on to say that it is a unfortunate for Afghan government that it has failed to control the situation there and instead level allegations upon Pakistan government for giving training to Taliban. This is utterly rubbish, as how could they come to Pakistan so quickly after carrying out their activities 200 kilometers away deep in Afghanistan. And if they are doing so then what are NATO and allied troops doing there to control them. Despite having huge resources, troops and technology why can't they control Taliban, she asked.

We even tried to close the Afghan refugee camps situated near Pak-Afghan border but Afghan government refused to do so.

Afghan child`s body found in govt. car in Islamabad

ISLAMABAD: A body of seven-year old child was recovered from a government vehicle numbered GP 2087 here on Thursday. The child was identified as Izzatullah, an Afghan national.

The car reportedly belonged to Federal Housing Minister Syed Safwanullah that was given him for official duty.

The dead body of a child was found at the back seat of the car on Thursday that was shifted to PIMS for postmortem.

Police has registered an FIR against unknown persons and launched investigations into the incident.

500,000 Afghan refugees registered

PESHAWAR: After the recent threats by unknown people to thwart the ongoing registration process of Afghan refugees in Pakistan, officials said on Thursday that enhanced security measures made it possible for the authorities to register half a million Afghans.

Out of the total, 270,000 have been registered in the NWFP so far.

Briefing media people about the registration process at the Kacha Garhi refugee camp near Peshawar, officials of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and Afghan commissionerate admitted that some unknown people had warned Afghans through pamphlets of suicide attacks if they visited the registration centres.

UNHCR’s assistant representative in Pakistan Indrika Rattawate, chief commissioner and provincial commissioner Afghan Refugees Nayyar Agha and Sahibzada Mohammad Anees told a joint press briefing that the registration process, which the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra), the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR) and UN refugee agency had launched on October 15, would continue till December 31 this year.

According to them, 24 registration centres have been established in different parts of the province for the purpose while 18 mobile teams have also been constituted to visit various localities where Afghan refugees are located.

They said Nadra has so far registered 525,000 Afghans and more than half of them were registered in NWFP, 22 per cent in Balochistan, 15 per cent in Punjab, 10 per cent in Sindh and 1.3 per cent in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

The UNHCR official said majority of people wanted to know about the purpose behind registration of Afghans. He said its basic aim is to obtain an accurate number of Afghan people living in Pakistan, which would help in making arrangements for them in the future and also in their repatriation.

He said it was the second operation by the Pakistan government after census of Afghan refugees in 2005.

Both the UNHCR and CAR officials explained that only those Afghans who were counted in the census and whose names were in the census database would be eligible for the current registration process.

In registration centres, Afghan refugees are being given registration cards valid for three years.

Nayyar Agha, however, explained that after receiving registration cards, it would not mean that Afghans would be eligible to live in Pakistan for three years and would allow them to work wherever they wished.

“These cards will purely be travelling documents and will not allow Afghan refugees to use them for other purposes. Also, they could be repatriated anytime when the process starts,” maintained the chief commissioner.

The Nadra Director General Colonel Zahid Iqbal said they had improved search functions in the database, which he said had accelerated the registration process.

He said many Afghans who were not registered in the census were now coming to the registration centres, which he complained was blocking the system.

Nayyar Agha clarified that Afghan refugees who were not registered in the census should wait till the registration process is completed and the Pakistan government decides about their future.

About hurdles in the process, UNHCR’s Indrika said since photographs were mandatory for success of registration, exceptions have been made in some cases where some of the families argued it was against their culture.

To ensure maximum registration, he said, Nadra has provided female photographers to facilitate the process in a culturally sensitive manner and 73 per cent of the women registered were photographed on their own choice.

These officials said that more than 2.87 million Afghan refugees returned to their homeland with UNHCR’s assistance since 2002 while an estimated 2.4 million Afghans were still living in Pakistan.

Sahibzada Anees said it was decided in 2002 to close the Kacha Garhi refugee camp by April 30, 2006 and repatriation of the inmates of the camp had been started, but then the idea as dropped as the government did not want forced repatriation of these people.

Afghan food aid in peril - By AP

KABUL -- The World Food Program said yesterday it is racing against time to deliver food to some 600,000 needy Afghans in villages that will soon be cut off by heavy winter snow.

The UN program is preparing to distribute 20,800 tonnes of wheat, beans, oil and salt across Afghanistan.

"Hundreds of villages that are remote today will be impossible to reach within the coming weeks," said Rick Corsino, the program's representative in Afghanistan.

Weather and increasing violence have affected food deliveries in some areas at higher elevations, and some mountain passes have already closed because of early snows.

Afghan Extremist Says He Regrets Bombings

Reuters - KABUL, Afghanistan -- Mumtaz Ahmad spent more than three years at a madrassa in Pakistan learning the Quran, then pursued his desire to become a Qari -- one who recites the Muslim holy book -- at a similar religious school in Kabul.

Now, Ahmad languishes in an Afghan intelligence service jail after police caught him three weeks ago planting a roadside bomb near the U.S. base in Bagram in an act he says was driven by a belief that killing foreign troops was his Islamic duty.

It was his third attempted bomb attack this year and all three had failed, Ahmad, 22, said in an interview in a bare, unheated office at the lock-up in central Kabul.

"They beat me when I got here because they wanted me to give them information," Ahmad said as two senior intelligence service investigators listened to his words.

"It's just as well they did, because I gave them the name of an accomplice. If I hadn't informed on him, there might have been some sort of attack," he said.

Ahmad said he had been lured into becoming a bomber by a shadowy man called Abdul Rahman who would visit his madrassa in Kabul to incite students to attack foreign troops in the name of the Prophet Mohammed.

Ahmad, a slim, bearded man, said he had left Afghanistan while the Taliban was in power to study for 3 1/2 years at a madrassa in Peshawar, across the border in Pakistan.

He returned home soon after Taliban rule collapsed in 2001 and began attending the Kabul madrassa, where he was one of around 200 students.

He said the shadowy Abdul Rahman had used religion to talk him into working as a courier and given him the 3 1/2 kilograms of explosives, which he buried until the man said where to drop it.

"I really regret what has happened, what I did. I realize now that these foreign forces came here to help us, not disgrace us," he said. "It's too late now. I know I was deceived."

Ignatieff softens pro-Afghan stance

CanWest News Service - Thursday, November 30, 2006

MONTREAL — Michael Ignatieff softened his rather hawkish stance on Canada’s Afghan mission Thursday, saying troops should be brought home in 2009.

“Yes, I voted for the renewal of the mission until February 2009,” the Liberal leadership front-runner said Thursday. “I see no reason to renew it. We will have done seven years of work for which I have the utmost respect.”

The remark, made in French to a gathering of the Liberal youth wing, closed the philosophical distance between himself and his top leadership rivals on the controversial mission, started by the Jean Chretien Liberals in 2002 as part of the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

It also appeared to be an attempt to sway undecided delegates on the eve of the first leadership ballot. The issue has been divisive in the Liberal party.

Earlier this year, Ignatieff was one of 24 Liberal MPs to give crucial support to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s motion to extend to 2009, which passed by just four votes. Sixty-six Liberals opposed it.

The Liberal leadership candidates were asked by the party’s youth wing to state their positions on Canada’s deployment of 2,500 soldiers to southern Afghanistan. This year, the mission has lost 37 Canadians.

Bob Rae, Ignatieff’s nearest rival, again called for the mission mandate to be reviewed before 2009. He said he never voted on extending the mission because he’s not a sitting MP.

“Because I wasn’t there I don’t feel committed to the 2009 date. I didn’t like the way in which the 2009 date was imposed.”

Candidate Gerard Kennedy blasted Harper for failing to get more NATO countries to send combat troops to Afghanistan’s volatile and violent south.

“We don’t stay until 2009 unless we have a mission that’s reformed,” said Kennedy “The prime minister failed us yesterday at NATO.”

Stephane Dion, the fourth place leadership hopeful, said he wants a comprehensive economic recovery strategy for Afghanistan, similar to post-Second World War efforts in Japan and Germany.

Iran lends hand to Afghan neighbor

LONDON, December 1 (IranMania) - Offering everything from cheap ice cream to 24-hour electricity, Iran is strengthening economic ties with western Afghanistan that could undermine support for US and NATO forces, The Associated Press reported.

Western Afghanistan has a newly paved 75-mile stretch of highway between the Iranian border and its main city, Herat, courtesy of the Islamic republic. Iran is also considering building a rail line on the busy route, and has pledged another $560 mln to help rebuild Afghan infrastructure and businesses.

"Iran is not going away from here," a Herat-based Western diplomat said. "The question is whether we can coexist in this region together and realize that some of our aims might even be the same when it comes to Afghanistan."

Tehran has built 10 schools and several clinics in western Afghanistan, and paid for the equipment to provide electricity 24 hours a day in Herat, unlike in most other parts of the country, including the capital, Kabul.

Iranian influence here dates back to ancient times and, while dependent on US military and financial support, the Afghan government tries not to antagonize Iran, which currently houses about 2 mln Afghan refugees.

"Our hope is for Afghanistan to be peaceful and stable because that would be good for the region," said an Iranian diplomat in Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with reporters. "Everyone wants a stable neighbor."

If Iran and the United States are at odds, Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Zahir Azimi said, "we will stay out of it."

Local political analyst Mohammed Rafiq Shaeir says Iran wants greater influence in western Afghanistan to promote its own national interests, both security and economic.

"The people of Herat have doubts about why Iran is putting so much attention into this area, but they still recognize that it is good for our own national interests and security in the region to have friendly relations with Iran," Shaeir said.

For many people in this historic city, famous for its mosques and minarets, Iran's largesse is a mixed blessing.

Herat shopkeeper Mohammed Aref said low-price Iranian ice cream harms local producers, which make products of the same quality that are, however, more expensive.

"I cannot compete with them," said Zamarai Qhousi, who owns a marble works, plastic utensils factory and foodstuffs packaging plant in Herat's Industrial Park. "Iranian producers are state-subsidized and people go for cheaper goods."

Iran's president urged the American people in an open letter yesterday to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and reject what he called the Bush administration's "blind support" for Israel and its "illegal and immoral" actions in fighting terrorism.

President MahmoudAhmadinejad's letter to "Noble Americans," which was distributed by Iran's mission to the United Nations, also accused Bush of governing by "coercion, force and injustice."

US State Department spokesman Tom Casey called the letter "something of a public relations stunt or a public relations gesture" by the Iranian government, and said it was a shame Ahmadinejad did not allow people in his own country the opportunity to have a free and open debate of political ideas and views.

Ahmadinejad urgedBush to put the United States' "wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war."

The FM will pay an official visit to Uzbekistan from 1-3 of December

Posted On: Nov 30, 2006 - MoFA

In this trip the Afghan Foreign Minister, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta will meet the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Uzbekistan.

 The purpose of the visit is to strengthen bilateral ties, cooperation and investment of Uzbekistan in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.The Afghan foreign minister is also due to sign a joint declaration with Uzbekistan.

To welcome the Afghan Foreign Minister, the government of Uzbekistan today released 12 Afghan citizens who were in prison in Uzbekistan.

Time is on the Taliban's side
By Jason Motlagh – Asia Times

US President George W Bush failed to achieve twin objectives of fewer restrictions and more troops for Afghanistan at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Riga this week, shifting focus back to Iraq, where he refuses to draw down military forces. The implicit message to Taliban insurgents and their backers: time can erode an already faltering alliance in the long run. NATO, in its first-ever mission outside Europe, now has about 32,000 troops in Afghanistan battling an unexpectedly robust

Taliban across the southern and eastern back country. To the dismay of the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands - member states that have borne the brunt of the fighting - other countries have put caveats on how and where their troops can be operate as militants continue to make headway.

"Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, and drug fighters and criminal elements and local warlords, remain active and committed to destroying democracy in Afghanistan," Bush told assembled leaders. "For NATO to succeed, the commanders on the ground must have the resources and flexibility to do their jobs."

Officials responded that France, Germany, Italy and Spain would ease some deployment restrictions in case of security emergencies, but would not commit troops to fight in hot zones down south. Poland is the only country that has pledged to send extra troops in the new year.

Bitterness is mounting among contributors such as Canada, which provides 2,500 troops and has had to shoulder a disproportionate amount of hostilities in recent months. The two Canadian soldiers killed on Monday by a suicide car bomb in the rebel stronghold of Kandahar raised their contingent's death toll to 36 this year, the majority of which occurred after they moved to southern provinces this summer.

"A country like Canada ... has every right to expect that their allies are at their back, which means if they get into trouble, they can count on support from all of NATO," Daniel Fried, US assistant secretary of state in charge of European and Eurasian affairs, told reporters. He pointedly added that Canada was paying a "hard price" among NATO members.

Germany, for its part, boasts some 2,700 troops in Afghanistan but they remain limited by their own government's mandate to safer northern areas around Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and Faizabad. Observers say this inconsistency could breed resentment among international forces that must cooperate to beat back the insurgency and fast-track reconstruction. The feared symptom is that public opinion back home vital to sustaining military involvement will gradually sour in a prelude to withdrawal.

Regardless of whether adjustments are made, a regrouped Taliban contingent estimated at 10,000 fighters is prepared to take the fight to "surprising" levels against international forces through the winter and on for as long as it takes to bleed Western resolve. Commander Mullah Obaidullah warned on Thursday that the possibility of more NATO troops "does not worry the Taliban, [but] rather will make it easier for our combatants to attack them".

These are more than fighting words. Suicide and roadside bombings targeting foreign troops and government officials have increased fourfold this year, up to 600 a month, with violence recorded in all but two of the country's 34 provinces. Officials say between 3,700 and 4,000 people have died in insurgent-related violence this year, including at least 186 coalition troops.

"After five years of constantly fighting foreign troops, the Taliban have become a strong military power of the same levels as the most powerful army," said Commander Obaidullah, who insisted that his fighters could carry on for another 20 years if necessary. Standing gun battles between Taliban and NATO forces in Kandahar and Helmand provinces over the summer - the fiercest since the movement's government was toppled by a 2001 US-led invasion - lend some ballast to this claim.

But the Taliban leadership is still banking on asymmetrical tactics founded on historical precedent to oust NATO forces. Two successful, low-intensity campaigns against the British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 1980s have kept geographical advantages fresh in mind. And the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands that have been a sanctuary to the hardline movement and al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden to this day serve as a rear base par excellence.

Mullah Dadullah, another top commander, told Al-Jazeera in a July 2005 interview: "Our tactics are now hit and run; we attack certain locations, kill the enemies of Allah there, and retreat to safe bases in the mountains to preserve our mujahideen."

Pakistan's underhanded support of the Taliban to destabilize its neighbor is no secret in the Western intelligence community, nor is the deep-seated corruption of an Afghan government that includes warlords and other officials with connections to the booming narcotics industry. Afghanistan watchers say all of these factors are interconnected and must be dealt with in unison to rebuild a country shattered by 30 years of war.

But as the United States leads the call for more NATO troops and firepower, critics counter that the Bush administration's overemphasis on military spending versus reconstruction aid has hamstrung efforts to win hearts and minds. By some estimates, military operations have cost US$82.5 billion since 2002, compared with $7.3 billion spent on development - a 900% disparity.

"In Afghanistan, military force, understandably a vital part of a counter-insurgency strategy, has for too long been the only strategy and one that will lose any utility if it is reduced to fighting for 'business as usual'," says the latest report from the International Crisis Group. "The desire for a quick, cheap war followed by a quick, cheap peace is what has brought Afghanistan to the present increasingly dangerous situation."

Adding fuel to the fire is record drug output, dubbed Afghanistan's Achilles' heel by US Marine General James Jones, a top NATO general. Narcotics now account for about half of gross domestic product, or $2.7 billion this year, and an even bigger bumper crop is expected in 2007. The Taliban have forsaken their anti-drug stance of the past for arrangements of convenience with trafficking networks and farmers in exchange for kickbacks to fund their insurgency. This allows them to pay well above what the fledgling national army and police can offer.

Amid calls for more robust action to combat the drug trade, US and European efforts thus far have done little to slash production and instead hurt the poor, according to a new United Nations/World Bank report. Farmers of means bribe local-government officials for illicit growing rights, and those lacking money go into debt once their crops are destroyed. In some instances, farmers are compelled to replant poppies to repay outstanding debts; in others, government officials are said to drive out competing cartels for a percentage.

UN investigators say it could take decades to eliminate the problem, while the Taliban appear to be growing stronger by the day.

Jason Motlagh is deputy foreign editor at United Press International in Washington, DC. He has reported freelance from Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean for various US and European news media.

Afghan Journalists Live Their Dream - Embassy, November 29th, 2006
NEWS STORY By Lee Berthiaume

It is still tough working as a female reporter in Afghanistan, but it is a job Mehria Azize and Najeeba Ayubi feel they are duty-bound to continue.

Six years ago, Mehria Azize had a dream that, as far as she knew, would never come true.

The then-18-year-old Afghan woman was living under the repressive Taliban regime that forbade women from leaving their homes without their husband or a male family member, let alone working as a television journalist.

"Everyone has a dream," Ms. Azize says. "When I saw people on TV with video cameras, I knew what's I wanted to do."

As she talks, a crowd of people are watching Afghanistan Unveiled, a video that Ms. Azize and several other camerawomen, Afghanistan's first in its history, shot a few years ago to show the world the plight of the country's female population after the Taliban were routed.

Ms. Azize and her colleague Najeeba Ayubi, a radio producer with the country's largest independent broadcaster, were in Ottawa last week as part of a cross-country Reporters Without Borders event aimed at raising public awareness about the challenges journalists–especially women who work in the media–face in Afghanistan.

Ms. Azize says she does not show Afghanistan Unveiled in her home country because of the dangers it would pose to not only herself, but also for those women who she and her colleagues portrayed.

"It's dangerous, it's like a bomb," Ms. Azize says of the film even five years after international forces pushed the Taliban out of power and started rebuilding the war-torn country.

The camerawoman says under the Taliban, there were no schools, no television and only one state-owned radio station and one state-owned newspaper. But she remembered a time before the Taliban when television was allowed, and that's when she first knew what she wanted to do.

Ms. Ayubi, on the other hand, has worked in journalism for many years. She started writing freelance articles when she was 13 and, after university, wrote stories and worked as a television producer in Parwan province near the capital of Kabul.

"When the Taliban came to Parwan, we had to go to Kabul, where we stayed at home because we are not allowed to work," Ms. Ayubi says.

She eventually fled to Iran where she established a school for Afghan refugees. When she returned to Afghanistan in 2001, Ms. Ayubi started working for Save the Children USA before joining Radio Killid, a new station where she is now a program director.

Both women say the situation for journalists in Afghanistan has improved. But while women are flocking to such positions because they see the media as a chance to hold some power after years of living under the Taliban, they are still not accepted in every part of the country.

"It will take such a long, long time," Ms. Azize says. "As an Afghan woman, I can't even take my camera on the street without people looking. They think we are not right for this.

"It is dangerous for us," she adds. "All the women who work in the media have stress. Sometimes even the families are against it."

But Ms. Ayubi says she feels she must continue to work in her position.
"I think whoever knows anything has to share it with everyone," she says.

[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.]