In this bulletin:

• 3 die, 19 hurt in Afghan blast, gunfire
• 70 to 80 Taliban killed in Afghanistan
• U.S. Report Finds Fault in Training of Afghan Police
• Afghanistan: A job half done
• Pakistani FM to visit Afghanistan for talks on joint jirga
• Afghan envoy meets ANP president
• Musharraf will meet Najeebullah's fate: JI
• 'The most significant medal I've ever earned'
• Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan
• Afghanistan Sugar Plant re-operates
• Educators persevere despite the constant threat of Taliban attacks .

3 die, 19 hurt in Afghan blast, gunfire

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) 12/3/2006 — A suicide car bomb exploded next to a British convoy in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, and troops speeding away from the scene fired at several civilian cars. Three Afghans were killed and 19 people were wounded, including three British soldiers.

The attack was one of at least five violent confrontations in southern Afghanistan in 24 hours. More than 12 people were killed and 11 wounded in the other fighting.

The suicide blast in Kandahar damaged an open-top NATO vehicle and scattered the pieces of the car bomb over a wide area in Kandahar city. Three NATO soldiers were wounded, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, an alliance spokesman in Kandahar.

The suicide bomber tried to ram his car into the convoy as the troops were driving through the city, Britain's Ministry of Defense said. One of the wounded soldiers was in serious condition.

Two civilians were killed and 10 wounded in the blast, said Dr. Bashir Ahmed of the main Kandahar hospital. A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmedi, claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack.

After the explosion, soldiers speeding from the scene fired at civilian vehicles, including a man on a motorcycle about a half-mile from the blast site. Ahmed said six Afghans were wounded by the gunfire.

Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbal said in Kabul that one civilian was killed and one was injured by the gunfire.

Maj. Luke Knittig, the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said that as the patrol was driving away from the blast site it came across a suspicious car which soldiers feared might be a second suicide bomber.

Chalk said the patrol fired warning shots to keep people away and that some civilians may have been injured as a result.

Isah Mohammad, one of the Afghans injured by gunfire, said from his hospital bed that he was driving through Kandahar with his cousin when the convoy passed them.

"The convoy was coming and there was some gunfire, but I thought it was a wedding ceremony," said Mohammad, who is in his early 30s and was hit in the shoulder and the right leg. "When they got closer, they started shooting at us."

His uncle, Gahfoor Aqa, had harsh words for NATO troops, saying they "are always saying they're coming to rebuild our country. But instead they are shooting our children," he said.

U.K. Taskforce spokesman Lt. Col. Andy Price condemned the suicide attack. "This was a typically indiscriminate attack from the Taliban, who didn't care if they killed or injured innocent Afghans around our forces," he said.

The blast was the fourth suicide attack in the Kandahar region in a week. Two Canadian soldiers were killed last Monday by a suicide car bomb just outside Kandahar.

NATO figures as of last week showed that 227 Afghans and 17 international soldiers have been killed in about 105 suicide bombings this year. The bombs typically target NATO and Afghan security forces but more often kill civilians.

Meanwhile, Knittig said NATO forces were doing a "recovery operation" at the site where a civilian helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday. He would not say how many people died in the crash.

Militants attacked a NATO convoy in southern Helmand province's Nawzad district, said Ghulam Nabi Malakheil, the province's police chief. NATO troops fired back and called in airstrikes that left five militants dead, he said. Two NATO soldiers were wounded in the exchange, Knittig said.

In Zabul province, suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint, sparking a gunbattle that left four insurgents dead and one police officer wounded, said Jailany Khan, Zabul's highway police commander.

Militants also tried to block the main highway linking Kandahar and Helmand province, and a clash with police left three militants dead and eight wounded, said Ghulam Rasool, the district police chief. No police were injured.

NATO troops also battled militants near Musa Qala in Helmand province for four hours late Saturday. The fighting, including airstrikes, killed or wounded "a significant number of insurgents," the alliance said.

Afghanistan's south is the center of a revived Taliban insurgency that this year alone has left over 3,700 people dead.

70 to 80 Taliban killed in Afghanistan

By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press Mon Dec 4

KABUL, Afghanistan - An estimated 70 to 80 Taliban militants were killed by NATO soldiers in fighting in southern Afghanistan after police told military authorities where insurgents had gathered, an official said Monday.

NATO soldiers suffered no casualties in the fighting in Helmand province that lasted into early Sunday, said Maj. Luke Knittig, the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The battle was in a remote location and there was no way to independently confirm NATO's casualty figures, provided by the commander on the ground.

"He had a pretty good idea of what he was up against and a pretty good idea of what effect he had on them," Knittig said.

The fighting was in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province but outside the town of Musa Qala, where British troops in October pulled out after an agreement with tribal elders that they would keep Taliban fighters out of town, Knittig said.

"The elders, as I understand it, have extraordinary influence, but that influence doesn't spread across the whole district, just mostly in the town," Knittig said. "If anything the deal in Musa Qala has freed up more of our troops to conduct the kind of reconnaissance patrol that was so effective in this engagement."

Afghan security forces had told NATO that insurgents increased their activity the last couple weeks in the area between the Musa Qala and Nawzad districts, Knittig said. About 100 to 150 Danish soldiers, along with Afghan forces, fought against the insurgents using attack helicopters and jet fighters, he said.

The fighting was part at least five violent confrontations in southern Afghanistan over the weekend. Two people were killed in Kandahar city Sunday after a car bomb exploded near a British convoy. One person was killed by troops who felt threatened and fired at civilians.

There have been 11 suicide attacks in Afghanistan since Nov. 18, said Adrian Edwards, the spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. He said 20 percent of the country is currently affected by the insurgency.

Taliban militants have launched a record number of suicide and roadside bombs this year. A growing insurgency, especially in the country's south and east, have left close to 4,000 people dead.

Knittig said there has been an average of 9.4 attacks a day in recent weeks and that the number of coordinated, complex attacks has dropped dramatically. He said that NATO forces are going out and attacking Taliban positions.

"What you're seeing is us doing what we said we would do through the winter months, seek out insurgents where they might otherwise seek safe haven," he said. "Danish reconnaissance patrols aren't hanging out in the barracks waiting for springtime."

U.S. Report Finds Fault in Training of Afghan Police

The New York Times 12/03/2006 By James Glanz and David Rohde

Five years after the fall of the Taliban, a joint report by the Pentagon and the State Department has found that the American-trained police force in Afghanistan is largely incapable of carrying out routine law enforcement work, and that managers of the $1.1 billion training program cannot say how many officers are actually on duty or where thousands of trucks and other equipment issued to police units have gone.

In fact, most police units had less than 50 percent of their authorized equipment on hand as of June, says the report, which was issued two weeks ago but is only now circulating among members of relevant Congressional committees.

In its most significant finding, the report said that no effective field training program had been established in Afghanistan, at least in part because of a slow, ineffectual start and understaffing.

Police training experts who have studied or had first-hand experience with the American effort in Afghanistan said they agreed with the report's findings, and some said they had warned for years that field training was the backbone of a strong program. But they said additional problems needed to be investigated, including the quality of private contractors and the cost and effectiveness of relying on them to train the police officers. In particular, the experts questioned why the report focused on United States government managers and only glancingly analyzed the performance of the principal contractor in Afghanistan, DynCorp International of Virginia.

Considering the state of the police force, an estimated $600 million per year will be needed indefinitely to sustain it, says the report, undertaken by the offices of the inspectors general at the Pentagon and the State Department. Howard J. Krongard is the inspector general at State, which led the work on the 97-page report, and Thomas F. Gimble holds the office at the Pentagon.

American advisers will also have to combat endemic corruption in the force, the report says.

Efforts to respond to some of the issues that the report identifies are already under way. Afghan and American officials recently announced that they had instituted an "auxiliary police" program at the end of the summer, which aims to hire 11,200 officers in parts of the country beset by Taliban attacks, primarily in the south.

But these officers receive only two of the standard eights weeks of training, and the police training experts say the program could worsen the situation. They say the new hastily created program could place ill-trained and poorly vetted officers in the field and allow militias and criminals to infiltrate the force.

An American official involved in the new effort said the program became necessary after southern governors besieged by Taliban attacks began hiring police officers on their own. American officials feared they were seeing the beginnings of de facto private militias.

"This was designed to avoid the creation of the militias," said the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly.

The training experts say the United States made some of the same mistakes in training police forces in Afghanistan that it made in Iraq, including offering far too little field training, tracking equipment poorly and relying on private contractors for the actual training. At the same time, these experts say, the failure to create viable police forces to keep order and enforce the law on a local level has played a pivotal role in undermining the American efforts to stabilize both countries.

In Afghanistan, the failure has contributed to the explosion in opium production, government corruption and the resurgence of the Taliban.

In Iraq, the challenge is even larger: Sectarian death squads have infiltrated the police force and helped push the country to what many are now calling a civil war.

"In both places we were extraordinarily late getting started," said Robert M. Perito, a policing expert at the United States Institute of Peace and a former National Security Council, State and Justice Department official. "In both places you have a dysfunctional Interior Ministry in control, and in both places the United States has tried to stand up a ministry advisory group to bring order out of chaos."

In an interview this fall, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the violence in the country's south was partly a result of the lack of a viable force. He called for "much more support" from the United States and for an expansion of the country's force of roughly 70,000 officers.

"It is not that they are strong," he said, referring to the Taliban. "It is that we are not strong enough to defend ourselves."

Most of the $1.1 billion the United States has spent on the training program in Afghanistan has gone to DynCorp, a technical services company based in Falls Church, Va., with 14,000 employees in about 33 countries. DynCorp also won the largest part of the training work in Iraq; it received $1.6 billion for its training and security work in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2004, 2005 and 2006 fiscal years, according to Gregory Lagana, a company spokesman. The work accounted for roughly 30 percent of the company's revenues during those years. In May, the company raised $375 million in an initial public offering of its stock.

Under orders from the Defense Department, the company has deployed 377 police advisers to Afghanistan, roughly half the number the United States has deployed in Iraq. Police training experts say far more police advisers are needed in Afghanistan, which is roughly the same size as Iraq. The report says that management of the DynCorp contract by United States government officials in Afghanistan has fallen into a state of disarray; conflicting military and civilian bureaucracies could not even find a copy of the contract to clarify for auditors exactly what it called for.

The report does not suggest that DynCorp held any responsibility for the program's failures, but former Afghan officials and several American policing experts who have examined DynCorp's training on the ground say that the company is partly to blame for long delays and that the use of private contractors for training should be reviewed. Afghan officials have complained about the high cost of the advisers and have said that some have too little experience.

Ali Jalali, an Afghan-American military historian who served as interior minister from 2002 to 2005, said the expertise level of some DynCorp advisers sent to his ministry was mixed. He said he rejected the first group he was offered because their résumés were unimpressive. When a second group arrived, some were retired officers not up to the demands of working in Afghanistan, he said. Others knew virtually nothing about the country.

"They were good on patrols in Oklahoma City, Houston or Miami," said Mr. Jalali, now a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. "But not in a country where you faced rebuilding the police force."

Mr. Lagana defended the company's work and said State Department officials closely monitored their activities. He said the Interior Ministry advisers who drew complaints regarding their experience level were removed.

"We filled positions based on the requirements and salary levels authorized by the State Department," Mr. Lagana said. "As we went along, everyone realized we needed people with experience at higher levels in law enforcement."

Seth Jones, an Afghanistan expert at the RAND Corporation who has made eight trips to Afghanistan since 2003 to study army and police training, called for a review of the company's performance. He said he had repeatedly heard complaints from both Western and Afghan officials in Afghanistan about the quality and experience of DynCorp's advisers.

"I was surprised, based on what I have seen on the ground, that DynCorp was let off the hook so easily," he said of the report. "I think a very frank assessment of DynCorp needs to be done."

Mr. Krongard, the State Department inspector general, acknowledged the seriousness of the report's criticisms. But he said in a statement in answer to questions about the report that in the face of obstacles like largely illiterate recruits, low pay and corruption, the program was "generally well conceived and well executed," but that for the police force to be self-sustaining, "long-term U.S. and international assistance and funding will be required at least beyond 2010."

The report concluded that the official figure of 70,000 trained police officers was inflated and that only where American advisers were present was the counting reliable to some degree.

As a best estimate, the report said that 30,395 Afghan officers — fewer than half the official total — were "trained and equipped to carry out their police functions."

The report also says that the vetting process for recruits, intended to keep the Taliban and people with powerful sectarian or tribal loyalties out of police ranks, has not been effective. After recruits are trained, they are often assigned by local police commanders to menial tasks like guard duty.

The international effort lost critical time when it initially mounted a token effort to train officers in Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials and policing experts. For the first two and a half years after the fall of the Taliban, no systematic police training program existed outside of Afghanistan's capital, according to American and Afghan officials. The United States focused on training a new multiethnic army and paid little attention to the need for policemen. Germany pledged to train a new force but sent only 40 police advisers to Kabul.

Then, in 2004, the State Department issued a contract to DynCorp to deploy 30 police advisers across Afghanistan and construct seven regional training centers.

The United States spent $164 million building and running the training centers; recruits received two to four weeks of training. The effort was poorly monitored and achieved mixed results, according to a June 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office.

In April 2005, the Defense Department took over police training in Afghanistan and drastically expanded the number of American police advisers; the number is 377 today. Still, police training experts said the Afghanistan effort remained far too small, with small teams of advisers each expected to field train thousands of Afghan policemen.

The small corps of advisers also makes it more difficult to track equipment, and the report said that just 3,000 of 5,000 vehicles issued to the police nationwide could be accounted for. Although the report does not explicitly connect its warnings on corruption to the loss of equipment, the two appear to be closely related.

The weakness of the police has contributed to Afghanistan become world's largest producer of opium, accounting for 92 percent of the world's supply, experts said. A report issued by the United Nations Office of Drug Control and the World Bank last Tuesday found that corruption had stymied efforts to counter opium production and that a handful of politically connected traffickers increasingly dominated the drug trade.

"The drug industry in Afghanistan is becoming increasingly consolidated," the report says. "At the top level, around 25-30 key traffickers, the majority of them in southern Afghanistan, control major transactions and transfers, working closely with sponsors in top government and political positions."

The report on police training strongly recommends expanding the advising program to take care of some of those problems but points out that an expansion would cost the United States much more money "as well as increasing the risk to U.S. personnel."

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: A job half done

By Lyse Doucet - BBC Afghanistan analyst Monday, 4 December 2006

In December 2001, a new future for Afghanistan was mapped out at an international conference in Bonn, beginning with an interim government to replace the Taleban. This week we look at how much has changed since then.

Five years ago, on a cold winter's day in Kabul, news broke that a new Afghan leader had been chosen thousands of miles away in the German city of Bonn.

I reached for a satellite telephone to call Hamid Karzai, still battling against Taleban forces in their last redoubt in the south.

"Am I the new Chairman?" he shouted on a crackling line. On a morning when he had come under fire from misguided American aircraft, Hamid Karzai still had not been told officially. "That's nice" was his unassuming reply.

Afghans have, in some ways, made an impressive journey since a hastily assembled group of Afghans and foreign envoys forged what became known as the Bonn process.

With some difficulty and delay all the ambitious targets were met: a traditional assembly, or loya jirga, approved a new government in 2002; a second loya jirga came up with a constitution; and presidential and parliamentary elections were held for the first time in decades.

But for many Afghans its a job half done. "We reached the quantity of targets, but the quality is still missing," says Nader Nadery, an observer at the Bonn conference who is now a Commissioner at Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission.

Afghanistan is still a place awash with guns, where commanders and local officials can impose their will with impunity, where many Afghans say their lives have changed little.

Most startling of all, the Taleban have made a comeback in the south, fighting with unexpected ferocity and firepower. There is no doubting some progress, but why did billions of dollars in aid and thousands of foreign troops not make more of a difference?

I have put this question in recent weeks to many of the players who helped shape Afghanistan over the past five years.

Former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani insists the world's aid agencies simply weren't equipped for state building in an impoverished country emerging from a quarter century of war.

Even Lakhdar Brahimi, who presided over much of this process as the UN's senior envoy, offers a scathing verdict on the performance of the UN and donors.

"The way we are doing it is really lousy. We are too late, too bureaucratic, and frankly we spend too much money on ourselves rather than developing the skills of Afghans."

Most critically for Mr Brahimi and many others, countries who vowed to "stand by Afghanistan for the long run" didn't send enough troops in 2002 to start rebuilding, including disarmament, across the country.

Only 5,000 soldiers were sent to Kabul while 8,000 US troops concentrated on rooting out remnants of the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Mr Brahimi speaks of a "great deal of bitterness" that resources were then suddenly found for a war in Iraq.

"In 2002, the warlords and commanders were shaking in their boots fearing they were going to be disarmed or cast aside," recalls Francesc Vendrell, the former UN envoy who is the now the EU's man in Kabul. "Now its much more difficult."

Five years on, Afghanistan's powerful regional leaders no longer command private armies but in province after province, men with guns now have access to state resources and positions of power.

Huge cracks have been exposed in this state building exercise. including the failure to focus enough attention on rebuilding institutions like the judiciary and police.

"Ten good police are better than 100 corrupt police and 10 corrupt police can do more damage to our success than one Taleban extremist," explains Lt General Karl Eikenberry, the senior US commander.

He has now put police reform at the top of the US military's agenda after years of a German-led effort which concentrated mainly on training. Government failings also fuel the rise of Taleban and other opposition forces.

President Karzai is often blamed for making poor choices when it comes to appointing provincial governors and police chiefs.

In an interview at his heavily guarded presidential palace, he admits "there are things I would have done differently".

But he rejects criticism that he still relies too heavily on advice from former mujahideen factional leaders blamed for the destruction of Kabul during the civil war of the 1990s.

His political signature has been "the big tent" approach. But what Mr Karzai views as a wise strategy to bring everyone on board, others see as a sign of weakness.

Many express regret over other missed opportunities. Lakhdar Brahimi worries that he and others were wrong not to bring the Taleban into the political process as early as 2002.

Former US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad told me he wished more attention had been paid to Taleban "sanctuaries" across the border in Pakistan.

Five years on, there is consensus on an urgent need to get a grip on the situation. It is more difficult now with the emergence of a new "mafia": a nexus of drug smugglers, criminals, and in some provinces Taleban, filling a vacuum left by the government.

Nato forces are now acutely aware their fight is also about jobs and reconstruction. As General Eikenberry puts it: "Where the road ends, the Taleban begins".

As another harsh winter closes in, long cold nights without electricity, even in Kabul, concentrate Afghan minds.

Spring must bring not just a reprieve from winter's icy blast, but clear signs that their government, backed by Nato forces and major donors, is heading in the right direction.

Pakistani FM to visit Afghanistan for talks on joint jirga

December 4, 2006 - ISLAMABAD (AFP) - Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri will visit Afghanistan this week for talks on curbing the Taliban insurgency by holding a traditional gathering of tribal leaders on both sides of the border, the foreign ministry said.

Kasuri's December 7-9 visit was part of regular contact between the two countries, during which he would discuss bilateral relations, the ministry's spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told reporters on Monday.

"Basically he would discuss how to bring about peace and calm in the bordering areas of the two countries," she said at a weekly briefing.

Kasuri would hold follow-up discussions with his Afghan counterpart, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, on decisions made by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai during their joint meeting with US President George W. Bush at the White House in September, she said.

They would also discuss the proposal for holding a joint jirga, or gathering or tribal elders, on both sides of the border. "The focus would be on how to activate this traditional institution to bring down violence and promote peace in the border areas," Aslam said.

Karzai, concerned about the growing insurgency in his country, proposed convening a jirga at the Washington meeting amid tensions between the neighbours, who blamed each other for not doing enough to rein in the militants.

Ethnic Pashtuns living on both sides of the border have for centuries used jirgas to resolve internal disputes.

Kasuri would also discuss the strategy Pakistan was following in its rugged tribal belt, where the government signed a peace deal with pro-Taliban militants in September to curb violence.

"We hope that something on similar lines, a comprehensive strategy, can be developed in Afghanistan," Aslam said. "If implemented, that (would have) not only a political dimension -- national reconciliation -- but also an economic component for reconstruction."

Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led "war on terror" has deployed 80,000 troops along the frontier to stop militants launching attacks in Afghanistan.

Afghan envoy meets ANP president

Janullah Hashemzada  - PESHAWAR, Dec 4 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Ambassadors of Afghanistan and the United States to Islamabad met the central president of Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP) Asfandyar Wali Khan and discussed with him the holding of the proposed Jirgas between tribal elders living on both sides of the Durand Line.

Afghan ambassador Nangyalai Tarzai and US ambassador Ryan C. Crocker called on ANP president on Sunday to exchange views on the holding of the tribal Jirgas, said ANP information secretary Zahid Khan.

The meeting was also confirmed by Afghan Consul General in Peshawar Haji Abdul Khaliq Farahi. He said Tarzai had completed his term as envoy to Pakistan and he would soon be replaced by another diplomat.

Sources told Pajhwok Afghan News Afghanistan's ambassador to Iran Omar Daudzai would likely replace Tarzai. However, a source in the Foreign Ministry rejected the transfer of Daudzai from Iran to Pakistan.

Musharraf will meet Najeebullah's fate: JI

via Hindustan Times -Press Trust of India Islamabad, December 4, 2006

Launching a scathing attack on President Pervez Musharraf, a provincial leader of Pakistan's Jamat-i-Islami (JI) has said the General would meet the fate of former Afghanistan President Najeebullah, who was publicly hanged when the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan.

Addressing a protest rally in Karachi yesterday, JI's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) leader, Sirajul Haq said Musharraf's days were numbered in view of the bombing of a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajour in which 80 people were killed.

"Each child of the nation would hold Musharraf accountable for every drop of blood," Haq, who resigned as the Finance Minister in the Mutthahida Majlis Amal (MMA) government in NWFP after the Bajuaur attack, was quoted as saying by The Nation.

He also claimed it was the United States which bombed the madrasa, which the Pakistan government alleged was being used to train suicide bombers.

JI, which is a constituent of the Mutthahida Majlis Amal (MMA), has been holding agitations against Musharraf and pressuring the other constituents of the MMA to resign from Assemblies over the Bajaur incident and the amendments to the rape and adultery laws of the Hudood Ordinance brought in by the government.

'The most significant medal I've ever earned'

Last Updated: Monday, December 4, 2006 - CBC News

Edmonton - Hundreds of soldiers who recently returned from Afghanistan were honoured with medals at a welcome home ceremony in Edmonton.

About 300 soldiers who arrived home from nine-month long tours received the medals and listened to a concert Sunday at Rexall Place. 

Tears began to well in Corp. Robert Kelly's eyes after Alberta's Lt.-Gov. Norman Kwong pinned a silver service medal on him.

"It brought back some memories from being over there. I lost a lot of good friends and all that," he said. Kelly's wife, Jocelyn, was overcome with emotion when she saw her husband receive the medal.

"[I am] proud, you know, that he returned home, unlike some other people. So it was nice to see him standing there instead of not standing there, I guess is the best way to put it."

This has been the most dangerous mission for Canadian soldiers since the Korean War. Thirty-six Canadian troops and one diplomat have been killed in the conflict so far this year.

Capt. Mark Peebles has received service medals for his tours in Bosnia and Croatia, but he said this latest decoration means so much more.

"It has a special significance. This tour was a tour unlike any other. When was the last time we've done combat? Korea. This medal to me is probably the most significant medal I've ever earned." 

Omar Samad, the Afghanistan ambassador to Canada, thanked the soldiers during Sunday's ceremony for their assistance to the 30 million people living in his homeland.

Afghans respect the Canadian troops and support the mission, said Samad.

Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan

The commercial landscape is rife with risk, but hardy entrepreneurs and multinational giants are betting that the Afghan economy will rise from the ashes

BY ARYN BAKER TIME Magazine Monday, December 4, 2006

With his tattered gray turban, his threadbare waistcoat and the gnarled hands of a laborer, Karim Khan hardly looks like the ideal customer for a financial-services firm. But to the Azizi Bank in Kabul, he's a prime client. Khan is one of some 60,000 Afghans who have opened an account at Azizi since a new savings product was launched four months ago. Although his initial deposit of $100 in crumpled Afghani notes may seem paltry, because of customers like him Azizi is increasing its deposit base faster than any other bank in the country. "You have business opportunities here in Afghanistan like nowhere else in the world," says Hayatullah Dayani, the bank's chief of business development.

Dayani is one of thousands of optimistic souls who believe a prosperous future can emerge from the stony soil of strife-torn Afghanistan. Since the brutal Taliban regime was toppled five years ago by Western coalition forces, the government of President Hamid Karzai, beset by warlords and Islamic militants, has struggled to maintain order and control. The country's primitive economy is dominated by illicit opium production, which by some estimates accounts for as much as one-third of GDP. About 40% of Afghans are unemployed. And last month, the World Food Program warned that millions of rural Afghans might starve this winter because a prolonged drought has devastated the wheat harvest.

Yet the country also harbors a hardy strain of entrepreneurs like Dayani who have sparked an economic revival of sorts. Afghanistan's average annual per capita income has almost doubled from $180 in 2002 to $355 this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF also estimates the economy grew 17% in 2006, and it's projected to grow 11.7% in 2007. In Kabul, the capital, new shops open every day, and construction is altering the city's low-rise skyline, which not long ago consisted mainly of bombed-out buildings. More than 1.5 million Afghans own mobile phones, six independent TV stations have launched since 2002 and 16 private banks are expected to be open by early next year. "It's not like investing in Austria or the United Arab Emirates where things are pretty straightforward," says Mohammad Rafi Fazil, economics officer for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Afghanistan. "Given that we are only just emerging from a postconflict situation, things are very complicated. But the possibilities are endless if you are able to adapt."

That's what Azizi Bank's founders were forced to do when they opened in June. Islamic law prohibits the collection and payment of interest, making it difficult for banks to attract deposits from devout Muslims. Instead, Azizi launched a program they called Qismat (or "luck") Banking, in which customers opening new accounts are automatically entered in a lucky draw for cars, TVs, gold jewelry and other prizes. It may sound more like a lottery than a savings account, but no fees are charged, and customers can withdraw their money any time after three months. Since the program launched in August, Azizi has drawn $20 million in Qismat deposits alone, capital that it can in turn lend to its less religious banking customers, at a profit. "That's another $20 million mobilized in the economic cycle of the country," says Dayani. "People are coming who have never seen a bank before. They are pulling their money from under the floorboards and we are putting it into circulation through loans." But the ADB's Fazil worries that the system is unstable: Afghanistan's banking sector is largely unregulated, and loan officers have little experience in assessing the risks of business lending. "If the private sector goes bankrupt, [Afghanistan's private banks] will go bankrupt," he says, "and the public, with all their 'safe' deposits, what will happen to them?"

But there are few sure things in Afghan commerce. Not even a powerful international brand like Coca-Cola is guaranteed success. In September, Habib Gulzar Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Coke's franchisee in Afghanistan, opened a $25 million dollar bottling plant on the outskirts of Kabul. The modern facility—the first such factory to open since the fall of the Taliban—is large enough to produce 40,000 cases of soda a day. But the factory is operating at less than 20% of its capacity. Asked to estimate when the investment might be recouped, Salman Rawn, country manager for Coca-Cola Afghanistan, demurs. "Our break-even point is far in the future," he says, noting that he's currently selling the bottles of soda at a loss because volumes are so low.

There are numerous reasons why profits may prove elusive for Coca-Cola's Afghan venture. The country's rustic road network means that product distribution is limited to Kabul and a few other nearby cities; Kandahar, a potentially large market in the south, is off-limits because militants and bandits make it too dangerous to truck goods there. In many places, Coke smuggled in from neighboring Pakistan is available in shops at significantly lower prices than the Afghan-produced bottles. The cost of safeguarding Coca-Cola's local bottling plant and employees from attacks has soared as suicide bombings have increased in Kabul. And some of the government's pro-business promises have not materialized, says Sayed Mustafa Kazimi, the former Commerce Minister who signed the Coca-Cola license on behalf of the government. "I didn't go to the [factory] opening ceremony because I didn't want to be embarrassed when they said that I brought [Coca-Cola] to Afghanistan," says Kazimi, who claims his successors in the commerce department disregarded his commitments. "We promised them electricity, we promised them security. We offered tax holidays and tariff reductions. It didn't happen. How can anyone operate under these conditions?"

Rawn defends Coca-Cola's $25 million investment in Afghanistan, saying the objective was not just to make money, but also to help industrialize the country. "If you plant a tree you can't expect to have fruit the first day. But if you don't plant at all, you will never have fruit." That sentiment is shared by Shakib Noori, p.r. director of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, the country's business-licensing body. Afghanistan imports some $5 billion worth of goods every year, and "half of those products could be produced here in Afghanistan," says Noori. "Dairy, foodstuffs, cement—there are huge opportunities, but the problem is that there is no infrastructure." Most of the country is out of reach of an electrical grid. Even in Kabul, residents receive just three hours of electricity a day. Although a national highway system is scheduled to be completed by 2010 and a planned electrical line from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the north could light up Kabul by 2008, Afghanistan's unstable political situation is a further deterrent to foreign investment.

Government corruption is also a formidable obstacle, as it is in many developing countries. "If you need land, you have to pay a bribe," says Kazimi, the former Commerce Minister. "Electricity, you have to pay someone off. To import goods, you have to pay baksheesh. Everyone has a 'tax.'" Those who refuse to pay risk losing out to their business rivals. When Roshan, a cellular-phone company jointly owned by the Geneva-based Aga Khan Development Network, Monaco Telecom and MCT Corp. of the U.S., began building a network in Afghanistan in 2002, transmission equipment languished in customs for months, says Roshan CEO Karim Khoja, because the company refused to pay bribes. Leases on prime land were also lost, and bureaucrats demanded free airtime and SIM cards, says Khoja.

Yet Khoja adds that it's certainly possible to operate a clean business and succeed in Afghanistan. Roshan is the largest carrier in the country. It has a million customers, a market share of about 60% and generated revenues of $100 million in its 2005 fiscal year. But to get there, Roshan had to make plenty of adjustments. Afghanistan has no functioning mail system or credit-card services, so billing methods prevalent in the West couldn't be used. Instead, customers get airtime by purchasing prepaid calling cards from roughly 4,000 vendors who are Roshan franchisees. In Kabul, the vendors, most of them selling cards on the street, earn about $100 a month, much more than most laborers. "We are creating an entrepreneurial middle class," says Khoja. Roshan is also helping to entertain the masses by sponsoring one of Afghanistan's most popular TV shows, a knockoff of American Idol called Afghan Star, which follows aspiring celebrities as they perform for a national audience. Viewers vote for their favorites by sending messages via their mobile phones. The revenue generated by the additional traffic is split between Roshan and programmer Tolo TV.

Supporting such programming in a pious country was a gamble. Under the Taliban, musical performances were banned. So was TV. But today, media company Moby Capital Partners, owner of Tolo TV, is prospering. Tolo TV's mix of news, sports, music, reality shows and Indian soap operas draws nearly two-thirds of the country's viewers, according to a recent survey by a Kabul consulting company. Tolo, one of six private stations in Afghanistan, has drawn the ire of conservatives who decry its use of female presenters. But its programs appeal to young Afghans (half the population is below the age of 20), and advertisers are stepping up. Saad Mohseni, an Afghan exile who spent most his adult life as a stockbroker in Australia before returning in 2002 to found Moby, estimates that the country's ad spending on all media is currently around $10 million a year. Capturing that revenue, he says, is simply a matter of taking a chance and getting the formula right.

A handful of foreign investors have been willing to take their chances. Foreign direct investment increased by 35% in 2005 to $253 million, according to the ADB, putting Afghanistan on par with a country like Sri Lanka. Besides Coca-Cola, multinational firms such as DHL, Standard Chartered Bank, the Hyatt hotel group, Toyota and Alcatel have also set up Afghan operations. In hope of convincing more to take the plunge, the ministry of commerce is reassessing tax laws, and groups like Afghanistan Investment Support Agency are helping to build industrial parks to encourage manufacturing. A steady rise in consumer spending should also boost the economy—for nearly 30 years, Afghans have been deprived of basic consumer goods, and they are eager to catch up. President Karzai, not surprisingly, has been eager to draw attention to these rays of economic sunshine. "Whoever invested in Afghanistan in the past four years has earned a lot," he said a few months ago at a conference to attract foreign investment. "Those who invest now in the still fresh, needy, greedy market in Afghanistan will make a lot."

He may be right. One thing is for sure: the nation's yearning for a better future has never been more intense. Just ask Khan as he waits in line to open his account at Azizi Bank: "The economy is moving forward. Afghans are hungry. We are tired of war and we want to buy. We want to build. But I hope there is no more fighting—if that happens it will destroy everything."

Afghanistan Sugar Plant re-operates

Xinhua  / December 04, 2006 - Afghanistan's only sugar plant has began production after rehabilitation, a press release of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the Untied Nations (FAO) said Monday.

After 15 years of non-operation, the New Baghlan Sugar Company, recommenced sugar production recently, it said.

To keep on running the plant, the FAO assists the farmers to provide high quality sugar beet in some 2,500 hectares of land. Presently 120 people are working in the plant, which has the capacity of processing 600 to 800 tones of sugar beet a day.

One of this project's most important aspect is the production of sugar is the first step towards self-sufficiency in Afghanistan, the press release said.

Afghanistan needs 830,000 tones of sugar in one year and the newly rehabilitated sugar factory covers only 1.3 percent of the country's need.

Like many other Afghan factories, the Baghlan sugar plant was badly damaged during the past decades of war. In Afghanistan, lessons in the face of violence

Educators persevere despite the constant threat of Taliban attacks.

By Paul Watson - The Los Angeles Times December 3, 2006

THE teacher had been warned. Mohammed Aref was on duty near the front gate of his school. The children were at recess, playing volleyball without a net.

The throaty rumble of a motorcycle broke through their playful shrieks and laughter. The lone rider, a man wearing a traditional shalwar kameez with his face obscured by the long tail of his turban, called Aref over to talk. Then he pulled an AK-47 from under his baggy shirt and fired six bullets into the teacher.

Aref had no way to defend himself. His only weapons were his faith in knowledge, some tattered books and a piece of chalk. He died in the dirt in front of horrified pupils.

Fifteen days earlier, Taliban guerrillas had come in the darkness and posted a "night letter" on the door of his farmhouse, telling the 50-year-old teacher to stay away from the school if he wanted to stay alive.

Aref, who earned just $50 a month, stood his ground. One of the first victims in the resurgent Taliban's dirty war on education, he gave his life trying to teach Afghan children that there is more to theirs than endless war.

After the U.S. joined with anti-Taliban militias five years ago to bring down the Islamist government, one of the biggest changes was in education. The Taliban, whose name means "students," regard Western-style education as a direct threat to the vision of a pure Islamic state. Its followers regard modern education as a morally toxic force of Western colonialism.

The Taliban's founders learned their disdain for most things modern in radical religious schools in Pakistan, where the only legitimate subject is study of the Koran. Extremist mullahs teach a harsh version of Islam that professes to be a return to traditions established by the prophet Muhammad.

A decade ago, when the Taliban swept across southern Afghanistan to seize the capital, Kabul, the mullahs issued edicts closing the women's university and most girls' schools. A collapsing infrastructure made it difficult for many boys to attend school as well.

When schools reopened in 2002 after the ouster of the Taliban regime, only about a third of Afghanistan's school-age children were in class. Today, the World Bank says, the figure is 87%, about 6.5 million pupils, a reflection of the hope of Afghan parents that the U.S.-backed government will be able to bring their country into the modern world. Some aid workers estimate the figure is much lower.

The United States has distributed textbooks and supplies, trained 50,000 teachers and rebuilt 672 schools.

But once again, education is under pressure from the Taliban. The militants are active once more across at least half of the country, including the southern province of Helmand, where Aref died in December 2005. Afghanistan's corrupt police and weak army are unable to provide much security.

Over the last year, insurgents have burned at least 146 schools, and insecurity has forced 215 others to close, the Afghan Education Ministry says. Zuhoor Afghan, an advisor to Education Minister Mohammed Hanif Atmar, says about 220,000 students have quit school because they fear for their lives.

To his wife and their seven children, and the many villagers who respected him, Aref was a mujahid, a courageous man engaged in a holy struggle to defeat ignorance and hatred so Afghanistan might know peace.

"He loved teaching," said his brother, Mohammed Rafiq Mohammedi. "It was important to him because he wanted students to learn what he knew and build the nation, to work for the people."

The day after Aref died, none of his school's 1,300 students or their teachers showed up for class.

Their principal, Noor Mohammed, spent weeks trying to undo the damage, sitting with parents for hours, trying to convince them they had to keep the school open.

"They said, 'Unless you guarantee the security of our children, we will not allow them to go to school,' " he recalled outside the deserted school recently. "I said, 'I cannot guarantee the lives of your children, but they must study as much as they can.' "

As he desperately tried to reassure parents and children, Mohammed received his own night letter, which was posted on the gate of the local mosque for all to see.

"Drop this business of teaching and the school or you will be responsible for your own death," it warned. "If you continue, you will have to wash your hands of your life."

Like Aref, the principal kept going, but he couldn't vanquish the terror sown by the Taliban or protect his school.

Even where Taliban violence isn't threatening schools, Afghanistan's other problems are. Across the country, schools are in crisis because of corrupt contractors, shoddy building practices and a chronic shortage of textbooks and trained teachers, said Afghan, the Education Ministry official.

"If they have teachers, they don't have books," he said. "If they have books, they have no chairs. If they have fancy buildings, they have no toilets."

The government doesn't even know how many teachers there are because it is still awaiting the results of a head count started early this year. Despite the progress in many areas, every district in the country is reporting a shortage of qualified teachers, Afghan said.

"We need thousands of professional teachers, and we also need to train most of our professional teachers who are teaching now," he said. "There are students who have not even finished their schooling yet, but they are teaching. For example, students in grade 10 and 11 are teaching grade 3 or 4, and in some places it's even worse than that."

The situation is likely to improve under Atmar, the education minister, who has a strategic plan to improve the system, said Wagma Battoor Hassan Zumati, education program coordinator for CARE, a U.S.-based aid agency. Atmar won praise from foreign aid donors for his management of the rural reconstruction and development ministry.

But many Afghans are losing patience. Encouraged by the promises of Western leaders, they believed the Taliban's defeat meant the dawn of a new age of rapid progress, in which all children could get a good education. The plodding advances, even relapses to the more familiar rot of war and corruption in large parts of the country, feed a growing cynicism toward foreign governments and aid agencies.

"The optimism has died because these people are not honest with each other or with us," Afghan said. "They are working for their own benefit."

FATIMA MUSHTAQ put her life on the line long ago to help educate Afghanistan.

When the Taliban's mullahs ruled, she ran a secret school for women. Now, as head of education for Ghazni province in central Afghanistan, she is defying the extremists' efforts to turn back the clock. And, as a woman in a deeply conservative region, she also fights entrenched sexism and sclerotic bureaucracy.

Mushtaq does not hide her elegant face in public. She dares to adorn it with makeup. She covers her hair with a sheer white scarf, embroidered with delicate flowers, draped over her shoulders. Her voice is soft, but uncompromising.

And she packs a pistol. "I can use it," she said with a steely smile. She may have to. Last fall, Mushtaq received a night letter warning that she would be killed if she didn't quit her job and stay home. "I said, 'Go ahead. Everything that you can do, I'm ready for it.' "

Friends and colleagues have tried to persuade her to give in to the threats. But Mushtaq feels the burden of a nation on her shoulders. She's afraid that if she surrenders, other women will give up too, and then everything they've gained will be lost.

And she has so much left to fight for. "When we go to people and tell them, 'You should send your daughters to school,' they tell us, 'First you build a school, then we will send you our daughters,' " she said.

Over the last year, insurgents have killed a principal and one of his office staffers and burned more than a dozen of Ghazni's schools. Taliban threats have shut down at least 13 more, forcing their students to study in homes and mosques.

About half the province's schools have no buildings or tents, and 100,000 Ghazni students attend class in the open, many of them sitting in the broiling desert, Mushtaq said. Textbooks are in short supply everywhere.

But she insists on seeing the bright side. "It's a bad situation with a good future," she said.

It takes a lot of optimism to see good things ahead for Ghazni villages such as Chaghatu, in a patch of windblown desert almost 100 miles southwest of Kabul. It is surrounded by barren, black mountains, a forbidding sanctuary for Taliban insurgents and their allies.

The villagers are ethnic Hazaras, who by one theory are descendants of Genghis Khan's Mongol army that invaded central Afghanistan in the 12th century. They have suffered persecution for generations, but after the Taliban's fall, they enjoyed a brief period of peace.

That changed a year ago when the insurgents suddenly grew stronger here. About 4 a.m. on May 29, marauders came down from the mountains and attacked Chaghatu's small school, just down the road from an Afghan army checkpoint.

A bomb placed in a storage room failed to explode, but ignited a fire that destroyed most of the books and part of the school. Villagers doused the flames with shovels of dirt and buckets of water, Principal Gul Mohammed said.

"There are a lot of motorcycles and cars passing us, and they are mostly Taliban or their informers," he said, with a worried eye to the dirt track that passes in front of his office window.

Twelve days before the attempted bombing, two men on a motorcycle passed by close to the gate about 5 p.m. One got off to warn the watchman that "girls should not go to school."

Some were moved the next day to a mosque. Several older girls remained in their regular classroom, where on a recent morning they still were studying. Sitting on floor mats, they were learning English.

"They are afraid of suicide attackers," the principal said. "They are afraid that someone might come into their class and explode or throw a grenade."

About 20 first-grade boys filled the scorched remains of the storage room, studying arithmetic under a burned-out ceiling, sitting on the floor in front of a blackboard propped against a charred wall. Other boys had their lessons in the hallway or outside on the hard dirt in the shade of a rear wall.

"Even though the school was burned, our students and teachers are more enthusiastic and they are still coming," said Mohammed Hassan, 25, the girls' cheery English teacher. "We won't be afraid of a single incident. A small warning cannot prevent us from teaching."

Mushtaq runs a department staffed by men, many of whom don't like working under a woman.

On a recent morning, one of her male staff members leaned over her large wooden desk and tried to browbeat her into returning a clerk she had shifted temporarily to another department. An elderly man in a turban demanded tents for his students. Several others reported new threats from the Taliban to kill teachers or burn schools and wanted to know what Mushtaq was going to do to protect them.

"It's the people's duty to protect their schools," she answered repeatedly, urging them to volunteer to guard the schools against Taliban attacks. "People have tried to persuade me to quit. I tell them, 'I'm a lady, but I'm strong and I'm brave.' "

Mushtaq had spent the morning fielding school security alerts on her cellphone, or from officials who traveled from remote villages.

Syed Dilawar, a 60-year-old clerk, joined the scrum of men pressing in around her desk. He had come more than 40 miles from a village in the desert of Qarah Bagh, to plead for protection from insurgents who were threatening to destroy his school.

He had traveled in a car with a woman and two other elderly men. Four Taliban guerrillas stopped them, and when they searched the car, they spotted the belt of Dilawar's satchel poking out from under the seat where he had tried to hide it. They found reports addressed to Mushtaq inside.

Dilawar acknowledged that the bag was his, and as the Taliban led him toward a nearby mountain, the female passenger, a stranger to him, fell at their feet, begging them not to kill him. The two male passengers added their appeals for mercy.

"I told them that I am the servant of the children of this country, and I am the servant of Afghan Muslims and I am the servant of Islam. I am the clerk that brings the salaries to the poor teachers of Ghazni," Dilawar said.

"Then they replied, 'You are not serving Islam, you are serving America, you are serving the infidels. You are misleading our children and you want them to become infidels too.' "

But the woman continued to cry, and on a forsaken stretch that some of the world's most powerful armies could not make safe, her tears were enough to spare Dilawar's life. "She was the one who saved me," he said.

ONE of the children who saw Aref die was Saifullah, a 13-year-old third-grader with a gold pillbox Kandahari cap covered with tiny round mirrors that glint in the midday sun. Aref was his Pashto-language teacher.

Standing in the dirt yard where the educator was killed, the boy stretched his right arm behind his back, nervously clutching the crook of his left, and paid his slain teacher a simple tribute. "I liked him because he did not beat us," he said, adding almost as an afterthought: "And he was teaching very well."

Saifullah wants to be a doctor. His friend, Samidullah, 12, hopes to become an engineer. But the futures of millions of children, and of Afghanistan itself, in some measure depend on whether their schools continue to function.

Without education, the two boys here are more likely to be sucked back down into Helmand's swamp of war and drug trafficking.

Aref's own son, 10-year-old Mohammed Asif, goes to a nearby school that was recently renovated by an Afghan subcontractor working for the U.S. military. But within weeks, the paint was peeling again, the windowpanes were broken, and the concrete was cracking. The rebuilt road outside was also crumbling.

Afghans accuse the Americans of failing to keep their promise to fix the schools. "And then people think of them as real infidels," said the principal, Mohammed Rahim. The U.S. military said it was assigning engineers to repair teams to make sure it didn't happen again.

But engineering can't protect a school from a determined arsonist or bomber. A few months after killing Aref, the Taliban guerrillas returned and set his school on fire. The flames destroyed the roof, melted window screens and blackened the mud-and-wattle walls.

In a hallway, an attacker used a piece of charcoal to write a lesson in bold Pashto. "This is the country of betrayers," it said. "What good will it do you? We will discuss this in the next life and on doomsday."

Nearby, someone scrawled an apparent reply in smaller script: "Do you have hope for the country?" And, as if to remove any doubt about his defiance, the writer added: "My country."

[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.]