In this bulletin:

• 6 killed in Afghan bombing
• NATO vows all-out support for Afghanistan
• Afghan elders' bid for peace falters
• Taliban repel British assault in south Afghanistan
• Afghan border: Pakistan's struggle with the Taliban - Dec. 5, 2006 -
• Dion to push for Afghan Marshall Plan
• General says Canadians ill-informed over Afghan debate, defends mission
• Canada defers to Dutch, bars reporters from Afghan base
• How NATO Chose to Fail in Afghanistan
• Flights resume at Afghan airport
• Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan
• Afghan Gold Treasure, Hidden in War, Goes Public in Paris Show

6 killed in Afghan bombing - The Associated Press Tuesday, December 5, 2006

A suicide bomber blew himself up next to a group of security contractors in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing two Americans and five Afghans in the sixth suicide attack in the Kandahar region in nine days.

The bomber walked up and detonated himself as the men left the offices of the U.S. Protection and Investigations security company, said Rohullah Khan, a company official. The USPI offices are near a Canadian military base in Kandahar.

Provincial police chief Asmatullah Alizai said two foreigners, four Afghan policemen and a translator were killed. USPI employee Mohammad Aszal said the two foreign victims were American. Three people were wounded, Khan said.

Qari Yousaf Ahmadi, who claims to be a spokesman for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, contacted The Associated Press and said the militant group was responsible for the attack. Ahmadi's exact ties to the militants are not known.

Near-daily attacks plague Afghanistan's lawless southern provinces — the former stronghold of the hardline Taliban regime, where the central government wields little power. The Kandahar region has seen six suicide bombings since Nov. 27, when two Canadian soldiers were killed in an attack.

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, has left close to 4,000 people dead. Despite the recent spike in suicide bombings, NATO said Wednesday that the overall number of coordinated insurgency attacks across the country has decreased.

There were 449 major attacks in November, down nearly 50 percent from 869 in September, said Brig. Richard Nugee, the chief spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. As the number of attacks on NATO and Afghan troops decreased, militants have resorted to suicide bomb attacks, Nugee told a news conference in Kabul.

"By using suicide bombs, they are being forced into a desperate tactic which in the long run will work against them because the people of Afghanistan will go against them," he said.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan's intelligence agency announced the arrest last week in the eastern city of Jalalabad of a man who was wearing an explosives-packed vest and belt and who was suspected of being on a suicide bombing mission.

The man allegedly confessed that he had crossed the border from Pakistan and that his family would have been paid about US$20,000 for his attack. He said he was hired by a cleric from a religious school in Pakistan, the agency said.

Afghan and some Western officials have long accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent insurgents from being trained on its soil and then crossing the border to attack in Afghanistan. Pakistan denies the charge and says it does all that it can.

NATO vows all-out support for Afghanistan

KABUL: Advisor to President Hamid Karzai for security affairs has said member countries of the NATO vowed its support to an independent and democratic Afghanistan.

Addressing a press conference here the other day, advisor Dr Zalmay Rasul said members of the NATO had pledged all-out support for an independent and democratic Afghanistan. He was addressing the conference after attending NATO meeting on November 28 in Riga, capital of Latvia.

He said NATO had decided to help Afghanistan in security and other fields. Rasul said NATO would arrange training for Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police.

Currently, only coalition forces are imparting training to Afghan National Army (ANA). The advisor said security had been improved in Kandahar, Zabul, Urzugan and Helmand provinces as compared with the past six months. Rasuli said: "After conducting successful operation in these regions, and sending of reserved police in the area, situation has been improved."

Afghan elders' bid for peace falters

GRAEME SMITH - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Tribal elders from Panjwai District say they spent weeks trying to secretly arrange a peace deal between the Taliban and the government, but their desperate efforts to put a lasting end to the violence in their villages appear to have faltered in the past few days.

It's not clear whether all hope of a ceasefire in Panjwai has been scuttled, and many details of the talks remain shrouded in secrecy, but interviews with senior politicians, Panjwai elders and a Taliban source found most players are pessimistic about their chances of avoiding another major battle in the ravaged district southwest of Kandahar city where more than half of all Canadian combat casualties have occurred.

Canadians say they were not involved, but a delegation of elders met on Saturday with Kandahar's governor and declared that Canadian, U.S. and Afghan soldiers would not retreat from a hill near Sperwan, a village roughly 30 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city.

"The issue was the checkpoint on the hill," said Ahmed Wali Karzai, chairman of Kandahar's provincial council, who attended the meeting. "The government doesn't want to pull back."

Three months ago, Canadian troops led their allies into the biggest battle Afghanistan has witnessed since 2001, smashing Taliban strongholds and carving out a small zone of government control in Panjwai. Canadians remain on the front lines in Panjwai, holding positions against daily skirmishing by the insurgents. The standoff can be resolved two ways, elders say: negotiations, or fighting.

Despite the fact that Canadian soldiers would provide the majority of the firepower for any further ground offensives, an official in Kandahar said no Canadians were participating in the talks.

The idea of peace talks was first raised a few weeks ago at Panjwai's local council, said member Haji Nematullah, 46. There was broad support for reaching out to both sides of the conflict, he said, despite misgivings about the warring forces.

Many ordinary people blame the Taliban for bringing their fight into Panjwai, Mr. Nematullah said, but most villagers also mistrust the foreigners. Mr. Nematullah himself said he has reason to be resentful, after he was wrongly suspected of hiding a missile and detained by Canadian troops along with fellow councilman Haji Noor Mohammed, 50. (A Canadian military spokesman said he is not allowed to talk about specific detainees.)

After his release, Mr. Mohammed was among a dozen Panjwai council members selected to negotiate on behalf of the elders. The bargaining team visited the village of Zangabad, just southwest of the military outpost in Sperwan, for a clandestine meeting with local Taliban commanders. They were encouraged by the talks, and went to Pakistan for further meetings. A Taliban source said their most important negotiating partner among the insurgents was Mullah Mohammed Mansoor, former minister of air transportation in the Taliban regime, and now a regional Taliban commander for Kandahar.

Mr. Karzai said the elders weren't bargaining with the Taliban, but rather serving them notice that they wouldn't be welcome in Panjwai.

"They were not negotiating with Mansoor," Mr. Karzai said. "They were telling him their terms."

Other elders said negotiations initially seemed feasible, even though the first demands suggested by their Taliban contacts seemed exceptionally tough: the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan; a declaration that Taliban aren't terrorists; and a role for Taliban leaders in government.

A Taliban source said the insurgents' opening position may have been unrealistic, but it was negotiable. The Taliban also felt cynicism about the process, the source said, because they didn't believe their demands would be accurately transmitted from the provincial government to foreign troops. "People in the government don't want us to join the government," the Taliban source said. "They want to fight."

Mr. Karzai said the proposal the elders took to the government included a key demand: Removal of government and foreign troops from Sperwan. The provincial council has rejected this idea, he said, but it might still be possible to show goodwill by moving the Sperwan base to a nearby location.

But others say the talks are dead. "Some elders from Panjwai sat together and thought they could solve the problem," said Haji Aga Lalai, head of the Panjwai council and a member of the provincial council. "But NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] and the government don't want this kind of negotiation."

Taliban repel British assault in south Afghanistan

By Peter Graff – Reuters Tuesday, December 5, 2006

GARMSER, Afghanistan (Reuters) - British Marines attacked a Taliban-held valley in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday but withdrew after a ferocious counterattack that withstood air strikes and artillery fire, witnesses said.

One Royal Marine was killed and a second wounded during the battle, the UK Helmand Task Force (UKTF) said.

Scores of soldiers ran across a bridge over the Helmand River under a full moon shortly before daybreak and began sweeping south through wheatfields in the south of the province, the opium center of the world's major producer.

A Reuters cameraman said the Marines initially faced only sporadic resistance but when they advanced, Taliban fighters launched a ferocious, organized riposte with heavy weapons and tried to outflank the British troops.

The fierce resistance illustrated the challenges facing the NATO troops in Afghanistan where they are trying to subdue well-armed Taliban and other militants bolstered by profits from a record opium crop, according to Afghan and foreign officials.

Major Andy Plewes, who led the Royal Marines of Zulu Company 45 Commando, on the assault, said the soldiers had expected resistance: "What we didn't know was how strong it was."

"We don't currently have enough forces in the area to hold ground completely and that has to be done by Afghan security forces," he told a Reuters reporter with the Marines.

The 32,000-strong force NATO-led International Security Assistance Force took over command of the war against the Taliban from U.S.-led forces in October and has launched a string of offensives.

British casualties have been mounting since ISAF took over command of operations in southern Afghanistan at the end of July. Britain has lost 41 soldiers since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001, the bulk of them this year.

The British forces, who make up the bulk of NATO forces in Helmand, opened fire from light armored vehicles and engaged small groups of guerrillas with mortars and machine guns.

Afghan police and soldiers have so far held just the bridgehead and the short road at the north end of the valley, criss-crossed by networks of ancient canals that make Helmand fertile enough to produce a third of the world's opium crop.

The Taliban withstood barrages of air strikes from Apache helicopters, 500 pound bombs dropped by B1 bombers and withering cannon fire from A-10 attack jets before the British finally withdrew after a 10-hour battle.

The Taliban fighters, who say they have the expertise to defeat the strongest army, had dug sophisticated networks of trenches often leading from compound to compound.

This year has seen the worst fighting since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's strict Islamist government in 2001. About 4,000 people have died, a quarter of them civilians.

The alliance troops were deployed to aid reconstruction and to help Afghanistan's government by build stability. But they have been increasingly drawn into battles with the Taliban and other militants in the opium poppy-growing south.

Tuesday's assault was the latest in a series of battles by British forces around the bridgehead.

Major Plewes said he considered the assault a success as they had cleared out areas near the "D.C.," a tiny strip of road and ruined buildings on the eastern side of the Helmand River.

But without more Afghan troops to hold the ground there was little hope of doing much more. "In the mean time we have to try to provide as much as security to the D.C. as possible," said Plewes.

Afghan border: Pakistan's struggle with the Taliban - Dec. 5, 2006 - CBC

Much of the blame for the rising insurgency in Afghanistan has been blamed on Pakistan's inability to control its border with Afghanistan, allowing Taliban militants to travel freely between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But the ex-chief of Pakistan's Intelligence Agency, Hamid Gul, says it's unreasonable to think that Pakistan can seal the border.

"This border is impossible to seal," he said. "The Russians could not seal it. The British could not seal it in 98 years of their rule over this area. The Russians stayed there for 11 years and they could not seal it. How can you seal a border that is 2,400 kilometres long. And it is very difficult geography, very difficult terrain."

Hamid Gul was trained by the CIA, and ran Pakistan's intelligence agency. Gul maintains a close relationship with Taliban militants. (CBC)

Thousands of Taliban fighters fled to Pakistan in the aftermath of the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan in 2002. Now Western military strategists widely suspect that the tribal areas within Pakistan are where Taliban members have been allowed to reorganize.

While Taliban fighters are known to go as they please through formal crossings between northern Balochistan and southern Afghanistan, Pakistani authorities complain it's difficult to identify the Taliban in a region where there are 1.2 million Afghans, many of them with Pakistani identity cards and passports.

But the constant flow of body bags returning from Afghanistan to be buried in Pakistani villages leaves little doubt the Taliban fighters are operating from within Pakistan's borders. And President Pervez Musharraf is caught between trying to appease Washington, as a partner of the U.S.-led war on terror, and contain rising tensions in Pakistan's tribal regions.

The Pakistani Army bombed a madrassa, a religious school, a few weeks ago after receiving American intelligence reports describing the site as a training ground for Taliban insurgents. But a list of victims compiled by a local political party described the people in the madrassa as students. Most of them were teenagers, a dozen of them were under the age of 12, and one of the victims was seven.

Nobody here is surprised that the United States was behind the bombing. Hamid Gul is convinced the attack was carried out by the United States. "You know this particular event, I think it is a watershed, because this was done by the Americans, there were no terrorists there," he said.

Gul is convinced the Americans bombed the madrassa in order to stop the signing of an agreement that Musharraf brokered with local militants in the Bajaur district.

Pakistan's intelligence agency, known as the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has a long history of courting rebel militias in the border regions. Gul believes the relationship, or the dialogue the ISI maintains with Islamic militants, has been an effective way for Pakistan to maintain some kind of control over the otherwise lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. At least until Musharraf joined the U.S.-led war on terror, where under the Bush doctrine, negotiating with terrorists is no longer an option. And as a result, Gul says, American policies have pitted Pakistan's army against its own people. No other country has suffered as many casualties as Pakistan fighting America's war on terror.

"Pakistan army suffered about a thousand casualties, and they killed their own people," said Gul. "But then the Pakistan army came against a stone wall. I don't want to use the word defeated but in reality this was the end of the road. What choice did they have? What more can Pakistan do?"

Aslam Beg, the army chief between 1988 and 1991, was trained by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1960s as part of a stay-behind organization that would melt into the population if the Russians ever overran Pakistan. Beg and his fellow trainees went on to train jihadists to fight in Afghanistan. And those fighters, Beg says, trained their own, a process that ultimately transformed the entire region into a jihadi breeding ground.

Beg says the CIA estimated that about 60,000 jihadists came into Afghanistan to fight the Russians and up to 35,000 from Pakistan. As a result, there were thousands of "die hard, well-trained, hardened freedom fighters" who left Afghanistan after the Russians withdrew, but returned after the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Aslam Beg was Pakistan's military chief of staff between 1988 and 1991. Musharraf was under his command at the time. (CBC)

"They took roughly about two years to regroup to reorganize, to mend their ways with the old mujahedeen leaders," he said. "And gradually they came up to resist the foreign occupation."

Beg believes the jihadists are fighting a worthy cause, to protect the sovereignty of Muslim states occupied by foreign troops. He says the West is fighting a war they just don't understand.

"This resistance force of the Muslim world, which has grown slowly, emerging from 70 countries of the world, it is this force which has put a limit to the power of the most powerful," he said. He points to the 1980s with Russia's involvement in Afghanistan, the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the current situation in Afghanistan.

"It is part of the faith and belief of Muslims to resist, to deter, to defy aggression, aggression against the Muslim majority."

Gul agrees that the so-called holy wars being played out in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be won with military might and that that policy makers from the West should start considering political solutions.

"There is nothing more that the NATO or the ISAF or the Americans can do in Afghanistan. NATO will be defeated," he said "The time has come to cut a deal."

Gul says Musharaff is "absolutely right when he says look we have been defeated, we can't do anything more." Just like the Russians who used 120,000 troops during a decade in Afghanistan, Pakistan has now deployed 80,000 troops while the Western countries has contributed 31,000 (including Canada's 2,500). "So how do you assume that with 31,000 you can win?" he said.

NATO has been unsuccessful in its attempts to increase its firepower. Most countries have been unwilling to send more troops to fight the insurgents in Afghanistan. It's also unlikely Western forces will take Musharraf's lead and start brokering deals with militants, the madrassa bombing last month proved that much. It all leaves a scenario that provides little comfort for those who are stuck in the middle of America's war on terror.

Dion to push for Afghan Marshall Plan

CAMPBELL CLARK AND BRIAN LAGHI - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — New Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said Tuesday he'll have little patience for the rising death toll of Canadian troops in Afghanistan unless there is progress in making that country more secure.

Mr. Dion said Canada must push its allies to build a Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of the strife-torn country, because the current strategy of focusing on combat against the Taliban is not achieving results.

“I cannot give a deadline, but I will not have a lot of patience if I see that we are risking the lives of our soldiers and civilians without any result for the security of the people of Afghanistan,” Mr. Dion said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

“It's an assessment I will do day after day, but I want a result.” Mr. Dion said the Canadian presence in Afghanistan means Canada's military cannot contribute in other parts of the world, so it must be effective.

A professional review needs to be done, he said, and Canada must push all nations involved in Afghanistan to assemble a major rebuilding and economic development plan.

“Can we have a kind of Marshall Plan as we have done in Europe, in Japan, in Singapore, in Taiwan, in so many countries before that?” he asked. “We need to stop being neo-conservative. You need to believe in the role of the government to help an economy to be built. For that we need a Liberal government.”

A key problem in the nation, he said, is the proliferation of the opium poppy crop which now makes up half of the Afghan economy, and provides money for the Taliban's operations. Canadian troops can't just focus on fighting Taliban militants who slip over a porous border with Pakistan, he said.

“There's no use for us to try to kill the Taliban in every corner of every mountain and to risk the lives of our soldiers in this way,” he said.

The Liberal government committed troops to Kandahar because they were told Canada was needed for a transition from a U.S. mission to a North Atlantic Treaty Organization operation, he said, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper extended the Canadian presence to 2009 without explaining what the mission would be.

Mr. Dion had harsh words for that move, saying Mr. Harper should have obtained the prior agreement of other nations to contribute more.

“Why he didn't make the first step [and say], ‘If I stay two years more, I want to know what you guys will do'?” Mr. Dion asked. “He did it for partisan reasons. To embarrass us, to divide us in the House, when it was such a dangerous and important reason for the country.”

Still, Mr. Dion said he would not abruptly pull the Canadian troops because that would further unsettle Afghanistan. “How would they feel if, in doing that, without any preparation, you are increasing the danger of the population,” he said. “It's not easy to get out.”

In his first days, Mr. Dion has stressed a political divide between his party and the Conservatives. But, speaking in a hoarse and cracking voice in the Opposition Leader's Parliament Hill office after the most eventful week of his political career, he took a go-slow attitude to the next election, making no threats to defeat Mr. Harper's minority government soon.

Mr. Dion ran his campaign on an environmental platform and argues that, unless the Tories are replaced early next year, Canada will not be able to meet the 2008 targets under the Kyoto Protocol. But he said he will not rush an election so they can be met, and if Canada misses the first targets, he would redouble efforts so later targets can be met, he said.

The Liberals remain unorganized and underfunded for an election campaign, particularly in Quebec, and many Liberals have questioned whether Mr. Dion can make gains there.

Mr. Harper has promised to lay out a solution to the so-called “fiscal imbalance” with the provinces — a touchstone issue in Quebec — in the next budget. But Mr. Dion has refused to use the term, despite its symbolism in the province.

Yesterday Mr. Dion said he does not know whether he will be against Mr. Harper's fiscal proposal, because he might favour it if it centres on equalization payments, for example.

But he said he is not willing to bandy around the term if it is unclear — and he accused Mr. Harper of seeking short-term political gain by adopting vague symbols favoured by Quebec nationalists.

“We need to get out of symbolic politics. When you accept to go to symbolic politics in order to look good in the coverage of the day after, it's for what purpose? We need to be sincere. I would not be sincere if I said to you I know what that means.

“I know what is the game of the separatists around this word, though: It is to give the sense to Quebeckers that Canada is unfair. And they are using that this way.”

General says Canadians ill-informed over Afghan debate, defends mission

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) - The debate over Canada's role in Afghanistan has been ill-informed and bereft of facts, says the former commander of Canadian troops there.

Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, who returned from the war-torn country last month, says he's having a hard time getting used to the chill in the air - both in terms of the weather and the public discourse involving the mission.

"It would be nice to have a debate with all of the facts on the table," Fraser said Tuesday in a speech to the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies. "I'll tell you right now, the story Canadians are receiving is like an iceberg. They're only seeing one-third of it."

In part, the soft-spoken general blamed the media for focusing on the casualty count, rather than the more nuanced narratives of nation-building. "What was reported this past summer was my operations in Sangin and Helmand; what I did to fight the Taliban," he said.

"No one reported the fact that I spent $20 million building roads, schools, wells and training and mentoring an Afghan corp commander." In fact, there has been media coverage of reconstruction efforts, but access and information is often difficult to get.

Fraser's criticism follows similar comments by Prime Minister Stephen Harper who has said several times that the good work Canadians soldiers are doing often goes unreported.

What the Conservative government does not say is that civilian members of government agencies, such as the Canadian International Development Agency and the Foreign Affairs Department, are routinely barred from speaking with journalists on the ground about redevelopment projects.

Last spring, Fraser's own principal political advisor at Kandahar Airfield - a Foreign Affairs staffer - was not allowed to be quoted on the record by the embedded media.

Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh blamed the information vacuum on the Conservatives and their policy of muzzling ministers and officials.

"I have the utmost respect for Gen. Fraser, the work he's done, and I understand his frustration," said Dosanjh. "But it's really up to the government to provide information. And they have not been providing that information."

Opposition MPs and senators - especially parliamentary defence committees - have "fought tooth and nail" to be briefed on the latest goings on in Afghanistan, he said.

Speaking to NATO parliamentarians last month about anemic support for the mission, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor conceded the government hadn't gone a good job engaging the public on the question of why the country was in Afghanistan.

Fraser, who was in charge of all coalition and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, ended his overseas tour Nov. 1 and turned over responsibility to a Dutch general.

During his time on the ground, Canadians were involved in the heaviest fighting they've seen since the Korean War. A series of conventional and guerrilla-type battles as well as accidents claimed the lives of 36 soldiers and wounded over 200 others.

Public opinion polls reflected a deep skepticism for the mission when troops were first deployed to the unstable southern region last winter. The results in subsequent surveys have ebbed and flowed, depending upon the state of fighting and the number of casualties.

Without naming NDP Leader Jack Layton, who's called for Canadian troops to be brought home, Fraser took aim at critics and said it is important the Conservative government stay the course.

"Those people over there in Afghanistan asked for us to be there. They want us to be there. They continue to want to be there." However, Dosanjh said it's not the job of the military to promote the mission - that's up to the government.

Fraser, who is on a speaking tour, said Canada's history of diversity and racial tolerance means it has a lot offer the fractious tribal country.

"When I met the governor, Assadullah Khalid, in Kandahar he led with a pistol eight months ago," he said. "Today he picked the phone and picks up a pen. He leads by example. Ladies and gentlemen, that is huge progress."

Canada defers to Dutch, bars reporters from Afghan base
CanWest News Service - Tuesday, December 05, 2006

OTTAWA — Dutch journalists were barred from reporting from the Canadian military base in Kandahar earlier this year after the Canadian Forces deferred to the government in the Netherlands, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The media ban came after Canada consulted with the Dutch government about its "comfort level” around having journalists from the Netherlands on the base, say the documents obtained under Access to Information legislation.

At the time, the Netherlands, a key Canadian ally in war-torn southern Afghanistan, was on the verge of sending 1,400 troops to join their Canadian and British allies.

The Dutch deployment came after a long, painful national debate that nearly blocked military involvement, which would have left NATO significantly shorthanded in its deadly fight against the Taliban insurgency.

On March 16, the Canadian Forces public affairs team in Kandahar received an inquiry from a Dutch journalist, who worked for a major daily newspaper and news magazine, asking that he and a photographer be embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan for three to five days.

The request set off a flurry of e-mails, first to Defence Department headquarters in Ottawa, and then to a NATO spokesman back in Kandahar.

On March 23, Canadian Maj. Scott Lundy, who had been seconded to NATO as a public affairs officer, wrote Lt.-Col. Rita LePage, the branch's lead spokeswoman, and a former aide to defence chief Gen. Rick Hillier,  that the Dutch Ministry of Defence did not support the journalist's request and "that he was not welcome to visit at this point in mission."

The Dutch parliament voted in early February to deploy to Kandahar, overcoming massive public opposition. In late 2005, opinion polls in the Netherlands showed 70 per cent opposition to sending troops to Kandahar.

How NATO Chose to Fail in Afghanistan

Time 12/04/2006 By James Graff in Paris - Analysis: The Riga summit was meant to turn around an Alliance mission in trouble. But its a mission for which there's little political will

The yardstick by which the success of NATO's summit in the Latvian capital of Riga would be measured was always going to be Afghanistan. By engaging 32,000 troops there - its first full-scale military action outside of Europe - against a now resurgent Taliban, the Western alliance had posed itself a cruel test of solidarity in one of the world's most historically ungovernable patches. Last week it effectively failed the test.

President George W. Bush and his key allies — Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian leader Stephen Harper and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer — wanted a greater sharing of the burden, and to give ground commanders full authority to deploy troops as they see fit, rather than be required to refer back to defense ministries in Europe's capitals. But the caveats that keep Italian, French, German and Spanish troops out of the heavy combat zones in the south of the country were not significantly relaxed. The Poles offered up an additional 1,000 troops toward the 2,500 reserve force that NATO military staff consider crucial to prosecute the war, and the French were among the allies promising to deploy troops to trouble spots in the event of "an emergency." But the sum effect was cold comfort for the Canadian, British, American and Dutch governments whose troops are bearing the brunt of the conflict. Canadian Foreign Minister Peter McKay, whose country has lost 40 soldiers this year, expressed concerns that an already jittery Canadian public could begin to balk at its commitment if its allies aren't seen as pulling their weight.

NATO in Afghanistan has become an institutional fig leaf for an ad-hoc and unstable coalition of the willing. The crux of the Atlantic alliance is its mutual defense clause, the all-for-one principle, in which an attack on any member is considered an attack on them all. But that clause's limitations were first displayed after Sept. 11, 2001, when it was invoked in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, only to be spurned by a Bush administration set on keeping tight reins on its response.

U.S. skepticism over the efficacy of the alliance, however, didn't start with President Bush. Clinton administration officials had bitterly complained of the political meddling and command confusion that hampered NATO's 1999 air war to push Serb troops out of Kosovo.

Now the rebuff is coming from the other side, for equally understandable reasons. Mutual defense of NATO territory is one thing; the call to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in a bedeviled country thousands of miles away from Europe is a more troublesome proposition. It isn't simply a question of resources: Canada is on the front line despite an anemic defense budget. For all the lip-service paid to Afghanistan as a war that cannot be lost, there seems to be a lack of political will to do what is necessary to win it.

The French are right that military action in the south of Afghanistan isn't making many friends for the West, and they at least have been consistent in counseling against NATO taking on a war-fighting role. But the Taliban isn't going to yield peacefully to the economic aid and civic encouragement aimed at bolstering the embattled government of Hamid Karzai. Security comes first. At Riga the alliance underwrote a still vague plan for a "Contact Group' that would involve neighboring countries and international organizations in the search for a solution for Afghanistan. But Washington's velvet-gloved relationship with Pakistan — and its non-existent relationship with Iran — augurs poorly for that effort. Robust and dangerous military action is a still unavoidable task, and NATO after Riga is in no better shape to manage it fairly than before.

Flights resume at Afghan airport

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Airliners were taking off from Kabul's airport in an unusual spiral pattern Tuesday after a three-day shutdown of commercial flights.

The spiraling takeoffs allow quick altitude gains and are sometimes used to avoid missile fire in war zones. But officials said the new patterns were being used in Kabul airport to allow planes to maintain visual contact with the control tower after a key communications system broke over the weekend.

Tight, spiraling "corkscrew" takeoffs and landings are used in Baghdad, Iraq to avoid possible incoming fire; those in Kabul Tuesday were much wider and more open.

Capt. Nathan Broshear, a U.S. military spokesman, said the corkscrew takeoffs were "normal safety precautions" that might be used at any airport where communications are limited.

He called them "unrelated to any wartime or enemy-related activity." Najeebullah Maqsoodi, the president of the airport, also said commercial aircraft were making corkscrew takeoffs and landings as a safety precaution because of limited communications.

He said commercial flights were using alternate radio methods to talk to pilots and the main system wouldn't be fixed until U.S. experts arrived from outside the country.

Military flights use a separate communications system and were unaffected by the outage, officials said.

Kabul International Airport closed to commercial traffic over the weekend because of the broken communications system and snowy weather, Maqsoodi said. The closure ordered by the U.S. military, which controls Afghanistan's airspace, irritated some Afghan officials, who said they weren't consulted beforehand.

Michael Boyd, an aviation consultant based in Evergreen, Colo., said the corkscrew takeoffs could be used to quickly gain altitude in the mountainous terrain around Kabul, and allow the control tower to maintain visual contact with planes during the communications problems.

He said another reason for using the procedure could be that planes have to fly over "real estate that's not secure."

An Associated Press reporter on Tuesday saw a landing military cargo plane launch flares, a defensive measure against potential missiles. Maj. Luke Knittig, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said the use of flares wasn't unusual.

"This is a conflict zone and the flights coming in here do exercise caution commensurate with it being a conflict zone," he said. Boyd said flares are used "when there is a reasonable expectation of a threat that someone on the ground is aiming something at you," he said.

Capitalism Comes to Afghanistan - Time Magazine 12/04/2006 By Aryn Baker

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

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."

Afghan Gold Treasure, Hidden in War, Goes Public in Paris Show

By Celestine Bohlen - Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- A year before the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in 1979, archaeologists in the north of the country dug up a trove of delicate artifacts from the first century A.D. that soon became known as the ``Hoard of Bactrian Gold.''

Shaped as cupids, dolphins, dragons and even an Aphrodite- like figure, these objects reflected the remarkable mingling of cultures north of the Hindu Kush that followed the armies of Alexander the Great, as Hellenic, Indian and Chinese influences swept up and down the Silk Road.

Sometime during the 23 years of turmoil that engulfed Afghanistan after the Soviet takeover, the Bactrian gold -- which was fleetingly shown to dignitaries and experts in the 1980s -- dropped from sight, raising alarm among archaeologists who feared it had been stolen by warlords and melted down as booty.

Then, in 2003, President Hamid Karzai announced, in an almost offhanded way, that the gold had been found, stowed inside a central-bank vault in Kabul and protected by an intricate system of locks. All 21,618 objects were accounted for, right down to the last penny-sized bangle.

Now, for the first time, part of the Bactrian Hoard -- 100 items including bracelets, buckles, swords, a crown and a gold belt with an uncanny contemporary style -- is on public display. An exhibition called ``Afghanistan: Refound Treasures,'' which opens today at the Musee Guimet in Paris, marks a world premiere for a treasure that had to vanish to be saved.

``It survived for more than 20 years only because it was hidden,'' said Afghanistan's deputy culture minister, Omar Sultan, at a special showing for dignitaries yesterday. ``There was no doubt that the situation in Afghanistan was not safe.''

It still isn't. Paris, not Kabul, was chosen as the first venue for the exhibition, partly for security reasons and partly because of France's long-standing involvement with archaeology in Afghanistan. French curators cleaned and cataloged the 228 objects on show.

Besides the objects from the site at Tillya Tepe, where six Bactrian tombs were found, the exhibition includes fragments of four gold bowls from Fullol dating to the Bronze Age; architectural remnants from the Greek city of Ai Khanoum, founded in 300 B.C.; and intricate ivory carvings from Begram, whose luscious scenes of palace life and sinuous statuettes of river goddesses highlight the Indian influence on Kushan civilization.

The idea, says Guimet Director Jean-Francois Jarrige, was to ``cast a light on four archaeological discoveries that illustrated the major role of Afghanistan as a meeting point of civilizations and cultures.''

Still, the star of the show is the Bactrian gold, displayed in glass cases under a tent-like hanging in a darkened room with shadowy images of Afghan nomads flickering on screens. Some of the items are tiny, like a horned ram no bigger than a thumb. Some are encrusted with turquoise and granite, while others display a range of cultural stimuli: A dagger topped by a bear suggests Siberian influence.

``This gives us a glimpse of a center on the Silk Road at the height of the first century,'' said Frederik T. Hiebert, an archaeologist who led a National Geographic Society inventory of the Bactrian collection.

``We used to think of the Silk Road as a link between China and Rome,'' he said. ``Here we see a separate center of art, by a nomad people capable of extraordinary craftsmanship.''

Hiebert long feared the worst about the collection. The Afghan National Museum in Kabul had been partly destroyed in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, and its storage room was later ransacked by Taliban followers intent on destroying non-Islamic art.

As it turned out, a group of people -- still unidentified -- had the foresight in the late 1980s to transfer most of the masterpieces from the museum to a vault belonging to the Afghan Central Bank.

``These were Afghan heroes,'' Hiebert said. Those in the know kept their secret for fear of inspiring looters. ``There was a code of silence -- a kind of omerta.''

Six boxes of Bactrian gold -- corresponding to the six tombs discovered by Soviet archaeologist Viktor Sarianidi -- were found intact. The vault also held boxes filled with the famous ivories of Begram, which many had assumed had been sold on the international black market.

The show's next stop, probably in Europe, is up in the air, organizers said. Hiebert said museums in the U.S. have expressed interest in hosting the show, perhaps in early 2008. The exhibition will stay on the road long enough to attract attention to Afghanistan's cultural heritage and to raise money for a new, more secure museum in Kabul, Hiebert said.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]