In this bulletin:

• NATO forces kill 50 militants in Afghan operation
• Taliban reportedly kill 2 for spying
• Taliban ex-minister leading southern resistance: Afghan general
• Special Forces stop Afghan suicide cell
• 10 Pakistanis arrested in Afghanistan after straying across border
• Afghan charge fabricated, says FO - By Qudssia Akhlaque – The News Int.
• It’s Afghan Army, NATO’s job to restore peace: Kasuri
• Australian minister says NATO must send troops to southern Afghanistan
• RFE/RL Newsline
• Maulana’s dubious recipe for peace
• Advice for Mr Karzai
• The Secret War in Afghanistan
• Attempt to assasinate Afghan governor foiled
• Iran Hangs Nine Criminals
• Registration of Afghans in Pakistan tops 1-million mark
• Pakistan won’t offer citizenship to refugees
• Afghan MPs struggle to find voice
• Kabir Khan's `Kabul Express' Is Tale of Sophistication, Drama
• The West Quiets Afghan Women

NATO forces kill 50 militants in Afghan operation

Kandahar (AFP) - NATO-led and Afghan forces have killed around 50 Taliban insurgents in a fresh anti-militant sweep in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said.

Operation "Baaz Tsuka" (Falcon's Summit) was launched last Friday by hundreds of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Afghan troops in the Panjwayi and Zhare districts of Kandahar province.

"We have cleared one large and two small villages of Taliban. We have killed about 50 Taliban," NATO spokesman Brigadier Richard Nugee told a press conference in Kabul on Wednesday.

The spokesman said there had been no Afghan army or NATO casualties during the operation. The 31,000-strong ISAF is fighting a fierce Taliban insurgency alongside Afghanistan's fledgling army and 8,000 troops from the US-led coalition that ousted the Islamist regime in late 2001.

Nugee said ISAF forces, which took over from the coalition in Afghanistan's restive south and east earlier this year, would stay in Afghanistan as long as they were needed.

"We are here to stay for as long as the government of Afghanistan wants us to help them and that might, we anticipate, be beyond 2010," he said. His comments come amid mounting concerns in western nations over increased NATO casualties in Afghanistan this year.

A stepped-up Taliban insurgency has claimed more than 4,000 lives during 2006, four times the previous year's toll. Around 1,000 of those were civilians while militant deaths make up the bulk of the rest.

Nugee said that the Taliban were losing support among the Afghan population and were weakening. "We have a different approach, we are counting more on local leaders. The Taliban see they don't have the support of the population any more. They are not fighting very hard," he added.

In mid-September NATO forces carried out "Operation Medusa" in the same area as the current assault, during which ISAF claimed to have killed more than 1,000 rebels and cleared the orchard-lined valley of Taliban guerrillas.

Taliban reportedly kill 2 for spying

Kandahar (AP) - Taliban militants beheaded a man and fatally stabbed another as a warning to villagers not to give the government or NATO information about Taliban activities, a villager who said he witnessed the incident said Tuesday.

The militants brought a young man to Talukan village's central market in the southern province of Kandahar on Monday, then stabbed him to death and suspended his body from a tree, said villager Lal Jan. They then beheaded another man, he said.

The militants told villagers that the men had been spying on the Taliban, and said the killings were a lesson for others cooperating with the government or NATO forces, he said. Government and NATO officials could not immediately confirm the killings.

Elsewhere, seven Taliban fighters including a regional commander were arrested Monday night in Zabul province, said provincial police Chief Noor Mohammad Paktil.

NATO forces overnight launched an airstrike against a "known insurgent command and logistics post" in an isolated area of Kandahar's Panjwayi district, a NATO statement said Tuesday.

It was not immediately known how many fighters were killed, said Maj. Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The force said it launched a second airstrike Tuesday on a group of insurgents in the region, destroying a vehicle. It described the strike as the third "direct hit on insurgent leadership this week."

"This is another direct message to the insurgents and anyone considering taking up the cause against the government of Afghanistan," said Squadron Leader David Marsh, an ISAF spokesman. "This could happen to you."

The airstrikes were part of Operation Baaz Tsuka, an offensive aimed at removing Taliban fighters from Kandahar's Panjwayi and Zhari districts. Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said Sunday that airstrikes have killed 30 Taliban in the area in the past week.

Five Afghan employees of the Ministry for Rural Rehabilitation and Development were kidnapped Sunday while traveling from Paktika province to Ghazni province, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said the five "are devout Muslims and have worked for many years, helping the most vulnerable and impoverished to improve their lives." It appealed for their release.

Karim Rahimi, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, said Tuesday that a general in the Defense Ministry was arrested Monday for spying on behalf of Pakistan's intelligence agency.

But Defense Ministry spokesman Zahar Azimi said the man is not a general and that there was no paperwork showing he had worked in the ministry since 2002.

Taliban ex-minister leading southern resistance: Afghan general

Kandahar (AFP) - The Taliban's former defence minister is leading a force of about 400 insurgents in a southern district where a major NATO-led offensive is underway, an Afghan general said.

Mullah Ubaidullah Akhund has not been seen since shortly after the ultra-Islamist regime was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001, although he purportedly issued a few brief statements in the intervening five years.

The Afghan army general, who is involved in Operation "Baaz Tsuka" (Falcon's Nest) in and around Panjwayi district in Kandahar province, said Ubaidullah was giving orders to Taliban fighters in the area.

"Mullah Ubaidullah is in charge of the Taliban forces in Panjwayi," the general told AFP on condition of anonymity. He cited intelligence reports and information from troops on the ground, as well as from captured insurgents.

The commander estimated there were about 400 Taliban fighters in the area, which is 30 kilometres (19 miles) south of Kandahar city, the birthplace of the movement that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Some had stayed behind in Panjwayi after a major NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operation codenamed "Medusa" in September, during which the alliance said some 1,000 rebels were killed.

Faced with hundreds of ISAF and Afghan troops who poured back into the area last Friday, the Taliban fighters were now likely to withdraw to avoid casualties, the general said.

"We have intelligence reports that Taliban leaders told their men to pull out without fighting," he said. "The order to pull out came from Mullah Ubaidullah."

Reports after the invasion of Afghanistan said Ubaidullah was among several Taliban cabinet ministers who surrendered to Northern Alliance forces but were later released.

Earlier this year he rejected an olive branch held out by Afghanistan's US-backed President Hamid Karzai. Meanwhile, the general said September's operation meant the rebels were "now too weak to fight another battle".

Ahead of operation Baaz Tsuka, ISAF troops air-dropped leaflets in Panjwayi, warning the rebels either to withdraw or face battles which would force them out.

Since the launch of the assault more than 30 Taliban fighters, including two rebel commanders, have been killed in two separate air strikes by ISAF on insurgent "command posts", the force has said.

But barring some small-scale gunfights, the troops have not faced any resistance in the area since entering the orchard-lined valley, an ISAF spokesman said.

The Afghan general said the militants were expected to pull back via neighbouring Helmand province to hideouts across the border in southwest Pakistan.

Afghanistan has accused Pakistan of both fomenting the Taliban insurgency, which has claimed 4,000 lives this year, and failing to crack down on the cross-border movement of militants.

Pakistan has strongly denied the allegations and said it had launched a series of operations in its frontier regions in the past three years that have left more than 600 Pakistani soldiers dead.

Special Forces stop Afghan suicide cell

Tagab Valley (AP) - While the southern city of Kandahar reels from a series of suicide attacks, Kabul is enjoying a respite because of a little-publicized operation that officials say disrupted Taliban suicide training cells and scattered hundreds of fighters.

After 115 suicide attacks this year nationwide, including a rash of bombings this fall that killed almost 40 people in Kabul, the Afghan capital hasn't suffered a suicide attack in two months.

Military officials had feared a bloody winter campaign in Kabul, saying 300 to 500 Taliban fighters had massed 60 miles north of the city in this isolated valley from which the earlier wave of attacks was launched.

But the operation in the Tagab Valley early last month wiped out three training compounds and drove out the Taliban fighters, U.S. Army Special Forces Lt. Col. Lynn Ashley told The Associated Press this week.

U.S. and NATO commanders are portraying the joint U.S.-Afghan operation as a model for taming the Taliban as it rebounds from its ouster by the U.S.-led invasion five years ago.

The militants had been able to gather so close to the capital partly because of the region's rough terrain, Ashley said. Minor operations had been conducted against them, but never a full-scale push.

Abdul Satar Murad, governor of Kapisa province, said about 20 fighters — some of whom had come from Pakistan — were killed in the weeklong operation and the rest left the region.

After five suicide attacks in Kabul during the first eight months of the year, fighters had stepped up their offensive, with eight suicide bombings in September and October, said Maj. Dominic Whyte, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

Two bombings in particular raised the specter of Baghdad-type violence: one on Sept. 8 near the U.S. Embassy that killed 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers, and another near the Interior Ministry on Sept. 30 that killed 12 Afghans.

The Taliban has launched seven suicide attacks within 11 days this month in the Kandahar region, its former power base, and Ashley said the assumption had been that Kabul was its next target.

But denying them Tagab Valley as a safe haven "will definitely lessen their ability to mass when they come out in the spring like they normally do," he said in an interview at the U.S. base at Bagram.

About 250 U.S. special and conventional forces along with more than 800 Afghan troops and police launched the offensive. Murad, the governor, was closely involved in its planning and execution, heightening its success and cutting down on civilian casualties, Ashley said. The operation came with a hearts-and-minds effort in which medics treated hundreds of Afghans and passed out food supplies.

The U.S. has since built a small military base on a high plateau and is spending $3 million to improve its winding dirt access road. Work, previously delayed by security concerns, is moving fast, while Ashley says other projects such as a new cell phone tower have also moved ahead.

Murad said no police posts in his province have been attacked since the operation. "Tagab was a key base for the Taliban," Murad said, "but now NATO and coalition forces patrol regularly "and I'm sure the Taliban will not come back."

The Afghan-U.S. cooperation in Tagab was held up as an example by Gen. David Richards, the top NATO general in Afghanistan, and by U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry.

Afghan officials "needed to take ownership and they needed to do most of the (work) to liberate the valley," Ashley said. "Our Special Forces teams enabled that to happen through their expertise and through close air support."

Kabul, meanwhile, has calmed somewhat, but jitters remain. "The situation has improved, but still we are afraid because the enemy, whenever it finds an opportunity, will do something," said Faruz Ahmad, a 44-year-old moneychanger.

Ashley hopes not. "As the people realize the government of Afghanistan is there to stay," he said, "they won't accept the Taliban back."

10 Pakistanis arrested in Afghanistan after straying across border

The Associated Press - Wednesday, December 20, 2006 - QUETTA, Pakistan

Afghan border guards arrested 10 Pakistanis who had crossed into Afghanistan by mistake, an official said Wednesday.

The 10 men were arrested late Tuesday in a mountainous southwest of the country where the Afghan-Pakistan border is not clearly demarcated, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Quetta, said Abdul Raziq Bugti, Baluchistan's provincial spokesman.

Five of the Pakistanis were off-duty border guards while the other five were civilians, from Pakistan's Tarkha area. The men crossed into Afghanistan while cutting fire wood in a mountain forest, Bugti said.

Baluchistan, Pakistan's southwestern province, has a long porous border with Afghanistan that straddles rugged mountains and desert regions. Afghan officials say that members of their country's former ruling Taliban militia are hiding in Baluchistan and cross border to launch attack against Afghan and foreign troops. Pakistan denies that.

The Taliban was ousted from power by a U.S. military campaign in late 2001 for harboring al-Qaida.

Afghan charge fabricated, says FO - By Qudssia Akhlaque – The News Int.

ISLAMABAD, Dec 19: The Foreign Office on Tuesday rubbished as ‘fabricated’ a claim by President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman that Afghan security forces had apprehended a Pakistani intelligence officer for espionage.

“This is all fabricated. They could have used coercive measures to make him say things which have no relevance to reality,” was the Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam’s reaction to the latest Afghan allegation.

Discarding the pervasive paranoid of the Afghan government, the spokesperson stated: “There is no Pakistani spy in Afghanistan.”

Ms Aslam said Islamabad had not been informed by Kabul about the arrest of any Pakistani and added: “Our embassy has sought consular access which the Afghan government is required to provide under the International Vienna Convention.”

When asked what could have prompted such a “fabricated’ claim, the spokesperson pointed to the escalating insurgency problem inside Afghanistan which she said was essentially an internal one.

It’s Afghan Army, NATO’s job to restore peace: Kasuri

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is not responsible for the deteriorating law and order situation in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri said on Tuesday.

Talking to Francess Vengal, a special envoy from the European Union, at the Foreign Office, Kasuri said that maintaining law and order in Afghanistan was the responsibility of the Afghan Army and NATO forces. According to a Foreign Office statement, Kasuri discussed with Vengal the overall security situation in the region, restoration of peace in Afghanistan, Pak-Afghan border issues and Pakistan’s strategy to improve the situation in its tribal areas. Kasuri said that it was unfortunate that some elements were blaming Pakistan for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. In fact, Pakistan is playing a vital role in the restoration of peace in Afghanistan, he added.

Kasuri said that President Pervez Musharraf had given a number of suggestions for the restoration of peace in Afghanistan and added that military force alone was not the solution to the problem. He called for the world to play a role in solving political, economic and cultural problems of Afghan people.

Vengal expressed concern at the resurgence of the Taliban and worsening law and order situation in Afghanistan.

Later, Kasuri left for a two-day official visit to Tehran on the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Manocher Mottaki.

Kasuri will discuss with the Iranian officials bilateral issues, Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline and peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Middle East. He is also expected to meet key Iranian leaders and civil society and business representatives.

Before leaving for Tehran, Kasuri said: “Our position on the Iran nuclear issue is very clear. We want a peaceful, diplomatic and negotiated settlement of the issue.”

“We have already suffered because of instability in Afghanistan. We will never encourage instability in Iran,” Kasuri said. “We have all along advocated a peaceful settlement of the issue.”

About the IPI gas pipeline, Kasuri said that determining the price of the gas was the only hurdle now in the way of the project. “Once the price issue is resolved, we are hopeful of entering into an agreement on the project,” he added. Agencies (Daily Times)

Australian minister says NATO must send troops to southern Afghanistan

The Associated Press Tuesday, December 19, 2006 CANBERRA, Australia

A cooperative agreement between British, Canadian and Australian forces in Afghanistan could persuade some NATO countries to provide more support in that country's troubled south, Australia's defense minister said Wednesday.

Several NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan — including Germany, France, Spain and Italy — restrict the use of their forces to relatively peaceful areas of the north.

Defense Minister Brendan Nelson, who is in London for talks with British defense officials, said Australia, Britain and Canada were providing an example of cooperation for NATO partners in Taliban-stronghold provinces in southern Afghanistan.

"The Canadians ... who have been doing some very, very tough work in Kandahar or the British in Helmand need to know that if they're in trouble, they will get support from the north," Nelson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"The primary objective is not to criticize NATO at all but we are very concerned that not all of the NATO countries have fully deployed the forces that they should and we're also very concerned that the caveats on some of the troops that are based in the north ... are such that they are not able currently to be deployed to the south," he added, without naming the countries he referred to.

Afghan, U.S., Canadian, British and Dutch forces have done most of the fighting in Afghanistan over the past year.

Australia has about 500 troops in Afghanistan under British command including 400 involved in infrastructure reconstruction.

"I wouldn't be foolish enough to think that us coordinating our activities in the south would in itself force some of the NATO countries to review what they're doing," Nelson said.

"But I think the fact that we are prepared to work collectively in the south to coordinate our activities, you would like to think that at some point we'll be able to get a message to some of the contributing NATO countries," he added.

RFE/RL Newsline - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty - Tuesday, December 19, 2006

NEO-TALIBAN COMMANDER DISCUSSES STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN

Mullah Abdullah Sarhadi, who claims to be a close associate of former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, said his movement's goal from its "beginning" has been "the establishment of an Islamic system and the supremacy of the Koran," Dubai-based Geo News Television reported on December 17. Speaking with Geo from an unspecified location, Sarhadi said the Taliban are "ready to confront the infidels of the entire world." According to Sarhadi, after a sluggish beginning the Taliban are now fighting "the enemy very steadfastly...waging guerrilla warfare" in every subdistrict, district, and province of Afghanistan. Because of Taliban activities, "the Americans, the Jews, and Christians are now winding up their occupation" of Afghanistan. According to Sarhadi, Mullah Omar has appointed leaderships in each district who are responsible for supervising military operations and acting as his representatives. On a personal note, Sarhadi added that when the Taliban regime was facing defeat in late 2001, he was captured in northern Afghanistan and eventually transferred to the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Sarhadi did not disclose when he was released from U.S. detention. AT

FIVE ENGINEERS KIDNAPPED IN SOUTH-CENTRAL AFGHANISTAN

The Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement issued on December 18 in Kabul that five engineers working for the Rural Development and Rehabilitation Ministry were abducted by unknown kidnappers in Ghani Province on December 17, the Peshawar-based Afghan Islamic Press reported. A search operation is under way to find the missing persons. Mullah Mohammad Anas Sharif, purporting to be the Taliban commander in Ghazni, claimed responsibility for kidnapping the engineers, saying that their fate will be decided by the Taliban leadership, Pajhwak Afghan News reported on December 18. According to Sharif, the five are being investigated regarding their positions in the Afghan government and their past activities. AT

AFGHAN GENERAL DETAINED FOR SPYING FOR PAKISTAN

General Khair Mohammad was detained recently on charges of spying for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), AFP reported on December 18. An unidentified spokesman for the Afghan national intelligence agency told AFP in Kabul on December 18 that Khair Mohammad has been arrested "over an act of treason," adding that the general has "confessed to working for ISI." According to the spokesman, the general worked in the Afghan Defense Ministry and provided ISI agents information about the ministry's structure and names and contact numbers of high-ranking officials. Khair Mohammad reportedly also provided information about Western military headquarters in Kabul. The general allegedly met with ISI agents three times in the Pakistani city of Peshawar and also maintained "regular" contact with a diplomat at the Pakistani Embassy in Kabul. Khair Mohammad has reportedly confessed to receiving thousands of dollars from his handlers. AT

KABUL DAILY ASSAILS DRUG BARONS

The government-run daily "Anis" said in an editorial on December 18 that drug traffickers are the "main and real enemies" of Afghanistan. "Thanks to their boundless illegal wealth, [drug lords] have penetrated the highest levels of the government structure" and "have established relations with senior government officials," the commentary added. Counterterrorism and counternarcotics strategies "will not succeed" unless the Afghan government and NATO forces take joint action "to arrest" the drug lords "and bring them to justice," "Anis" asserted. According to the commentary Afghans, while hearing about the arrest of drug lords, have not witnessed any trials of the "members of the drug mafia." If noted drug lords "along with their powerful supporters" are brought to justice, "Anis" wrote, Afghans will truly "trust their government." While Afghanistan's narcotics problem has worsened lately, NATO has tried to sidestep the issue, leaving the Afghans to deal with an overwhelming situation, the daily wrote. AT

Maulana’s dubious recipe for peace - Daily Times (Pak) EDITORIAL 12.20.06

The MMA secretary general and JUI leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has claimed that he has the key to the crisis of Afghanistan. He complained about the overt appeals made by President General Pervez Musharraf to the people not to vote for “hypocrites”, “extremists” and “dangerous” people, and retorted that General Musharraf “will need the help of the religious parties for peace in the Pak-Afghan border region, and should avoid alienating them”. His view is that by bad-mouthing the clergy General Musharraf is increasing the gap between the religious parties and the liberal elements of the country.

One might be deceived into thinking that the good Maulana is finally realising that he should not posture inflexibly across the entire gamut of political issues and try to come into the middle ground by helping establish peace in the region. So far he has been competing with Qazi Husain Ahmad on extreme statements simply to protect his party from radical assaults from the Jamaat chief. His past efforts towards establishing peace — in particular to get violent elements to give up violence in the clerical world — have not met with great success.

In the 1990s, when he was still quite innocent and didn’t know where the Deobandi militias were going, Maulana Fazal went to India to intercede with a Harkatul Ansar splinter group to let some foreign captives go, but had no effect. Later he thought it was safer to issue violent statements than to act the peacemaker in Pakistan’s peculiar environment. In fact, he over-reached himself when he issued the fatwa allowing the killing of Americans. Even in his latest statement printed in a foreign paper he takes away with his left hand what he gives with his right: “There can only be peace if foreign forces leave Afghanistan and the Afghan government holds talks with the Taliban; they are the sons of the soil”.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman also accused General Musharraf of being deceitful by telling the world that he was working for democracy in the country while dressed in a military uniform. With due respect, however, we can accuse the clerics of promising democracy while planning to do quite the opposite after coming to power. Of course, when Maulana Fazlur Rehman rolls back democracy it will be in light of the divine edict and no one will be able to complain. Does he think the world is not aware of such duplicity? As far as the world is concerned, he is part of the problem and not the solution, as he likes to pretend.

His prescription is that the ‘foreign forces’ should leave and then Karzai should talk (sic!) to Mullah Umar. This is a big ask. The ‘foreign forces’ are in Afghanistan under a UN Security Council resolution under Chapter Seven and they are looking for Mullah Umar so that he can be brought to trial for various crimes, including harbouring Al Qaeda in Afghanistan since 1996. He may be the beloved of Pakistan, but there is no love lost between him and Afghanistan’s neighbours and the citizens of Afghanistan living in the north. Therefore it is disingenuous on the part of Maulana Fazlur Rehman to talk of the Taliban as the warriors who deserve to rule Afghanistan. They made a hash of it when they had the opportunity to rule and they almost took Pakistan with them when they went down in 2001.

Lest it be forgotten, Taliban rule was the reign of Muslim-kill-Muslim and the inability of Mullah Umar to develop enough political flexibility to muster a consensus in his country actually presaged what is happening in Iraq today. If the Maulana wants to be part of the solution, he should stop Muslims from oppressing fellow Muslims. One way of doing that is to stop his government in the NWFP from pursuing the divisive and suffocating Hasba Bill. If he is in doubt about the fact that the people of Pakistan don’t like what his alliance is up to, he should revisit some of the public debates that took place in Pakistan before the Hudood laws were amended.

Maulana Fazlur Rehman is said to be a thinking and pragmatic cleric, as opposed to the emotional and radical president of the MMA, Qazi Hussain Ahmad. But the false impression among the clergy of Pakistan is that the iron is hotter now than it ever was under General Zia to create a truly Islamic state with a water-tight Sunni caliphate under sharia. This impression has been unfortunately retained even after what happened among the Muslims of Afghanistan when the Taliban established their oppressive Sunni caliphate. The other example is that of Iran — which the Taliban nearly went to war with — where the clergy rules only without a democratic opposition. *

Advice for Mr Karzai – Editorial The News Int. (Pak)

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government need to get serious if they want to solve their disputes with Pakistan. The best way for a country to not solve a problem with another is to keep on discussing it and raising it in the media, and that -- unfortunately -- is precisely what Mr Karzai has been doing of late. In the past couple of weeks, he has publicly said -- before schoolchildren in Kandahar -- that Pakistan wants to "enslave all Afghans" (the schoolchildren reportedly responded with considerable applause). Mr Karzai has also apparently cried in public, shedding, according to reports, tears while saying that his government is helpless against Pakistan's sending of Taliban fighters across the border to create trouble for his country. In fact, he has broken protocol and set aside diplomatic niceties to basically imply, to quote him, that the problem "is not Taliban [sic], the problem is with Pakistan". The Afghan president is saying what no one else is saying, that the Pakistan government is actually supporting and providing assistance to the Taliban fighters that every now and then cross the border into Afghan territory, carry out an attack and return.

Now, as reported on Monday, the Afghan government has hauled up one of its generals for allegedly being on the payroll of the ISI. Even for the sake of argument, if there were some truth in this canard, does Kabul actually think that the ISI is the only foreign intelligence agency that is interested in acquiring information of matters related to the Afghan government and administration? Also, there has been mention that Afghan intelligence agencies may well be active inside Pakistan but we haven't seen Islamabad publicly hurl accusations at Kabul. The fact of the matter is that continuing finger-pointing at Pakistan in different forms is as puerile as the childish applause that the Kandahar schoolchildren gave to Mr Karzai's tearful anti-Pakistani speech. Surely, if the Afghan president wants to see a solution to his grievances against Pakistan, he needs to realise that the anti-Pakistan tone of his recent remarks was a bit to hard to bear, even for those who may consider that there is some truth in what he is saying. The Afghan general who has been arrested has, according to the press office of the Afghan national intelligence agency, admitted his involvement in espionage and to meeting ISI officials in Peshawar "three times". This all, too, seems rather convenient, and frankly speaking sounds as bad as Pakistani intelligence roughing up an Indian suspect who then immediately admits to working for RAW. The days when such things were done are over Mr Karzai. You need to move on and you need to speak directly to Islamabad instead of shedding tears for public and media consumption. Or else, Pakistanis in general will believe that Kabul is not serious about resolving its issues with Islamabad and only wants to malign it internationally.

The Secret War in Afghanistan

Strategy Page - December 19, 2006: The recent fighting in southern Afghanistan was reported in terms of American, British, Canadian and Dutch troops fighting the Taliban. But the most effective troops hardly got mentioned at all, and that's the way they like it. Among 20,000 or so American and NATO troops, there were nearly 2,000 commandos (about a third of them U.S. Special Forces). Afghanistan has been something of a commando Olympics for the past five years. During the last three months, the Taliban were subjected to a series of offensive operations, most of them using the commandos to get the drop on the Taliban, and then call in U.S., NATO or Afghan troops to finish off the enemy, after the commandos and smart bombs had done their work. In this way, about half the 4,000 deaths in Afghanistan this year, took place in those three months. During that period, 2,077 Taliban were killed. Some 40 percent of those Taliban losses occurred during Operation Medusa, which took place in September, in Kandahar province. This operation was meant to upset the Taliban plans to bring in thousands of gunmen, and take control of the area around Kandahar (the traditional Taliban "capital") and perhaps (if only temporarily) the city itself. The Taliban were outmaneuvered and outfought, especially by the international commando force.

The Taliban have declared their 2006 operations a success, despite the death of nearly 3,000 of their fighters, and the wounding of even more. Exactly how many Taliban were running around in southern Afghanistan this year is hard to tell. Could have been as many as 10,000. But success depended a lot on cooperation from local tribesmen. Some tribes were more pro-Taliban than others. Where they had some local support, there was a lot of terrorizing of civilians going on. But any organized attacks on local officials or police, brought a quick response. The Coalition commandos, plus air power, were the most feared combination. UAVs could quickly be over an area and would appear to stay there forever. If the commandos picked up the trail of a group of Taliban, they would usually catch up with them, and, using a combination of smart bombs and superior fighting skills, destroy the Taliban unit. These Taliban groups would sometimes have several hundred fighters. The Taliban were not stupid, and would often scatter when they knew the commandos and UAVs were on their trail. But since so many of the Taliban gunmen were Pakistani Pushtuns, and not familiar with the local terrain, the most effective tactic, of ditching weapons in one of the many little caves in the area, and then splitting up in to much smaller groups and scattering, didn't work. So hundreds of Pakistani Taliban died in these operations, trapped in a landscape they were not familiar with.

American air reconnaissance (UAVs and manned aircraft) made it dangerous for the Taliban to try and get away in vehicles, and the commandos were able to go after them on foot. The Taliban rationale for their "victory" in 2006 rests on the fact that they did mount a major effort, most of them survived it, and they burned down 200 schools, killed at least twenty teachers, and several hundred other uncooperative Afghans. They managed to kill 56 foreign troops, and several hundred Afghan soldiers and police. But the Taliban lost about ten dead, for every enemy they killed. The Taliban also enraged many Afghans, who like the idea of having schools, and roads and being left alone. So who really won?

Attempt to assasinate Afghan governor foiled

Press Trust of India Kabul, December 19, 2006 - Police in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday arrested a would-be suicide bomber with explosives strapped to his body, foiling an attempt to kill a provincial governor, officials said.

The 20-year-old, identified as Aynullah, a Pakistani national and resident of Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal zone, was seized in Afghanistan's Ghazni province, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.

"He was arrested because of an earlier tip-off. Investigations have revealed he was attempting to kill the provincial governor Mirajuding Pattan or the provincial police chief," Bashary said.

Bashary said the attacker, who was carrying 15 kilograms of explosives, was linked to "enemies of Afghanistan", a term often used by Afghan officials to refer to remnants of the ousted Taliban regime. "He is under investigation and more information will be released soon," said Bashari.

There have been around 100 suicide attacks this year in Afghanistan -- where the phenomenon was previously rare — mostly linked to a spiralling insurgency by the ousted Taliban militia.

The governor of eastern Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal, was assassinated in a suicide bombing in September, becoming the first governor to be killed since the Taliban were toppled in 2001. The Taliban said it carried out the attack.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials have blamed the Pakistani government for supporting Taliban extremists, giving them safe haven in Pakistan, training and financial support.

Iran Hangs Nine Criminals

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty - December 20, 2006 -- Reports from Iran say the country has publicly hanged three Afghan men convicted of rape and executed six murderers. The three were hanged on Monday (December 18). Capital offences in the Islamic republic include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy, blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy,adultery or prostitution, treason and espionage.

Registration of Afghans in Pakistan tops 1-million mark

December 19, 2006 Source: UNHCR

By the end of today in Pakistan, we expect to have registered 1 million Afghans in an ongoing government registration exercise to find durable solutions for one of the largest groups of concern to UNHCR today.

The registration of Afghans in Pakistan started in October and is expected to end on December 31. So far, over 63 percent of those registered are in North West Frontier Province, over 17 percent in Balochistan, 12 percent in Punjab, 7 percent in Sindh and less than 1 percent in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Forty-eight percent are female while 51 percent are children aged 14 and below.

This exercise is a follow-up to the Pakistan government's census of March 2005, which tried to "fix" the Afghan population in Pakistan for the first time since they fled the Soviet invasion in late 1979. Only Afghans who were enumerated in the census can be registered. They receive 'proof of registration' cards valid for three years that recognise them as Afghan citizens temporarily living in Pakistan. The card provides them with official documentation for the first time in exile, and will also be linked to new return arrangements starting in March next year.

More than 2.8 million Afghans have repatriated from Pakistan with UNHCR assistance since 2002, but an estimated 2.4 million remain in the country today. While conflict and persecution first drove them into exile, these are no longer the main reasons for their continued stay in Pakistan. According to the 2005 census, 57 percent of Afghans said they could not go home because they lacked land and shelter in Afghanistan. The shortage of jobs ranked second as an obstacle to repatriation, followed by the lack of security.

The information collected through registration will be analysed to get a clearer profile of the remaining group – who they are, where they're from, what their skills and education levels are, and if they intend to repatriate in the near future. These insights will help UNHCR and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to create suitable policies to manage the future of Afghans in Pakistan.

The US$6-million registration exercise has received funds from the European Commission, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Pakistan won’t offer citizenship to refugees

Published: Tuesday, 19 December, 2006, 10:05 AM Doha Time - Gulf Times (Qatar)

PESHAWAR: No proposal to integrate the Afghan refugees with the Pakistan population is under consideration, a senior official has said.

"The government of Pakistan will not forcibly repatriate Afghan refugees, nor will it offer them citizenship," said Sahibzada Mohamed Anees, head of the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees (CAR), while briefing members of a European Parliamentary delegation at the Kacha Garhi refugee camp here.

Neena Gill, chairperson for South Asia, is leading the delegation which earlier visited Darul Uloom Haqqania near Nowshera.

At the Kacha Garhi camp, the delegation members witnessed the process of registration of the refugees at an office of the National Database and Registration Authority.

The delegation members also spoke to the refugees at the camp. Haji Mohamed, an elderly Afghan national, told the delegation that the refugees could not go back to Afghanistan, primarily because of a worsening law and order situation there.

Lack of basic amenities of life in the country was also hampering their repatriation, he said. "I led a four-member family to Pakistan in 1980, but now my family has grown to 54 members," he added.

The Afghan national also complained that about 55,000 inhabitants of the camp were facing problems concerning basic needs.

Briefing the delegation, Anees said even though Pakistan was not a signatory to the Geneva Convention or any other protocol to shelter and feed such a large number of immigrants, it would not opt for forced repatriation of the refugees.

"Pakistan is providing shelter to more than 2.5mn Afghans on humanitarian grounds and it will help them go back to their homeland under the UN voluntary repatriation programme," he said.

The Pakistan government, he said, never imposed a ban on the movement and activities of the refugees in any part of the country. It had given certain incentives to them to earn their livelihood and exempted them from several taxes, he added.

However, the CAR chief clarified that Afghan children, born in Pakistan, were not eligible for citizenship nor could they be given jobs in the public sector.

He said under a tripartite agreement signed by Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), about 400,000 refugees were to be helped go back to their homeland. However, the target could not be achieved this year due to the security situation in Afghanistan, he said.

Anees said that under a new strategy, being devised to enable more and more refugees to return to their country, the Afghan government would recommend the number of people to be returned from time to time.

He deplored that since 1995 there had been no international assistance for the refugees. He said the UNHCR was providing assistance for a primary education project while the CAR was running secondary schools in refugee camps out of its own resources.

Quoting a report, he said that 40% of the refugees were getting treatment at the government hospitals. – Internews

Afghan MPs struggle to find voice

By Mark Dummett BBC News, Kabul Monday, 18 December 2006

In Afghanistan's parliament, former enemies politely wait their turn to speak, and women debate with warlords. The country's first parliament in more than 30 years is regularly cited, by the Kabul government and its foreign backers, as one of the great achievements of the post-Taleban era.

"This gathering shows that all of the people of Afghanistan are unified," President Hamid Karzai said at the swearing-in ceremony on 19 December last year.

The 91-year-old former king Zahir Shah felt it was "a step towards rebuilding Afghanistan after decades of fighting". "The people of Afghanistan will succeed!" he exclaimed to applause from the new members of parliament, and guests who included US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In a recent debate in the Wolesi Jirga, or lower house, the VIPs were absent, but the slogans were similar. "In our 5,000-year history, Afghans have defeated every country that has invaded us," one MP said.

"All of us here in the parliament should stand together, for the sake of the unity of our country." That day the MPs were discussing one of the key challenges facing Afghanistan - how to stop the insurgents crossing the border with Pakistan.

But for all the fighting talk, at the end of the debate, they could only agree on one course of action - to issue a press release condemning a statement allegedly made by Pakistan's foreign minister.

This seems illustrative of the fact that beyond its symbolic importance, Afghanistan's parliament has little to show for its first year - a period which has coincided with the escalation of conflict in the south and east of the country.

Malalai Shinwari, one of the 68 women, admits the MPS are still learning their jobs. "As the representatives of the people, we should advise the government make good policy," she said. "We do have power in our hands. But it is now up to us to decide how to use that power."

In May MPs flexed their muscles for the first time, and used their powers to veto President Karzai's nominee for chief justice of the Supreme Court, and five of his ministers.

But according to Nasima Niazi, who represents Helmand province, where British troops have been battling the Taleban, at other times they are simply ignored. She says that neither Nato nor the Afghan army have involved them in their struggle to defeat the insurgents by "winning hearts and minds" in Helmand.

"We are not happy because the government does not consult us about the problems in Helmand, and neither do the international forces. "Even when we asked for a meeting with the authorities there, they said they didn't care who we were," she said.

Within the assembly, too, she says she sometimes finds it hard to make herself heard by religious conservatives. "Most of them don't want to hear women's voices, and turn off our microphones, but we will continue with our struggle. "We want to be listened to, like women in other countries' parliaments," she said.

In the eyes of some Afghans, the MPs' authority is weak because many have links to militia groups. Instead of being investigated for war crimes, it is alleged many have been able to buy, or cajole themselves into parliament.

But it seems there is little that can be done for now. "There has been a lot of injustice and cruelty, but we don't have a government which can bring people to justice," admits Maulvi Abdelaziz, an MP from north-eastern Badakhshan province.

It has clearly been a slow start for the parliament. But according to a recent report by a think-tank, the International Crisis Group, if the government wants to defeat the insurgency, it needs to involve MPs much more.

"The national assembly as the voice of the people needs to be listened to," the report says. "Afghanistan needs more democracy, not less."

Kabir Khan's `Kabul Express' Is Tale of Sophistication, Drama

By Nabeel Mohideen - Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- War-ravaged Afghanistan is about as far as you can get from the tastefully color-coded sets of a typical Yash Raj Films Pvt. Bollywood extravaganza.

The latest feature film from the production house, ``Kabul Express,'' has two mainstream Bollywood leads in John Abraham and Arshad Warsi, but eschews most of the genre's conventions, aiming for a more universal film-making style. There are no songs either, except for the background score music and the haunting strains of a Sufi chant by Sayed Abdul Qudus.

Director Kabir Khan's first feature is a robust bit of film-making that tells a tale of some sophistication and much drama. Khan and executive producer Rajan Kapoor have made documentaries in Afghanistan and possess intimate knowledge of the people, the country, the period and the geopolitics.

While the tale itself is beguilingly slight, its scope is vast, drawing upon recent events to comment about the way India's neighborhood has changed, especially after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and how that has affected individuals.

It's November 2001, about a month before the Taliban are ousted from Kabul, and fighting rages across a lawless Afghanistan. Two Indian television journalists, Jai Kapoor (Warsi) and Suhel Khan (Abraham) find themselves in the country, trying to get hold of someone from the Taliban, now on the run from U.S.-led forces, for an interview.

They find one, Imran Khan Afridi (played by Pakistani actor Salman Shahid), only he's holding an AK56 and is desperate to get to the Pakistan border. The two journalists, now being used as cover by Afridi, and their driver (Afghan actor Hanif Hum Ghum) become hostages in this road trip across Afghanistan. Along the way, an American woman photographer joins them in a journey that explores the complicated reasons Afghanistan has come to this pass.

There is an awfully stark beauty to the landscape of a mountainous country ruined by decades of civil war and director of photography Anshuman Mahaley captures it well. Director Khan keeps the narrative going with a script that's part adventure yarn and part political debate.

The film's faults include the dependence on contrivance, such as the appearance of a tank early on to transport the two journalists in the middle of nowhere. Even the shot of a seven- year-old landmine victim, moving as it is, needed a more natural introduction. Still, that's balanced by the flinty exchanges among the various occupants of the vehicle about who's right and who's wrong in the Afghan conflict. A kind of harmony prevails when an old Bollywood melody drifts over the radio that gets Pakistani and Indian singing along with the tune.

The key moment in ``Kabul Express'' comes when Afridi's conflicted self is revealed and he subsequently has to confront first loss and eventually betrayal by his own.

``Kabul Express'' is a strong debut and all credit to Yash Raj for taking a chance with a non-mainstream film. But it's let down by some uninspiring performances. Linda Arsenio, playing the American journalist, is handicapped by awkward dialogue and can't bring her character to life. Abraham is unable to find something within himself that can connect with his character and make it real. His portrayal is flat and superficial unlike that of his co-actor Warsi, who comes up with yet another fine performance as the cynical news cameraman with a smoking habit. ``Kabul Express'' was released in India on Dec. 15.

(Nabeel Mohideen is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

The West Quiets Afghan Women

The Washington Post, 12/19/2006 By Sima Wali

Although women have made major strides towards equality in the 21st century, we also see a lingering tendency in the West to restrain these advances around the world. Let's turn to history for a moment.

Although women have made major strides towards equality in the 21st century, we also see a lingering tendency in the West to restrain these advances around the world. Let's turn to history for a moment.

Often dismissed as an anomaly, Afghan civil society blossomed under King Amanullah from 1919 to 1929. Declaring his independence from Britain in his inaugural address, Amanullah's sought to abolish slavery, discourage the veil, empower women, and introduce secular education for girls. Afghanis generally accepted these reforms as in keeping with Islamic law.

But Britain's colonial gatekeepers opposed a secular, democratic Afghanistan. They, in the words of former U.S. Ambassador Leon Poullada, "saw a modernizing of Afghanistan as a threat to British rule in India since it offered an example of the kind of progress free Asians could achieve..."

Afghanistan is still viewed through a colonial lens. Despite real changes that have occurred during the last two centuries, the Victorian mentality -- immortalized by story-tellers like Rudyard Kipling -- obscures the many ways Afghanistan citizens strive for modernity.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, America's journalists reconstituted the old British myths of "fierce tribal Afghan warriors," and today this faux mythologizing is reaching new heights, burying the real yearnings of Afghanistan's people. The movie Charlie Wilson's War now being filmed in Morocco may well further engrain these powerful misconceptions in the psyche of Americans and the world.

Governments and civil society must work to overcome such false image making. We must demand a genuine, honest 21st century mythology from our storytellers. We must stretch our imaginations and construct images of a future that we can all live within. We must appreciate that most of Afghanistan's men and women yearn for modernity, not tribal war.

Sima Wali is the President of Refugee Women in Development (RefWID). She lives between Afghanistan and the U.S.

[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.]