In this bulletin:

• Taleban 'admit commander's death'
• Taliban executes tribal elder in Daikundi
• Pakistan to fence, mine Afghan border
• Karzai: Mining Afghan-Pakistan border will not stop terrorists
• UN criticises Pakistan mine plan
• ANALYSIS-Pakistan's Afghan border fence plan "impractical"
• Afghanistan arrests Pakistani `suicide bomb supplier`
• Taliban vows to continue jihad despite success of Operation Baaz Tsuka
• Russia may write off Afghan debt
• Afghan heroin's surge poses danger in U.S.
• Prime Minister makes Christmas phone calls to Canadian troops in Afghanistan
• Canadian military banned Dutch reporter from Afghan mission
• NYT Reporter: I Was Assaulted by Pakistani Agents
• Pakistan becomes haven for Afghan militants
• ANALYSIS: Incredible line on Afghanistan
• Worsening security impinging on investment
• Afghan women suffer daily violence
• War museum to open Afghan exhibit

Taleban 'admit commander's death'

BBC News / Wednesday, 27 December 2006

The Taleban are reported to have confirmed the death of a senior commander who the Americans said they had killed in Afghanistan last week. Initially, the Taleban denied that Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani had died in an air strike in Helmand province.

But Reuters news agency reports an unnamed senior Taleban official as saying his leadership had not wanted to publicise the death. The US says Osmani headed Taleban operations in southern Afghanistan.

"He has died. We got this information on the day of the strike but our leadership ordered us not to disclose it," Reuters reports the commander as telling one of its journalists by phone.

"He was not only an experienced military commander but also good in making financial transactions for us... his death will have some bad impact on our movement for some time."

On Saturday, US officials said Osmani's vehicle had been hit in an air strike in Helmand province on 19 December. A Taleban spokesman initially dismissed reports of his death.

The Afghan interior ministry called the killing "a big achievement". An Islamist insurgency spearheaded by the resurgent Taleban militia is at its strongest in the southern Afghan provinces bordering Pakistan.

Osmani was reportedly close to the Taleban's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and to al-Qaeda chief, Osama Bin Laden.

Taliban executes tribal elder in Daikundi

KANDAHAR CITY, Dec 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Taliban fighters have executed a chieftain in Gezab district of the central province of Daikundi. Haseebullah, resident of Gezab district, told Pajhwok Afghan News on Monday that Malak Habib was hanged in public Sunday morning.

A group of Taliban came and dragged out the chieftain from his house and hanged him in public. Another resident of the same district, who wished not to be named, said they saw no other reason behind the murder except the tribal elder was supporting the government.

Local officials said they did not know about the incident. Taliban so far did not issue any comment. This summer, an alleged murderer was executed in public by the militants in the same district.

Pakistan to fence, mine Afghan border

26 Dec 2006 - Islamabad (Reuters) - ay it would fence and mine parts of its border with Afghanistan to try to stop Taliban rebels crossing to wage their growing rebellion.

Afghanistan, increasingly critical of Pakistan for not doing enough to stop cross-border incursions, immediately rejected the plan as neither helpful nor practical.

"It will be done selectively ... the armed forces have been asked, they have been tasked, to work out the modalities," Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan told a news conference in Islamabad.

"This is a part of our established policy. We are taking measures to prevent any militant activity from Pakistan inside Afghanistan."

Pakistan has previously suggested a fence but Afghanistan, which does not recognize the British-drawn border, said doing so would unfairly divide ethnic Pashtun communities straddling the largely unmarked frontier.

Pakistan strongly opposes a similar move by India to fence the disputed frontier with Kashmir to block Kashmiri separatists it says are backed by Pakistan. Islamabad denies backing the rebels.

This has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the hardline Taliban government in 2001. More than 4,000 people have been killed, most in fighting and bomb attacks in areas near the Pakistani border.

The violence and a war of words over Taliban safe havens in Pakistan has strained relations between the two U.S. allies in the war on terrorism. Afghan President Hamid Karzai this month leveled some of his strongest criticism at Islamabad.

Pakistan, which supported the Taliban before the September 11 attacks on the United States, has denied helping the insurgents.

But Pakistani officials say militants are crossing the porous frontier that stretches 2,400 km (1,500 miles) from snow covered mountains in the north to remote deserts on the border with Iran in the south. And the U.S. says the resurgent Taliban is being bolstered by its ability to shelter in Pakistan.

In Kabul, a spokesman for Karzai said terrorists had to be confronted head on and a fence would not help. "We must confront terrorists in a real manner. Fencing or mining the border is neither helpful nor practical that is why we are against it," said the spokesman, Khaliq Ahmad.

The Afghan-Pakistani border is known as the Durand Line after the British colonial administrator who drew the frontier between Afghanistan and Britain's Indian empire in 1893. When Pakistan was created in 1947, it inherited the internationally recognized border.

But Afghanistan has never recognized the line, arguing the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan should never have been divided by British colonialists. Afghanistan has in the past also backed calls for a Pashtun homeland, leading to Pakistani fears of losing territory.

Asked about Afghan opposition to the fence, Khan said: "We don't need any agreement from any country for that matter, to fence, to do whatever measures we need to take on our side of the border."

"This is an extraordinary situation and we need extraordinary measures," he said, when asked about international efforts to ban landmines.

Pakistan has sent 80,000 troops to its side of the border to battle militants since it joined the U.S.-led war on terrorism and Khan said extra paramilitary forces would be deployed and troops would guard the fence.

He also said NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Afghan security forces, had a responsibility to guard the Afghan side. Khan did not say when work would begin nor did he elaborate on which sections would be sealed, but said the work was expected to take a long time.

Karzai: Mining Afghan-Pakistan border will not stop terrorists

The Associated Press, t hursday, December 28, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Pakistan's plan to mine and fence its border with Afghanistan will separate families but will not prevent terrorism, President Hamid Karzai said Thursday.

Pakistan on Tuesday said it would plant land mines and build a fence on parts of its 2,430-kilometer (1,510-mile) frontier with Afghanistan — an effort to fend off criticism it does too little to stop Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas from crossing the border.

Terrorists will still find a way to cross the border to attack in Afghanistan, Karzai told a news conference.

"Laying of mines or fencing the border will only separate people, families from each other," he said. "Rather than helping, it will cause people difficulty in movement, in trade."

The frontier region is inhabited on both sides by Pashtun tribespeople who travel freely across the border.

Karzai said that rather than building a fence, officials must remove the training centers used by terrorists and go after their sources of funding and equipment, an accusation he often levels against Pakistani officials without mentioning the name of his neighboring country.

"If we want to prevent terrorism from crossing the border into Afghanistan, if we want to prevent terrorism as a whole, forever, eradicate them, defeat them, then we must remove their sanctuaries," Karzai said.

Afghan and Western officials contend militants train in Pakistan and then launch attacks in Afghanistan, but the Islamabad government insists it does all it can to stop them.

Mines are deeply unpopular in Afghanistan, where thousands of its civilians have been killed or maimed by mines planted during 25 years of war here. "We have suffered, and we are very much for the removal, prevention of mines," Karzai said.

U.N. officials on Wednesday criticized Pakistan's plan, saying it would add to civilian casualties.

Taliban-led insurgents have stepped up attacks in Afghanistan over the past year, triggering the worst violence since the hardline regime was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition five years ago. Relations have been souring between the neighbors, which are key U.S. allies in its war on terror groups.

Afghanistan quickly objected to the idea of a fence along the rugged border, but Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammed Khan said his country would be acting on its own territory and did not need Afghan consent. Pakistan did not say when or where work would start.

UN criticises Pakistan mine plan - BBC World News;  27 December 2006

UN officials have criticised Pakistan's plans to build a fence and plant
landmines along sections of its border with Afghanistan to stop militants.

The officials, based in Afghanistan, say that such a step would add to
civilian casualties in a region already littered with ordnance. Afghanistan has already rejected the plan saying both countries need to tackle "terrorists in a real manner".

It has long blamed Pakistan for cross-border attacks by the Taleban. Islamabad denies any involvement in the attacks. The UN's Richard Bennett said the use of landmines was opposed across the world by human rights advocates.

Correspondents say Afghanistan has been heavily mined during years of war,
and thousands of its civilians have been killed and maimed.

A Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman said on Tuesday that the measures
would help prevent insurgents from Pakistan crossing into Afghanistan to
fight Nato forces there.

Officials say that as the fence and mines would be on the Pakistani side of
the 2,430km (1,510-mile) border, an agreement with its neighbour was not
needed. Additional paramilitary troops will also be deployed along the border, they say.

ANALYSIS-Pakistan's Afghan border fence plan "impractical"

By Robert Birsel

ISLAMABAD, Dec 27 (Reuters) - A Pakistani plan to build a fence and lay landmines on parts of its Afghan border is impractical and will not stop an intensifying Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, analysts said on Wednesday.

Pakistan said on Tuesday it would fence and mine parts of its border with Afghanistan to stop Taliban insurgents crossing.

Afghanistan, increasingly critical of Pakistan for not doing enough to stop cross-border incursions, immediately rejected the plan as neither helpful nor practical.

Analysts in Pakistan agreed, saying it would be impossible to effectively seal a largely unmarked frontier that stretches 2,500 km (1,500 miles) from snow-covered mountains in the north to remote deserts on the border with Iran in the south.

"This is impractical. It cannot be fenced, it cannot be mined," said Asad Durrani, a former chief of Pakistan's main Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

"It cannot be covered by observation and fire and if that is not done, they (the fence and mines) do not serve their purpose, they can be breached."

This has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the hardline Taliban government in 2001.

The violence and a war of words over Taliban safe havens in Pakistan has strained relations between the two U.S. allies in the war on terrorism. Afghan President Hamid Karzai this month levelled some of his strongest criticism at Islamabad.

A spokesman for Karzai, rejecting the proposal to fence and mine the border, said terrorists had to be confronted head on.

Analyst and author Ahmed Rashid said the plan for the border was a red herring.

"The essential thing that Pakistan needs to do is arrest the Taliban leaders living in Quetta," he said, referring to the southwestern Pakistani city where Afghanistan and its allies say the Taliban have found refuge.

"As long as the Taliban organisational structure has a base in Pakistan this conflict is going to continue."

Pakistan, which supported the Taliban before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, has denied helping the insurgents, or that Taliban leaders are in Pakistan, but says militants are crossing the frontier.

The decision to reinforce the border was a reaction to the chorus of accusations over Taliban incursions, and both countries could be taking more effective measures against the militants, said retired Pakistani general Talat Masood.

"In the end, people are interested in results. Are we really preventing terrorism? Are we really preventing the rise of Talibanisation and extremism? Ultimately, that is what matters," Masood said. "There's much more to be done than mining, on both sides."

Rashid said fencing and mining the border would aggravate tension between Afghanistan and Pakistan and incite anger among the ethnic Pashtun tribes that straddle the border and have always crossed it freely.

"Secondly, it's an impossible task," he said. Pakistan bitterly opposed a move by India to fence the disputed frontier with Kashmir to block Kashmiri separatists it says are backed by Pakistan.

"It still has not stopped infiltration," Rashid said, referring to the Indian fence. "So how are we going to stop infiltration along 15,000-foot peaks and hundreds of miles of desert?"

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said the movement of people through designated border checkposts would not be impeded. "We intend to mine and fence areas from where most illegal crossings take place," she said.

Disagreement over the frontier has bedevilled relations between the neighbours since Pakistan's independence in 1947. Afghanistan has never recognised the border, which it says was unfairly imposed by British colonialists in 1893, and is reluctant to see it marked out by a fence and minefields, analysts said.

Afghanistan arrests Pakistani `suicide bomb supplier`

Khost (Afghanistan), Dec 26: Afghan authorities on Tuesday said that they had arrested a Pakistani national who had allegedly been providing suicide bombers to the Taliban in eastern Paktika province.

The man, whose name was not revealed, was "in charge of recruiting suicide bombers and equipping them," provincial governor, Mohammad Akram Khpolwak said.
He was arrested from Bermal district in the bordering Paktika province yesterday, the governor said.

He gave no further details saying that the case was under investigation. Afghan government officials frequently blame Pakistan for a surge in Taliban-led violence including the increase in suicide bombings in Afghanistan.

Pakistan firmly denies helping the Taliban and points to the fact that it has 80,000 troops along the border with Afghanistan, hundreds of whom have died fighting pro-Taliban militants.

The Governor also said that police raided a suspected Taliban compound in the same district and seized a bomb-fitted motorbike. However the owner of the motorcycle fled before the raid, he added.

Some 4,000 people, including 1,000 civilians, have died this year in insurgent violence that has made 2006 Afghanistan's bloodiest year since the fall of the Taliban five years ago.

Taliban vows to continue jihad despite success of Operation Baaz Tsuka

26/12/06 - MAS'UM GHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The jihad against NATO forces will continue despite the apparent success of Operation Baaz Tsuka a spokesman for the Taliban said Tuesday

.

" The Jihad will be going on until we kick them out of Afghanistan," said Qari Yousaf Ahmadi in an interview with The Canadian Press by satellite phone .

" The non-Muslims came and occupied our country ."

NATO forces launched Operation Baaz Tsuka with the goal of eliminating what it calls "tier-one Taliban" from the Panjwaii and Zhare districts. It is believed roughly three-quarters of Taliban fighters, still located in the area, are only in it for the money - and could be convinced to put down their weapons and return to their villages .

A number of villages in the Panjwaii and Zhare districts have been secured by Canadian and NATO forces with few fireworks so far. A number of U.S.-led air strikes has taken its toll on the Taliban with a number of commanders being killed .

Their deaths will not deter the Taliban from the ultimate goal of ridding Afghanistan of coalition forces, said Ahmadi”. Several of our members are killed in the jihad and it happens in this kind of war," he said .

Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant said the strikes against the Taliban leadership have been heartening but the long-term success of Operation Baaz Tsuka comes down to letting Afghan people provide the security in these villages .

" This is all great news, to disrupt and cause some uncertainty in the Taliban leadership is a wonderful thing," said Grant . "We need to push ahead with the development and reconstruction that we've been doing. Working with the local village elders, with the governor, with the district councils. This has proven to be more successful than anything else we've done," he added .

But Afghans who continue to co-operate with coalition forces will face dire consequences from the Taliban, warned Ahmadi ."

The spies who are working for Canadians or NATO or Americans and who proceed with their polices - they have to be killed by us," he said . The Taliban has already executed civilians accused of co-operating with coalition forces. Some have been beheaded .

The third phase of Operation Baaz Tsuka is underway with the goal of eliminating pockets of Taliban in the area south of Howz-e Madad .

" The assessment is there was a heavy concentration of Taliban in that whole peninsula but the ground force resistance wasn't that significant," said Lieut.-Col. Omer Lavoie, commander of the Canadian Battle Group .

" The Taliban, in typical insurgent type of tactics, are willing to take pokes at you and retreat quickly but when it comes to overwhelming combat power I think they learned their lesson in Medusa," he said .

The Taliban will attack in anyway it can said Ahmadi who added it isn't over .

" We do change our tactics," Ahmadi said. "Sometimes we will do suicide attacks, sometimes we will ambush them and for some time we are going to have roadside mines," he said .

Russia may write off Afghan debt

MOSCOW: Russia may write off about $10 billion of Afghanistan’s Soviet-era debt in February, local news agencies quoted Russian Foreign Ministry sources as saying on Monday.

A decision to write off the debt piled up during Moscow’s 9-year-long invasion in the Asian state, which ended in a withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, was reached at an international conference on Afghanistan in January.

But debates on the precise size of the debt and conditions of the deal have slowed the talks. “The sides have effectively finalised the document and expressed readiness to sign it in February,” Itar-Tass quoted its source as saying. RIA quoted a similar source as saying access for Russian businesses to contracts in Afghanistan was a condition for writing off the debt.

The agencies gave no further details. Officials could not be immediately reached for comments. reuters

Afghan heroin's surge poses danger in U.S.

The world's purest form can kill more addicts, as seen in L.A. County.

By Garrett Therolf, LA Times Staff Writer December 26, 2006

Supplies of highly potent Afghan heroin in the United States are growing so fast that the pure white powder is rapidly overtaking lower-quality Mexican heroin, prompting fears of increased addiction and overdoses.

Heroin-related deaths in Los Angeles County soared from 137 in 2002 to 239 in 2005, a jump of nearly 75% in three years, a period when other factors contributing to overdose deaths remained unchanged, experts said. The jump in deaths was especially prevalent among users older than 40, who lack the resilience to recover from an overdose of unexpectedly strong heroin, according to a study by the county's Office of Health Assessment and Epidemiology.

"The rise of heroin from Afghanistan is our biggest rising threat in the fight against narcotics," said Orange County sheriff's spokesman Jim Amormino. "We are seeing more seizures and more overdoses."

According to a Drug Enforcement Administration report obtained by The Times, Afghanistan's poppy fields have become the fastest-growing source of heroin in the United States. Its share of the U.S. market doubled from 7% in 2001, the year U.S. forces overthrew the Taliban, to 14% in 2004, the latest year studied. Another DEA report, released in October, said the 14% actually could be significantly higher.

Poppy production in Afghanistan jumped significantly after the 2001 U.S. invasion destabilized an already shaky economy, leading farmers to turn to the opium market to survive.

Not only is more heroin being produced from Afghan poppies coming into the United States, it is also the purest in the world, according to the DEA's National Drug Intelligence Center.

Despite the agency's own reports, a DEA spokesman denied that more heroin was reaching the United States from Afghanistan. "We are NOT seeing a nationwide spike in Afghanistan-based heroin," Garrison K. Courtney wrote in an e-mail to The Times.

He said in an interview that the report that showed the growth of Afghanistan's U.S. market share was one of many sources the agency used to evaluate drug trends. He refused to provide a copy of DEA reports that could provide an explanation.

The agency declined to give The Times the report on the doubling of Afghan heroin into the U.S. A copy was provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control.

This potent heroin, which the DEA says sells for about $90 a gram in Southern California, has prompted warnings from some officials who deal with addicts that they reduce the amount of the drug they use. Many addicts seeking the most euphoric high employ a dangerous calculation to gauge how much of the drug they can consume without overdosing. An unexpectedly powerful bundle of heroin, therefore, can be deadly.

"I tell people, 'If you're using it, only use half or three-quarters of what you used to,' because of the higher potency," said Orlando Ward, director of public affairs at the Midnight Mission on Los Angeles' skid row.

Health workers in boutique rehab centers as well as health clinics for the homeless say increasing numbers of clients are addicted to more powerful heroin.

"My patients say it's more available and cheaper," said Michael H. Lowenstein, a doctor at the Waismann Method detoxification center in Beverly Hills.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, warned world health authorities in October of the increase in Afghan heroin.

"This, in turn, is likely to prompt a substantial increase in the number of deaths by overdose, as addicts are not used to injecting doses containing such high concentrations of the drug," he said.

From 1980 through 1985, Afghan heroin dominated the U.S. market, with a 47% to 54% share, according to the DEA.

AFGHANISTAN'S share dwindled to 6% for much of the 1990s, as competition from Southeast Asia and Colombia grew. Meanwhile, the Taliban was cracking down as it gained territory, virtually eliminating poppy production after taking over the country.

Once the fundamentalist Islamic government was overthrown in 2001, Afghans turned once again to the poppy trade to survive in one of the poorest countries in the world.

A report released Nov. 28 by the World Bank said U.S. and European efforts to end Afghanistan's $2.3-billion opium business were failing.

The production of opium used to produce heroin reached its highest level ever in Afghanistan this year. It accounted for more than one-third of Afghanistan's gross domestic product and 90% of the world's supply of illicit opium, mainly going to Asia and Europe, according to the report.

The poppy crop now drives the economy in some regions of the embattled nation, helping to fund a Taliban resurgence.

In the United States, Afghan and Mexican poppies tied for second place among sources of heroin in 2004, according to the DEA's Heroin Signature Program. South America, led by top supplier Colombia, held 69% of the market.

That figure had dropped 19 percentage points from the 2003 level as U.S. and Colombian efforts to eradicate the trade enjoyed success and as Afghanistan's share increased, according to the DEA.

The Department of Homeland Security also has found evidence of increasing Afghan heroin in this country. The agency reported skyrocketing numbers of seizures of heroin arriving at U.S. airports and seaports from India, not a significant heroin-producing country but a major transshipment point for Afghan drugs.

The seizure of heroin packages from India increased from zero in 2003 to 433 in 2005 — more than 80% of total mail seizures of heroin arriving in the U.S. that year.

In the meantime, although they may not recognize the product as coming from Afghanistan, addicts across the country are increasingly coming into contact with more powerful heroin.

"There is a different kind of heroin now," said Eric Wade, a 32-year-old recovering addict in Portland, Ore. "It is very, very strong, and it is cheaper than the other stuff. Not everybody has access to it, but I've seen more people overdose … on that stuff."

In Ballwin, Mo., an affluent suburb of St. Louis, two sisters were arrested in the spring, accused of selling "China white" heroin between classes at their high school.

Capt. Tom Jackson, who leads the St. Louis County Police Department's bureau of drug enforcement, said investigators thought the heroin traveled to the campus from Afghanistan with the help of Nigerian traffickers, a Chicago gang and a downtown St. Louis drug dealer.

"This China white is so pure that they can snort it or smoke it," Jackson said. "So, no needles or track marks."

Prime Minister makes Christmas phone calls to Canadian troops in Afghanistan

Monday, December 25, 2006 – CP - OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper placed phone calls over Christmas to Canadians serving in Afghanistan, a statement from his office said Monday.

Harper made two separate phone calls coinciding with Christmas celebrations in Afghanistan, the statement said.

The first was on Christmas Eve to Canadian Forces personnel, development workers, police and diplomats who are members of Canada’s provincial reconstruction team. He made the second call Christmas morning to Canadian Forces personnel at Kandahar Airfield.

“The prime minister took the opportunity to express the pride of all Canadians in the work that they are doing to help stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan and to tell them that they are in the thoughts of all Canadians this Christmas,” the statement said. “He concluded his remarks with three wishes for Christmas: be careful, be safe and be proud.”

Earlier, in his first holiday message as prime minister, Harper asked Canadians to think about family, sharing and Canada’s blessings.

He said Christmas is a good time to remember what it means to be part of a peaceful and prosperous nation. And he added it’s important as well for Canadians to reflect on their faith.

Harper didn’t mention Afghanistan specifically in his holiday message, but he did ask Canadians to remember Canada’s soldiers and others serving their country abroad.

Calling Christmas a rich Canadian tradition, Harper said he hopes everyone is able to take a break from their routine, so they can be with friends and loved ones. At this time last year, he and other federal political leaders were embroiled in a general election campaign.

Canadian military banned Dutch reporter from Afghan mission

Tuesday, December 26, 2006 - Canwest News Service - OTTAWA - When Dutch journalist Joeri Boom wrote to the Canadian Forces nine months ago asking to be embedded with troops in Kandahar, he was told in no uncertain terms that he was not welcome.

Only six weeks earlier, the Netherlands parliament - after what had been an agonizing, heated national debate that lasted months - had voted to send 1,400 soldiers to southern Afghanistan to help out Canadian, British and American forces to fight a reconstituted, deadlier Taliban insurgency. And Boom wanted to get in early to show readers in his country what their troops were in for.

But as a series of memos obtained by the Ottawa Citizen revealed, Canadian and Dutch government officials didn't want Boom offering any sneak previews. After checking on the "comfort level'' of Dutch authorities, and making sure they weren't "facilitating Dutch media pressure,'' Boom was told to come back later in the summer with his own country's soldiers.

The memos, released through Access to Information, confirmed that Canada had consulted with Dutch military officials.

"I never expected Canada to play the dark game of our Ministry of Defence, which wanted to keep all possible negative information out of the media. In fact, my own feelings do not matter,'' Boom said earlier this month from the southern Afghan province in Uruzgan, where he had finally arrived to report on Dutch troops.

"What really matters is that Canada co-operated with a Dutch attempt to ban a reporter. That has very little to do with upholding press freedom.''

Boom contacted the Ottawa Citizen earlier this month, after the newspaper reported on his initial ban. The documents censored the names of Boom and his photographer, and the Citizen did not disclose the media organization that was involved.

"I'm afraid it's me,'' Boom wrote in an e-mail about a week later from Uruzgan, noting how through the Internet and a satellite telephone, the story had wound its way to him deep in the southern Afghan desert.

Boom said he was determined to learn the identity of the person in his government that tried to keep him away from the front lines.

The documents, which were declassified once they were given to the Citizen, don't answer that question, but they show that on March 16, his e-mail request generated a lot of interest in Kandahar, Ottawa, and likely the Hague.

"His interest is based on the future Dutch deployment to Uruzgan province. Lt.-Col. LePage suggests we investigate the comfort level of the Dutch with this journalist's request,'' wrote Capt. Doug MacNair, of the Forces' expeditionary command branch in Ottawa, referring his boss, Lt.-Col. Rita LePage.

"We would not want to be seen to be facilitating Dutch media pressure on the recent decision, etc.''

On March 23, a Canadian military spokesman seconded to NATO in Kandahar replied to MacNair 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'' but that he could revisit the request ``later this summer'' once the Dutch troops had moved into Uruzgan.

"I thought: let's check out how the Canadians are doing, and what kind of strategy they are preparing for the ISAF-mission in their Kandahar area,'' Boom said in reply to a series of e-mailed questions while he was out on maneuvers with the Dutch army, which made him difficult to reach on his satellite phone.

"Canada had a lot of casualties. I hoped that by being embedded with the Canadians, the Dutch, especially our minister of defence, would start realizing how dangerous the southern provinces are,'' he explained.

"I am not pro or against this mission. I only wanted the Dutch public to be informed about the harsh circumstances under which any military mission would be forced to operate.''

Boom, 35, said he and a photographer eventually got embedded with Dutch soldiers because nothing he would have written could have reversed the political decision back home. It is his sixth trip to Afghanistan on behalf of Dutch weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer and as a freelancer for the daily newspaper, Algemeen Dagblad.

In late 2005, Dutch public opinion polls opposed joining the NATO mission in Afghanistan by more than a two-to-one margin because of the bad taste left by the country's previous international military mission a decade earlier. In 1995, Dutch peacekeepers were unable to stop the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the UN-protected haven in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995.

This time around, the Dutch parliament faced a tougher sell in contributing its troops to a major international mission.

"The discussion was also about the character of the mission: are we sucked up in a big fight, like Canada and the U.K., which you will never win in a counterinsurgency situation? Or is it really possible to win over the population for Karzai's democratic government? In fact, this fight is still on in parliament,'' he said.

Canadians and their elected representatives are also ambivalent after what has been Canada's worst year in Afghanistan since sending troops there four years ago, with 36 soldiers and one diplomat killed, bringing the total to 45.

The Dutch soul searching still continues even though, compared to Canada, they have suffered relatively few casualties. Since July, four Dutch soldiers have died in Afghanistan, three by air crashes, and one suicide.

For Boom, the assignment has carried considerable personal risk. On the night he wrote the long e-mail that answered the questions for this story, four rocket-propelled grenades exploded inside the Dutch forward operating base in which he was embedded.

Dutch troops didn't overreact, he said, and kept their big guns in check so they wouldn't cause unnecessary civilian casualties.

"I try to make clear that the Dutch are restraining themselves and that at the moment this seems to work. That seems to be different with the Brits and Canadians. The local population tends to be co-operative here, while in Kandahar and Helmand tension is rising over the large amount of civilian dead,'' Boom wrote, co-incidentally just days before Canadian troops shot and killed an innocent elderly man riding on a motorcycle in Kandahar, a man who was once a teacher of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

But Boom realizes there are limits to what he sees and can verify. Even while under fire, he is working hard to maintain his objectivity.

"I am not in the position to check the information they (the army) give me. So I have to be careful with drawing conclusions. One-sided stories do not help any one understand anything.''

NYT Reporter: I Was Assaulted by Pakistani Agents

blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter December 26, 2006 Gretchen Peters Reports:

New York Times correspondent Carlotta Gall tells ABC News she was assaulted by plain-clothed government security agents while reporting in Quetta, a Pakistani city near the Afghan frontier where NATO suspects the Taliban hides its shadow government.

Akhtar Soomro, a freelance Pakistani photographer working with Gall, was detained for five-and-a-half hours. According to Gall, the agents broke down the door to her hotel room, after she refused to let them enter, and began to seize her notebooks and laptop. When she tried to stop them, she says one of the men punched her twice in the face and head.

"I fell backwards onto a coffee table smashing the crockery," she recalled in a written account of the incident. "I have heavy bruising on my arms, on my temple and my cheekbone, and swelling on my left eye and a sprained knee."

Gall says the agents accused her and Soomro of trying to meet the Taliban. They identified themselves as working for Pakistan's Special Branch, an undercover police department, but Gall said other local reporters identified them as employees from one of the country's two powerful spy agencies: Inter-Services Intelligence or Military Intelligence.

The Committee to Protect Journalists ranked Pakistan the "third most dangerous" place in the world to work in 2006, after two journalists died in violent circumstances, and more than a dozen others were abducted or assaulted by state authorities.

In its annual report, Reporters without Borders complained that in Pakistan "investigative journalists are constantly targeted by military security services, which have no hesitation in harassing anyone they find troublesome." It was the first reported incident of Pakistani agents belting a female reporter.

Gall said the Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem Khan, apologized for the incident and helped secure the release of the photographer and Gall's belongings. But she says he told her to inform Pakistani authorities ahead of future visits to Quetta "to avoid such difficulties."

Pakistan becomes haven for Afghan militants

Taliban fighters are training in Pakistan, then slipping into Afghanistan with help from border control agents, according to U.S. military intelligence and other sources. BY PAUL WATSON Los Angeles Times

LIZHA, Afghanistan - The guerrillas followed a dirt road from the Pakistan border through a valley surrounded by low, grassy mountains to their target: an Afghan police post.

Not long after sunset, they opened fire from several sides.

Then, as quickly as it started, the fight ended. The militants picked up their dead and wounded and fled back into sanctuaries, three miles away, in one of the loosely governed tribal areas of Pakistan.

"A hundred armed Taliban men passed through the Pakistani border with their equipment, and with their rocket-propelled grenade launchers," said Qasim Khail, commander of the Afghan border police's 2nd Brigade, which guards the post here. "And they retreated the same way. There are only two escape routes out of here, and both of them end at a Pakistani border post."

Confidential documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times show that for at least two years, U.S. military intelligence agencies have warned American commanders that Taliban militants were arming and training in Pakistan, then slipping into Afghanistan with the help of Pakistani border control officers.

On Sept. 5, Pashtun tribal leaders in Pakistan's North Waziristan border region signed a pact with the central government led by President Pervez Musharraf, an avowed ally of the United States in its declared war on terrorism.

Under the agreement, the Pakistani army, which had fought fierce battles with pro-Taliban militants, withdrew from the region, leaving a tribal force in charge of border posts. In return, the tribesmen renounced giving support, training and sanctuary to Taliban and al-Qaida-linked fighters, although some foreigners were allowed to remain.

But the violence has not abated. Instead, Afghan officials and the U.S. military say that since the pact was signed, cross-border attacks have surged.

Like many Afghans, Khail believes that despite Musharraf's persistent denials, his country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency still supports the Taliban and at least some of its allies. The intelligence documents show that the U.S. military shared this suspicion as recently as the start of this year.

Pakistan historically has sought influence in Afghanistan, in part because of a border dispute dating back to 1893, when then-British India drew a border, called the "Durand Line," that divided the Pashtun tribal areas.

Intelligence warnings have for months documented U.S. worries about Pakistan's role in providing a haven for Afghan insurgents.

A map prepared in early 2005 for a U.S. Army Special Operations task force warned that officers at Pakistani border control posts were "assisting insurgent attacks." It showed militants' infiltration routes from Pakistan, several of which crossed from North Waziristan to Khowst province, where members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network who have long been based in Afghanistan are still active.

On Jan. 19 of this year, a report from the U.S. military's Joint Intelligence Task Force said that al-Qaida "continues to provide expertise and resources, such as weapons, training, and fighters to anti-coalition groups including the Taliban" and its allies.

In a report the same month, the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency identified six eastern provinces as "al-Qaida strongholds." "These locations allow al-Qaida members easy entrance and exit over the Afghanistan-Pakistan border," it added.

The document warned that well-armed Afghans, Arabs and Pakistanis who might attack U.S. forces were in Afghanistan. And the report warned that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate "poses a high intelligence threat to U.S. and Coalition forces."

Pakistani intelligence agencies were recruiting sources among Afghan interpreters for U.S. forces, collecting information on U.S. counterintelligence operations, the report said. It also noted continued risks for the U.S. military posed by spies for Iran, Russia and India.

The DIA report said Iranian spies gather information from the U.S. Embassy's Afghan guards, interview Afghan visitors and shadow American staff. It described the Iranians as a "critical threat."

ANALYSIS: Incredible line on Afghanistan — Rasul Bakhsh Rais (Daily Times)

Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan is strategically too important for stability and peace within Pakistan and in the region to be left to the private groups or be subject to any ambiguity or ambivalence on Pakistan’s part

The world around Pakistan and beyond has changed during the past five years, and the pace of change is likely to quicken further in the coming years. What has changed is too obvious even to an ordinary observer. But let’s recap.

Afghanistan continues to remain troubled and uncertainty about its future hangs thick. This will have serious security repercussions for Pakistan. Under the American guns and thunder, Iraq is now a failed state and on the verge of disintegration along ethnic and sectarian lines. What should concern Pakistan and other Muslims states is the destructive sectarian civil war that has sucked in Iran and is likely to draw Arab states into this conflict. The issue of Islam, ethnicity and the contest over political power in the emerging Central Asian states will also have vibrations in all directions.

Located at the crossroads of ethnic and religious polarisations, Pakistan is caught in deadly crossfire. One the one side are the United States-led western countries trying to win two wars and shaping the security of these regions according to their vision of peace and stability. On the other hand are theocratic Iran and Islamists with a different agenda of political change and national security. It may not necessarily be the infamous clash of cultures, but a bipolar worldview on what is good for the Muslims societies and who has the right and responsibility to define that good has definitely emerged.

This is not a simple question; it involves larger issues of state sovereignty, regional autonomy and self-determination of peoples, communities and nations. The Southwest region and Afghanistan have reached a new boiling point and it is unclear if our policymakers have the vision, depth and the sense of history to grasp the political and security trends and realise the dangers ahead.

Instead of relying on the robustness of institutions and the depth of collective thinking on national security issues, we lack clarity, remain ambivalent and rely heavily on ‘great men’ to give us direction. It should be obvious that relations with Afghanistan constitute the most important regional relationship for Pakistan in terms of the latter’s security. Consider the elements that impinge on Pakistan’s national security: common ethnicity, porous borders, migration, refugees and movement of non-state actors, to list a few and it should be clear that the insecurity and instability of Afghanistan will have great impact on our own stability and security.

Pakistan’s declared policy of non-intervention and support to international coalition of forces for stabilising Afghanistan lacks credibility. With every incident of violence, the Afghan government, foreign media, and most importantly the United States point fingers at Pakistan. Islamabad’s response to these accusations has not changed a bit. The foreign office spokesperson reads the same line again and again: Afghanistan and international coalition of forces have failed in their efforts to secure and stabilise the country, and they use Pakistan as a scapegoat for their own weaknesses.

True, international forces in Afghanistan have many failures and weaknesses to account for, and the pace of economic and political reconstruction has been slow. Rebuilding a state and its institutions, reintegrating diverse ethnic communities into a single nation-state and rebuilding infrastructure are ambitious objectives that cannot be realised in the face of growing insurgency in some of the Pashtun regions bordering Pakistan.

Yet, Pakistan’s famous line on Afghanistan is neither trusted by our allies in the war on terror nor given any respect by the leaders of Afghanistan. In the vastly changed circumstances of the regional setting Pakistan cannot afford to entirely dismiss as rubbish, as unfortunately Islamabad has tended to do, whatever the leaders of Afghanistan and the world say about its polices. In fact the line on Afghanistan has become a joke in the academic as well as policy circles around the world. The credibility gap has widened over the past couple of years. Most important in this regard is Pakistan’s assertion that insurgents in Afghanistan will not be allowed access to Pakistani territory and resources in terms of shelter, sanctuaries and any other material support.

It is time to change our line on Afghanistan, in fact Pakistan should have done it a long time back: Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans; Pakistan will remain neutral in the current and future power struggles, and will not allow ethnic and religious groups from east of the Durand Line to give support in men and material to likeminded groups across the border. Obviously, Pakistan would not accept a similar policy from Afghanistan.

One important sign of the fragility of a state is that private groups encroach upon its sovereign territory by pursuing private foreign and security policies. Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and Pakistan’s religious parties have been running parallel polices with or without any meeting point with the sate. This is also a legacy of the war of resistance in Afghanistan. But today’s world is different, and the decoupling of the private groups and the public national security establishments in both the countries is a must.

This is an area where states’ institutional and political capacity needs to expand, and their writ extended to the border regions and other areas outside of such control. This is not happening at all; at least the result of this kind of capacity are not visible on either side of the Durand Line. A recent statement by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the opposition in the national assembly, that he directs his followers to support Taliban fighters in Afghanistan by providing “humanitarian aid”, and that “we support anyone who is struggling for the implementation of an Islamic government” will confirm the doubts of Pakistan’s security partners. It is equally true that some of the Afghan leaders have been found involved in sabotage activities in Balochistan apparently to avenge our failure to control the flow of aid to the Taliban.

Pakistan’s relationship with Afghanistan is strategically too important for stability and peace within Pakistan and in the region to be left to the private groups or be subject to any ambiguity or ambivalence on Pakistan’s part. Islamabad must listen to the world and its Afghan friends carefully about what they say about Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan, real or imagined. A free, united, stable and sovereign Afghanistan is in Pakistan’s national interest. Its troubles have been, and will be Pakistan’s troubles. Pakistan should shed its doubts on this score and proactively remove the doubts of the partners regarding its will, intentions and actions.

The author is a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

Worsening security impinging on investment

Pajhwok 12/26/2006 By Zainab Mohammadi

KABUL - Deteriorating security situation in the country has affected both foreign and local investment, which has registered considerable decline over the previous few months.

In charge of the policy and research branch of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) Sayed Mubin Shah said the agency had registered 319 companies and entrepreneurs in the previous three months with a total investment of over 57 million US dollars.

However, the investment volume stood at $305 million by 695 local and foreign companies during the same period three months earlier. More than 21,000 people got jobs during that period.  

During the previous three months, Mubin said, over 8,000 locals got jobs in 272 companies, who invested $57 million in different projects across the country. Those included 272 local entrepreneurs with $38 million and 19 foreign companies with an outlay of 19 million US dollars.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, the official said besides insecurity, lack of space for the new companies and non-availability of electricity were also impinging on the inflow of capital in the country.  

According to unofficial figures, 24 suicide attacks were registered in the first three months of the Afghan year (beginning from March), 39 in the second quarter and 45 during the previous three months, pointing to a marked increase in the number of suicide attacks during that period as compared to the previous year.

Afghan women suffer daily violence

BBC 12/26/2006 - Five years ago, after the fall of the Taleban, Afghanistan's new government pledged swift action to improve the lives of women.

But a recent report by the international women's organisation Womankind Worldwide said millions of Afghan women and girls continue to face discrimination and violence in their day-to-day lives.

The BBC's Afghan service has been talking to Afghan women about their lives. Afghan women's rights groups acknowledge that women now have a variety of rights which they didn't have under Taleban rule.

But in practice, they say, many of those rights are ignored. And activists face intimidation, or worse. In September, the head of the Women's Affairs Ministry in the southern city of Kandahar, Safia Amajan, who'd criticised the Taleban's treatment of women, was shot dead.

One of her former colleagues, who was too afraid to give her name, says since then activists have been staying home. There are many opportunities to work here, she says.

There's a lot to do, but there's no security so women don't want to leave their homes. They think about what happened to Safia Amajan and they're afraid the same thing will happen to them. 'He beats me'

All Afghans are affected by worsening security. But for women, widespread domestic violence is an additional problem. "My husband beats me whenever he feels like it," a young mother of three from Kabul told the BBC.

"Once he broke my arm, then my legs. Now he's broken my arm again. I try not to make a fuss because of the children." Hamayra Daqiq, a policewoman in Kabul, says women like this turn up at the city's central police station every day looking for help.

"There are many reasons why domestic violence happens," she says. "One big reason is poverty. Many parents marry their daughters off to wealthy, older men when the girls are very young, often when they are underage.

"Another reason is where a family resolves a dispute with another family by handing over one of their daughters. The girl usually gets treated really badly by the second family."

About 57% of Afghan girls are married before the legal marriage age of 16; about 60-80% of marriages are forced. Homeyra, an 18-year-old student from Mazar-e Sharif in the north, was promised in marriage to a much older man when she was just a few months old.

He's now returned to claim her and she's distraught. "I went to the police," she said. "But they couldn't help me. His family says if I don't go through with the marriage then my father should kill me."

Many women who spoke to the BBC also said that they had tried and failed to get help from the police. It's a problem which Humayra the policewoman acknowledged: "We just don't have enough experienced female officers to follow up all the complaints," she said.

And even when the police do intervene, they don't always manage to achieve results. "The police have been to see my husband several times and they made him sign a written undertaking not to beat me anymore," said the young Kabul mother with the broken arm.

"But it just doesn't make any difference. I've asked my parents and my brother for help, but they always say, we are poor people, we can't afford to take you back."

Increasing numbers of Afghan women are resorting to desperate measure to try to escape situations like these. Shaimi Amini an assistant doctor at Herat hospital in western Afghanistan, said she was seeing more and more cases recently of women setting fire to themselves.

"During the past five days we've had four cases. In the last six months we've had 53 cases," she said. "If someone in the family sees what's happening and acts fast enough then there's more of a chance to save these girls. But in many cases they die.

"The girls who survive are often terribly disfigured. They need lots more surgery and so they face even more suffering to come." Afghanistan's Women's Affairs Ministry now says it's trying to introduce a new bill to prevent violence against women.

But it will also realise that even if a new law is eventually passed, in practice it may be difficult to ensure that it is widely enforced.

War museum to open Afghan exhibit

OTTAWA (CanWest) - A new exhibition at the Canadian War Museum promises to bring Canadians real life stories from the front lines of the war in Afghanistan.

''Afghanistan: A Glimpse of War'' will open Feb. 9. and feature photographs, video and news reports by journalists Stephen Thorne of Canadian Press and Garth Pritchard, a freelance documentary filmmaker.

The display includes wreckage from a Canadian military vehicle destroyed by a roadside bomb, the rifle used by a Canadian sniper credited with the longest recorded sniper shot in history and a piece of aircraft wreckage from the World Trade Centre terrorist attack.

''I hope this will say something to Canadians about a war that is affecting both Afghans and Canadians right now,' said Dean Oliver, director of research and exhibitions for the museum.

''The stories we are telling are not just news clips, they are stories about real people's lives.'' While the war continues, Oliver said museum staff researched and planned for the exhibit like any other.

''We approached this exhibition just as we would a 300-year-old war,'' he said. ''We put together raw accounts of those who have experienced the war first-hand and we also have collected stories told to us in the second person, through journalists. Being able to talk to the people who are actually there gives us the best kind of material to work with.''

Oliver said one of his favourite features is a photograph by Thorne of Canadian soldiers piling out of a Chinook helicopter on a mountainside. ''It captures the vitality, action, drama and uncertainty of modern combat that we don't often associate with peacekeeping,'' Oliver said.

''We assume (peacekeepers) are directing traffic. They aren't. They are warriors ?and we have this fabulous image that really shows it.''

The exhibition, which runs until Jan. 6, 2008, will also profile the conflict in Afghanistan, from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to the deployment of troops in the region and current operations.

[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.]