A golden ornament on display at an exhibition of Bactrian treasure in Kabul. Afghanistan put on display part of its collection of the famed 2,000-year-old Bactrian gold, the first showing in 17 years of the ancient treasure that resurfaced in 2003 after fears it had been destroyed in war.(AFP/Farzana Wahidy)

In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan's ancient Bactrian gold in rare display
• Fierce Fighting Kills 37 in Afghanistan
• Taliban turn to suicide attacks
• Security a focus of Afghan president's Pakistan visit
• Russia explains its policy on Afghanistan
• AFGHANISTAN'S ECONOMY
• Freedom strikes a chord
• AFGHANISTAN: Political Errors Could Undermine Aid
• Why it's in all our interests to help Afghanistan rebuild itself
• Dutch party leader quits over mission in Afghanistan
• Flour exports to Afghanistan worry Pakistan
  

Afghanistan's ancient Bactrian gold in rare display

Kabul (AFP) - Afghanistan put on display part of its collection of the famed 2,000-year-old Bactrian gold, the first showing in 17 years of the ancient treasure that resurfaced in 2003 after fears it had been destroyed in war.

Twenty-five items from the 2,000-piece collection were displayed on Saturday for a few hours in the heavily fortified presidential palace in an exhibition that was closed to the public.

President Hamid Karzai, members of his cabinet, heads of diplomatic missions, the country's new parliamentarians and selected media were among those invited to see the items.

Saturday's short exhibition was intended to provide a glimpse of the collection before it is sent on a tour of Europe, perhaps this year. "This exhibition is an important step in the introduction of Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage to the world," national museum director Omarakhan Massoudi told AFP.

The last time the collection was on display was in 1989 when the communist government presented a few items to foreign diplomats to prove it had not been looted by the Russians as they retreated after a 10-year occupation.

Afghanistan collapsed into civil war three years later and the collection vanished. Many feared it had been plundered, and perhaps melted down, during the brutal civil war in which two-thirds of the objects in the national museum disappeared.

In 2003, when a measure of stability had returned to the country after the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001, the central bank's vaults were opened to reveal the collection, which had been hidden there by a few museum staff.

The 25 relics displayed Saturday, most of them dating to the first century BC, included a Bactrian Aphrodite, a intricate chained belt with buckles showing a man riding a lion, a solid gold plate, a dagger and sheath, and jewellery delicately inlaid with turquoise and garnets.

The items are still kept in the central bank vaults, as the refurbished Kabul museum is unable to display them because of inadequate facilities, including for security.

Fierce Fighting Kills 37 in Afghanistan

Kandahar (AP) - Fighting raged across southern Afghanistan on Saturday with attacks on government offices and a police convoy killing a district chief and 15 others — raising the death toll from two days of battles to 37, officials said.

Government officials said more than 200 rebels were fighting 250 police and Afghan soldiers, as well as U.S. forces, making it the biggest and deadliest battle this year in Afghanistan.

The violence comes after an unprecedented spate of suicide bombings and underscores the massive challenge facing international forces in bringing peace to the troubled country four years after the Taliban was ousted.

American war planes bombed suspected Taliban militants before dawn Saturday, killing eight of them, said Khan Mohammed, a police chief in Helmand province.

At the same time, militants attacked a government office in Helmand province's Musaqala district, killing the government chief and wounding four police, said Amir Mohammed Akhund, deputy governor of southern Helmand province.

Hours later, insurgents attacked the main government office in neighboring Nauzad district, setting off a two-hour gunbattle that left one policeman and three suspected Taliban dead, he said.

Militants used a remote-controlled bomb to attack a police convoy in Kandahar, the main city in southern Afghanistan and a former Taliban stronghold, said Sher Mohammed, a police officer.

A district police chief in the convoy was unhurt, but a woman and a child who were walking in the area were killed, and three other passers-by were wounded, he said.

Also in Kandahar, a Taliban commander, Abdul Samad, was killed by border forces as he tried to enter illegally from neighboring Pakistan with about 10 other militants, Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said. The other insurgents fled back across the frontier.

The toll from the initial fighting in Helmand on Friday rose to five police and 16 insurgents dead, and 16 police wounded, Akhund said.

The U.S. military confirmed it was involved in the fighting on Friday, but asked about its involvement in the violence on Saturday, spokesman Lt. Mike Cody said he had no details.

Kandahar and Helmand are hotbeds of the anti-government insurgency and the drug trade, underlining the challenges that will face NATO peacekeepers from Britain and Canada who are to be deployed there later this year to take over from U.S. forces.

Fighting last year left some 1,600 people dead, the highest death toll since 2001, as militants stepped up their campaign against the U.S.-backed central government.

Afghan authorities blame much of the violence on foreign militants who have come here to bolster the insurgency. Officials said this week after interrogating an Iraqi caught trying to sneak into the country that a large group of Arab al-Qaida militants are believed to be on their way here.

The latest fighting comes just days after an international donors' conference in London ended with $10.5 billion in new aid pledged — much of it for improving security.

Taliban turn to suicide attacks - By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – Fourteen successive suicide bomb attacks have shaken this province in a way that nearly four years of guerrilla insurgency has not.

Afghan officials say they have made strides in the last few days to shut down terror networks that launched these attacks, arresting 20 insurgents this week. But Taliban spokesmen say their suicide attacks, including a deadly bombing Wednesday in Khost Province, have only just begun.

"I confirm that there are 200 to 250 fidayeen [dedicated soldiers] who are prepared to carry out suicide attacks, and the number is increasing day by day," says Dr. Mohammad Hanif, a Taliban spokesman, speaking to the Monitor by telephone.

While it is impossible to verify such claims, the use of suicide bombers has already given the Taliban a renewed visibility. Once deemed unacceptable in Afghan culture, suicide attacks have become common this winter, including the Jan. 15 assassination of Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry in Kandahar and an attack the following day that killed 23 Afghans in the border town of Spin Boldak. The suicide attacks have had a devastating effect on the morale of Afghans, and have begun to force foreign aid workers to change the way they deliver aid in the southern part of the country.

"The Taliban have been doing a lot of guerrilla attacks in the last year, but they didn't get any credit for that; it didn't create enough instability," says Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, a former Taliban commander who threw his support behind the Karzai government last year after being released from Afghan prison. "Now, with the suicide attacks, they have added a lot of instability and nervousness and anxiety to the people and the government, and now their name is bigger than it was before."

"But to me, it just shows the Taliban's weakness," says Mullah Rocketi, who earned his nickname during the Russian war for his ability to shoot down helicopters with rockets. "They couldn't do frontal assault. They couldn't do guerrilla attacks. All they can do is suicide attacks, and kill more of their own people."

Whether out of weakness or strength, the tactic has changed daily life. The streets of Kandahar, while still bustling with trade, have checkposts on nearly every other block, as police and national Army troops check vehicles for suspicious packages.

Police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the key trouble signs are cars that have had seats removed to make room for large bundles. But several of the most recent arrests have come from tip-offs, including vehicle descriptions and license-plate numbers. Yet even police admit they don't have the manpower to check every vehicle; the only way to stop the suicide attacks is if more Afghans come forward to cooperate with police when they see suspicious activity.

The suicide attacks have set off debate over where the suicide bombers come from. The Taliban claim that all of their 250 suicide bombers are Afghans, a sign of local support. Afghan officials insist that the bulk of the attacks have been conducted by foreigners, as evidenced by recent arrests that have included non-Pashtun Pakistanis.

"It is obvious that the Taliban have some secret places here, they have professional people who help them fix the wires and assemble the bombs," says Gen. Rahmatullah Raufi, the corps commander of Afghan National Army in Kandahar. "The explosives come from Pakistan, and the drivers come from Pakistan and foreign countries. It is very difficult for an Afghan to persuade himself to commit suicide."

Earlier this week in Nimroz, a province on the Iranian border, an Iraqi and three Pakistanis with suspected links to Taliban rebels were arrested and are believed by police to have been plotting attacks.

Recent arrests in Kandahar indicate that both Pakistanis and Afghans may be involved in the latest attacks. According to Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid, Afghan police have arrested 20 people - including two Pakistanis who were caught with a vehicle packed with explosives - in villages around Kandahar. The two Pakistanis, Governor Khalid says, have admitted that they were preparing to carry out suicide attacks.

But some Afghan officials say that the recent trend of violence has as much to do with the failures of Afghan governance as it does with foreign infiltration.

"Why are these attacks happening now? It's because of the distance between the government and the people," says Mirwaiz Yaseeni, former chief of an elite counter-narcotics police unit and now a member of Parliament. "Our intelligence service is weak. Our law enforcement and judicial systems are weak. Our government is constantly shaken by corruption. We have to come up with a good cabinet, then purify the second layer and so on. Only then the support for the Taliban will decrease."

One thing that everyone agrees on is that suicide attacks have brought the Taliban renewed attention.
The attack against a crowd of spectators at a wrestling match in Spin Boldak, for instance, grabbed headlines worldwide, mostly because of the number killed in the attack. More than 23 Afghans died on that day alone, and dozens of others were seriously wounded, all by a single man riding a motorcycle packed with explosives.

"Their tactics are changing," says a Kandahar police official familiar with the investigation. "They used to hire Afghans to drive cars to a target, and not tell them that there were explosives inside. But the Afghans were not very effective and they didn't get close enough to the target. So now they are sending in voluntary suicide bombers, and their effectiveness has improved a lot."

Gov. Khalid says he is hopeful that more Afghans will cooperate to arrest suicide attackers. As an example, he points to the village of Loy Kariz, on the Pakistan border. According to police reports, a group of Taliban attempted to cross the border around midnight on Tuesday, and demanded to be put up for the night.

An argument between the Taliban and villagers quickly turned into a gunbattle, leaving two Taliban and one villager killed. "They wanted to cross the border, and the people stopped them," says Khalid. "From my view, security is getting better."

General Raufi, points to a similar incident where a suicide bomber was driving from the Pakistani border past the airport with massive explosives in the back of a minivan. Afghan Army forces gave chase, after getting a tip that explosives were inside. The driver finally crashed into a truck. The van, which was set to explode on impact, failed to detonate.

"The driver ran into a village, and the villagers captured him and tied his hands," says Raufi. "You could see that he was ready to die. He had clean clothes, a clean beard, and he has kohl [eyeliner] around his eyes. I don't know why he couldn't do it." He smiles. "Thank God."

Security a focus of Afghan president's Pakistan visit - Feb 3

KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he would raise security concerns plaguing his insurgency-hit country during a visit to neighbouring Pakistan this month. "Afghanistan, as a nation, wants to live in peace and security," Karzai told reporters on Friday.

"Once we are there, with our Pakistani brothers and Pakistani officials, we'll discuss this and find a way to resolve these problems," he said, stressing that his relations with Islamabad were "very good and friendly". The one-day visit is due in mid-February, a presidential spokesman said.

Karzai's comment came in response to a reporter's question about allegations that elements in Pakistan are supporting militants responsible for attacks in border areas.

Demonstrations have been staged in several Afghan cities in recent weeks against a surge in attacks, most of them blamed on remnants of the Taliban government ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Some Taliban and their Al-Qaeda allies are believed to have fled into Pakistan from where, according to some Afghan officials, they are leading an insurgency against Karzai's government.

Militant-linked violence, including recent Iraq-style suicide attacks, has already killed dozens of people this year. More than 1,700 people were killed in 2005, many of them rebels.

Tens of thousands of Pakistani troops have been deployed in the country's largely lawless tribal areas to hunt down militants since late 2002.

While they have had some successes, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and other key figures are still at large.

Russia explains its policy on Afghanistan - 04.02.2006 Pravda

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister, spoke in London on January 31st at two venues – the International Conference on Afghanistan and the Meeting of the Contact group on Kosovo.

Sergei Lavrov explained that the new document drawn up after the meeting on Afghanistan is called the Asghanistan Compact, which “encompasses the economic and social rehabilitation of the country” and stipulates steps for fighting narco-traffic, which is creating problems in Russian cities.

He added that the document also covers external assistance, pointing out that Russia had provided 30 million USD of assistance to Afghanistan under the Bonn Agreement and over 200 million USD in supporting infra-structures, such as the Afghan Armed Forces. Apart from this, “we have quite a few projects there from previous times, which the Afghans would like to continue using in the interests of a peaceful life”, these being schools, hospitals, factories and other institutional buildings.

Regarding Afghanistan’s debt, Sergei Lavrov reminded those present that Russia is one of the major creditors to the country and stated that “we are ready to consider this problem within the Paris Club framework”.

AFGHANISTAN'S ECONOMY – The Economist - Feb 2nd 2006

Small, though unmistakable, signs of progress in the private sector

FROM his office, 55-year-old Karim Siddiqi, the co-owner of Kabul's answer to the Dubai Burj Tower, looks out over the skyline of the Afghan capital. Beyond the blue minaret of the local mosque, the city
is startlingly low-rise. Barely a building reaches four storeys, and a dark cloud of diesel fumes from thousands of small generators obscures the surrounding mountains. At eight storeys, the Kabul Business Centre, smartly fronted with blue-tinted glass, is something of a local wonder.

As one of Afghanistan's new captains of industry, Mr Siddiqi has mixed feelings about his decision to scale down the second-hand truck-import business he ran in Germany and return home. His land holdings in Kabul have multiplied in value ten times since 2001, as Kabul has been gripped by a frenzy of speculation. One JIRIB (approximately a fifth of a hectare, or about half an acre) is currently worth around $1m. On the downside, the office space in the Kabul Business Centre, into which he has sunk $3m, remains largely unoccupied.

Despite four years and $10 billion of promised foreign aid, the infrastructure of the city is still frustratingly unattractive to investors. Kabul's electricity grid offers four hours of power every other day; there will not be a continuous supply until at least 2008.

The road network is decrepit and there is no drinkable mains water.

Blast barriers protecting the offices of many foreign companies contribute to terrible traffic congestion, and also reflect the continued threat from terrorists. Tapping the window of his fifth-floor office, Mr Siddiqi explains that it is bullet proof. This might be reassuring, or not.

Security is not the only difficulty. Like many local businessmen, Mr Siddiqi says he is worried by escalating levels of government corruption. Among public-sector workers on salaries of around $50 a
month, this has become a financial necessity, thanks to rents which are now several hundred dollars a month for a modest Soviet-built apartment.

Land tenure is particularly problematic. American-sponsored business parks have proved enormously popular on the edge of several cities simply because they offer secure land-holdings, basic services and access to markets. More are planned.

Sadly, the most buoyant sector of the economy remains the drugs trade, which is currently equivalent to around a third of GDP and, at an estimated $2.7 billion, dwarfed government revenues of $260m last year.

Such revenues represent just 4.5% of GDP, one of the lowest rates in the world. The government's own resources are not even enough to pay its current expenditure, let alone make any form of investment in the country's future.

However, there are small signs of progress. Western diplomats speak in glowing terms of improvements within the finance ministry and the central bank since 2001. Growth has been steady, if from a very low base (see chart). The economy grew 14% last year, after good rains boosted agriculture, the livelihood of 80% of Afghans. The construction industry is also booming. Exports grew 40% to $500m. Coca-Cola has taken the plunge and opened a factory on the edge of Kabul, complete with its own water-purification plant.

The biggest success story, however, is the growth of the telecoms industry in a country that as recently as 2002 boasted one phone line per 1,000 people. The partly state-owned Afghan Wireless Communications Company and Roshan, a company partly owned by the Aga Khan, now have 662,500 registered users between them, with coverage across many of the remoter areas of the country. The spread of mobile phones has had a revolutionary impact on business, even among local farmers, who can check prices before herding their sheep to market.

Freedom strikes a chord - Mark J. Broderick - THE WASHINGTON TIMES February 4, 2006

Under the Taliban's harsh rule just five years ago, Afghans were forbidden from singing, dancing or listening to popular music. Today, they are eagerly tuning in to TV shows like "Afghan Star," a local version of "American Idol" in which aspiring stars perform for a national audience.

Pop music and edgy call-in talk shows are staples of a growing private sector media empire that has rushed into the political space created by the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. The most popular television and radio stations in the country are Arman FM and Tolo TV, owned and operated by the independent media firm Moby Capital Partners.

The stations' programming is largely geared toward a youthful audience -- more than 60 percent of its viewers and listeners are under age 20. Entertainment is a relatively new concept in Afghanistan. Under the mujahedeen government established after Soviet forces were driven from the country in 1989, television shows consisted almost exclusively of news and patriotic songs. When the Taliban regime took over, television was banned entirely.

"Democracy is about freedom of choice," said Saad Mohseni, the director of Moby Capital Partners, during a recent visit to Washington. "Arman FM and Tolo TV are dedicated to continuing the spread of freedom of speech and the press" in Afghanistan, he said.

Don Ritter, a former Republican member of Congress from Pennsylvania and senior adviser in Washington to the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce, said Mr. Mohseni is "the lead protagonist for modernity and electronic media" in Afghanistan.

Tolo TV claims to have made groundbreaking innovations in Afghan independent media. The station boasts 24-hour programming that reaches up to 15 million people and broadcasts not just in Afghanistan, but in a wide region that includes Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Iraq, according to the station's Web site.

Much of the programming would be familiar to Americans -- at least in format if not in language. It ranges from the "6:30 Report" -- a nightly newsmagazine hosted by Massood Qiam -- to "Hop" -- Tolo's music video and comedy hour -- to "Moments" -- a knockoff of "Candid Camera."

The "6:30 Report," a program on the model of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," has pioneered investigative journalism in the country. Mr. Qiam has interviewed international and Afghan notables including President Hamid Karzai and opposition leaders, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns.

Tolo TV also has ventured to deal with such touchy issues as pedophilia and women's rights in what is still a harshly fundamentalist country. "Tolo and Arman are offering new formats and new genres" to the citizens of Afghanistan, Mr. Mohseni said.

Kazim Ahang, a former dean of journalism at Kabul University, said Afghanistan's journalism pioneers are learning by following the example of others. "We are imitating science, we are imitating medicine, we are imitating journalism," he said in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor last year. "Imitation can be defined as the cleverest way of learning."

In 2002, Mr. Mohseni and his partners received a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to build up independent Afghan media outlets. Since then, he has invested his own funds in the project.

In a recent interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Mohseni said independent media in Afghanistan face unique problems. After U.S. forces invaded to overthrow the Taliban in the fall of 2001, he said, "the environment was unclear, and sponsors weren't willing to invest capital in an unstable economy."

Investors have slowly overcome their initial hesitation, Mr. Mohseni said, and the nation's advertising market has grown rapidly in the past two years. "Companies are now allocating particular advertising budgets," he said. "Pepsi, Coke, Western Union, and Unilever are all entering the Afghan market in 2006."

However, there are still fundamentalist groups that would like nothing more than to shut down Mr. Mohseni's stations. In October, Sheik Mohammad Asef Mohseni, a former Islamist mujahedeen leader, told the British Broadcasting Corp. radio that new media were bringing offensive Western influences into Afghanistan. "We are under attack from foreign tradition and cultures. We must not lose our Islamic identity to these. ... Otherwise we will lose our liberty," he said.

Mr. Mohseni of Moby Capital Partners rejected the complaint. "We would never stray from what is acceptable to the Afghan population," he said. "These groups are labeling what Afghan culture is. I think that, ultimately, we all have the same values."

AFGHANISTAN: Political Errors Could Undermine Aid - Inter Press Service; 2 February 2006

The ten billion dollars pledged in aid for Afghanistan sounds like good news for the country, but some experts fear it could be undermined by political misdirection.

LONDON, Feb 2 (IPS) - "It sounds good on paper, but our concern is that this is going to be undermined by the direction that geopolitics is taking in the country," Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of The Senlis Council, a drug policy think tank told IPS.

A military solution to drugs "is going to undermine the sovereignty of Afghanistan," he said. "That could lead to major unrest, and all the money pledged - if ever delivered - could be for nothing if this is going on."

Afghanistan has seen some dramatic difference between pledges and delivery before. And such delivery that is made gets whittled down along the way.

More than five billion dollars of aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan was pledged over a five-year period at a meeting of donors in Tokyo in January of 2002. Of this an amount of 1.7 billion dollars was pledged for that year. But Afghanistan got only about 150 million dollars in aid for reconstruction.

The 1.7 billion dollars pledged for the year was followed up by firm commitments of only 1.1 billion dollars. A total of 900 million dollars has come in by way of actual disbursements, of which about 70 percent went for humanitarian relief such as providing food and to facilitate the return of refugees.

That left about 250 million dollars for actual reconstruction aid this year. After paying for salaries, only about 150 million dollars were left for educational and vocational development, health and nutrition, and for social programmes.

More development aid flowed into Afghanistan in the years following, but the aid that reaches ground level is only a fraction of what is pledged and then delivered, and that is likely to be no different with the pledges made through the 'Afghan Compact' as the donors meeting this week in London was called.

Of the aid received in the past, Afghans themselves have got to handle only a fraction. Most of it went to Western non-governmental organisations and companies from donor countries engaged in development projects.

"When you go to the real Afghanistan, you will see that the money is not going to those who need it, the farmers, families, rural people," Reinert said. "Afghan development policy is a myth, out there you hardly see anything."

Afghan officials have been protesting against aid in this form. A joint Afghan-United Nations commission will seek to ensure that Afghans have more say where the aid goes. But the aid package is likely to be concentrated on security and poppy eradication, and on supporting education to prevent
another generation of terrorists coming up.

Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's opium and heroin, and this is certain to present the biggest challenge for Western influence in Afghanistan - and the most likely source of conflict. This is the one area the West wants to supervise, rather than leave to Afghan authorities.

"Money should be used for policies and in ways that help the Afghan government help itself," Reinert said.

The aid being offered to Afghanistan is tied to a dangerous policy of poppy eradication, he said. "The new money should be used to support the Afghans to make good use of the opium produced, not to wipe out the cultivation."

The aid pledges come in the wake of growing militancy by the Taliban or Taliban-like groups in the south of Afghanistan. The Senlis Council says forced eradication of poppy could exacerbate that unrest. (FIN/2006)

Why it's in all our interests to help Afghanistan rebuild itself - By George Soros Saturday, Feb 04, 2006 Taipei Times While the unremitting violence in Iraq grabs the world's headlines, Afghanistan still struggles for peace. The country's parliament is packed with warlords, the drug trade is thriving, and violence is on the rise.

During the course of last week, world leaders had an opportunity to steer developments onto a new and more hopeful path when they met in London to forge a new compact with Afghanistan. The compact builds on the 2001 Bonn Agreement, which laid the framework for a democratic Afghanistan but left much to be done to overcome that war-torn country's tragic legacy.

The need for renewed attention to Afghanistan could hardly be greater. Decades of neglect coupled with foreign intervention left the country in ruins, with reverberations across the world. It is now in everyone's interest to help Afghanistan rebuild.

The drug trade exemplifies the far-reaching impact of domestic instability. Last year, the value of drugs produced in Afghanistan -- the world's largest supplier of opiates -- is estimated to have reached up to 25 percent of GDP.

Security, too, remains a serious concern. In 2005, more than 125 Coalition troops were killed, while suicide bombing emerged as a new and increasingly common tactic of the insurgency.

Corruption is rampant, with government officials accused of cronyism and drug trafficking. Several members of the newly elected parliament are known warlords with bloody records.

With international aid poorly coordinated and the US reducing its troop strength, many Afghans believe that the outside world is abandoning them.

But the massive scale of the challenges facing Afghanistan should not overshadow the opportunities for positive change. The Bonn process established the principle of democratic accountability, gave Afghanistan its first directly elected president, and provided a new constitution that created a legitimate central government.

It also paved the way for a parliament in which over a quarter of the members are women, this in a country where, just five years ago, women were not allowed to leave the house without a male relative.

Moreover, most of the 20,000 village councils were elected through secret ballot. In a nod to the importance of the councils to realizing change at the most local level, the World Bank and its partners have adopted a highly innovative program that channels rural development aid through the councils, which have been empowered to decide how the funds will be spent.

At the national level, the government recently approved a new development strategy that goes far to advance a vision for Afghanistan's future stability and growth.

Public opinion reflects widespread support for the latest changes. A recent poll shows that Afghans overwhelmingly favor their country's new direction, backing the participation of women in public life and international intervention against al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the drug economy.

But Afghanistan's potential for progress must be bolstered by concerted international action. Measures need to be taken to support the counter-narcotics strategy recently approved by the Afghan government, which would reduce economic dependence on opium production, punish traffickers and dealers, and provide sustainable economic alternatives for poppy farmers.

Afghanistan is grappling with the world's biggest narcotics problem and donors must commit to a long-term drug control strategy. A resolution by the European Parliament to consider whether Afghanistan should become one of the countries licensed to produce opium for medical purposes also needs to be followed up.

Furthermore, instead of pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into technical assistance and short-term capacity-building programs, the the Afghan government's benchmark for equipping young people with the skills and education necessary to lead their nation to a future of peace and prosperity deserves backing. International support could help educate 40,000 Afghans each year in urgently needed fields, such as engineering, management, agriculture, law, and economics.

Judicial reform is another pressing issue. Currently, the judiciary is incapable of trying a case of petty theft much less of ensuring human rights. A Supreme Court dominated by conservatives has selected judges and prosecutors, and Afghans have little legal redress in a system that allows local commanders, who hold sway over the judiciary, to act with impunity.

Without a viable legal system, foreign investment will remain elusive. Even Afghan expats in the Gulf states, who have invested roughly US$5 billion in regional and global trading networks, are reluctant to invest in their homeland.

Reform is nonetheless clearly possible. Last month, the Afghan leadership finally adopted a transitional justice plan that could remove from power the biggest war criminals who have consolidated their grip on the country over the past five years. Implementation of this plan would not only give a boost to the rule of law, but also would enhance security and lead to better governance.

Failure to act would mean a betrayal of the Afghan people, who in 2001 welcomed the US army and NATO forces as liberators. For their sake, and ours, we must not let them down.

George Soros is chairman of the Open Society Institute and Soros Fund Management.

Dutch party leader quits over mission in Afghanistan

BRUSSELS, Feb. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The leader of the Liberal Democrat D66 party Boris Dittrich announced his resignation at a hastily arranged press conference on Friday afternoon.

Dittrich admitted he had made tactical mistakes in the vote on the deployment of Dutch troops in Afghanistan and said this had to have consequences, reported by Dutch news agency ANP.

"As political leader I have to be accountable and I expect that from others," he said. A large majority in parliament voted late on Thursday in favor of contributing up to 1,400 troops to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

D66, the smallest of the three parties in the coalition government, voted against the mission. But Dittrich did not follow through on an earlier threat to pull his party out of government if it went ahead.

It is reported that Lousewies van der Laan, one of the party's six MPs (Member of Parliaments), will be the new leader. Meanwhile, Dittrich will stay on as an MP. Enditem

Flour exports to Afghanistan worry Pakistan - New Kerala - Feb 03
Islamabad: Unabated exports of flour to Afghanistan has raised concerns in Pakistan, with officials fearing a shortage in the country. The ministry of food, agriculture and livestock is of the opinion that traders are feverishly exporting the commodity to neighbouring Afghanistan.

"The threat of shortage within Pakistan is towering and something must be done immediately. There should be some control," an official said.

The export of wheat flour to Afghanistan got a boost after the Economic Coordination Council (ECC) of the cabinet removed last month the 15 percent regulatory duty on its exports.

The step was taken after a request by importers who have bought surplus stocks of wheat from Russia and other countries due to their economic prices. The importers wanted to export it to Afghanistan to get rid of surplus stocks arising from a lack of buying interest for the wheat imported from non-traditional sources.

"Importers have booked huge consignments from countries that are selling wheat at lower rates as compared to the US and Australia. Its quality is questionable and needs mixing with indigenous wheat," said Tariq Sadiq, a leader of the All Pakistan Flour Mills Association and former president of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The ECC had rejected a proposal for levying 20 percent regulatory duties on the import of wheat into Pakistan. This also boosted imports. Many exporters choose to buy flour from the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) for exports to Afghanistan due to its proximity to that country. If a shortage takes place, NWFP will face the consequences.

[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.]