In this bulletin:

• Karzai in Pakistan terror talks
• Pakistan, Afghanistan joint responsible for border security: spokesperson
• Two Afghan Intelligence Agents Killed
• Blast kills Afghan policeman, UK troops arrive
• Two Nepalis abducted in Afghanistan safe: Embassy
• President Karzai Condemns the Killing of 4 US Soldiers
• Afghan Suicide Bombings, Tied to Taliban, Point to Pakistan
• Pakistan releases 562 Afghans as Karzai arrives
• Iran seeking to draw western Afghanistan into its sphere of influence
• Canadian general takes the helm of international forces in Afghanistan
• Portugal to extend military mission in Afghanistan
• Taliban commander arrested, school torched in Afghanistan
• Anniversary of withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan
• Afghan gas pipeline nears reality
• Afghan Parliament debates chaperones for women
• Signs of hope amid the chaos AFGHANISTAN: TB major health problem in the south - WHO

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf (2nd L), Afghan President Hamid Karzai (3rd R) and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz (R) review the honour guard in Islamabad February 15, 2006. Karzai arrived on Wednesday on a three-day visit to hold talks with Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

Karzai in Pakistan terror talks – BBC

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has arrived in Pakistan for talks due to focus on tackling cross-border attacks. During the two-day visit, Mr Karzai is expected to urge President Pervez Musharraf and other senior officials to crack down on Taleban rebels.

Islamabad denies it could do more to combat militants who use Pakistan as a base to launch attacks on Afghanistan. Ahead of the visit, Pakistan freed more than 500 suspected illegal Afghan immigrants as a gesture of goodwill.

We hope that we will be able to work out ways and means of dealing with this threat in co-operation with Pakistan Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah

It is the fifth meeting between Presidents Karzai and Musharraf in Islamabad in four years. The BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says that is seen as a sign of how important and tricky relations between them are.

President Karzai flew into Chaklala air base near Islamabad before heading for talks with Gen Musharraf. Earlier in the day, the Afghan president's spokesman said he would call for an end to terrorism, and ask Pakistan for action against Taleban rebels.

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he was very concerned at continuing attacks in his country: "Especially recent suicidal attempts and the links these security incidents have to the other side of the border."

He told the BBC: "We hope we can sort them out with our neighbouring country Pakistan. "Taleban leaders there are inciting terror and instigating terror and they are behind most of the incidents taking place in Afghanistan. So is al-Qaeda."

Pakistan supported the Taleban but changed its policy after a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 removed the hard-liners from power. Hundreds of Taleban and al-Qaeda militants were believed to have fled to Pakistan after they were toppled.

There have been a number of anti-Pakistan demonstrations in Afghanistan in recent weeks. The Taleban has been blamed for an increase in violence in recent months, including a spate of suicide bombings.

Pakistan, Afghanistan joint responsible for border security: spokesperson

ISLAMABAD: Feb 15 : Pakistan has said that control of illegal cross-border- movement on the Pak-Afghan border is a joint responsibility of both the Governments and that Afghan government should focus on law and order, elimination of drugs and terrorism within their own country.

Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasneem Aslam told a private regional TV that Pakistan’s policy is clear about terrorists and the security forces act swiftly against those who are involved in terrorist acts. She said that Pakistan had played a front state roll in war against terrorism and has done more than any other country.

When asked about an Afghan spokesman statement that Pakistan must take steps against Taliban like al-Qaeda, Tasneem Aslam said that this is a undeniable fact that there are more than three million Afghan refugees in Pakistan who frequently visit their country.

“If some of them are sympathizer of Taliban, it is difficult to identify them. If these refugees go back to their country this cross border movement would be limited,” she said.

She rejected the impression that there is some contradiction in Pakistan’s policy about al-Qaeda and Taliban. “Pakistan can not be blamed for the law & order in Afghanistan,” she said, adding that there is a great need of good relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We are indispensable for each other” she added.

Commenting on the reports, regarding arrest of some Pakistanis in Afghanistan she said, “We are trying to confirm these reports. The people who are taking part in the reconstruction of the war torn country should be giving proper security and treated respectfully”.

On a question FO Spokesperson said Pakistan had played a very constructive roll in reconstruction, conducting of elections and rehabilitations of refugees which was greatly appreciated globally. “We support every effort for peace and stability in Afghanistan”. Foreign Office Spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said that the Pakistanis working in reconstruction of Afghanistan should be treated respectfully.

Two Afghan Intelligence Agents Killed

Kabul (AP) - Suspected Taliban rebels abducted two Afghan intelligence agents in a western province and killed them, dumping their nearly decapitated bodies in the desert, a top official said Wednesday.

The men were kidnapped while riding motorbikes in the countryside in Farah province Monday and their bodies were discovered a day later, provincial Gov. Hazatullah Wasefi said. The pair worked as intelligence agents for the province's security forces, gathering information on the Taliban and other militant groups, he said.

A manhunt has been launched for those behind the killings but no one has been arrested, Wasefi said. Farah has escaped the worst of the Taliban-led fighting that has wracked southern and eastern Afghan provinces.

Violence has increased in recent months as militants step up their campaign against the country's U.S.-backed government. Last year, some 1,600 people were killed, the most since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.

Blast kills Afghan policeman, UK troops arrive

Kabul (Reuters) - A blast killed an Afghan policeman and wounded two colleagues on Wednesday and two intelligence officers kidnapped this week have been found dead, officials said. The violence came as the first 150 British combat troops of a deployment of about 3,300 British troops to the Afghan south arrived in the country.

Taliban or members of an allied faction were responsible for the blast that hit the second of two police vehicles traveling on a road in Ghazni province, south of the Kabul, said district government official Habibullah January. "Militants who don't want peace and stability were behind this," he said. One of the wounded policemen was in serious condition, he said.

The Taliban have been fighting U.S.-led forces since they were ousted for harbouring Osama bin Laden weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Violence has intensified in recent months with a wave of roadside and suicide bombings killing dozens of people as NATO members prepare to send thousands more peacekeepers.

The bodies of two intelligence officers abducted while on a mission in Farah province in the west were found in a desert on Tuesday, said provincial governor Izatullah Wasifi.

He declined to speculate on who might have been responsible but Taliban have been known to operate in the province. Earlier, police said security forces arrested a Taliban district commander in Ghazni province along with two of his men suspected of burning down a school.

The Taliban commander, Mullah Nazer Shah, had been a district official during the Islamist group's rule and was detained during a search by security forces late on Tuesday, said provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang.

Shah's two men who were also detained were suspected of burning down a school in the area on Monday night in the latest attack on the U.S.-backed government's efforts to promote education, he said.

Most of the recent attacks have been near the border with Pakistan and many Afghans say their eastern neighbor is not doing enough to stop insurgents launching attacks from the safety of Pakistani soil.

Pakistan denies involvement with the Taliban but security is expected to be high on the agenda when President Hamid Karzai arrives in Pakistan for talks later on Wednesday.

British forces are playing a leading role in the expansion of a NATO peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan this year. The force will expand to about 16,000 troops from 9,000.

As NATO troops take over more responsibilities, the United States is hoping to cut the number of its troops in a separate U.S.-led force hunting insurgents.

British peacekeepers have been in Afghanistan since shortly after the fall of the Taliban. The new deployment of 3,300 will be based in Helmand province in the south where Taliban insurgents and drug gangs are a major problem.

Arriving in Afghanistan on Wednesday were 150 Royal Marines commandos, part of an advance party of 850 British troops deploying to Helmand this month to help prepare for the arrival of the full contingent over subsequent weeks.

Two Nepalis abducted in Afghanistan safe: Embassy - (Xinhua) 2006-02-06

The two Nepali nationals who were abducted from Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday are safe and sound, the Royal Nepalese Embassy in Pakistan stated.

Radio Nepal Wednesday quoted Royal Nepalese Ambassador to Pakistan Pushkaman Singh Rajbhandari as saying that the abductors themselves brought the two abducted Nepalis in contact over the phone to the "Amour Group", a security company that employed them in security service at the Kabul-based Department for International Development, Britain.

He quoted the officials at the Amour Group as saying that the two abducted Nepalis told them over the phone that they were safe and sound. Rajbhandari said that the demand of the abductors is not clear and the Afghan government and the employer company are making efforts for securing the release of the two Nepalis.

Some Nepalis work for security companies in Afghanistan and are also employed for guarding foreign embassies in Kabul. Nepal does not have its embassy in Kabul.

President Karzai Condemns the Killing of 4 US Soldiers - Date of Release: 14 February 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, strongly condemned the killing of 4 US soldiers in the province of Uruzgan.

In his reaction to the news the President said, “Terrorist attacks have been taking place in Afghanistan for sometime now, which have claimed the lives of international soldiers and Afghans alike. We must fight this menace together until it is removed from the region and the world.”

The President expressed his deep sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims.

Released by the Office of the Spokesman to the President - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Afghan Suicide Bombings, Tied to Taliban, Point to Pakistan - By CARLOTTA GALL – The New York Times 02/15/06

Sajjad is one of the arrested Pakistanis who reportedly told Afghan interrogators that they had been recruited in Pakistan for a Taliban-directed campaign of suicide bombings in Afghanistan .

Abdullah is another of the arrested Pakistanis captured and interrogated by Afghanistan.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 12 — Arrests and interrogations of suspects in a recent series of suicide bombings in Afghanistan show that the attacks have been orchestrated from Pakistan by members of the ousted Taliban government with little interference by the Pakistani authorities, Afghan officials say.

In taped interviews by an Afghan interrogator, two Afghans and three Pakistanis who were among 21 people arrested in recent weeks described their roles in the attacks, which have killed at least 70 people in the last three months, most of them Afghan civilians but also international peacekeepers, a Canadian diplomat and a dozen Afghan police officers and soldiers.

In the tape, the men described a fairly low-budget network that begins with the recruitment of young bombers in the sprawling Pakistani port city of Karachi. The bombers are moved to safe houses in the border towns of Quetta and Chaman, and then transferred into Afghanistan, where they are provided with cars and explosives and sent out to find a target.

The tape appears to confirm Afghan officials' suspicions that the suicide bombings, which are largely a recent phenomenon in Afghanistan, were generated outside Afghanistan, and in particular from neighboring Pakistan. It was shown to The New York Times by an Afghan official who asked not to be identified because of the diplomatic implications of the contents.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, dismissed the claims of the Afghan government. "This is a propaganda campaign of the government," he said by satellite telephone from an unknown location. "Our mujahedeen don't send one group to one area so they can be found and arrested. Our mujahedeen send different people to different areas at different times."

He added that there was no need to recruit Pakistanis for the attacks. "They are all Afghans," he said of the suicide bombers.

But Afghan officials said the confessions provided the proof they needed to demand action from Pakistan. "I think there is a factory for these bombers," said Asadullah Khaled, the governor of Kandahar Province, where 15 attacks have occurred in the last three months.

President Hamid Karzai is traveling to Pakistan on Wednesday specifically to raise the issue with President Pervez Musharraf and in speeches to Parliament and officers at a military academy as well.

"If you are the ones blowing yourselves up, why are you making the explosion in front of the police headquarters, where people like you are standing in front getting passports?" Mr. Karzai said, addressing the bombers rhetorically, in a televised speech to elders from southern Afghanistan last week.

He has spoken increasingly of the need to tackle the problem at the source. Anti-Pakistan sentiment has been rising in Afghanistan, and a popular refrain is that if the hand of Pakistan were cut, the Taliban, many of whom fled over the border when they were ousted in late 2001, would be no more.

"Most of the attackers are non-Afghans," the governor of Kandahar, Mr. Khaled, said Saturday at a memorial service for 14 victims of the latest bombing. "We have proof, we have prisoners," he added. "We have addresses, we have cassettes."

Pakistani officials in the past have said the Pakistanis arrested in Afghanistan are usually illiterate laborers looking for work.

Judging by the tape, Pakistan appeared to be the base for the terror network, however. In the interviews, all of the men appeared to speak freely, some expressing regret for what they had done. Only one showed some nervousness, though the interrogations seemed relatively relaxed. Three of the men, speaking in Urdu, said they were Pakistanis and had been recruited as bombers.

Two of the men, Akhtar Ali and Sajjad, who only gave one name, said they had been recruited by a man named Jamal, who was working for the Taliban and who owns a bookstore in Karachi. Sajjad had been staying with his brother in Karachi when Jamal showed him video cassettes in which Muslim clerics urged listeners to go and fight a holy war and earn a sure way to paradise.

"I was doing nothing, walking around, playing cricket and football," Sajjad said, adding in reference to a senior cleric: "The maulavi sahib talked to me and showed me a cassette, so I got involved. They were talking on the cassettes and telling us to do this and that, telling me to kill Americans."

Mr. Ali, who is from Karachi and who looked to be in his late 20's, said he received training to fight five years ago, when the Taliban were still in power, but never went to Afghanistan. Muslim clerics speaking on the video cassettes persuaded him to go this time, he said.

"I heard from the clerics there that if you fight jihad, you would go to paradise," he said. "There are cassettes there and they say: 'There is jihad against non-Muslims.' "

The third man, who gave his name as Abdullah, said he had come from Peshawar but was working in Karachi when recruited by a co-worker named Iqbal. "Iqbal was talking of fighting against Americans, he was talking of going to fight jihad there," Abdullah said in his interview. "I said I cannot do it. Iqbal persuaded me."

Separately the three men were sent to Quetta, they said in the tapes, and put in touch with an Afghan member of the Taliban, Abdul Hadi, who had a house in the border town of Chaman. Sajjad was on his second trip in; his first attempt was aborted when the man preparing the car in Kabul blew himself up.

Sajjad and Mr. Ali were arrested with their Afghan facilitator, Nur ul-Baqi, as they drove into Kandahar. Abdullah, a man with a hard direct gaze, said he had been given shelter for two days in Afghanistan and provided with a car filled with explosives and two gas cylinders. "My other friend told me which button to press," he said.

He was caught by the police on the edge of Kandahar in a car laden with explosives and tried to detonate them as the police stopped him, the interrogator said on the tape. Abdullah denied that and said he had had a change of heart and stopped his car.

The interrogations also indicated that the network behind the men was made up of Afghan Taliban, many of them living in Pakistan. Mr. Baqi, the Afghan courier arrested with Mr. Ali and Sajjad, said on the tape that he had brought four would-be bombers into the country, taking them from Mr. Hadi in Chaman and delivering them to various people in Afghanistan who set them up with cars and explosives.

He said he had brought in one bomber called Imran from Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, who blew himself up on the road near the Kandahar airport. The other bomber did not go through with his attack, Mr. Baqi said.

He gave names and details of other bombers who had been taken to Kabul and one to Herat to carry out attacks, and of the Afghans who helped them. Among them were an Afghan husband-and-wife team who blew themselves up on the Jalalabad road on the east side of Kabul. "Most of the attackers are Pakistanis; I can tell you 99 percent are Pakistani," he said. He said he had not seen any Arabs coming through.

Mr. Hadi provided the money to purchase cars, one for $2,000, Mr. Baqi said. He said he had asked Mr. Hadi several times where the money had come from. "It is coming from the sky," was the reply.

"They are getting their logistics there, so it is obvious that Pakistan is also giving them money, in my opinion," Mr. Baqi said, adding that he and the other Afghan Taliban had free movement in Pakistan. "The people who are bringing anarchy in Afghanistan, the Pakistanis don't say anything to them," he said.

Hafiz Bismillah, the last man on the tape, said he was from Panjwai district, just 30 minutes southwest of here. Wearing glasses and a white prayer cap, he was the only one who appeared jittery in his interview.

Mr. Baqi had brought Imran, the bomber, to his house, and he had stayed with them, he said. "We knew he was going to do a suicide mission," he said. "We gave him a place to stay." The police found 80 mines inside large blue plastic barrels at his house, he said.

Pakistan releases 562 Afghans as Karzai arrives – February 15, 2006

KARACHI (Reuters) - Pakistan freed 562 Afghans held in detention for visa violations, in a goodwill gesture at the start of a visit by Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday.

Karzai, during his three-day visit, is expected to ask Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to do more to stop Taliban fighters crossing into Afghanistan after a spate of suicide bomb attacks over the past few months.

Although both are allies in a U.S.-led war against terrorism, Afghanistan has still to overcome distrust lingering on from Pakistan's support for the Taliban militia during its rule of Afghanistan between 1996 and late 2001.

While security issues are expected to dominate talks, the two sides will also look for ways to improve ties, and Afghan officials welcomed the release of their countrymen on Wednesday.

"We are glad they released these poor laborers, they were here for petty jobs," Abdul Muqtader Frozanfar, Afghanistan's Consul General, told reporters as he received the released men at the gates of a Karachi prison. The Afghan government had requested release for the men, who had been detained in various parts of Pakistan during the last five months and held in Karachi.

"We have very few job opportunities in Afghanistan, so we have to take some risks to make a living," said Khalaq Dad, 24, from Kabul who worked for a software firm in Karachi before being jailed four months ago.

Lala Mohammad, of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, was glad that he was being repatriated after living in Karachi for the past six years. "I was thinking to go back but police arrested me," said Mohammad, who had earned 150 rupees ($2.50) a day as a porter at Karachi's main fruit and vegetable market before his detention in January. "Thank God I am going back to my country."

Karzai's government has already released hundreds of Pakistanis who fought on the Taliban's side when they were defeated by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. (With reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi)

Iran seeking to draw western Afghanistan into its sphere of influence -

SHINDAND (AP 02/14/06) - Sitting in a grimy office at the end of a dank hallway, Police Chief Syed Ahmed Ansari tells of finding caches of explosives and hunting spies in his corner of western Afghanistan, far from the main haunts of Taliban rebels. He says his biggest worry isn't the Taliban -- it's Iran.

"Iran is a dangerous neighbor. We know that terrorists are being trained in both Iran and in Pakistan, and we are in the middle," says Ansari, whose town is in a southeastern swath of Herat Province that borders Iran and Pakistan. Iran's foreign ministry has repeatedly rejected the accusations of interference in Afghanistan as "baseless."

But all along Afghanistan's sparsely peopled frontier with Iran, Afghan officials and Western diplomats say Tehran's hard-line Islamic regime is encouraging unrest in its neighbor while striving to increase its own influence.

They say Iranians are using cutthroat business practices to gain an edge in Afghan commerce, recruiting supporters among Afghanistan's Shiite Muslim minority and using popular TV serials to sway public opinion against Western allies, depicting them as anathema to Islamic traditions and tenets.

The Iranian push here and elsewhere in the region seeks to take advantage of the shifts in power and relationships that have followed the U.S.-led ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq -- wars that left large numbers of American troops on both sides of anti-Western Iran.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai warns that interference from Iran and other neighbors is a dangerous game, saying an unstable Afghanistan will bring chaos to the region.

"The consequences will be that this region will suffer with us, equally, as we suffer. In the past we suffered alone. This time everybody will suffer with us," Karzai told The Associated Press in Kabul, the capital.

The 580-mile border that Afghanistan shares with Iran runs along three Afghan provinces. There are no big towns, and Afghan forces make few patrols, making it easy for people to sneak into the nearly empty region of scruffy plains, treeless hills and the foothills of the Bakharz mountains in the north.

Security is a major concern for Ansari. His town of sun-baked mud houses may have the look of centuries past, but Shindand plays a strategic role for the U.S.-led international coalition as home to Afghanistan's only major military air base aside from Bagram, near Kabul.

Yet his force has only 65 officers, two cars and no communications equipment to patrol an area the size of Manhattan Island that is roughly 240 miles from Iran.

In an interview with AP, Ansari said Afghan authorities had collected disturbing intelligence about Iranian activities in the frontier regions. "From Iran they are bringing explosive material to Afghanistan. They don't want Afghanistan to be at peace because they are at war with the United States. One hundred percent, Iran is working against Afghanistan's safety," he said.

Ansari said the intelligence indicated Iran is sending in spies and trying to stir up opposition to Karzai's government. "We conduct searches for explosive materials and we find stockpiles of weapons in areas around here, yet we don't have strong Taliban commanders from here, so where is this coming from? We know it is coming from Iran. But it is not an easy thing to stop," he said.

Some experts say it's not surprising Iran would try to gain influence in its neighbors. Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, sees Iran's regional policy as "mostly defensive." "At one time, Iran sought the export of its revolution, but the failure of that policy has largely tempered such ambitions," Takeyh said.

Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim nation, welcomed the toppling of Afghanistan's largely Sunni Taliban regime after the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. Tehran also was happy at the defeat of Saddam, a longtime enemy. Yet those wars expanded the U.S. presence in the region, a trend opposed by Iran.

Some 19,000 U.S. soldiers buttress Karzai's government in Afghanistan, while 136,000 are in Iraq, joining the previous strong U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf. Washington's ties with Saudi Arabia are solid and there is now a U.S. alliance with Pakistan's military rulers.

Iran has built more security posts along the border with Afghanistan, and Afghan officials say it even has put up a fence that encroaches 200 meters (yards)inside Afghan territory. But officials said Iranian activities go far beyond guarding against incursions.

Before leaving Afghanistan last year for his new post in Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad accused Iran of sending the Al Quds Division of its Revolutionary Guards across the border to incite unrest and cause trouble for Western troops.

A senior Afghan defense ministry official, who would not allow his name to be used because of the sensitivity of his country's relations with Iran, told AP in Kabul that recent intelligence revealed the Revolutionary Guards have camps along the border.

He also warned of a nexus of interests emerging between Iran, Russia, Taliban remnants and renegade Afghan militia leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, saying they all want to see Afghanistan destabilized.

"Russia is not happy with what is going on here, with the U.S. presence here. Russia wants Central Asia to be dependent on them and Iran wants Afghanistan as a buffer for them and as a place to make trouble for the United States," the official said.

Mohammed Zaman, acting manager of customs operations at Islam Kala, western Afghanistan's busiest border crossing with Iran, said the Tehran regime is infiltrating loyalists recruited among the hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees living in Iran, some since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

"They have their own friends among the refugees and some of these refugees are now in the government," Zaman told AP in a chilly, makeshift office within sight of the border and Iran guards.

Graffiti scribbled on the wall of a housing complex for junior police officers 74 miles away in the provincial capital, Herat, attest to the support Iran has in western Afghanistan. The graffiti reads: "Long live Ahmedinejad," referring to Iran's hard-line President Mahmood Ahmedinejad elected last June.

Zaman also said both the Iranians and Americans are active in gathering intelligence along the frontier. When the topic turned to the U.S. activity, Zaman's voice dropped to a whisper. His information was sketchy, he said.

"The American soldiers come once or twice a week. They come and they search. We don't know what they are searching for or what they are looking for. They come in their own cars and do their searches without talking to us," Zaman said.

A news report last year said U.S. troops had slipped into Iran from Afghanistan to hunt for evidence of secret installations used in Tehran's suspect nuclear activities -- a program that has been put before the U.N. Security Council for consideration of whether Tehran is trying to build atomic weapons.

Since the ouster of the Taliban, Washington has sought to improve controls along the border by training Afghanistan's customs police and building a customs complex.

The effort has been largely unsuccessful because of corruption, said a Western diplomat, who insisted on speaking anonymously because he feared for his personal safety in a region where he said he is vulnerable to Afghan insurgents and Iranian agents. His job in western Afghanistan is to keep an eye on Iranian activity, particularly in business.

"This is less sexy but vitally important because Iran is using predatory trade practices, subsidized input and smuggled goods to undercut Herat businesses," the envoy said. "What Iran is trying to do is colonize western Afghanistan by making sure they are not strong competitors able to build a strong, independent economy."

Al Haj Toryalai Ghawsi, an official at the Industrial Union in the provincial capital of Herat, agreed. "Iran is overrunning our economy in western Afghanistan. Iran is looking at western Afghanistan to have influence throughout our economy. They worry because they look at Afghanistan and see Afghanistan as part of America, and to have control they want to control our economy," he said.

Abdul Ahad, a 50-year-old shopkeeper in Herat, also sees the Iranian encroachment. "Everything we have is from Iran. Look inside my shop, the biscuits, the tea, the sweets -- it is all from Iran," he said.

He said he worries about Iranian intentions, although he also is suspicious of the United States. Others are more comfortable with Iran's influence. "We are Muslims. I don't want the American kind of freedom," said Gul Ahmed, a 50-year-old laborer. "We have our religion and our culture. There is no difference between our culture and Iran's culture."

Just as the Tehran regime has been accused of using religious ties with Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority to undermine Iraqi unity, Iran allegedly relies on bonds with Afghanistan's Shiite minority -- about 30 percent of the population -- to work against Karzai's government

Mohakik Nasab, an Afghan Shiite cleric who studied in the Iranian holy city of Qom, found himself jailed and condemned to death when Afghanistan's Shiite clerics council charged him with insulting Islam. He was freed after three months and the death sentence was lifted.

He blamed Iranian pressure on the cleric council for his jailing, which came after Nasab argued in Women's Rights magazine that women are equal to men under Islam and that civil courts don't have the right to impose the death penalty on a Muslim who converts to another religion.

"But what really got me into trouble was that I wrote that Iran was interfering too much in Afghanistan among the Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan to make them answerable to Iran. They want to use Shiite Muslims here for their political purposes like in Lebanon against Israel," Nasab said.

"They are doing this in many ways. They give money. They train spies. You ask me what is my proof? I am in the community. I can see with my own eyes," he added. Naseer Ahmed Raha, who heads a youth group dedicated to developing civil society in Herat, also sees Iranian machinations in Afghanistan.

"Iran never said it was against democracy in Afghanistan, but in these days Iran has promoted insecurity, has taken over our businesses, has encouraged mullahs in Afghanistan to talk for the benefit of Iran, mullahs to speak out against the American influence," he said.

In Kabul, Karzai told AP last month that interference by Afghanistan's neighbors has been the bane of his country's existence, but he is determined to fight efforts to play his country's ethnic groups against one another.

"We are bloody determined," Karzai said. "It is not going to be Pakistan playing the Pashtun, non-Pashtun game in Afghanistan. It is not going to be Iran playing this or that game, or any other country."

Canadian general takes the helm of international forces in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - The Canadian who will lead multinational forces in volatile southern Afghanistan is getting to know his new base of operations.

Brig.-Gen. David Fraser is in Kandahar, where he will take charge of 2,200 Canadian troops. Later this year he will take command of international forces in the region. While stressing the dangers Canadian soldiers face, Fraser says recent suicide attacks and roadside bombings show international forces are succeeding in their mission. The attacks are desperate attempts to derail the stabilization of the area, Fraser says.

About two-thirds of the Canadian contingent is now at Kandahar Airfield, a base established by the United States shortly after the original invasion of Afghanistan.

Canada will take the lead in the fight to hunt down insurgents in the heartland of the former Taliban government with help from British, Dutch and other NATO forces. Afghan security forces have captured a mid-level Taliban commander after his men torched a school in southern Afghanistan, a government official said.

Portugal to extend military mission in Afghanistan

LISBON, Feb. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- Portugal will extend its military mission in Afghanistan until February 2007, the country's Superior Council for National Defense said on Tuesday.

But the number of troops will be reduced to 157 after undergoing the current rotation, the council said. Portugal has now 196 troops deployed in Afghanistan whose mission was originally scheduled to expire in August 2006.

The latest decision to extend the mission was made months after Defense Minister Luis Amado pledged last November to keep Portuguese troops in Afghanistan beyond the August 2006 deadline.

According to Portuguese military officials, Portugal currently has a total of 894 soldiers taking part in peace-keeping missions in seven countries headed by the United Nations, NATO and the European Union. Enditem

Taliban commander arrested, school torched in Afghanistan

Kabul (AFP) - Mullah Shah Nazar, a district governor in southern Kandahar province during the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, was arrested late Tuesday after his men set ablaze a school in Ghazni province, the interior ministry said on Wednesday.

"Mullah Shah Nazar, a mid-level Taliban commander who has been involved in several violent attacks on government targets, was captured last night," ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said. He said villagers had been able to douse the flames at the high school but some classrooms were destroyed.

Suspected Taliban rebels have attacked several educational institutions as part of their anti-government insurgency. More than a dozen schools have been torched and several teachers have been killed in recent violence.

The Taliban, toppled in a US-led military campaign four years ago, carry out regular attacks, mainly against government and US-led foreign security targets who are based here to hunt them down. A top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, has admitted the movement has burned down some schools but said it only targeted those teaching Christianity.

Anniversary of withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan

MOSCOW, February 15 (Itar-Tass) - The seventeenth anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan is being marked in Russia on Wednesday. Lieutenant-General Boris Gromov, Commander of the 40th Soviet army, was the last man of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Troops to cross the bridge over the Amu Darya River, the border between the USSR and Afghanistan, at 10 hours 30 minutes on February 15, 1989.

This was the end of the almost 10-year-long undeclared war, which took a toll of approximately fifteen thousand Soviet officers and men and of no less than 100,000 Afghan fighters. Tens of thousands of people on both sides were invalided.

Chief of the Personnel Department of the Russian Defence Ministry Colonel-General Mikhail Vozhakin told reporters here on Tuesday that more than six hundred thousand Soviet servicemen had discharged their combat duties during the stay of the Limited Contingent of Soviet Troops on the territory of the Republic of Afghanistan, not counting approximately 21,000 workers and office employees, who had discharged civilian functions there”. As many as 205,863 servicemen were decorated for the successful implementation of the tasks set before them by the military command in the period from January 1980 to November 1994. Seventy-three servicemen were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union, he added. Privates and sergeants accounted for more than fifty per cent of those decorated, and officers – for more than thirty per cent.

Wreaths and flowers were laid on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and in other places linked with the memory of those killed in action to mark the seventeenth anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

Afghan gas pipeline nears reality - The Christian Science Monitor 02/15/2006
By Scott Baldauf

KABUL - KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - If all goes well this week, Afghanistan may soon be on its way to having a gas pipeline going through its territory. The ninth meeting of oil ministers for Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan started Tuesday in Ashkabad, Turkmenistan's capital. And according to Afghan officials, the three countries are closer than ever to a deal.

"When I met with the Turkmenistan vice president, and with [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai, and with President Pervez Musharraf, they all said this is a very good project, and it will have a good effect on the regional economy," says Mir Sediq, Afghanistan's minister for mines and industry.

Even India is interested in the project, and Indian officials will be attending the Ashkabad meeting as observers. "Manmohan Singh told me, 'We have a population of 1.3 billion people, and we cannot continue to grow without power," says Mr. Sediq. "One or two pipelines are not enough. We'll need three or four.' "

From the time it was first proposed in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the 1,000-mile-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline project, or TAP, has always had a certain unrealistic aura to it. Clearly Pakistan has a growing need for energy. Just as clearly, Turkmenistan has a lot of natural gas. The dilemma has always been Afghanistan: Would you put a gas pipeline through a country with a raging civil war?

For much of the 1990s, American oil company Unocal answered "yes," and hired Afghan consultants - such as the soon-to-be president Hamid Karzai; soon-to-be US ambassador to Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad; and soon-to-be minister of Mines and Industry Sediq - to help negotiate with tribal chiefs and militia warlords. Eventually, Unocal shelved the project, in part because of the Taliban's intransigence, and in part because of pressure from human rights groups for trying to do business with them.

But with the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, and the support of foreign forces to keep relative peace, Afghanistan has suddenly turned into a "safe" investment choice, at least from the perspective of the oil industry. That is the assessment of the Asian Development Bank, which recently commissioned a study that gave its support to the TAP. Security is an issue, the ADB report says, but an issue that can be resolved with a few protective measures.

Then there's Pakistan: Will it be able to consume enough of Turkmenistan's gas for the project to be viable? At the time the TAP was first proposed, Pakistan's economy was growing at 4.5 percent a year. Today, its growth rate is estimated at 8.5 percent. Pakistani energy officials estimate that they will run out of domestic gas supplies in 2010.

The final cost of the project is currently estimated at $3.7 billion, up from the $2.5 billion price tag estimated in the 1990s. Unocal is now out of the picture, replaced by Argentine energy company Bridas.

For Afghanistan, this project could be a welcome source of jobs and income. After the three-year construction period, annual revenue for the Afghan government would reach around $350 million to $450 million. This is less than the $2.2 billion in Afghanistan's illicit opium economy, but it has the advantage of being clean.

Afghan Parliament debates chaperones for women - By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Kabul (02.15.06) - When Afghan parliamentarians went to London earlier this month to participate in a major donor's conference, it was a milestone of sorts, with a presidency and Parliament working side by side to solve the nation's problems.

But for Al-Hajj Abdul Jabbar Shalgarai, a conservative legislator, the trip was distinctly un-Islamic. He saw the participation of two Afghan women parliamentarians - who traveled without their husbands - as a breach of the law.

So while President Hamid Karzai and his delegation were securing promises of aid, Mr. Shalgarai told his fellow parliamentarians that they were all obliged to follow the Islamic sharia law, which forbids women - including women parliamentarians - from taking long journeys without being accompanied by a male member of the family.

"This country is the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and the Constitution says that nothing can be done in Afghanistan that is against sharia law," says Shalgarai, recalling his statements in Parliament. "I don't want to pass a new law into the Constitution; we already have a law, and it is in sharia."

It was a debate that was bound to happen in Afghanistan sooner or later, a clash of two different visions of Islamic society, one traditional, the other modern. But for female parliamentarians hoping to improve the lot of women in this conservative Islamic country, the return of sharia rules - even if they are not specifically stated in the Constitution - is a troubling sign indeed. After all, it was this very same sharia principle that the conservative Taliban regime used to prevent women from going to school, to market, and to work.

"This is not just for women in Parliament, this will create a big problem for all women of Afghanistan," says Safiya Sadiqi, a female parliamentarian from the Pashtun-dominated Nangrahar Province.

"We have international donors who emphasize funding on women's development. They won't be happy to see this backward trend," says Sadiqi, who attended the London conference after being nominated by Parliament to go. "It means probably that soon women can't go to school alone, can't go to market alone, can't work alone."

perones neededUnder sharia, the notion of mahram-e sharaii, or male chaperones, allows for women to travel for more than three days if they are accompanied with a male relative. Because mahram-e sharaii has not been introduced as a bill, it is impossible to know just how much parliamentarian support it has. But with an estimated 50 percent of the lower house claiming past experience as fighters in the anti-Soviet jihad, and current affiliation with Islamist parties, it's clear that conservative interpretations of Islamic life have a strong political hold.

"As Muslims, we have a strong book, the Holy Koran, and we believe in the Koran, we don't believe in the Constitution," says Haji Ahmed Fareid, a religious scholar and parliamentarian. "We have given women the right to educate themselves, to take part in government, to participate in political life. But there are special rules."

Haji Fareid says that Westerners pay so much attention to women's rights in Islamic nations, but rarely give Islam credit for the rights it gives to women, such as the guarantee from husbands that they will provide clothes, food, and shelter for their wives, as well as the right of inheritance.

"In some countries, the women work outside the house, and then come home and they have to cook, and wash clothes, and look after the children too," he says. "In Western cultures, women are equal to a pack of chewing gum. You can see their images on a box of soap or a bottle of shampoo. That makes women just a part of business."

Similarly, Shalgarai says the rule of mahram-e sharaii is actually intended as a protection of women. "If a woman is on a three-day journey, far from home, and she falls sick, who will look after her?" asks Shalgarai. "If someone else's woman is sitting in the same row of seats as you, well, human beings have different drives, including sexual drives. Sometimes these cannot be controlled. This is to save the dignity of women."

Selective application of the rules?Yet women parliamentarians say that such stringent interpretations of the Koran are not appropriate for a modern Afghanistan.

"Islam is a social religion, it is good, and broad, and it covers everything in our lives," says Sahera Sharif, a female Parliamentarian from Khost. "But unfortunately, when there are rules that affect men and women equally, the men in our society only address these rules toward women."

Zeefunun Safi, another parliamentarian, agrees. "If my husband accepts me, and lets me travel and be a member of parliament, then who are you not to accept me?"

Yet she acknowledges that some women parliamentarians may end up supporting mahram-e sharaii, if it ever is introduced as a bill. "There are lots of women in Parliament against this, but they have to support it, because people will say, 'You are not our representative, get out of Parliament.' "

Signs of hope amid the chaos - The Baltimore Sun 02/15/2006 G. Jefferson Price III

The rumors fly around in this dusty old city like lint in the wind.
There's talk of kidnappings that may or may not have happened. Talk of al-Qaida or the Taliban calling for the abduction of Western women. Talk of the Taliban and al-Qaida resurgence.

Kabul is an ugly city, for the most part, a ramble of low structures, some still showing damage from the wars that have been fought here in the last three decades. The air is full of choking dust blowing particles of stuff you don't even want to think about. The environment complements the mood. This is a scary city in a scary country. Why stay?

Lately there's been enough upheaval in the capital and violence elsewhere in the country to make it wise to lie low. The unrest was spawned by a combination of protest over the prophet Muhammad cartoons and the Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in Herat, the provincial capital in western Afghanistan that I left Friday.

The route from the Kabul airport into the city center was lined with police officers in full riot gear. There was word that a mullah in the capital had told his congregation the death of a single Westerner would satisfy the insult of the offending Muhammad cartoons. Back in Herat, meanwhile, the security situation was said to be deteriorating.

The alert there began Feb. 7 with news that some Iranian provocateurs had come into the city from across the nearby border and whipped up people in the mosque over the cartoons.

On Wednesday, as expected, the demonstrations in Herat began sharply after 9 a.m. prayers. They ended like clockwork at 11 a.m. A few shots had been fired, but no harm done. Thursday was Ashura, the day that Shiites march and flagellate themselves to honor Hussein ibn Ali, the martyred grandson of the prophet Muhammad, and the security lid was still on. This time, fighting broke out between the Shiites and the Sunnis. There were gunshots and the sounds of grenades and 50-caliber guns, and some signs of smoke from a couple of Shiite mosques.

Word came to us that as many as 30 people had died, that doctors in the hospital were being assaulted by the families of people whose lives they could not save. This was an exaggeration. In the end, six were counted dead. No brutalized doctors appeared.

But now, Ismail Kahn, a venerated warlord who once ruled Herat until he was dislodged by the national government last year, is saying some Sunnis are missing in Herat. Mr. Kahn was sent back to Herat with a contingent of national police officers to help quell the violence by the very government that drove him out last year. Now he is threatening to search every house in Herat to find the missing Sunnis. More violence seems likely. Many Westerners are getting out for a while.

This sort of thing is likely to go on for a while, and might get much worse. The fear is that support for the commitment to Afghanistan will diminish in the West with the passage of time and the increase in violence stirred up by a variety of players, not just the Taliban and al-Qaida.

So let me share with you a couple of encounters I've had in the midst of this chaos. One was a visit to a group of female farmers outside of Herat whose lives were better because the West, especially the United States, has given them the resources to grow garlic, cumin and saffron - all valuable crops.

Another was here in Kabul. In the midst of the security alert and all the clamoring for Western blood, I visited a school for the deaf, supported by the United Nations and a U.S. humanitarian group. People at the school have developed a 2,000-word signing dictionary. They are proud people.

Alone, neither of these undertakings is enough to withstand the forces of violence and hatred that have gripped Afghanistan for decades, nay, centuries. But put them together with the development of usable roads, irrigation, sanitation, education, economic opportunities and the other stuff that Western money is being used to develop, and you see signs of significant change.

So far as I can see from my read of the history of Afghanistan, no other conqueror - from Tamerlane to the Taliban - has helped in this way. So the opportunity is here, if only we aren't scared away. It will take more money, billions more. It may take more troops. But let's not forget why we came here in the first place. This cause is just.

G. Jefferson Price III is a former foreign correspondent and an editor at The Sun who has been traveling on behalf of Catholic Relief Services.

AFGHANISTAN: TB major health problem in the south - WHO

Source: IRIN 15 Feb 2006

KANDAHAR, 15 February (IRIN) - Zakera, a 40-year-old widow and mother of three, sits in a long queue of mostly female patients awaiting medicine at a tuberculosis (TB) control centre located in the Shar-e-Now district of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.

"I have been suffering from a cough and pain for seven months, the same disease I had 10 years ago," the emaciated Zakera spluttered. "The deadly disease killed my first husband and then I was married to his brother who also died of TB 10 years ago," Zakera noted."

"Life has become so miserable for me, Sharina, my only daughter, has also been suffering from the same illness for six months." Zakera, who had to travel for two days to get to the clinic, added.

Zakera is one of thousands of people suffering from TB in post-conflict Afghanistan. According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, approximately 70,000 new TB cases occur annually in Afghanistan, and an estimated 20,000 people in the country die from the disease every year. Two-thirds of Afghanistan's reported TB cases are women.

According to health officials, the disease is rampant in the southern provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Urozgan, Helmand and Daikundi.

"Due to lack of government attention and weak health infrasturces, TB still remains one of the biggest health problems in the southern region," Dr Mamoon Tahiry, regional coordinator of the national TB control programme for the southern provinces, said in Kandahar.

Lack of education about the condition is another key issue, with late diagnosis and failure to complete subscribed medicines also playing their part in keeping TB prevalence rates high.

"TB is one of the major health problems in the south, if controlled measures are not strengthened right away it could cripple thousands of people with its ultimate impact on the economy," said Dr Arshad Quddus, medical officer at WHO southern regional office in Kandahar.

TB is a disease which usually attacks the lungs, but it can affect almost any part of the body. A person with TB does not necessarily feel ill but the symptoms can include a cough that will not go away, tiredness, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever, night sweats and coughing up blood.

Like the common cold, TB is spread through the air after infected people cough or sneeze on others.

Commenting on the problem of TB in southern Afghanistan, Dr Hayat Mohammad Ahmadzai, director of the national TB control programme at the health ministry, said that the government was trying its best to improve the TB control system in the region.

"We have trained personnel in the region and they are working hard to expand the TB control programme," Ahmadzai noted, adding the ministry had already established 45 health facilities providing TB services in the area and was planning to raise the number to 92 during 2006 in all five southern provinces.

According to health experts, of every 100 patients infected with TB and left without treatment for two years, 50 would die, 25 would recover and 25 percent would survive as chronic cases with the potential to infect others.

According to the WHO, TB kills more young people and adults than any other infectious disease and is the world's biggest killer of women. TB kills approximately 2 million people worldwide each year and the global epidemic is growing. The breakdown in health services, the spread of HIV/AIDS and the emergence of strains of multi-drug resistant TB are contributing to its spread worldwide.

Between 2002 and 2020 at least 36 million people globally will die of TB - if further control is not strengthened, the WHO has warned.

[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.]