In this bulletin:

• Army threatens to storm Afghan jail after two-day standoff
• Mujadeddi in negotiations with rioting prisoners
• Afghan riot inmates set demands – BBC
• Two Russians hit in mine blast in Afghanistan - diplomats
• He's Welcome In Pakistan
• A First Look Back at the Horror
• Afghan, Pakistani border guards swap prisoners
• Pakistan to close three more refugee camps
• US holds 500 terror suspects in Afghanistan Minister won't support vote on troops in Afghanistan
• Canadian troops dispose of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan
• Waging peace in Afghanistan
• Friend or foe? UK forces enter Afghanistan's dark zone
• 'Lioness of the Panjshir' emerging as a new leader in Afghanistan
• 61 Afghan children treated in Germany return home
• Little hope for Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas

Army threatens to storm Afghan jail after two-day standoff

Kabul (AFP) - A standoff between security forces and hundreds of rioting inmates at Afghanistan's main jail dragged into a second day, with the army threatening to storm a seized cell block if negotiations failed.

There were believed to be about four dead bodies among the nearly 1,300 prisoners, who had not been given food since the riot erupted late Saturday at the dilapidated Pul-e-Charkhi prison on the outskirts of the capital Kabul.

The rioters had also refused to hand over their wounded, believed to number up to 30 people, to ambulances waiting outside the sprawling complex, officials said. There were calls from inside the building for food and medicine, they said.

Security forces had closed the gate into the complex to hold back prisoners who appeared to have armed themselves with makeshift weapons including steel bedposts and shards of glass, witnesses inside the jail said.

Negotiations between the prisoners -- including about 300 Taliban and Al-Qaeda members -- and government officials opened early Monday. "The negotiations are still ongoing but if it doesn't work, we will intervene militarily. We will carry out an operation," an Afghan army official said on condition of anonymity.

About 200 extra soldiers took up positions at the compound where hundreds of heavily armed soldiers and police reinforcements arrived Sunday. The riot erupted late Saturday when prisoners attacked wardens and set bedding and furniture ablaze.

They smashed windows and doors and ripped holes in walls separating units for women, criminals and political prisoners -- including those from Al-Qaeda and the hardline Taliban government ousted in late 2001, officials said.

Prison wardens opened fire to control the situation, apparently causing some of the casualties. Others appeared to have occurred when police periodically fired into the building after the riot.

A police official and another involved in the negotiations said on condition of anonymity that there were four bodies inside the complex and around 30 wounded.

Human rights worker Firoda Kohstani told AFP she was able to speak to one of the prisoners, a doctor, through a window and he said there were 18 wounded people in his unit and three dead bodies.

He said suspicions that prisoners had raped women inmates were unfounded, Kohstani told AFP. Deputy Justice Minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai said it was difficult to know the exact situation until authorities were able to enter the block.

A list of demands drawn up by the rioters included complaints about overcrowding, prison food and the separation of prisoners from their visitors, the police official said.

It also alleged that criminals were able to use bribes to avoid jail. "The list has been given to the government authorities. Now they are discussing it," he said.

Some reports said the unrest may have been sparked by resistance to new prison uniforms. Others said the riot was a bid by Taliban prisoners to escape.

The massive and rundown jail, built in the 1970s, is notorious for the detention and torture of thousands of people during the communist rule of the 1980s.

Seven Taliban prisoners escaped from it a month ago, allegedly with help from prison wardens. Five guards and four inmates with suspected links to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban died during a standoff there in December 2004.

The Taliban have been battling President Hamid Karzai's government since they were toppled from power in a US-led operation in 2001 for failing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.

Mujadeddi in negotiations with rioting prisoners

KABUL, Feb 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A senior Afghan government official Monday went into negotiations with rioting inmates at Afghanistan's largest and most fortified jail on the outskirts of Kabul, a knowledgeable source revealed.

National Reconciliation Commission Chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi began talks with the rioters at the notorious Pul-i-Charkhi Jail, where hundreds of terror convicts including Taliban and al-Qaeda activists are being held.

At least, seven prisoners and policemen were killed and more than 30 injured in the bloody clash that jolted the jail for several hours on Sunday. The prisoners, who have already ceased fire, demand immediate release.

Tense calm prevails at the high-security prison, as Afghan security forces, US-led coalition troops and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldiers are patrolling the area to calm down the situation. The drama, on the face of it, remains far from over.

Afghan riot inmates set demands – BBC

Prisoners who have seized part of Afghanistan's main high-security jail have issued a series of demands. Inmates want talks with senior officials, better food and a change in jail uniform rules, among other things.

Security forces are continuing to ring Kabul's notorious Pul-e-Charkhi jail, more than a day after the riot began. Sources told the BBC that seven people had been killed and 36 injured in the rioting, although officials deny this. Negotiation efforts have so far failed.

Taleban and al-Qaeda members as well as ordinary criminals are involved, officials say. Inmates are reported to be armed with knives and makeshift clubs, but not guns. Gunfire was heard within the prison walls on Saturday night and Sunday, but the situation appeared calmer on Monday.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary, outside the prison, says only two gun shots were heard on Monday morning, and that there are fewer troops at the scene. He says US and Nato forces are also monitoring events, and that two drones have been circling overhead.

Hundreds of prisoners remain barricaded inside the women's wing, our correspondent says. A senior prison official told the BBC that he was "concerned" that some 1,350 prisoners who had "taken control" of a women's wing may have raped some of the inmates.

"We really do not know how many people are killed or injured since we cannot enter the area," he said. Two female prison guards are reported to have been taken hostage.

Trouble apparently started at about 2200 (1730 GMT) on Saturday in Block 2 - which houses 1,300 inmates - after a change in prison uniform rules.

By Sunday evening local time, up to 750 inmates jailed for ordinary criminal offences in another block had begun burning furniture in support of the Block 2 prisoners. Some reports said the riot developed into an escape attempt, with prisoners trying to climb over the walls.

"It's the work of al-Qaeda and Taleban. By making things violent, they want to escape the prison. So far no-one has succeeded doing this," Gen Salam Bakhshi, director of Afghan prisons, told the BBC.

Afghan MP Assadullah Hymatyar denounced any use of gunfire to quell the unrest, and called for "immediate, peaceful negotiations".

"It's a plot to kill the political prisoners," he told the BBC. "If it's not, then why are they firing at them in the blocks behind closed doors? We are asking for a clear explanation from the government."

Pul-e-Charkhi is a huge prison complex built in the 1970s on the outskirts of the capital. Correspondents say the vast and run-down jail is notorious for the disappearance and torture of thousands of Afghans during the communist era.

Last month, seven Taleban suspects escaped from the jail, with prison guards accused by officials of helping the break-out. Four men described as "dangerous militants" escaped from US custody at the Bagram air base near Kabul last year.

Two Russians hit in mine blast in Afghanistan - diplomats

MOSCOW, February 26 (RIA Novosti) - Two Russian citizens were injured, one of them seriously, in a mine explosion in northern Afghanistan Saturday, the Russian consulate general said Sunday. Yuri Kolotukhin and Samit Sadykhov of the Russian Trading House sustained various wounds, the consulate's spokesman in Mazar-e-Sharif said.

"The incident occurred at 4pm local time near the Hayraton checkpoint 70 km (about 45 miles) from Mazar-e-Sharif," the spokesman said. He said that the injured had been taken to a hospital in the town of Termez by Russian consulate employees, and Kolotukhin had undergone several operations since then.

"Kolotukhin had to have one of his legs and four fingers on the right hand amputated. He is in stable condition now," he said, adding that Sadykhov had received minor fragmentation wounds. The diplomat said the Russian Trading House's employees had arrived in the country on business.

He's Welcome In Pakistan - By Ahmed Rashid Washington Post

LAHORE When President Bush lands in Islamabad later this week, it may be the closest he ever comes to being in the same neighborhood as Osama bin Laden. His nemesis is probably only a few hours drive away in Pakistan's Pashtun belt, now considered to be al Qaeda Central and one of the world's most dangerous regions.

During the past 12 months or so, CIA and Pentagon officials have quietly modified the line they employed for three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- that bin Laden was hiding out "in the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border." Now the same officials say with some confidence that he is "not based in Afghanistan." Whatever ambiguity there was in the past is gone: Bin Laden is in Pakistan. What's left is the question: What are the United States and its ally, Pakistan, doing about it?

Not enough, according to high-ranking Afghan, Pakistani and Western officials I've spoken to here. Indeed, the disastrous policies of the United States and Pakistan, starting with the aftermath of the war in 2001, have only hastened the radicalization of northwest Pakistan and made it more hospitable to bin Laden and his Taliban allies. The region has become a haven for bin Laden and a base for Taliban raids across the border back into Afghanistan which they had fled.

Not that you'd be able to tell any of that from what Bush administration officials have been saying. Almost everything the administration claims about the al Qaeda leader is tinged with bravado and untruthfulness. "We are dealing with a figure who has been able to hide, but he's on the run," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month. Here in Pakistan, however, the view is different. Bin Laden is not considered to be on the run, but well protected by friends who are making his life as comfortable as possible.

After all, his number two, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, appears to have a busy social calendar in Pakistan's Pashtun belt. U.S. missiles narrowly missed him at a dinner party held in his honor on Jan. 13.

This represents a change in venue for bin Laden and his lieutenants. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, bin Laden's zone of influence was among Pashtuns in Afghanistan, which was the center of the Taliban's power and its major recruiting base. The Pashtuns are Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and have ruled the country for the past 300 years. They were artificially divided by the British so that today millions of Pashtuns also live across the border in Pakistan, many of them in seven so-called tribal agencies where control by the government has been minimal.

It was in eastern Afghanistan that bin Laden made his last public appearance in Jalalabad on Nov. 10, 2001, just after the northern cities had begun to fall to the anti-Taliban alliance. He addressed an estimated 1,000 Pashtun notables and militants, urging them to continue resisting the American invaders, according to U.S. journalists working in the region at the time. He dished out wads of U.S. and Pakistani cash and then disappeared into the mountain fastness of Tora Bora, never to be seen again. (The CIA didn't learn of the meeting for several days.)

Few Afghan Pashtuns would have dared to betray him then. But times have changed in Afghanistan. The majority of Afghan Pashtuns now want the benefits of peace -- economic development, roads and schools.

Pakistan's Pashtuns, by contrast, have become more radicalized than they ever were before 9/11. And the bloody Taliban-al Qaeda resurgence now under way has relied on Pakistan's Pashtun belt for most of its recruitment, logistics, weapons and funding.

Bin Laden's new friendship zone stretches nearly 2,000 miles along Pakistan's Pashtun belt -- from Chitral in the Northern Areas near the Chinese border, south through the troubled tribal agencies including Waziristan, down to Zhob on the Balochistan border, then to the provincial capital Quetta and southwest to the Iranian border. The region includes every landscape from desert to snow-capped mountains. Sparsely populated, it provides bin Laden an ideal sanctuary.

Al Qaeda's money, inspiration and organizational abilities have helped turn Pakistan's Pashtun belt into the extremist base it is today, but U.S. and Pakistani policies have helped more. Although the Taliban and al Qaeda extremists were routed from Afghanistan by U.S. forces, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's refusal to put enough U.S. troops on the ground let the extremists escape and regroup in Pakistan's Pashtun belt. The Taliban settled in Balochistan where they had originated before 1994, while al Qaeda members hid in the tribal agencies they knew well. Bin Laden had built tunnels and caves there for the anti-Soviet mujaheddin in the 1980s.

What followed was a disaster: For 27 months after the fall of the Taliban regime, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Washington's closest ally in the region, allowed the extremists free rein in the Pashtun tribal areas to re-establish training camps for militants who had escaped Afghanistan. These included Arabs, Central Asians, Chechens, Kashmiris, Africans, Uighurs and a smattering of East Asians. It was a mini-replay of the gathering in Afghanistan after bin Laden arrived there in 1996.

Musharraf did capture some Arab members of al Qaeda, but he avoided the Taliban because he was convinced that the U.S.-led coalition forces would not stay long in Afghanistan. He wanted to maintain the Taliban as a strategic option in case Afghanistan dissolved into civil war and chaos again. The army also protected extremist Kashmiri groups who had trained in Afghanistan before 9/11 and now had to be repositioned.

Indeed, in March 2002, just three months after the defeat of the Taliban, the United States began to withdraw its Special Forces, surveillance satellites and drones from Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq. Distracted by Baghdad, it did not notice what was happening in the tribal agencies. By the time the Pakistan army entered South Waziristan in March 2004, the extremists were so well entrenched that 250 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the first encounters.

Since then, with no consistent political strategy to woo the Pashtun population away from bin Laden, the army has steadily lost ground. The political agents, who ran the tribal agencies with a mixture of bribery and pressure, have been replaced by arrogant generals ignorant of local conditions. Today the extremists rule over North and South Waziristan and other tribal agencies, while the 70,000 Pakistani troops stationed there are boxed up in outposts, too frightened to patrol the mountains. More than 100 pro-government tribal elders have been assassinated by extremists for divulging information to the U.S. or Pakistani secret services.

Meanwhile down south, the Balochistan provincial government is controlled by a coalition of pro-Taliban fundamentalist parties, which came to power in elections in 2002. Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islami, the party that controls the key ministries, openly supports the Taliban.

This has created a new stronghold from which the Taliban can launch attacks back in Afghanistan. The 99 U.S. soldiers killed last year in Afghanistan were mostly targeted by the Taliban based in Balochistan. While Washington's principal aim has been to capture bin Laden and decapitate al Qaeda, whose members are believed to be in Waziristan, the United States has failed to pressure Pakistan to deal with the Taliban, despite protestations from Afghan President Hamid Karzai. On a visit to Islamabad this month, Karzai handed Musharraf intelligence dossiers detailing how suicide bombers are being trained in Pakistan. In the past few months, at least 30 attacks have killed nearly 100 people in Afghanistan, including NATO peacekeepers and a Canadian diplomat.

The dossiers listed the names and addresses of Pakistani recruiters and people who equip suicide bombers with explosives before sending them to Afghanistan. Much of the recruitment takes place at a radical Islamic bookshop, several mosques and some madrassas in the port city of Karachi, while the training is done at safe houses in Quetta and Chaman, in Balochistan province.

"We have provided President Musharraf with a lot of very detailed information on acts of terrorism . . . and we discussed in great detail what actions Pakistan could now take," Karzai told me on Feb. 17 in Islamabad. ''Americans are dying, a Canadian diplomat has been killed, our people are suffering. So it is time that action is taken to stop these acts of terrorism and interference in Afghanistan internal affairs," he said. "We expect results."

Getting those results won't be easy. Bin Laden has fighters and sympathizers down the length and breadth of Pakistan's Pashtun belt. No Pakistani Pashtun has reason to betray bin Laden, despite the $27 million reward for his head. Thanks to the drug trade in Afghanistan and the suitcases full of cash still arriving from backers in the Arabian Gulf, neither al Qaeda nor the local Pashtuns are short money. The Pakistani army's failure to offer Pashtuns a greater political role in the national framework has not inspired any loyalty among the tribesmen. And misguided U.S. interventions, such as the January missile strike that killed women and children, do the rest.

Washington's recent decison to start pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan this year has only reinforced al Qaeda's belief that it is winning. After nearly five years of avoiding capture or death, every single day that bin Laden stays alive is a day that inspires the extremists who protect him and join his ranks.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is the author of "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia" (Yale University Press) and "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia" (Penguin Books).

A First Look Back at the Horror
Afghans Begin to Address Decades of Brutality at Ex-Official's Trial
By Griff Witte Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, February 25, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan -- If there ever were lights in the makeshift courtroom where Asadullah Sarwari is on trial for his life, they are gone. The room is cold and cramped, the breath of the accused and his accusers swirling together in a faint gray haze.

"I t has been 27 years, and we don't know where our brothers and uncles and husbands and fathers are buried," Obeidullah el-Mogaddedi, 75, said during the trial last month, his voice cracking and his finger stabbing the air. "We want to know their fate."

Afghanistan's first war crimes trial has brought emotional pleas from witnesses and a lengthy catalogue of charges against Sarwari, a communist-era intelligence chief who is accused of ordering executions in the late 1970s. But no one who testified at the hearing saw him commit a crime.

Lack of evidence is one of many problems that have arisen as Afghanistan attempts to confront its violent past, conducting the first such trial after a quarter-century of conflict that claimed at least a million lives.

Until recently, the country had seemed more intent on burying its history than reliving it through potentially explosive investigations and trials. That is beginning to change. But as the process gets underway, it is revealing unpleasant truths about the present as well as the past.

In many ways, the Sarwari case has degenerated into a farce. The defendant, who has been imprisoned for 14 years, has had difficulty keeping an attorney because lawyers are pressured not to represent him. The prosecutors have presented scant evidence. Witnesses have spoken at length about what they heard from relatives or friends, but none has produced evidence.

Afghan human rights activists and international observers said the problems are symptomatic of a justice system that is undeveloped, corrupt, highly politicized and poorly equipped after decades of neglect and manipulation.

"This trial is so fundamentally flawed in so many ways, we're recommending it not continue," said Patricia Gossman, director of the Afghanistan Justice Project, an international group that has pushed for accountability. "Totally left out is any concern for the truth. It's not fair to the defendant or to the victims."

Yet the stakes are enormous. The Sarwari trial could set precedents for future war crimes cases in Afghanistan, a country in which years of civil war and turmoil have produced countless atrocities. Hundreds of former militia commanders could be brought to trial.

Afghan officials and their Western backers, especially the United States, have felt it is too soon to aggravate such raw wounds. Although surveys have shown that most Afghans want abusers brought to justice, officials have said peace must come before justice in a fledgling democracy with a weak government, well-armed private militias and deep ethnic and ideological divisions.

But now, with rural insurgents, drug traffickers and regional strongmen gaining power, some wonder whether postponing Afghanistan's reckoning with the past may be ruining its chance for a different kind of future.

"The people clearly link security with justice," said Nader Nadery, a member of Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission. "They say that if there is no justice for crimes of the past, there will be impunity and therefore no peace."

In December, the cabinet endorsed the initiation of a truth-seeking process and a strategy for bringing war criminals to trial. But the plan is short on specifics, and it remains to be seen whether it will be implemented.

Countries such as South Africa and Chile have gone through similar processes, but the challenge here may be more complex. The country endured three conflicts between 1978 and 2001: the communist era and Soviet occupation, the civil war among Islamic militias known as mujaheddin, and Islamic Taliban rule. In each case, the line between oppressor and oppressed was blurred.

Afghanistan's problems are not behind it. Many of the figures accused of bombing cities, torturing adversaries and ravaging the populace have managed to stay in positions of authority. The new parliament, elected in September, includes leaders from nearly every group accused of past abuses.

"They were the same as me, and now they are back in power," Sarwari, a burly man in his fifties with a long, pale face, said glumly during an interview in the Kabul prison run by the national intelligence service. "If I hadn't been arrested, I would be in the parliament now."

In 1979, Sarwari was the government's intelligence chief during an especially brutal period of communist rule, when tens of thousands of people were taken into custody and never heard from again. In one week, more than 70 members of Mogaddedi's family disappeared.

Sarwari has been imprisoned since his arrest in 1992. But in many ways his trial is an accident. Late last year, prosecutors realized he had never been tried and hastily put a case together, despite widespread agreement that the judicial system was nowhere near ready to handle such trials.

"Sarwari is really the symbol of the beginning of violence against humanity in this country," said Rangin Dadfar Spanta, a top adviser to President Hamid Karzai. "War crimes did not begin with the mujaheddin or the Taliban. The beginning was Mr. Sarwari and his party and the coup of 1978."

After the bloody overthrow, the communist regime launched a merciless campaign to eliminate rivals. The Mogaddedi family, prominent members of a strain of Islamic mysticism known as Sufism, was among the thousands of victims. One night in 1979, dozens of armed men showed up at the family's Kabul compound and Sufi sanctuary.

According to witnesses, Sarwari supervised as first the men, then the women and children were taken.

Mary Aman, then a girl in the extended clan, recounted getting a hysterical call from her cousin, cut off in midsentence as the power failed. Soon, armed men were at the door. They took her brother Yahya, 17, who had dreamed of becoming a physician. She never saw him again.

"They put their guns to my chest and said, 'Don't scream or we'll kill you,' " said Aman, now 38. "I wish they had killed me that night. They took everyone else."

Six months later, the women and children were released. For years, rumors circulated that the Mogaddedi men had been sent to Siberia, pushed out of planes or killed and buried in mass graves. Family members want Sarwari to tell them what happened. Then they want him executed.

Despite the wealth of accusations against him, the chances of a conviction are in question, largely because so little evidence has been presented.

One trial witness said his uncle told him Sarwari had beaten 60 people to death with his bare hands. But that uncle is dead. Another witness named Abdul Samad, 33, began yelling at Sarwari, accusing him of killing his father and three uncles. When the judge asked whether he had any evidence, Samad replied, "No, I was too young."

Sarwari, given a chance to defend himself, said others in the government had committed the crimes. But he said his most recent attorney had quit, so the judge granted him more time to prepare his case. The trial was scheduled to resume Saturday.

In many respects, Sarwari's case is easier than those that could follow. He is in jail, and the communists have long since been discredited. But the mujaheddin leaders, who defeated the communist forces and then turned their guns on one another, are still in power -- revered by followers and despised by their victims.

The mujaheddin's capture of Kabul in 1992 ushered in some of the worst years of war, as rival factions rocketed the capital, fighting block to block for control. In southwest Kabul, it is nearly impossible to find anyone who did not lose a home, a limb or a relative.

Mohammed Raza was 7 when his father was struck dead by a rocket as he walked home from his job selling kebabs. Now 18, Raza has been weaving carpets for 11 years to support his family. He thinks he knows who killed his father: Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, a militia commander who controlled a nearby hill.

But Sayyaf, a white-bearded Islamic scholar, was elected to the parliament in September. Later, he also came within a few votes of its leadership, losing to a former fellow commander.

"Maybe Sayyaf will be brought to justice," Raza said, "but I don't know how."

Afghan, Pakistani border guards swap prisoners

TORKHAM, Feb 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan and Pakistani officials swapped prisoners at the Torkham border last night, security officials said on Sunday.

Commander Shah Mahmud, in charge of Afghan border guards, told Pajhwok Afghan News that in all 10 prisoners were exchanged by the two sides. Among those swapped, three were Pakistanis and seven Afghans, he added.

Mahmud said the three Pakistani nationals from Peshawar, Swabi and Bajaur had been arrested by Nangarhar police for entering Afghanistan without valid travel documents. The seven Afghans apprehended by Pakistan were ANA soldiers, said the commander, who did not know as to why and when they were detained.

A Pakistani paramilitary commander at Torkham, Tajamul Afridi, also confirmed the prisoner exchange. He revealed five of the seven Afghans had been detained in Karachi on terrorism charges, which could not be substantiated.

Deputy Commander of Nangarhar's Border Police Col. Ibrarullah said the prisoner swap, the second in three months, was negotiated by intelligence officials of the two countries.

Pakistan to close three more refugee camps

KABUL, Feb 24 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Pakistan is going to close three more refugee camps in its Balochistan and North West Frontier Province (NWFP) at the end of April this year.

An official statement released in Pakistan's central capital of Islamabad the other day said, the camps to be closed included the Kacha Garhi refugee camp in Peshawar and Jungle Pir Alizai and Gard-i-Zangal camps in Balochistan province.

The three camps are housing 129,000 refugees. Of these, 51,000 are living in Kacha Garhi, 35,000 Jungle Pir Alizai and 43,000 in the Gard-i-Zangal refugee camp.

The Pakistan government said refugees living in those camps should either repatriate to their country or relocate to other camps in Pakistan. The statement said that the camps were being closed due to security, land development and camp consolidation reason and no one would be allowed to stay in the camps after the due date.

Two days back, the UN agency for refugees, in a statement issued in Islamabad, said that they were going to restart the voluntary repatriation programme of Afghan DPs to their country from March 2006. The programme was halted at the advent of cold weather last year, which would be resumed next week.

US holds 500 terror suspects in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- The U.S. military holds some 500 terror suspects at a prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, indefinitely and without charges, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The military has quietly expanded the less-visible prison, where terror suspects are held in more primitive conditions, compared with the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has sparked an international debate over its future, the report said.

Some of the detainees have been held at Bagram, some 60 km north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, for as long as two or three years, and unlike those at Guantanamo, they have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as "enemy combatants," military officials were quoted as saying.

The report said Pentagon officials have often described the detention center at an American air base at Bagram as a screening center, and that they said most of the detainees were Afghans who might eventually be released under an amnesty program or transferred to an Afghan prison that is to be built with American aid.

While Guantanamo offers carefully scripted tours for members of Congress and journalists, Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the International Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there. The prison may not be photographed, even from a distance, the report said.

Citing accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, the report said the prison at Bagram is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its counterpart in Guantanamo. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, sleeping on the floor on foam mats, and until about a year ago, often used plastics buckets for latrines, according to the report. Enditem

Minister won't support vote on troops in Afghanistan

O'Connor will try to persuade Canadians that soldiers will increase Afghan stability - JEFF SALLOT – Globe and Mail

OTTAWA -- Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan aren't looking for a fight but will defend themselves, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says, admitting he's got a big selling job ahead of him to explain why the troops are there.

"We're not in Afghanistan to conduct combat operations," Mr. O'Connor said yesterday, rejecting the suggestion by the NDP that there should be a parliamentary vote on the deployment of 2,300 Canadian troops in the Kandahar region in southern Afghanistan.

Canada is taking on this military commitment "to provide a security environment, a stable environment" for the Afghan government to rebuild schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, he said on CTV's Question Period.

"There is an insurgency in Afghanistan. But we're not aggressively going after the insurgents," Mr. O'Connor said. "But if we're attacked, we'll attack back."

Canadian troops came under fire Saturday night and one soldier, 2nd Lieutenant Kelly Catton, 22, was slightly wounded when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the door of his vehicle. "I got peppered a little bit with some shrapnel," the soldier told The Canadian Press. "It's fairly minor, all superficial stuff."

Within hours of the attack, the Afghan National Army found a mortar shell that was set up as a roadside bomb on the same piece of road stretching from the Canadian camp to the main coalition base at Kandahar airfield. Canadian troops disposed of the bomb yesterday.

Mr. O'Connor, who has received briefings from the defence staff that include casualty estimates, said he did not want to speculate on the numbers. Eight soldiers and a diplomat have died in Afghanistan in the four years since Ottawa first deployed units to join the U.S.-led mission to destroy al-Qaeda terrorist training camps.

But the Canadian military commitment is entering a new phase this month, with infantry troops forming the backbone of an international task force in southern Afghanistan, and Canada taking over command from the United States in the region.

Mr. O'Connor said he was surprised by a national public-opinion poll published last week that showed 62 per cent of respondents are opposed to sending Canadian military forces to Afghanistan.

The poll, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV, also showed 73 per cent said there should be a vote in Parliament before the troops are deployed.

"This poll tells me I've got a lot of work to do," Mr. O'Connor said. He said the results were a surprise because polls for years and years have shown that Canadians strongly support the work of the military abroad.

Mr. O'Connor, who is a retired army general, acknowledged that the Afghanistan deployment is not like the typical United Nations peacekeeping mission that Canadians have been performing for years because the Afghan government is facing an insurgency.

A flourishing opium poppy trade compounds the problem, he said. Nevertheless, "I don't think it's getting worse," the minister said. "Actually, things overall are getting better there."

Mr. O'Connor said he will provide an update on the Afghan mission to the new Parliament when it convenes in April, but he sees no need for a House vote. The previous Liberal government made the initial commitment with Conservative support.

Meanwhile, the NDP is calling for a full debate and parliamentary vote on the mission. NDP critic Dawn Black said MPs owe it to the members of the Canadian Forces to ensure that all the right questions are being asked about how long they will be expected to serve in Afghanistan and under what conditions.

The Liberal critic, Ujjal Dosanjh, also wanted to know "what the exit strategy is." He said it's important for Parliament to fully debate the deployment "with casualties beginning to happen," but that the government does not need a vote of approval in the House.

Canadian troops dispose of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan - Canadian Press LES PERREAUX Sun Feb 26

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Canadian troops disposed of a roadside bomb Sunday, a few hours after a fellow soldier was injured by a rocket attack a few metres away.

Engineers from Canada's provincial reconstruction team defused the old Russian mortar shell that was set up along the same stretch of road where two rocket-propelled grenades were fired at a Canadian G-Wagon jeep. Engineers suspect the bomb was meant to be the second blow of a one-two punch.

2nd-Lieut. Kelly Catton, 22, was hit in the legs by shrapnel from a rocket-grenade that struck the door of his vehicle on Saturday night. Catton, from Dundurn, Sask., limped around camp Sunday morning.

He ate breakfast with friends before checking out the reading material at the camp store. He said he didn't feel any pain until he got back to Camp Nathan Smith in Kandahar, where he is based. "I got peppered a little bit with some shrapnel," Catton said. "It's fairly minor, all superficial stuff." Catton hopped around on one foot to humour television crews who asked him to demonstrate where he was hit.

The Saturday night attack from an improvised explosive device came along a road known as IED Alley. "I couldn't see much from the seat I was in," Catton said. "We were driving along and there was a bright flash. That was basically all I remember, although I was conscious the whole time."

Within hours of the attack, the Afghan National Army found a mortar shell that was set up as a roadside bomb on the same piece of road stretching from the PRT camp to the main coalition base at Kandahar airfield. "It was a typical IED, as far as what we see around here," said one of the engineers, who cannot be identified for security reasons. "It wasn't the most complex device that we've seen, but the funny thing is it's extremely effective because it is simple." The engineer said the device would have caused serious damage to any civilian vehicles or bystanders.

The soldiers involved in the rocket attack momentarily emerged from their armoured vehicles to assess the situation before carrying on to their home camp.

Waging peace in Afghanistan

Canadian troops deliver everything from textbooks to tractors, but ensuring the aid gets through can be dangerous - National Post –Canada Chris Wattie Feb.25

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The children of Zahir Shahi School, a spotlessly clean compound in downtown Kandahar, shuffle nervously into the hallway outside the principal's office, eyes fixed firmly on the carpeted floor, with only the briefest of curious glances at the looming Canadian soldiers.

They line up in front of their school's whitewashed walls within earshot of the cries of vendors and the honking horns of one of the city's busiest bazaars. Then, they read haltingly from letters they have written to schoolchildren in Canada, and shyly thank the burly soldiers, members of the Canadian provincial reconstruction team bristling with weaponry and body armour, who have delivered a small truckload of school supplies.

Captain Mike Schultz, the team's civil-military co-operation officer, smiles at the children's obvious nervousness -- it was not so long ago that visits from soldiers meant something much less welcome than a delivery of schoolbags, books, pens, pencils, paper and other hard-to-find necessities.

"Obviously our soldiers are interested in helping out the kids," he says. "It's sort of a statement to the children that the coalition is supporting them."

He shrugs off the children's nervous reception -- he is used to it. The Canadians, with their weapons and armoured vehicles, get suspicious, even hostile, looks from locals even as they deliver humanitarian aid, but without the military hardware the aid would be unlikely to get through.

Still, he has noticed a difference in the six months the Canadian reconstruction team has been in operation. "There's a tremendous change here: It's very rewarding."

At Zahir Shahi, progress means little girls can go to school, even the same one as little boys -- albeit in segregated classes -- in the city that was the main power base for the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic militia that was ousted after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The Canadians have given 1,500 "goody bags" filled with supplies to children in Kandahar province, arranged the donation of firefighting equipment to the Kandahar fire department, provided textbooks and other support to Kandahar University, distributed blankets and aid to orphanages and refugee camps, and handed over tractors and wheat seed to local farmers.

But without the heavy machine-guns in the turrets of their armoured G-wagons, or the even heavier firepower of a coalition task force at nearby Kandahar Air Field, it is doubtful the children of Zahir Shahi would be getting new books, crayons, paper and pencils. The Taliban has been mounting an increasingly deadly campaign of roadside and suicide bombings, and still burns down schools, threatening or killing teachers who instruct girls.

"We're in that loop where security provides development and development provides security," says Colonel Steve Noonan, outgoing commander of the Canadian contingent in southern Afghanistan. "This is a state that's still fragile, that could still revert to being a safe haven for terrorists."

International aid agencies are still thin on the ground here, largely because the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their allies began targeting aid workers about a year ago, but the region remains one of the poorest in the country.

Afghanistan as a whole has been relatively stable since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, mainly because of the more than 30,000 international troops, including a 2,200-strong Canadian task force now deploying in Kandahar. A constitution has been adopted, the country's first-ever presidential election was held last year and voters in September chose the first elected parliament in three decades.

Bazaars are bustling in cities across the country, construction sites are springing up everywhere, and the inflow of billions in aid has given Afghanistan an economic growth rate of more than 10% on average in the past three years.

However, many of the improvements have bypassed ordinary Afghans, particularly in remote districts in the south where Canadian soldiers are now patrolling.

Despite the international hoopla that attended the signing last month of the Afghan Compact-- a five-year aid agreement between the Afghan government and the international community -- few Afghans have felt much benefit from the political changes of the past few years.

Most continue to live in abject poverty and have little faith in their government's capacity to do much of anything to help them. More than two decades of civil war and years of Taliban rule have left Afghanistan's modern infrastructure in ruins, with much of the country reduced to living conditions one diplomat described as "medieval."

The average life expectancy is 44 years, one in five children dies before the age of five, and about 1,600 of every 100,000 mothers die in childbirth -- one of the highest rates in the world. Only 13% of Afghans have access to safe water, 12% to adequate sanitation, and 6% to electricity, according to World Bank figures.

Repairing the damage has been a slow and uneven process, stalled by poorly co-ordinated international aid projects, widespread corruption and incompetence in the central government. In addition, powerful warlords in the provinces refuse to acknowledge the national government's sway, and there is an increase in violence, blamed on the Taliban in the south and east, and criminals in other areas.

The reconstruction team's civil-military co-operation cell, a military humanitarian aid unit, has a $2- million a year budget for the few small projects it can organize, but Col. Noonan, who hands over command at the end of the month, says Kandahar's problems are too serious and the tribal, religious and linguistic rifts too deep to be solved by the military alone. "It's too wide for just a military to take on, but it's not too wide for a nation."

Which is why representatives of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and Foreign Affairs Canada are part of the reconstruction team in Kandahar and why Canada has made Afghanistan its largest single donor country for bilateral aid.

The United States is still by far the largest donor to Afghanistan, contributing more than half the US$4-billion in reconstruction aid last year. Almost 70 countries have been involved in rebuilding Afghanistan since 2002, committing US$20-billion, of which about half has been spent, the Afghan Ministry of Finance says.

The Afghan Compact sets out a five-year agenda for aid to help consolidate democratic institutions, curb insecurity, control the illegal drug trade, stimulate the economy, enforce the law, provide basic services to the Afghan people and protect their human rights.

CIDA is sending $250-million in aid over the next three years. This will be used to fund de-mining programs and plans to disarm thousands of former combatants in Afghanistan's long-running civil wars, help rebuild infrastructure and continue an amnesty that has seen 11,000 tanks, artillery pieces and heavy weapons turned in to the national government.

But the federal agency has been criticized for cutting its aid funding for all Afghanistan and channelling the money to the southern half of the country.

CARE Canada director John Watson, who has been critical of military humanitarian operations, said this will mean an end to funding for other projects.

But CIDA officials insist the agency is not cutting aid to Afghanistan and is supporting hundreds of projects across the country through such initiatives as "micro-financing," a plan to lend small amounts of money to Afghans to start home businesses.

"That program has 100,000 clients, 80% of them women, who we loan an average of $200," said an official in Kandahar, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We've had great success with that and Canada is the top donor to that program."

Col. Noonan sees progress, but admits it is not coming as quickly as most Afghans would like -- "managing Afghan expectations" has become one of the Canadian military and aid officials' largest concerns in recent months.

"They want progress now and we're feeling that pressure, because they haven't had all these things that we take for granted for such a long time," he says. "And we have to be seen to be delivering something quickly."

Friend or foe? UK forces enter Afghanistan's dark zone - The Guardian
Declan Walsh in Camp Bastion Saturday February 25, 2006 - Helmand mission aims to reclaim night from Taliban - Lawless province provides big challenge for soldiers

Midnight in Helmand, and the only sound is the crump of boots on the desert soil. A line of Royal Marines prowls through the night, their rifles trained on the inky darkness. Suddenly a rattle of gunfire shatters the quiet. The commandos drop to the ground, train their guns in the direction of the noise, and wait.

Out there may have been a Taliban ambush or a drug lord whose high-speed convoys power through the night laden with opium and heroin. Moments later, Second Lieutenant Gordon Sweny sends an answer down the line. "ND," he whispers into his headset - negligent discharge. The gunfire, it seems, came from a nearby camp of the Afghan national army, Britain's key ally in Helmand.

Distinguishing friend from foe can be difficult in Helmand, the lawless Afghan province that will soon be home to one of Britain's most ambitious - and perilous - deployments to Afghanistan since colonial times.

By next May more than 3,300 British paratroopers, backed by Apache helicopters, Harrier warplanes and a phalanx of hi-tech artillery, will start pouring in. Their mission is to impose order and facilitate development in a lost province where violence, crime and bitter tribal rivalries are part of everyday life.

Helmand has concentrated doses of Afghanistan's most worrying problems: a corrupt local government and police; vast swaths of territory under the control of the Taliban; and a fast-growing drug industry. Last year Helmand produced more poppies, the plant used to make heroin, than any other Afghan province. This year the crop is expected to double.

"Nobody thinks this is going to be an easy ride," said Nick Kay, the newly appointed Foreign Office coordinator for southern Afghanistan.

Most of the British soldiers will be based in Camp Bastion, a sprawling base just off the province's main highway. A company of marines from 42 Commando unit arrived last week to protect it until it is completed in the early summer.

A US-funded £50m camp for the Afghan national army is under construction next door, which will house soldiers from the fledgling national force to be trained by British officers.

The British are keen to stress a difference in style from the departing American contingent, which is due to leave in mid-April. Whereas US soldiers roar through Laskhar Gah inside armoured vehicles, the British have started daily foot patrols in an effort to gain people's confidence.

On Thursday Drummer Philip Grundy, 21, balanced his S-80 rifle as he kicked a ball with a group of children. "Pashto? Ah, me no Pashto," he said, smiling over a cacophony of greetings.

But many Helmandis say it is security not smiles they want. The token international presence until now means that outside the two main towns, Laskhar Gah and Gereshk, the Taliban and drug lords hold sway. The militants terrorise teachers, aid workers or anyone linked to the central government. Once darkness falls the Taliban rules. In the latest attack four Afghan soldiers were gunned down in an ambush on Thursday night.

Many disillusioned Helmandis doubt the British are serious, said Sardar Muhammad of the Mercy Corps aid agency. "They think this is a change in name, nothing more," he said.

One of the British soldiers' first tasks will be to reclaim the night, said Colonel Henry Worsley, the commander in Laskhar Gar, the provincial capital. Although the Nato mandate does not allow British troops to aggressively seek fights with the Taliban, they do expect trouble. "I think it's common sense the enemy will have a go," he said.

The terrain is among the most challenging anywhere. Some mountain villages in northern Helmand are accessible only by donkey; the burning deserts of the south will test the hardiest vehicles.

British troops will avoid "busting down doors" or other search techniques used by US soldiers that have caused anger in the conservative south. "That's their way but it's not ours," said Col Worsley.

Officials stress the importance of strengthening President Hamid Karzai's government, which has only a tenuous toehold in Helmand. "There's got to be an Afghan face on this," said Col Worsley.

Britain is throwing its political weight behind the new governor, Muhammad Daud, who has promised to start eradicating the poppy crop shortly. But the campaign, if it goes ahead, is likely to prove unpopular and violent, and British troops will not be involved, said Col Worsley. "You won't see us turning up at some poor farmer's house, arresting him and chopping down his crops."

Instead British paratroopers and Apache helicopters will conduct week-long missions at Baramcha, a border town filled with drug smugglers and Taliban insurgents slipping across from neighbouring Pakistan. All operations will rely heavily on the fledgling Afghan forces, principally the national army. "They are our exit strategy - a well trained, well led Afghan army," said Col Worsley.

But, as the accidental firing incident during this week's night patrol showed, it may take British trainers some time to turn the army into a western-style fighting force, with a sense of national pride as well as fighting skills.

Among the hundreds of recruits at a military parade last week stood Hassan Gul, 25, who happily admitted that he had previously fought under the Taliban. "I like to fight for everyone," he said with a smile. "Whichever government comes along, I will serve with it."

'Lioness of the Panjshir' emerging as a new leader in Afghanistan
Stars and Stripes By Anita Powell Mideast edition, Saturday, February 25, 2006

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan — Some call her the “Lioness of the Panjshir.”
Five years after the Taliban’s assassination of resistance fighter Ahmed Shah Massoud (lovingly known as the “Lion of the Panjshir”), new, less traditional leaders are emerging to protect the legendary valley in northeast Afghanistan.

One such leader is provincial council member Homyra Daud, a 35-year-old gynecologist who gave up her practice to represent Panjshir province.

And while few can hope to live up to Massoud’s mythic status — paintings of him on billboards attest to his posthumous power over the valley — Daud said she hopes her leadership will be similarly inspiring.

As one of three women on the nine-member Panjshir Provincial Council, she says she’s determined to use the tools of government to fight for the rights and needs of the nearly 72,000 people she represents.

“I do my best from my heart to work for them and help them, serve them,” she said in Dari, through a translator. “It is up to the community to judge me. I would like to see the next generation of women do like me.”

Her goals for her five-year term can only be described as ambitious. “My biggest goal is reconstruction of this valley and this country,” she said, adding, “my biggest goal is to educate these children, these women, these girls.
“I want to have clinics for women and children, too.”

While her presence on the council was legally mandated — in the national parliament, women were given a quota on the provincial council — her commanding presence in the valley, where burqa-clad women still float through villages, is an anomaly.

“Women need to talk about their needs and they need to fight for their rights,” she said. “They should have an important role in any decision made in the central government. This is a huge achievement for Afghanistan that we have any women in our parliament. This is a huge achievement that in this valley we have women on our provincial council.”

On a recent visit with officers with the American-run Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team, Daud demonstrated her fierce claim to her territory. After stopping at the site of the future district council office, where she admonished several construction workers, she began to tromp impatiently up a mountain path in order to reach the next project, a school high in the mountains.

Once in the car, she needled Maj. Paul Johnson, a reservist from the 429th Civil Affairs Battalion, 321st Civil Affairs Brigade, to rebuild the dirt road.
“You see this street?” she said in pointed English as Johnson drove cautiously up the narrow, organ-jangling path. “Very small. Not good. Very dangerous.”

Her reputation in the valley stems from her lifelong resistance to authority. During Taliban rule in the late 1990s, she worked quietly in the valley, disobeying the law by working as a doctor.

“People respect me,” she said, garnering a wave of vigorous nods from men and boys in one village. “They’re OK. They’re with me.” Despite her dedication to her people, there’s one traditional Afghan duty Daud says she won’t commit to.

“I don’t like husbands, I don’t like children,” she said in English, with a dismissive toss of her hand. “Too much responsibility.”

61 Afghan children treated in Germany return home

KABUL, Feb 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): As many as 61 Afghan children returned home after being treated for different ailments in Germany, officials said on Sunday.

The children had been flown to Germany by the Afghan Red Crescent Society, which opened hospitals in the European country in 1988 to treat children under 11 with burn injuries and joint pains.

Afghan Red Crescent Society official Sibghatullah told Pajhwok Afghan News the children had stayed in Germany from three days to two and a half years in connection with medical treatment.

Parents and relatives affectionately received the children at the ARCS office near Pul-i-Artal. Shah Gul, awaiting her grandson Zabihullah who had been to Germany two years back, said: "May Allah bless foreign doctors for treating our children."

Nine-year-old Abdul Qayyum remarked: "When officials put me on the list of returnees, I felt delighted, thinking I would be able to meet my parents whom I missed during my stay abroad."

The returning children lauded the care with which doctors treated them. Rahima, 10, from Ghorband district of the central Parwan province, said: "I will never forget the enjoyable time I spent with my friends in Germany."

On February 23, about 72 children with burn injuries and bone problems were transferred to the hospital in Germany. Frozan Danish Rahmani

Little hope for Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas -
Indo-Asian News Service - Kabul, February 27, 2006

There was universal outrage - even in the Muslim world - when the Taliban made good their threat to destroy the Bamiyan Buddhas in an act of religious piety on March 1 five years ago.

Two weeks later, the fundamentalist rulers in Kabul proudly announced they had carried out their pledge. The huge statues, a World Heritage Site, had been machine-gunned and then blown up.

Just six months later, following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the US moved to topple the Taliban. But the damage wrought on the famous statues is permanent and, according to the UN cultural organisation UNESCO, there are currently no plans to rebuild them.

Buddhist monks carved the two statues standing 38 and 55 metres high out of the cliff face in the sixth century.

Since the Taliban were driven from power at the end of 2001, UNESCO has been in charge of maintaining what remained of the statues after the religious fanatics had done their work.

The niches cut out of the rock in which the huge Buddhas stood have been propped up to prevent collapse, remains of the statues have been collected and stored, and what was left of the wall paintings has been preserved.

There is little more that can be done, according to Afghanistan expert Christian Manhart of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre. "Reconstruction is not possible at this stage," he says.

There have been repeated proposals, mainly from Switzerland, to rebuild the statues. Permission from the Afghan government and the technical capability are lacking, but the main reason for the absence of progress is fund shortage, says Manhart. He estimates rebuilding to cost $30 million.

There is a cheaper alternative. Instead of carving the statues from stone as was done originally, they could be cast in concrete, but UNESCO has rejected this.

"Then we would be left with a kind of Bamiyan Disneyland, and not the original that was created by the efforts of the Buddhist monks," Manhart says.

The leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, who to this day remains at large, personally ordered the destruction of the Buddhas. "It is in line with Islamic teaching that all statues should be destroyed," Omar said at the time.

But many Muslim scholars disagreed and said the Taliban had gone way beyond what is laid down in Islamic teaching. The Taliban's march to power began in 1994, and within two years the "students of Islam" had taken Kabul. Time and again their rule provoked international outrage.

Adulteresses were stoned to death and girls banned from attending school. All secular music and television were banned. Even whistling was taboo. Special squads beat up women not wearing the veil and men without beards, and children were stopped from flying kites.

The country sank into poverty and squalor under the Taliban's incompetent rule. In the light of this, Omar's comment after the statues had been destroyed that it was a disgrace that the world was more concerned with stone objects than with the suffering of the Afghan people seems cynical.

But there were other voices that questioned the world's reaction. Britain's Independent newspaper noted that the world had woken up to conditions in Afghanistan only after the statues had been destroyed.

"As terrible as it is, this is by no means the worst that has happened during the 10 years the Taliban has been in power," it said.

But it was neither the violation of human rights nor the destruction of the statues that brought the Taliban down, rather their refusal to comply with demands for the extradition of Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks. Until then, the world had appeared paralysed by the horrors of Afghanistan.

The Taliban has not gone away. They have been heard from again in the current controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. With the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Taliban made clear their contempt for other religions. Now they are calling for Holy War over the cartoons.

[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.]