model displays an Afghan dress designed by Gabriella Ghidoni and Zolaykha Sherzad during Afghanistan's first fashion show in years, held at a luxury hotel in the capital Kabul July 8, 2006. Models strode down a catwalk in the Afghan capital Kabul for the first time in decades this weekend as two designers showed off their clothes behind the guarded walls of a luxury hotel. Picture taken July 8, 2006. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood (AFGHANISTAN)

In this bulletin:

• President Karzai Chairs Meeting on Insecurity
• President Karzai Expresses His Deep Regret at the Death of 150 People in Russia
• India declines reports of plan to send troops to Afghanistan
• Coalition soldier, 10 rebels killed in Afghanistan
• Troops in Afghanistan have 'energised' Taliban: Defence Secretary
• Ten Taleban fighters 'killed'
• Soldier cleared in driver's death
• AFGHANISTAN: Women Assigned As Would-Be Suicide Bombers
• $33m earmarked for reconstruction in Balkh
• Four cement factories to be established
• Pakistan to construct parallel road from Torkham to Jalalabad
• Auditing Afghanistan
• Afghan Legislator Accuses U.S.-Led Forces of Firing on His Family
• Afghanistan gets first fashion show in decades
• Afghan Music Market Falls Silent
• Sikhs quitting Afghanistan
• Shakespeare in Kabul: After years of a Taliban war on the arts, Afghan theater draws a tentative audience
  

President Karzai Chairs Meeting on Insecurity - Date of Release: 9 July 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan, summoned at the Presidential Palace today the second meeting of the Policy Action Group, a special committee consisted of various ministers and officials from the government of Afghanistan and representatives from UNAMA, Coalition Forces, NATO and some NATO member countries. The groups’ first meeting was held two weeks ago on 24 June in which the President directed an urgent assessment of the security situation and the establishing of a joint process between the Afghan Government and the international community designed to address the country’s most urgent security and reconstruction issues.

The President was informed that over the past two weeks the Afghan Government and the international community had held several intensive meetings both separately and jointly in which an assessment of the security situation was undertaken and a joint paper produced on factors behind the current insecurity.

During the meeting, Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Minister of Defense of Afghanistan and Mr. Tom Koenigs, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN for Afghanistan, gave a detailed briefing On the committee’s work. This assessment identified principal elements of The current insecurity, which continues to feature regular acts of
terrorism. These acts are perpetrated by a variety of groups including those linked to international terrorist networks, fighters recruited from outside of Afghanistan and the opium industry which provides additional support to
these groups.

Based on this assessment the President approved a set of recommendations for immediate action. These included measures that the Government of Afghanistan and its partners from the international community must implement on an urgent basis in the following five areas:

• External Factors / Diplomacy
• Governance
• Security
• Economic Development
• Public Outreach

It was agreed that a process led by the President would be established through which the committee will provide advice and guidance on policy and strategic issues, while overseeing an implementation team that will take activities forward. There would be a regular process of meetings and reporting back to the President.

The President commended the work of the committee and gave advice on How the process should be further improved. He emphasized strengthening community level engagement and supporting traditional community leadership. He also stressed that government institutions at provincial and district level would continue to be strengthened, and government officials directed to show greater responsiveness to community needs.

The President instructed the committee to work on a detailed implementation plan. He welcomed the fact that urgency was reflected in the work of the committee and that the committee had conducted its work in a united and effective manner.

President Karzai Expresses His Deep Regret at the Death of 150 People in Russia - Date of Release: 09 July 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, expressed his deep regret at the death of 150 people in Russia.

According to reports, the Sibir Airbus A-310 plane was flying from Moscow when it crashed on landing at Irkutsk airport. The plane slid off the runway and hit a building at about 0800 on Sunday, killing 150 people and wounding 55.

The President, on behalf of the people of Afghanistan, expressed his sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims and to the people of Russia and prayed for the full and speedy recovery of the injured.

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

India declines reports of plan to send troops to Afghanistan - New Delhi, July 8, IRNA

India has declined reports in the Pakistani media that it is planning to send troops to Afghanistan, saying these were "mischievous."

"All that I can say is that these news reports are mischievous and totally baseless," Navtej Sarna, spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs told reporters here when his attention was referred to such reports in the Pakistani media.

Coalition soldier, 10 rebels killed in Afghanistan

KABUL (AFP) - An unidentified coalition soldier was killed during an assault on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan as a Spanish soldier and 21 rebels were killed in weekend violence.

Most of the rebels were killed in a US-led coalition and Afghan operation on a rebel den in the Panjwayi area of Kandahar province that began early Saturday and continued into Sunday, a coalition spokeswoman said Sunday.

The bodies of 10 were discovered on Sunday while five were killed on Saturday, Captain Julie Roberge said.

Three other coalition soldiers were wounded in Panjwayi on Saturday, one of whom was evacuated to a military hospital in Germany with serious injuries, she said.

The coalition did not immediately release the nationality of the latest of its soldiers to die in an upsurge of Taliban-linked violence in which more than 50 foreign troops have been killed this year, most of them Americans.

In other violence over the weekend a Spanish soldier serving with theNATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in the west of the country on Saturday when a homemade bomb struck a patrol.

Four other soldiers were wounded in the explosion about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the city of Farah.

And five more Taliban were killed late Friday after coalition soldiers returned fire after an ambush in Zabul province that wounded five of the foreign troops, the coalition said in a statement.

In another incident Saturday, an "enemy combatant" was killed in a clash in eastern Laghman province, the Afghan defence ministry said.

And in southeastern Uruzgan province police arrested four militants with explosive devices as and 300,000 dollars' worth of Iranian and Pakistani currency, a ministry statement said.

Southern and eastern Afghanistan are being pounded daily by violence linked to a growing Taliban insurgency -- either strikes by troops or ambushes and bombings by the rebels.

Civilians are often caught up in the violence which has only grown despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops and the growing capacity of the Afghan security forces.

As despondency grows out the grinding unrest, President Hamid Karzai -- who has long said Afghanistan needs more international help to defeat the Taliban militants and their Al-Qaeda allies -- has called for a new approach to tackling the insurgency.

He said last month this conflict-weary country could not forever be a battlefield for the US-led "war on terror" and the international community needs to focus on the sources of funding and training of militants outside the country.

Afghan officials often say Al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives -- possibly including the fugitive leaders of the groups -- are hiding out in Pakistan where radical madrassas are churning out fighters for the rebel cause.

The allegations sparked a bitter war of words this year between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which was one of three international allies of the Taliban regime before turning its back on the movement after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Weeks later the Taliban regime was toppled for sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders.

Troops in Afghanistan have 'energised' Taliban: Defence Secretary - Sat Jul 8,

LONDON (AFP) - The deployment of troops to the restive southern province of Helmand in Afghanistan has "energised" the Taliban, Defence Secretary Des Browne admitted in an interview.

"It is certainly the case that the very act of deployment into the south has energised the opposition, and the scale of the opposition and the nature of that opposition became apparent when we were deploying," he told The Guardian.

Six British soldiers have been killed since the troops began moving into Helmand in April and commanders have warned that the Taliban resistance is stronger than expected.

Following the latest death on Wednesday, Browne said that he was considering "as a matter of urgency" whether to send more troops amid concern that the current force is insufficient. An announcement is expected soon.

But he rounded on critics who claimed that Britain's precise role in Afghanistan was unclear, accusing them of putting soldiers' lives at risk.

"The objective is clear. It is to let the writ of the Afghan government run in the south, against a background that these provinces have been largely lawless for three decades, leaving the Taliban, drug warlords and militia to act with impunity and brutalise local communities...

"We have always explained this was going to be very, very difficult and dangerous, and we have also explained that the purpose was to create the security space for reconstruction of the country.

"People who criticise us have to ask themselves whether they want us to do it at all. There is overwhelming support for this mission.

"We are doing this not just to secure Afghanistan... but also to deny that space for Al-Qaeda to deliver violence back to our communities."

Britain is due to head a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Helmand from the end of July, taking over control of security from the US military.

The mission aims to rid the area of Taliban violence, rebuild the economy and replace widespread opium farming with alternative livelihoods.

Britain has around 5,000 troops in Afghanistan. Some 3,500 are in the south -- around 2,300 in Helmand and many others in Kandahar province.

Ten Taleban fighters 'killed'- Saturday, 8 July 2006 BBC News

US-led forces in Afghanistan say they have killed ten suspected Taleban militants in the south of the country.

A coalition spokesman said eight of its soldiers and one Afghan army soldier had been wounded in the battle in Kandahar province.

The fighting is part of a massive operation by coalition forces to flush out militants in the south.

Afghanistan has seen an upsurge in violence by the Taleban and their allies this year, with hundreds killed.

The BBC's Mark Dummett in Kabul says the US-led coalition and their Afghan army allies are currently involved in the biggest anti-Taleban campaign in the south of the country since the militants were ousted in 2001.

A coalition spokesman said its forces were engaged in numerous fights with Taleban militants in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar.

One militant was also injured in the latest battle on Saturday morning.

The coalition forces did not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers who were injured, but the largest contingent of foreign troops in the province are from Canada and the US.

The coalition says hundreds of people have died in the ongoing operations in southern Afghanistan, most of them Taleban fighters.

In the neighbouring Helmand province, British forces have lost six soldiers in the past month, prompting calls in the UK for extra troops.

Soldier cleared in driver's death
From correspondents in Ottawa Herald Sun (Australia) 08jul06

CANADA'S military cleared one of their own in the shooting death of an Afghan man who failed to stop at a checkpoint in insurgency-hit Kandahar in March, an official statement said overnight.

An investigation "has determined that the Canadian Forces soldier involved acted lawfully and that no criminal or services charges will be laid," Canada's national defence department said.

Canadian troops, on a heightened state of alert after being targeted in several attacks including by suicide bombers, opened fire on the man in the volatile city of Kandahar on March 15.

The driver of the vehicle, a three-wheeled motorbike, had ignored warnings from Afghan police and Canadian troops to halt and carried on moving towards a Canadian patrol, a Canadian military official said. The Afghan man died in hospital.

It was the first time Canadians had killed a civilian since deploying to Afghanistan more than four years ago following the toppling of the hardline Taliban regime, the Canadian military said.

Canada has about 2300 troops in Kandahar and in February took control of an international force in southern Afghanistan that is hunting down militants from the Taliban and their Islamist allies, including the Al-Qaeda network.

The Taliban were removed in a US-led military operation after refusing to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden for the September 11, 2001 suicide attacks that killed more than 3000 people in the United States.

AFGHANISTAN: Women Assigned As Would-Be Suicide Bombers - Italy)

Karachi, 7 July (AKI) - (Syed Saleem Shahzad) - Suicide bombings appear to be taking root as a form of militant warfare in Afghanistan, with a group of women at the forefront of the expansion of the use in the country of the bloody, largely Iraq-imported technique. The women - numbering around 70 - include widows of Arab and Uzbek fighters killed in clashes with the US military in Afghanistan or with Pakistani forces, sources in Pakistan's North Waziristan region have told Adnkronos International (AKI).

North and South Waziristan which are being used by Taliban and al-Qaeda militants to mount attacks into neighbouring Afghanistan, have recently become a haven for militants, the sources said.

This because Islamabad's recent policy of reconciliation with local tribal fighters has led to the withdrawal of much of the Pakistan troop contingent deployed in the borderlands region. The withdrawal began after the Islamabad government engaged the leaders of Pakistan's opposition six-party Muslim alliance to hold talks with the pro-Taliban tribesmen.

In the wake of these overtures, the fugitive spiritual leader of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, Mullah Omar appealed to his men to concentrate their efforts on fighting government forces in Afghanistan as well as the US-led multinational military contingent deployed there.

The introduction of suicide bombings - a style of combat alien to Afghanistan - can be traced to a covert visit to the country in March by a delegation of Iraqi-based insurgents linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in a US air raid in Iraq.

The group, the sources told AKI, brought along with themn video footage of succesful suicide bombings in Iraq to show their Taliban allies how to carry out such attacks. The group of women was subsequently assigned to pioneer the technique in Afghanistan.

While most Muslim scholars agree that suicide is against the tenets of Islam, some such as the Qatar-based scholar Yusuf al-Qardawi, have urged Palestinians to use suicide bombings against Israel, describing the the use of the technique in that context as "blessed".

Suicide bombings have become the main weapon used by Iraq's Islamist insurgents against US-led forces there. For propaganda the insurgents have often produced video footage showing suicde bombings, often accompanied by religious music and imagery. Such footage is increasingly being distributed in North and Waziristan the sources told AKI.

$33m earmarked for reconstruction in Balkh - Ahmad Naim Qadri 

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, July 8 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Ministry of Finance has allocated $33 million for reconstruction of airport, university building and roads in the northern Balkh province.

This was announced by Deputy Finance Minister Wahidullah Shahrani during his visit to the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, Shahrani said the amount earmarked was part of the loan given by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Describing the reconstruction projects as important for the people, the minister said it would solve their problems. He said those were the biggest projects in the country. He said completion of the projects would solve problems of students and common people.

He said of the $33 million, $20 million had been allocated for the reconstruction of the airport, $11 million for the university and $2 million for the construction and repair of roads in the provincial capital.

Provincial Governor Ata Mohammad Noor, while appreciating the minister's announcement, said implementation of such projects was pointing to the improved security in the province.

He said they were happy at the announcement of the central government for the implementation of the projects and hoped it would solve problems of the people up to a large extent.

Four cement factories to be established
Mustafa Basharat 

KABUL, July 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Mines Ministry said four new private cement factories would be established in three years to help in fulfilling 50 per cent cement need of Afghanistan.

Engineer Khozhman Uloomi, spokesman for mines ministry, said on Thursday license had already been issued to one factory that would be set up in the northern Baghlan province while three others would get license in near future.

A company Afghan Invest Com, has recently got license, will be the biggest private cement factory, that will be established in Pul-i-Khumri in two years. It would produce 7,000 metric tons of cement daily, added Uloomi.

Safi Brothers is the second factory to get licence next week after participating in a bid in the western city of Herat. The factory will produce 3,500 metric tons of cement on daily basis.

Uloomi said other two factories had open chance to start work in any of the two provinces in Herat, Baghlan, Kandahar, Nangarhar and Bamyan. No applicant with less than $140 million investment would be given licence to set up factory, he contended.

Currently, only one factory is operative in Pul-i-Khumri that produces 100 tons of cement on daily basis, but the output is nothing as compared with growing demand.

This factory will also be joined with Invest Com and thus its production will be increased to 1,400 tons per day. Uloomi said Afghanistan at present needs five to eight million tons of cement per year, but demand will be further increased due to ongoing reconstruction process. Prices of cement have also been increased during the last two years.

Afghanistan imported two million tons of cement only from Pakistan last year and the rest were imported from other countries.

Pakistan to construct parallel road from Torkham to Jalalabad

JALALABAD, July 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Pakistan and Afghanistan have agreed in principal on dualisation of the 75-kilometre Torkham - Jalalabad road through the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) - the leading Pakistani road construction company.

This was disclosed by Pakistan's Consul General in Jalalabad Shahzada Ziauddin while talking to a media delegation from Pakistan in this provincial capital of the eastern Nangarhar province.

Quoting the Consul General, Pakistan's official news agency said modalities and other necessary formalities were being worked out for making the road a dual carriage way. The project, he said, would cost about 350 million US dollars.

He said, Pakistan had pledged 100 million US dollars for reconstruction of war-ravaged Afghanistan and construction of the international standard Torkham - Jalalabad road was part of the aid programme. The Government of Pakistan had committed the grant in assistance for the reconstruction of Afghanistan spreading over five years, he maintained.

The Consul General said Pakistan was also funding establishment of a kidney centre in the name of "Nishtar Kidney Centre" and a science block in Nangarhar University.

Briefing the media team at Ghaziabad, camp office of FWO about the completion of the 75-kilometre road, Project Manager Col Muhammad Shahid Iqbal said over 95 percent work had been completed. He said it was the first road project completed by the FWO in a foreign country.

The project is due for inauguration in first week of August this year and the inaugural ceremony is expected to be attended by senior officials from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Auditing Afghanistan

Will the committee set up to oversee the aid money coming into Afghanistan have the tools to keep track of a previously chaotic spending process?

Institute for War & Peace Reporting - By Mohammad Jawad Sharifzada and Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 221, 7-Jul-06)

Five months on from a landmark conference which set out the international aid funding plans for the next few years, Afghan analysts have mixed feelings about the effectiveness of a body set up to monitor the flow of money.

The Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board is a 28-member committee of internationals and Afghan officials whose job is to monitor the implementation of the Afghanistan Compact, a framework plan of action agreed at a donor conference in London on January 31-February 1.

At the meeting, the various participating governments pledged 10.5 billion US dollars to Afghanistan over the next five years, to be spent in three key areas: security; governance, rule of law and human rights; and economic and social development.

The JCMB is a response to past concerns about the lack of a system to check and manage where the foreign aid money was going. Coordination by different groups doing similar things was at times incoherent and it was unclear where some of the funds ended up.

This fed a perception among many Afghans that the internationals and a few lucky local non-government organisations, NGOs, were in effect spending the money on themselves - buying expensive vehicles and paying high fees to foreign consultants - while little of it trickled through to make a difference to ordinary people’s lives.

The Afghanistan Compact aims to correct that perception, and the intention now is to ensure that half the total funding flow goes through the Afghan government - thus increasing its credibility among the population. Previously, less than a quarter of the money was thought to have been spent via government agencies, and the bulk went to NGOs.

The JCMB has two co-chairmen: Ishaq Nadiri, the senior economic advisor to President Hamed Karzai, and Tom Koenigs, Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Afghanistan. The other Afghan members reflect the main development areas set out in the compact, consisting of the foreign, finance, economy, education and justice ministers and the president’s national security advisor.

On the international side, alongside Koenig there are 20 other individuals representing major donor governments such as the United States, Britain, Japan and Germany; regional players including Pakistan, India and Iran, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Six of the internationals are drawn from the military forces present in Afghanistan – the US-led Coalition, NATO and four participating nations.

It is an impressive group of players, but some Afghan analysts interviewed by IWPR raised concerns that the committee has neither the resources nor the teeth to act as watchdog over the aid flow. The board members meet only four times a year. They are supposed to have a secretariat and technical experts to support them and keep the work going between meetings, but IWPR understands that this structure does not yet exist.

According to Mohammad Hashim Mayar, deputy director of the Afghan Coordinating Body for Aid Relief, ACBAR, "This board will not resolve any problems because its members are senior officials from different governments and they are busy with their own important work. It doesn’t have any other personnel, or a secretariat."

Those involved in the process say this does not matter. Co-chairman Nadiri did not respond directly to questions from IWPR about the extent to which the board could be responsible for what happened to the money, but he said there were other organisations to do much of the basic legwork. “Monitoring impact and expenditure is the job of the Ministry of Economy and other [government] bodies. But if there is a major problem, the ministry of economy refers it to the JCMB, which reports it to the media and donors after evaluating it," he said.

Addressing the first meeting of the JCMB on April 30, Koenigs said the board’s work was all about strategic oversight of the aid coordination on the one hand, and ensuring that the compact was underpinned by high-level political support to the Afghanistan Compact, on the other.

"The objectives of the JCMB's sessions will be to ensure overall strategic coordination, provide advice on significant issues and to report to the Afghan president, the National Assembly, the UN Secretary General, the donors and the public," he said.

Presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi said the board would help ensure the money was not misused, "Establishing the board will be a positive measure in preventing administrative corruption and creating transparency."

He added that the fact that both the Afghan government and the international community had members on the board meant that its decisions would carry real force.

While there are conflicting views about the effectiveness of the JCMB, most Afghan commentators interviewed by IWPR agreed there was a great need for transparency and accountability.

Despite his reservations about the board’s limited resources, Mayar said that the Afghan people want to know how the money has been spent by the government and international NGOs - and that it was up to the JCMB job to ensure they are no longer kept in the dark.

Hamidullah Farooqi, head of the Afghan International Chamber of Commerce, agreed, saying, "If there were no body to monitor the spending of the aid money, and if those who spent it didn’t feel responsible for accounting for it, everything would get much worse."

But Ramazan Bashardost, a member of parliament and former planning minister who has been a long-standing and outspoken critic of the way NGOs have used funds, believes the concept behind the JCMB is flawed.

He said the diverse national origin of the JCMB’s members is a weakness – when it comes to answering for the aid expenditure in future, no one individual or government will be accountable.

"In my view, Karzai alone should be responsible for all of the aid money and its expenditure, so that he is accountable to donor countries and the public in the future," said Bashardost.

Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, a political analyst who heads the Centre for Regional Studies in Kabul, is less pessimistic, viewing the JCMB as the political embodiment of the compact between the Karzai administration and its international backers.

“This board is like a guarantee between the Afghan government and the international community. It will undoubtedly be effective because there are representatives of the international community on the board," said Liwal.

On the streets of Kabul, people are generally sceptical of the new institutions that spring up from time to time.

Ahmad Firoz, a 30-year-old resident, said, "Karzai has created many such useless commissions. No one feels for this poor nation. All these things are just for show."

The JCMB holds its next meeting on July 30. Mohammad Jawad Sharifzada is a freelance journalist in Kabul. Hafizullah Gardesh is an IWPR editor in Afghanistan.

Afghan Legislator Accuses U.S.-Led Forces of Firing on His Family
By CARLOTTA GALL July 8, 2006 The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 7 — A member of the Afghan Parliament on Friday accused the American-led coalition of opening fire on his family as they traveled by car in one of the most troubled provinces of southern Afghanistan, killing his brother-in-law and wounding five others, including his wife and two of his children.

Hajji Abdul Khaliq, a legislator from Oruzgan Province, said in a telephone interview that the shooting occurred Wednesday, and that American and Australian troops were responsible for it. "My wife, my son, my daughter, my nephew and my wife's brother were traveling with a driver from Oruzgan to Kandahar for a medical checkup at Kandahar hospital, when they were attacked by American and Australian troops from the top of a hill" in the middle of the afternoon, he said.

"The coalition were on the top of the hill and started shooting towards their car," Mr. Abdul Khaliq said, "killing my wife's brother, Abdul Baqi, and injuring my wife, my son, my daughter and my nephew." His nephew and the driver were slightly injured, he said.

The family took cover in a ditch beside the road and lay on the ground for several hours, he said. The coalition kept firing on the car and after some time came to the scene, he said, but even when they saw the woman and children lying wounded they did nothing to assist them. A statement from the American-led coalition said it was "deeply saddened" by the reports, but added that "coalition forces are confident the coalition is not responsible for this attack."

Lt. Col. Paul Fitzpatrick, a coalition spokesman, said that there had been only one report of coalition forces "engaging the enemy" in the region, and that it took place at night when "four Taliban extremists on foot" fought a patrol "far off the road." Colonel Fitzpatrick added that the claim that coalition forces were responsible for the attack on Mr. Abdul Khaliq's family "could very well be extremist propaganda."

A few hours after the attack, Mr. Abdul Khaliq said, villagers and friends of the family came to help them and took them to the hospital in Tirin Kot, about 11 miles away. He moved the family to a Kandahar hospital on Thursday, he said.

Afghanistan gets first fashion show in decades Sun Jul 9

KABUL (Reuters) - Models strode down a catwalk in the Afghan capital Kabul for the first time in decades this weekend as two designers showed off their clothes behind the guarded walls of a luxury hotel.

An audience of expatriates and well-heeled Afghan watched the show in hotel garden, under a clear midsummer night's sky, to the strains of traditional Afghan music.

All of the models showing the conservatively cut clothes that included designer burqas were expatriate women, to the disappointment of some in the audience.

The organizers said they did not want to court controversy in what is a deeply conservative Muslim country by having Afghan models.

"We invited a lot of Afghan women to attend the show but not to be models," said Italian designer Gabriella Ghidoni, who organized the show with an Afghan partner.

The Taliban forced women to wear the all-enveloping burqa but nearly five years after the hard-line Islamists were ousted, many women still choose to wear burqas when they are out.

"The models should have been Afghan, but we know that many families still don't allow their daughters to do things like this," said a member of the audience, Nooria Farhad.

"It will be much better and more effective if in future our Afghan models do fashion shows and show the world Afghan clothes. I hope one day we'll have Afghan models," she said.

Another member of the audience said the Saturday night show was a boost for the city which has seen bloody anti-government and anti-foreign riots and several bomb blasts in recent weeks.

"This is really important for the country, it's a great morale booster for the people," said bank chairman Haji Ali Akbar.

"It also shows that Afghanistan is going toward stability and the platform for foreign investment and businesses is opening day by day."

Ghidoni and her partner, Afghan designer Zolaykha Sherzad, started off training women in fashion and jewelry design. They then began selling the output from their Kabul shops.

Sherzad said people used to hold small fashion shows in Kabul before the war begin in the late 1970s. These days there was a market for fashion in the city, although it may not be obvious, she said.

"There's not much in terms of the fashion we see in the West but there is fashion within a private environment, within the houses," she said. "People like to be fashionable."

Afghan Music Market Falls Silent

Instrument makers in the northern city of Samangan are going out of business as people turn to western music. Institute for War & Peace Reporting By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 221, 7-Jul-06)
Qurban Shah, 61, sits deep in thought in his mud-built shop, drinking a cup of black tea. On the walls around him hang rows of dutars or two-stringed lutes, and zirbaghali, drums made out of pottery.

Seeing someone approach, Qurban grew animated at the prospect of a sale, and was disappointed to discover it was an IWPR reporter looking for an interview rather than a dutar.

However, he consented to tell his story, and recalled how like his father before him, he has devoted his life to crafting instruments. He showed off various examples of the long-necked dutar with a belly shaped from mulberry wood, which he sells at 10 to 15 US dollars a time, and a zirbaghalis with goat- or sheepskin heads stretched over a tapered clay body.

Qurban is one of the many traditional instrument makers and traders working out of the Bazaar-e-Danbora-Feroshi - the Lute-Sellers’ Market - in the northern town of Samangan. The bazaar used to be heaving with activity and full of music, but these days business is slow.

Qurban blames modern popular music for the fall in trade. "I think of the days when I was selling ten or 12 dutars and the same number of zirbaghalis a day. People came from all across the country to buy musical instruments, because Samangan is renowned for its dutars and zirbaghalis throughout Afghanistan,” he said.

"But now I’m extremely happy if I sell just one dutar in a whole day." Many of the instrument sellers have shifted to other trades.

One of Qurban’s colleagues at the market, Nazar Mohammad, commented that foreigners on the lookout for ethnic artifacts now accounted for many sales of instruments. "They know a good thing when they see it – so why do they make these electronic instruments and export them to our country?" he grumbled.

In recent years, imported music based on foreign instruments has begun displacing local styles. Musicians make their living from performing at events such as weddings, but fashions have changed and now people want amplified electronic sounds rather than the strains of a dutar.

"I don’t know why people like this electronic music, which gives no enjoyment,” said Qurban. “I’m completely at a loss what to do. I don’t have any option other than to abandon my father's profession."

Sitting on a raised platform in a tea house in Samangan, 81-year-old Sufi Gulmurad has also seen the warning signs, although he plans to hang on.

"I have sat here and played the dutar to people for 60 years now, and they have paid me money,” he said. “But nowadays people don’t get us to come to their weddings or other parties, they get musicians with electronic instruments."

As he picked up his instrument to begin playing, Gulmurad said that even though no one pays him any more, he will make music as long as he lives, "I play so that the new musicians will understand that music is a love, not a means of making money."

Ahmad Shah, one of the new breed of musicians who are popular at weddings, has a jazz band in Balkh province, neighbouring Samangan, and plays a Japanese-made electronic piano.

He thinks the days of the old Afghan instruments are over. "If someone turns up to a wedding party with a zirbaghali and a dutar these day, there’ll be no one left there after an hour – they’ll all have made their escape," he said.

Young people generally prefer newer, imported sounds.

"This local music is a sign of backwardness. We can see what stage the world is at but we still won’t abandon the dutar," said Nasrullah, 23, a resident of the northern province of Jowzjan. "I am sure this kind of music will die out by itself, because people in this country don’t like old things any more.

"I don’t want to listen to the dutar myself - I don’t like the sound."

For Nasrullah, the old styles symbolise a past with more limited horizons, "People played the local music because they didn’t have access to modern music, but why should they play it now that they do?”

Traditionalists like Qurban and Gulmurad said the youngsters are missing the point. They pointed out that foreign-made instruments are costly, so there is less amateur music-making around than there used to be.

Both men also contrasted the authenticity of Afghan music with the imported, more artificial product.

"In other countries, people are trying to improve their own original music, but in Afghanistan our youth are trying to improve the music of other countries," said Qurban.

Gulmurad added, "I am sure electronic music cannot create for enjoyment, because its sound does not come from the heart – it’s mostly pre-recorded. By contrast, when a human being makes something and then plays it, that creates another kind of enjoyment."

Sayed Yaqub is an IWPR journalist in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Sikhs quitting Afghanistan
By Rajeshree Sisodia in Kabul  Aljazeera Sunday 09 July 2006, 14:05 Makka Time,

After living in Afghanistan for more than two centuries, economic hardship is pushing many in the country's dwindling Sikh community to emigrate to India, their spiritual homeland.

Gurdyal Singh appears no different from any other Afghan man, complete with his black-as-coal beard and an immaculately tied scarlet turban.

But the 40-year-old father-of-four chuckles as he clears up the mistaken belief that he is a Muslim.

"I am Sikh but I think of myself as being Afghan," he says as he tends to a Sikh temple in the Karta Pawan district of the capital.

The Guru Nanak Durbar Gurdwara, tucked away in a quiet corner of central Kabul for the last 25 years, is one of around 43 Sikh and Hindu temples in Afghanistan.

"We speak [the north Indian language] Punjabi at home but we can speak [the Afghan languages of] Dari and Pashtun."

A caretaker at the gurdwara, or temple, Gurdyal is one of a handful of Sikhs who has remained after the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Afghanistan, he says, is the country of his birth and the home where his family has lived for generations.

Historic ties

Sikhs have lived in Afghanistan for centuries, with the majority originally migrating westwards to the central Asian country from India and what is now Pakistan.

About 80% of Afghans are Sunni Muslim, 19% are Shia and 1% are listed as "other"

Source: US State Department
 
A small minority of Sikhs were Afghan Muslims who converted, according to historians in Kabul.

Nilab Rahimi, chief of Kabul library, explains that Afghanistan's near-porous border with India until the advent of the British Raj helped the free flow of people and culture between the two nations.

"Before, we had lots of Sikhs and Buddhists. We had very open contact with India, for centuries. Some [Afghans] converted to Sikhism," he told Aljazeera.net.

But since 1979, when the Soviets invaded the country to support a government allied with Moscow, Sikhs have been leaving in large numbers.

The exodus increased in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government collapsed, and again in 1996, when the repressive Taliban theocracy ruled the country.

"Before the Taliban there were around 500,000 Sikhs in Afghanistan ... now there are few," said Rahimi.

Minority religions in Afghanistan suffered under Taliban rule, as the destruction of the 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha in Bamiyan province five years ago showed.

With Muslims accounting for 99% of the Afghanistan's 30 million people, the country's new sharia-based constitution recognises Islam as a sacred religion.

But Afghan law, drafted after the fall of the Taliban, also guarantees freedom of religion to the nation's small Sikh, Hindu, Jewish and Christian communities.

Despite the recent imprisonment of Abdur Rahman, an Afghan who converted from Islam to Christianity, many religious minorities now experience little or no religious persecution in the country.

The Taliban

It was a different story under the Taliban, when men in Sikh and Hindu communities were forced to wear yellow turbans and yellow salwar kameez [long tunic-like shirt and baggy trousers] while women were made to wear burqas.

Sikh women who did not adhere to this stringent dress code were as susceptible to street beatings by Taliban police as other Afghan women.

But the Taliban, perhaps surprisingly, did not close down the Guru Nanak Durbar Gurdwara. Sikh Afghan leaders are at a loss to explain why.

"The Taliban never bothered us. We were always okay. The Taliban did not close the gurdwara, they let us be," Gurdyal explains as two Muslim women clad in blue burqas enter the gurdwara grounds, removing their shoes at the gate, to seek blessings to heal their sick children.

Gurdyal carefully guides one young mother carrying a small boy in her arms.

"It is better now than it was before [under the Taliban]," Gurdyal says, explaining that Sikhs are relieved they no longer have to abide by repressive codes.

However, while Gurdyal and the rest of Afghanistan's Sikh community have endured civil war and repressive governments over the years, a new force threatens to further reduce their already dwindling numbers - economic hardship.

Economic instability

Sikhs who left Afghanistan since the Taliban was deposed by a US invasion in 2001 cite economic instability and lawlessness - not the threat of communal violence - as reasons for their departure.

Official figures estimate that the country is beleaguered by up to 50% unemployment while around 80% of the population is illiterate.

The British Department for International Development says as many as 40% of rural Afghans are malnourished.

Despite the Afghan government and UN agencies making tentative inroads in establishing schools and health clinics throughout the country's 34 provinces, 70% of Afghans continue to live on less than $2 a day.

Enormous aid packages promised by the international community have failed to materialise for ordinary Afghans, with many feeling little effect of the billions of dollars earmarked for reconstruction and rehabilitation.

According to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), 70% of Afghans rely on agriculture as a means of income, but the country is still reeling from particularly harsh drought seasons in the past four years leaving many impoverished.

Afghanistan's persistent poverty levels, few economic prospects and increasing levels of violence by a resurgent Taliban have hit the Sikhs, as well as the Muslim majority, community hard.

Sikhs have always prided themselves as influential members of the commercial community in Afghanistan, particularly in the clothing and currency exchange business.

Many shops and general stores were owned by Sikhs before the upheaval of the 1990s. Since then many have fled to India and the West in search of better lives.

After the fall of the Taliban, some returned only to find their homes, shops and property destroyed by war.

With few economic prospects and a resurgent Taliban threat, many Sikhs chose to leave Afghanistan opting for India, their spiritual homeland and where they still have ties.

Manjeet Kalra, 48, left Kabul five years ago with husband Swaran Singh, 52, daughter Sanya, 16, and son Daman, 15, hoping to escape rampant crime, slow economic growth and unemployment.

But they were forced to return to Afghanistan recently after almost four-and-half-years in the West after both the British and Dutch governments denied their refugee applications.

"Afghanistan is no good. I don't want to be here. We don't have anything here in Afghanistan," she told Aljazeera.net.

"I don't think us Sikhs will have a good future here in Afghanistan. There are no schools; it's the same future Muslims have in Afghanistan," she added.

Sikh leaders say that no more than 2000 Sikhs currently live in Kabul, Ghazni in the east and Jalalabad near the Pakistan border.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says 88% of India's 9700 Afghan refugees are Sikhs and Hindu.

Some Afghan Sikhs who left Afghanistan in the late 1990s have decided to remain permanently in India and become naturalised citizens. Twelve Sikh and Hindu families were granted citizenship this year.

According to UNHCR, dozens of Sikh refugees apply for Indian citizenship every month, with the peak reaching 57 applications in February 2006.

As the Muslim women leave the temple grounds, Gurdyal considers whether he would leave Afghanistan for a better life elsewhere. "Afghanistan is poorer than India. I have never been to India, I would love to go there [but] we don't have money".

Shakespeare in Kabul: After years of a Taliban war on the arts, Afghan theater draws a tentative audience
Jacob Baynham, Special to San Francisco Chronicle Ferdowsi, "Shahnameh"

The towering mud and straw flanks of Herat's old citadel in western Afghanistan have seen the rise and fall of a thousand years' worth of Central Asian empires. They have protected noble kings, been damaged by bloodthirsty armies and served as a refuge for weary travelers on the Silk Road. But even a building as old as this still has its firsts.

Recently, before an audience of 250, five women on a stage of carpets took off their veils. Ripples went through the crowd. Five years ago, under Taliban rule, Herat's women could scarcely leave their houses. But this evening's event showed that times had changed in Afghanistan. The throng was gathered to watch something that was until very recently unthinkable -- an Afghan performance of Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost," in Dari.

Beneath the citadel's soaring ramparts, a troupe of talented actors belted out their lines, suitably filled with witty Dari couplets, humor and heartache. For a city still emerging from Sharia law and the Taliban's war on the arts, the result was a production as political as it was cultural.

In the five years that the Taliban ruled Herat, they whitewashed paintings, banned music and dancing, and outlawed the celebration of the Persian new year, Nawroz. The well-educated population of the city could only watch as their vibrant legacy of arts and culture was veiled and locked away. The citadel's massive walls were used instead to launch mortars into the city.

Yet, standing next to a rusting rocket launcher in one of the towers of Herat's citadel, one has a commanding view over the city that once, in terms of culture and the arts, knew few equals. The mud and straw houses still stretch to the city's limits, small lines of light and shadow etched into the sand. The bazaar below still teems with people buying spices, vegetables and carpets and occasionally slipping from the blazing summer sun to drink chai under a pine tree.

The scene couldn't be much different than if Tamerlane were standing beside you, looking out over his glorious capital, 700 years ago.

But beginning with the Soviet invasion and ending with the fall of the Taliban, Herat has been rocked by continuing battles that have destroyed more of the city than even Genghis Khan's hordes were capable of doing. As a result, the citadel, itself an old caravansary of the Silk Road, has gone largely unexcavated. Modern warfare has added its own artifacts. Today, broken pieces of glazed pottery from the city's glory days catch the midday sun alongside bullet shells of all sizes.

There is a palpable awareness of the rich artistic heritage among the people of Herat. Even leaving the citadel aside, it doesn't take more than a glance at the magnificent tiled calligraphy on the walls of the 13th century Masjid Jomeh to realize that. Bazaars still sell the traditional azure blown-glass goblets of Herati artisans and other local handicrafts. But the few craftsmen that remain are aging, and although the city is moving again toward an artistic spring, it may be too little, too late.

A worker from a nongovernmental organization in the audience said he fears that the years of fighting may have dealt a death blow to the arts in Herat.

"It's not enough to have a beautiful building or a great previous leader," he said. "We have to do new things. Education is the most important thing. You have to educate people to be ready for these things."

Although the play was adapted to suit an Afghan setting, actor Shah Mohammed Noori said it still approached the limits of what was acceptable in Islam.

In the play, the king of Herat and his three best friends sign a pact to dedicate their lives to study for three years, with little food and sleep and no contact with women. As they sign it, however, they remember that the princess of Kabul is due to arrive that day. Despite their contract, the king and his friends fall in love with the princess and her companions. They attempt to woo the ladies with gifts and singing and dancing.

During the performance, there are times when the women's scarves come off their heads, an act that would have been punishable by beating under the Taliban. During the singing and dancing scene, the men hold the women's hands and go without their shirts, another punishable offense.

The reaction of the crowd appeared divided. Actor Mohammed Noori watched the minister of education leave in the middle of the show. He said the minister is a close friend of Ismael Khan, the previous warlord and conservative governor of Herat who still wields great power in the city.

"Because it was the first time, people were surprised," Mohammed Noori said of the play, "but 25 to 30 years ago we had these sorts of things -- much more even. Now, after years of war, people aren't used to it anymore."

As a result of careful advertising in newly formed women's unions and girls' schools, about 40 percent of the audience was female. Just five years ago women were barely allowed to leave their houses. One woman in the audience dressed in a sky blue burqa was overjoyed by the performance.

"This is the first time we've had anything like this," she told Anna Elliot, who directed the Herat performance, in fluent English. "This is the first time a woman has been onstage in Herat. It is shocking. Now more will follow, because it is not taboo anymore."

The acting troupe, made up of 11 men and women, has performed "Love's Labour's Lost" throughout the country. As theater is not a common art form in Afghanistan, it took a while to explain to people what the performance would be like. The producers took to calling it "a movie without a screen."

With large crowds of food vendors, policemen and picnicking families, some performances here must have rivaled the wayward audiences of the first Shakespeare performances in England, says Elliot.

But Mohammed Noori said that the city was the perfect place for the production.

"In Herat they understand more because there is a higher level of education here," he said. "Many people go to Iran to study and they read many books. Afghans haven't seen much theater in their lives, so many came to see what it was."

Though the final performance went smoothly, preparing for a theater production in Afghanistan is hardly a matter of renting the Globe for a night. A thousand small obstacles would have had the Bard himself pulling out his hair.

The question remains unanswered whether the continuing violence in Afghanistan will succeed in stamping out the ancient arts.

As the rest of the audience retreat to their homes in the dusk, Mohammed Noori stands in the shadow and crosses his arms.

"This was in our culture once," he said. "It was not new to us, and we want to see more. Slowly, slowly, we have to take a step. Things will take time to change."

[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.]