In this bulletin:

• Karzai should refrain from giving inciting statements against its Allies
• Musharraf asks people near Afghan border to reject extremism
• Rumsfeld visits Afghanistan
• Afghan police hold seven after round-up in mosques
• Hunt for the Taliban trio intent on destruction
• Inside the anti-US resistance
• Afghanistan's mounting body count no measure of success
• Violence adding to frustration with Afghan president
• Education system needs govt attention
• Pakistan kills '21 Baloch rebels'
• Fire erupts in five-star hotel; no casualties
• Afghan boxers fail to turn up
• Afghans get a taste of the catwalk

Karzai should refrain from giving inciting statements against its Allies
US Ambassador in Pakistan PNS, Pakistan

MULTAN - US Ambassador in Pakistan, Ryan C Crocker while commending Pakistan's vital role in war on terror, stressed Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to give inciting statements against US allies. Talking to journalists after the signing ceremony on the ACCESS English program here Friday, US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker has said that Pakistan role in war on terror is commendable and a number of Pakistan's soldiers have scarified their precious lives specially on Pak-Afghan border. He said that Pakistan, Afghanistan and United States are important allies in war on terror and no one has any doubt about Pakistan sincerity in war on terror, he added.

Asked about democracy in Pakistan, US Ambassador said that US is striving for promotion of democracy all around the world including Pakistan, although he remarked that democracy has significant importance for Pakistanis and they have to work for its sustainability. He stated that democracy in Pakistan is moving towards positive trend and we are in favour of it, he added.

Earlier speaking at the signing ceremony of $198,891 grant agreement between U.S. Embassy and Multan-based NGO Better World Foundation, Ambassador Crocker said that the extraordinary success of the ACCESS English pilot project in Lahore has encouraged us to expand this program to Multan, where it will reach around 300 high school students, giving them the English language skills so necessary to compete for college admissions and later on in the job market.

He said that Learning English through a program associated with the U.S. Consulate in Lahore will also provide these bright students with a new window on American values and culture that will in turn enhance trust and understanding between our two nations."

Ambassador Crocker also noted that, "The ACCESS Micro-scholarships will open the door for these students to participate in many American educational and cultural programs such as Fulbright scholarship program. I wish Better World Foundation success in carrying out this important project, he added."

He said that the ACCESS English Micro-scholarship Program is an initiative of the U.S. State Department that provides an American-style classroom experience to underprivileged youth around the world. The goal of this two-year program is to adequately prepare bright students in written and spoken English so that they can compete more effectively with students who have studied in English-medium schools for admission to Pakistani colleges and universities and improve their ability to obtain good jobs upon graduation, he added.

Ambassador Crocker was greeted at the Moonlight High School by Mr. Malik and members of the BWF Board of Governors and presented with a bouquet from two students.

Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi, from the BWF Board of Governors, later spoke on the importance of the ACCESS English program for the city of Multan.

Musharraf asks people near Afghan border to reject extremism

Islamabad, July 09 Zeenews.com: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has asked people of Shandoor, near the Afghan border where al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden had been reportedly hiding, to join hands with his government to defeat extremism and terrorism.

"Promise me that there should be no terrorism and extremism here. You must help the government to curb terrorism and extremism," Musharraf told the people of Shandoor who had gathered to listen to him. "We can attract tourists if you stand against terrorism and extremism. Tourists will pour - in the area if there is peace," he said.

Musharraf urged the people to rise against the forces of terrorism and extremism, adding they should not be afraid of these elements.

Pakistani officials have denied reports in the past that Bin Laden may be hiding in Chitral, the district where Shandoor is located.

There were reports in the Pakistani media earlier this year that American FBI conducted an intelligence-gathering exercise in Chitral to locate the venue of a scheduled meeting between Osama Bin Laden and former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Jamaat-e-Islami party staged rallies in Chitral last month against the reported opening of an FBI office in the

city.

Rumsfeld visits Afghanistan July 9, 2006 WASHINGTON (AFP)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan in a show of support for the government which is under attack by resurgent rebels forces.

Burns, US undersecretary for political affairs, told NBC television the trip Sunday, which comes on the heels of a visit to Afghanistan late last month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was meant to bolster the beleaguered government of President Hamid Karzai.

"Secretary Rumsfeld is in Afghanistan this morning and Secretary Rice was there 10 days ago and we're giving that government, President Karzai's government, all the support it can get," Burns said.

The visit comes amid a rise in Taliban-linked violence against US and other international forces deployed in the country. A US-led coalition toppled the Taliban regime late in 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda leaders.

Afghan police hold seven after round-up in mosques - Sun Jul 9 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP)

Police in Afghanistan's southern city of Kandahar were holding seven men among 125 who were rounded up from mosques on suspicion of links to the Taliban, a police chief said.

Police took in the 125 late Thursday after raids on several mosques and madrassas, or religious schools, in the city but released most of them after a few hours, police chief Aziz Ahmad Wardak said on Saturday.

Most had been spending the night in the mosques and madrassas which usually put travellers up for free.

The seven still in custody were not from the region and carried no identity cards, Wardak said.

Police have meanwhile ordered mosques and madrassas to stop taking in unknown travellers for the night.

"We've told the mullahs not to allow the people they don't know to spend the night," Wardak said.

Kandahar suffers regular attacks linked to a a bloody upsurge in an insurgency launched by the religious Taliban movement, after it was driven from power in late 2001 by a US-led coalition for not handing over Al-Qaeda leaders.

The tense city, the biggest in southern Afghanistan, has seen several suicide attacks this year, most of them aimed at Afghan and coalition security forces but causing more casualties among civilians.

Hunt for the Taliban trio intent on destruction - The Observer, UK 07/09/2006
By Jason Burke

Behind the rising death toll of British soldiers in Afghanistan is a shadowy group known as 'the junta'. Now the coalition has them in its sights

The trio are known as 'the junta'. They live in the shadows of southern Afghanistan, masters of bands of determined fighters who want to destroy any outside military presence. And that means destroying the British army in Afghanistan. Coalition intelligence officers in the country held an emergency meeting last week to co-ordinate the hunt for the three, who are believed to be behind much of the current upsurge in fighting.

As fears in London grew over the spiralling violence in southern Afghanistan, British, American and French officers discussed how to track down, capture and kill the Taliban leaders. They are: Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran tribal leader and guerrilla fighter; Mullah Mohammed Omar, the reclusive one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban regime when in power; and the lesser-known Mullah Mohammed Dadullah Akhund, an ultra-violent and media-savvy commander who is emerging as the number-one enemy of coalition and Afghan government forces.

The Observer has learnt that an air strike in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, where around 4,000 British troops are deployed, was aimed at Mullah Dadullah. American defence officials have claimed that the strike killed 35 Taliban, including 'senior figures'. But Dadullah appears to have escaped again.

US and British military officials are keen to downplay any focus on individual leaders: 'This is about tackling the roots of a complex and dynamic insurgency, not just taking out individuals,' said one US source in Kabul. Yet few doubt that killing or capturing any of the three leading figures in the Taliban would seriously weaken the militants.

The atmosphere in the leafy compound of the British-run headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul was tense last week. Though Isaf, and thus Nato, which runs it, has yet to assume overall control of military operations in Afghanistan from the Americans, a transfer which should occur in three weeks, the staff officers splitting their time between open-air coffee shop and meetings and briefings are increasingly concerned by the task that faces them.

Estimates of the size of the Taliban forces range from 1,000 active fighters - the number given by Major General Chris Brown to The Observer - to 5,000, the number given by American officials. Coalition bulletins have claimed a total of more than 900 Taliban killed since the beginning of the year. The truth is that no solid figures exist.

Afghan officials in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, where the insurgents are most active, speak of 'a broad range of actors who are united on an ad hoc basis to carry out individual operations'. Coalition reports now refer to the enemy as 'anti-coalition militants' or 'ACM', rather than 'al-Qaeda/Taliban' or 'AQT' as before. 'It's a semantic change but important evidence of our evolving appreciation of the varied nature of the foe,' said one coalition officer. However, the very complexity of the enemy - which includes religious militants, tribal militias, drug traffickers and bandits - has paradoxically reinforced an emphasis on identifying, tracking and killing leaders. 'At least that gives us something to shoot at,' said one senior soldier.

Intelligence reports and interviews in Kabul and Kandahar reveal that the new 'Taliban triumvirate' was put in place in the spring when Mullah Omar, who founded the original Taliban in 1994, appointed Haqqani to the command of the eastern sector of the insurgency, along the border with Pakistan, and gave Dadullah control of the militants battling the British in Helmand province.

All three men share similar backgrounds, though Haqqani is by far the oldest and most famous locally. All fought the Soviets before taking part in the campaigns of the mid-Nineties that saw the Taliban impose a rigorous rule on the anarchy that was Afghanistan at the time. 'They are good men, good Muslims and good mujahideen who have proved themselves,' said one Taliban supporter in the bazaar in Lashkar Gah, a few hundred yards from the British base there.

Both Dadullah and Omar received a low-level religious education and have lost legs to mines. All three are from Pashtun ethnic tribes that straddle the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, all hate America and all have powerful backing in the conservative religious networks that exist in Pakistan. Haqqani, a respected Islamic scholar, has additional lines of financing that reach back to oil-rich fundamentalists in the Gulf. According to several sources, one of Haqqani's wives is a Kuwaiti aristocrat and members of the Saudi Arabian royal family are thought to have contributed to the construction of several large religious schools under his control.

It is from these schools that Haqqani, a senior commander for the Taliban during the war of 2001 who is held in high esteem in his native dusty hills around the eastern Afghan city of Khost, has organised the dispatch of hundreds of young students to fight coalition forces during the summer break in their studies. Dadullah, for his part, has relied on contacts in the Pakistani city of Quetta and the frontier town of Chaman for fighters, many of whom are paid a salary, to bolster his largely local forces in Helmand.

Though the Pakistani government denies any support for the Taliban from within its territory, it is clear that much of the population along the frontier is deeply sympathetic to the religious militant movement. Scores of people gathered recently in the small Pakistani village of Mahmoudabad, a mile from the Afghan border, for the funeral of Abdul Baqi, 24, a local man who was killed fighting coalition forces near Kandahar. Baqi, a student in a madrassa or religious school, joined the Taliban this year and was killed during an attack by American jets on a Taliban stronghold in Panjawi district, just to the west of Kandahar. 'We are proud of him,' Abdul Qadir, his older brother, told reporters.

Much of the limelight has been seized by Mullah Dadullah. After being declared dead by coalition forces, the 40-year-old fighter surfaced last month in a video broadcast by al-Jazeera in which he was seen firing an automatic weapon and dispatching orders to suicide bombers. Dadullah is known as ruthless even among the Taliban. Some video images show fighters decapitating six Afghans they accuse of spying.

Though Dadullah is believed to be behind much of the resistance in Helmand, where six British troops have been killed, a classified American intelligence briefing on narcotics reveals that the fierce resistance to the attempt by troops to establish a presence in the hills in the north of the province owes as much to a powerful desire to protect drugs industry profits as it does to religious fervour.

The report details the close links between drug traffickers and Taliban leaders and alleges high-level corruption in the Afghan government. It also reveals the existence of mobile heroin laboratories in Pakistan which process large quantities of Afghan opium. The drug is then smuggled to Iran, Turkey and finally to Europe along routes that pass through the valleys where British troops are currently fighting.

The British military still hope that reconstruction may win over 'hearts and minds' despite the fierce fighting. Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, has reportedly requested engineers to aid building projects. Yet the overall reconstruction context is not promising.

Two years ago, The Observer travelled to the village of Sangesar, the birthplace of the Taliban and at that time still under government control - or at least government-friendly warlords. When asked what they wanted, local people replied: 'Security and a well.' Last week Engineer Asadullah, the head of the Ministry for Rural Development (DRD) in Kandahar province, said that Sangesar district now has dozens of wells - 32 were completed last year. Yet Sangesar, like so many other districts locally, is now strongly Taliban. 'You could say it's too little too late,' said Asadullah bitterly. 'Most of the money that was pledged from the West for reconstruction has not been spent on projects but has gone on experts and rents in Kabul,' Asadullah said.

Observers say the British government is over-estimating the impact even a successful mission would have. 'The UK element is part of a broader military strategy that is part of a national political strategy that itself is heavily influenced by a regional situation,' said one Western diplomat in Kabul. 'Even if it works 100 per cent, it will not be the answer without a huge effort elsewhere.'

The result may be that Haqqani, Omar and Dadullah - 'the bad, the ugly and the uglier', as one intelligence officer put it - are likely to be at large for some time yet, along with as many Taliban as they can put in the field.

Inside the anti-US resistance By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online July 8, 2006

Osama Bin Laden is ill and invisible, but five years after September 11, 2001, his al-Qaeda movement has become the fulcrum of a global, Islamic resistance against the United States.

Asia Times Online has learned from an operative close to the al-Qaeda leadership that bin Laden languishes on a dialysis machine, in rapidly declining health.

"Sheikh [Osama] was in a poor condition when my father last visited," said the operative, who uses the name "Abdullah". Abdullah's father, known as Sheikh Ibrahim, is number two after Tahir Yuldeshev in the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IUM), a group closely allied with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and operating in Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

Sheikh Ibrahim's meeting with bin Laden took place "a few weeks ago", Abdullah told Asia Times Online in an interview at the end of June in a northern Pakistani city. Abdullah had traveled there from North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal agency on the Afghanistan border, to meet this correspondent.

"He [bin Laden] asked all of us to pray for his health. For the past many months he has been on dialysis and just cannot move. My father never told me where he was when he met Osama ... but he was worried about his fast-waning health."

Nevertheless, said Abdullah, the al-Qaeda leadership remains in Afghanistan and still serves as the nucleus of the movement.

"Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Laden's number two] is very active in Afghanistan and controlling affairs. Most of the Arab fighters left Afghanistan after the US invasion of Iraq and many went there to fight. But the main leadership of al-Qaeda continued to stay in Afghanistan," Abdullah said.

Abdullah is a tall, strongly built 23-year-old. He lived through some very hard times after the US invasion of Afghanistan and the Taliban's subsequent retreat. His family moved to Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, and later went abroad. In 2003, when the Taliban regrouped in South Waziristan, his family returned to Karachi.

Abdullah has been in a position to observe the rise and fall of the Taliban over the past eight years, due to his father's senior position in the IMU as well as his own involvement with the movement.

"Until the end of 2003 Karachi was the focal point of all al-Qaeda, Taliban and other people who fled from Afghanistan. But constant intelligence operations forced us to leave Karachi and by the end of 2003 we reached South Waziristan, where my father joined hands with Sheikh Essa [an Egyptian] and Tahir Yuldeshev," Abdullah said.

He confirmed Asia Times Online reports that bin Laden had been short of funds, hampering al-Qaeda operations. Still, Abdullah maintained that the al-Qaeda leadership would remain in Afghanistan despite all difficulties, because of the country's identification with Bilad-i-Khurasan - a land, Muslims believe, where Muslim armies will finally regroup and go to liberate the "land of Abraham" from the Anti-God (Dajal).

"I have heard this notion since the days when Abu Hafs [the al-Qaeda number three who was killed in a US strike on Kabul in 2001] was alive. He often repeated that," Abdullah said.

Abdullah also revealed that international players are aligning themselves with al-Qaeda and the Taliban in a global Islamic alliance to fight the US.

"The money is now with Tahir Yuldeshev, who organizes Uzbek youths in South Waziristan. Where the money comes from is a mystery, but a few years ago I personally witnessed two sources of his funding, one from Turkey and the other from Saudi Arabia. Both were private people. I was with Tahir and I personally saw him receiving money in Madina," Abdullah said.

"Many months ago, I learned about a delegation of Muslim youths from Russia who met with Mullah Omar [the Taliban leader] and offered to arrange a supply of Russian-made missiles and sophisticated weapons, for cash. Mullah Omar refused the deal.

"However, recently another development happened which once again reminded us that international forces are aiming at us.

"The development occur in the wake of differences between the Uzbeks. A group of Uzbeks, to which I belong, defied Tahir Yuldeshev because of his dictatorial behavior. We left South Waziristan and went to the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. His dictatorial behavior aside, there were many other rumors in circulation about him. All put a question mark on Tahir's integrity."

(At this time, Yuldeshev was settled in South Waziristan and allied himself with local commander Abdullah Mehsud. Yuldeshev was not active on any front.)

"There were a lot of things published in the Russian press about Tahir's connection with Americans. We were not sure about that, but the way Tahir made himself aloof from al-Qaeda and the Taliban created doubts," Abdullah said.

Yuldeshev then "circulated a message through a CD, strictly for his Uzbek circle, in which he stated that a smear campaign was being run against him by Russia. Tahir said that Russians contacted him, and after he approved they came to see him in South Waziristan and offered him a deal to finance him and provide arms and ammunition to fight against the Americans in Afghanistan, on condition that he gave up his struggle in Uzbekistan.

"Tahir said on the CD that he refused the offer outright, after which a campaign was run to malign him and portray him as having CIA [the US's Central Intelligence Agency] connections."

Nevertheless, as Asia Times Online has reported, recently a greater alliance hasbeen formed throughout North and South Waziristan. Yuldeshev has changed his reclusive behaviour and joined hands with Haji Omar, Biatullah Mehsud and other Taliban commanders in a new drive against the American-led forces in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan's mounting body count no measure of success - by Bronwen Roberts
Sun Jul 9

KABUL (AFP) - Near-daily battlefield death tolls released in Afghanistan are no measure of the success of US-led operations, can be misleading, and often deflect attention from real achievements in the war-torn country, experts and officials say.

Official numbers of "enemy" killed in battle can be staggering: 100 in Panjwayi, 60 in Musa Qala, 10 every other day.

Loosely worded statements on "estimated" dead or "enemies of Afghanistan" are often picked up by international media desperate for news from inaccessible battlefields but with little way of verifying details.

The Taliban also issue battle tolls but these are usually so wildly out of line with the more credible Afghan and coalition accounts that they are generally regarded with even more suspicion than the official figures.

The US-led coalition says it issues death tolls after significant operations in order to ward off questions from the media.

But coalition officials admit the figures can be misleading and inaccurate, and are no measure of success in a struggle that is more about winning the support of ordinary Afghans than killing people.

"It is an obvious question we always get," coalition spokesman Colonel Tom Collins, of the US military, said. "Anytime we conduct an operation we try to provide some result of what happened."

The force has not kept an overall count of enemy casualties since the arrival of the coalition in late 2001 to topple the Taliban government for sheltering the Al-Qaeda terror network.

The US military abandoned the use of a "body count" after the Vietnam War, when the sometimes-inflated tallies were discredited and called into question the military's credibility.

"It is not about how many enemy are killed or captured," said Collins. "Ultimately what we are doing is much bigger than that."

Efforts include building capacity within the Afghan government and security forces so they can better take on militants and criminals whose activities ensure Afghanistan remains unstable.

For the Canadians it's about winning over the ordinary Afghans who sit on the fence between the Taliban and the coalition and government, Lieutenant Commander Mark McIntyre said.

"As Canadian forces we don't use a body count as a measure of success or progress," he said.

"Firstly it can be so inaccurate. Secondly our primary mission is not to kill people. We certainly fight if we have to, but that kind of lethal force is one of the measures of last resort."

In a drawn-out insurgency, death tolls are an important part of what is becoming an increasingly intense propaganda war.

But the high tolls of rebel dead also suggest the militants can draw on more and more recruits, giving the impression that the post-Taliban insurgency is more organised than ever.

Sources said the "big show" -- inflating figures to give an impression of strength -- had also been a feature of the jihad, or religious war against the 1980s Soviet occupation.

"When the Russians were attacking an area, at the end of the day they were announcing that they had killed 200 rebels," said political analyst Waheed Mujda.

"Myself, inside the jihad, could see that that was not true. Big-showing is part of the job in any military and in any part of the world. And it's because they want to legitimise their expenses," he said.

Around 15,000 Russian troops were killed, and thousands of Afghan fighters also lost their lives.

The Soviets, with their superior firepower, killed about a million civilians and mujahedin, yet were defeated.

Today's insurgency was not going to be won through attrition with the size of the impassioned rebel force unknown and "terrorist factory" madrassas, or religious schools, in Pakistan churning out as many militants as needed, a high-ranking Afghan defence official said.

"As many Taliban fighters die, that many new Taliban are produced," he said requesting anonymity. "If one Taliban fighter dies, there is his brother, cousin and uncle taking up his arms."

"Taliban can't be eliminated by war.... Strengthening basic infrastructure, improving people's life and fighting corruption is the only way to rid Afghanistan of the current violence," he said.

Violence adding to frustration with Afghan president AFP 07/09/2006

An upsurge in insurgent violence in Afghanistan and deepening public frustration is eating away at domestic support for internationally backed President Hamid Karzai, analysts say.

Five years after the fall of the hardline Taliban government, the insurgency is only more bloody and is undermining the authority of Karzai's government which is propped up by international funds and security forces.

The May 29 riots that shook Kabul pointed to growing frustration, with some of the demonstrators chanting "Death to Karzai" and attacking images of him.

A series of minor bomb blasts in the city last week appeared intended to deepen a feeling of instability, although security officials have cast doubt on the Taliban's claim of responsibility.

With anger increasingly directed at the man who won 55 percent of Afghanistan's first presidential vote in 2004, there is more and more talk of opposition groups aligning themselves into new political fronts against him.

Only his international support is guaranteeing his position, says political analyst Waheed Mujda.

"There's no doubt Karzai has lost his popularity due to many reasons: intensified fighting in the south, corruption and poverty that the ordinary people are fighting with.

"If you put all these together, then you can say he is in a very fragile position that may cost him dearly -- maybe even his government," he told AFP.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a big show of support for the 49-year-old president during a fleeting visit last month, describing him as a man of courage and wisdom admired around the world.

But should the international community "crutch" be taken away, "then he is over," Mujda said.

Karzai, who was little known before he was appointed interim leader soon after the Taliban were driven out in late 2001, could today summon little support in the Pashtu-dominated south from where he hails and which has been particularly hard-hit by the insurgency.

He has never had much backing in the Uzbek and Tajik-dominated north of the ethnically riven nation.

"Karzai did get a mandate from the people and I don't think he always remembers that," political analyst Joanna Nathan said.

People are in particular unhappy with appointments to national and provincial government, with some officials alleged to be involved in crime, the opium trade or past human rights abuses, she said.

"The administration needs to seize the agenda and tackle corruption and change peoples' lives," she said.

Afghanistan's infrastructure was all but destroyed in the past nearly three decade of war; the country is one of the poorest in the world with some of the lowest human development indicators.

It supplies Europe with almost all its illegal opium, with drugs traders and other criminals adding to instability wrought by the Taliban.

"Any government dealing with the enormous task of state building as this one is would be as fragile as this government is today," said rights activist Nader Nadery.

The task has however been hampered by a focus, led in part by the international community, on political development at the expense of issues like judicial reform and disarmament, he said.

Karzai has long called for more international troops to defeat the insurgency. And as the unrest has peaked this year, he has urged the international community to find a better way to tackle terrorism including by going for its sources abroad.

That he has called for an improved plan "indicates that this is an extremely difficult time," a Western analyst said on condition of anonymity.

"But to read from that that he is particularly fragile is going too far. From the international community's point of view he is the only credible person to deal with." . The president's office meanwhile dismisses suggestions that his popularity is waning, saying saboteurs try to detract from his successes by creating security problems such as last week's bomb blasts that killed one person in Kabul.

"When the enemies of Afghanistan see that we are making progress, they want to undermine his presidency," said presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi pointing out that the blasts struck as Karzai was on a "fruitful" visit to Japan.

But this can be difficult to swallow for some of those caught up in the violence. "The president is sitting in his office and doesn't know what is going on in his capital," fumed one Kabul shopkeeper as he swept up shards of glass after one of the explosions.

Education system needs govt attention

BAMYAN CITY, July 8 (Pajhwok Afghan News): "My son daily brings more dirty clothes than mine, though he spends all day in school and me in working on farmland," complained Muharam Ali a farmer and resident of Sar-Asiab village of the central Bamyan province.

Being deprived of education, he said he was hopeful that his son would get quality education, but learning in such pitiable condition would not make his bright future.

Abdul Rahman, a 5 th class student in Folladi valley of Bamyan, said: "There are a lot of noise and dust in our class and we cannot concentrate on our study."

"If we have safe classrooms then we can focus on our studies," he added.

Director of education department Mohammad Ali Wasiq said of the 286 schools, 130 were having no buildings and students were compelled to studying in the open without chairs and desks.

About 78,500 students including 30,450 were studying since last year while 21,000 more boys and girls students were registered this year.

Wasiq said the teachers could not teach the students in the open and class control was also very difficult. Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Minister of Education, vowed its ministry would build over one thousand schools across the country in next two years.

Mohammad Aziz, a teacher in Waras Middle School, said: "Teaching in the open is difficult and likewise students also cannot focus on their studies." He said there should be complete silence during teaching and clean environ should be provided to the students.

Meanwhile, teachers and students in the province, also criticized worst education system in the country. However, Hamid a student of class 9 th is not contended with the teaching methods. He said all teachers were not committed with their profession that was a great hurdle in the learning process.

He said most of the courses were not completed in time that was a severe problem. Director of education said unless the old method of education was not replaced with the new one, they could not expect quality education in the country. He said new syllabus must be framed to fulfill modern needs of the people.

He said there was not specific teaching methodology in the country. He said there were similar problems in all provinces of the country.

Pakistan kills '21 Baloch rebels' - BBC News Sunday, 9 July 2006

Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships have killed at least 23 tribal militants in Balochistan province, officials say.

Another 12 rebels were wounded in Dera Bugti district and 50 surrendered, officials said. A rebel spokesman told the BBC he knew nothing of the clash.

Last week, the authorities said they had killed about 30 rebels in the same area - claims the tribesmen denied. Tribal militants want more control of the poor but gas-rich province.

Military operations had been going on in the Sangseela and Bhambhor Top areas of Dera Bugti district for four days, Balochistan government spokesman Raziq Bugti told the BBC.

He said security forces had intercepted Bugti rebel communications and found that 23 people had been killed.

It was unclear whether the security forces had actually seen the bodies of the tribesmen said to have been killed in the fighting.

Dera Bugti district official Abdul Samad Lasi, however, told the BBC that bodies of the dead were still at the scene and locals were preparing to bury them. He said the injured had been taken to hospital.

The tribesman have said nothing about the reported clash, which took place in an area where it is virtually impossible to independently verify the two sides' competing accounts.

When contacted by the BBC, Agha Shahid Bugti of the Jamhoori Watan Party - a close relative of tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti - expressed ignorance about the latest incident.

When the authorities said last week that 31 Bugti rebels had been killed, the tribesmen vigorously rejected the official version.

They made the counter-claim that more than 35 security force personnel had been killed and at least three helicopters damaged - claims in turn denied by the authorities.

Security forces stepped up their crackdown on the militants following a failed assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf during a visit to the province in December.

Rebel tribesmen have been accused of attacking officials and government buildings as well as blowing up gas pipelines in the province, Pakistan's biggest and poorest.

The government is pumping millions of dollars into Balochistan with the aim of turning it into a regional economic and energy hub.

It has also been building military garrisons to secure the investments, which officials say will bring development to the people.

But many Baloch resent the growing presence of the armed forces - seen as imposing Islamabad's agenda - and support for the tribal rebels is growing, correspondents say.

Fire erupts in five-star hotel; no casualties Pajhwok Mustafa Basharat

KABUL - Fire broke out in a portion of a five-star hotel in Kabul Friday evening but police say the blaze caused no casualties.

Management and staff of the Kabul InterContinental Hotel, situated in the Bagh-i-Bala locality of this central capital, immediately removed foreigners staying in the hotel and called fire brigade to extinguish the flames.

Police as well as management of the hotel say they did not know what caused the fire that broke out around 6:20pm and was extinguished after one and a half an hour. During that time, the flames spread to the north and eastern portions of the hotel resulted in huge material losses.

Without being able to mention the exact cause of the blaze, crime branch chief at the Kabul police headquarters Alishah Paktiwal said some staff members of the hotel had been taken into custody for investigations.

He told reporters the flames spread from the kitchen and engulfed the nearby portion in no time. He would not say what caused the fire but said they were investigating.

As the fire fighters were busy extinguishing the flames, a number of foreigners were seen loitering on the road outside the premises of the hotel. At the same time, contingents of police have surrounded the building and no one was allowed to go near the site of the blaze.

Afghan boxers fail to turn up

ISLAMABAD, July 8 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Afghan boxing team failed to participate in the Green Hill Cup International Boxing tournament being held in Pakistan's port city of Karachi.

Teams from around 21 countries are taking part in the contest. Invitation was extended to the Afghan squad by the Pakistan Boxing Federation on May 15; however, the team failed to report to the organisers and was expelled from the event.

Secretary of the Pakistan Boxing Federation Shakil Durrani told Pajhwok Afghan News on Saturday the team had to arrive here on Friday; however, they failed to turn up.

He said their non-arrival had disturbed the whole schedule and they had to prepare a new schedule for the matches. He said the Afghan side did not provide them any excuse prior information about their decision.

Din Mohammad Sapi, advisor to the Afghanistan's Olympic Committee, on the other hand, said they could not participate in the tournament due to some administrative problems.

He said they could not independently participate in any international tournament. He said teams could participate only when they were invited through the Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan.

Afghans get a taste of the catwalk - BBC Online

Afghanistan has played host to its first fashion show in decades, with models displaying designer garments at a hotel in the capital, Kabul. The show, which made the news on Afghanistan's Tolo TV channel, attracted an audience of expatriates and well-to-do Afghans.

Clothes made from Afghan textiles, including fashion burqas, were shown off by non-Afghan models to the accompaniment of traditional local music.

Organisers said they did not want to court controversy by using models from the conservative Muslim country.

The Taleban, who ruled the country in the 1990s before being ousted in 2001, enforced laws requiring women to cover themselves from head to toe.

Nearly five years after the Taleban's fall, many Afghan women still choose to cover up completely when in public.

One of the designers behind the show, Italian Isabella Ghidoni, told Reuters: "We invited a lot of Afghan women to attend the show but not to be models."

The garments on display were body-skimming rather than skimpy, and covered the models' chests, legs and arms.

Nooria Farhad, one of those in the audience, harboured her own hopes for the future.

"It will be much better and more effective if, in future, our Afghan models do fashion shows and show the world Afghan clothes," she said.

"But we know many families still do not allow their daughters to do things like this."

Ms Ghidoni and her partner, Afghan designer Zolaykha Sherzad, started off by training women in fashion and jewellery design and went on to sell their creations in Kabul shops.

Ms Sherzad said small fashion shows were held in the city before war broke out in the late 1970s.

"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."

BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

[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.]