In this bulletin:

• Afghan female official killed by Taliban
• 6 Taliban militants killed in S. Afghanistan
• Karzai urges farmers to switch from poppies to pomegranates
• Six detained for Kabul bombings
• School set ablaze in Kunduz
• Afghan defence minister expects a turnaround in troubled south
• Move to reinstate Vice and Virtue
• Mumbai blasts reflect Afghanistan's security scene: Wali Khan
• Afghanistan is no place for quitters
• Taliban in search of a winning formula
• Remember the stakes in the Afghan conflict
• Italy debates Afghanistan funding
• War on Afghan opium farming an "absolute disaster"
• Biofuels may be Afghans' future
• Feature: Will there be no more grapes from Kandahar?
• Drought Hits Afghan North
• Jobless Face Grim Future

Afghan female official killed by Taliban

KABUL, July 13 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan female official has been killed in central Afghanistan by Taliban militants, the Afghan National TV reported Thursday night.

Zahra, the first female official murdered after the Taliban regime collapsed in 2001, was from refugee department in Ghazni province. She was kidnapped two days ago and her body was found on Thursday, provincial police chief Tafser Khan Khogiani was quoted as saying by the TV.

Taliban, who banned women from school and work, has claimed the responsibility for the killing. The enemy of peace just wants to deprive women's right in Afghanistan, Khogiani added. Enditem

6 Taliban militants killed in S. Afghanistan - Source: Xinhua 7/14/06

At least six Taliban insurgents have been killed and four others wounded in an exchange of fire in the southern Helmand province of Afghanistan, an officer told Xinhua on Friday.

The militants were killed or injured on Thursday night by Afghan troops, police and coalition forces in Mirmanda and Hidar Ahbad villages in Grashak district of Helmand, said General Nabijan Mullhakhed, a senior commander of Afghan forces. Two militants were arrested, and no casualties were reported from the troops and police, he added.

Afghanistan has suffered from a rise of Taliban-linked violence this year, during which over 1,200 persons, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed so far.

Karzai urges farmers to switch from poppies to pomegranates Agence France Presse Sardar Ahmad 7/14/06

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai boasts that Kandahar's pomegranates are the best in the world; others say they contain the Almighty's miracle cures. Desperate poets liken their shape to the breasts of their veiled lovers. The fruit is found everywhere in Afghanistan, from the suburbs of Kabul to the green valleys of Kunduz, from lawless Paktika to prosperous Parwan.

But the ones grown in the bomb-shattered gardens of Taliban-dominated Kandahar have long tempted consumers because of their candy-sweet taste and remarkable size - some reaching 1 kilogram.

Karzai, who grew up in the southern province, is pushing the desert province's farmers to rip up their illegal opium poppies and replant the pomeg-ranates and other fruits that Afghanistan was renowned for until decades of war kicked off with the 1979 Soviet invasion and left the farming sector in tatters.

But few are under any illusion that pomegranates will replace lucrative opium in Kandahar, the second-biggest producer of the country's 4,000-ton annual output - more than 80 percent of the amount smuggled into Europe, sometimes as heroin.

One kilogram of dry opium could bring a Kandahar farmer about $140, according to a February report by the UN drugs office and Afghan government, although this would take a lot more land to produce than pomegranates.

The same amount of the fruit fetches about $2 in Kabul and less than $0.50 in rural centers, says a Kandahar agriculture department official identified only as Ezatullah.

The other advantage of the opium is that it can be stored for long periods, unlike pomegranates. Until this year Kandahar had no facilities to store the fruit to export them off-season for a better price, Ezatullah said.

"This year we opened a cold storage system which was built by the Indian government. We can store up to 50,000 tons of fruit," he said.

That is more than double the nearly 21,200 tons of pomegranates Kandahar produces every year, much of it in the green Arghandab valley, an oasis in the desert that is less than 10 kilometers from Kandahar city.

Six detained for Kabul bombings

KABUL, July 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Police detained on Wednesday six suspects for their alleged involvement in recent bombings and suicide explosions in this central capital.

Crime branch chief of Kabul headquarters Gen Alishah Paktiwal said they had arrested Qari Hakim Mullah, who belonged to Parwan province, along with his five co-accusers on alleged links with Taliban during search operation.

"Police also recovered remote-controlled bombs when they searched room of Qari Hakim Mullah in Jada-e-Maiwand of Kabul," he added.

The six detainees were under investigation and police would also quiz them about their alleged involvement in recent Kabul explosions. The arrest of Qari Mullah came after police nabbed Mullah Ezat, another key suspect, for alleged involvement in Kabul bombings, sometime back.

School set ablaze in Kunduz

KUNDUZ CITY, July 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Unidentified militants overnight set ablaze Qushtipa boys and girls school in Chardara district of the northern Kunduz province, just a day after education officials, teachers and students condemned arson attacks.

The fire gutted class rooms, administration block, furniture and stationeries of the school. While condemning the attack, provincial education director Said Omer Farooq told Pajhwok Afghan News about 800 students were studying in the school.

He blamed enemies of the country and education for the attack. Omer said locals built the school some 14 years back. Deputy provincial police chief Brigadier Gen Mohammad Amerkhel said none was yet arrested in line with the incident. He said they had thrown a search net in the area to track down the perpetrators.

A day earlier, about 1,000 education officials, teachers and students flayed the arson attacks. They urged the government to bring the activists to the justice.

Deputy provincial police chief said they had nabbed three miscreants on charge of plotting arson attacks in the province a day earlier. Over 250,000 boys and girls were studying in 270 schools in this province.

Afghan defence minister expects a turnaround in troubled south

Kabul (AFP) - A surge in Taliban-led attacks in Afghanistan's south highlighted neglect of the troubled area, the defence minister said, predicting a turnaround as the government and its allies redress the situation.

Abdul Rahim Wardak told AFP a "reintensification" in strikes by the extremist Taliban movement, whom he conceded appeared better equipped than before, was a wake-up call.

"We were definitely wrong the way we were operating... the Afghan and government and international community," he said an interview on Thursday. "There were no forces, there were no proper governors, there were no proper police...," he said.

For example in Helmand province -- flush with Taliban and opium traders -- there were only about 50 foreign special forces, a small provincial reconstruction team and an understrength Afghan army battalion until the British started deploying this year.

Helmand sees some of the worst of the violence with six British soldiers from a force of 2,300 killed in action there in the past month.

But now that attention has been refocussed on the area and Wardak said he expected a "drastic change soon -- within two, three months we will see everything is getting much better."

"The level of the Afghan security forces will increase considerably in these provinces, there will be better governance, better police chiefs, better district commissioners...

"There will be more reconstruction, there will be more job opportunities in the area," he said.

A particular focus would be "a better media campaign or psychological warfare," the minister said, admitting the Taliban were running an effective propaganda drive that he said had to have outside help.

The violence in the south escalated after March this year, weeks before an expanding NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is due to take over from a US-led coalition by end July.

Extra British, Canadian and Dutch forces have been moving in, supplementing US troops already there.

ISAF hopes to focus on stabilising the area to allow reconstruction to take place as part of a strategy to assert government authority, win "hearts and minds" and prod the economy.

But the new deployments, particularly the British and Canadians, have been hard hit by attacks with some commanders admit the rebel forces have been more virulent than expected.

The international military is only a temporary solution, Wardak said, with the strengthening of Afghanistan's own police and army essential and eventually expected to allow a draw down of foreign troops.

The country is growing its army to a targeted 70,000 -- it is about half of that now -- but Wardak said this is not enough.

"The lowest figures should be between 150 to 200,000," he said, admitting the destitute country could however not even sustain its current force without international help.

Wardak said the Taliban had pulled out all the stops this year because they wanted to capitalise on the transition between NATO and coalition forces in the south and play on concern in NATO nations about their participation.

"That is why I think they have closed the madrassas and turned everybody to combat ... and sent them this side," he said, echoing often-voiced Afghan opinion that religious schools in neighbouring Pakistan are churning out Islamist fighters.

Wardak was confident however the rebels were no match for the sophistication of the coalition and NATO forces. "Wherever they are they will get crushed and suffer heavy casualties."

The Taliban and their allies have been waging an insurgency since the hardliners were toppled from government in late 2001 by a US-led coalition that struck after the regime did not surrender Al-Qaeda leaders for the September 11 terror attacks.

Failing in Afghanistan is not an option, Wardak said. If the country lapsed back into chaos, it would "become a sanctuary again, it will be a place where the terrorists can hide and plan and train and operate."

"People would not be safe in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Washington... Nobody wants that. Our failure would be the failure of all civilised countries," he said.

Move to reinstate Vice and Virtue - BBC News Friday, 14 July 2006

The Afghan government is considering the re-establishment of the Taleban's Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

The move has been recommended by the Ministry for Religious Affairs. Under the Taleban, the department was notorious for its sometimes brutal enforcement of Islamic norms.

A government minister said the department would help to prevent corruption. The Afghan parliament is due to debate the issue soon.

Correspondents say that under the Taleban, the department's enforcers struck fear into the population by such actions as beating women who did not observe the strict dress code.

Mumbai blasts reflect Afghanistan's security scene: Wali Khan

Shimla, July. 14 (PTI): Terming signs of Taliban's resurgence a threat to the Indian sub-continent, Grandson of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and president of Pakistan's National Awami Party A Wali Khan today suggested the blasts in Mumbai and Srinagar were ripple effects of the worsening security situation in Afghanistan.

"Unless we find Afghanistan peaceful and forward, we should forget about a peaceful and forward looking Indian sub-continent," he said, delivering a lecture on 'South Asia- the way ahead' at the Himalayan Institute of Intergrated Studies in Himachal University here.

Though Khan welcomed Afghanistan's inclusion in the SAARC, he was wary of the happenings in that country as "What starts in Afghanistan trickles down to the entire subcontinent".

The blasts in Srinagar and Mumbai showed that the developments in Afghanistan affected not just Pakistan, but India and Bangaldesh as well, he observed.

On the Kashmir issue, he urged both India and Pakistan to shun the rigid manner in which they approached the issue and resort to dialogue to find a lasting and peaceful solution.

He noted that while it took India and Pakistan five decades to take to the path of discussions, people like his grandfather, also known as `Frontier Gandhi', had all through their life stressed on a negotiated settlement to the matter.

Though there would be initial hurdles to get the dialogue going, the countries would have to assert themselves and ensure the "defeat of the minority", who come both from within and outside the countries, he said.

Sorting out such issues would help India and Pakistan scale down their military expenses and use the money instead in nation building pursuits.

Afghanistan is no place for quitters

JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER - From Friday's Globe and Mail 7/14/06

Thousands of young uniformed men and women from 37 countries -- NATO nations and our partner countries -- are putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan. The Taliban, drug lords and common criminals have all stepped up attacks on our troops, the Afghan government, and ordinary Afghan men, women and children. And all with one aim: to drive us away, and put the clock back to 2001.

Five years is not long enough to have forgotten how much of a threat Afghanistan was then. Under the Taliban, the country was the home and training ground of al-Qaeda, the launch pad for multiple, mass terror attacks in Africa and, of course, 9/11 in the United States. We cannot afford to let Afghanistan become, again, that kind of direct threat to us.

We should also not forget that, until Western forces arrived in 2001 to overthrow the Taliban, Afghanistan was arguably the worst place on Earth to live. The Taliban imprisoned women like chattel, carried out regular public executions, made listening to music a crime, razed the country's rich historical and religious treasures, and in general imposed a system bereft of the most basic human rights. It was a system so offensive to our shared international values that only a handful of countries ever recognized the Taliban, and they were never allowed to take a seat in the United Nations.

The bottom line is clear: While the cost of staying in Afghanistan will be high, the cost of doing nothing will be higher. We have done a lot, but there is a lot left to do.

That is why NATO is carrying out this UN-mandated mission in Afghanistan. We are now expanding to about 16,000 soldiers, and soon to more than 20,000. NATO allies are making a major military effort, together with the Afghan national army, to provide security. But this is not just a military story. Without security, development cannot begin; but without development, security cannot last.

That is why our military effort must be matched on the civilian side. This weekend, G8 nations are meeting to discuss the important political and economic issues of the day. Afghanistan should be at the top of their agenda.

The world has committed, through the Afghanistan Compact, to support the country's reconstruction and its long-term development. The G8, UN, European Union, World Bank, NGO community and others all must redouble their efforts to build the capacity of Afghan institutions, rebuild the economy and speed reconstruction. It makes no sense to pour military resources, human and financial, into Afghanistan to lay the foundations for peace, without investing what it takes for peace to be sustainable.

Our objective is clear: to prevent the return of an anti-democratic, fanatical regime that exports terror. Our strategy is clear: to support Afghanistan's young democracy, including its security forces, to create the space for civilian development. It will require a broad-based effort by the entire international community. And it will take close co-operation between the Afghan government and the international community.

A good example is the fight against narcotics. The importance of this fight is clear: Ninety per cent of the heroin in Europe comes from Afghanistan, and the Taliban are increasingly in league with the drug lords. We must help tackle this problem at the source. But soldiers alone cannot provide an answer. An effective counter-narcotics strategy means providing alternative livelihoods to poor farmers, building prisons, training lawyers and judges, and making roads safe so farmers can get legitimate crops to market. A comprehensive approach, melding civilian and military efforts under Afghanistan's lead, is the only solution.

And it must be a long-term solution. With two peaceful and democratic elections, and many children back in school, Afghanistan has come a long way since 2001. But by any measure, it still has a long and bumpy way to go. What we must do is stay the course and not leave this task half done. What we must do is build upon the success we have already achieved and finish the job.

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is secretary-general of NATO.

Taliban in search of a winning formula    

by Syed Saleem Shahzad Source: Asia Times, HK 12 July 2006

KARACHI - The Taliban's spring offensive in Afghanistan is now three months old. It is the biggest ever mounted against foreign forces in the country since the Taliban's ouster in 2001, and it has taken a heavy toll on insurgency as well as coalition forces.

And, according to one of the Taliban's top 10 commanders who spoke to Asia Times Online, the rising spiral of death is just the tip of the iceberg and the coalition's "Operation Mountain Thrust" in the southwest of the country will be severely challenged.

Mullah Gul Mohammed Jangvi (the last name means warrior) said by telephone from Afghanistan the Taliban would once again alter their tactics. Jangvi is one of the 10 members of the command council of the Taliban.

"We have had some initial successes, which boosted our morale. Tarood, Sangeen and Musa Qila districts in Helmand province are our recent victories," Jangvi said.

"We have set a few priorities, top-most of which is to fight only with foreign forces and avoid fighting Afghans. However, there are Afghans who are top of our [hit] list, like Gul Afghan Sherzai [governor of Nangarhar province], [President] Hamid Karzai and the members of parliament."

Jangvi dismissed a question that perhaps the Taliban were on the back foot as they were frequently changing tactics. "In the past few weeks we narrowed down our targets and we are aiming to hit those targets which give us optimum results.

"In the recent past we tried to attack Kandahar airport and US military bases. This is aimed at rooting out American air power in these stations so that they would not be able to shield their ground troops in a short span of time. In the coming days you will see more and more attacks on airfields, and once air cover vanishes from over the heads of coalition troops, they will be trapped everywhere like sitting ducks."

Despite Jangvi's optimism, though, the fact is that the Taliban have only inflicted about 100 casualties on coalition forces in the past three months, while the body count of Taliban and civilians in southwestern Afghanistan, most of them Taliban supporters, is estimated at more than 2,000.

And critically, in some areas the insurgency has degenerated into an unholy mess of internecine strife, so much so that even Karzai has decried the bloodshed and called on coalition forces to alter their tactics as "even the Taliban are sons of the soil".

As things stand, with the insurgency losing some of its focus as tribes fight each other, it only has a limited effect on the morale of the mighty American war machine and does not bode well for the chances of the campaign turning the Taliban into an emboldened force to make a comeback.

Hence the Taliban once again changed focus by concentrating solely on foreign forces, rather than engaging the Afghan National Army.

Jangvi explained his optimism: "The Taliban's command structure started off with 10 commanders, and now it is expanding. As soon as we get back into the villages, towns and cities, we will revive our old networks and our old command structures.

"At present I can only divulge that now we have commanders in all Afghan provinces from north to south. Last year we did not have that network. More successes bring more strength and in the coming days the Taliban command structure will reach up to all districts and village levels. And once we attain that it means that we will be returning to our old strength, that is, around 300,000 all across Afghanistan."

This number refers to those Taliban who were part of the regime's administration, police, army and other security apparatus during Taliban rule, and who after the Taliban retreat melted into Afghanistan's tribal population.

"Now use your imagination, once we negate American air power and regain our whole strength, why can't we seize control of Afghanistan?"

Nonetheless, losing Afghanistan is not an option for the Americans as even a limited victory of the Taliban up to southwestern Afghanistan would be a new base for an anti-US movement. This area would include the provinces of Urzgan, Zabul and Helmand, beside a few districts in Kandahar.

This would be a blow to the American war machine not only in Afghanistan but also in Iraq as the Taliban would be in a position to establish a supply line of manpower from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq for the resistance there. Such a line could also be used to channel funds from Afghanistan's rampant opium industry to the Iraqi resistance.

This is the reason why coalition forces will keep up the pressure in the region, notably by increasing the number of troops on the ground - especially from Britain and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Jangvi is unperturbed, though. "More foreign troops means more of their casualties. This would be the time for the world Muslim community to understand that jihad in Afghanistan has reached a significant level and it is time again to help the resistance with manpower and money."

Remember the stakes in the Afghan conflict – Globe and Mail Editorial 7/14/06

Is it time to give up on Afghanistan?

As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization gets ready to take over command in the country's dangerous south on Aug. 1, the mood among those who are trying to put the war-torn country back on its feet has moved from hope to gloom. Things are not going well. Five years after being toppled from power, the Taliban are back with a vengeance, ambushing allied troops, setting off suicide bombs and wreaking havoc wherever they can. The drug lords are back too (indeed they never went away), confirming Afghanistan's status as the world's biggest heroin exporter and doing it right under the noses of NATO troops. More than 1,100 people have lost their lives in the fighting since April. The United Nations says the Taliban are burning schools at the rate of one a day, and killing female teachers at the same clip.

The Afghan government seems powerless to stop them. With drug runners and warlords in its ranks, its moral authority is open to question. In any case, its writ barely runs in the provinces, where warlords and tribal leaders still hold sway. Because security is so dicey, reconstruction efforts have barely started. The new roads, sewage systems and electricity Afghans desperately need are nowhere to be seen.

But, bad as this year has been for Afghanistan and its backers, it's not time to throw in the towel yet.

Why? To begin with, things are not quite as dire as they look. The Afghan government may not be filled with angels, but it has held together. The country has conducted two successful elections, in 2004 and 2005. Its President, Hamid Karzai, is honest and solid. Despite all the disappointments, Afghans have not turned en masse against their leaders or rebelled against the foreign troops, a remarkable fact given their history of hostility to soldiers from abroad. On the contrary, most people still seem to welcome the help of the international community. Largely because of outside help, two-thirds of Afghans now have access to health care and five million children go to school.

Military officials figure the Taliban and their militant allies command no more than 6,000 fighters in a population of 30 million. They are growing bolder, but they are also losing more men. One reason the fighting has intensified is that Canadian and other NATO forces are for the first time taking on the militants in their southern heartland. So, in a sense, the fiercer fighting is a sign of success, not failure.

To underline the good news is not to deny the bad. It would be foolish to ignore what is going wrong in Afghanistan. But it would be equally foolish to succumb to defeatism. A lot is at stake. If the vicious nihilists who lead the insurgency were to drive out the foreign coalition, the Afghan government would certainly fall. The Taliban could regain power or the country could descend into civil war. Either way, the cause of international terrorism would claim a famous victory and gain an invaluable base. With millions of hectares of opium poppies to fund them, they would be free to spread havoc around the globe.

Canada and its allies are there to prevent this from happening. Success is crucial to the world's safety (to say nothing of Afghanistan's survival). It is hard to think of a more important mission. Bad news notwithstanding, they should stick with it.

Italy debates Afghanistan funding

By Tony Barber in Rome – Financial Times July 13 2006

Italy’s centre-left government was facing a critical test of its unity on Thursday as internal tensions rose over plans to renew funding for Italy’s contribution to Nato-led military operations in Afghanistan.

Moderate members of the ruling coalition criticised their communist partners for opposing the measure and risked disarray in the government, a mere three months after Mr Prodi defeated Silvio Berlusconi, the centre-right ex-premier, in a hard-fought general election.

Mr Prodi supports Italy’s military involvement in Afghanistan and sees the extension of funding as an important signal to the US and Italy’s European partners that his government, even with communists and pacifists in it, will be a reliable Nato ally.

But Mr Prodi must tread carefully because his coalition has only a two-seat majority in the Senate, parliament’s upper house, and eight leftist malcontents as well as one senator-for-life have threatened to vote against renewed funding.

“The declarations of some people on the radical left are disconcerting and make one bitter,” said Massimo Donadi, parliamentary group leader of Italy of Values, a moderate government party.

If the radical leftists were to carry out their threat, Mr Prodi would be forced to depend upon the votes of Mr Berlusconi and the opposition to pay for Italy’s continued deployment of 1,800 soldiers in Afghanistan.

Such a humiliation could spell disaster for Mr Prodi for, as the opposition Christian Democrats argued this week, “if the government majority doesn’t have enough votes, and the votes of the centre-right determine the outcome, then Prodi has the moral duty to step down”.

The lower house of parliament, where Mr Prodi has a secure majority, is scheduled to vote on the Afghan funding on July 17, and the Senate’s knife-edge vote is pencilled in for July 25.

Massimo D’Alema, foreign minister, suggested this week he would resign unless the government rebels backed down.

Italy’s Afghan mission has generally been less controversial in domestic politics than its military deployment in Iraq, which started under Mr Berlusconi, a fervently pro-US premier. The Prodi government intends to pull out all Italy’s troops from Iraq by the end of this year.

But the new prime minister views the Afghan mission in a different light, noting that it has the support of the United Nations, whose secretary-general Kofi Annan, visited Rome on Wednesday and asked Italy to keep its forces in Afghanistan.

George W. Bush, the US president, gave an interview to an Italian newspaper this week in which he also urged the Prodi government to stay with its Nato allies in Afghanistan.

However, some communists in Italy’s ruling coalition have a virulently anti-US and anti-imperialist worldview, regard the Nato-led operation in Afghanistan as inflaming an already troubled situation, and want Italy’s forces out.

If there is one political calculation that may curb their rebelliousness, it is the awareness that the alternative to the Prodi government is a centrist coalition that would take even less account of their desires or, worse still, the return of Mr Berlusconi, their nemesis.

War on Afghan opium farming an "absolute disaster"

Financial Times Deutschland 07/14/2006

For Britian, which has deployed 3,300 troops in and around the province and is the lead nation for Afghanistan's counter-narcotics programmes, the bumper harvest will be deeply embarrassing.

Afghanistan is set to produce its largest ever opium crop, with the biggest rise in Helmand province, where British troops are engaged in combat with the Taliban, western officials said.

The $1bn campaign to eradicate the crop had been "an absolute disaster", a top western counter-narcotics official said. Stemming poppy cultivation in Helmand, which accounts for more than a third of Afghanistan's opium crop, was seen as essential to the programme's success.

As the harvest season sets in, western officials estimate that Helmand's poppy crop may more than double to 77,000 hectares, up from 26,500 in 2005. For Britain, which has deployed 3,300 troops in and around the province and is the lead nation for Afghanistan's counter-narcotics programmes, the bumper harvest will be deeply embarrassing.

In Taliban-held areas of Helmand, farmers were encouraged by insurgents to grow poppies. Letters were sent ahead of the sowing season threatening them with violence if they did not comply. But corruption has also been a big problem in bolstering the drugs harvest.

"We really need to start focusing on corruption. There are up to 10,000 hectares of government land being used to grow poppy in Helmand," a US official said.

The booming poppy crop has opened up divisions within the international community. A Nato official told the FT that military officers were mulling a grace period for Afghan farmers so that reconstruction efforts could be rolled out by incoming forces across the south. "A grace period is being discussed. We have to get things done in the right sequence," he said.

Lieutentant General David Richards, who will take command of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan from the US at the end of July, said Afghan farmers had no viable alternatives to opium. To help create other options, he said, Nato aimed to provide a security umbrella so progress could be made on reconstruction, which has been stalled by rising violence.

However, the UN has warned that focusing efforts on areas that cultivate the most poppies is not the best strategy. Boosting development in parts of the country where poppy cultivation was not the main earner "would build a line of defence against the spread of the crop", a UN official said.

Biofuels may be Afghans' future - The Financial Times, 07/14/2006 – Letter to the Editor

Sir, There is a greener alternative to Angus Runciman's sensible suggestion (Letters, July 12) that the UK government purchase the entire Afghan poppy crop at 10 per cent above Taliban rates in order to win "hearts and minds". That alternative is the Jatropha curcas plant.

Jatropha grows prolifically on waste land with limited water supply (Afghanistan surely qualifies on both counts) and produces seed, the copious oil extract from which can readily be refined into biodiesel, using simple, cheap and available technology.

If HM government offered to purchase Jatropha seeds at 10 per cent above Taliban poppy prices it would give an incentive for farmers to switch from poppies to a plant that has the potential to assist the world to move from fossil fuels to biofuels. Perhaps the Taliban could then be involved in the process of refining and marketing the biodiesel produced.

Dick Martin, Tonbridge, Kent TN11 8JX

Feature: Will there be no more grapes from Kandahar?

KANDAHAR CITY, July 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Grapes in Kandahar are no doubt not sour but the recent surge in insurgency is stopping farmers to go there and pick the produce.

Insecurity in the southern provinces is affecting all dimensions of life and now the victims are the orchard owners who could not find buyers for their grape produce.

Panjwayee, Zharai and Mewand are the districts enjoying reputation for its copious grape produce but growers, this year, complain no one was turning up. The main detriment is said to be the security situation which has slipped from bad to worse over the past few months.

Tribal elders, growers and orchard owners from the districts visited the provincial capital on Wednesday to inform the authorities concerned of their dilemma.

The dismayed group also attended a meeting with the provincial officials and chief of the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) in the province.

The fruit is ripe and the orchard owners are awaiting buyers to come and pick it, says Haji Abdul Ali, a grower and member of the delegation.

Haji Esa Khan, another elder, lashed out at the government for the lawlessness in the districts. He said the authorities were caring more about their own security than that of the masses.

Justifying anxiety of the cultivators in face of the rampant lawlessness in the districts, head of the Kandahar provincial council Ahmad Wali Karzai asked the government to create gainful market for their produce. "No market for their produce will drop the farmers in grave financial crisis," he opined.

Disheartened by the prevailing situation, an orchard owner from Panjwayee Haji Wali Mohammad Khan said 300 trucks load of grapes were shifted from the district last year. But not a single had been delivered in the market so far this year.

The government wanted the farmers to cease poppy cultivation and start growing fruits and other crops, but their produce was going to the waste as no one was turning up to buy it, Wali lamented.

Regarding the complaints of the orchard owners, senior official at the Ministry of Commerce Mohammad Azim Wardak said the produce was still unripe and government would take steps at the right time.

He said a delegation comprising traders and attaches at the Afghan embassy in Saudi Arabia and Consulate in Quetta, Pakistan had been formed to export the produce to the two countries.

But Hamidullah Farouqi, chief executive officer at the Afghanistan International Chamber of Commerce (AICC), sees the whole affair with a different spectacle.

Farouqi said the grapes from Kandahar were not of the international standard. Its packing was also not of high quality; hence the traders evince little interest in it. It is pertinent to recall that Kandahar had exported 20,000 tons of grapes last year.

Drought Hits Afghan North

Farmers are selling off their animals and trekking to other areas as the lack of rain makes for a long dry summer. Institute For War and Peace Reporting
By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 222, 13-Jul-06)

Many farmers in northern Afghanistan are on the move in a migration caused by the region’s worst drought in five years.

On June 29, a first group consisting of 200 families from the northwestern province of Badghis arrived in the north-central Samangan region, more than 200 kilometres away, in what is expected to be a larger flow. Their ultimate destination is Kunduz, further east again, where they hope the nearby river Amu Darya will ensure there is enough water.

The population movement is a symptom of a wider problem affecting a swathe of provinces across northern Afghanistan, which is flatter than the rest of the country, and where agricultural and pasture land has been hard hit by a lack of spring rains this year.

Officials in Samangan say they are struggling to cope with the influx, as their own province too is suffering the effects of drought. Some farmers in Samangan are beginning to move on themselves.

The families from Badghis have lost their livestock and crops because of the drought, and have come to Samangan in hope of finding drinking water for the animals they still have.

One of the migrants, Nazar Gul, lives with his wife and four kids in a sack-made tent, too flimsy to prevent the heat of the sun. They made the trip after their crops withered and animals died.

“There is no water in our province because of the harsh drought," Nazar Gul told IWPR. "I think that if we’d stayed there a few days more, my kids would had died of thirst."

While he moved eastwards, most of his relatives have gone south to Pakistan or west to Iran, he said.

Samangan’s provincial governor, Abdul Haq Shafaq, said his administration had no resources to deal with the new arrivals apart from the help offered by local residents.

Shafaq also expressed concern at the risk of drought facing the local population. "Right now, more than 20,000 families in Samangan are threatened by the lack of water," he said.

The governor said steps were being taken to stop people packing up and leaving. He said water tankers belonging to the provincial branch of the ministry for rural rehabilitation and development were now being used to carry water to villages where natural springs and man-made wells had dried up. But he added that the tankers were few in number and were not able to bring water to livestock that were out to pasture.

Some farmers in the province are already leaving. One man interviewed by IWPR, Zalmay, was on the move with his 11-member family.

"Everything I planted has been destroyed. No one has helped me yet, so I have to move to a place where I can find drinking water," he said. "All our springs and wells have dried up, so we have to move.

“If we don't, we’ll have to spend the whole day looking for water and then we won’t have time to find something to eat."

Aibak, the capital of Samangan, at first sight looks like a booming market town as it is packed full of the animals farmers have brought in for sale.

But this glut too is a warning signal - farmers are offloading large numbers of their animals while they still can. Once their stock has gone, they face an uncertain future.

"The farmers are selling their livestock at half price because of the lack of water," said Governor Shafaq.

"I have sold 140 sheep at half price. That money won’t support me even for one year. I don't know what I’ll do after that," said Gulbuddin, a farmer. People in other northern areas are facing similar problems.

Karim, a farmer in Balkh province just west of Samangan, described how he had lost his agricultural crops to drought and was now figuring out the best strategy to keep his livestock going for as long as possible.

"I’ve had 200 sheep die since the beginning of the year. The pasturelands are dried up, but we’re going to keep our animals until the autumn. Come winter, though, it’s going to be completely impossible to keep them," he said.

In Jowzjan, west of Balkh, the head of the provincial agriculture department, Abdul Rashid, said, "The data we have gathered indicates that the drought has dried up more than 90 per cent of land under wheat, and has made life hard for farmers in the province."

Abdul Rashid said the provincial administration had no way of helping those affected, and appealed to the international community for assistance. "I’m afraid that our farmers will migrate to foreign countries,” he said.

In Kabul, the agriculture ministry is aware of the crisis and has responded to pleas for help with an emergency plan. “The drought can be felt in all provinces, but in northern Afghanistan it is a matter of concern," Deputy Agriculture Minister Ghulam Mustafa told IWPR.

"The ministries of agriculture and of rural rehabilitation and development have decided to provide foodstuff and drinkable water to people affected by the drought…. Under the plan, the government will soon take all the assistance, which includes wheat and water-carrying equipment, out to the affected people.

“The programme is intended to stop people migrating en masse.” However, an official with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, cautioned that before effective help can be offered, the extent of the drought and the need must first be surveyed.

Mir Shafiuddin Mirzad, who heads the FAO office in northern Afghanistan, said his organisation was working with the ministry of agriculture and the World Food Programme to carry out an assessment of the situation.

Recalling that the three bodies carried out a similar needs assessment study during the bad drought of 1998-2001, Mirzad said, "We have recently established this coordination [again], and we are working to identify which part of the country we should start the survey from.

“We cannot know the need for food until a survey is conducted. So any kind of assistance given before the survey is done will not be effective. We can neither assist nor can we say anything about the scale of the drought until that survey is completed."

As talk of assessments goes on in the capital, farmers across northern Afghanistan look set to continue making tough choices about survival - selling off their herds for slaughter, and moving out.

Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Jobless Face Grim Future

Unfulfilled hopes of economic growth and security create a growing pool long-term unemployed, many of them returning refugees. Institute For War and Peace Reporting By Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 222, 13-Jul-06)

On several squares in central Kabul, hundreds of people are milling around in hope that someone will give them a day’s work. When prospective employers show up - and they are few and far between - a crowd immediately gathers around them.

"Please take me. I’m a hard worker,” said one hopeful at this informal hiring market for “muzdorkar” or day labourers. “In the name of God, I haven’t been able to find any work for the past week."

Analysts argue about how much the state is directly responsible for providing its citizens with jobs, but they agree that people at the bottom of the heap - many of whom have recently returned from years in exile - have been let down by flawed policies and empty promises.

Unemployment data is hard to come by in a country where government institutions are still emerging and have limited reach. Government estimates say about 33 per cent of the working-age population are jobless.

Most of the unemployed are returning refugees from Pakistan and Iran, left stranded by the failure of the Afghan economy to pick up. Others swelling the jobless ranks include school and university leavers.

At a May 29 press briefing in Kabul, Shengjie Li, the International Labour Organisation’s liaison officer, said that many of those without work are women or people with disabilities.

When the Taleban regime fell in late 2001 and a new administration led by President Hamed Karzai was installed, the hope was that economic recovery helped along by billions of US dollars in international assistance and, down the line, foreign investment made possible by increased stability, would create workplaces to provide decent livelihoods for returning refugees as well as for those who never left the country.

Efforts began to encourage Afghans to return from Pakistan, Iran and further afield where several million had lived for years after escaping successive waves of conflict - Soviet invasion, the internecine strife that followed, and Taleban rule.

The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, in Kabul says over 4.5 million people have returned to Afghanistan since the agency began a voluntary repatriation programme in March 2002. The number includes three million from Pakistan and more than a million from Iran.

While Kabul presents a veneer of rapid economic development, with smart new houses and shopping centres springing up in fashionable areas, the changes are largely skin-deep and have not generated large numbers of jobs. In urban centres outside the capital, employment opportunities are even thinner on the ground.

The problem, say analysts, is that the government has not done enough to create the right economic and security environment in which new jobs will appear. Until security is in place, there can be little economic development, said Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, a political analyst who heads the Centre for Regional Studies in Afghanistan.

"Economy and security are very closely connected with one another. Both need to be in place. Their absence causes unemployment, which [in turn] fuels the lack of security," he said.

Fazul Rahman Orya, a political analyst and chief editor of the Payam magazine, reeled off a list of areas where in his view the government has contributed to high unemployment - the failure to secure the country in the face of continuing violence, slow reconstruction efforts, the lack of support for domestic and foreign investors, corruption in the government bureaucracy, and the influence of warlords and drug barons inside the administration as well as outside it.

All these factors are interlinked, but according to Orya, "The factor that has made this government an ailing one is Karzai's wrong-headed policy and his inappropriate tactic of consulting with war- and drug-lords. This policy has made the security situation worse and has deterred domestic and foreign investors and traders from putting money into the country.”

Liwal does not agree that it is for central government to create jobs for everyone in society. But he too believes government policies - and failures - have contributed to maintaining and increasing the unemployment crisis.

"It’s the government's responsibility to ensure security, create a safe working environment, and maintain the national interest. What should have been done in this regard has not been done," said Liwal.

"There is no strategy for using public property. Energy - the lifeblood of the economy - is non-existent. All of this is the job of government, which it should have carried out.”

Liwal also said the international community has not done enough to assist economic growth at a nationwide level.

"If the international community wants to rebuild Afghanistan, why doesn’t each country work in one Afghan province, putting the people there to work and eradicating unemployment?” he asked.

OFFICIALS PRESCRIBE INVESTMENT AND TRAINING - Deputy Economy Minister Nazir Ahmad Shahidi said the kind of unemployment seen in Afghanistan was a feature of countries recently in conflict. But he said the fact that unemployment was now on the rise was a worrying sign.

"Unemployment is increasing day by day. The government needs to find a solution, because this is a major problem that affects the security situation,” he said. Shahidi said the answer lay in creating a more investor-friendly business environment.

A senior official at the ministry of labour and social affairs, Abdul Karim Hamid, pointed out that the de-skilling of the Afghan labour force over a quarter of a century of instability and conflict had also played a role, and had even prompted companies to import better-qualified labour.

"If we recognise that the government is 80 per cent to blame, we must also admit that the people themselves are 20 per cent to blame because they have not acquired skills," said Hamid. "Those who need workers try to hire foreign workers because they have adequate skills.”

Hamid said that to redress the situation, the labour ministry had set up vocational training centres in specialisms such as tailoring, masonry and carpentry in 16 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, and similar schemes would soon be started in other regions. He also noted that in the last four years, his ministry had found jobs in government agencies and organisations for more than 120,000 people. Finally, he said, the government plans to send people to work in other countries.

JOB SITUATION REDUCES INCENTIVE TO RETURN - There are still approximately 2.6 million Afghans still living in Pakistan and 900,000 more in Iran, according to UNHCR, and the intention is to encourage most of them to come back. But despite the hardships they face in those countries, the poor employment situation in Afghanistan may now be deterring them from returning.

In May, the Associated Press news agency reported that only 1,000 people had come back from Iran so far in 2006. The UN had predicted that around 600,000 refugees would return in the course of the year, including 150,000 from Iran.

As Ismail Khan, a journalist for the Dawn newspaper in Pakistan, told the BBC recently, "The Pakistani authorities and UN officials admit that these Afghans are not political refugees, because there is security in most parts of Afghanistan, but they cannot return to their country because of the unemployment there."

SOME RETURNEES LEAVING AGAIN - One of the most worrying indications of the difficulty of earning a living is that some of the refugees who did come back are now planning to leave again. Outside the Pakistani and Iranian embassies, and at the Afghan passport office, hundreds of people can be seen queuing up every day.

Ali Yawar, 27, standing in a long queue outside the passport agency, spoke for many others when he said life in Iran was far from easy, but he felt his own country had nothing to offer him.

"Karzai cheated us three years ago when he said, ‘Come to Afghanistan - there is security and work.’ We came to Afghanistan and sold all what we had gathered over the three years [in Iran], but I didn’t find work. Now I want to go back to Iran with my family,” he said.

"The Iranians don’t treat Afghan refugees well, especially the police for whom it’s easy to beat and kill refugees. But we have to endure it in order to earn our daily bread."

Because obtaining a passport and visa is a cumbersome process that can take a month and a half, many people leave the country with no documents and become illegal migrants.

The costs are high, and so is the risk of arrest and injury along the way. At the end of May, 30 Afghans were among 40 illegal migrants killed when the truck they were packed into crashed on a motorway from Osmaniye to Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey.

DESPERATION COULD FEED UNREST - Another risk of high unemployment is that marginalised groups could be drawn into violence and crime. According to political analyst Orya, such people are ready source of recruits for the armed insurgency or the drug trafficking trade.

Sulaiman, 28, has applied for many public-sector jobs without success, and now finds himself at a day-labourer market in Kabul’s Baharistan Cinema area. Standing aside from the crowd, he told IWPR that he usually managed to work one day a week but needed to support ten family members.

Leaning against a tree, he spoke angrily about his circumstances but said he would not demean himself by chasing after prospective employers like the other labourers did.

"I’m sick of this life. I don't know how much they pay a suicide bomber. I don't know how to get in touch with them. I am ready to carry out a suicide attack because then some money will be left to my family," he said.

Sulaiman said many of his young male relatives were involved in various illegal activities, but added, “It isn’t their fault – they’re unemployed and they have to feed their children."

Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s editor in Afghanistan.

[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.]