In this bulletin:

• Karzai: Tribesmen Will Help Fight Taliban
• Afghanistan seeks long-term partnership with NATO
• Four Afghans working on Indian road project shot dead
• Forces kill 37 militants in Afghanistan
• Australian to open embassy in Kabul
• The End of the Kabul Spring
• Pros and cons for legalizing Afghan opium plantations
• Afghan mission creates split among Grit contenders
• The fall guy for the US retreat from Afghanistan
• Taliban take the fight to the country
• Afghans make England tour

Karzai: Tribesmen Will Help Fight Taliban

By AMIR SHAH The Associated Press Sunday, June 11, 2006; 12:13 PM

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that his government will recruit local tribesmen to fight the biggest increase in Taliban violence in years.

A U.S.-led coalition soldier and seven Afghan civilians were killed in the latest violence in the country's south, which has been hardest hit by the surge in insurgent attacks.

Speaking to a group of tribal elders from eastern Afghanistan, Karzai said he did not want to form militias that could clash with rival tribes. "We just want to strengthen the districts to safeguard them from terrorist attack," he said.

Although they would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity of the topic, Western diplomats briefed on the plan said they worried it could fuel factional fighting by giving weapons to forces loyal to warlords with long histories of factional disputes.

Karim Rahimi, Karzai's spokesman, said that would not happen because, the government believes, the recruits will be loyal to Kabul. He described the new recruits as "community police." "They are to strengthen the security setup in Afghanistan," he said.

The president did not say how many tribal fighters would be recruited. But he said there would be a dramatic increase in the ranks of security forces in some areas.

He told the elders that in one troubled district in southern Kandahar province that there were only 45 police for a population of 65,000. "We need about 150 police in that district for it to be strong, so we need to build the force from within the community," he said.

Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told reporters that the tribal forces would "take their command from each district police chief." He said local security forces would also be given better weapons and bulletproof vests.

The surge in fighting has killed more than 500 people, mostly militants, since mid-May and raised fears of a Taliban resurgence. Wardak said the rebels have stepped up attacks to scare NATO countries from deploying troops there.

He said that violence had increased in the south because the Taliban was making an all-out push to scare Britain, Canada, the Netherlands and Romania from deploying some 6,000 troops to the region.

The soldiers are scheduled to resume responsibility for the region from the U.S.-led coalition next month. "They just want to take advantage of this period of transition from coalition to NATO and they want to have maximum impact," Wardak said of the insurgents.

He said that once NATO deploys extra troops to the region _ effectively doubling the number of foreign combat forces _ and the government deploys more soldiers there, "I am absolutely sure that the situation will improve drastically."

In the latest violence, a U.S.-led coalition soldier was killed when a bomb hit his armored vehicle during a search of a village in Ghazni province, the U.S. military said in a statement.

U.S. military spokesman Sgt. Chris Miller said he was not permitted to disclose the soldier's nationality.

Also in Ghazni, unidentified gunmen killed three Afghans late Saturday as they were driving near the provincial capital, said Ali Ahmad, a local police commander.

In Kandahar province, gunmen killed four Afghan laborers working for an Indian road construction company, said Daod Ahmadi, a government spokesman. The men were driving home with $8,000, which was stolen from them. It was not immediately clear whether the Taliban or thieves were responsible.

Afghanistan seeks long-term partnership with NATO

KABUL, June 11 (Xinhua) -- The post-Taliban Afghanistan has been trying to reach an agreement on having long-term strategic partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),the country's Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak disclosed Sunday.

"To have long-term strategic partnership with NATO, I have discussed the issue with NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer some five months ago and hope to finalize it soon," Wardak told newsmen after return from Brussels.

Wardak, who attended the meeting of NATO-members states defense ministers in Brussels last week, noted that having partnership with NATO would help boost and equip Afghan security apparatus. However, he declined to say if the post-Taliban nation were eager to join the western military pact either now or in future.

He made this comment while Taliban-linked insurgency is on rise in the southern region amid NATO's expansion in the rugged terrain where hundreds of the remnants of the former fundamentalist regime are said to have hidden.

Taliban-linked insurgency has claimed the lives of more than 700 people including militants, Afghan and U.S.-led foreign soldiers as well as pro-government religious and social figures since beginning 2006.

To root out militants and ensure security, NATO has decided to increase its strength from some 10,000-strong force to 18,000 in the coming months.

NATO forces would remain in Afghanistan at least for five years and their extension, according to the Afghan minister, depends on security situation. "We want NATO to strengthen its relations and further support us," Wardak said.

Four Afghans working on Indian road project shot dead – AFP 06/12/2006

KANDAHAR - Gunmen robbed and shot dead four men working for an Indian road construction company in southern Afghanistan, a provincial government spokesman said.

The men were Afghan nationals who had been living in Pakistan for around two decades as refugees and had returned to Afghanistan to work, officials in Pakistan said on Sunday.

They were killed Saturday in a district of Kandahar province known to be a stronghold of the Taliban movement that has been waging an insurgency since being removed from government in late 2001, spokesman Daud Ahmadi said.

It was too early to say if the Taliban were behind the attack in Maiwand district, the spokesman said, telling AFP: "We don't know who the attackers were affiliated with."

The killers stole 80,000 dollars and a four-wheel-drive vehicle the men had been travelling in, Ahmadi said. The Taliban have admitted to several such killings in the past but have denied robbing their victims.

An administration official in the Pakistani border town of Chaman, where the bodies of the men were handed over to their relatives on Sunday, said the Afghan government had indicated that robbery had been the motive.

"The Afghans told us that according to their preliminary investigation, it was purely a case of robbery," the official, Saqib Aziz, told AFP. "We are also investigating the matter," he said.

Indian road construction projects have previously been targeted by Taliban militants, who focus their attacks on government officials and groups involved in efforts to rebuild the country after 25 years of war.

A purported Taliban spokesman was quoted in an Indian news magazine last month warning Indian groups to wind up their construction projects in Afghanistan and leave the country.

The statement was issued after Taliban militants abducted and killed an Indian engineer in late April in southern Zabul province. His headless body was found two days after he was captured.

"We want all Indians to leave Afghanistan and shut down their projects here," Taliban spokesman Mohammed Hanif was quoted as saying in an interview with The Outlook.

The extremist Taliban launched their insurgency after they were removed from government by a US-led coalition in late 2001.

The latest upsurge of violence peaked in mid-May, leaving around 400 people dead in a two-week stretch. Most of the dead were militants but about 40 civilians were also killed, most of them in coalition operations.

Forces kill 37 militants in Afghanistan

Kandahar (AP) - Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 37 suspected militants, including a relative of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in three separate battles, an Afghan army general said Monday.

Omar's brother-in-law, Mullah Amanullah, was among 15 insurgents killed in one of the battles in Siachave village, in southern Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, when troops stormed the area late Sunday after a tip from tribesmen, said army commander Gen. Rehmatullah Raufi.

Amanullah, whose body was recovered from the village, was the Taliban commander in Uruzgan province's Dihrawud district and responsible for numerous rebel attacks, Raufi said.

Coalition military spokesman Maj. Quentin Innis could not confirm if Amanullah had been killed.

Six other suspected militants were captured and several assault rifles and rocket launchers seized in the village, Raufi said. No Afghan or coalition troops were hurt.

In a second raid early Monday, Afghan and coalition troops killed 12 suspected militants in southern Kandahar province's Saidan village, Raufi said.

The rebels were discovered hiding in a shop selling dried fruit, sparking a fierce gunbattle that followed a two-day operation tracking the insurgents.

Ten militants were killed in neighboring Helmand province's Sangin district late Sunday in a battle involving Afghan and British forces, the Afghan general said.

The clash was the same in which a British soldier was killed and two others seriously wounded, Raufi said.

The deaths come amid three weeks of the worst fighting since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. More than 500 people, mostly militants, have been killed and fears have been raised for this country's future

In Kabul, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann suggested drug barons were inciting some of the violence in an effort to destabilize the region and undermine the government's U.S.-backed counternarcotics campaign.

Neumann said a campaign by President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed administration to forcibly eradicate poppies prompted the drug lords to take action.

"Drug dealers are trying to make more violence. Two years ago, there was no eradication of poppy," Neumann said. "This year, President Karzai led a very strong policy to have governors eradicate poppy and to tell people not to grow."

"There were efforts by drug dealers and terrorists together to prevent that," he said. "Now, they are trying to use the violence to guard their wealth."

Australian to open embassy in Kabul

KABUL, June 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Australia is scheduled to open its embassy in Kabul in the coming three months, officials said on Monday.

Australia has so far no embassy in Afghanistan. The decision was taken after getting positive response from the Afghan government. The country was in contact with the Afghan government to officially open its embassy here.

A senior official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on condition of anonymity, told Pajhwok Afghan News Afghanistan wanted friendly ties with all countries. He said they welcomed the decision of the Australian government to open its embassy here.

Australia is one of the major partners who are playing their role in reconstruction and maintenance of security in Afghanistan. It had also pledged $150 million during the London Conference.

Besides, Australia had contributed 500 troops for the US-led coalition to fight insurgency in Afghanistan. Presently, Kabul is hosting 41 embassies and missions from different countries.

The End of the Kabul Spring – Washingtonpost By Pamela Constable Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page B01

Sounds of shouting, running, smashing.

A burst of gunfire. A dog howling.

A heavy truck moving fast. A tank?

Three bursts, very near. That's a Kalashnikov.

Black smoke drifting between the trees.

A glimpse of tattered black banner held aloft.

Something's burning.

More shouts, whistles, stampeding.

Oh,God, they're right outside.

Hide the computer, hide the cameras.

Hide anything written in English.

They're going to come over the wall.

Those are notes from my reporter's notebook, made on Monday, May 29, although the handwriting doesn't look like mine. It's bigger and loopier than normal, a little shaky. I spent that day pacing an office in Kabul, barricaded behind a high wall while my Afghan interpreter reported from the streets. I grew more frightened and angry as the sounds and smells of a riot came closer.

The city was crackling with rumors that American soldiers had shot or run down innocent civilians during the morning rush hour, rumors that raced from block to block, drawing men and boys into a frenzied torrent of rage and frustration that surged through the streets like a river, searching for anything foreign to destroy.

After seven hours, when the river had spent itself and the city was quiet except for the wail of firetruck sirens, the guard took my incriminating laptop and photography equipment out of the rain barrel where I had hidden them, trundled me into a van and rushed me to a friend's high-rise apartment, where I spent the night watching TV footage of men throwing stones at U.S. troops, schoolboys lugging looted laptops and police traffic posts in flames.

I had come to love Kabul during repeated long stays over the past eight years -- even when I had to get up before dawn to wash my clothes in freezing bathtub water, even when I had to share greasy soup from a common pot, even when landlords cheated and traffic clogged and power failed, even when dust invaded every crevice and my hair turned into an impenetrable hunk of straw.

I loved Kabul because it was a capital coming to life after years of destruction, clanging and chugging with chaotic purpose after too much ghostly idleness, charting an uneasy but urgent course between old and new. There were Internet cafes and burqa sellers, Land Cruisers and donkey carts, blaring Bollywood tunes and soothing calls to prayer, young men hurrying to computer classes and little boys hurrying to Koranic lessons, women in billowing veils and others in smart black suits.

It was a mess, but it was also an extraordinary experiment in which the West had played a positive, widely welcomed role. The day before the riots, I had visited the new parliament building and watched men in tribal turbans engrossed in serious conversations with female lawyers. I had visited a bookshop and listened to a new Afghan rap song about preserving tradition while embracing change. It was one of those days when I thought to myself: This might actually work.

But two days later, when I saw the destructive fury that had devoured not only luxury hotels and restaurants but also CARE International, a down-to-earth charity whose well-digging and shelter-building projects had reached into thousands of Afghan homes, I realized how thin and brittle that veneer of progress was.

I was swept by a sickening feeling that I had been dead wrong about Afghanistan; that the cynics were right when they said it was too atavistic to enlighten and too corrupt to reform; that my own investment in hope had blinded me to stubborn facts of despair. Now, like the handwriting in my notebook, I did not recognize the city.

It had not been an easy spring in Afghanistan. To the south and east, the revived Taliban militia, once thought vanquished, was blowing up military convoys and ambushing patrols with increasing frequency and ruthlessness. Opium traffickers, angry at poppy eradication projects, were reportedly paying men to fight the government. Farmers and former militia fighters, disillusioned with the lack of services and development after four years of Western-backed democracy, were restless. There was a growing sense that despite the presence of thousands of foreign troops, the country was unraveling at the fringes.

But all that was hundreds of miles from Kabul, the heart of Afghanistan's renascent intellectual, political and commercial life, a fortified capital honeycombed with Western military compounds where foreign peacekeeping troops shopped for carpets and new wedding halls sprouted flashing neon gardens.

There were still beggars at traffic lights, but there were also thousands of well-paying jobs with international agencies, and millions to be made through construction contracts. Rumblings of political discontent or religious fanaticism were rare and brief, such as the eruption of protest that followed the discovery that a local Afghan man had converted to Christianity.

Thus the riots of May 29, with its virulent anti-American and anti-government slogans, came as an enormous shock, both to resident foreigners and to the Afghan officials and business owners who viewed the capital as a still-poor but rapidly evolving and relatively safe place to open a restaurant, build a house, go to the movies, follow the debate in parliament or browse in the huge open-air bazaars.

For me, the shock was personal. I realized a frenzied mob wouldn't know or care how I felt about the country, how many of its dust-choked roads I had journeyed, how many hours I had spent sipping tea with village elders. All I could do was hide and pray the rioters did not find me. As I paced inside that walled compound, listening to the riot's receding roar, a deep anger and sadness grew in me. In a place I truly loved, I feared I would never really feel safe again.

In just hours, a fatal traffic accident involving a U.S. military cargo truck had unleashed a public display of rage and resentment against all things foreign that seemed to make no sense at all. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan was a country that had welcomed U.S. troops as liberators, U.N. officials as political mentors and the millions of dollars in Western aid that accompanied them. This was supposed to be the role model for building a modern democracy in the Muslim world. Kabul was not Baghdad.

Indeed, most city residents, such as the middle-class family that offered me sanctuary from the riots, were horrified by the violence, ashamed that it had tarred all Afghans and angry at the police for failing to stop it. Government officials dismissed the rioters as a tiny fringe, spurred on by opportunistic agitators, that did not represent the nation or its attitudes.

But the eruption of wanton fury conveyed important, if disturbing, truths about Afghanistan, its relations with the world and its ability or desire to change.

First, this is a country where for the past quarter-century -- and for long periods of history before that -- the only skill that mattered was knowing how to fight. Now, a nation of warriors has had its weapons confiscated, and a nation that defeated the British and the Soviets is dominated by thousands of foreign troops who drive too fast, eat too much and speak no local language.

Second, this is a country with closely held, traditional Muslim values that is now being insidiously invaded by libertine Western culture. Many Afghan men see human rights, women's emancipation, alcohol and pornography as not only dangerous but also synonymous with democracy. They may enjoy browsing X-rated Web sites, but they would kill a man who eloped with their daughter.

Third, this is a country so poor that most people cannot afford a radio, a midwife or a bicycle. Foreign governments, agencies and charities have created a closed, parallel universe in Kabul that sports fleets of SUVs, drives up rental rates and pays huge salaries to a few Afghans lucky enough to know English and Windows. For others with connections, the aid boom has also created endless opportunities for official corruption and graft. The jobless and unskilled, left seething on the sidewalk, see no difference between a luxury hotel and a foreign charity that digs wells for farmers.

During the rioting, my interpreter heard a tragic and telling statement shouted by a middle-aged woman in the angry crowd. He asked her why she was demonstrating against the foreigners who had come to help, and she replied, "We don't want their help. We want them to go away and leave us alone. We don't want their progress or their development. We would rather stay in the ruins just like we were before."

This strain of defiant, destructive nihilism echoed other violent episodes in Afghanistan's recent history, including the devastating bombardment of Kabul by warring militia factions in the 1990s, the scorched-earth policy of the Taliban that ruined thousands of acres of farms, the recent rise of drug gangs that thrive on political chaos, and the rash of school burnings by insurgents across the country.

Of all the details that saddened and angered me about the riots -- the charred rosebushes at the CARE compound, the bullet holes sprayed across every window in the new Serena Hotel -- there was one that affected me the most, and that seemed to pit the hopeful and dark sides of Afghanistan against each other.

Several years ago, I visited a remote town and met an elderly teacher who loved books and was struggling to inspire his students with little money, few supplies and a school still scarred from Soviet bombing. I was never able to return there, but last month I met a member of parliament from the same town and asked if he would take some school supplies on his next visit. I filled a box with books and maps and pens, wrote the old teacher a letter and taped his name and town on the outside.

My driver was delivering the box to the legislator when the rioting broke out. A group of armed men stopped him on the street and forced him to drive them around the city for several hours. They noticed the box with the teacher's name in English, and pounced on it in suspicion. One of them drew a dagger from his jacket and stabbed the box over and over again, until he was satisfied it contained nothing of value.

Pamela Constable, a deputy foreign editor of The Washington Post, served as Kabul bureau chief from 2002 to 2004.

Pros and cons for legalizing Afghan opium plantations - Source: The Times of Central Asia - 11 June 2006

BISHKEK - Legalization of opium poppy growth in Afghanistan has been frequently suggested as a way to solve the Afghan drug problem. This idea is presented as an alternative to drug expansion and a panacea for countries that use and transit drugs, including Kyrgyzstan.

Afghanistan has monopolized the world's heroin production, delivering about 95 percent of all heroin consumed worldwide. The growth of opium poppy, which is the raw material for heroin, makes up to 40 percent of Afghanistan's GDP and involves 15 percent of the country's population.

In 2005, Afghanistan produced 4,400 tons of raw opium, which was enough to produce 440 tons of heroin. According to experts, 60 percent of Afghan drugs go through Iran to Turkey and on to Europe through the restored Balkan route. The remaining 40 percent go to Russia through Central Asian countries.

As of the middle of May 2006, Tajik border guards alone had seized almost a ton of drugs, including 426 kilograms of heroin. The increasing drug traffic from Afghanistan has made it possible to use the term "drug aggression," which poses a number of threats to the national security of Russia and Central Asian countries.

The Afghan government of Hamid Karzai is now trying to solve the problem of drug production. The country has established a Ministry to Fight Drugs, and at a forum in London last February the Afghan anti-narcotic minister said they reduced opium growing by 20 percent in 2005.

"Governors of Afghan provinces now help law enforcement authorities to destroy opium plantations," said the minister. "Their contribution to fighting drugs is sometimes the main indicator of their loyalty and ability to govern a province."

However, in specialists' opinion, the growing of opium poppy could be stopped by economic incentives, not by force. According to World Bank experts in Kabul, as soon as authorities stop the cultivation of opium poppy in one part of Afghanistan, opium plantations immediately appear in other parts of the country. Experts believe that if Afghanistan miraculously puts an end to growing opium poppy, this business will soon flourish in other countries.

Drug dealers make tremendous profits due to the difference (as much as 100-fold) between drug prices in consumer countries and in Afghanistan. These high revenues make it very difficult to use economic methods in fighting the illegal growth of opium poppies.

Economic incentives will work only if revenues from the legal sectors of Afghan agriculture exceed opium revenues three times. This is impossible in Afghanistan with its ruined infrastructure.

Along with using the forceful methods of an anti-narcotic jihad, the Afghan government is implementing a daring experiment: they have significantly restricted the import of grain crops to provoke local peasants into growing grain. The government has also launched a saffron project, suggesting that Afghans grow saffron instead of opium poppy.

Saffron costs as much as opium - $ 750 per a kilogram. There are proposals to allow Afghanistan to grow opium poppy for medical purposes with the UN's permission, as India is doing now.

However, the Afghan government is against this solution, believing that this step will finally corrupt the country, mar its international image, and kill any incentive to develop economy and agriculture.

In Soviet times, Kyrgyzstan legally cultivated high quality opium poppy for medical purposes, producing up to 16 percent of the global market. In 1974, Kyrgyzstan stopped growing opium poppy in compliance with a UN decision.

In the early 1990s, after gaining independence, some Kyrgyz scholars and officials suggested legalizing the cultivation of opium poppies in an effort to revive the country's ailing economy.

"We have grown opium poppy for decades and used it to cure all diseases, but we have not had any drug users," they claimed. At that time the Kyrgyz government had enough common sense and wisdom not to slip to a cheap populism and false patriotism.

"If our opinion is not heard and opium poppy growing is restored, the Interior Ministry will decline all responsibility for the country's future!" said the then Interior Minister Feliks Kulov (now the Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan).

In 1991, Kyrgyzstan established an expert group to analyze the cost efficiency of the possibly restoring opium poppy growth.

The experts came to the conclusion that it was "more profitable to grow potatoes." At that time there were strict quotas for buying opium for medical needs and there was an overproduction of opium.

Moreover, there are synthetic analgesics that cause no addiction. India, which produces legal opium in much lesser amounts than illegal Afghan opium, now faces problems with its sales. If opium poppy growth is ever legalized, Afghanistan will easily increase its annual production to 20,000 tons.

There were reports that, after receiving compensation for each hectare of voluntarily destroyed opium poppy plantations, Afghans extended their plantations ten times the following year to get more money for another voluntary destruction.

Legalization in Afghanistan may also make neighboring countries start legal opium production in an effort to improve their economic situation. What if Tajikistan, possibly followed by Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, begins growing opium poppies?

Afghan mission creates split among Grit contenders - CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen, Sunday, June 11, 2006

WINNIPEG -- Liberal leadership candidate Bob Rae expressed "profound" disagreement with rival Michael Ignatieff over the combat role of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan Saturday, warning troops may be seen as "an army of occupation" and lose their longstanding role as peacekeepers.

His remarks came during the first official all-candidates' forum that pitted nine candidates against Ignatieff and Scott Brison, the only two of the 11 leadership candidates who supported the minority Conservative government's recent motion in the Commons to extend the Afghan mission by two years to 2009.

"The risk that we run by turning ourselves into a combat force that's engaged in counter insurgency and counter guerrilla forces is that we will in fact lose our way as peacekeepers and as people who believe in the maintenance of peace," said Rae, a Toronto lawyer and former Ontario NDP premier.

"And that it seems to me is a very basic question for Canadians and a very important position for Liberals as we head into the next election."

The Afghan issue was the only one that sparked lively audience reaction and provoked clear disagreement and a little passion, with all candidates otherwise generally agreeing on such issues as health care, environmental protection, aboriginal rights, and immigration reform. About 500 people attended the two-and-a-half hour session in Winnipeg involving the 11 leadership candidates.

The only other significant divisions among the candidates were expressed outside the debating hall after candidate Joe Volpe, a Toronto MP in hot water for defending campaign contributions from the children of corporate executive donors, held a news conference to claim Liberals were "smearing" him.

Speaking a day after Ignatieff accused Volpe of harming the party's reputation, he challenged all candidates to disclose the names and ages of all campaign donors. No candidates took up the challenge and at least one other, Toronto MP Carolyn Bennett, said the controversy had embarrassed the Grits.

Some of the candidates who supported the government motion on Afghanistan expressed bitterness at Prime Minister Stephen Harper for framing the vote as a matter of support for Canadian troops, whose current mission, which began under the previous Liberal government, was due to expire next year.

Ignatieff, a rookie Toronto MP and international conflict scholar, said he couldn't have "in good conscience" voted against the motion on the same day Capt. Nicola Goddard was killed in combat. Goddard was Canada's first female combat death.

He said it's impossible to deliver humanitarian aid and reconstruction to Afghanistan if you can't protect people, as candidate Hedy Fry, a Vancouver MP, had mentioned, "unless you have the capacity to have a military that can stand up, if necessary, to respond with fire."

But Rae said it was unjust and unfair to cast the issue as a simple matter of support for Canadian troops. "What I saw in Iraq last summer is what happens when an army of liberation is perceived by a population as an army of occupation," he said.

"And the risk we run as Canadians, and we have to be aware of this, is missions have to be very carefully chosen, that they can succeed, that they can maintain peace, that they can extend humanitarian assistance, that they can achieve something that is truly durable."

Brison, a Nova Scotia MP and former cabinet minister, defended his vote for the government motion as a matter of Canada's responsibility to its allies, to bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanistan. He said if MPs had defeated the motion, the New York Times would have reported that Parliament was withdrawing its support for the mission.

That provoked a withering rebuttal from candidate Martha Hall Findlay, a Toronto lawyer. "We do not establish foreign policy in this country, with all due respect, because we're afraid of what the headlines in the New York Times might be," she said.

Toronto MP Maurizio Bevilacqua said it was unfair to ask MPs to make a decision after only six hours of debate. "It is unfair. It is unjust, when we have men and women fighting for democratic principles in Afghanistan to abandon democratic principles in the House of Commons," Bevilacqua said, winning applause.

Some 6,000 Liberal party delegates will choose a leader to replace Paul Martin at a Montreal convention in early December.

The fall guy for the US retreat from Afghanistan - Khaleej Times 06/12/2006 By imon Jenkins

LAST week an American military convoy on a road into Kabul crashed in a traffic jam. What happened next is confused. It appears the American soldiers, whose drug consumption is reputedly prodigious, lost their heads and fired into the crowd.

The result was half a dozen deaths and the worst riot Kabul has seen since the occupation four and a half years ago. This lost city in the mountains is, compared with Baghdad, relatively peaceful and is recovering well from the Taleban trauma in the 1990s. Security is good and money is spent on infrastructure. But frustration among the three million inhabitants is growing at the inability of the large foreign community to do anything but admonish them for not doing what they are told.

Last week's riot was aimed largely at that community, which reacted by withdrawing its workers from the provinces and gating them in its compounds. In a walk round the old city on Monday I saw not a single Westerner. The downtown Serena hotel, built by the Aga Khan as a symbol of normality, ceded victory to the rioters by bricking up its ground-floor windows, Baghdad-style.

Afghanistan is facing probably the last attempt by outsiders to give it a Western political economy. Nato's International Security and Assistance Force comes under the nine-month command of an extrovert British general, David Richards. He is running a sort of peacekeeping Olympics, with soldiers from some 36 nations — from Luxembourg to Mongolia — all out to prove their new-world-order spurs. He must somehow do what has defied the Americans for four years: curb the resurgent Taleban, impose government on the provinces and persuade local rulers to pay allegiance and taxes to Kabul — for the first time in their history.

Hamid Karzai, the weak but brave American-backed president of Afghanistan, appears to be moving away from the Western nation-building models of his more technocratic ministers, and towards a more traditional Afghan politics. After four years of waning authority outside Kabul, Karzai knows that to survive he must deal with existing power brokers, including the drug warlords — whatever this does for his reputation abroad.

Last month he appalled Western observers by appointing a dozen provincial police chiefs described to me by one UN official as "gangsters and criminals". Having failed to disarm local militias, he decided to pay them as regulars. Unfortunately he particularly rewarded his own people, the Pashtuns, invoking the wrath of the Tajiks, who led last week's riots.

Meanwhile, down south, the Americans have failed to stem increasing Taleban infiltration from Pakistan. Their brutal bombing of villages has recruited hundreds of fighters to the Taleban cause and bred hatred for both the Americans and Karzai. On Thursday the Taleban almost killed the Canadian commander in Kandahar. Richards must try to reverse all this. He is certainly the kind of soldier I would put in any last ditch. His strategy is to draw a thick line under the heavy-handed American tactics and go for hearts and minds in selected "ink spots".

The trouble is that Richards has no control over the Americans, obsessed with tracking down the Scarlet Pimpernel of Waziristan, Osama bin Laden, by hook or crook, mostly crook. He has no control over Karzai's deals with warlords and none over the reigning confusion that is Western opium policy.

In 2001, at the West's bidding, the Taleban stamped out almost the entire poppy harvest (by shooting farmers). After the invasion the Americans rewarded provincial warlords by allowing the 2002 crop to proceed and then, with a lethal sense of humour, made Britain lead nation for poppy eradication. Given Britain's consumption of the stuff, it was like getting Libya to chair a UN human rights convention. A year later the policy has produced the highest ever Afghan opium yield. John Reid, British defence secretary, was obsessed with eradication, telling parliament, with no shred of evidence, that it was "absolutely interlinked to the war on terror". The Americans turned a blind eye, accepting that some 80 per cent of the country's exports by value are tied up in opium. Yet they still train Afghan pilots in Texas to spray poison on poppies. As for substitute crops, there are none of remotely equivalent value, especially since the West started dumping wheat on the Afghan market this year.

A faintly plausible intervention in southern Afghanistan might have the West buying the entire poppy crop for processing through legal channels (as in Turkey and India), thus undercutting the Taleban and the drug mafia. It might involve bribing local councillors to toe Kabul's line and joining local militias in hitting back at Taleban incursions. On a conservative estimate I am told this would need a "foreign legion" of 150,000 British troops in the desert. Isaf has just 6,000 troops, with the Dutch and Canadians politically averse to casualties. The mission is little short of suicidal.

Whether or not he keeps Western troops, money and Land Cruisers, Karzai seems secure as "mayor of Kabul" and titular head of Afghanistan. But the drug barons and militia commanders are likely to remain rampant elsewhere. Karzai will eventually have to strike some deal with some version of the Taleban in the south, much as Pakistan has de facto. It would be better struck if isolated European garrisons were not dotted across the south.

The original American policy had realpolitik. It was to capture Kabul with proxy tribesmen, topple the regime and get out fast. Even the most starry-eyed neocon could see little thanks in nation-building in Kabul. But the policy needed cover for its retreat. It needed a fall guy.

Step forward plucky Britain, with Afghan glory lodged in its military genes. This time it even came with a glittering baggage train of cosmopolitan hangers-on. The fall guy will fall. We can only take comfort that he will do so in style.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Taliban take the fight to the country - By Syed Saleem Shahzad / Asia Times Online / June 9, 2006

PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN border areas - The Taliban movement has evolved beyond its guerrilla struggle into an organized widespread rebellion. It has fully matured in southern Afghanistan and is heading north toward Kabul and beyond, all the way drawing on growing popular support.

"Don't consider the present [insurgency] movement as Taliban only. This is a mass mutiny against the foreign presence, and all common Afghans are solely responsible for that," Gul Mohammed, a Taliban commander, explained to Asia Times Online in an interview in Qalat, the capital of Zabul province in Afghanistan.

Gul Mohammed's views are not exaggerated. They confirm

exhaustive ATol on-the-ground-investigations and reports over the past few months. And this week, the Senlis Council, a London-based international security and policy advisory think-tank, reached a similar conclusion.

"Helmand [where the Taliban have a strong foothold] is an early warning of what the whole of Afghanistan could become if a radically different approach is not taken in the coming months," the Senlis Council, an independent group actively engaged in work in Afghanistan, said in its report.

"The United States unilaterally bombing Kandahar undermined the civilian population's support for the [Hamid] Karzai government," the council said. "The recent riots in Kabul were also an example of the increasing hostility of the Afghan people towards the international community."

Gul Mohammed picked up the point: "Americans crashed our gates and the sanctity of our houses. They disrespected our traditions and gave Christian missionaries a free hand to operate in Afghanistan. We just explained these features to the masses, who are our brothers and sisters."

Mullah Gul Mohammed Jangvi (the last name means "warrior"), to give him his full name, was the commander of the Taliban at Pul-i-Khumri in central Afghanistan when the US attacked in 2001. When the Taliban retreated from Kabul in the face of the invasion, he took refuge in Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital.

In 2003, he was betrayed to US forces, arrested and taken to Bagram Base near Kabul, where he was tortured and then coerced into joining the Jaishul Muslim, a proxy US outfit established among the Taliban in an attempt to dislodge Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

But soon after Gul Mohammed was released, Jaishul Muslim evaporated and he rejoined the Taliban, along with 1,600 men. He is now one of the main commanders in the Qalat and Helmand area.

The US invested millions of dollars to built a support system in this region, which included buying the loyalties of local warlords, establishing proxy organization such as Jaishul Muslim, appeasing local tribes by releasing their men from Bagram Base, and recruiting local youths for the Afghan National Army.

However, when this year's spring offensive by the Taliban started, the whole scheme fell apart like a house of cards, with the chief beneficiary of the elaborate investment being the Taliban.

"Before the present [spring] campaign, we had adopted a strategy to educate the masses about the high-handedness of the Americans. Whenever we entered any village, we surrounded the whole area and asked the people to gather in a nearby mosque," said Gul Mohammed.

"We then told the people that they are under foreign occupation and there is a need to stand up against the foreign forces. We distributed night messages [a traditional Afghan way of spreading information] and passed on our messages through audio cassettes and computer disks."

Gul Mohammed maintained that the Taliban would continue their twofold strategy - military and political - and expressed confidence that soon the movement would reach into northern Afghanistan and foreign forces there would be very much under attack, as they are in southern Afghanistan.

"At present we have made Kandahar, Qalat and Helmand our strategic nucleus, where we have completely debased the enemy. There are seven main districts in Kandahar which are completely in our hands. Soon we will intensify our suicide operations throughout Afghanistan, and then you will see how the Afghan administration will collapse," said Gul Mohammed.

This is substantiated by the Senlis Council report: "About 80% of the population in Helmand supports the Taliban. The British troops [who are to replace US troops] will need to regain control, and for this they will need a different approach. That approach will have to be to listen to people and their needs."

The report continued, "The perception of the local people has changed ... they now see the Taliban as acceptable. So actually the Taliban are about to win the battle for the hearts and minds of the local population."

Gul Mohammed is of the same view: "In the next stage, ethnic groups from the Tajik and Uzbek communities will join hands in our struggle and foreign forces will not have any option except to leave Afghanistan.

"We have made southern Afghanistan a hell for foreign forces. There is little media coverage on our activities, otherwise [people would know] we are far ahead of the Iraqi resistance. There is not a single day when the Taliban don't carry out an operation against foreign forces.

"In the last two months we launched 20 successful attacks against foreign forces in which they lost men and assets. For instance, a recent incident happened in Maroof district of Kandahar in which we targeted a military convoy in which two tanks and eight US [foreign troops] were killed. The media did not mention this operation," Gul Mohammed said with some satisfaction.

Gul Mohammed said the Taliban had stored a lot of weapons before the US invasion, which they were now using, including Stinger missiles.

Again, the Senlis Council report confirms this. "We're talking about attacks being conducted every day. We're talking about a rise in suicide bombings, from five in 2004 to 21 in just the first semester of 2006. We're talking of a sophistication of terror techniques used, for example in the explosive devices used. So there is definitely a change in the way the insurgents are organizing their operations."

The rise in insurgency activity is admitted by General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: "In the last two months, the Taliban have been conducting larger attacks this year than they did during the same time last year.

"The problem for the Taliban is that as they have gotten larger groups together, they have become much bigger targets. And they have lost about 300 Taliban in the last two months during those operations. So the Taliban are a tactical problem for the coalition in Afghanistan. [But] the coalition in Afghanistan is a strategic problem for the Taliban," said Pace.

Gul Mohammed, however, maintained that the real asset for the Taliban was the mass support they already had, and which was increasing multifold.

"The Americans bombed Panjwai [a district of Kandahar province], where innocent civilians were killed. The Taliban did not sustain a single injury in that incident. However, the way the Americans brutally bombed the area brought cascading effects. People turned against the Americans with conviction. There were 18,000 soldiers in Kandahar in the Afghan National Army. After the bombardment, it was reduced to 7,000 as the rest left the army in anger.

"The more they oppress Afghans, the more the reaction generates against the Americans. The same happened with Soviet Russia [in the 1980s], and ultimately it was defeated in Afghanistan and collapsed. The same will happen with the Americans," Gul Mohammed predicted.

Caught in the crossfire

For Merajuddin, a 29-year-old welder, and Mohammed Din, a 45-year-old farmer, both from Panjwai, their lives have been turned upside down.

Both belong to the Ishaqzai tribe and fled to Chaman, Pakistan, with their families, like dozens of other families from their home town, after the US bombing of Panjwai recently in which more than 50 civilians were killed.

"We saw an end-of-time sort of situation," said Merajuddin. "It is true that the Taliban had came to our area, but they left. The US got information and send aircraft 24 hours after the Taliban left. From 11pm to 5am aircraft constantly bombed Talaqan, the district headquarters.

"Initially they released gases which [put] many of us in an unconscious-like condition, and then they bombed the area. It looked like aircraft were static in the air for hours, and they showered bombs," Merajuddin said.

"As soon as the bombing ended, foreign troops took positions. They never allowed us to look after affected families. Instead, they took away the wounded men to interrogate them. The incident prompted us and other Afghan families to leave the area and take refuge in Pakistan," Merajuddin said.

Migration of tribes symbolizes the seriousness or depth of any crisis in Afghan history. When tribes leave their places in bulk, it shows that they would participate in a prolonged war.

"The Americans walk into our houses when they feel like. Neither do they ask permission nor are we in a position to stop them. They think all Afghans are Taliban. They entered in areas where only women live," Mohammed Din said, adding that the behavior of the Afghan National Army was even worse.

"They are given a free hand to humiliate us. They come to search for Taliban in our houses and eat our food and take away blankets and even money from our pockets," said Mohammed Din.

"Nobody wants to leave his place, but we were forced to do so. Here in Pakistan, we will do some labor jobs to make our two ends meet," Mohammed Din maintained. "And we won't leave here until the foreign forces leave Afghanistan."

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan, Asia Times Online.

Afghans make England tour debut – BBC

Afghanistan's national cricket team is beginning its first-ever tour of England, playing seven matches.

They took on Hertfordshire amateur side Hoddesdon CC on Sunday and will also play Essex, Glamorgan and Leicestershire second XI sides. They are hoping to raise their international profile as well as money.

Afghanistan Cricket Federation's Azam Khan said: "We hope we will raise some money to make cricket stadiums, pitches and proper infrastructure for cricket."

Cricket gained popularity in the country in the 1990s, though refugees returning from neighbouring Pakistan. And it was one of the few sports allowed by the former Taleban regime.

It is now the third most popular sport in Afghanistan behind football and buzkashi - a sport in which competitors on horseback drag a dead calf over a scoreline.

Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), led by former England captain Mike Gatting, played an Afghanistan XI in Mumbai in March and were so impressed they recruited two players for the Young Cricketers scheme.

Khan added: "For the last two and half decades, every part of life has been affected by war, so there are a lot of hardships that we face. We do not have enough funds and we do not have proper grounds."

But they are now an affiliated member of the International Cricket Council and have played in several Asian Cricket Council tournaments in recent years and also reached the Middle East Cup final.

The Afghan Cricket Federation has 22 teams in the provinces and 12,000 signed-up players And Hoddesdon captain Nick Gandon said the Afghans were very good cricketers. "We're expecting them to be very strong indeed," he said.

"We're aware that they played against a very strong representative side from the MCC in Mumbai and the MCC came off second best by a comfortable distance."

[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.]