In this bulletin:

• President Karzai Condemns the Terrorist Attack in India
• Afghan leader urges end to violence against women
• Fight against maternal mortality a priority for Afghanistan:
• U.S. Likely To Reduce Afghan Troop Levels
• Afghan MPs blast Musharraf's remarks
• Pakistan proposes Afghanistan mining of border as Karzai rejects fence
• Musharraf caught in an arc of turmoil
• Ingram avoids 'foolhardy' speculation on Afghan deployment
• Big Anti-Drug Operation Under Way In Afghanistan
• Pakistan Shells Suspected Hideout Near Afghan Border
• Taliban claim killing cops, torching govt offices
• Report on the status of Afghan women
• Afghan women need our help
• Tripartite meeting on Afghan refugees kicks off in Mashhad
• Repatriation of Afghan DPs resumes
• Afghan mission not up for debate, Harper says
• A Canadian Responds - EARL MCRAE, OTTAWA SUN
• Afghans see us as true allies
• Bin Laden will never surrender, says Saudi ex-jihadi

President Karzai Condemns the Terrorist Attack in India - Date of Release: 08 March 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Varanasi, India.

In his reaction to the news the President said, “This terrorist act is shocking and despicable. It is aimed at killing innocent civilians and I condemn it in the strongest terms.”

The Afghan people send their sympathies to the people of India. Afghans have suffered at the hands of terrorists for many years and understand the pain and suffering that terrorism causes. My thoughts are with the families of the victims and those injured.

The President, on behalf of the Afghan people, expressed his heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the people and Government of the Republic of India. Released by the Office of the Spokesman to the President - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Afghan leader urges end to violence against women - March 8

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan women have won a range of rights since the hardline Islamic Taliban regime was ousted but they are still being oppressed, President Hamid Karzai said on Wednesday, calling for a campaign to end violence against women.

"We have achieved successes in various dimensions during the past four years," Karzai told a function marking International Women's Day, referring to the late 2001 defeat of the Taliban at the hands of U.S. and Afghan opposition forces.

"But this journey has not ended ... women especially are being oppressed, there are still women and young girls who are being married to settle disputes in Afghanistan, young girls are married against their will," he said.

Women, especially in conservative, rural areas, are sometimes given away in marriage to settle disputes. Karzai called for an end to the practice. "I hope that tribal chiefs, scholars and influential people raise their voices against this oppression," he said.

During Taliban rule, women were forced to wear an all enveloping burqa while venturing outdoors and even then, had to be escorted by their husbands or another male relative.
Women who went out alone faced a beating at the hands of the feared religious police. Girls' education was also banned and virtually all women were forbidden from working.

Afghanistan's new constitution has enshrined equal rights for women and Karzai hailed the fact that women held nearly 28 percent of seats in the two chambers of a newly elected parliament. Today, millions of girls are in school and many women have gone back to work, including in the police and armed forces.

Despite the improvements, Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate, at 1,600 deaths per 100,000 live births, is second highest in the world. Most women are still illiterate and Karzai said education was a major way to tackle violence against women.

Fight against maternal mortality a priority for Afghanistan: minister –

KABUL (AFP) Tue Mar 7 - Tackling Afghanistan's maternal mortality rate, among the highest in the world, is a priority in the country where women suffer abuses ranging from forced marriage to honor killings, says Women's Affairs Minister Masooda Jalal.

More than 1,600 of every 100,000 Afghan women die giving birth. With each having on average more than six children, a woman's risk of maternal death is one in about 10, according to official statistics.

"If they lose their lives, we cannot talk of other rights so for us it is a priority that the maternal mortality rate should be decreased," Jalal told AFP in an interview.

"Each 30 minutes we lose one mother. Eighty-seven percent of these losses have been studied to be preventable due to lack of access to health services and lots of other factors," she said.

While there had been some progress in alleviating the plight of women in the country since the hardline Taliban government was removed in 2001, most women still had miserable lives, Jalal said.

"Right now it is very bad. I don't think in any other country it would be like this that women are victims of domestic violence, forced marriages, child marriage," she said.

Another phenomenon was families marrying off their children to settle disputes, including over murder or debt, and killings of women thought to have brought dishonour to their families. Marriages were not registered, allowing a host of abuses including denial of property and inheritance rights, Jalal said.

The second priority for the ministry was education, with more than 80 percent of women illiterate, the minister said. "For instance 60 percent of the girls within the school age seven to 13 are outside the education system due to lack of access," she said.

The regime gained notoriety for its treatment of women, including whipping them in the street if they did not wear the all-covering burqa and denying them access to health on the basis that they should not be examined by a male doctor.

When the Taliban was removed from power, to now be waging an insurgency against the new government, the new internationally backed government adopted a constitution enshrining equal rights for Afghanistan's long-downtrodden women.

The first ever women's ministry was established, discriminatory laws were done away with, and schools and universities were reopened to women, many of whom took jobs.

"They are taking part in the economic development of the country. We have hundreds of businesswomen, we have women in parliament," Jalal said. "These are achievements but they are not enough."

For example, only one percent of the top jobs in the government were taken by women. "Going towards equality, which is guaranteed in the constitution of Afghanistan, there is a long way left," Jalal said.

A key step in correcting the imbalance was a law being processed to eliminate violence against women, she said. A protocol was also being circulated among ministries committing them to take steps to eliminate child marriage, she said. The law already bans marriage for girls under 16 but this is seldom enforced.

However even with these legal provisions, women's lack of access to male-dominated legal systems often meant they did not have recourse to justice, Jalal said.

A third priority for the government was to encourage women to play a greater role in society, she said. Even in the capital Kabul, only men go to cinemas and shows and few women drive.

Jalal last week led about 40 women to pray in a mosque, which women rarely do in Afghanistan, saying she hoped it would encouraged more of them to leave their homes to worship.

She also oversaw the transport ministry's signing of an agreement to reserve 30 percent of seats on public buses for and to change the attitude of bus drivers who regularly fail to stop if there are only women waiting.

Jalal said resistance from men in patriarchal Afghanistan could be expected to the changes her ministry was bringing about with help from groups such as the United Nations.

"The one who will be losing power will not like it," she said. "But it doesn't matter -- the goal for us is to have half of the citizens of this country getting their equal rights."

U.S. Likely To Reduce Afghan Troop Levels - UPI 03/07/2006

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is likely to drop to about 10,000 in 2006, about half its current size, as NATO shoulders more of the burden.

NATO forces now number about 9,000 in Afghanistan, but by October are expected to increase to about 15,000, with an additional 5,000 to 6,000 American troops rounding out the contingent to 21,000 from 36 nations.

U.S. Central Command will maintain a separate counter-terrorist force in Afghanistan -- heavy on special forces personnel -- who will continue the hunt for high-value targets like Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, Osama bin Laden and other central figures. How many CENTCOM will want for that mission has not been determined.

However, a U.S. official said on background it is likely to be several thousand, bringing the total U.S. commitment to about 10,000 in Afghanistan. There are now roughly 23,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a number that will drop to about 17,000 in the coming weeks as soldiers are replaced after their year-long deployment.

Afghan MPs blast Musharraf's remarks - Pajhwok 03/07/2006

KABUL - Afghanistan's parliament Monday termed Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf critical remarks of his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai as insult to the entire Afghan nation and meddling in country internal affairs.

The Wolesi Jirga (Lower House) of the parliament in a statement said Musharraf's blast of Afghanistan's government would harm national interest of both the countries when they were close in fight against terror.

The statement also said the words used by Musharraf were far from diplomatic language and were tantamount to insulting Afghan nation. The parliament urged Musharraf to respect international rules of diplomacy, neighbourhood and joint interests, avoiding recurrence of such 'irresponsible' remarks in the future.

"We must not ignore such remarks harming dignity and reputation of the people of Afghanistan," the parliament speaker Yunus Qanuni said.

Addressing a press conference on Monday Foreign Minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah said the two countries should try to smoothen their relations. Pakistan had already admitted existence of training camps for militants on its soil, he added.

He said the list handed over to Pakistan comprising both old and fresh information. President Musharraf in an interview with American CNN TV said that President Hamid Karzai was "totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country."

"I am really surprised and shocked why they have disclosed the intelligence information to the media," Musharraf told CNN. "We've already gone through this list. Two-thirds of it is months old, and it is outdated, and there is nothing," he said, "What there was, the telephone numbers that they are talking of, two-thirds of them are dead numbers, and even the CIA knows about it, because we are sharing all this information with them."

"The location that they are talking of Mullah Omar is nonsense. There's nobody there," Musharraf said. He also accused Karzai of "waiting for a presidential visit to hand me over this list" an apparent reference to President Bush's visit to both nations this past week.

Pakistan proposes Afghanistan mining of border as Karzai rejects fence
KUNA 03/07/2006

ISLAMABAD - As the Afghan President Hamid Karzai rejected old Pakistani proposal of fencing the long and porous border, Islamabad placed another suggestion to prevent infiltration by mining it. Pakistan has proposed Afghanistan to carryout mining of the border, said Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmoud Kasuri at a press conference here Tuesday.

The new proposal came from any top Pakistani official amid President Karzai again rejected the fencing of the border, saying that he is against separation of families.

The Minister said there are few, foreign as well as in the Afghan intelligence and the defence ministry, elements, who want to bedevil the relationship between the two states, adding that Pakistan and Afghanistan are twins and twins cannot kick each other.

He said Pakistan has given President Bush and also President Karzai documented proof of it. "President Musharraf will be discussing the matter with General Abizaid the US Centcom chief, who arrived here Tuesday." He advised the Afghan leadership to use diplomatic channel, tripartite commission or intelligence sharing to convey Islamabad its concerns instead of communicating through media

Musharraf caught in an arc of turmoil - Asia Times 03/07/2006 By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - President General Pervez Musharraf's observation that Pakistan is strategically situated in an "arc of turmoil" from Afghanistan through Iran to the Middle East is aimed at promoting Islamabad's influence in this region.

At the same time, Pakistan itself is caught in a vicious arc of turmoil that all but ties the hands of the Pakistani leader, for whichever way he turns, he is looking down a double-barreled shotgun: domestic wrath that could bring him down, and alienation of his increasingly disgruntled partner in the "war on terror", the United States.

The American barrel - Despite President George W Bush's flying visit to Pakistan on Saturday, the two sides are aware that their alliance now borders on the realm of living in a fool's paradise.

The US and Pakistan are meant to be major allies, yet this marriage of convenience, forged in the tumultuous days following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and the ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2001, appears headed for the rocks.

When Bush and Musharraf met in Islamabad, they didn't even have a clear-cut agenda to discuss, unlike Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had met earlier and agreed on a number of important issues, including a civilian nuclear accord.

What Bush did want from Pakistan, according to officials familiar with the meeting who spoke to Asia Times Online, was for Abdul Qadeer Khan to be made available for interrogation.

The US wants to grill Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program and self-confessed proliferator, including with Iran, so that it can build a case against Iran at the United Nations Security Council. The US argues that Tehran is bent on building the bomb. The issue of Iran's nuclear program is currently before the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. It is expected to make a decision on referral to the Security Council soon.

Pakistan has outright denied any direct access to Khan, who is under virtual house arrest in Pakistan, although it has agreed to hand over a scientist, named only as Dr Farooq, and a Pakistani businessmen, named only as Mr Jafery, who were allegedly involved in smuggling nuclear components on the international market.

To the Americans, this is only a half-measure, and until direct access is provided to Khan, they believe they will not be able to draw a full picture of Iran's nuclear program and its possible capacity to develop atomic weapons.

Against this background, the US will definitely not provide Pakistan with any cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear energy, as it did with India. Bush clearly drew a line during his press conference in Islamabad in response to a question on whether his country would deal equally with India and Pakistan. He said Pakistan and India had a different history of nuclear development and requirements.

Between the lines, he clearly outlined the fact that India had developed its nuclear program indigenously and had never been involved in proliferation, while Pakistan had obtained its program clandestinely and then sold on secrets.

Bush raising the issue of democracy in Pakistan and of Musharraf's insistence on wearing a uniform also irked the Pakistani leader, who seized power in a coup in 1999. Further, in calculated remarks ahead of Bush's visit, Afghanistan lashed out at Pakistan for failing to deal with Taliban bases and their activities on Pakistani territory.

This prompted Musharraf to pay a fruitful strategic visit to China, during which he not only struck a deal for fighter aircraft with an advanced delivery system, but also for nuclear plants. This was a clear message to the United States that Pakistan had options.

"They [US] should be ready for worse times coming ... we have substitutes and they know why I went there [China] before his [Bush's] visit," Musharraf said at a press conference in Islamabad, which was repeatedly broadcast on all private and state-run media.

From the Pakistani perspective, it now sees the US is committed to squeezing Islamabad until it produces on the "war on terror" shopping list, starting with Osama bin Laden, his deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, Taliban leader Mullah Omar and resistance figures Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Much as the US would like to add Khan to this list, Pakistan sees him as non-negotiable.

The Taliban thorn - The Taliban are geared for their spring offensive in Afghanistan, having regrouped in their thousands and established bases in the country, on the border areas with Pakistan and within Pakistan itself, in North Waziristan. They are complemented by al-Qaeda-linked jihadis who have helped train the Taliban in urban guerrilla warfare.

On Monday, after several days of fighting between Taliban and Pakistani forces in North Waziristan, relative calm returned to the area, and the two sides have begun talks. The major demand of the Taliban is a guarantee of free movement over the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At present, militants use footpaths in the Shawal region to cross into Afghanistan. This hampers their logistical ability and makes supply lines very difficult to maintain. The Taliban are demanding access from Ghulam Khan Mountain, which would allow vehicles to pass so they could fuel the insurgency at the highest possible level.

If they get this, and with more advanced weapons, they could significantly raise the level of the insurgency. The US, though, by carrying out various attacks within Pakistan, the latest being a drone attack on suspected militants last month, clearly could never accept such a Pakistani deal with the Taliban.

Rallies sponsored by the establishment against the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in European countries have turned into ones related to Tehrik-i-Nizam-i-Mustafa, in essence the call for the introduction of sharia (Islamic) law.

Now angry mobs want to destroy all icons of pro-Americanism, including the leaders sitting in Islamabad. Opposition parties have said they will not let Musharraf salute an important parade on March 23.

Musharraf has a stark and unenviable choice. He could go along with the Taliban plan for easy access into Afghanistan. That would mean risking complete alienation from the US, whatever that might entail, but it would take the fire out of the domestic campaign to unseat him.

Alternatively, he could refuse the Taliban, attempt to play ball with the US, and try to defuse the mounting movement against him. The nucleus of whatever Musharraf decides to do will be North Waziristan. One clear swing toward either of the choices would set off an unprecedented reaction.

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

Ingram avoids 'foolhardy' speculation on Afghan deployment - Mar 7

LONDON (AFP) - Armed forces minister Adam Ingram refused to speculate on exactly how long British troops are liable remain in the lawless southern Afghan province of Helmand.

"It would be foolhardy to say at the end of three years it's over or at the end of five years it's over. We don't know how this will develop," Ingram told the House of Commons armed forces committee.

"All the indicators are of improvements that suddenly become very rapid and then you would have to consider what more should you be doing, what less should you be doing," he said.

"It's taken us 30 years in Northern Ireland where one would have thought it was a much easier equation, but I don't want that to be used as some indicator that it's 30 years' commitment to     Afghanistan."

Defence Secretary John Reid announced in January the deployment of 3,300 troops to Helmand, one of four southern provinces where Canada has been put in charge of multinational forces hunting Taliban and Al-Qaeda sympathisers.

The first British troops are already on the ground, preparing for the arrival of the main force later this year.

Ingram told the parliamentary committee that there had been "too much talk" of a need for an exit strategy from Afghanistan.

"I think people have got hung up on this exit strategy," he said. "The strategy is to create conditions where we effectively allow good governance to take place. That is what the Afghans want."

He said Britain was sending troops to Afghanistan out of "enlightened self-interest" to prevent the vast Central Asian nation becoming a breeding ground for a repeat of the September 11 attacks in the United States in 2001.

"If we remove ourselves and it became an ungovernable space again, the bad elements can fill that vacuum," he said.

Big Anti-Drug Operation Under Way In Afghanistan - Radio Free Europe: Radio Library

March 8, 2006 -- Afghan anti-narcotics agents, backed by some 1,000 police and soldiers, today launched a massive campaign to destroy poppies in southern Afghanistan. The operation is targeting the Dishu district of Helmand Province, the country's major poppy-growing area. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opiate-derived drugs.

The campaign comes two days after Afghan and United Nations officials warned that they expect poppy cultivation to rise this year, despite international efforts to stem it.

Pakistan Shells Suspected Hideout Near Afghan Border
March 8, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Pakistani forces have reportedly shelled a village near the Afghan border after an ambush in the region against the troubled North Waziristan's top administrator.

Pakistani military authorities say they targeted the hideouts of suspected pro-Taliban militants who have been fleeing fierce fighting at the nearby town of Miran Shah. Tribal region administrator Syed Zaheerul Islam told AP that he was unhurt in the ambush on his convoy, which Zaheerul Islam said killed one of his security guards.
 
Residents told a correspondent for RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan on 7 March that the current fighting is the bloodiest in the area in two years. More than 100 people have been killed in the area since March 4, when militants attacked government troops in retaliation for a raid that killed 45 militants last week.
 
Pakistan's military is trying to clear foreign militants from along its border area with Afghanistan, where suspected terrorists are believed to seek sanctuary from sympathetic local tribesmen.
 
Senior Pakistani and Afghan officials are currently engaged in a running war of words over security and intelligence issues that largely relate to cross-border insurgency, which Kabul accuses Islamabad of doing too little to combat.
(AP, Reuters)

Taliban claim killing cops, torching govt offices

KANDAHAR CITY, March 8 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Taliban Wednesday claimed killing two policemen in Gezab district of the central Daikundi province. The government, however, spurned the assertion as baseless.

Purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News from an undisclosed location that they had torched the building housing Gezab district government offices, the police headquarters and nine vehicles.

Yousuf said the insurgents also killed two policemen in the attack, which left one of the fighters wounded. He would not give further details of the daring assaults that came amidst stepped-up security. But Gezab district chief Ahmad Jan, who confirmed the arson attack on the building and torching of vehicles, denied the killing of policemen.

He added security forces had wrested back control of the building occupied for short time by the Taliban fighters in the wake of the attack. Ahmad Jan said the situation had returned to normal.
Saeed Zabuli

Report on the status of Afghan women - KHORSHIED SAMAD - Special to Globe and Mail Update - Web-exclusive comment on Int. Women’s Day

Four years after the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan resistance overthrew the Taliban, Afghanistan is still stumbling on the path to peace and stability. But glimmers of hope do exist. The brightest developments include the inauguration of the new Afghan parliament in December, and the political involvement of Afghan women in rebuilding their country.

Afghanistan's new constitution guarantees women equal rights and a quarter of the parliamentary and provincial council seats. Many women have become more socially and politically involved in their daily lives. Millions of women and girls have returned to work and school. Now that the burka is no longer a rights issue, some women have abandoned the head-to-toe public veiling that was mandatory under the oppressive regime.

Under the Taliban, women couldn't travel without a male relative and were whipped in the street for showing as much as an ankle. They were forbidden to work, go to school, or receive any form of education. They lived in overshadowing fear, though many secretly continued to study and go to underground schools.

Afghan women have started to become actively involved in the political arena of their country, demanding increased representation in government and legislatures. Out of the 5,800 registered candidates who participated in the historic parliamentary elections last fall, 565 were women. Women are guaranteed 68 of the 249 parliamentary seats and 26 of the 102 seats reserved for the senate, or upper house. In January, an Afghan woman was voted one of the deputy speakers for the parliament. Clearly, in some sectors of society progress is being made.

But, while a dynamic private sector is giving rise to a new middle class, poverty is still pervasive in Afghanistan. About 53 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line on less than a dollar a day. Life expectancy is around 45 years and one out of five children dies before the age of five, with about 1,600 of every 100,000 mothers dying in childbirth or because of related complications. Only 13 per cent of Afghans have access to safe drinking water, 12 per cent to adequate sanitation, and six per cent to electricity. Last year was also one of the bloodiest years since the fall of the Taliban, with at least 1,600 people killed in conflict-related violence due to an increase in insurgent attacks and insecurity in the southeastern parts of the country.

If there is any bit of light against the darkness that surrounds security and the economy, it comes in an important area: education. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), around 5-million children were studying in schools during 2005, an increase of more than a million from 2004. However, about 1.2-million primary-school-age girls are still not studying, according to the same UN study. This is primarily due to cultural restrictions, fear and ignorance. Hundreds of girls' schools were targeted by the Taliban last year, many of them burnt to the ground during night attacks. The militants have recently targeted teachers, killing a school headmaster earlier this year.

Education remains one of the most crucial areas in need of improvement because Afghanistan's population is 70 per cent illiterate. In the rural areas, illiteracy runs up to 96 per cent for Afghan women. These numbers are of epidemic proportions and need serious attention from the Afghan government and international community. Though many new schools are being built all over the country, the country faces a dire shortage of teachers and administrators. Without an increase in teaching capacity and changes in cultural stigma toward girls attending school, the situation will be slow to improve.

The human rights picture in 2005 was mixed. Despite more girls going to school, and significant participation of women in the landmark parliamentary elections, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission cautioned that serious violations of human rights continued in the country. Last year, at least 100 women set themselves on fire to escape family problems and forced marriages. Around 80 cases of forced marriages and 199 cases of physical torture and beating had also been registered with the commission.

Many women have found work in the past few years. But about 2.5 million - many of them widowed during the past quarter century of war - are in "desperate need of skills to help them find employment," according to the Ministry of Women's Affairs. There have been some successes, but women are still very much second- and third-class citizens, especially in some remote areas. Without education and economic opportunities, these women have a very limited future.

While the political status of women and girls has improved in Afghanistan, overall progress has been uneven. The volatile security situation and traditional cultural norms continue to limit women's and girl's roles in public life and deny them the full enjoyment of their rights. The needs for reconstruction and strengthening of human capacity, especially in education and health care, will require the sustained attention and support of the international community for many more years to come.

Khorshied Samad, the former Kabul bureau chief for Fox News, is married to the Afghan ambassador to Canada.

Afghan women need our help - Initiatives that train widows for a job release them from their desperate poverty trap - Toronto Star - March 8, 2006 By Clementina Cantoni

When I was kidnapped in Kabul last year, it was the voices and screams of brave Afghan widows that penetrated the walls of my prison. These women, the most vulnerable and marginalized in Afghan society, organized themselves and demonstrated on my behalf, calling for my immediate release.

Women in Afghanistan have few rights — widows even fewer. So you can understand how much it meant to me that these women dared to scream their indignation, some even brave enough to appear in front of television cameras, showing their faces.

As Canadian soldiers head to Afghanistan to take control of the mission in Kandahar, there has been much discussion of the dangers of the assignment and the future of the country, and frequent use of words such as "3D" — defence, diplomacy and development. I have other words: Nadjia, Bibi-Meena and Homaria.

Nadjia is 27. She is poor, desperate and a widow. She has no means to support her four children. She qualifies to receive food assistance through CARE's CIDA-funded Humanitarian Assistance for Widows of Afghanistan program, which gives food and job training to 10,000 widows and their children in Kabul.

But Nadjia is more than just a desperate widow — she's determined, intelligent and dignified. Given the choice, she tells me that it's not free food she wants, it's a job. With three months of training to become an office assistant, Nadjia has written her first email to me in stunted English.

Bibi-Meena doesn't look you in the eye. Her 12-year-old boy has epilepsy and she finds it difficult to feed her two other children. We find her a job and one month later she's a different woman. As she brings me some tea, she smiles broadly and says, "My children are proud of me."

Homaria, a 36-year-old widow, sits besides me and pokes me in the arm. "Find me a job. I need to work," she demands. Homaria's husband was brutally murdered by the Taliban. She's illiterate and has six children. But being illiterate doesn't mean you're stupid. She knows her rights and wants to work.

These are the names of some of the widows I worked with during the three years I lived in Afghanistan. They are the people Canadian soldiers are there to protect, the people we, as a world community, are committed to helping. Any discussion about Afghanistan should be with their best interests in mind.

Kabul alone is home to an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 war widows, many of whom are illiterate, have few (if any) marketable skills, and own no productive assets. Many live below the poverty line on less than $1 a day.

For numerous widows, begging and sending their children to work in the streets are the only options for survival. But as we all know, sending a child to work amounts to far more than the denial of fundamental rights — it condemns the entire family to a life of poverty.

This is why initiatives that aim to help people emerge from the poverty trap, like the widows' program, are so important. Afghans are working to help each other reconstruct their country, one that will be safe and prosperous. The Afghan government, with the help of the UN and humanitarian agencies, is running programs to provide education for all children, job training and proper infrastructure.

At the recent donor conference in London, the world community pledged more than $12 billion in aid to Afghanistan in the coming years — a commendable commitment, and one that is desperately needed. The goal is to gradually reduce the amount of aid, to build the Afghan government's capacity so that Afghanistan no longer needs outside support.

Canada, for example, is reducing its overall aid to the country by 60 per cent over the next three years. The key to this plan is to make sure that this transition is done responsibly. Ongoing programs, many of which began as emergency responses, need an appropriate exit strategy in order to gradually phase them out.

Right now work is underway to renew funding for the project I worked for that helps the thousands of war widows receive food to feed themselves and their families while they continue to develop the skills they require to become independent. Many of them, like Nadjia, Homaria and Bibi-Meena, have already have become self-sufficient and no longer need food rations — a sign that with continued commitment, the people of Afghanistan, even the most vulnerable, can become independent and productive members of society.

While the world continues to debate the new military mission and the future of Afghanistan, I am asking you to remember that the people there have names, faces and families. These are the proud, dignified people who rallied in my support when I was in serious trouble. They are the reason we are in Afghanistan.

Clementina Cantoni is the former program manager for CARE's Humanitarian Assistance for Widows of Afghanistan program in Kabul.

Tripartite meeting on Afghan refugees kicks off in Mashhad -
Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN -- The 9th meeting of the tripartite commission on the joint program for voluntary repatriation between Iran, Afghanistan, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to open today in the northeastern city of Mashhad, the UNHCR office in Tehran announced in a press release.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees participates in the meetings with a regional team of delegations from the UNHCR in Afghanistan, UNHCR headquarters in Geneva and the UNHCR in Iran, which will be led by representative Sten A. Bronee. The Iranian delegation will be represented by Ahmad Hosseini, the advisor to Iran's interior minister and the director general of the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants, while the Afghan delegation is to be led by Naeem Ghiasi, the deputy minister for refugees and returnees.

During the meeting, the parties are expected to assess progress and developments in voluntary repatriation process which started in 2002 and discuss various key issues related to the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees and displaced persons from Iran. They will also be engaged in discussions to plan for the coming year's program based on the return estimates and the analysis of the implementation of last year's program, with the view to enhance the joint program.

The last tripartite commission meeting was hosted by UNHCR at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, following UNHCR's annual executive committee sessions in October. On that occasion, all parties reaffirmed their commitment to the voluntary and gradual character of the repatriation of Afghan refugees and displaced persons from Iran.

The current tripartite agreement, which was signed following high-level negotiations that took place in Herat in June 2005, will expire by the end of the Iranian year 1384 on March 20, 2006. In the year 2005, around 290,000 Afghan refugees have returned to their homeland, of which 64,000 were assisted by the UNHCR office in Iran under the voluntary repatriation program. Since the signing of the first tripartite agreement in 2002, over 1.4 million Afghan refugees have been repatriated to Afghanistan.

Repatriation of Afghan DPs resumes

ISLAMABAD – The News International: The UN refugee agency’s fifth phase of assisted returns to Afghanistan from Pakistan started last week, with a total of 77 Afghans having repatriated on Wednesday and Friday when the UNHCR started the final year of voluntary repatriation under the current tripartite agreement with the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The operation had been suspended during winter when the number of people returning to a wintry Afghanistan typically dwindles.

"As in previous years, repatriation starts slowly in March. Parts of Afghanistan are still too cold at this time of the year. The pace peaks in May, June and July," said UNHCR officer Robert Friedman.

Voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan is governed by the a tripartite agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UNHCR that was set to expire in March but was extended till December this year. The refugee agency is in negotiations with the two governments on new return arrangements beyond 2006, possibly shifting from individual travel assistance to area-based reintegration assistance.

Afghan mission not up for debate, Harper says

Last Updated Tue, 07 Mar 2006 17:44:11 EST CBC News

A debate on whether Canadian troops should be in Afghanistan would put the troops in danger, and any attempt to pull them back would be a betrayal, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Harper, speaking after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, stressed that the previous Liberal government committed the troops to their Afghan mission, which has proved deadly in recent weeks, and that the Conservatives will honour the commitment.

"I'm saying that Canadians don't cut and run at the first sign of trouble," he told reporters. "That's the nature of this country, and when we send troops into the field, I expect Canadians to support those troops." He repeatedly rejected the idea of a debate and said his government will not make decisions based on opinion polls.

"I understand the frustrations," he said. "Perhaps the previous government should have had a vote on the deployment, but that was not their decision. The decision was taken and we can't change our opinion when the troops are in danger."

He did not say why a debate in Canada would put soldiers at risk in Afghanistan, but he stressed it is "a very dangerous mission. "It's not the intention of this government to question the particular commitment when our troops are in danger," he said. "Such a debate or such a lack of strength by any of the political parties in Canada will merely weaken the resolve of our troops and will even put our troops in even more danger."

However, he left open the possibility that Canada would pull back from the mission at some point.

"The exact involvement of our commitment does change every year or so, depending on what obligations we take on or don't take on, and we'll be reviewing those obligations at the appropriate times in the future.

"But as I say, we will not be in any way backtracking from an obligation which has been undertaken." To do so, he said, "would not only not be in the best interests of Canada's international reputation or of our obligation to the people of Afghanistan and to the international community, it would be a betrayal of the men and women, the brave men and women we have in the field.

"So we will not be revisiting any decisions until the time when those decisions would normally come up for review."

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, speaking to reporters separately, said he is willing to brief Parliament about the Afghan situation, but he declined to get into a debate about whether there should be a debate. "I would bring this forward to the House to explain our mission, why we're there, where it's going, etc., and there would be input. That's all I've said."

A Canadian Responds - EARL MCRAE, OTTAWA SUN

Unbelievable. Disgusting. Enough to make you embarrassed to be a Canadian soldier. Enough to make you ashamed to be a Canadian citizen.

Some wonderful moral support it is from the people back home for our soldiers in Afghanistan doing what soldiers are paid to do and who know what might happen to them when they volunteer, yes, that's right, volunteer to join the armed forces of a nation that once proudly distinguished itself in war, whose young men and women in uniform did not shirk their duty, whose combat troops were renowned among allies for their training and fighting skill.

There was an expression among the allies in the Second World War, acknowledging the superior equipment of the Yanks and the combat tenacity of the Canucks: "If you want to capture a town, send in the Americans. If you want to keep it, send in the Canadians."

What must our veterans and their successors now serving in Afghanistan be thinking when they hear the results of a national Ipsos-Reid poll revealing that 48% of respondents feel Canadian troops "should not be deployed in Afghanistan and should be brought home as soon as possible," and only 52% think Canadian troops "are performing a vital mission in Afghanistan and they should stay as long as it takes for them to succeed."

An Ottawa Sun Online Poll today shows 64% supporting our mission there, but that figure is nothing to rave over, either. The Ipsos-Reid poll was conducted the other day after a Canadian soldier was killed and six others injured when their armoured vehicle collided with a taxi, and five more were hurt the next day in an attack by a suicide bomber. (One of the wounded soldiers subsequently died from injuries suffered in the crash.)

Only a handful of Canadian soldiers have been killed and/or injured in Afghanistan, not in direct combat, and on hearing of this, an inexcusably high 48% of their compatriots polled on the home front have decided such carnage is just too much for their pacifist, anti-violence, peacenik hearts, and so let's just cut and run like a bunch of dishonourable yellow bellies.

What an insult to our soldiers. Our soldiers, with their allies, are rightly in Afghanistan with the thanks of a government and its people who want democratic freedom from terrorists who favour tyranny, the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

If it was reversed, if we in Canada were the terrorist-victimized would you be grateful for soldiers from other lands in our midst fighting the enemy on our behalf, or would you want them to take the chicken express home the first time one of them is killed or wounded?

Too many decades of peace in the North strong and free have bred too many generations of spoiled, selfish, pampered, clueless, anti-military softies. We've lost all sense of proportion. A single Canadian soldier is killed or wounded, either in combat or a vehicle accident, and you'd think a thousand had fallen, his photo and story on the front pages of the newspapers, the top of TV newscasts, flags lowered, eulogies across the land.

In the Second World War, there were instances when hundreds, even thousands, of Canadian soldiers were killed in action in a single day, and that in combat. You didn't splash a big front page photo and story of every Canadian soldier killed every single day of the war, you didn't have the room, nor would you anyway, and the public didn't expect you to.

There were no photos and stories in the papers during the Second World War when my father was killed in Germany, my uncle in Italy, my grandfather wounded three times in France in the First World War. As the death toll climbed in those wars, Canadians were not screaming: "Bring 'em home."

War is war, soldiers, sadly, get killed and wounded. They know that might be their lot when they sign up. Even able-bodied boys whose main purpose in joining the army is to get an education or learn a trade, are put through basic combat training. They're soldiers first and foremost.

In this Afghanistan war against terrorists who, ultimately, have our country in their crosshairs, it is likely the number of Canadian soldiers killed or wounded in combat will increase significantly.

Accept the probability. Stop shaming yourselves. Our soldiers don't need, or want, your hearts of wimp jelly undermining theirs of warrior steel.

Afghans see us as true allies - Mar. 8, 2006 Toronto Star –

As a Canadian Afghan, I was stunned by the barbaric attack carried out by the purported Taliban axeman on Capt. Trevor Greene. Such cowardly, terrorist and inhuman acts are the attributes of the Taliban. A remnant of the Taliban is still at large and poses a threat to civilization. The idea behind such an orchestrated ambush is to demoralize the spirit of Canadian soldiers and to undermine Ottawa's decision on long-term commitment.

I firmly believe the Afghan people view Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan not as occupiers but as true allies who are working hard to bring peace and security, deliver humanitarian aid and rebuild the infrastructures in Kandahar province.

Ahmad Tariq Fahimi, Toronto

Bin Laden will never surrender, says Saudi ex-jihadi

AFP - A Saudi Muslim scholar who spent years with Arab jihadis in Afghanistan said he knows Osama bin Laden well and that the Al-Qaeda leader would never surrender, according to a report published here. "He will never surrender because he seeks death and yearns for it," said Musa al-Qorni in an interview with Saudi-owned pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat.

He added that he believed bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, is at present under the sway of the "Egyptian jihad group" led by Al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri and acts according to its plans.

Qorni said he and others tried to convince bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990s to come back to Saudi Arabia and "lead a normal life", but that the Saudi-born militant snubbed them and returned to Afghanistan.

US President George W. Bush said during his first visit to Afghanistan on March 1 that he was confident bin Laden would be brought to justice. Bin Laden, sheltered by the Taliban regime that was removed from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001, is believed to be hiding out along the remote, mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

A US-led coalition force of about 20,000 based in southern and eastern Afghanistan as well as some 80,000 Pakistani troops stationed on the other side of the border are on the hunt for Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants, including bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Qorni, whose interview with Al-Hayat will be published in installments over three days, said he went to the Pakistani city of Peshawar in the 1980s to act as mentor to the Arab jihadis (holy fighters) that flocked to the area with the support of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fight the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan.

He says that he and four other scholars taught at the Dawa and Jihad university established in the hijra (immigration) village for Arab fighters near Peshawar but that his role went beyond the school benches and to the front, where he taught jihadis how to live and fight according to sharia, Islamic law, and sometimes fought alongside them.

"I knew many young men who before coming for jihad and in some cases they got killed, and we ask God to bless them as martyrs, led a non-Islamic and even sometimes very deviant life," says Qorni, 52, who is now a lawyer and sharia consultant in Saudi Arabia.

In his interview, Qorni talks at great length about how the Arab fighters shared with the Taliban their animosity towards Ahmad Shah Massoud, head of the rival faction that controlled a section of northern Afghanistan, who was assassinated in September 2001. He says bin Laden took part in a Taliban staged trial that convicted Massoud of being "an apostate and agent of the West."

[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.]