In this bulletin:

• Suicide bomber killed in attack on French convoy in Afghanistan
• Afghan Man Prosecuted for Converting
• Afghan president likely to reshuffle cabinet within hours
• Foreign Minister tells of the progress made in reforming his country
• Japan to provide $22.4 million for reconstruction - Pajhwok Report
• Turkey pledges $1m for health sector
• Dozens of heroin labs destroyed in Nangarhar
• Iran, Afghanistan officials review anti-drug program
• Seven dead as bomb blast rips through Pakistani police van
• Afghanistan bans poultry import from Pakistan
• Canada's air force to establish first all pilotless formation in Afghanistan
• Documents give glimpse of al-Qaida recruits in Afghanistan - By SAM F. GHATTAS
• Partnership Key to Progress in Afghanistan, U.S. General Says
• Lessons of life and death
• Taliban, poverty fueling Afghan opium boom
• Historic Alliance to be Tested in Afghanistan
• Locomotive to get suitable position in Afghan Museum
• Digging of 140 wells starts in Zabul
• THE ROVING EYE: In the heart of Pipelineistan

Suicide bomber killed in attack on French convoy in Afghanistan

A suicide car bomber was killed when he rammed his vehicle into a coalition convoy in southern Afghanistan, officials and witnesses said.

A local police commander in the restive Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province said the convoy was made up several vehicles of French troops operating under the US-led coalition in the region.

"No one but the attacker was killed in the explosion. It was a suicide car bomb," said the commander, who asked not to be named. The US military confirmed the blast and said one member of the coalition sustained minor injuries. It declined to say whether it was a suicide attack.

Abdul Wasey Alakozai, police chief of Spin Boldak town, said the French troops were returning to base from an operation to defuse a roadside bomb when the attack happened.

He said the bomber's car was carrying an improvised explosive device made out of nine rockets, but only one of them exploded. Purported Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi, calling AFP from an unknown location, said the attack was carried out by Taliban loyalists.

"We carried out the attack. It was a suicide attack by one of our mujahedin," he said, adding that he could not give details of the attacker for his family's safety. Ahmadi, however, said the bomber was an Afghan from Kandahar.

Abdullah, 22, a shopkeeper in Spin Boldak on the Pakistani border, said he saw the explosives-packed vehicle slam into the convoy. "I saw it. It was a (Toyota) Corolla car which hit into the convoy. Later I heard a huge bang and saw a big fire," Abdullah said.

Spin Boldak suffered a deadly suicide attack on January 16 when a motorcyclist blew himself up as a crowd left a wrestling match, killing 22 people and injuring as many others.

The police commander said Sunday's bomber was most likely a foreigner as Pakistani currency and telephone numbers were found on his body. "We believe he was a foreign national. We found lots of Pakistani currency and a list of Pakistani telephone numbers in his pocket," he said.

Around 200 French special forces are operating as part of the US-led coalition in Kandahar while another 600 are taking part in the NATO peacekeeping force in the capital Kabul.

Earlier this month a French soldier died in a clash with suspected Taliban rebels in Kandahar and a another French soldier died in September last year. The Taliban were toppled in a US-led operation in late 2001 but are still waging an insurgency against foreign and Afghan targets. Most of these attacks occur in the south including Kandahar.

Afghan Man Prosecuted for Converting

An Afghan man who allegedly converted from Islam to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday.

The defendant, Abdul Rahman, was arrested last month after his family went to the police and accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada told Associated Press in an interview. Such a conversion would violate the country's Islamic laws. Rahman, who is believed to be 41, was charged with rejecting Islam when his trial started last week, the judge said.

During the hearing, the defendant allegedly confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago when he was 25 and working as a medical aid worker for Afghan refugees in neighboring Pakistan, Mawlavezada said. Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which states that any Muslim who rejects their religion should be sentenced to death.

"We are not against any particular religion in the world. But in Afghanistan, this sort of thing is against the law," the judge said. "It is an attack on Islam. ... The prosecutor is asking for the death penalty."

The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said the case was the first of its kind in Afghanistan. He said that he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman changed his religion back to Islam, but the defendant refused.

Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months. Afghanistan is a deeply conservative society and 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim. The rest are mainly Hindus.

Afghan president likely to reshuffle cabinet within hours - By AFP Published March 19, 2006 –

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is likely to "significantly" reshuffle his cabinet in the next 24 hours, inducting new faces in key portfolios, officials said on Sunday.
    
"Most likely the cabinet will be presented to the parliament either today or tomorrow," Karzai's chief advisor on international politics, Dadfar Rangin Spanta, said. He would not give details but said parliament would take a few days to approve the cabinet.
    
Under a law adopted by the lower house earlier this month, each minister has to be voted on individually by the parliament. Another official at Karzai's palace said the current 28-member cabinet would be "significantly" reshuffled with several ministers, including Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, set to be replaced by new faces.
    
"A number of ministers have been replaced by new faces, Abdullah Abdullah is also dropped off the list," said the official who requested anonymity. The parliament inaugurated in December last year is the first legislature elected in Afghanistan in more than 30 years.
    
Also on Sunday, a suicide car-bomber was killed when he rammed his vehicle into a US-led coalition convoy in southern Afghanistan, a witness and an official said but there were no military casualties.
    
A local police commander in the restive Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province said the convoy comprised several vehicles of French troops operating under the US-led coalition in the region.
    
"No one but the attacker was killed in the explosion. It was a suicide car bomb," the commander who asked not to be named said. Abdullah, 22, a shopkeeper in Spin Boldak town on the Pakistani border said he saw the explosives-packed vehicle slam into the convoy.
   
"I saw it. It was a [Toyota] Corolla car which hit itself into the convoy. Later I heard a huge bang and saw a big fire," Abdullah, who like many other Afghans uses only one name, said after being contacted from the nearby Kandahar city. The US-led coalition headquarters in Kabul gave no comment.

Spin Boldak has suffered previous violence in the ongoing insurgency, including a suicide attack on January 16 when a motorcyclist blew himself up as a crowd left a wrestling match, killing 22 people and injuring as many others.
    
The police commander said Sunday's bomber was most likely a foreigner as Pakistani currency and telephone numbers were found on his body. "We believe he was a foreign national. We found lots of Pakistani currency and a list of Pakistani telephone numbers in his pocket," he said.
    
Around 200 French special forces are operating under the US-led coalition force in Kandahar while another 600 are taking part in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in the capital Kabul.

Foreign Minister tells of the progress made in reforming his country - By Aman Mehrzai, CORRESPONDENT Inside Bay Area

FREMONT — A crowd of nearly 400 Afghan Americans waited anxiously outside the Flamingo Palace banquet hall to meet the foreign ambassador of their homeland.

Dr. Abdullah arrived with an entourage of Afghan officials and security provided by the State Department, Fremont police and the Alameda County Sheriff's Office bomb squad.

Upon his entrance, Abdullah, who like many Afghans has only one name, first greeted a group of language students who are studying Dari for the State Department in Santa Cruz. Their teacher is Abdullah's brother. He exchanged some words with them, then proceeded to a press conference with mostly Afghan media.

Abdullah studied to be an ophthamologist during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, receiving his M.D. in 1983 and practicing in Kabul until 1985. He then went into the trenches of the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, where he met the mujahedeen forces of Ahmad Shah Masood, who was assassinated by Al-Qaida two days before the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

In 1986, Abdullah became a close adviser for Masood, and then the foreign minister of the Northern Alliance from 1998 on. Although Abdullah is considered to be one of the leaders of the Tajiks in Afghanistan today, his mother is of Pashtun descent.

After the 2004 elections in the country, Abdullah maintained his post, despite the fact that many other Northern Alliance officials were removed from power. Abdullah focused his speech Friday night on the gradual progress of the government of Afghanistan despite the many difficulties it faces.

Abdullah also addressed concerns of recent Shia-Sunni conflicts, offering that he didn't believe it will spill over to other areas. "What we know now is that it's not widespread," he said.

Still, he added, the government is keeping a close eye on the situation because of the apparent Sunni vs. Shia struggles in Iraq. During the question-and-answer period after Abdullah's speech, two women were escorted out by security for disrupting the event when they refused to sit down. The two accused Abdullah of having ties to the former Communist regime in Afghanistan during the bloody war with the Soviet Union.

Japan to provide $22.4 million for reconstruction - Pajhwok Report

KABUL, Mar 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The government of Japan will provide $22.4 million to support the ongoing reconstruction process in Afghanistan, says a press release issued here.

In this connection, the two countries inked an agreement on Saturday. The accord was signed by Afghanistan Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mahmoud Saikal and ambassador of Japan Norihiro Okuda.

The recent amount is part of Japan's third round of the Non-Project Grant Aid (JNPGA) for development and reconstruction of Afghanistan. The aid is provided to Afghanistan to purchase fuel up to 230,000 tons, which will be sold inside the country to earn profit for the Counterpart Fund (CPF), says the release.

The Counterpart Fund is used for many national projects and programmes like the National Area Based Development Programme ($15m), Afghanistan Stabilisation Programme ($6m), Rehabilitation and Expansion of Power Distribution Network in Herat ($5m), provision of equipment to Kandahar highway police ($1.6m) and passport printing ($1m).

Turkey pledges $1m for health sector

KABUL, Mar 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): In order to improve health condition in the war-torn central Asian state, Turkey will soon grant free of cost aid of $1m to Afghan public health ministry.

Afghan Minister for Public Health Syed Mohammad Amin inked an agreement on Thursday with the Turkish ambassador in Kabul Ethern Takedmir.

After signing the accord, Fatimi told reporters that the fund would be spent on building clinics and provision of standard health facilities to the people in Maimana, Shibershan, Taloqan and Takhar provinces.

The minister said Turkey had also granted Kabul $60,000 for getting various medicines that was not included in Thursday's accord. Spokesman for Public Health Ministry Abdullah Fahim said in the past too Turkey had assisted Afghanistan in health sector.

Dozens of heroin labs destroyed in Nangarhar

JALALABAD, Mar 19 (Pajhwok Afghan News): More than 40 small and big heroin factories had been destroyed in Shinwari, Achin, Nazian and Spin Ghar districts of the eastern Nangarhar province, security officials said on Sunday.

Spokesman for the provincial police headquarters Colonel Abdul Ghafoor told Pajhwok Afghan News the labs were demolished during an operation carried out with the help of locals. He said two vehicles parked in the vicinity of a laboratory were torched during the operation. The vehicles were belonging to owners of the illegal factories.

The action against drug factories has been taken at a time when the Nangarhar provincial council had constituted a delegation to talk to elders on eradication of poppies in the Kot, Achin and Shinwari districts of the province.

Deputy chief of the provincial council Maulvi Abdul Aziz Khairkhwa told this news agency the delegation had visited the areas along with police to discuss the poppy cultivation.

Iran, Afghanistan officials review anti-drug program - Vienna, March 18, IRNA

A security belt should be constructed in borders between Iran and Afghanistan to tackle drug transiting and trafficking between the two countries, an Iranian official said.

Secretary General of Iran Drug Control Headquarters (IDCH) Fada Hossein Maleki made the comment in a meeting with Afghan Minister of Counter-narcotics Habibullah Qaderi on the sidelines of the 49th Session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna.

Maleki said that all drug laboratories in Afghanistan should be destroyed. Afghan Qaderi, at the meeting, noted that his country is obliged to control its borders but has not been managed to do its obligation due to lack of facilities in field of drug control.

"The neighbor countries of Afghanistan should further control their borders under tight security." The 49th Session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs opened in Vienna on March 13 and wrapped up work on Friday.

Located in the focal point of the so-called 'Golden Triangle', Afghanistan is of the leading poppy cultivation and major source of heroin across the globe.

Seven dead as bomb blast rips through Pakistani police van

At least seven people were killed when a powerful roadside bomb suspected to have been planted by pro-Taliban militants ripped through a police van in northwestern Pakistan.

Three policemen, three paramilitary soldiers and one passerby were killed in the blast which "totally destroyed" the van as it passed on a routine patrol. "It was a remote-controlled device, planted on the road," local police chief Dar Ali Khattak told AFP.

"It was a powerful blast, the vehicle has been totally destroyed," he said, adding that a bomb disposal unit was examining the device.

Dera Ismail Khan, about 250 kilometers (156 miles) northwest of the capital Islamabad, borders the restive tribal region of Waziristan where Pakistani forces are hunting suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban rebels.

Six of the victims were killed at the scene while the third member of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary died in the town's hospital, a doctor said.

"We have seven dead bodies," doctor Jahanzeb Khan told AFP by telephone. He added that four others had been admitted, three of them with "serious injuries." The wounded included two policemen and one paramilitary soldier. Hours later two more bombs exploded but there were no casualties.

A low intensity device went off near a government building close to the scene of the first blast, damaging its outer wall, police and witnesses said. Later in the evening another home-made bomb exploded near a police post outside the city but caused no casualties, they said.

No group has so far claimed the responsibility for the bombing which North West Frontier Province police chief Riffat Pasha described as a "terrorist act." "This is a terrorist attack in which law enforcing agencies have been targeted," Pasha told private Geo television channel, adding that it could be fallout from recent incidents in North Waziristan.

Local police chief Khattak also linked the blast to the current unrest in North Waziristan. "It seems to be repercussion of recent clashes in North Waziristan," Khattak said.

"We knew that some militants from Waziristan were trying to sneak into the city and there were fears of possible attacks on government offices and state installations. But we did not expect the blast would be carried out on the busy road" that links Dera Ismail Khan with Islamabad, he added.

"We were on red alert" after fierce battles earlier this month between Pakistani forces and pro-Taliban insurgents in neighbouring North Waziristan, which resulted in dozens of deaths, he said.

The clashes erupted on March 4 -- during a visit to Islamabad by US President George W. Bush -- after local Taliban sympathisers briefly took control of parts of the main tribal town of Miranshah. Around 170 suspected militants and five soldiers died during several days of heavy fighting.

Afghanistan bans poultry import from Pakistan - Business Recorder (Pakistan) - ZIA M KHAN

ISLAMABAD (March 18 2006): Afghanistan has banned poultry import from Pakistan as the country expects early next week a confirmation of lethal H5N1 bird flu strain from a UK lab and industry losses climb to Rs 4 billion, official and farm sources said.

"Yes, Afghanistan has imposed ban on poultry products import from Pakistan and it's being implemented but Kabul is still to convey this officially to Islamabad," a Food Ministry spokesperson told Business Recorder on Friday.

Dr Mohammad Afzal said European Union Reference Lab on bird flu in London was expected to send its report till Wednesday. A preliminary examination at a laboratory in Islamabad confirmed dead birds did contain a mild H5 bird flu strain and authorities sent samples to London to be extra sure. Dr Afzal said, "We (the government) have asked the UK lab to expedite the testing of samples and sent us report as early as possible."

According to poultry association around three trucks of chickens and one truck of eggs are exported to Afghanistan weekly. Pakistan Poultry Association central secretary Dr Bashir Mahmood Bhatti said chickens and eggs are exported to Afghanistan mainly from Punjab and NWFP. He feared the ban would multiply the losses to poultry industry that had already surged to Rs 4 billion after a bird flu scare hit the industry late last year.

Canada's air force to establish first all pilotless formation in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Canada's air force will cross a technological threshhold this month with the establishment in Afghanistan of its first organized flight of pilotless aircraft.

An entire flight of Sperwer tactical uninhabited aerial vehicles will soon be fully operational for reconnaissance missions over the windswept desert and craggy mountains passes in the vicinity of Kandahar. A few of the remote-controlled aircraft are already deployed, but more are on the way.

Using real-time video and a host of infrared and other specialized sensors, the drones are sent aloft to monitor the surrounding countryside and to track down insurgents, hopefully before they become a threat to Canada's 2,200 troops on the ground.

Although the Canadian military has been using the devices - known as TUAVs - on an individual basis for the past couple of years, the air force has now formally added a flight of pilotless aircraft to 408 Squadron, a Griffon tactical helicopter formation based in Edmonton.

"It can be described as a milestone," said Maj. John Casey, a helicopter pilot and the commander of the TUAV flight in Kanadahar. "It's a milestone in the ongoing transformation of the air force and the Canadian Forces."

For security reasons, military officials on the ground here will not say how many drones are in use, but an average manned flight involves six to 12 aircraft.

Casey said troops on the ground seem happy with the quality of reports they're getting. If there's any resistance to the idea of remote-controlled aircraft, it's coming from pilots, he said.

The growing popularity of TUAVs was demonstrated last winter when Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservatives said part of their Arctic sovereignty strategy involves monitoring remote frozen inlets with drones. In 2003, defence researchers began debating whether Canada could effectively replace its CF-18 jet fighters with combat TUAVs.

The French-made Sperwers are blasted into the air on a truck-mounted rail-launch system, going from zero to 160 kilometres per hour in one-quarter of a second.

Part of the attraction of the Sperwer - Dutch for Sparrow Hawk - is that it doesn't need a runaway to land, unlike the bigger American drones, such the Predator or Global Hawk.

The units are controlled by technicians on the ground, who sit in an area that resembles the cockpit of an aircraft. They monitor a variety of sensor data produced by the TUAV's onboard computer, which in turn is relayed to troops in the field.

The air force is eager to get further into the business of flying TUAVs, mostly because of the safety factor. Having drones available means highly-trained fixed-wing and helicopter pilots can be saved for combat missions instead of being exposed to danger in what are often routine intelligence-gathering missions.

Documents give glimpse of al-Qaida recruits in Afghanistan - By SAM F. GHATTAS The Associated Press

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Recruits at Osama bin Laden's terrorist-training camps in Afghanistan were clamoring for suicide missions against the United States more than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, according to al-Qaida documents declassified by the U.S. Defense Department.

"Why have the martyrdom operations against the Americans been delayed?" one recruit wrote on a calendar page dated July 8, 2000.

Another recruit referred to the 1998 suicide attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 231 people, saying: "We look forward to martyrdom operations like the ones in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. What are the characteristics of the man that is required to execute such operations?"

A third recruit asked the leadership why it disapproved of assassination: "Why do you oppose and find it inappropriate, knowing that it cleansed many tyrants?"

One document published on the Pentagon Web site this week contained rare criticism of bin Laden from an al-Qaida operative, who accused the terrorist leader of monopolizing decision-making and ignoring advice.

"We must completely stop outside operations until we sit down and consider the disaster we have caused," said the operative, who used the name Abdel Halim Adel.

Adel appealed to a friend in the al-Qaida leadership to steer the group away from the policies of bin Laden, whom he referred to as Abu Abdullah. "Stop foreign operations, stop sending people to detention, and stop planning new operations, whether they are ordered by Abu Abdullah or not," he wrote.

The documents provide a rare glimpse of the mentality and training of recruits at al-Qaida's camps in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based until late 2001. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States threw its weight behind opponents of the Taliban regime that hosted bin Laden.

While the camps in Afghanistan have been destroyed, many of those who trained there have returned to their home countries, taking al-Qaida's ideology and tactics with them.

The U.S. military said the documents, published Wednesday, were "captured during recent operations." Some were reportedly seized in the 2003 invasion of Iraq but many, according to U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, were found in Afghanistan.

The recruits called bin Laden "sheik," a clerical title. But it was not clear whether their questions were addressed to him or to one of his lieutenants.

"Our sheik, you have previously given us lessons and asked the question: 'How do we drive the infidels out of the Arabian Peninsula?' " a recruit said in one document. He then asked: "Is striking at the origin [America] the priority or is it driving them out [of Saudi Arabia]?"

The documents show al-Qaida members were concerned about their safety and the safety of their families, although they embraced suicide attacks. Adel, the operative who criticized bin Laden, protests the leadership's posting on the Internet of a letter in which he sent kisses to his children. "Please quickly take it off because I think the whole world now knows how many kids I have and their names," he wrote.

The release of the documents, which is expected to continue for months, is designed to allow U.S. legislators and the public to investigate issues such as what Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime said about weapons of mass destruction. The Pentagon cautioned it has made "no determination regarding the authenticity of the documents, validity or factual accuracy."

Partnership Key to Progress in Afghanistan, U.S. General Says - Washington File 03/17/2006 By David I. McKeeby - Significant accomplishments include security, governance, reconstruction

Washington - Partnership is the key to progress in Afghanistan, says Army Major General Benjamin Freakley, commander of the U.S. military's Combined Joint Task Force 76, currently leading security operations in that nation.

"As we enter this fifth year of operations in Enduring Freedom, we can see significant accomplishments. And while there's still a great amount of work to be done, we think that also this nation of Afghanistan clearly is moving forward every day," Freakley told reporters in a March 16 press briefing from Bagram, Afghanistan. Freakley said that the Combined Joint Task Force is focused on three major operational objectives: security, governance and reconstruction.

The U.S.-led Combined Joint Task Force is 21,000 strong, including 15,000 U.S. troops and 4,300 allied troops, primarily from Canada, the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Romania, who are working closely with the 27,000-member Afghan National Army and the country's 55,000 police to coordinate combined operations against armed militants.

The provincial reconstruction teams, comprising military forces and personnel from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are working with local Afghan governors to support area infrastructure projects and to strengthen local government and civil society in every district and province in the country.

USAID also works with nongovernmental organizations and other foreign governments to provide humanitarian aid and to repair and rebuild communities shattered by decades of conflict.

The continuing threats in Afghanistan are complex, said Freakley, and come from several sources. In southern Afghanistan, Taliban militants continue to operate from isolated safe havens in Afghanistan and from locations along the border with Pakistan, while across the country, the Joint Task Force encounters foreign extremists "motivated primarily by al-Qaida" who are providing funding, arms and training to various militant factions. Coalition forces also are seeing incidents of suicide bombing and use of improvised explosive devices that parallel insurgent tactics seen in Iraq, he said.

In the interior regions, drug traffickers and criminals paid by al-Qaida or Taliban remnants to attack Afghan and coalition forces are a significant challenge, Freakley said, adding that criminal organizations tied to opium trafficking are particularly worrisome because they fund militant activity and force farmers to continue raising poppies instead of diversifying into other, more beneficial crops. Afghan authorities recognize the danger of the confluence of narcotics and terrorism and are making progress in eradicating opium crops, he said.

The Joint Task Force also contends with smaller local militant groups, such as the Haqqani network that operates around Khost, and the Hezb-e Islami Group, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyr, in the north, he said.

Throughout Operation Enduring Freedom, the Afghan military and police forces have grown in size and capability as effective partners to coalition forces. "The Afghan National Army and the coalition forces have the initiative. We're taking the fight to the enemy, and we'll continue to help extend this government by prosecuting this fight against the different groups," he said.

Lessons of life and death - Boston Globe 03/16/2006 By Declan Walsh - Afghan schools under siege as Taliban maintain grip

SARKH DOZ - Remnants of the ousted Taliban regime have launched a campaign of arson, intimidation, and assassination targeting schools and teachers in southern Afghanistan, forcing some 200 schools to close in recent months, local officials say.

Five teachers have been killed, said Hayat Allah Rafiqi, head of the education department in Helmand province. Hundreds more teachers have received ''night letters" -- threatening notices nailed to their houses under darkness, warning them to quit teaching or die.

''Our teachers are helpless because security is so weak," Rafiqi said. ''By day the government rules, but by night it is the hand of the Taliban." The attacks, which President Hamid Karzai estimated have idled 100,000 students in the south, have undermined attempts by the government to revive the country's educational system and teach both boys and girls -- a key to Afghanistan's recovery from decades of war. Girls were barred from attending school when the fundamentalist Islamic regime ruled the country in the 1990s.

While schools in Kandahar and Zabol provinces also have been targeted, Helmand has been particularly hard hit. Sixty-six of Helmand's 224 schools -- many of them built or repaired with American aid -- have closed, and others have reduced classes as parents move pupils to the safety of the main towns. Even there, protection is uncertain.

In one of the Helmand attacks, assassins dragged a teacher from his classroom in the village of Nad Ali and shot him at the school gate. His crime: teaching girls.

Two days later, gunmen burst into Karte Laghan secondary school in the provincial capital, Laskhar Gah, killing a watchman and a student. The attack occurred less than a mile from the new British military base. ''We are always afraid of being shot or attacked on our way home," said Gul Ali, a female teacher of chemistry and biology at the school.

In rural areas, schools are particularly vulnerable. An arson attack in January destroyed the lone school in the sleepy settlement of Sarkh Doz, near the sluggish Helmand river. Now the playground is ghostly quiet, the gate is bolted shut, and all that remains of the yellow classrooms is a charred shell of cinders and ash.

Residents say militants in a station wagon pulled up, doused the building in gasoline, and struck a match. Then the car roared up the rutted road to the next village, Mangalzai, and torched a school there, too.

The attacks on the schools have dealt a blow to aid efforts in Helmand, the volatile southern province where US troops are currently handing control to a 3,300-strong British force.

''Terrible," said police chief Ahmed Samonwal, shaking his head as he walked past the blackened building in Sarkh Doz. ''This is the work of our enemies." While some teachers have quit, most of Helmand's 1,500 teachers are defying the threats. For some, it is a matter of patriotism; for others, the security of a $50 monthly salary.

''Of course we are afraid," said one teacher, Abdul Hakim. ''But this is our duty. For the sake of the next generation, our country, and our children, we cannot quit our jobs."

Hakim, a man with piercing gray eyes under a dark turban, teaches 12-year-old boys at a school in Garmser district, a 90-minute drive south of Laskhar Gah. An atmosphere of fear pervades the town.

The police station is peppered with bullet holes since an attack by the Taliban in December that left nine dead. The town's school for girls is shut, Hakim said, and one of his colleagues who had received a night letter fled to Laskhar Gah. But the boys' school has not been targeted by the Taliban and remains open.

The Taliban's anti-education offensive is consistent with its virulent opposition to schooling for girls. But the campaign also serves a broader purpose -- to erode the tenuous authority of Karzai's government.

''This is not just about girls. The Taliban are against all education," said Sardar Muhammad of Mercy Corps, one of just five relief agencies operating in Helmand. ''Ignorant people are easier to control. When they were fighting their way to power [in the mid-1990s], only the uneducated were sent to the front."

The climate of terror also suits the province's drug barons with whom the Taliban have allied in recent months, local officials say. As a result, heroin and opium flow across the border into neighboring Pakistan and freshly trained insurgents travel from Pakistan in the opposite direction.

At his office, the newly appointed governor of Garmser, Haji Abdullah Jan, displayed an antitank mine rigged to a remote control device intended to kill him along a roadside earlier this month. ''Some villagers called me with a warning. Otherwise I would have driven into it," he said.

As NATO forces prepare to assume control in the south, securing the schools of Helmand will soon be a task for British paratroopers, about 2,500 of whom are expected to start arriving in early May, backed up with Apache attack helicopters. But the British commander in Laskhar Gah, Colonel Henry Worsley, said their principal role was to train and support the fledgling Afghan security forces. ''In a place like Garmser we might help mount a check post, put a soldierly look on it, and tell them how to defend it," he said.

Haji Karim Khan, 65, considered his family's educational history. Four decades ago, he graduated from Kabul University, he said. During the bloody Soviet occupation, just one of his sons completed secondary school.

Now his six grandsons may not even make it that far -- they have just been moved to the town of Goreshk since all four local schools closed down. The people of Helmand say the Karzai government has abandoned them, he said.

''You just hear a small item at the end of the news saying the situation in the southwest is bad these days. But that is not enough. They need to tell us what they are going to do," he said.

Taliban, poverty fueling Afghan opium boom - The Economist 03/17/2006

With a rising threat of Taliban politics spreading elsewhere in Pakistan, the tribal areas are no place for half-hearted, or ham-fisted, policy

SOLDIERS block the road from Bannu, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NFWP), to Miran Shah, the capital of the North Waziristan tribal area and epicentre of an ugly war. A lorry rolls the other way, packed with refugees from fighting between the army and fundamentalist local tribesmen. "It's chaos," says a bearded fugitive. "The army is on the streets but everyone knows it's not in control."

Two years of conflict in Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas, which are divided into seven agencies arrayed along the border with Afghanistan, suggest he could be right. The latest, especially serious surge began on March 1st, when the army attacked a village it described as an "al-Qaeda training camp" near Miran Shah. It claimed that 45 Islamist militants were killed in the attack, including some Chechens. Refugees said only 15 local tribesmen were killed.

In response, their Talibanised brothers and cousins raided Miran Shah, grabbing the telephone exchange and other government buildings, and bombarding an army base with rockets and mortars. The government's political agent for North Waziristan narrowly escaped death in an ambush. Several thousand townspeople fled 30 miles (50km) east to Bannu. Even there they seem terrified, telling tales of sandbagged army outposts, a market square razed to rubble and fighting between helicopter gunships and grenade-toting Talibs. No one knows how many people have been killed. The army says 200, mostly "militants". The fugitives say many civilians were among them: "That's why the media is not being allowed in."

For the first half-century of the country's existence, Pakistan's governments paid little attention to the tribal areas. Like their British forebears, they preferred them wild and woolly, deprived of basic rights and services-though they occasionally found them useful for launching insurgencies, first against the Soviet army and then the Mujahideen who succeeded it, inside Afghanistan. That changed when America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and thousands of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, Pakistanis and Afghans, fled to the tribal areas. Then Pakistan sent its army in.

Policed by 80,000 soldiers and paramilitaries, most of the tribal areas are now under unprecedented central control. To assist its operations, the army has bulldozed many miles of roads. Unlike the British with their punitive sorties, it says it is there to stay. To please the locals, it claims to have built clinics and schools, though tight restrictions on visiting journalists make such claims hard to verify. But in North and South Waziristan, the army has encountered fierce resistance from local tribesmen, assisted perhaps by a surviving handful of foreign jihadists. Drawn from the Wazir tribes, most of the fighters are religious students loyal to two fire-breathing clerics, Abdul Khaliq and Sadiq Noor. They sometimes call themselves the "Pakistan Taliban".

In early 2004, fighting in South Waziristan caused several hundred deaths on both sides-and failed to deliver the "high-value" al-Qaeda target that Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, had promised. In the latter part of last year, North Waziristan suffered 25 bomb blasts and the deaths of at least 35 soldiers in fighting. In another time-honoured tradition, the government then tried bribing the tribesmen to keep quiet-apparently without success.

Many in Pakistan now wonder whether the government's military campaign is making the tribal areas more radical, not less. The conflict has weakened both traditional leaders and their civil-servant handlers. The area is instead seeing a face-off between the army and the clerics. With insurgent violence worsening on both sides of the border, the consequences could be grim. In NWFP, a Taliban promotional video is widely available. It shows what happens to "miscreants" under an "Islamic Justice System": a severed head is waved before a crowd; a bloodied corpse hangs from a tree, eyes gouged out, a wad of money stuffed in its mouth; a tangle of bodies is hauled through the streets. "The Taliban have done the job the enlightened moderates have refused to do," says the voiceover. It was filmed in Miran Shah in December 2005.

Pakistan has often been accused of failing to prevent Taliban incursions into Afghanistan. It has arrested several al-Qaeda chiefs in recent years-though none in the tribal areas. It has also suffered Taliban leaders to preach and recruit in its northern town of Quetta. Last month, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, said that a recent wave of suicide bombers in his country came from Pakistan. The furore was embarrassing for Mr Musharraf, as it coincided with a visit from President George Bush, to see whether his Pakistani "buddy" remained as "committed as he has been in the past" to fighting terrorism.

Mr Bush pronounced himself satisfied; Mr Musharraf has shown great courage in the fight. But it would not be surprising if some of his lieutenants were less eager to quell Afghanistan's insurgency. They remain dismayed at their loss of influence over a country which, under Taliban rule, they controlled. Worse, India is on excellent terms with Mr Karzai. But with a rising threat of Taliban politics spreading elsewhere in Pakistan, the tribal areas are no place for half-hearted, or ham-fisted, policy. According to reports in Pakistan this week, the Taliban recently opened an office in South Waziristan's capital of Wana, "to help restore law and order."

Historic Alliance to be Tested in Afghanistan - FOX News 03/16/2006 By Greg Simmons

WASHINGTON - For Masood Aziz, it is a time of opportunity and concern, both for him and his birth country. The United States plans to give up much of the military control in Afghanistan by the end of this year to forces under NATO, the multinational, transatlantic alliance first formed to thwart Soviet expansion and control of Europe.

Aziz, 44, says the turnover of authority is a big concern. A NATO-led force may not be up to the task, nor may enough U.S. troops involved to make sure the nascent Afghan government can succeed. He said he fears military leaders might be making the same mistake the world made before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that launched the War on Terror: heading down the road toward ignoring Afghanistan at its own peril. "This is the kind of thing that we cannot let happen," Aziz said.

Aziz, whose family moved to France before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s and then to the United States in 1984, is a U.S. citizen and an international development consultant whose work focuses on Central and South Asia. He said he sees his war-torn homeland - a mountainous and rugged, but naturally rich country - as the future hub of prosperity between Europe, India, China and Pakistan, assuming the country can first be made a safe place.

"I think that the opportunities are great. Enormous. But the time window will be closing. ... We haven't had this sort of opportunity in the region, and not to take that, and make it real, would be a complete defeat for all of us. Not just the U.S., not just for Afghanistan, but for the whole region - everybody," Aziz said.

Some analysts who have recently visited the country say Afghanistan is a mixed bag of encouraging signs and causes for concern. Warren Marik, a former CIA case officer who worked in Afghanistan in the mid-1970s, said he now regularly visits Afghanistan for pleasure. His most recent visit was from August to October.

"It's quiet," Marik said. "All the stuff you hear about" - including roadside bombings - "is happening out in the boonies." Kabul, the capital, is a relatively safe and functioning city, Marik said.

"Merchants come out and say, 'Buy my rugs,' and little kids come out and say, 'I'm starving to death,' and I walk to my Chinese restaurant ... and they sit you down and they feed you the best you can, and, you know, life goes on," Marik said.

On the occasions when a bombing does occur, Marik said it's not ignored, but the locals seem to react to it the same way U.S. residents react to a fatal traffic accident: People die and it's reported in the local press, but it's largely forgotten about the next day.

The Taliban, he said, has been marginalized, and the most important thing for the United States is for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to remain in power. "Nobody wants the Taliban back," Marik said.

But Christina Corbett, a London-based intelligence analyst who this year traveled to Afghanistan, said the Karzai government still needs to build its influence in the rest of the country.

"I think, sadly, the Karzai government is - still remains quite weak and ineffective outside of Kabul," Corbett said. As a result, some tribal warlords still have power in local districts, and to retain his power, Karzai needs their help to run the government.

"This is a reality that Karzai needs to use their support, to exert some influence in regions that really are still far from being under the control of the central government itself. And this, I think, is the nature of Afghanistan. It's a multi-factious country," Corbett said.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in the early years of the Cold War as an alliance to ward off the spread of communism and serve as protection against the Soviet Union. After the 1991 Soviet downfall, new nations formerly under communist rule joined NATO to counter common threats, including terrorism. Russia, while not a member, has a friendly military agreement with the group.

But the alliance still struggled to redefine itself. The humanitarian crises in the Balkans and Africa, and now the spreading threat of terrorism gave its members new reasons for cooperation. In 2003, NATO got the job of giving a familiar name to the international coalition formed to restore Afghanistan's government after the ouster of the Taliban in October 2001.

The military command structure in Afghanistan now is split between the U.S. military and NATO, with increasing help from local Afghan forces as they receive training. In addition to the 26 alliance members, another 10 nations are aiding in the efforts.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO's top military commander, said that as the alliance prepares to be the lead command structure for all of Afghanistan by the end of this year, he is confident it will be better than the current split.

In the new line-up, NATO will handle all security action except for counterterrorism missions. U.S. forces will continue to lead in that area.

Currently, 20,000 troops in Afghanistan are from the United States. The Defense Department late last year signaled a reduction in forces in Afghanistan by roughly 3,000 troops, which would bring the levels down to about 17,000.

In a Defense Department briefing last week, Jones avoided reporters' questions about specific future U.S. troop levels. He said he expected 21,000 troops to be under NATO command, including U.S. troops. But he did not say exactly how many would be U.S. troops, and how many, if any, U.S. troops would remain outside of NATO command.

"With regard to the final end state of what U.S. forces are, that'll be U.S. decision. The U.S. can decide to do what it wants. We have a minimum military requirement that I'm satisfied and has been met by all nations, and whatever is over and above that is up to the nations."

New Threats Put NATO Mission at Risk - In an interview Tuesday, Walter Slocombe, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, who was also a senior adviser for the Coalition Provisional Authority, told FOXNews.com that he believes a unified command under NATO is the way to go, although it's not going to be an overnight transition.

Slocombe said that while political differences divide its members, NATO is more nimble than the United Nations, in part because fewer countries are involved, in part because of fewer language barriers and in part because the military structures are more similar.

"It's clear that NATO has real problems in conducting an operation" in Afghanistan, Slocombe said, "but I think it is adapting." That's a better assessment than he and a group of analysts gave in January after being sent to Afghanistan by NATO to observe on-the-ground efforts there. The group reported its findings during a January forum held in Washington, D.C., at the Brookings Institution.

The analysts, some of whom also had been to Iraq, noted that it appeared that national security was being tested more. Terrorist bombings have increased; the opium trade continues to be strong. They expressed mixed views over NATO's ability to handle the situation.

"The security situation is tough, and pretty clearly deteriorating. Although I say, that compared to Iraq, it is not nearly as bad as it is in Iraq," Slocombe said.

Steven Simon, who at the time of the Afghanistan visit was a RAND Corp. terrorism analyst but who has since moved to the Council on Foreign Relations, said he was concerned about NATO's ability to do what it needs to do: prevent terrorism.

Simon said evidence suggests terrorist elements are continuing to broaden their anti-Western horizons, and nothing seems to be ruling out that insurgents in Afghanistan might start taking their cues from counterparts in Iraq. He said the proposed drawdown of U.S. troops and what he said was NATO's unwillingness to be proactive could aid a greater insurgency. After the forum, Simon told FOXNews.com that media reports don't reflect what he saw.

"I think the public perception of Afghanistan is that things are ticking over pretty nicely," Simon said. But "if the goal is to be winning the War on Terror, we really need to be doing more, because it's unrealistic to expect NATO to pick up the slack," Simon said.

In a follow-up e-mail, Simon said that U.S, Australian, British and others NATO contributors have good special-forces capabilities there, but "that won't choke off the Taliban terrorist threat."

In a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month, Jones acknowledged that while NATO continues to widen its scope, problems hinder the alliance.

Jones said only seven member nations are meeting the alliance's agreed-upon goal of spending 2 percent of an individual nation's gross domestic product on defense. For instance, the United States spent about 3.7 percent of its 2005 GDP - $472 billion - on the military, whereas Lithuania was expected to spend 1.3 percent of its 2005 GDP on defense, or roughly $323 million, according to NATO estimates.

After the hearing, Jones told FOXNews.com that he believed NATO is prepared to take control of Afghanistan even with its budgetary limits, but the alliance could be limited by money if it expands further.

"If the nations were to reverse course and, in fact, over a period of time plus-up their budgets, so much the better. I do think it's a problem., and I do think the trend line of taking on more political operations [such as NATO's mission in Afghanistan] - which I like, I mean, I think it's good - has to be accompanied by an equal political will to resource those operations," Jones said. "Otherwise, future commanders are going to get missions without capabilities, and that will be a problem," Jones said.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and convened the hearing in which Jones testified, told FOXNews.com that he was optimistic of NATO's ability to take military control in Afghanistan and said what he heard from Jones signified progress.

"It's a complex country as we all know, besides the military side. NATO can only do so much, but it's doing a great deal. And it's the first out-of-area situation, which all these countries have been forced to come to grips with - how do you have different nations with vastly different capabilities, some of them with no lift capacity [to move their forces over great distances] whatsoever, dealing in areas clearly outside the continent for which they felt responsibility in the past?" Lugar asked.

Despite the political and economic differences of the 26 member nations, Jones said the NATO forces are ready to take control in Afghanistan. "I think that if there is a test, that the outcome is going to be swift and decisive. And then I think that you'll see that the terrorists or whoever it is that's doing it will take their business elsewhere," Jones said at last week's briefing. "I'm confident about the future."

Locomotive to get suitable position in Afghan Museum

KABUL, Mar 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): After 80 years one of the three historical locomotives of Afghanistan would receive a credible position in front of the Afghan National Museum.

The tiny train comprising six boggies in all was manufactured by the German company 'Henschel'. During Amanullah Khan regime from 1923-1929 the country had its own railways.

On an experimental track from Kabul to the Darulaman-Palace rolled three steam locomotives. But the running of trains in Kabul buried with the past and entered Afghanistan in the list of the countries deprived of the facility.

The three ancient locomotives could not catch eyes of the visitors for their unjust and unsuitable position, the backyard of the Afghan National Museum. The DED or German Development Service poised to bring the locomotive, which is in the best conditions, from backyard to the fore gate. The work of moving the train to the front gate would be done with the help of German ISAF-contingent crane.

An official Mohammad Nader Rasooli termed the event important for tourists and preserving an antique. He told Pajhwok Afghan News: "The locomotive stand unnoticed in rear part and will become a centre of attention if moved to fore part of the museum."

The old-timers who have observed the locomotive plying on the track said Az Kabul Ta Darulaman, from Kabul to Darulaman, was written on front of the train and the fare was one penny of the time.

Head of the Afghan National Museum Umra Khan said: "Seeing of the locomotive will recall today youth that Afghanistan had a train facility in the past." He said the locomotive had rusted for standing in open for years.

Digging of 140 wells starts in Zabul

KANDAHAR, Mar 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) has started digging 140 wells in some districts of the southern Zabul province.

President of the Rural Rehabilitation and Development Department Mohammad Afzal told Pajhwok Afghan News that they were drilling 80 wells in Shahjoi, Arghandab, Mizan and Shahr-i-Safa districts with $8,000.

He said that 60 wells were digging up in provincial capital Qalat and Atghar districts of the province with $65,000. MRRD would grant fund for the project that would redress the problem of drinking water in the region, he added.

A local Haji Akhtar said previously they were bringing water from far-flung areas that were too not suitable for drinking. Reported by Saeed Zabuli & translated by Rahman

THE ROVING EYE: In the heart of Pipelineistan - Asia Times Online; 17 March 2006 By Pepe Escobar

TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki may have captured all the headlines when he announced that Iran would not use the oil weapon in the event it was slapped with sanctions by the UN Security Council. But in the world of Pipelineistan, the nuclear row waged by the US, the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), the United Nations and Iran is just a detail.

The heart of Pipelineistan itself has been transposed to Tehran for the International Conference on Energy and Security: Asian Vision, organized by the Institute of International Energy Studies and the Institute for Political and International Studies. There could not be a better place to meet and discuss oil-and-gas geopolitics with an array of scholars and executives from Iran, China, Pakistan, India, Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, Georgia, Venezuela and Germany.

And their overall message is unmistakable: the interdependence of Asia and "Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics", as an Iranian analyst put it, is now total; the nuclear row should be solved diplomatically in the next few months; and Asian integration has everything to gain from Pipelineistan linking the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia and China.

It's a gas, gas, gas The heart of Iran's gas strategy lies in the gigantic South Pars field, responsible in itself for 50% of Iran's and 8% of the world's natural-gas reserves. South Pars is strategically located between Bushehr to the west (where Russia is helping Iran to build its first civilian nuclear power station) and the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas to the east.

According to Gholamreza Manouchehrie, chief executive officer of PetroPars Co, South Pars at its full capacity could deliver 28 billion cubic feet of gas a day. But not all of its 19 blocks have been negotiated for exploration. Iranian participation stands at 60%. Join ventures are common; for instance, the liquefied natural gas (LNG) operation is shared at 50% each by the state-owned National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) and TotalFinaElf.

But much more foreign investment is needed. "We are 10 years behind Qatar," said Manouchehrie, referring to the neighboring gas emirate. "There is cooperation between our experts, but it's still not enough. But we will catch up with them in production by 2012."

South Pars' enormous strategic importance is that its production will be exported to Asian countries - after the construction of a pipeline to the Pakistani border and then to India, pumping 150 million cubic meters of gas a day. As for North Pars, it's an independent field, 100 kilometers to the north, and geared for domestic consumption.

Manouchehrie said that "this pipeline controversy has been going on for 10 years. Now it's a compelling geo-economic reality. China also wants to be a beneficiary." Most agree that the pipeline should be finished as soon as possible. For Asia, it's the most feasible and the most cost-effective.

Welcome to IPIL High-level negotiations between India and Iran started on Tuesday in Tehran. According to Seyyed Alavi, an Iranian oil executive, a final agreement between the three countries (Iran, Pakistan and India) will be reached "by June or July".

The tentative schedule is for the pipeline to be concluded in five years and three months. Pakistan needs to build 1,000km of 48-inch pipeline, plus the infrastructure, and India needs to build 600km.

Farshad Tehrani, an Iranian oil executive based in Norway, is in favor of the project being called the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline (IPIL), a joint venture with a cross-section of ownership. Tehrani finds many reasons for India and Pakistan to switch from oil to gas: they reduce their oil imports; they opt for cleaner fuel; they save foreign currency.

For Iran, it's also inevitably about geo-economic power: "Iran is the only country in the world with more than 15 neighbors. Iran wants to be a true regional power - we are in West Asia after all. Besides, all our neighbors can swap gas with Iran as well," said Tehrani.

Maqsud Hassan Nuri, a senior research fellow at Islamabad Policy Research Institute, agrees with all the benefits. But he preferred to single out President George W Bush's recent visit to South Asia, where once again it was clear that "the US does not want stable relations between Iran and India and Pakistan".

The Pakistani perspective - shared by Pakistani oil executives in Tehran - is that the ongoing nuclear row could be solved within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and not the UN Security Council, which is this week deliberating moves to reprimand Tehran over its nuclear program.

The Pakistanis agree that Iran is a factor of stability in the region. They also agree with Iranian and Egyptian executives that the current standoff won't be frozen in time - just as it did not between India and Pakistan regarding their dispute over Kashmir.

As Tehrani, the Iranian oil executive, put it, "In the subsequent months there will be some kind of arrangement whereby the West is satisfied and Iran's legitimate rights will be respected." Nuri added a conditionality: "Nuclear weapons take care of the strategic ego, they don't solve our economic problems. Forty percent of South Asia still lives below the poverty line."

Rafiullah Azmi from the Institute of Islamic Studies in New Delhi stressed that IPIL would reach way beyond South Asia, offering a vital link among the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia and China, and thus "it goes against the geopolitical game of the US in the Persian Gulf".

So basically why is Washington so much against it? "The Americans feel it will help Iran; it will set dangerous precedents for other countries to buy gas from Iran; and it will cement friendly ties between Iran, India and Pakistan," said Azmi.

Tehrani said that "it goes back to [former US president] Bill Clinton, when he said that you're free to buy energy from anywhere, as long as it's not from Iran".

Azmi stressed that India was creating "a multitude of options" for its energy needs - from nuclear to gas. Nuclear power in 2010 will attend to no more than 10% of India's requirements. He recalled what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently told the Indian parliament: "We are not part of any push towards regime change in the region." Azmi is convinced "geo-economics will triumph over geopolitics".

No tapping The Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) has disappeared from view - obliterated by the Taliban resurgence - but the project remains in the cards, although the realistic prospects are grim, according to Seyed Shah Bukhari of the Institute of Strategic Studies in Islamabad.

An agreement among Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan was signed last month. India is an observer. The US is very much in favor. But besides the chaos in Afghanistan, it is the reliability of Turkmenistan that is in question.

Turkmenistan has signed multiple contracts, especially with Russia and Ukraine, but there's no guarantee it will be able to supply all of its customers. Bukhari stressed that both India and Pakistan may need more than two pipelines for their needs. That would mean IPIL, TAP and another US$2.7 billion project from Qatar via Oman to Pakistan and then India.

Tamine Adeebfar, an analyst at the Caspian Energy Politics in Brussels, expected the Middle East to supply energy to East Asia for nearly a century. There's total interdependence now, but everything "needs to be anticipated and planned now". This is dawning on the Iranians.

Iranian oil executives Alavi and Tehrani make two important points - both of them related to the urgency of foreign and local direct investment in its gas industry. Iran still cannot compete with Russia in exporting gas to Europe - one of its priorities for the 21st century. And incredible as it may seem, Iran still imports gas from Turkmenistan - even though it holds the second-largest gas reserves in the world.

Ahmed al-Najar, of Al-Ahram Institute for Strategic and Political Studies in Cairo, prefers to puncture the myth that oil prices are related to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. World demand for oil grew from 76.6 million barrels a day in 2004 to 83.3 million in 2005. In China, it grew from 4.7 million barrels a day in 2001 to 6.7 million in 2005. But in the US it grew only from 24 million barrels a day in 2001 to 25.6 million in 2005.

So the growth in demand is basically from Asia. Al-Najar said that "supply now exceeds demand by 2 million barrels a day. There's plenty of oil, all the time." So who's profiting? "Big oil companies. They receive from 25-40% of what they discover. This is related to the American oil strategy, which is biased towards the American oil companies."

Vulnerable China The interdependence of the Persian Gulf and Asia anyway is more than enshrined. World demand for natural gas will triple from now to 2020. By 2025, Asia will import 80% of its total oil needs, and 80% of this total will be from the Gulf.

Chinese executives such as Liu Guochen of Sinochem Corp, based in Amman, admit that China imports energy from unstable areas, and is worried about US hegemony over the flow of energy resources.

So China is frantically diversifying, said Iranian scholar Masoud khavan-Kazemi of Razi University, "in its investments, pursuing territorial claims and building up strategic oil reserves". He foresees Asia facing "great imbalances"; the potential for conflict in the Persian Gulf, Russia, Central Asia and the Caspian; insecurity suffered by China, India and Japan in relation to the US presence in Asia; and the Chinese sense of vulnerability as China and the US are de facto strategic rivals.

Akhavan-Kazemi pointed out that the US was pursuing three key objectives. The first two may be shared by many Asians: guaranteeing the energy flows from Asia to international markets; and trying to stop Russian hegemony. But a crucial factor - which the Russians are keen to point out - is that Iran, India and Pakistan are now observers at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). And "the SCO would be able to protect pipelines going in all directions", said a Russian oil executive.

As for the third US objective - preventing Iran from exporting its gas - definitely it is not shared by anyone. Akhavan-Kazemi emphasized that "despite the American military hegemony in the Persian Gulf, its political hegemony is in doubt".

In the corridors of the conference, most of the oil and gas executives and scholars agreed that the way the game is played today in Pipelineistan, everything is politicized.

"When Bush tells India, 'You don't need to import gas from Iran,' that's totally illogical," said a Georgian scholar based in Bologna. "The [alleged Iranian] bomb is a pretext," said an Iranian oil executive based in London. "The Americans don't want Iran to develop, and that's equally true of China and Venezuela. We need to talk about security through knowledge."

Pipelineistan actors are actively discussing the possibility of limited US strikes against, for instance, the Bushehr plant, as was implied by a recent belligerent statement of the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton.

But the general consensus is that an agreement of sorts will be reached in the next few months - with no UN sanctions against Iran. Asia does not want an Iran battered by the West; Iran, after all, is part of West Asia.

[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.]