In this bulletin:

• Stinger missiles in Afghanistan a threat: US
• Afghan FM says Osama, Zawahri and Mulla Omar all in Pakistan
• US military changes tactic to fight militants in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan's Taliban shifts to propaganda war: US
• Bomber Botches Afghanistan Suicide Attack
• Man on trial because converting to Christianity is a crime under Afghan law
• Swiss documentary on Afghanistan: Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy Buddhas
• Afghanistan not "Canada's Iraq", says defense minister
• British face 20-year war to tame Taliban
• Afghanistan finds more bird flu, likely H5N1
• Afghanistan to start bird flu cull on Wednesday
• Our troops doing 'marvellous job' in Afghanistan
• Drugs in Afghanistan: Plan meshes incentives, punishment
• NATO AND AFGHANISTAN

Stinger missiles in Afghanistan a threat: US

US-made Stinger missiles will pose a threat to military and commercial aircraft across the region if they fall into the hands of Taliban rebels in Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said.

Washington supplied a large number of shoulder-fired Stingers to Afghans fighting the Soviet occupation in the 1980s and dozens are still thought to be missing.

There was no evidence to support media reports that the Taliban had obtained some of the heat-seeking missiles but coalition forces were continuously monitoring the situation, spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts said on Monday.

"Stinger missiles are a dangerous threat. It's a worry to all Afghans, Pakistanis and the coalition," Yonts told reporters in Kabul. "Stinger missiles can be used not only against coalition aircraft but against civilians flying in the area, commercial aircraft coming in and out," he added.

"(Stingers are) a common enemy and a regional threat that we have to address." The CIA has offered 150,000 to 200,000 dollars for each remaining missile in Afghanistan, an Afghan intelligence official has said.

Recent media reports recently said that US and NATO authorities were concerned that some had been bought by the Taliban, who are waging a bloody insurgency more than four years after their regime was ousted.

"Right now we don't have any indications they are in theater. But it's one of those items that we continously look at from a regional perpsctive," Yonts said.

A US-led military operation overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 for not handing over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Violence linked to the Taliban has claimed thousands of lives, including 1,700 last year, most of whom were militants. Nearly 100 US soldiers also died in Afghanistan 2005, and another nine since January this year.

Afghan FM says Osama, Zawahri and Mulla Omar all in Pakistan
By Khalid Hasan Daily Times - Mar 19 3:39 PM

WASHINGTON: Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah claimed here on Sunday that Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri and Mulla Omar are all together and in Pakistan, where other Al Qaeda figures have been found and apprehended.

Asked by CNN where Osama Bin Laden is, Abdullah replied that according to his country's intelligence, the Al Qaeda leader is "outside Afghanistan and he might be in the same place where other members of Al Qaeda have been arrested." He added that Ayman Zawahiri was also in the same place where Bin Laden was.

Asked pointblank if he was in Pakistan, the foreign minister replied that it was "more likely." To the question where Mulla Omar was, he replied that all these "friends" should be found together.

Abdullah said what is needed is greater cooperation between the two countries because they face a common threat. When asked to comment on President Pervez Musharraf's harsh remarks about Afghan President Hamid Karzai in an earlier interview with CNN, the Afghan minister replied that Pakistan and Afghanistan have to work things out, and added that there are Taliban bases inside Pakistan.

Asked if that meant Pakistan is not doing enough to deal with the Taliban and other such elements in the tribal areas of Pakistan, he replied, "Yes of course they know about this."

In answer to the question as to "how bad" the relationship between the two countries really is, the foreign minister said it was his hope that "we would put it behind us as soon as possible" and the two countries would deal with a threat which is common in a straightforward manner.

US military changes tactic to fight militants in Afghanistan

KABUL, March 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. led collation troops have changed their tactics to effectively deal with the increasing insurgency and fight the Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan, spokesman of the coalition said Monday.

    "We also shift our tactics, we also shift our intelligence and our operational forces to combat the enemies," James Yonts said ata weekly press briefing here. He made the remarks amid reports of change in Taliban tactics including conducting suicide attacks to sabotage security in the war-shattered nation.

    "We have seen the Taliban and enemies of Afghanistan shift their tactics now to IED (improvised explosive device), against civilians and Afghan security forces," he added.

    Over a dozen suicide attacks, mostly in the restive southern provinces have been reported since last November.

    Three suicide attacks have claimed the lives of six persons including two Canadians and four Afghans in Kandahar and Kabul over the past one month, respectively.

    The U.S. army spokesman, however, declined to disclose the troops' new tactics to combat militants. "Well, there are something in our tactics but I cannot disclose due to security reasons," Yonts asserted. However, he added that American forces are very aggressive in conducting operations against the rebels.

   "We are very aggressive in our operations along with the Afghan security forces in the east and the south. So, we are denying the sanctuary to them and defeating them in these areas," the spokesman of some 20,000-strong force noted.

    More than 1,500 people with a majority of them militants were killed in Taliban-linked insurgency in 2005 while the militants' attacks have claimed the lives of over 100 people including 12 Americans and two Canadian soldiers since January. Enditem

Afghanistan's Taliban shifts to propaganda war: US

The Taliban have abandoned attempts at a serious military campaign in Afghanistan and are now fighting a propaganda war, the US military said, despite an increase in attacks by the rebels.

"The insurgents have clearly failed in their objectives to establish a regional control in Afghanistan," US chief military spokesman Colonel Jim Yonts told a regular news conference in Kabul.

"So they shifted their tactics to tactics such as improvised explosive devices (IED). They have shifted to a propaganda war instead of a tactical war," he said.

Rebels loyal to the former Taliban regime, which was toppled by a US-led invasion in late 2001, are still waging an intense insurgency against the 20,000-strong US-led coalition and thousands of Afghan troops.

Violence linked to the Taliban claimed around 1,700 lives last year, including nearly 100 US soldiers along with many militants. Another nine American troops have died since January this year.

Afghanistan has seen more than 30 suicide car bombings and roadside bombings in recent months that are similar to those seen in Iraq, while the Taliban are avoiding pitched battles against the superior firepower of the US-led forces.

Yonts said that some insurgent methods seen in Iraq were being used by Taliban militants, but he added that the technology used by Iraqi fighters had not come to Afghanistan.

"We see the same form of tactics but not the same technology," he said.

"The enemy shifted to IEDs. We also shifted our tactics, our intelligence and our operations to combat that shift," he said.

On Sunday a French soldier with the US-led force suffered minor injuries when a suicide car bomber slammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a coalition convoy in violence-prone southern Afghanistan.

Bomber Botches Afghanistan Suicide Attack - Sunday, March 19, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A suspected suicide attacker triggered a car bomb near a convoy of French troops Sunday in southern Afghanistan, killing himself but injuring no one else, Afghan officials said.

The car was parked on the side of the main road linking the southern city of Kandahar to the Pakistani border and the attacker set off the explosives as the troops passed, a government official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Yousuf Stanezai, confirmed the attack but said he had no other details. Meanwhile, a roadside bomb in eastern Paktika province Saturday killed a police chief and a second officer, while two policemen were wounded, said local police commander Shah Wali.

Also Saturday, a shootout between Taliban fighters and in the Maywand district of Kandahar left two policemen and two attackers dead, Stanezai said.

Four other policemen went missing after the fighting and they are believed to have been abducted by the Taliban. One attacker was captured, he said. The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency in the past year, causing a spike in fighting across Afghanistan.

Man on trial because converting to Christianity is a crime under Afghan law

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP 3.20.06) - An Afghan man is being prosecuted in court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said Sunday.

The trial is thought to be the first of its kind in Afghanistan and highlights a struggle between religious conservatives and reformists over what shape Islam should take four years after the ouster of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime.

The defendant Abdul Rahman, 41, was arrested last month after his family accused him of becoming a Christian, Judge Ansarullah Mawlavezada said. Rahman was charged with rejecting Islam and his trial started Thursday.

During the one-day hearing, the defendant confessed that he converted from Islam to Christianity 16 years ago while working as a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Mawlavezada said.

"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." Mawlavezada said he would rule on the case within two months.

Afghanistan's constitution is based on Shariah law, which is interpreted by many Muslims to require that any Muslim who rejects Islam be sentenced to death, said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, deputy chairman of the state-sponsored Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission.

Repeated attempts to interview Rahman in detention were barred. The prosecutor, Abdul Wasi, said he had offered to drop the charges if Rahman converted back to Islam, but he refused.

"He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one," Wasi said "We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty."

After being an aid worker for four years in Pakistan, Rahman moved to Germany for nine years, his father, Abdul Manan, said outside his Kabul home.

Rahman returned to Afghanistan in 2002 and tried to gain custody of his two daughters, now 13 and 14, who had been living with their grandparents their whole lives, the father said. A custody battle ensued and the matter was taken to the police. During questioning, it emerged that Rahman was a Christian and was carrying a Bible. He was immediately arrested and charged, the father said.

Afghanistan is a conservative Islamic country. About 99 percent of its 28 million people are Muslim, and the remainder are mainly Hindu.

Swiss documentary on Afghanistan: Pakistani, Saudi engineers helped destroy Buddhas - Daily Times –Pakistan -Khalid Hasan March 19, 2006

WASHINGTON: The Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban with the help of Pakistani and Saudi engineers.

According to an account published here on Saturday, a local Afghan told the makers of a Swiss documentary on the giant statues which had stood there, carved in the side of a mountain for hundreds of years, had been destroyed by engineers from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The dynamiting of the statues took place in March 2001. Swiss documentary filmmaker Christian Frei, who has made several documentaries that have won praise at various international film festivals, shot ‘The Giant Buddhas’ in Afghanistan. The film is due to be shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on 26 March.

The Taliban went ahead with the destruction of the giant statues, revered for centuries, because they considered them “offensive to Islam”. They ignored appeals from around the world, including UNESCO and an appeal from the then Government of Pakistan, made, it would appear now, more “for the record” than any serious intent to stop the Islamist zealots from destroying what the rest of the world considered mankind’s heritage.

Taliban minister of information Qudratullah Jamal said in a statement later, “The destruction work is not as easy as people would think. You can’t knock down the statues by dynamite or shelling as both of them have been carved in a cliff. They are firmly attached to the mountain.” Museums and governments around the world kept hoping until the end that the Taliban would desist from committing what the rest of the world saw as an act of “cultural sacrilege” but they were adamant in their resolve.

A delegation from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference went to Kandahar to urge the Taliban leaders to change their mind, but was turned down. The Taliban information minister was quoted at the time as saying, “We would repeat to them as we have to other delegations that we are not going to back away from the edict, and that no statues in Afghanistan will be spared.” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also urged the Taliban not to go ahead but was rebuffed.

Koichiro Matsuura, the head UNESCO, said the agency would continue efforts to salvage other Afghan relics targeted for destruction. “It is abominable to witness the cold and calculated destruction of cultural properties which were the heritage of the Afghan people, and, indeed, of the whole of humanity,” he said in a statement. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak dispatched the Grand Mufti of Egypt to Afghanistan to plead with the Taliban rulers to spare the statues but his emissary had no success either. Zahi Hawas, the man in charge of the plateau holding the great pyramids outside Cairo, said at the time, “They are making bad publicity about Islam - and Islam has nothing to do with what is happening in Afghanistan.”

Xuanzang, a 7th century Chinese monk, pilgrim and chronicler, travelled to Bamiyan and wrote a graphic description of the statues. He even mentioned a giant “sleeping Buddha” in the area, but no trace has been found of that in modern times.

Afghanistan not "Canada's Iraq", says defense minister

OTTAWA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan will not become "Canada's Iraq" as critics have suggested and Canada will carry on its mission in the country until the task is fulfilled, Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor said Sunday.

    O'Connor rejected criticism that there is no exit strategy for Canadian troops, saying Canadian troops provide security and stability enabling Afghan military and police units to be trained,who then take over gradually. Canadian soldiers are creating stability, transition and then exit, he said.

    O'Connor also asserted that there will be no parliamentary voteon Canada's mission in Afghanistan and the military, which has been deployed since 2001, will carry through its commitment.

    Canada took the command of coalition troops in southwestern Afghanistan recently. The increase in fatalities in recent weeks has also prompted mounting opposition against the motion. Some have doubted if the Canadian military, now engaging in combating the Taliban remnants, has swerved from its traditional role as peacekeepers.

    Opposition New Democratic Party has called for a new debate to resolve growing concerns among Canadians about how the nature of the mission has changed.

    O'Connor's remarks came after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made a surprise morale-boosting two-day visit to Canadian militaryin Afghanistan. The prime minister also asserted firmness in keeping on the deployment.

    The defense minister also listed three reasons for Canadians tobe in Afghanistan. Firstly, it is in Canada's national interests because if Afghanistan was allowed to decay terrorists may come over to North America. Secondly as part of the world, Canada has to show some leadership in dealing with the world's problems and thirdly Canada needs to help rebuild Afghanistan. Enditem

British face 20-year war to tame Taliban - The Sunday Times Online -UK
Christina Lamb March 19, 2006

THE objectives of the British mission to Afghanistan could take as long as 20 years to achieve, according to a confidential Ministry of Defence briefing seen by The Sunday Times.

The assessment by senior military officers highlights the risks to the 3,300 British troops to be deployed to the lawless Helmand province and warns that even in five years the best that can be hoped for in terms of security and stabilisation would be “interim status”.

The disclosure contrasts with assurances given to the Commons by John Reid, the defence secretary, that the mission will be completed in three years.

Questioned last month about the danger that British troops could end up bogged down in southern Afghanistan, Reid told MPs: “We will make our judgment on the basis of changes on the ground: extension of central government control, a reduction in insurgency, growth of the Afghan security forces and economic development.

“The exit strategy involves one of the entrance aims: the achievement of a degree of success in all those respects in a relatively short time — three years — in the south.”

However, the Ministry of Defence briefing — given to Nato allies involved in Afghanistan — reveals that it expects only an interim degree of success in five years in meeting these aims and in combating narcotics.

The “end game” is estimated to require 15 to 20 years, suggesting that British troops may be the country for far longer than acknowledged.

It is a view echoed by Colin Powell, the former American secretary of state. Last week he warned the Canadian government that its troops in southern Afghanistan should prepare for an “extended” military campaign and should not put a time limit on their stay.

He emphasised the deteriorating security, pointing out: “There are Taliban elements that want to continue the fight.” More than 1,700 people were killed in Taliban attacks last year and there has been a recent spate of suicide bombings.

Helmand is regarded as the centre of Taliban activity in Afghanistan. More than half the schools in the province have been closed down by attacks.

But Afghan intelligence reports suggest the military threat may not be as great as feared, with fewer than 300 Taliban fighters in Helmand under five local commanders. These are all under the control of Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s one-legged former intelligence chief, who is believed to be based across the Pakistani border in Quetta.

Apart from a “Taliban/Al-Qaeda backlash”, one of the main risks to British troops emphasised in the briefing is that of a “hostile backlash” to counter-narcotics activity.

Afghanistan is the biggest producer of opium and more than 90% of the heroin sold in the UK comes from there. Helmand is the centre of this production. Poppy cultivation in the province has doubled this year.

An operation that recently got under way to eradicate it before the May harvest is expected to create enormous resentment both among farmers who have no other livelihood and among drug barons, some of whom are related to senior government officials.

Military officers have expressed concern that the British forces will be arriving in the wake of this unpopular campaign. “How can we win over hearts and minds when we will clearly be associated by locals with the end of their incomes?” asked one.

The governor of Helmand, Engineer Daud, is furious that the British troops are not already in the province to provide back-up to police and contractors destroying the poppy fields.

“This is the real challenge,” he said. “In fighting against terrorism we are only fighting Al-Qaeda and Taliban, but in fighting against drugs we’re not just fighting them but also our own people. We can’t do this alone.”

An advance party of Royal Marines and Royal Engineers has arrived in Helmand as barracks are built in the main towns of Lashkar Gah and Grishk. But the main deployment of 16 Air Assault Brigade, including the 3rd Battalion the Parachute Regiment, has been delayed until the summer.

The mission, which will cost £1 billion over three years, will be backed up by air power, including six Chinook and four Lynx helicopters as well as by Britain’s first deployment of eight Apache attack helicopters. A Ministry of Defence spokesman said this weekend the troops and equipment would not be fully in place until July.

One senior officer admitted he was worried the slow build-up would play into the hands of the Taliban, whose propaganda claims western nations are frightened to move into southern Afghanistan and are thus endlessly delaying.

“We need to come in with a real show of power to show we mean business, not this drip-drip effect,” he said. “It makes us look vulnerable.”

Senior British officials privately concede that the biggest threat to the troops may well come from across the border in Pakistan, where Taliban are believed to receive their training and funding.

There have been high-level talks between Whitehall and Islamabad over the issue. It was also raised by President George W Bush with General Pervez Musharraf, his Pakistani counterpart.

Earlier this month President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan gave Musharraf addresses and telephone numbers for senior Taliban officials in Pakistan and demanded their arrest. The officials included Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.

Karzai also alleged that the Pakistani military was involved in their training. A furious Musharraf dismissed the information, saying: “I feel there is a very, very deliberate attempt to malign Pakistan by some agents, and President Karzai is totally oblivious of what is happening in his own country.”

Afghanistan finds more bird flu, likely H5N1

Tests confirmed a new outbreak of bird flu in Afghanistan and authorities strongly believe that it is the deadly H5N1 strain.

The broad H5-type virus was found in dead chickens in the eastern province of Kunar, which borders Pakistan, health ministry advisor Abdullah Fahim told AFP.

Afghanistan and the United Nations last week revealed the presence of H5N1 in six poultry samples taken from the capital Kabul and from the province of Nangarhar.

"It is very likely that the H5 type confirmed in Kunar provinces is the N1 sub-type since it is confirmed positive in neighbouring Nangarhar... and in Kabul," Fahim said Monday.

UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said it was the first time infected birds had been found in Kunar.

No human cases have been reported yet in Afghanistan, he added.

Afghanistan ordered the slaughter of thousands of chickens after last week's announcement that H5N1 had been detected.

About 85 percent of the Afghan population live in close contact with poultry, officials have said, with most rural families having several chickens in the backyard.

Afghanistan to start bird flu cull on Wednesday - 20 Mar 2006

KABUL, March 20 (Reuters) - Afghanistan hopes to begin culling chickens in areas infected by the H5N1 bird flu virus on Wednesday after the U.S. military supplied some protective suits for workers, an Agriculture Ministry official said.

The H5N1 virus was confirmed in two provinces last week and it has assumed to have spread to at least three others, officials said.

"The day after tomorrow we will start the depopulation of affected areas," Azizullah Osmani, chief of the Agriculture Ministry's veterinary department told Reuters.

Tests at a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) laboratory in Italy confirmed H5N1 had been found in the capital, Kabul, and the eastern province of Nangarhar.

The H5 subtype of bird flu had also been found in dead birds in Laghman province east of Kabul, Wardak to the west and in Kunar province, on the eastern border with Pakistan, Osmani said.

While tests had yet to determine if the strain in those three provinces was H5N1, experts were working on the assumption that it was, said a spokesman for the FAO.

Bird flu has killed about 100 people since late 2003, most of them in Asia. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between humans and trigger a pandemic that could kill millions.

There have been no human cases in Afghanistan but there is concern that with veterinary and health sectors still recovering from decades of conflict, the country could struggle to contain an outbreak.

Osmani said he was speaking by mobile telephone from a district to the west of Kabul where H5N1 had been confirmed, to explain Wednesday's cull, which is due to begin there, to village elders and municipal authorities.

He said the U.S. military in Afghanistan had provided 50 protective suits for cull workers. A U.N. spokesman stressed the importance of quick action to contain the disease.

"It's clearly important to see action rather than just statements on this and we look forward to see what the government is coming up with," said the spokesman, Adrian Edwards. "The imperative here is speed," he said.

Afghan and U.N. officials have stressed the importance of giving farmers compensation for their culled birds.

Afghanistan's poultry industry was decimated by several years of drought up to 2005 and is small-scale with only an estimated 12 million chickens in the country, another Afghan official said.

Our troops doing 'marvellous job' in Afghanistan - By KRISTEN VERNON, EDMONTON SUN

When Abdul Alami talks to relatives back in Kandahar - the volatile region of Afghanistan where Canadian troops are stationed - word on the Canadian mission is positive.

"The Canadians are doing a marvellous job," said Alami, 47, who moved to Canada in 1986 after studying engineering in India. Alami said his relatives give kudos to Canadian troops for their respect of local traditions.

Canada has about 2,200 soldiers on the ground in the Kandahar area since increasing its presence in the country earlier this year.

Canadian troops, many of them based in Edmonton, make up a significant portion of the Canadian-led multinational brigade, which is working to bring security to Afghanistan and rebuild the area's infrastructure.

Alami, who works for the provincial government, said he supports Canada's mission in Afghanistan, but worries the country could be seen to be playing into American hands, as a "pawn in international politics."

He said he also fears Afghans could come to view his adopted home as supporting corrupt elements in the Afghan government.

Brothers Shoujauddin and Ali Akbari, who arrived in Edmonton with their parents roughly a week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, are also behind the Canadian troops.

They believe the 2002 fall of the oppressive Taliban regime they grew up under and the Canadian soldiers' reconstruction efforts have helped make life better in their former home.

"What I hear from my friends is things are getting better and better," said Ali Akbari, 29, who works at a call centre. "I think people are not worried now to go out," said Shoujauddin Akbari.

When the 20-year-old University of Alberta engineering student lived in Kabul, he feared run-ins with gun-toting Talibs.

"Once, when I was 13, a Talib came to me and asked me, 'Where's your beard?' I said, 'I'm too young to have a beard.' He said, 'Well try to grow it,' " Shoujauddin Akbari said. "It was scary."

Drugs in Afghanistan: Plan meshes incentives, punishment
By Philip Dine - POST-DISPATCH WASHINGTON BUREAU Mar. 19 2006

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - The world's biggest helicopter arrived recently at the airport in Kabul. It is an imposing, even fearsome sight, with its bulbous head and oversized propellers that seem to reach out forever before drooping down far from the aircraft.

Guy Charlton spotted it first, and his shouts stirred a planeload of bone-weary
State Department and U.S. Embassy officials stretched out under blankets and
jackets as they returned from a visit to the volatile Kandahar region.

The United States hopes the Russian-made Halo helicopter will be key to saving
Afghanistan from becoming, once again, a failed state and a terrorist haven.

Charlton, senior aviation adviser at the U.S. Embassy, has leased the
helicopter -at $9,000 an hour - to move men around the country so they can
destroy the poppy fields that are subverting Afghanistan's fledgling democracy
through the corruption, violence and illicit profits spawned by the trade in
opium and heroin produced from the poppies.

The Cold War-vintage MI-26 Halo can ferry 80 anti-drug troops and carry
vehicles. It provides Afghan eradication troops with speed, safety and
flexibility - each critical in a country whose roads are in disrepair, are
under insurgent attack or don't reach remote areas.

But will the offensive against drugs prove too little, too late?

Until the last year or two, the United States did relatively little to combat
the burgeoning poppy problem because it was focused on securing the country and
building democracy. The irony is that the narcotics trafficking that was
allowed to flourish now poses a severe threat to that very security and
democracy. The $2.8 billion drug trade compares with a legitimate Afghan
economy of $4.6 billion.

Seated in his office at the new and highly fortified U.S. Embassy in Kabul,
U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann says the drug trade has put Afghanistan at a
crossroads.

"It jeopardizes the ability to build a modern democratic government that
Afghanistan has resolved to build. It is not possible to build democratic
institutions on the base of large amounts of drug money," Neumann says.

"Last year," he candidly acknowledges, "was not a success by any means. Afghan
efforts jelled late in the growing season. Our own policies were a bit late.
Our money came late. As a result, there are a whole lot of changes going into
this growing season. So this year is the first real test of the policy."

The strategy

The new official in charge of the anti-drug effort is Tom Schweich, a wiry and
energetic man of 45. A graduate of Clayton High School, Yale University and
Harvard Law School, he spent 19 years with St. Louis' biggest law firm, Bryan
Cave. Schweich has done three separate stints with former Sen. John C.
Danforth, R- Mo., most recently as chief of staff when Danforth was ambassador
to the United Nations.

Three months ago, he was named to a senior post at the State Department's
Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, where he
coordinates an anti-narcotics Afghan policy that's two parts carrot, three
parts stick. It's carried out in large measure by Afghans with help from
Americans, while other countries assist in specific areas - Germany, for
instance, in police training, Italy in legal reform.

The enticements involve informing Afghan citizens about how heroin violates
Islam's tenets while damaging their health; and offering alternative
livelihoods to farmers who stop growing poppies.

Each strategy bumps into inconvenient realities on the ground. A switch to
legitimate crops means a steep drop in income for farmers. And touting
anti-drug fatwahs - religious edicts - by Afghan clerics is countered by
Taliban insurgents who argue that not growing poppy plays into the hands of
anti-Islamic Western forces.

As a result, the three punitive components - eradication, interdiction and
prosecution - are key.

Going to Helmand

The poppy farmers are just now getting their first taste of the new Afghan
Eradication Force. The 600-strong unit had assembled outside Lashkar Gah in
Helmand province for the past couple of weeks and this weekend began swooping
down on the fields. Normally divided into several teams, the force was combined
because Helmand, on the border of Pakistan, is particularly dangerous and
critically important. Heroin traffickers and insurgents have burned schools and
clinics there and attacked local police.

After the crew completed the long trek down from Kabul, it waited for supply
lines to be set up and local political approval to be obtained before heading
for the fields.

"It's very important for me, because Afghanistan is known all over the world
for drugs. This is a bad name for the people of Afghanistan," said Sayed
Meskeen Wafakish, a commander who was seated in a tent as his men milled
outside, brandishing their guns. "If we clean this up, we will be known as a
good place. We are not stopping, because this (drug-dealing) is shameful
action."

Because the poppy plants are still small, the eradication forces will use
tractors to wreck them; as the crop grows taller and more brittle, it is
destroyed by hand. Aerial spraying, which would offend many Afghans by
recalling the Soviet bombardment of the 1980s, won't be used.

Crops that survive face interdiction efforts aided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, which involve snagging opium or heroin as it's being
transported.

Success in this area left Charlie Warren, a retired state trooper from
Milwaukee serving here as a security consultant, exuberant at 4 a.m. recently.
He had just learned that border police had arrested five Afghan traffickers in
Herat, close to Iran, as they transported 22 pounds of raw opium.

"We had a training session on searching in rice bags two days ago," Warren
shared, "and now they found opium in a rice bag. They're eating up this
training. Everybody's pretty excited about locating contraband drugs now. They
see others getting kudos, they get jealous of each other, so there's a little
competition going on."

Alternatives

Afghans aren't shy about seeking more help. Helmand Gov. Engineer Daud recently said that the U.S. Agency for International Development had just approved his plan to provide jobs for 6,000 small farmers to wean them from poppy crops, but that he needed $8 million to offer job opportunities for others in his drug-plagued province. Schweich listened without making a commitment, later privately praising Daud: "He's trying to do things like no one ever has before."

An evening earlier, Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid urged U.S. diplomats to increase his funding to destroy poppies in his province while getting farmers' fruit to market. He detailed his efforts to curb suicide bombings and improve highway safety, while persuading mullahs and village councils to oppose drugs. Recently, he said, his forces arrested three highway police officers transporting 170 pounds of heroin.

At his rented house in Kabul, Khalid made his plea while plying his guests with an Afghan feast that featured a huge ceramic platter of the local pilaf - basmati rice yellowed by saffron, chopped fruit and large chunks of lamb - followed by milk pudding with pistachios.

U.S. officials said they would consider his request. Local authorities are being repaid for eradication efforts only after results are actually demonstrated and receipts for expenditures are verified.

Afghan officials walk a thin line between coaxing poppy farmers to turning to something new and rewarding them for their illicit past. The trick, says Mohammad Nabi Hussaini, director of the Afghan poppy elimination program, is to offer economic opportunities without directly favoring former poppy growers. The government is currently, for example, pondering raising the price of
surplus wheat.

Afghan justice

The plan's final element is to bring drug traffickers to justice while deterring others from illicit behavior, by establishing functional court systems long lacking in Afghanistan.

But building up Afghanistan's legal system runs into historical and cultural obstacles. Italian diplomat Jolanda Brunetti Goetz describes her role as helping Afghans improve their legal system "without scrapping traditional Afghan tribal customs and provincial systems."

"They're suspicious," she admits. "We are not Muslim, and maybe we want to impose our rules, our traditions."

Unlike many developing countries, Afghanistan was not colonized and therefore wasn't left with a French or British or other legal system. It has a judicial patchwork borrowed from Egyptian, Turkish, French, Italian and other traditions - and even that essentially collapsed during 23 years of war.

Moreover, only 15 percent of Afghan justice is dispensed by courts, with the rest administered by consensus through village councils of elders. Goetz says more attention should be devoted to this second path, which helped hold the country together in recent decades.

But because notions of justice used in these local forums are so ancient, she's trying to persuade Afghans to substitute rulings based on the Quran, which she said is "more advanced."

Prospects for success

Clues as to whether Afghanistan can avoid slipping into narco-state status are likely to emerge by the fall as the size of the crop and the effectiveness of the U.S.-Afghan offensive come into focus. In the long run, other factors may well prove decisive:

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Reducing corruption. Many Afghan officials are secretly engaged in the drug business or susceptible to being bribed. Afghan legal sources say privately that evidence collected over the past year against prominent provincial officials and police chiefs will spur indictments within a month or two - weeding out bad apples while sending a broader message that there is no future in narcotics.

Improving the economy. Without better job prospects for Afghanis, any inroads against drugs may prove temporary.

Reducing demand. Heroin production wouldn't be growing without rising demand. Many Afghans believe that consuming nations should do more to curb the appetite within their borders. "Where there is demand, there is supply, there is an offer," says Kahir Ismailee, an Afghan human rights and education activist.

Patience and perseverance. U.S. Ambassador Neumann hopes modestly for "a piece of progress one year, a piece of progress the next year." One vexing problem is that enough opium has been hidden around Afghanistan that even if not a single new poppy plant were grown, processors and traffickers
have enough to stay busy for years.

"This will not be resolved in 10 years," says Doug Wankel, who heads the Counter Narcotics Task Force at the U.S. Embassy. "What I'd like to see is the pendulum swing, so people say this is a new Afghanistan."

NATO AND AFGHANISTAN. Passive Aggressive by David Bosco  (The New Republic 3.20.06)

Last week, several dozen Dutch soldiers arrived in the troubled Afghanistan province of Uruzgan. The troops are the vanguard of a contingent that will reach approximately 1,500 by the summer and help extend the reach of the NATO peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. They're entering a region where Taliban insurgents still operate, and they fully expect to take casualties.

A month ago it wasn't at all clear that they would be going. The Dutch parliament demanded a full debate on the deployment, and the government of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende appeared to be on the edge of collapse. "This mission is doomed to fail," an opposition spokesperson predicted. "It is a reconstruction mission in a war zone and we don't think that will work." Polls suggested that the Dutch public was also wary.

The Netherlands, it appeared, might not be able to stomach a mission that would involve combat. Alarmed political leaders, including NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and top Afghan officials made public pleas for fortitude. The Netherlands, Britain, and Canada were the only major NATO states that had agreed to send troops into the south (even though the alliance as a whole approved the plan). Without Dutch participation, they warned, the deployment could come apart.

In the end, with international pressure mounting, the parliament approved the mission. "It's time for us to show some guts," one parliamentarian said. "Fighting terrorism is in the Netherlands' interest and in the interest of Afghanistan."

The Dutch debate and a similar (if more muted) version in Canada, are critical not only for the success of the Afghan mission, but also as part of a broader conceptual struggle about what modern nation-building entails. Opponents of NATO's push south tend to see a bright line between peacekeeping and combat operations. And why shouldn't they? During the Cold War, the United Nations developed a theory of peacekeeping that made strict impartiality its watchword and shunned the use of force. Peacekeepers were to be mere buffers between warring parties. If they actually used the weapons they carried, the theory went, their usefulness had ended.

The doctrine made some sense when peacekeepers were patrolling demilitarized zones between disciplined national armies. But it's downright pernicious in a world of failed states, civil conflict, and rogue regimes. The trauma of the Balkans in the early 1990s should have put the debate to rest. U.N. blue helmets in Bosnia tried for several years to deliver humanitarian aid and maintain their precious neutrality in the midst of Bosnian Serb aggression. It was a moral and strategic disaster that culminated in peacekeepers standing by as the Serb army slaughtered Muslim civilians.

Yet in some quarters, the notion that nation-building in war-torn countries can be consensual and essentially non-violent has persisted, and the negative image of the U.S. war on terror has helped preserve the misguided theory. Canada, with its long tradition of donning blue helmets, is home to many of the peacekeeping purists. Opposition leader Jack Layton has said he doesn't want Canadian troops in a "war-like" environment. Others have warned about becoming too closely aligned with the U.S. counterinsurgency effort. "It's not a good idea for Canada to become identified with [U.S.] foreign policy, particularly because it endangers us," former Canadian diplomat Paul Heinbecker told a wire service.

But somebody's troops have to do the hard work of fending off Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. Since 2002, almost 20,000 American troops have been battling them in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The U.S. military has had help from small allied special forces teams, but the fight has been primarily an American one, and more than 200 U.S. troops have died. European troops, by contrast, tend to operate in relatively peaceful cities such as Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, and Farah.

Opponents of NATO's expansion into the volatile south seem to believe either that Afghanistan can be stabilized without confronting the insurgents militarily or that American troops alone should do the confronting. The first notion is Pollyannaish, the second is, well, just plain selfish.

Puncturing the peacekeeping mythology is most critical in the heart of Europe. Germany, France, and Spain have been particularly skittish about having their troops (other than a handful of commandos) fighting insurgents. The troops they do have on the ground often confine themselves to routine patrolling and steer clear of trouble. German troops, in particular, receive poor marks from observers in Afghanistan for initiative and ambition.

The wavering in the Netherlands--one of Europe's more hawkish countries--was a useful reminder of the startling gap between American and European preparedness to bear military burdens. But it was also evidence that stalwart political leaders can make the case. Other politicians had better follow suit: N ATO has committed to deploy to the even more difficult eastern provinces in 2008, and somebody will have to provide the troops.

American policy may sometimes be unsubtle and overly militarized, but large portions of the European political spectrum remain maddeningly passive. It's a failing that reverberates well beyond Afghanistan. On Darfur, today's most serious humanitarian crisis, Europe has been even more disengaged and timid than the United States. Afghanistan is as good a place as any for Europe to start backing its sensibilities with some mettle.

David Bosco is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. He has reported from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

[Disclaimer: The content of this news bulletin does not necessarily reflect the view or policy of the Afghan Government, unless specifically stated as such. The collection of articles and commentaries from Afghan and international news sources is provided for informational purposes, and accuracy of the news is the responsibility of the original source.]