In this bulletin:

• Fraser wraps up mission in southern Afghanistan
• President Karzai Pays Condolences to Survivors of Fighting in Kandahar, Kunar Provinces
• President Karzai Chairs Meeting of Policy Action Group 
• NATO chief calls for bigger EU, UN role in Afghanistan
• Waging war with 'old guns,' pickup trucks
• The unravelling of Pakistan
• Afghanistan, Five Years and Counting
• Captain Greene's toughest mission
• Another deadly blow for Pakistan
  

Fraser wraps up mission in southern Afghanistan

Updated Wed. Nov. 1 2006 11:37 PM ETCTV.ca News Staff

Canada's top soldier in Afghanistan handed NATO control of the dangerous southern region of the country over to Dutch forces Wednesday morning.

The move -- a scheduled rotational command change -- completes a deadly eight months for Brig.-Gen. David Fraser in the most volatile region of Afghanistan. He said the military has much more work to do before stability is brought to the country.

"There is an Afghan proverb: 'A might river is made of many single drops,'" Fraser said during the handover ceremony. "In our short time here it is hard not to see ourselves as single drops with no river in sight."

Fraser has commanded about 9,500 NATO forces -- mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops -- in southern Afghanistan.

He added that some progress has been made under his leadership, pointing out that new roads have been built and canals and schools have been constructed.

However, the toll has been high. Forty-two Canadians soldiers and one diplomat have been killed since 2002.

Fraser conceded the job is far from being complete and many Afghans are still waiting for help. The assistance they need, he said, is dependent on more nations contributing troops to Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban so that reconstruction and aid efforts can proceed.

Retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie, who visited Afghanistan on a fact-finding trip, said NATO needs to send thousands of additional troops to succeed in its mission.

"The commander is only asking for 2,500 more. If I was him -- maybe I wouldn't last too long -- I would be asking for 40,000 more," he said.

Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon of the Netherlands now takes over for Fraser in southern Afghanistan and will command six provinces for half a year. Fraser will also hand over authority of the Canadian contingent to Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant.

Fraser will be heading home to Edmonton, where he will join his wife Poppie, their two sons, and an Akita dog named Seiko.

The Wednesday handover may mark a change in NATO's strategy in the country, said CTV's Steve Chao, reporting from Kandahar. Under Fraser, the coalition forces have been focused on fighting, routing out Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.

Chao said the next few months will prove crucial for NATO troops. Top officials believe it is vital that the coalition proves that NATO can restore stability and improve the lives of ordinary Afghans.

If that doesn't happen, NATO expects the insurgency to gain strength next spring when the fighting season resumes.

President Karzai Pays Condolences to Survivors of Fighting in Kandahar, Kunar Provinces

On October 31, President Karzai met with the families of victims killed during fighting in Panjwayi District, Kandahar Province and Manugay District, Kunar Province at the Presidential Palace.

The meeting was attended by Nematullah Shahrani, Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs, Sheikhulhadis Mawlawi Fazl Hadi Shinwari, Head of Afghanistan’s Ulema Council, and the Governors of Kandahar and Kunar provinces.

President Karzai asked survivors about the number of casualties and instructed the following authorities to assist the victims’ families:

1) The inquiry commission will assess the damages inflicted and livestock lost so that the Government can compensate the losses.

2) The Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs will facilitate their pilgrimage to Hajj in Mecca.

3) The Ministry of Health will send the wounded to countries for treatment that is unavailable in Afghanistan.

Bismillah Khan, a representative of the group, thanked President Karzai for expressing his kindness to the families in their time of need.

President Karzai Chairs Meeting of Policy Action Group  

On October 30, President Karzai chaired a meeting of the Policy Action Group at the Presidential Palace.

Government authorities and representatives of the international community discussed hastening the pace of reconstruction and implementing development projects in the provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Zabul, and Uruzgan.

Muhammad Hanif Atmar, Minister of Education, briefed participants on the progress of development projects, stating that reconstruction projects have already begun in these four provinces as part of the National Solidarity Program.

“The donors have agreed to allocate the desired budget through the World Bank for implementation of the projects,” stated Dr. Anwar-ul-Haq Ahadi, Minister of Finance.

It was also mentioned that work on the Kajaki power station in Helmand Province has already begun.

NATO chief calls for bigger EU, UN role in Afghanistan

Berlin(AFP) - NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has urged the UN and the European Union to beef up their role in Afghanistan, calling the mission there "the most important operation" for the Atlantic alliance.

In an interview published Wednesday in the German daily Tagesspiegel, De Hoop Scheffer said NATO could help lay the groundwork for Afghanistan's long-term stability but the country needed more than military support.

"As NATO secretary general, I ensure that Afghanistan has a prominent place on NATO's radar screen," he said.

"But I believe that Afghanistan must be equally present on the radar screen of the European Union, the United Nations, the G8 and other international organizations," he added, referring to the Group of Eight industrialized nations.

He warned that neglect of Afghanistan would be a fatal mistake. "If we do not reinforce our engagement in Afghanistan, Afghanistan will come to us. It will again become an exporter of terror. The consequences will be felt in Amsterdam or Berlin or London or New York."

The Dutchman said international organizations such as the EU and the UN could do more in areas such as fighting the drug trade, in particular by viewing the issue as a development problem.

"Do we have a real, internationally coordinated anti-drug strategy? I don't think so," he said. "You cannot fight drugs simply by burning down poppy fields. Then the farmer asks himself, how can I feed my family?"

He said there was no need for "new and complicated structures" to organize international activities in Afghanistan, but added that better coordination was key.

"NATO cannot solve all the problems in Afghanistan on its own," he said. "At the end of the day, the answer in Afghanistan cannot be a military one. The answer is nation-building and development."

NATO has faced a spike in violence in Afghanistan linked to the hardline Taliban movement which the US-led coalition toppled from government in late 2001.

The alliance has appealed for member states to provide additional soldiers to bolster the 31,000 troops stationed in the country.

De Hoop Scheffer said NATO would be forced in the future to refine its concept of security, including expanding its operations to include protecting energy supplies.

"I could imagine that NATO with its naval forces could play a role in securing sea routes for oil and energy transports," he said.

"We are also talking about protecting critical infrastructure in the energy sector against terrorist threats."

Waging war with 'old guns,' pickup trucks

Afghan commander says his troops are crippled by lack of arms, vehicles

PAUL KORING - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — The sprawling base looks like it could be in Texas, even if the road signs suggest Wisconsin.

In fact, it's close to Kandahar air base, just beyond the old bombed-out and burned Soviet officer quarters, now home to scores of ragged children and the wives of officers in the new Afghan National Army. Not far away is Tarnak Farms, the notorious al-Qaeda training area where four Canadians were killed by a U.S. bomb in 2002.

At the corner of Green Bay and South Bend roads is the simple, newly built headquarters of the Afghan army's 205 Corps, known as the Hero Corps. Inside, the commander is General Rahmatullah Raoufi, whose domain stretches across most of strife-torn southern Afghanistan, more or less matching the patch where NATO is battling a fierce Taliban insurgency.

The general has troubles. His wife has been ill, requiring that he be away for many weeks in Turkey, where she is getting treatment.

Over tea, with nuts and raisins to nibble, he is warmly hospitable but firm in warning that unless his troops get more than encouragement from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they won't be able to take on the Taliban.

He has few troops, and even fewer in Kandahar, the province that is arguably the linchpin of the entire effort to defeat the Taliban. And these troops have few weapons.

"Our guns are old, they are [East German] weapons," he said, referring to the massive collection effort intended to disarm the country's militias. It was mostly old, defective guns that were turned in, but many of the AK-47s -- the ubiquitous military weapon in Central Asia -- have been recycled to the ANA.

NATO's southern commander, Canadian Brigadier-General David Fraser, who hands over command of the multinational forces to a Dutch general today, rejects any suggestion that Gen. Raoufi's troops have been shortchanged.

"We have provided them boots, we have provided them flak jackets," Gen. Fraser said.

But Gen. Raoufi points out that his soldiers are driving around in open Ford Ranger pickup trucks. For starters, he would like 100 Humvees. Perhaps even just one for himself. "I am a corps commander in a Ranger," he said, with only a touch of rancour.

It is odd. Canada's high command is trying to keep scores of armoured G-wagon jeeps inside the Kandahar base as much as possible because they offer only limited protection against roadside bombs. Yet Afghan army troops, working alongside Canadian troops battling the Taliban in the hinterlands, are riding around in unarmoured vehicles little different than those found in shopping-mall parking lots.

Gen. Fraser is too polite to say the fledgling ANA can't yet service or handle sophisticated military vehicles, but that's the message.

The Afghan army "has got to grow in incremental steps," he said. We need to "give them what they need, not give them something that becomes an anchor around their necks."

Even Gen. Raoufi's sprawling new military base came missing one key element. The U.S. contractors who laid out Camp Shirazai forgot to include a mosque. So the general is having one built -- a traditional brick structure, soon to be covered with plaster, that will sit, oddly, among the Western-style barracks.

The burly, mustachioed, Afghan general, a 37-year veteran who fought with the Soviets against the Afghan insurgents, seems resigned to a long, slow rebuilding process.

"When the Canadians first got here, there were some misunderstandings, but the problems have been cleared up," he said. But he hasn't been able to persuade the NATO countries supposedly training and mentoring his troops that the Afghan army is being crippled by a lack of weapons and vehicles.

The Taliban have newer and better weapons, he said -- they all come from Pakistan, where the Taliban train.

He estimated that 3,000 to 4,000 Taliban fighters are active in the southern region. The general said it will be at least five years before his army can fight without Western ground troops. No one in NATO is that optimistic.

The unravelling of Pakistan

Growing tensions in restive Baluchistan and Sindh spell trouble for Islamabad, says South Asia specialist SELIG HARRISON

SELIG HARRISON - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Pakistan gets American attention primarily because it is a hotbed of al-Qaeda activity and a staging area for the Taliban campaign to recapture Afghanistan. But the most important and least-noticed news about multiethnic Pakistan is that it is slowly falling apart as tensions grow between its Punjabi-dominated military regime and its restive ethnic minority regions of Baluchistan and Sindh.

To suppress a growing Baluch insurgency in the southwest, President Pervez Musharraf has diverted significant military forces from the Afghan frontier. Six Pakistani army brigades, paramilitary forces totalling 35,000 men, and U.S.-supplied helicopter gunships and F-16 fighter jets are currently deployed in the Kohlu mountains and surrounding areas.

The United States, which dismisses the insurgency as an "internal" Pakistani affair, should be actively promoting a political settlement between Islamabad and the Baluch for two urgent reasons: to stop the diversion of U.S.-supplied equipment from the battle against al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and to end the misuse of U.S.-supplied aircraft in bombing and strafing operations that have killed hundreds of women and children in Baluchistan since January of 2005. Even more important, a settlement is critical to head off a steadily developing disintegration of Pakistan that would destabilize the entire South Asian region.

In Sindh, adjacent to Baluchistan, separatists who share Baluch opposition to Gen. Musharraf's regime are reviving their long-simmering movement for a sovereign Sindhi state, or a Sindhi-Baluch federation, that would stretch along the Arabian Sea from Iran to the Indian border.

Many Sindhi leaders openly express their hope that instability in Pakistan will sooner or later tempt India to help them militarily and economically to secede from Pakistan as Bangladesh did with Indian help in 1971.

There are six million Baluch in Pakistani Baluchistan and 1.2 million in eastern Iran. The Sindhis number 23.4 million, all in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Baluch areas were forcibly incorporated into Pakistan when it was created in 1947 and have since fought three insurgencies before this one. In the most bitter one, from 1973 to 1977, some 80,000 Pakistani troops and 55,000 Baluch were involved at various stages of the fighting. Much of the anger that motivates the Baluchistan Liberation Army today is driven by memories of Pakistani "scorched earth" tactics in past battles.

Iran, like Pakistan, was a U.S. ally during the 1973-1977 conflict. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who feared that the insurgency would spread across the border to the Baluch living in eastern Iran, sent 30 Cobra gunships with Iranian pilots to help Pakistan. But, this time, Tehran is no longer an ally of Washington, and is also at odds with Islamabad. Iran has charged that U.S. Special Forces units are using bases in Pakistan for undercover operations inside Iran designed to foment Baluch opposition to the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The big difference between earlier phases of the Baluch struggle and the current one is that Islamabad has not been able to play off feuding tribes against each other. Equally important, it faces a unified nationalist movement under younger leadership drawn not only from tribal leaders but also from an emergent, literate Baluch middle class that did not exist three decades ago. Another key difference is that the Baluch have a better armed and more disciplined fighting force in the Baluchistan Liberation Army. Baluch leaders say rich compatriots and sympathizers in the Persian Gulf are providing the money needed to buy weapons in the flourishing black market along the Afghan frontier.

Gen. Musharraf has repeatedly accused India of providing weapons to the Baluch insurgents and funds to Sindhi separatist groups, but has provided no evidence to back up his charges. India denies the accusations. At the same time, New Delhi has issued periodic statements expressing "concern" at the fighting and calling for political dialogue.

India brushes aside suggestions that it might be tempted to help Sindhi and Baluch insurgents if the situation in Pakistan continues to unravel. On the contrary, Indian leaders say, India wants a stable Pakistan that will negotiate a peace settlement in Kashmir, so both sides can wind down their costly arms race. But many Indian media commentators appear happy to see Gen. Musharraf tied down in Baluchistan and hope the Baluch crisis will force him to reduce Pakistani support for Kashmir Islamic extremists.

Unlike India, Iran has its own Baluch minority and fears Baluch nationalism. Tehran recently launched a campaign of repression in which "hundreds" of Baluch were rounded up and, in many cases, executed on charges of collaborating with the United States.

Many Baluch and Sindhi leaders are not yet pushing for independence and are ready to settle for the degree of provincial autonomy envisaged in a 1973 constitution that successive military regimes have ignored. Washington should seek to promote a political settlement with the Baluch and Sindhis based on autonomy; but, realistically, a constitutional compromise is not likely unless Gen. Musharraf steps down and permits the presidential election scheduled for next year to be conducted fairly with the participation of two exiled former prime ministers, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Given continued military rule, the Baluch and Sindhi insurgencies are likely to be increasingly radicalized, and the danger of a breakup of Pakistan will grow, with incalculable consequences for the United States and South Asia.

Selig S. Harrison, a former Washington Post bureau chief in New Delhi, has covered Pakistan since 1951 and is the author of five books on Asia, including In Afghanistan's Shadow, a study of Baluch nationalism. He is director of the Asia program at the Washington-based Center for International Policy and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Afghanistan, Five Years and Counting

The National Interest - 10/31/2006 By David C. Isby

This month marks the fifth anniversary of American boots on the ground in Afghanistan. The first US insertions quickly gained momentum, especially after the city of Mazar-e-Sharif was taken. The Taliban's legitimacy and resources had so diminished that few Afghans were willing to fight to the death to maintain them in power.  It was the foreign fighters of Al Qaeda that continued to resist in desperation or, more often, flee across the Durand Line into Pakistan.

What is left today of the victory that began five years ago?

Despite its conflicts, Afghanistan appears unlikely to break apart or dissolve. No region wants to secede or join kin on the other side of the border. There remains a shared sense of nationhood. Afghanistan is not the former Yugoslavia or Iraq: It has never sustained colonial or totalitarian domination. This has led to a continued societal, cultural and political viability rooted in traditional and indigenous political and cultural development that is not present in Iraq (or many countries at a higher level of development).

But when things start to go bad in Afghanistan, they do so quickly.  There are few leaders, institutions or organizations that can serve as firebreaks. Conflict in Afghanistan will inevitably have an impact beyond its borders, as the events of 2001 demonstrated. If Afghanistan fails again, it will mean more than the failure of the policies of a U.S. administration (and its coalition allies). It will also reflect the world community's inability to improve the Afghan situation in the face high stakes: a transnational terrorist threat.

Afghanistan has seen many successes in the past five years that Afghans and their foreign supporters may point to with pride. But threatening these achievements are, internally, the inability to create security and a functioning national civil-sector economy and, externally, the failure to have Pakistan crack down on the cross-border insurgency and undertake the slow and painful process of rebuilding civil society to counter the "Taliban society" from which the insurgency is drawn.

Lack of development, more than ideology, provides manpower for the insurgency. Some 80 percent of the prisoners captured in a recent coalition operation claimed they were there because of economic motivations. And an insurgency with a cross-border sanctuary is hard to defeat even for governments with strong capabilities and long-term foreign commitments.

A Study in What Not To Do

Afghans are unfortunately familiar with seeing great victories turn to ashes. The retreat of the Soviet Army in 1989 was followed by a series of civil conflicts that only ended in 2001. The ongoing war has expanded in size and scope—1,250 Afghans killed in the three months of summer 2006—and the trends are not encouraging.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium. Drug money as well as cross-border Islamic radicalism funds the insurgency. But Afghanistan has not yet become Colombia. Still, the potential for the emergence of a narco-kleptocracy, compounded by the challenges posed by the insurgency, remains real. Even when leaders are not directly involved in the drug trade, they feel compelled to turn a blind eye to their political clients. Kabul and its foreign supporters are under pressure to cut back on the international traffic but have so far created no effective alternative way of bringing income to rural Afghanistan.

Post-2001 reconstruction has been undercut by the unwillingness of donor countries to expend political resources for the sake of a potentially costly commitment to a distant country. Aid per-capita is far below the levels provided to other, much more developed countries in conflict situations, such as in the Balkans or Central America.

Much of the post-2001 track record in Afghanistan is a study in what not to do, with projects and priorities too often geared towards maximizing the convenience and ego-boost of the donors, rather than what Afghanistan requires. Indeed, the Afghan government does not set the priorities of development nor control the process; nor does the US military, NATO, or any embassy—even though development is a critical part of effective counter-insurgency.

Afghanistan's Indispensable Man

Karzai is Afghanistan's "indispensable man." An ethnic Pushtun, he is uniquely acceptable to the Northern Alliance, especially the Panjsheris, due to his support for their lost leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, assassinated by Al Qaeda in 2001—not to mention Afghanistan's foreign supporters. It remains uncertain whether he will stand for re-election and, barring that possibility, who might effectively replace him without widening the ethnolinguistic and political fault lines. Karzai's suspicion of the divisive nature of a party system has made it difficult to institutionalize his political achievement and hand it on to a successor.

Still, while the Afghans have not been able to exploit the opportunities presented by the 2001 victory, their enemies have not been able to take advantage of this. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and their supporters within Pakistan have not gotten smarter or broadened their base since 2001.  The U.S. and coalition military presence remains accepted by most Afghans as a necessarily part of preventing a return to a widespread conflict. While the government has not met many of its people's hopes and needs, it still possesses greater legitimacy and capability than any Afghan government has for a generation and possesses a goal—albeit largely unrealized—of making life better for the average Afghan. The people, while impatient with their own government and its foreign supporters, show little enthusiasm of turning against them and reverting to the Taliban—overthrown five years ago.

David C. Isby is a Washington-based author and consultant on national security and foreign policy issues and a frequent visitor to South Asia.  Books he has written include: Russia's War in Afghanistan, War in a Distant Country, and Afghanistan:  The Russian Empire at High Tide.

Captain Greene's toughest mission

MARK HUME - From Saturday's Globe and Mail

VANCOUVER — Debbie Lepore was lying in bed with the darkness of night starting to soften and cold showers falling on the city when she heard someone at the door.

She knew immediately what it meant. Her man was in Afghanistan. And there in the darkness, before the phone started to ring incessantly, before the haunting images began to flicker across the television screen with news reports, she knew.

Something terrible had happened to Captain Trevor Greene, the big, good looking, athletic writer and soldier she had met five years earlier, to whom she was engaged, and with whom she had recently had a baby girl, named Grace.

“It was about 6 or 6:30 in the morning. Saturday. March 4th,” she said in an interview from Vancouver General Hospital this week, where she goes daily. “There was a knock on the door. You know instantly what it is.”

She'd had that premonition once before, months earlier, when Canadian military officers had come to her Vancouver home to tell her Capt. Greene, 41, had suffered minor injuries in an attack on an armoured vehicle he was in. “I had a sense it was more serious this time,” she said.

And it was. Capt. Greene, a man who friends say always wanted “to do good,” a champion of the downtrodden who wrote books about the missing women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the homeless in Japan, was struck in the head with an axe when he sat down with Afghan villagers to talk about how to get clean water for their homes and farms.

A member of a military unit known as CIMIC, for Civilian-Military Co-operation, Capt. Greene had taken off his helmet as a sign of trust and respect.

He was attacked from behind, suffering a deep head wound that put him in a coma for weeks, and which, nearly eight months later, has left him confined to a hospital bed. His attacker was shot dead.

Capt. Green was not the first Canadian soldier to be injured in Afghanistan, but the attack on him shocked Canadians — perhaps because its nature brought home to them the reality that this was a mission like no other, where violence and treachery could come from anywhere, without warning.

Ms. Lepore held her breath and opened the front door.

“I can't recall what was said. I can't even remember who was there. One was a military padre,” she said.

She laughed at herself for forgetting the details. “I don't know if it was the shock or maybe it's just that so much has happened since then. But the details are gone.”

A lot has happened since then, as Capt. Greene has begun a second mission – one at least as challenging as anything he faced in Afghanistan – where the goal is simply to get well, get whole again.

In that moment, Ms. Lepore's life was also changed dramatically. She went from having a busy, orderly life filled with raising Grace and crunching numbers for the Catalyst Paper Corp., to one that has submerged her in the medical world of head trauma and rehabilitation.

“I am the type of person who just gets immersed in it,” she said. “I have to learn everything about it to the point where I sometimes catch myself using medical jargon to friends who have no idea what I'm talking about.”

Within 24 hours of hearing of the attack, she was en route to a hospital in Landsthul, Germany, accompanied by Capt. Greene's parents and Canadian military escorts, who have stayed in touch with her almost daily since then.

“When I first saw him he was in a medically induced coma,” she said. “But he looked like his old self. Except for the swelling [from his head wound]. I felt right then he was going to make it.”

In the months since then, Capt. Greene's family and friends have maintained a constant vigil, praying that one day he will be fully recovered.

For now, it remains a struggle where progress is measured in the simplest movements, a smile, or a few words, a gesture with a hand.

He is mostly confined to a bed at Vancouver General Hospital. His family and friends visit him daily.

Ms. Lepore or others take turns holding up a newspaper for him to read, or reading to him from books.

He does crossword puzzles with the help of friends. Sometimes he sends messages on a BlackBerry (a friend types; he presses send) or has brief conversations. Talking is difficult because he has had a tracheotomy, a surgical procedure to open his wind pipe, which leaves his throat dry.

Ms. Lepore works daily with him on physical rehabilitation, moving his limbs, helping him from his bed to sit in a chair, massaging his atrophied muscles. And every day she gives him a Chinese herbal footbath.

Although progress is slow, she said, he has been showing great signs of recovery, regaining his sense of touch – and his famous sense of humour.

“You can make him laugh and it's great when he does,” she said. One day a nurse commented on his ability to drink lots of water. “You should see me drink beer,” he said.

There is no official prognosis. His head injury was severe and doctors don't know how far he can go in recovery, or how fast. But Ms. Lepore, other family members and friends who have visited him all say the same thing.

If anybody can make a come back from this, it's Trevor, or ‘Bubba' as he's known to his closest friends.

Ms. Lepore said her faith in his ability to recover was shaken only once, early at Landsthul, when he slipped from medically stable to unstable.

“We did a lot of praying that night,” she said. “And the next day he bounced back and was stable – and I have never doubted since then. I really believe in positive energy and I have nothing but positive thoughts. As my grandmother says, ‘Why worry about what might not happen?' I just believe everything's going to be good, everything is going to work out.”

Ms. Lepore isn't alone in that approach. Shortly after news of the attack on Capt. Greene, a network of his friends, alerted by e-mails, text messages and phone calls, gathered at his favourite Vancouver beach, Jericho. About 50 people came out in a lashing rainstorm to share stories about the rugby player and reserve soldier who stepped up when the call to Afghanistan came — because he thought he could help bring peace to a war-torn area where people deserved better.

“We just wanted to send out positive energy,” said Barb Stegemann who helped organize that spontaneous gathering. She has been a friend of Capt. Greene's since they went to school together at University of Kings College, in Halifax, in the 1980s, where they were both in the rowing program and shared a mentor who encouraged them to “serve the homeless and those who were unprotected in society.”

Ms. Stegemann described him as a remarkable man with a passion for life and a deep feeling of compassion for those in need.

Striving to establish his credentials as a writer, he took on difficult subjects where he could give a voice to those who had none in mainstream society.

That same attitude led him to become a CIMIC officer, where he could work on helping “the average Afghan,” get basic things like food, water and schools.

Ms. Stegemann described Capt. Greene, renowned for his athletic skills as a rugby player and rower, as a big man, 6 feet 7 inches, with a gentle soul and gregarious personality.

“I really think it's important to convey the fact that he's always been a protector of people. I always used to tease him about his white horse he comes charging in on. But he's always looked out for people that are being bullied or harmed. I remember in university he would go across the campus to ensure that a girl got across safely, even if he didn't know her. He wouldn't let someone leave an event and walk alone. I always thought that was remarkable for a young man to be so protective of people. I think that really testifies as to why he went to Afghanistan, to ensure that the people there are heard and that they feel protected. I think that connects and loops back to everything else that he is.”

Ms. Stegemann said she was shocked when a phone call alerted her to Capt. Greene's injury, and she didn't know what to expect when she first visited him at the hospital. But after seeing the recovery he's made so far she believes he's going to prevail.

“Doctors have said you don't see injuries like this very often. Dealing with an injury like that is new ground. But he's remarkably strong, incredibly strong, to be with us still after that severe attack. He's on his own healing journey and he has successes every day and for that we're grateful,” she said.

Robyn Gibson, another friend from college, said he was “shaken and terrified” when he heard of the attack but quickly his fears gave way to a feeling of confidence.

“To get in there and see him and see that infectious smile, to see those bright eyes, was just to reassure me what I know, which is that Trevor will make a full recovery,” he said.

Mr. Gibson recalled an outing he had with his friend before he went to Afghanistan. Out of the blue Capt. Greene called up to say he wanted to go bike riding. But Mr. Gibson, “a Lance Armstrong wannabe” warned him off, saying he'd be taking a high performance bike on a gruelling, high speed ride out around the University of B.C. campus and Vancouver International Airport.

Capt. Greene, he said, showed up on an old mountain bike, wearing flip flops – and proceeded to stick with him for the whole ride.

“He's just not a quitter,” he said, laughing at the memory. “It just never occurred to him to turn back.”

“This will tell you something about him,” he added. “ I think his greatest disappointment to finding himself in that hospital is that he won't finish his mission. I know that sounds crazy, but this is a guy who believes in the Canadian mission, who believes in the UN . . . if he regrets anything it's that he didn't complete the job.”

Richard Greene, Capt. Greene's father, agreed with that assessment.

One of the first things his son asked doctors when he regained the ability to talk was when he'd be able to go back to Afghanistan.

Mr. Greene, a retired RCMP officer, said he thought he knew his son well before the accident, but has learned more about him since, by listening to his large circle of friends talk about the life he led.

He and his son have particularly enjoyed the company of Capt. Greene's former rugby teammates from the Vancouver Rowing Club.

“They have left rugby balls and rugby shirts all over the hospital room,” he said. “They are a rowdy bunch. And Trevor just loves seeing them.”

On the field Capt. Greene was a big, physical player and it is frustrating for him to be bedridden, Mr. Greene said.

Last month Capt. Greene went through a second round of head surgery, after earlier operations in May. Since then, Mr. Greene said, there has been noticeable improvement.

“His motor skills were very severely damaged. But he can move his arms and fingers and hands. The reconnections are taking place and he's able to do a heck of a lot more now than he did in July.”

“He wants to come back. We know that,” Mr. Greene said. “It's now up to us to bring him back.”

When he says “us,” he means Capt. Greene's family, his large circle of friends, his military supporters, doctors, therapists – and the thousands of Canadians who have sent messages of support and prayer.

But mostly he means his son's fiancée, Ms. Lepore, who Capt. Greene planned to marry on his return from Afghanistan.

Friends describe her as “an angel” who brings a sense of hope with her on every visit to the hospital.

Ms. Lepore said the greatest motivator both for her and Capt. Greene, is their bubbly, 21-month-old daughter. “Grace is always happy. She's a joy for us both,” she said.

Capt. Greene will soon be able to leave the hospital and the family is searching for a rehabilitation facility that is experienced with handling patients with such severe brain injuries.

Ms. Lepore said that will probably require leaving B.C. and perhaps Canada. She will have to quit her job, leaving a company that has been “incredibly supportive.”

But she won't hesitate to pack up and move both herself and Grace. “Wherever he goes, we go,” she said. “We're his team.”

Another deadly blow for Pakistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / October 31, 2006

KARACHI - Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf wanted to draw a line in the sand in his struggle for the spiritual soul of the country by early next month, ramming through parliament a controversial bill regarding women's rights that is seen as a move to purge Islamic laws from the constitution.

Instead, helicopter gunships raining death on a village in the remote Bajour agency tribal area on Monday morning significantly escalated Musharraf's battle with militant Islamic forces fiercely opposed to any softening of the state's Islamic legislation.

A pre-dawn attack on a madrassa (Islamic seminary) in a village in the Bajour tribal district in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) claimed the lives of scores of people.

Pakistani authorities claimed immediately that the raid was carried out by Pakistani forces. However, Asia Times Online contacts on the spot are convinced that the raid was undertaken by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces. Recently, Islamabad agreed with NATO that it could conduct operations in Pakistan from across the border in Afghanistan.

Monday's attack came two days after thousands of pro-Taliban tribesmen held an anti-US, anti-NATO rally in Damadola in the Bajour area close to the site of a US missile attack that killed several al-Qaeda members and civilians in January.

Authorities say information that Taliban or al-Qaeda fugitives were in the region prompted Monday's raid. The border village lies opposite the Afghan province of Kunar and is considered a major corridor for militants to enter Afghanistan. In May, Pakistani authorities said a senior al-Qaeda figure, Abu Marwan al-Suri, had been killed in Bajour during a clash with local police.

Just as they are denying NATO involvement in Monday's attack, Pakistani authorities also initially denied the US had carried out the January attack.

Political fallout - Soon after Monday's raid, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the chief of the powerful Islamic political party, the Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan (JI), announced that two leading JI members had resigned their posts - a senior minister in NWFP, Sirajul Haq, and a member of the federal parliament from the Bajour agency, Haroon Rasheed.

The JI is a part of the six-party religious alliance the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), which has been at the forefront of agitation against the proposed legislation on women's issues, as well as in opposition in general to Musharraf and his pro-US stance in the "war on terror".

Haq was quoted as saying that protests would be staged throughout the northern tribal region on Tuesday.

Significantly, Pakistan and Taliban authorities struck a peace deal in Bajour only two days ago and were scheduled to sign a document to that effect on Monday. This lends credence to the possibility that it was NATO and not Pakistani forces that made the raid.

Clearly, any peace deal in Bajour is now off the table, and the MMA will seize on the raid to ramp up and expand its campaign against the proposed women's legislation. The MMA has already threatened to resign from the central parliament and all four provincial assemblies, two of which have a controlling MMA presence.

Behind this political activism in the garb of religious issues, though, lies the fear that any demonstrations will turn anti-West - and violent. Under cover of violence and chaos, various smaller underground religious groups as well as militants will mobilize for the fulfillment of their agendas.

Militants already have immense power in the country and have forced the government to step away from the tribal areas, notably North and South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban have a heavy footprint. The same was to happen in Bajour agency.

Bajour is home of the powerful Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammedi, which was the group responsible which gathering more than 10,000 Pakistani youths to go to Afghanistan before the US invasion of 2001.

Bajour is also the strategic back yard of the Hezb-i-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which is active in the Afghan insurgency. Many prominent al-Qaeda leaders use the area while in transit in the Nooristan-Kunar Valley.

Musharraf in the crosshairs - With the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, pockets of jihadi groups have sprung up in Pakistani cities and villages, and to them the symbol of hatred is Musharraf.

After the attacks on the US of September 11, 2001, Musharraf came up with a guarded approach to handle jihadis. He held many secret meetings with their leaders at which he expressed his resolve in the cause of Islam, as well as in jihad.

He tried to convince the jihadist leadership that Pakistan's decision to ditch the Taliban was made under duress from the US and that as soon as Pakistan could it would resume its support of the Islamic forces in Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, the bridge continued to widen between the jihadis and Musharraf, to a point where Musharraf was repeatedly a target for assassination by jihadist groups allied with disaffected military officers.

Pakistani military operations in Waziristan further alienated the jihadist outfits from Musharraf, even as his dependence on the US grew. Recent Pentagon documents indicate that disbursements to Islamabad amounted to about US$3.6 billion for operations from January 2002 through August 2005, an amount roughly equal to one-quarter of Pakistan's total military expenditure during that period. At the same time, as the Taliban revival in Afghanistan continues, the United States' dependency on Musharraf has grown.

Musharraf appears to forget that Pakistan is still a traditional society in which the majority of the people live in a tribal setup. Traditions are generally the final word, and the true literacy rate (which only means capability to read Urdu-language newspapers) is hardly 25%.

In such an environment there is a blind following in religious issues, as in the case of the Women's Protection Bill, which all traditional clerics from north to south and from east to west are unanimous in rejecting.

Military dictatorships, as is Musharraf's, tend to care more their constituency (the armed forces) than the masses. Yet any development that is perceived as an intervention against religion will have a serious impact, as Islam is specifically the soul of the Pakistani army, thanks to the rule of the late dictator General Zia ul-Haq and his Islamification program.

Monday's bombing in Bajour brings Musharraf's showdown, and the line in the sand, with Islamic forces just that little bit closer.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.

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