In this bulletin:

• Govt again says 'no' to border fencing
• Pashtuns protest Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan
• Pak hoodwinking Bush on Taliban pact
• Asfandyar to Musharraf: All Pashtuns are not Taliban
• Analysis: Musharraf strategy in tatters
• Bomber kills 42 Pakistani troops
• Afghan violence leaves five dead, including NATO soldier
• Afghan unrest fuels tensions ahead of NATO summit
• Italian Foreign Min To Travel To Afghanistan For Talks
• EU open to bigger role in Afghan police training
• Tehran Launches Plan To Expel Illegal Afghan Workers
• Over 130,000 Afghans registered in Pakistan
• Tribal elders reopening southern schools
• Survey of 21 reservoirs to be launched soon: Minister
• Ministry signs MoU on IT facility
• Literacy cuts hit Afghan women
• Afghanistan 'to spray poppy crop'
• Khalilzad to leave Iraq

Govt again says 'no' to border fencing

Zubair Babakarkhail - Translated and edited by Daud Khan 

KABUL, Nov 7 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghanistan once again rejected the fencing of the Durand Line and said the step would divide the people living on both sides of the line between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Addressing his weekly press briefing, presidential spokesman Karim Rahimi said fencing the border or erection of separation wall would not end terrorism. Rather it would divide the people living on the two sides of the Durand Line.

"We are against erection of any kind of separation wall and will never accept it," said Rahimi, who added the proposal was already rejected by the people living on the two sides of the divide.

Pakistan, Afghanistan and the international community should strike at the root causes to eliminate terrorism, said Rahimi, who was responding to the fresh statement of Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri regarding the border fencing.

Kasuri, during talks with his Dutch counterpart Bernard Bot, who paid a visit to Islamabad two days back, renewed the border fencing proposal and said it would help putting an end to terrorism and infiltration of miscreants.

Regarding President Karzai's talks offer to Taliban leader Mulla Omar and Hezb-i-Islami chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the spokesman said the government was ready to welcome any independent move, either by its supporters or opponents, to bring peace and stability to the country.

However, there should be no pre-conditions for such move or talks, the spokesman clarified.

About the proposed Jirga between tribal elders from both Pakistan and Afghanistan, Rahimi said preparations were in full gear to set modalities for the meetings on both side of the border.

To a question, he said they were trying their best to include true representatives of the people in the proposed Jirgas. The first Jirga will be held in Afghanistan and both President Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart Pervez Musharraf are expected to attend it.

Regarding the mid-term elections in the United States and the effects of its results on the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan, Rahimi said terrorism was a global problem and any change in American government would have no effect on the struggle.

Pashtuns protest Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan

By Saeed Ali Achakzai - November 7, 2006

CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - Several thousand ethnic Pashtuns rallied in a Pakistani town near the Afghan border on Tuesday, accusing Pakistan of meddling in Afghanistan's affairs.

The protesters, Pakistani Pashtuns and some Afghan Pashtun refugees, accused Pakistan of providing sanctuary to Taliban militants, who have this year unleashed the most intense violence in Afghanistan since their 2001 ousting from power.

"We demand the government of Pakistan stops playing its game in Afghanistan," Hamid Khan Achakzai, a leader of a Pakistani Pashtun nationalist party and a former member of parliament, told the rally in the southwestern town of Chaman.

"This duplicitous policy poses serious danger to the entire world," Achakzai said. Pashtuns live on both sides of the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border.

Afghan complaints that Taliban insurgents are operating from safe havens on the Pakistani side have seriously strained relations between the neighbours this year.

Pakistan nurtured the Taliban after they emerged from Pashtun tribal lands along the border in the early 1990s, but officially ended support after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

A major ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, Pakistan denies helping the Taliban but says some militants are able to cross the porous frontier.

Protesters at the rally in Chaman shouted "Down with terrorism in Afghanistan" and "Down with the policy of interference in Afghanistan".

Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month asked two ethnic Pashtun Pakistani politicians, including the head of an Islamist group, for help to stem the Taliban insurgency.

Pakistan accuses its old rival India, which has close relations with Karzai, of stirring ethnic unrest in Pakistani areas on the Afghan border.

The border areas have traditionally been strongholds of conservative Islamist groups but Pashtun nationalist parties, which want the merger of Pashtun areas on both sides of the frontier, also have support.

Pakistani forces have been battling Islamist militants in Pashtun tribal areas on its side of the border over the last few years and hundreds of people have been killed.

In the latest violence, militants fired at least six rockets at a paramilitary base in the town of Wana, in the South Waziristan region, to the north of Chaman, but there were no reports of casualties, a security official said.

Two rockets landed near the base when the governor of North West Frontier Province, Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, was meeting tribal elders there.

Pak hoodwinking Bush on Taliban pact:

Report Hindustan Times
Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, November 8, 2006|16:36 IST

Pakistan has been misleading the world on the agreement with the pro-Taliban tribals on its border with Afghanistan, "selling out" Washington's and Kabul's interests, Los Angeles Times said.

In a hard-hitting editorial this week, it asked President George W Bush's Administration and the new Congress to be on guard against President Pervez Musharraf's regime 'hedging' against President Hamid Karzai's government that Islamabad perceives as being "hostile and pro-India".

"If President Bush has any red lines left, he should be furious that Pakistan is legitimising the very Taliban it has pledged to eradicate.

It should come as no surprise, we should add that the Taliban has not kept its part of the bargain. Attacks have multiplied since the deal was signed," the newspaper said.

Karzai's fears about the September 5 agreement between the Pakistani authorities and the Taliban-friendly tribals in Northern Waziristan have proved right, judging from the increased attacks across the border, the LA Times says.

It quotes in support an expose by Jane's Intelligence Digest, published last week, about the continued, surreptitious role of Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in fomenting trouble against the Karzai regime.

Jane's has said that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-sponsored Taliban training camps and jihadist madrassas (seminaries) have multiplied along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

The LA Times editorial came a day before the Karzai government rejected Pakistan's proposal that the entire Pakistan-Afghanistan border be fenced to prevent illegal cross-border movement.

Analysts have said that a fence on the volatile border on a difficult terrain is unworkable and the proposal is just a ruse by Islamabad to display its earnestness in fighting the Taliban.

LA Times has alleged that Musharraf sought to mislead the Bush administration on the agreement, saying that it was signed with the tribals.

"Perhaps he didn't expect his Western friends to read the agreement in the original Urdu," it observed.

The Bush administration has now studied the text of the agreement in original Urdu, something Islamabad might have not expected, to find out that the signatories on the other side were representatives of the "Talaba", a plural for the Arabic word "Taliban", which means students.

The pact had "sold out" the American and Afghan interests to the Taliban, the editorial said.

Referring to last week's operations in Bajaur Agency, the newspaper says that Musharraf had "tried to make amends" by ordering air strikes on one Taliban-run madrassa that killed at least 82 people last week, triggering angry protests against the US.

"But it will take far more to persuade the American public and Congress of the wisdom of providing Pakistan with $3 billion in military and other aid each year while Pakistani territory, tribal or not, gives sanctuary to Taliban fighters who kill US and NATO soldiers and destabilise the Afghan government," the editorial said.

A day after the agreement was signed, Musharraf paid a high-profile visit to Kabul to 'sell' the agreement and asking Karzai to have similar agreements with tribals on the Afghan side.

Totally unconvinced, Karzai protested and complained to Bush, compelling the US president to get the two squabbling neighbours to meet over a dinner hosted.

Both agreed to cooperate, but did not shake hands for the media, reflecting mutual distrust and tension.

Asfandyar to Musharraf: All Pashtuns are not Taliban

PESHAWAR, Nov 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The nationalist Awami National Party (ANP) is going to organise a grand jirga comprising Pashtun leaders from all parts of Pakistan to develop unity among the community living on the other side of the Durand Line and stop bloodshed in their areas.

The announcement was made by ANP central president and member of Pakistan Senate Asfandyar Wali Khan while talking to journalists at Bacha Khan Markaz, headquarters of the party, in Peshawar.

The ANP leader informed that they would invite Pashtun leaders from all over the country to the jirga (meeting), which is scheduled to be convened on November 20.

The move, said Asfandyar, the elder son of late Abdul Wali Khan, was aimed at promoting unity among Pashtuns on the Pakistani side of the Durand line, which was crucial to stop bloodshed in the country.

He said invitations would be sent to all Pashtun leaders whether political, social, secular or religious. "We are ready to forget our differences with the religious parties for the sake of Pashtun unity and expect the same from them," he added.

He said the existence of Pashtuns was at stake unless they united and fought its enemy. "President Pervez Musharraf and the US have taken advantage of our differences and the ANP is resolved to put them aside, at least for the time being," said the nationalist leader.

Lashing out at the policies of Pervez Musharraf, the ANP leader said the Pakistani president continued to make the West believe that unless the Taliban were crushed, al-Qaeda would exist and that all Pashtuns were Taliban. "In short, people at the helm of affairs continue targeting Pashtuns to keep them away from mainstream politics," he alleged.

He believed that the Pakistani government was caught unaware by the Bajaur Agency air strike and that the explanations from the army spokesman were self-contradictory. "If the government was monitoring activities at the madressa, how come they held peace talks with its administrator Maulana Liaqat during the evening before the strike?" he questioned.

The ANP chief said his party had come to the conclusion that if Pashtun politicians did not unite, Bajaur-like attacks would continue and more Pashtuns would die. "After Bajaur, Khyber will be the next target after which fire will enter the settle areas of Bannu, Swat and Tank," he said, adding he urged the religious parties to set aside their differences with the ANP and join them for the sake of Pashtuns.

He said the jirga would try to bring peace to the tribal areas on both sides of the Durand line. He believed no jirga could be successful without the participation of the religious parties and that the Pakistani government should stop trying to decide who all would take part in the jirga proposed by Afghan and Pakistani leaders to discuss peace in Afghanistan.

Analysis: Musharraf strategy in tatters

By SHAUN WATERMAN - UPI Homeland and National Security Editor

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 (UPI) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's strategy of cutting peace deals with local leaders on his country's border with Afghanistan lies in tatters, after the U.S. strike last week on a religious school in the area, and charges that a terror plot was hatched there.

"It is in tatters, but there is no alternative," Pakistani analyst Husain Haqqani told United Press International Monday. Musharraf adopted the strategy under pressure from army leaders who saw the effort to pacify the notoriously lawless and inaccessible border region by military force alone as doomed.

The architect of the strategy, retired Gen. Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai, the governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, has threatened to resign, and Musharraf will hold a meeting with senior army staff Tuesday to allay their fears about the deal's collapse, according to local reports.

Over the weekend, the Dawn newspaper -- citing an unnamed senior investigator -- reported that the leader of a shadowy Uzbek extremist splinter group, the Islamic Jihad Group, had given the go-ahead for a planned series of attacks in Islamabad last month.

The attacks were foiled when a number of artillery shells, wired to be detonated by mobile phones, were found by authorities less than a mile from the parliament building and Musharraf's residence, on Oct. 5.

The Uzbek was named by Dawn as Nadzhmiddin Kamilidinovich Janov. The enwspaper said he used the aliases Yakhyo and Commander Ahmad and was based in Mir Ali, in North Waziristan -- one of the seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies that lie on Pakistan's lawless and inaccessible border with Afghanistan. Dawn said Janov was the leader of a splinter from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

The Islamic Jihad Group has been designated a terror group by the U.S. government, but little is known about it. The group claimed responsibility for several attacks in Uzbekistan in April 2004, but has not been heard from since.

Eleven people have been charged in the plot and Dawn said interrogations had revealed the link to Janov. "While the fingers were in Islamabad, the tail was in Mir Ali," the anonymous investigator told the newspaper.

"If this report is true," Haqqani said, "it would be a very serious breach of the agreement" signed between Pakistani authorities and local leaders in the agency Sept. 5.

Under the agreement, the leaders, who included prominent members of the local Taliban shura or council and the heads of tribal militias, were supposed to expel any foreign militants who did not adopt what the deal called "a peaceable life," and prevent cross-border attacks against NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But U.S. military officials said that attacks in the Khost province of Afghanistan had increased since the deal was signed, and many analysts have been skeptical of the deal.

The Dawn report comes days after a strike Oct. 30, widely believed to have been carried out by a U.S. predator drone, killed more than 80 people, including several children, at a religious school or madrassa in the Bajaur agency, another of the tribal areas.

The strike destroyed a deal scheduled to be inked in Bajaur that day with local leaders, the second in what was planned as series of such agreements building on the North Waziristan accord. One of the leaders who was due to sign it narrowly escaped death in the attack.

Former Indian intelligence official B. Raman reported that Orakzai had threatened to resign because he was angry at being blindsided by the strike.

Newsweek reported Sunday that at least six middle-ranking Pakistani Army officers had been court-martialed for refusing orders to fight in the area, and the pressure from the military that led Musharraf to adopt the strategy has not abated.

But the Bajaur strike suggests that the United States has lost faith in the approach, and the allegations in the Dawn report, if they are borne out, show that the strategy has failed to stop militants planning operations even very close to home. "There are only rocks and hard places for Musharraf now," said Haqqani.

Bomber kills 42 Pakistani troops

BBC News / Wednesday, 8 November 2006

A suicide bomber has killed at least 42 soldiers at an army training school in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

It is the deadliest attack by militants on the army since it began operations against pro-Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters close to the Afghan border.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

It happened in the town of Dargai in North West Frontier Province, not far from where the army said it killed some 80 militants last week.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan says Wednesday's attack could undermine recent agreements between the military and pro-Taleban militants in other border areas.

Emotions in the region have been running high since an air strike on a religious school (madrassa) last week in the neighbouring area of Bajaur, in which the army said 80 militants were killed.

Local people insisted the dead were innocent religious students.

'Expected'

The army base targeted in Wednesday's suicide bombing is about 40km (30 miles) south-east of the bombed madrassa.

"The attack was carried out by a man who got down from a car wearing a chaddor [cloak] and walked into the parade," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said.

"After the Bajaur incident this was expected, but we will continue the fight against terror. We condemn it, innocent lives were lost."

An eyewitness, Aurangzeb, told the BBC he saw soldiers picking up scattered body parts minutes after the explosion.

"The victims were dying. Their shoes and caps were scattered all over the place," he said.

It appeared that most of the men who died were military recruits who had been doing morning exercises.

Up to 20 soldiers were wounded in the attack. Some are believed to be in a critical condition.

The military are reported to have sealed off the area and also the hospital where the wounded are being treated.

Dargai is a stronghold of a banned pro-Taleban movement, Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-Mohammadi (TNSM).

The head of the madrassa targeted last week was a TNSM member. He was killed in the attack.

The TNSM led thousands of tribesmen across the border into Afghanistan to take on American forces after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Many never returned.

In recent days tribesmen have openly threatened suicide attacks against the army in retaliation for the madrassa air raid which many also blamed on US forces across the border.

Pakistan has deployed nearly 80,000 troops along the border to hunt militants who sought refuge after the ousting of the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001.

Afghan violence leaves five dead, including NATO soldier

November 7, 2006 - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - The latest in a wave of attacks blamed on Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has left five people dead, including a foreign soldier, police and the NATO-led military force said.

A Taliban-style suicide attack meanwhile wounded a district governor and two police guards near the border with Pakistan.

The soldier with NATO's International Security Assistance Force was killed Monday when a bomb struck a military vehicle travelling through the southern province of Kandahar, the force said.

"One ISAF soldier died and two were injured when the vehicle they were travelling in was struck by an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar yesterday," it said in a statement.

ISAF does not release the nationalities of its casualties before announcement from the soldiers' home country.

Most of the soldiers in Kandahar are from Canada, which has about 2,300 troops in Afghanistan, but the Canadian military said it was not involved.

More than 115 foreign troops have been killed in combat in Afghanistan this year, about half of them Americans. Nearly 180 have died in total, but this includes those in aircraft crashes, accidents, and from health problems.

The attack was in the Panjwayi district about 35 kilometres (19 miles) west of Kandahar city, which in September was the focus of ISAF's biggest anti-Taliban offensive yet, an operation the force said killed around 1,000 rebels.

An Afghan army soldier was killed the same day when another IED struck a military patrol in the Gereshk area of neighbouring Helmand province, ISAF spokesman Captain Andre Salloum said.

"A vehicle went over an IED which was on the road. One vehicle was damaged and had to be destroyed," he said.

ISAF soldiers destroyed the vehicle because it was not salvageable and contained military equipment and intelligence, he said.

In the eastern province of Khost meanwhile, Taliban insurgents attacked a highway police post just after midnight Monday, sparking off a gun battle that killed two Taliban and a policeman, provincial police said.

Also in Khost, a suicide attacker on Tuesday detonated explosives strapped to his body near the vehicle of the chief of the Tanai district on the border with Pakistan, an official said.

"Tanai district chief Badi-ulzaman and his two police guards were wounded in a suicide attack today," Qasim Jan, the provincial governor's secretary, told AFP.

The men were seriously injured and transferred from a public health hospital to that of the US-led coalition, another official said.

The incidents are part of a pattern of guerrilla-style strikes by the Taliban and other Islamist groups trying to destabilize Afghanistan by attacking military and government targets, as well as aid workers.

This year has also seen some of the most intense battles between the military and rebels since the Taliban were toppled in 2001 but there have been no announcements of heavy fighting in the past few days.

The relentless violence has frustrated Afghans and undermined support for President Hamid Karzai. But international and Afghan officials have warned it will take several years to stabilize the war-torn country, with reconstruction essential to the project.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer repeated on Monday calls for the European Union and United Nations to do more to rebuild the destitute nation.

"Now is the time for the international community to step in and help push Afghanistan further in the right direction," he told a conference in Brussels.

The appeal pointed to tensions among NATO members and its partners ahead of the alliance's late November summit in Latvia that is likely to be dominated by the Afghan military mission, the most ambitious in NATO's history.

Afghan unrest fuels tensions ahead of NATO summit

by Pascal Mallet - Tue Nov 7 - BRUSSELS (AFP) - NATO urged the European Union and United Nations to do more to rebuild strife-torn Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency and waning international support are complicating the alliance's mission.

The appeal, by NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, was a new sign of the increasingly public tensions between the transatlantic alliance and international organisations three weeks ahead of its summit in Riga, Latvia.

"NATO is doing a lot but we are neither a relief organisation nor a reconstruction agency," he told a conference in Brussels. "Now is the time for the international community to step in and help push Afghanistan further in the right direction."

NATO agreed in late September to expand the military operations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) it is leading in Afghanistan into the east of the troubled country, giving it a toe-hold there at all points of the compass.

But a dogged Taliban-led insurgency, particularly in the volatile south, has frustrated the alliance in its most ambitious operation ever, as it tries to establish secure conditions for rebuilding to go ahead.

NATO officials fear that if reconstruction is too slow, ordinary Afghans could turn back to the radical Islamic Taliban movement, which was forced from power by a US-led invasion in late 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden.

In an interview with Tuesday's edition of French newspaper Le Monde, de Hoop Scheffer took particular aim at the 25-nation EU.

"NATO's mission is not to 'resolve' the problems of Afghanistan because there are no military solutions. The real problem is that Afghanistan is not sufficiently on the EU's radar screen," he said.

"There must be concerted planning between NATO and the European Union," he warned. He added that he would "insist on this question at the summit in Riga", on November 28-29, given that 19 of NATO's 26 states are also EU members.

In an article in Monday's International Herald Tribune, de Hoop Scheffer said the participants of an informal meeting between NATO and international organisations on October 2 had agreed that the EU needed to do more.

But a NATO diplomat told AFP: "The main thing to come out of the meeting was that the United Nations must play the central role."

Across the Atlantic, the United Nations -- through its representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs -- has warned NATO to step up its efforts to keep the Central Asian country from sinking further into chaos.

"The conflict cannot be won by military means alone but NATO must not lose it," Koenigs said in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, calling for an "enormous military effort" against the insurgents.

He said that while diplomatic and humanitarian aid was essential, attacks mounted by the Taliban, and backed by drug runners and war lords, had to be stopped.

"Otherwise the entire NATO alliance is absurd and not usable for peacekeeping in the Third World," Koenigs said.

Amid what appears to be buck passing, the NATO diplomat noted: "It is likely, ahead of Riga, that a few cracks appear. But it is important not to blame each other for the difficulties in Afghanistan."

One particular shortfall is Afghanistan's police force. The main task for reconstituting the force falls to Germany. But with little real progress made so far, de Hoop Scheffer said the EU should be "taking over the training and equipping of the Afghan police".

Asked about its role, the spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the bloc was analysing a report compiled by an assessment team sent to Afghanistan around six weeks ago. "No immediate decision is expected," she said.

Italian Foreign Min To Travel To Afghanistan For Talks

November 7, 2006 - ROME (AP)--Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema will travel to Afghanistan in the next few days to hold talks with President Hamid Karzai and other top officials, the ministry said Tuesday.

D'Alema will also meet with U.N. envoy Tom Koenigs, and the European Union representative to the country, Francesc Vendrell.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Pasquale Ferrara, didn't disclose the date of the trip, but said it would be in the next few days.

Italy has about 1,800 troops in the 30,000-strong North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led force in Afghanistan.

EU open to bigger role in Afghan police training

BRUSSELS, Nov 7 (Reuters) - The European Union is studying a possible takeover of training of Afghanistan's police force as part of moves to stamp out widespread corruption plaguing reconstruction efforts, EU officials said on Tuesday.

NATO, battling a violent insurgency in the country, is pushing for the 25-member bloc to expand a German-led training operation which the military alliance says has made little progress so far.

An EU team travelled to Afghanistan in September to assess EU help for security reforms and its findings were currently under discussion by member states, one EU official said.

"If there is added value in an EU contribution, we will evaluate that in a favourable light," said the official.

"There is no conclusion yet. It's in the process of being evaluated," added the official, who requested anonymity.

A second official said any such move would first require Germany and Italy -- the other European country involved in existing efforts -- to request an EU operation, and for the other member states to agree to it.

NATO, which has acknowledged it underestimated the scale of violence it is facing in Afghanistan, says the conflict cannot be settled by military means alone and has stepped up calls on international partners to do more in the civilian domain.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told an audience in Brussels on Monday that the EU was ideally suited to providing police training in the country and urged it to assume full management of the operation.

While the top of the Afghan judiciary and interior ministry had been shaken up with reformers committed to the rule of law, the alliance sees a need to train and equip judges and police and to build administrative capacity -- areas of EU expertise.

An official for the European Commission noted the bloc was the largest payer for Afghan police training and salaries, and said NATO had made no specific request to EU officials during a meeting on Afghanistan hosted by the alliance last week.

NATO officials say corruption in the Afghan police and judiciary is undermining local confidence in President Hamid Karzai's government and his efforts to extend the rule of law.

NATO's top commander of operations, U.S. General James Jones, in September highlighted police reform as one of the major weaknesses of U.N. reconstruction efforts.

Tehran Launches Plan To Expel Illegal Afghan Workers

RFE/RL - 11/06/2006 By Golnaz Esfandiari - Iran has begun a new plan to expel illegal Afghan workers from the country. Officials have said that the plan will help solve the country's unemployment problem.

Press reports say the first phase of the plan -- identifying illegal workers -- began on October 28. Iran has hosted more than 2 million refugees from Afghanistan for more than three decades.

But since the fall of the Taliban, Iranian officials have repeatedly said that it is time for Afghans to return home.The repatriation plan comes amid increased restrictions aimed at forcing Afghans in Iran to return to their country.

Iranian officials say that along with the 960,000 Afghans who are registered as refugees in Iran, between 1-2 million Afghans are in the country illegally.

Few Legal Afghans - According to Iran, only some 1,000 Afghans living in Iran have a valid work permit. The rest are considered illegal workers.

Under the new initiative, those Afghans workers who are illegally residing in Iran will be deported. Iranian employers will face fines if they don't lay off illegal workers.

Illegal Afghans workers that have a valid residence permit will not be expelled from Iran. They will, however, not be allowed to work. But their employers could apply for six-month work permits for three sectors: brick-making plants, construction, and agriculture.

Mohammad Youssef Etebar is the first consul at the Afghan Embassy in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashad, which has a large Afghan population. He tells RFE/RL that Iranian officials have begun screening for illegal Afghan workers.

"Through my contacts with [Iranian] officials I know that for now there is no problem for refugees with documents," he said. "But assessments have begun on those who don't have documents in factories, workplaces, or with their employers. We have to wait and see the results."

Refugee Rights - The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) says it is monitoring the situation. Astrid van Genderen, the UNHCR's spokesperson in Geneva, told RFE/RL that her agency wants to ensure that refugees are not among those who are expelled.

"We are, of course, concerned about the people who are refugees and who cannot, at this stage, return to Afghanistan," he said. "Regarding illegal workers who are not refugees, it's very difficult for UNHCR -- it's not our mandate, we cannot control it -- it's a sovereign action [by] a government. But over the past few years when such actions happened, we always monitored if there were no refugees or people who sought asylum and we've not come across such cases."

Iranian officials say Afghan workers are taking job opportunities away from Iranians. They claim the new initiative will revive some 300,000-400,000 jobs that are currently held by Afghans. Iran's official unemployment rate is about 10 percent. But the real rate is thought to be at least 20 percent.

Many Afghans living in Iran resort to hard labor in construction and at factories to support their families. Afghans and some Iranian observers say Afghans tend to be paid less and Iranian workers are not willing to take those jobs with the same wages.

An Afghan woman living in Iran who wanted to remain anonymous told RFE/RL that many of the illegal workers are Afghans who had previously returned to Afghanistan.

Afghans Returning To Iran - "They say that we couldn't stay there; there was no education, our children were becoming illiterate, there was no security, and the houses are expensive," she said. "These are people who lived in Iran for some 20 years -- they didn't have a house there. So they were forced to return to Iran with lots of problems. They're here [illegally]. I don't know what will be the fate of this generation that is wandering here. Who is responsible?"

She says Afghans living in Iran are facing increasing pressure, including educational restrictions for their children. Nevertheless she says few Afghans are willing to return to their home country.

The UN agency says that while more than 1.5 million Afghans have returned home since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the number of those returning voluntarily has almost dried up.

UNHCR's van Genderen says there are different reasons why Afghans living in Iran do not want to return home.

The Time Is Not Right For Returning - "They come either from areas where security is not right or they come from areas where the economy has not properly developed and it's very, very difficult to reintegrate into the community and into the labor market," he said. "There are also other Afghans who lived all their life in Iran and have substantially contributed to the economy there; there are Afghans that were even born in Iran."

Etebar, the chief Afghan consul, says neighboring countries should be patient until the time is right for Afghans to return home.

"We are still facing many problems with respect to the economy, reconstruction, and providing them with jobs and a means of making a living," he said. "Our request and our expectation is that countries cooperate as they did in the past and be patient until the time when we can remove all the problems in Afghanistan."

Iranian Interior Minister Hojatoleslam Mustafa Pur-Mohammadi urged the international community on October 11 to live up to its promise of investing in Afghanistan's reconstruction, which he said would enhance the prospects for higher return figures.

The Iranian press has reported that by the end of the Iranian year, on March 20, 2007, some 500,000 Afghans are due to be expelled from Iran.

Over 130,000 Afghans registered in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Nov 7, 2006 (Xinhua) -- More than 130,000 Afghan citizens have so far been registered in the largest scale registration conducted by the Pakistani government and the UN refugee agency, Pakistani and UN officials said on Tuesday.

At a press briefing in Islamabad, the officials of the Pakistani government and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that the pace of registration was picking up after a slow start, urging more Afghans to come forward for registration before the exercise ends on Dec. 31.

Since the start of the registration of Afghan citizens in Pakistan on Oct. 15, more than 136,000 Afghans have been registered in Pakistan, according to UNHCR.

Women constituted 48 percent of those registered so far, and children below the age of 14 years were 50 percent.

"This is not a registration to deport or exclusively repatriate Afghans. The exercise will gather information and seek to provide a much awaited solution to their protracted situation," said UNHCR 's Representative in Pakistan Guenet Guebre-Christos.

Secretary of the Pakistani Ministry of Statas and Frontier Regions Sajid Hussain Chattha said that registration was important for the management of the Afghan population in Pakistan.

"This exercise is great in terms of challenges," said Saleem Moin, chairman of the implementing agency National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).

"We're doing it through centers all over Pakistan. In some areas, they don't even have basic services like electricity. But we will leave no stone unturned to make sure the exercise is a success," he said.

The 10-week registration exercise has mobilized 2,500 NADRA staff and 1,000 staff from the Commissioner for Afghan Refugees and UNHCR in 70 registration centers and mobile registration vans.

Only Afghans counted in the 2005 census can register after having their names checked against the census database.

NADRA is increasing its equipment to smoothen the verification process. Responding to some resistance against the photographing of Afghan women, the authorities have hired more female staff to handle photography while persuading those concerned that photographs are mandatory for the Proof of Registration (PoR) card.

The registration exercise is a follow-up to the 2005 census of Afghans in Pakistan. Those registered will receive a PoR card valid for three years that recognizes them as Afghan citizens temporarily living in Pakistan. There are an estimated 2.4 million Afghans living in Pakistan.

Tribal elders reopening southern schools

IRIN 11/07/2006 - LASHKAR GAH - In an effort to reopen hundreds of schools, closed due to fear of attacks from insurgents in southern Afghanistan, local tribal elders in Helmand province have helped the government to open the doors of at least 20 schools in the past two weeks, local officials said on Tuesday.

The initiative came after local officials in the insurgency-hit south announced last month that more than 300 schools were now closed following attacks and threats from insurgents.

"Community leaders in Sangin and Nawzad districts have also raised their voices and support for reopening schools and now we hope that many other schools will be reopened for students in the near future," Saifal Maluk Noori, head of Helmand's education department, said.

The elders, who command considerable respect and power in their villages, have promised to guard and protect schools and mount a community-based protection network to counter the threats from militant groups.

Haji Abdul Sadiq, a tribal elder in Nad Ali district of Helmand province, said that they have helped the government to reopen 14 mixed schools in the district this week and were trying to reopen all the remaining schools in the area.

"Schools were in a very vulnerable situation here so all the tribal elders decided to work together and take strict measures to guard all the schools in the district," Sadiq asserted.

The initiative has widespread support in a region where girls' education increased markedly after the Taliban were removed from power in late 2001. "People were very happy and even some slaughtered cows during the opening of schools in their villages," Sadiq added.

Ali Mohammad, a student in the third year in Shekh Sori middle school in Nad Ali district is now studying under a tent after his school was set ablaze by insurgents five months ago.

"We love our studies and our school and hope it won't be closed again because we don't want to be illiterate and ignorant," Mohammad asserted. "We need not only a new building for our school but more and new books, chairs and desks here."

United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) spokesman Aleem Siddique praised the initiative and called for its extension to other parts of southern Afghanistan where many schools are still closed due to fear of attacks.

"The news that schools are reopening in Helmand is encouraging. We hope that this trend will continue in other southern provinces of Afghanistan," Siddique told IRIN in Kabul.

"This underlines the vital involvement of the tribal elders and community leaders in helping to deliver real progress for Afghan people."

Currently, more than 200,000 boys and girls in the south are deprived of education after some 150 schools were been set ablaze by insurgents this year, according to the Ministry of Education in Kabul.

Mohammad Salim, another tribal elder in Nad Ali district, called on government and aid agencies to rebuild burnt and destroyed schools and assist teachers and students in providing books and proper salaries.

Helmand is home to Taliban militants who are waging a deadly anti-government insurgency mainly in southern Afghanistan, following their ouster in late 2001 by the US-led coalition. The hardline militant group shut down all girls' schools and banned girls and women from work during their five-years of rule of the country.

There have been many attacks on educational institutions in the insurgency-hit south over the past 12 months. Suspected Taliban guerillas set fire to three primary schools in the Nawa district of Helmand in January this year. In December 2005, suspected militants dragged a teacher from his classroom and shot him at the gates of his school after he ignored warnings to stop teaching boys and girls in a mixed class in Helmand province. In Zabul province, also in the south, in another gruesome incident, a teacher was dragged from his home and beheaded in February.

Survey of 21 reservoirs to be launched soon: Minister

KABUL, Nov 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Ministry of Energy and Water is planning to launch a survey for the construction of 21 small and medium water reservoirs in nine provinces.

In this connection, the ministry inked a contract with an Indian enterprise, Technical Consultative Service Company. The survey will be completed at the cost of $2.3 million.

Minister for Energy and Water Mohammad Ismail Khan said the ministry would afford the cost of the survey work, which would be completed in 18 months. The survey will soon be launched in different districts of Kabul, Sar-i-Pul, Paktia, Herat, Ghazni, Kapisa, Daikundi, Paktika and Baghlan provinces.

The Indian company would provide detailed report to the ministry about the level, site and size of the proposed water reservoirs and their capacity after completion of the survey, he added.

The minister said the project would bring a landmark change in the country. "Survey of the 21 dams is a massive project being conducted in Afghanistan for the first time."

President of the Indian Company PK Chattarjee said they would conduct the survey in coordination with US and Afghan companies. He did not conceded more details about the companies and the type of cooperation.

Ministry signs MoU on IT facility

Pajhwok 11/07/2006 By Mustafa Basharat - KABUL - The Ministry of Finance on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Iran for provision of Internet and networking facility in the ministry.

Under the proposed arrangements, different offices and sections of the ministry would be connected through a networking system to get rid of the unnecessary paper-work.  

The MoU was signed by Deputy Finance Minister Abdul Razzaq Samadi and head of the Iranian delegation Hussain Tahbaz Tawakuli, said the ministry's spokesman Aziz Shams.

The Iranian delegation, which is visiting Afghanistan, comprises officials from the ministries of Finance and Economy of that country. Finance Ministry will be the first to get networking facility.  

Besides providing the networking arrangement, Iran will also train the ministry's staff on use of the facility. An estimated amount of $0.5 million will be spent on the project.

Shams said the new system would replace the traditional way of letter writing and despatch and would made communication easy among different offices and departments of the ministry.

Literacy cuts hit Afghan women

By David Loyn - BBC News, Kandahar Tuesday, 7 November 2006

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to cut almost all non-emergency aid to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. The cuts come as they struggle to cope with the emergency needs of almost 100,000 people displaced in recent fighting.

Women's literacy programmes, where women received food in return for attending classes, are being hit hardest. Many of the women who have been attending the classes are widows.

One, whose husband was killed when the Americans bombed Kandahar in 2001, said that the lessons had made a huge difference to her life.

Another, whose husband was the victim of a suicide bomber, appealed for the aid to be restored. "For two months now we have not been given any aid here. We have problems living, and that aid really matters."

Women's education, in this deeply conservative society, could be a vital development tool. In traditional pashtoon society, the identity of women is completely subservient to men.

But this could change. Any joined-up international approach to tackling Afghanistan's security problems, should see this kind of clever development as a vital component.

And there are leading Afghan Muslims who support the rights of women to be properly educated.

"If we have educated women in society, I think it will bring an 80-90% solution to the problems of society," a Sufi cleric, Haji Musa Kaleem Agha, said.

But the Taleban, who have growing influence again, are opposed to almost all forms of women's education, and there is very strict security for the schools.

All of the women need to be searched for bombs or concealed weapons before they are allowed into class. They travel together for protection, happy enough when they arrive to discard the shapeless blue burqas that cover them completely in the streets.

While their children are taught in a separate class downstairs, the women, of all ages, learn how to read and write, as well as learning a skill such as sewing, so that they can earn money and support themselves.

For those women who are married, and who have been able to persuade their husbands to let them attend the classes, the promise of a bag of food in return was a useful inducement.

The head of one of the schools, Parizad Sadada, said that the failure to deliver food aid is a breach of promise by the international community.

"The people who need this help are widows and poor people. Why should they be denied their rights? This aid is not coming out of somebody's personal pocket.

"The World Food Programme and big countries give aid to the people of Afghanistan. So why is the aid not reaching the women now?"

But despite the need, there has been a shortfall in funding for WFP programmes this year. Only around 30% of requirements have been fulfilled.

There have been problems bringing aid in safely amid a worsening security situation in the south, and local partners, who are essential for the delivery of aid, are becoming increasingly worried.

The threats are real. The most prominent advocate of women's rights in the south of Afghanistan, Safia Ana-Jan, was shot dead outside her home in Kandahar on 24 September.

Abdul Baqi Topal, the director of the Kandahar literacy programme, said he set it up in the teeth of strong opposition. "We are in fear for our lives doing this work," he said.

But five years after the fall of the Taleban government, the failure of the international community to make aid work is now having real consequences.

Afghanistan 'to spray poppy crop'

By Najiba Laima BBC Pashto/Persian service

The Afghan government has for the first time accepted that aerial chemical spraying could be considered to curb the cultivation of opium poppies.

Poppy production across Afghanistan has increased by 60% since 2005.

A spokesman for the anti-narcotics ministry told the BBC that spraying could be used to free Afghanistan from its "biggest enemy", opium.

The government has resisted aerial spraying, but the spokesman said it was now being considered as a last resort.

Local people in the southern Helmand province, which cultivates more than a quarter of Afghanistan's poppies, claim there has already been clandestine spraying which reduced the province's poppy yield by more that half last year.

They say the spraying also badly affected other crops and that some people complained of skin conditions.

New plans

President Hamid Karzai has declared jihad, or war, against drugs, arguing they are destroying his country and its future prospects.

However, a leading member of the Afghan parliament, Daud Sultanzoy, has told the BBC that he will fight the aerial spraying.

He said Afghanistan should not become a test ground for western chemicals companies.

The latest announcement is part of a new initiative to curb poppy cultivation to be implemented in the 11 provinces where it is most rife.

Critics of the new strategy say that if it leads to farmers destroying their poppy fields, the government must at the same time move more quickly to provide them with alternative crops and livelihoods.

Khalilzad to leave Iraq

The Independent, UK 11/06/2006 - Arbil, northern Iraq - Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy in Baghdad who tried to conciliate the Sunni people, is to leave his post in the next few months said a senior member of the US administration.

"Khalilzad really failed because greater Sunni political participation has not reduced the violence and has at the same time angered the Shia," said a senior Kurdish political figure.

Appointed ambassador to Iraq in April 2005 Mr Khalilzad played a highly active role in Iraqi politics but the crisis has worsened dramatically during his tenure.

The Afghan-born Mr Khalilzad was more effective than his predecessors in cultivating Iraqi political leaders. He sought to amend the Iraqi constitution before it was approved in a referendum in October so it would be more acceptable to the Sunni community that largely supports armed resistance to the US occupation. Mr Khalilzad also played a central role in getting rid of the prime minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari only to find that his successor Nouri al-Maliki was more resistant to US demands.
Mr Khalilzad was skilful in cultivating good personal relations with Iraqi politicians but often found they did not have the power to deliver what he wanted.

His critics say he did not appreciate that Iraq is very different from Afghanistan where he was US envoy.

While willing to open talks with some Sunni insurgent groups Mr Khalilzad found the most powerful ones wanted to expel the US, not negotiate.

Mr Khalilzad is likely to stay into the spring the US official said. His likely successor will be Ryan Crocker, a senior career diplomat who is currently US ambassador to Pakistan.

In Baghdad, the chief prosecutor said the Iraqi appeals court is expected to rule on the guilty verdict on Saddam Hussein by mid-January. If affirmed he could be hanged within 30 days.

[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.]