In this bulletin:

• West 'will fail' without Pakistan
• Musharraf: An Accuracy Test
• Pak-Afghan security clash over check post
• Bin Laden not in Afghanistan, Afghan leader says
• Loya Jirga plan reshapes Afghan chessboard
• US helping Pak to strengthen hold in areas bordering Afghanistan
• Karzai over optimistic
• Machiavellian Musharraf leaves British troops in the lurch
• Musharraf should save his fire for the Taliban
• Fear stalks the streets of Kabul
• 300 militants killed in Operation Mountain Fury in Afghanistan
• Pakistan 'role in Mumbai attacks'
• Whose Side is Pakistan On?
• Warlike Pakistan area quiet since pact
• Bush can't afford to let Afghanistan woes worsen
• American who served time for running private jail in Afghanistan leaves country
• Defense Ministry Admits German Planes in Action in Afghanistan

West 'will fail' without Pakistan

BBC News Saturday, 30 September 2006

Pakistan's president has warned the West would be "brought to its knees" without his country's co-operation in the so-called war on terror. "If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," said President Pervez Musharraf in a BBC Radio 4 interview.

He said the Taleban, not al-Qaeda, was now the focus of the struggle against militancy in the region. "The greatest danger today is if the Taleban movement gets converted into a people's movement," he warned.

Earlier this week Tony Blair assured Gen Musharraf a leaked paper condemning Pakistan's intelligence service did not reflect his government's view.

In the leaked report, a naval commander at the Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed Pakistan's intelligence service, ISI, had indirectly helped the Taleban and al-Qaeda.

In the BBC interview Mr Musharraf rejected these claims and said ISI's support was vital. "You'll be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn't co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you won't manage anything," he said. Let that be clear. And if ISI is not with you, you will fail."

'Historic debt' - He also claims the US and Britain had a historic debt to pay as Pakistan had helped "win the Cold War" for the West. He argued that the West's strategy in Afghanistan towards the end of the Cold War helped to create the conditions which led to al-Qaeda's rise.

President Musharraf said mujahideen fighters went into the area from all over the world and the West armed and trained the Taleban. He said Pakistan was then left "high and dry".

His comments develop arguments he has made over the past few days at meetings with US President George W Bush and Tony Blair and a speech given in Oxford.

Gen Musharraf said the Pakistani government's aim in the country's tribal border areas was to "wean the people away" from supporting the Taleban, pointing out that while al-Qaeda was mainly comprised of "foreigners", the Taleban's support was more locally based.

He denied the suggestion that the tribal elders with whom the government has forged a recent agreement are a front for the Taleban. He said the tribal elders were the "only way" to establish support from the local population: "The army cannot get them on our side".

'Disappearances 'denied - Gen Musharraf also strongly denied allegations by the human rights organisation Amnesty International that some alleged terror suspects had vanished without trace.

"I don't want even to reply to that, it is a nonsense, I don't believe it, I don't trust it," he said. Gen Musharraf said the authorities had detained some 700 people, but all of them were accounted for.

Of the leaked MoD paper, British defence officials claimed it was written by a junior official, was unfinished and had not been seen by anyone who actually makes government policy.

After two hours of talks on Thursday Downing Street said Gen Musharraf had accepted Mr Blair's reassurances.

Musharraf: An Accuracy Test

The New York Times By DAVID ROHDE

PRESIDENT PERVEZ MUSHARRAF of Pakistan was in Washington, New York, and on TV screens across the United States last week to promote his country’s efforts to counter Al Qaeda, but that was not all. He was also promoting his new autobiography “In the Line of Fire: A Memoir.”

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York Tuesday, the general repeatedly made statements that his critics, and some experts, questioned. Here are some of his remarks as transcribed by the Federal News Service, with responses from United Nations, Pakistani and United States officials.

ECONOMIC GROWTH - “Today, our G.D.P. growth over the last four years is 7 percent. Our per capita income has more than doubled. Our G.D.P. has doubled.”

Kaiser Bengali, a Pakistani economist, says doubling Pakistan’s per capita income and G.D.P. would require a higher growth rate than 7 percent or more time than four years.

PAKISTAN’S TRIBAL AREAS - “Now, there is no change in the ground military situation — not one soldier has moved out. We are in position.”

Pakistani officials say that under a deal with tribal leaders, Pakistani forces have withdrawn to their barracks and tribal militias now patrol the border area, where American officials believe Taliban members cross into and out of Afghanistan.

WHO RULES AFGHANISTAN - “Fifty to 60 percent of Afghanistan is Pashtun. Tajik — total percentage of Tajiks — is 5 percent.” A member of the audience states the percentage is higher. “So, O.K., this will be about 7 or 8 percent, 9 percent. O.K.”

General Musharraf was making a case that ethnic Pashtuns, a group that has been the Taliban’s base of support in the past, are under-represented in the Afghan government, and that ethnic Tajiks from the country’s north — including Panjsheris from the Panjshir Valley — hold too many positions. Pakistan has generally supported Afghanistan’s Pashtuns. India has generally supported its Tajiks and Panjsheris.

The State Department says Pashtuns make up from 38 to 44 percent of Afghanistan’s population, and Tajiks make up 25 percent. Half of the government ministers, including President Hamid Karzai, are Pashtuns, say American experts.

AFGHAN SECURITY FORCES - “In the ministry of interior and intelligence — if 50 percent people are Panjsheri, how will the Pashtun, the 50 percent population of Afghanistan, be feeling about it?”

American officials have led the training of the army, intelligence service and police, and see ethnical balance. The army is 49 percent Pashtun, 21 percent Tajik, a 2005 Congressional report said.

Pak-Afghan security clash over check post

PNS 10/01/2006

KABUL - Pakistani and Afghanistan border security forces clashed the other night over a checkpost in Arya district on Pak-Afghan border the other night.

Security commander of Paktia Province, Gen. Matiullah Rehmani told Bakhtar news agency that the establishment of the post led to clash between Pakistani militia and the border security forces that lasted half an hour.

After the clash, a delegation of the tribal leaders was sent to the area to probe into the incident and report to the authorities concerned.

Bin Laden not in Afghanistan, Afghan leader says

Sat Sep 30 KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai insisted that Osama bin Laden is not in his country, in the latest installment in a row with the leader of Pakistan who says the Al-Qaeda chief is in Afghanistan.

Other militant leaders including Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were also not in the country, Karzai told reporters in a briefing about his visit to the United States that was overshadowed by the spat.

"I can assure you they are not in Afghanistan," Karzai said after being asked for his reaction to comments by Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf who said Thursday that bin Laden was here.

Asked if he meant the militant leaders were in Pakistan, Karzai responded: "I can only tell you that those you mentioned, their names are not in Afghanistan."

A tit-for-tat row between Karzai and Musharraf about the reasons for a deepening insurgency was a key feature of the leaders' visit to the United States last week.

Afghanistan says Pakistan must do more to stop militants on its soil who are involved in the insurgency while Musharraf insists much of the violence is homegrown.

US President George W. Bush urged the leaders Wednesday to end their war of words and unite, with US help, against the common threat of Islamist "extremists".

Loya Jirga plan reshapes Afghan chessboard

The News International (Pakistan) September 30, 2006 By Shaheen Sehbai

WASHINGTON: The Bush-Musharraf-Karzai summit decision to convene Loya Jirgas in Pakistan and Afghanistan is being viewed here in Washington as a smart move which allows all the parties, even the Taliban, to take advantage from a rapidly deteriorating situation.

But most of the analysts and experts believe General Musharraf has succeeded in convincing Bush and Karzai to accept his strategic plan of mobilising and motivating the “Non-Taliban” Pakhtuns on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border, something which he did in Waziristan through the famous though widely criticised deal with the tribal chiefs.

Former ambassador Dennis Kux, an expert on Afghanistan and South Asia, told The News that the Loya Jirga plan was basically a good idea but the results would have to be seen as many hurdles will have to be crossed to make it a success.

The well known think tank, Strategic Forecast Group, or Stratfor, in an analysis of the plan said on Friday each party, including Washington, sees its own interest potentially being served by the plan.

“The Bush administration is aware of the major surge in Taliban activity this year and knows that a military solution alone will not be enough to stem it. For Karzai, his position is so precarious that he is willing to pursue any course of action that can help in dealing with the Taliban,” Stratfor said.

But Stratfor said it was Musharraf who would derive multiple benefits from the Jirga plan. “First and foremost, it allows him to minimise the extent of US military operations in Pakistan’s northwestern regions. Second, it could allow Islamabad to insert itself into the political process in Kabul. Third, it provides the Pakistani government the means to try to regain control over the country’s restive tribal belt, where it has been losing ground since the Pakistani military began counterterrorism operations there under pressure from Washington.”

The Stratfor analysts believe Musharraf was able to sell both Karzai and Bush on the idea of engaging the tribal leaders. “Both Musharraf and Karzai are trying to revive the traditional and political power base in Pakhtun areas on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. Both Kabul and Islamabad see this as the only way to undercut the Jihadists. This process entails empowering the tribal elders who, along with the appointed local political officials, have lost power since the resurgence of the Taliban. The hope is that the convening of the tribal Jirgas in both countries will jump-start this process.”

But there is a note of caution in the Stratfor analysis as well. “It is quite possible, however, that these gatherings will have the opposite effect. Tribal Jirgas have been held in both countries before without producing the desired results. The Afghan Constitution was chartered as a result of a Loya Jirga, but it has not created security and political stability there.

“Similarly in Pakistan,” it says, “such gatherings have been held since the problems began in South Waziristan in early 2004; they produced agreements that collapsed within a couple of months. In fact, militants in North Waziristan continue to violate the recent truce, and have killed half a dozen individuals since it was signed on Sept. 5. And this is supposed to be the model Musharraf has sold to both Bush and Karzai.”

The most interesting point in the Stratfor analysis is how the Taliban will take advantage of these Jirgas. “What is more, the Taliban both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s tribal badlands have gained influence among tribal elders through manipulation and intimidation. This will allow them to shape the Loya Jirga process to their advantage. After the councils break up, Karzai and Musharraf may find they have little to show for their work.”

US helping Pak to strengthen hold in areas bordering Afghanistan - PTI

Washington - To bolster the fight against terror, US President George W Bush has said his country was helping Pakistan to have stronger control on Afghan border and giving it high-tech equipment to stop terrorists from crossing over.

He said al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other terrorists "are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear-- no matter how long its takes, we will find you, and we're going to bring you to justice".

President Pervez Musharraf's decision to "fight terrorists was made at great personal risk. They have tried to kill him as a result of his decision, because they know he has chosen to side with the forces of peace and moderation, and that he stands in the way of their hateful vision for his country," he told the Reserve Officers Association here yesterday.

Bush said Pakistan President has made a major impact in the war against terrorism and "as we work with Musharraf to bring security to his country, we're also supporting him as he takes steps to build a modern and moderate nation, that will hold free and fair elections next year".

Spelling out how the US was helping Musharraf in tackling terrorists crossing Pak-Afghan border, he said "we are providing high-tech equipment to help Pakistani forces better locate terrorists attempting to cross the border.

"We are funding an air wing with helicopters and fixed- wing aircraft to give Pakistan better security and surveillance capabilities," he said.

Karzai over optimistic - United Press International By Jacob Russell

Washington - Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, handpicked by Bush in December 2001, painted an optimistic picture of Afghanistan in five years in a speech at a Washington think tank, raising the eyebrows of several critics.

Karzai, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the way forward is to remove the need for groups, organizations, and all state entities relying on religious radicalism as instruments of policy.

"He was even induced to give Bush political support on Iraq," said Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute who was just in Pakistan earlier in the week.

"Has the exercise of the use of radicalism as instruments of policy ended by intervention in Afghanistan? Or is that exercise still continuing? I would tell you it is still continuing," he said.

Karzai urged a more effective fight against terrorism. "We as societies and those who act on our behalf -- the governments -- must make sure that no entity in that part of the world relies on radicalism as an instrument of policy," he said. "In order for us to be safe, we must bring ourselves to an end of this reign and if we do not, we will continue to suffer."

When questioned about the dominating presence of warlords and Taliban groups in Afghanistan, Karzai said that there were no warlords in control of any town, and that that was the case four years ago.

According to Karzai, Afghanistan has now established governors and district chiefs appointed by his signature in those places. He admitted that some of those district chiefs were bad, but he assured the committee that he can remove them and replace them at any time.

The truth, according to Weinbaum, is that the warlord problem is still very much alive. President Karzai has had to make appointments of local authority figures who are, in Weinbaum's words, "basically warlords," because the central government doesn't have the strength to exert its authority. Some of these "warlords" aren't bad, Weinbaum said.

"Marvin's right," Dr. Larry P. Goodson, professor of Middle East Studies and the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security, said. "Ethnic Afghans might say, 'Why do you always call them warlords? They're ethnic community leaders.' Yeah, you could call them that, but they are also warlords. They get their power from having control over armed men."

He added, "Karzai is not entirely incorrect." What Karzai can do, he explained, and what he has been successful doing, is to move warlords around to disconnect them from their sources of income.

"Karzai has tried to push a technocratic cabinet to put highly qualified people in places while keeping the warlords on the sideline," Goodson said. "The warlords, however, have a lot of local support, so there's a tension between Karzai with a Westernized background returning to Afghanistan and the warlords who have blood on their hands but can legitimately say they've been there all along."

Karzai wants to replace the warlords with highly educated and skilled politicians who have made their place in the United States, Goodson said. The locals perceive these officials as carpetbaggers. "That's a very loaded term," he added, "but I am using it purposely."

Presently, the central government is turning to the local militia to work as a police force in order to arrest the momentum that Taliban has had, Weinbaum said. This further displays Afghan dependence on a militia that they claim is authorized and not under control.

President Karzai made the situation in Afghanistan sound optimistic. According to him, the real problem was four years ago with warlords, but it is now under control. "We've disarmed thousands of people," he said.

"He's putting the best face on it," Goodson said. The disarming of thousands, according to Weinbaum, mostly took place in the north -- outside of the areas that were most contentious. All of the big warlords were disarmed, he said, but not the tens of thousands of militia "sub-commanders" who have the greatest influence over these towns.

Instead, they are rearming these militias they were once so anxious to get rid of. "It's a problem," Goodson said. "It's sort of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation. If you don't turn to warlords, then you don't have the ground strength to push back the Taliban, but if you do, then you undermine the whole success of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration."

The problem is very serious and unfortunate. The continuation of trouble in Afghanistan will increase Afghan taxes, the cross-war activities, the loss of foot-war soldiers, the loss of women and children, the burning of schools and the burning of mosques, according to President Karzai.

Machiavellian Musharraf leaves British troops in the lurch

Scotsman 10/01/2006 By Gerald Warner - Musharraf's background equips him for this chameleon career.

IN THE Line of Fire: that is the title President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has given his memoirs, which he is currently promoting, and its aptness is beyond dispute. Few political leaders today find themselves beleaguered by so many different factions and issues, the potentially tedious routine of government punctuated by serial assassination attempts.

He is a difficult subject to interpret. He has at various times been a declared supporter of the Taliban, a committed enthusiast for the war on terror, a militarist, a peacemaker, a defender of liberty and a dictator. If that sounds an incoherent career, just look at the chaotic situation in which he operates and much of it becomes self-explanatory.

Like all military rulers, Musharraf has, first and foremost, to placate the armed forces on which his power depends. He has also had to make (unkept) promises to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a coalition of Muslim, pro-Taliban parties. Then, in the broader perspective, he needs to keep the United States and its allies happy, playing the role of a zealous warrior against terror and jihad. It is a challenge at which an Italian Renaissance prince of the Machiavelli school might have balked.

Musharraf's background equips him for this chameleon career. He has good western cultural credentials, educated at St Patrick's High School, Karachi, which does not sound like a madrassah, and with a brother a Rhodes scholar. At the end of his military training his classmates rated him in their student yearbook: "Quite a guy to be with, especially when in a fix." Musharraf has seldom been out of a fix in recent years; but, as his contemporaries predicted, he has shown an extraordinary aptitude for coping.

Since he seized power in the coup d'état of October 12, 1999, Musharraf has executed a dramatic U-turn, away from the Taliban, which his government formerly cultivated, to support the United States after September 11, 2001. The turning point came in a keynote speech in January 2002, denouncing terrorism. Yet relations between the West and Pakistan are far from satisfactory. Some responsibility lies with western narcissism - our inability to see other people's problems and priorities.

In the first place, Musharraf is more interested in Kashmir than in Afghanistan. It is Kashmir that chronically threatens war with India. Then there is the question of Musharraf's status as a dictator, albeit with a post-facto fig-leaf of electoral endorsement. Western griping about restoring democracy is kamikaze behaviour, like Jimmy Carter's grandstanding destabilisation of the Shah in Iran, with consequences we are enduring to this day. If Musharraf goes, he could be succeeded by Islamic hardliners and, let us recall, Pakistan is a nuclear power. This is surely a case of "Hold very tightly on to Nurse...".

The Pakistani president's visits to Washington and London last week were a setback to co-operation rather than a consolidation of relations. The first distraction was his hyping of his memoirs, which confirmed what American intelligence analysts must already have known, but not the general public, about Pakistan's role in facilitating North Korea's nuclear programme.

Musharraf has revealed he believes the technology exported to North Korea by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the maverick Pakistani nuclear engineer, included the P-2 centrifuge which would enable the régime of Kim Jong-Il to enrich more uranium at a faster rate than the more primitive first-generation P-1 centrifuge that was assumed to have been supplied. That puts further pressure on Washington in its confrontation with Pyongyang.

When Musharraf moved on to Britain, his visit was overshadowed by the row over a leaked document from an agency sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, which alleged that Pakistan's intelligence service, at least indirectly, "has been supporting terrorism and extremism, whether in London on 7/7 or in Afghanistan or Iraq". Musharraf was reportedly furious at this claim and the British government duly grovelled.

Musharraf's outrage should impress no one. How does he know whether the analysis is accurate or not? Dictators notoriously do not know what their labyrinthine intelligence apparatuses are doing (cf Stalin/Beria, Hitler/Canaris). Only in early 2002 did Pakistan even nominally detach itself from its Islamist allies. Is it credible that there would not be significant pockets of sympathisers with the Taliban and al-Qaeda remaining within its intelligence agencies?

The real damage done by this leaked document was to put Britain on the defensive during the president's visit, when our priority should have been to ask him, in the most uncompromising manner, what exactly he thinks he is playing at in Waziristan.

Earlier this month he signed a peace accord, supposedly with the Utmanzai tribesmen of the North Waziristan Agency, bordering on Afghanistan, but in reality with the Taliban. The Pakistani army has had more than 500 troops killed in fighting with the Taliban and this treaty was an acknowledgement of defeat.

Pakistani troops are withdrawing; 165 militants have been released; foreign fighters are permitted to remain in Waziristan, on the flimsy pretence they will refrain from incursions into Afghanistan; and attacks on allied forces inside Afghanistan have increased threefold since this de facto surrender. Some of those troops are British - committed to a lost cause and much more endangered due to Musharraf's deal. The Taliban and al-Qaeda now effectively have an independent client state from which to operate: welcome to Talibanistan.

President Musharraf needs to be told he is a valued ally, so long as he pulls his weight, within reason and taking account of the domestic difficulties he faces; but to increase significantly the pressure on our forces, in order to return his own troops to barracks, is a capitulation too far.

Musharraf should save his fire for the Taliban

The Globe and Mail - September 30, 2006

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf grossly understated Canada's losses in Afghanistan when he said in a CBC interview: "You suffer two dead, and there's a cry and shout all around the base that there are coffins." In fact, yesterday, the 37th Canadian military death was confirmed. But General Musharraf was addressing a larger truth, albeit with the characteristic bluntness of a military commander, when he said that countries that send their soldiers to war must expect losses. If "you're not prepared to suffer casualties as an army, then don't participate in any operation." The problem is not so much what he said, as why he said it.

The president has come under heavy criticism for his less than wholehearted support of the war against the Taliban. He has said his country was threatened with being bombed back to the Stone Age if he didn't become an ally in the war on terror, and that he did so only after he tested in a war game what would happen if he chose to oppose the United States, which had to go through Pakistan, either by air or land, to get at the Taliban. His unsurprising conclusion? That U.S. military might would have destroyed his fighting forces, wiped out his nuclear deterrent and devastated his nation.

There are complex political reasons for Gen. Musharraf's role as the reluctant ally. Although he dropped his support of the Taliban regime after 9/11 and threw in his lot with the West, he has had to walk a careful tightrope at home, balancing Pakistan's international interests with a host of domestic pressures. The moderate needs the support of hard-line Islamic political parties and he cannot afford to alienate key military and intelligence officers by seeming to pander to Washington.

Consequently, his revelations about heavy-handed U.S. threats can only serve to help Gen. Musharraf domestically. The message to his countrymen is that he was compelled to support the West. And it had the added benefit of bringing Pakistan billions of dollars in economic and military aid. Whether his claims are true or not -- Washington has denied making any threats -- is beside the point.

He has made it clear during his current tour to shill his new memoir, In The Line of Fire, that he is a reluctant ally in the war on terror. This fact is underlined by his military's poor record in rooting out insurgents who have taken sanctuary inside Pakistan, his political alliance with fiercely nationalist Muslim groups (which he regards as essential to victory when he puts his rule to the test in next year's planned presidential election), the refusal to reform harsh Islamic laws that degrade women and the inability -- or lack of desire -- to shut down the madrassas, the radical religious schools where firebrand teachers preach a message of extremism, hatred and intolerance to impressionable young minds.

For those determined to win the war on terror, this ambivalence is not just unhelpful, but dangerous. Recently, Gen. Musharraf reached a deal with tribal leaders to end hostilities in the lawless region of North Waziristan, where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters coming across the border from neighbouring Afghanistan have long fled to safety. Islamabad says the truce does not apply to al-Qaeda and that the tribesmen have promised to stop joining in attacks on Afghan and NATO troops. It is a worthless promise.

The Bush administration has made much of the fact that Pakistan's security forces have handed over close to 700 people suspected of ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, including the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Now, in his memoir, Gen. Musharraf explains why: His government was paid millions of dollars in bounties. We realize that the general must walk a careful line at home, but this all does raise the question: Is this person of expediency really someone who should be lecturing Canadians on the meaning of sacrifice?

Fear stalks the streets of Kabul

BBC News / Saturday, 30 September 2006

Violence has been escalating in Afghanistan's capital Kabul over recent months. After a suicide bomber killed at least 12 people outside the interior ministry, residents of the city describe how the bloodshed has injected fear into daily life.

MUSTHAQ HABIBI, 22, CONSTRUCTION TRADER

It was about 8am when I heard the bomb. I was some distance away and drove to the scene of the explosion.

It happened on a really busy street. By then the police had covered the area and wouldn't let us go close, but I did see that people were in a bad condition.

Blood was spattered on the streets. I saw the wreckage of a car. I've never experienced such a horrible incident. There is a school very nearby. I heard that children were injured.

When I got there, police were sweeping the blood from the street. When I saw that happening, I thought: "Is this our future now?"

One witness told me that the suicide bomber wanted to enter inside the building but the police didn't let him. When the police got suspicious, he abruptly detonated the bomb.

Kabul doesn't feel safe anymore. Terrorist activities have been increased. It's not just me, lots of people feel more at risk.

AJMAL WALIYER, BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT, 24

What happened in Kabul today is utterly wrong. I have lived here since 2002. We lived in Pakistan during the Taleban years.

When we saw Kabul for the first time after the war, we had great hope that never again would war return to the streets of Kabul, there would be no bomb explosions.

Until last year, we felt this was a happy city, we thought the country was developing for the good. Our neighbours returned as well.

But once again, attacks are happening here. Any hope that the country would improve has gone.

I don't feel safe personally, I am always watching out. The atmosphere is bad because every time we go out from our homes, we are scared of bombs.

I feel there is little hope for the Afghan people. War is coming back. Life has been turned upside down.

WAHEEDULLAH POPALZAI, GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE, 27

I think today is the worst day of my life. I work for one of the government ministries and friends and colleagues from the bombed interior ministry came to our offices after the explosion.

They told us that many people have been killed and many more injured. We are very shocked. These were just people going about their daily duties.

People on the streets feel quite insecure. There has been a big rise in this kind of attack. The citizens of Kabul are very worried.

My family lived in Pakistan for 20 years to escape the chaos in Afghanistan and we returned in 2002. We thought that was a good decision. But now, things have changed.

I know people are considering leaving again.

MUSTAFA KAZEM, 33, FINANCIER

We are very fearful that Kabul may dissolve further into a city of suicide bombings. We are afraid that it is going to become another Baghdad.

I have been affected by a bomb explosion in the last few months. A vehicle was bombed, it was a very powerful blast and people were killed. We felt the blast at home - it shook the walls.

Having it so close to where you live was scary. We saw the immediate aftermath of chaos and sadness.

This shakes that little bit of security that people have, where you feel you can go about your day and work. You try not to think about it, but something like that brings you back to reality.

I have watched the situation deteriorate here. Things are going in the wrong direction. Two years ago there was a lot of optimism and calm. I was very gung-ho about being here and making positive changes.

This violence makes me question my presence here. People are feeling discouraged.

The whole city is talking about this. Although life goes on, there is certainly a renewed sense of concern and nervousness.

MUHAMMAD KHAN, 30, NGO EMPLOYEE

I think people are really terrified. There is tight security all around and still the bombings continue. We are afraid to go to the office in the car. No-one knows when there will be a sudden bomb with many people killed.

The people of Afghanistan are suffering. They suffered when the Russians attacked, they suffered from internal warfare, they suffered under the Taleban.

Under the Taleban time, the people of Kabul were afraid to walk the streets, they were angry. Now, we are suffering again when all the world is here. And we still cannot walk the streets freely.

I have lived in Kabul for three years. When we first came, we were very excited to have our own government, prosperity, and construction. There was a lot of excitement and optimism. But that has all faded now.

300 militants killed in Operation Mountain Fury in Afghanistan - Xinhua

About 300 insurgents have been killed in Operation Mountain Fury in eastern and central Afghanistan, a coalition forces spokesman told Xinhua on Saturday.

"Yes, I can confirm that some 300 militants have been killed jointly by Afghan and the U.S.-led coalition forces in the operation," said Lt. Marcelo Calero.

He said the operation is ongoing, and that there is no timetable for ending yet. The joint forces would continue to fight anti-government militants and facilitate reconstruction in the region, he added.

About 7,000 coalition forces and Afghan troops and policemen launched Operation Mountain Fury on Sept. 16 to wipe out Taliban militants in Logar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces in eastern and central Afghanistan.

However, a purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi rejected the claiming, saying only 41 Taliban militants were killed in the past three months, according to local reports.

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of violence since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.

Over 2,400 persons, mostly Taliban rebels, have been killed in this Central Asian country in the past nine months.

Pakistan 'role in Mumbai attacks'

BBC News Saturday, 30 September 2006

Pakistan's intelligence agency was behind the train blasts in Mumbai in July that killed 186 people, Indian police say. The attacks were planned by the ISI and carried out by the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, based in Pakistan, Mumbai's police chief said.

AN Roy said the Students' Islamic Movement of India had also assisted. Pakistan rejected the allegations and said India had given no evidence of Pakistani involvement in the attacks.

"We have solved the 11 July bombings case. The whole attack was planned by Pakistan's ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba and their operatives in India," Mumbai (Bombay) police commissioner AN Roy told a news conference.

Tariq Azim Khan, Pakistan's minister of state for information, rejected the allegations. "We are still studying the Indian statement. Needless to say, this is once again baseless allegations - yet another attempt by India to malign Pakistan," he told the BBC.

"Both the president and the prime minister condemned this terrorist attack on the train when it happened. But India also must look at home for reasons for this growing insurgency at home," he said.

On 11 July 2006, seven co-ordinated blasts within 15 minutes ripped through trains on Mumbai's busy commuter network. Mr Roy said 15 people had been arrested, and that some of the bombers had received training in Pakistan.

He said the bombs were made using a total of 15-20kg of an explosive called RDX, which was smuggled into the country and packed into seven pressure cookers.

Timers were attached to the bombs, which were put into bags and concealed using newspapers and umbrellas, he said. He said 11 Pakistanis were involved in the operation, and had crossed into India in small groups from Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh.

Seven teams, each made up of one Indian and one Pakistani militant, transported the bombs by taxi before placing them on the trains, Mr Roy said.

Indian security officials suggested early on in their investigations that the bombings bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Toiba, a leading militant group fighting in Kashmir and based in Pakistan.

But Pakistan denied any involvement in the blasts and Lashkar-e-Toiba condemned the attacks.

India postponed talks with Pakistan after the bombings, but Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met recently in Cuba and said they had agreed to resume talks.

The two nations, both nuclear armed, have fought three wars since independence, two over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Whose Side is Pakistan On?

The Sunday Times - Christina Lamb

So President Pervez Musharraf is military dictator turned tease, making us wait for his book launch in New York today for more details of the Bush administration's crudely worded threat against Pakistan if it did not support the war on terror.

"Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age," was the graphic warning from deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, though admittedly it came one day after September 11. Armitage has disputed the wording but the fact that such a threat had to be made raises the question of whose side Pakistan is really on.

Pakistan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieutenant General Ehsan-ul-Haq, was in London last week talking about how no other nation has suffered so much in the service of the war on terror.

His forces deployed in the badlands that border Afghanistan have lost more than 500 soldiers - "more than the whole of the coalition combined". Musharraf himself has narrowly escaped three assassination attempts.

Pakistan's military intelligence, the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), last month helped foil the alleged Heathrow plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights and the six most senior al-Qa'ida officials to be caught so far, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11 attacks, were all arrested in Pakistan.

So far, so impressive. On the other hand, how come those al-Qa'ida leaders were living in Pakistan not in caves but in residential areas, even a military cantonment, in Khalid's case? American special forces searching for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are convinced the ISI tipped off Zawahiri on two occasions when they got near.

Yesterday, Pakistani officials reiterated they were still hunting bin Laden, and rejected French media reports that the al-Qa'ida leader had died from typhoid.

A senior security official said it was "inconceivable that an event of this nature would remain unnoticed in Pakistan where we are constantly on the al-Qa'ida hunt".

But why do most would-be suicide bombers regard Pakistan as a finishing school?

And while military planners in Washington focus on Tehran's nuclear program, remember where the Iranians acquired their uranium-enrichment capability.

In 2003, I spent a week with US troops in Afghanistan at a godforsaken firebase called Shkin on the border with Pakistan. Every day, fighters would come and take potshots at the Americans then run back across the invisible border. The soldiers could do nothing because Pakistan refused to allow hot pursuit.

For those of us who have followed Pakistan for some time, it's a familiar story. Remember General Zia ul-Haq, who seized power in 1977? He, like Musharraf, spent two years as an international pariah. When the Soviet army crossed the Oxus into Afghanistan in 1979, he suddenly became the West's most crucial ally.

Because US support to the Afghans was a covert operation, it was channelled through the ISI. But what the West ignored then, and again after September 11, was that the ISI had its own agenda.

It was the ISI's idea in the mid-1980s to ship in young Arabs, including bin Laden, and train them to fight. When the Russians left, and the West overnight abandoned Afghanistan (and slashed aid to Pakistan), the ISI supported the creation of the Taliban.

After September 11, Musharraf had little option but to join the war on terror. Even if the Pakistani leader was genuinely committed, the ISI saw no reason to stop supporting those same Afghans they had been helping for more than two decades.

So whenever Musharraf has come under pressure from Washington, he has banned jihadi groups and watched them reform under new names. Or he has agreed to regulate madrasahs, the Islamist schools, then done nothing. In almost five years since the fall of the Taliban in Kabul, not a single Taliban leader or commander has been arrested in Pakistan. Yet they operate openly from there, particularly around the town of Quetta, long known as Taliban Central.

"Is Pakistan playing a malevolent role by supplying training?" asked a diplomat involved in drawing up British Afghan policy. "Well, we haven't found a smoking gun. It seems Musharraf is guilty of the sin of omission."

Whether Islamabad is simply turning a blind eye to training and recruitment inside its own borders or actively involved, the West's failure to see Pakistan as the real battleground of the war on terror is one of the reasons the Taliban have re-emerged as such a threat.

For obvious reasons, most leaders wait till they are no longer in office to release their memoirs. Musharraf's choice of title is intriguing. In the Line of Fire was a Hollywood movie starring Clint Eastwood as a veteran secret service agent haunted by his failure many years earlier to save President John F.Kennedy from assassination.

Is the general trying to tell us something?

Warlike Pakistan area quiet since pact

But fighters have reportedly crossed into Afghanistan to aid insurgency there

Pamela Constable - Washington Post 9.29.06

Peshawar, Pakistan -- Three weeks after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, announced a peace pact with Taliban radicals in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, recent visitors say there is now pin-drop silence in a territory that once shook with artillery and bomb blasts, and that religious patrols are enforcing law and order in place of Pakistan army troops who have withdrawn to their barracks.

But as the toll of violence rises across the border, with suicide bombings killing 22 people in three Afghan cities this week, there are reports that militant Pakistani tribal leaders, while complying with their pledge to reduce the presence of foreign Islamic fighters, intend to defy the peace pact by sending more local Taliban supporters into Afghanistan to be insurgents and suicide bombers.

Musharraf continues to deny Afghan charges that the Pakistani government is sheltering and encouraging the revived Taliban insurgency from the tribal zones. But people interviewed in northwest Pakistan said there is widespread support in the tribal region for the Taliban movement's harsh Islamic morality and its war against U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

The tribal zones are a cluster of seven remote and rugged border districts where Pakistan's central government has never exerted more than nominal control. AK-47 assault rifles are common household possessions. Most of the people are Pashtun, the same ethnic group that dominates neighboring southern Afghanistan, and which gave rise to the Taliban movement in the 1990s. Many Pashtun don't recognize the Pakistan-Afghan border, crossing it at will in both directions.

Under terms of the Sept. 5 agreement, Musharraf pledged to withdraw troops who had been attacking armed Islamic groups in the tribal area. In return, the fighters are to stop attacks on both sides of the border and expel foreign fighters unless they take up a peaceful life.

But the traditional system of tribal self-governance has been weakened during three years of conflict with Pakistan troops. More than 200 tribal chiefs have reportedly been killed. It is not clear whether the Taliban leadership feels bound to any agreement made by local elders.

In a recent telephone interview with a Pakistani reporter, senior Taliban leader Dadullah Akhund said he had told local Taliban members to cease attacks in Pakistan but to continue their fight abroad against the U.S. military. He said he had 500 suicide bombers and 12,000 fighters at his disposal, and that by next spring the Taliban would have enough force to launch major attacks on Kabul, the Afghan capital.

The revived Taliban insurgency has already cut a swath of violence across Afghanistan. So far this year, more than 2,000 people have been reported killed -- civilians, insurgents and soldiers -- in clashes and bombings in numerous provinces. NATO forces are struggling to secure southern provinces where the fighting is focused.

Critics of the Waziristan peace pact on both sides of the border continue to condemn it as a farce. They described it as a major concession to the Islamic radicals by Musharraf after he failed to quell them by force, and a ruse to persuade the United States and European powers he is serious about stopping the Taliban while actually hoping to push the problem across the border into Afghanistan.

"This deal has handed over North Waziristan to the Taliban," said Afrasiab Khattak, a human rights activist and secular politician, in an interview in Peshawar, which is located in the so-called settled areas outside of the tribal region. He said a hierarchy of Taliban commanders has taken control of North Waziristan, collecting taxes and meting out rough justice.

"The war in Afghanistan is totally from this side," Khattak said. "It is a new round of jihad, and it is not going to remain inside the tribal enclaves."

U.S. officials have long believed that al Qaeda from various Muslim countries as well as renegade Taliban fighters had sought refuge in the tribal areas after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 that toppled the Taliban. In recent months, fighters of an Uzbek Muslim militia, expert in explosives and sabotage, have reportedly been operating in the area.

Bush can't afford to let Afghanistan woes worsen

Chicago Sun-Times editorial

It is likely Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf were not feted with tea and Twinkies when they dined with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday. Tea and Twinkies were on the menu when Musharraf visited Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" earlier in the week, but there were far fewer laughs at the White House when Karzai and Musharraf met face-to-face after publicly squabbling about the lack of security along the Afghan-Pakistan border. While Musharraf has denied his country is abetting Taliban fighters, reports suggest otherwise. It is believed Pakistani sympathizers are harboring al-Qaida leaders and supporting the Taliban by swapping weapons for drugs. Indeed, poppy cultivation has blossomed in Afghanistan -- a problem Karzai said he takes responsibility for. The United Nations estimates this year's opium yield has gone up 49 percent, and money gleaned from the drug-infused flowers goes into the warlords' pockets and then buys weapons for Taliban fighters.

It was believed, five years ago when the United States went into Afghanistan, that the Taliban -- who had ruled Afghanistan since the Soviets withdrew -- had been decimated. But like the poppy that grows so effortlessly in the harsh Afghan soil, they have grown in force and in determination to take back control of the country. The entire southern part of the country, near the Pakistan border, has been devastated by suicide bombers and roadside bombs.

The murder of an Afghan official who was working for women's rights was fanatical and repugnant. Safia Amajan was a religious woman and wore a burka when a Taliban gunman shot her four times with a pistol. The vicious killing recalled filmed scenes in a Kabul sports stadium when the Taliban were in power and a woman was brought into the middle of the field and shot in the head.

NATO forces, about 18,500 troops, are frustrated because their mission had been intended to help reconstruction, not fight the Taliban, and they rightly are asking for more troops. Many Afghans have lost faith in Karzai's government: Only one in 10 has electrical power at home.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday that the American government must pressure our allies who "have pledged troops and assistance" but have not followed through. Pakistan President Musharraf recently made a deal with tribal lords to leave jurisdiction of their lands to them in exchange for no militant incursions into Afghanistan. It isn't working. It is hoped President Bush communicated this to Musharraf and that he will turn his attention again to the continuing problem of Afghanistan's instability.

American who served time for running private jail in Afghanistan leaves country

By Associated Press Saturday, September 30, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - An American was released from an Afghan prison and flown out of the country Saturday after serving more than two years for running a private prison as part of a freelance hunt for terrorists, officials said.

Court documents filed Friday in Washington, D.C., show that U.S. officials planned to secure Brent Bennett a passport and a ticket out of the country, and an Associated Press reporter saw a man identified as Bennett board a plane for Dubai late Saturday.

It was not clear if Bennett, 29, was free or in the custody of U.S. officials. He was held in a private room at the airport and journalists were prevented from talking to him.

Bennett, former U.S. soldier Jack Keith Idema, and Edward Caraballo were arrested in July 2004 and convicted of running a private prison in Kabul after Afghan security forces raided a house and discovered eight Afghan men who said they had been abused. Idema told the AP by phone from his prison cell Saturday that there had never been any evidence the Afghans were abused.

Abdul Qayum, the commander of the Policharki prison where Bennett had been jailed, said the American was in good spirits when he left Saturday.

An Afghan airport official showed an AP reporter a copy of the passport of the man boarding the plane in the name of Brent L. Bennett. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Idema, who is serving a five-year sentence, also told the AP that Bennett was being flown out of the country on Saturday. He said Bennett had been forcibly removed from his cell earlier in the week during a night of violence at the prison that included a fire being set in a cell block and gunfire from guards.

No U.S. officials in Afghanistan would comment on Bennett’s case, and an American lawyer filing paperwork on his behalf said he didn’t know if Bennett was free or in U.S. custody. When Bennett boarded the plane he was not wearing any restraints.

“We don’t know if he was forcibly put on the plane or not because they probably knew people would be watching,” lawyer John Tiffany said by phone from the United States.

Edward P. Birsner, the consul at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said in Friday’s court filing that the “Embassy has no intentions of taking Mr. Bennett into custody.”

A spokesman for the embassy declined to comment on the case Saturday. Bennett’s mother, Debra Bennett, said she hadn’t heard from her son directly and didn’t know his plans, but that Tiffany had told her he had left Afghanistan.

“We’re trying to find out what’s going on,” said Debra Bennett of Fortuna, Calif., about 250 miles north of San Francisco. “We miss him so much.”

She said family members hadn’t spoken with Bennett since December and were excited to hear about his release. “We just want to see him back here in the United States,” she said.

Bennett had been sentenced to three years in prison. Caraballo, who has said he is a video journalist, was released in April.

Defense Ministry Admits German Planes in Action in Afghanistan

Deutsche Welle (Germany) September 30, 2006

A defense ministry source has revealed that German military aircraft are seeing action in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan. The report comes days after German help in the south was officially ruled out.

German military aircraft are supporting NATO operations in volatile southern Afghanistan, a defence ministry spokesman said Saturday, confirming a report to appear in Monday's edition of the weekly Der Spiegel.

The report came after Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung ruled out any possibility of transferring German troops from the north to help fight a dogged Taliban-led insurgency in the south.

Der Spiegel said German Transall transport aircraft and helicopters had made some 60 flights this year into the south, ferrying allied soldiers and evacuating wounded.

Secret mission a compromise in deployment discussions - The weekly said the operation, hitherto kept secret, was largely aimed at deflecting pressure on Berlin to switch forces to the south from the more peaceful north, where it has some 2,750 troops deployed.

The German parliament on Thursday agreed to extend the contingent's mission for another year, but Jung said it would be "totally wrong" to move troops from the north, where attacks had "almost doubled" in the past 12 months.

Also Thursday NATO agreed to expand its military operations into eastern Afghanistan, even as it struggles to find troops to hold the south.

The agreement, endorsed at a meeting of alliance defence ministers, would see some 12,000 US troops come under NATO control within Afghanistan's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) within weeks.

It would permit NATO's commanders to move US soldiers from the east down to the Taliban's southern heartland, where British, Dutch and Canadian troops have been locked in battle.

Violence increases threat of all-out war - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer both urged the allies to do more, amid a general reluctance to supply around 2,000 reinforcements called for by supreme commander US General James Jones.

But US officers in the east say attacks on their troops have increased two- to three-fold recently, and, according to one diplomat, Jones told the ministers that the threat in the west had "gone from medium to high."

More than 100 foreign soldiers have been killed in hostile action in Afghanistan this year, about half of them US troops, and Iraq-style suicide bombings have been on the rise.

Der Spiegel said Berlin had turned down a NATO request to deploy Tornado reconnaissance aircraft in Afghanistan.

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