In this bulletin:

• Italian journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan: reports
• Afghan violence kills 12, governor escapes assassination bid
• 16 Afghans sent from Guantanamo to Kabul
• Mujaddidi for action against 'corrupt officials'
• France to be first to see Afghanistan's rediscovered ancient treasures
• Pakistan border police arrest Afghan defence ministry official
• UK denies parallels in Afghanistan with Soviet invasion
• Afghanistan: ISAF warning offers chance to break destructive cycle
• Albanian commentator suggests new way of defeating Al-Qa'idah
• Governor escapes life attempt
• Police arrest Pakistani on charges of spying
• The Nation Magazine: Taliban Rising
• Who's Running Afghan Policy?
• India's Agenda in Afghanistan
• Musharraf and Afghanistan
• Military Censorship Hiding in Plain Sight
• Where the Rhetoric Doesn't Match the Reality
• CDC makes commitment to Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund
• Justice Ministry issues license to private company
• Afghanistan's Anti-Narcotics Strategy
• Afghan TV channel debates shortcomings in judiciary
• UNESCO approves new badge to be granted in Mowlana's honor

Italian journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan: reports - By Terry Friel

KABUL (Reuters) - Gunmen have kidnapped an Italian photojournalist in the lawless southern heartland of the Taliban, news reports and aid workers said on Saturday.

The abduction of Gabriele Torsello, not yet confirmed by Italian authorities in Rome or Kabul, came as two more NATO soldiers died in combat in the south in the bloodiest year since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001.

Torsello was seized by five gunmen on the highway from the capital of Helmand province to neighboring Kandahar province, the independent Pajhwok news agency quoted traveling companion Gholam Mohammad saying.

Pajhwok said its call to Torsello's mobile phone was answered by a man saying: "We are the Taliban and we have abducted the foreigner on charges of spying."

Attempts by Reuters to reach Torsello on his mobile failed. But a Taliban spokesman told Reuters the Islamist group was not involved in any abduction, blaming criminals instead.

An Italian online newspaper, PeaceReporter, which specializes in reports from conflict zones, said Torsello had confirmed by phone he had been kidnapped, but not by whom.

PeaceReporter said he had spoken briefly to the security chief at a hospital run by the Italian relief organization Emergency in the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah.

He said he did not know where he was being held. Torsello said he had been kidnapped on Thursday from a public bus, according to PeaceReporter.

Helmand and Kandahar are Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces and have been the scene of heavy fighting in the past few months between Taliban guerrillas and NATO forces.

The kidnapping comes a week after two German journalists were shot dead in the relatively safe north of Afghanistan on their way to Bamiyan, site of two famed giant Buddhas blown up by the Taliban in 2001.

Kidnappings, both for criminal and political reasons, are becoming increasingly common across Afghanistan.

NATO said in a statement two soldiers from its International Security Assistance Force were killed and three wounded in a clash with insurgents in Kandahar on Saturday. NATO would not give the nationalities of the dead.

Also on Saturday, a provincial government engineer was killed in an assassination attempt on the governor of Lagman province, just northeast of Kabul, the latest in a series of attacks targeting local leaders.

He was wounded in a bomb blast, followed by a gun battle, as the governor arrived for work, and died soon after. Insurgents have targeted local government leaders in a bid to destabilize regional areas. Last month, a suicide bomber killed the governor of southeastern Paktia province, an Australian citizen, in what is so far the only successful assassination.

Amid rising bloodshed, the Taliban released a video showing a large, well-armed group fighting unknown troops.

The video, obtained by Reuters on Friday from a source with Taliban links, shows the group's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, walking through mountains and firing a machine gun.

In one scene, several men identified as "spies" -- most of them clearly already dead -- are beheaded and their heads placed atop their prostrate bodies. In another, suicide bombers pledge to give their lives to drive the "infidels" from Afghanistan.

More than 2,500 people have died in fighting this year. The violence is a mix of rebellion, operations by government and foreign forces, tribal warfare and crime. The dead include about 150 foreign soldiers.

Afghan violence kills 12, governor escapes assassination bid

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) - An Afghan governor has escaped an assassination attempt that killed a colleague, while officials reported 11 more deaths in Taliban-linked violence around the troubled nation.

The NATO-led security force said it had arrested nine people suspected of involvement in a surge of unrest in the capital Kabul , which has seen six deadly suicide blasts and other attacks in the past few weeks.

The governor of the eastern Laghman province, which adjoins the capital province of Kabul , told AFP he was travelling to work on Saturday when his two-vehicle convoy hit a mine.

Unknown insurgents then opened fire on the stricken convoy, killing an administration official, governor Gulab Mangal said.
"A bomb struck under our front vehicle. Then we had some shots and our friend was hit. I was in the second vehicle," he said.

A Taliban spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, told reporters: "We planted the mine. We fired the gunshots." Laghman and other provinces close to the capital have seen increasing incidents related to the Taliban-led insurgency.

Three senior district officials were killed in a similar attack in the province of Nangarhar earlier in this week.

The governor of the eastern Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal, was assassinated in a Taliban-claimed suicide bombing last month, becoming the first governor to be killed since the extremists were toppled from government in 2001.

In another incident likely carried out by the Taliban or another Islamic group, police reported that a remote-controlled roadside bomb had killed six Afghan militiamen in Paktia Friday.

The men were part of a militia force hired by the US-led coalition to patrol volatile areas. Police in the southern province of Zabul announced meanwhile they had killed three Taliban in a gunfight Friday that repelled an attack on a police patrol.

Also in the south, a bomb struck a military vehicle in the Zhari district of Kandahar province. "Six soldiers were very lightly injured in a remote-controlled roadside bomb," the defence ministry said. Police and a provincial official said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

The blast came a day after a suicide car bomb claimed by the Taliban killed a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldier and eight Afghan civilians in Kandahar city Friday.

ISAF said Saturday its troops had shot dead an Afghan national as he approached a security cordon around the site of the suicide blast. The man had been acting in "an erratic and threatening manner" and had ignored warnings to stay away, a statement said.

"Suspecting a secondary suicide attack, ISAF soldiers opened fire to protect themselves and the local population in accordance with their permitted rules of engagement," it said.

ISAF troops killed another Afghan national near Kabul Friday during a raid in which nine "suspected insurgents" were captured.

"In the course of the operation, three local nationals were injured and one subsequently died of injuries sustained," it said. Some of those arrested were "thought to have been involved in recent attacks in Kabul ", it said.

ISAF said its soldiers were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades while on patrol late Friday in northeastern Kunduz province.

Two were wounded and in a stable condition, Flight Lieutenant Euan Downie said, without giving the nationality of the soldiers. Most of the ISAF troops in Kunduz are German.

ISAF includes around 31,000 troops from 37 countries trying to stabilize Afghanistan .

16 Afghans sent from Guantanamo to Kabul - Daily Times 14 October 2006

WASHINGTON: The US Department of Defence announced on Thursday that it has transferred 16 detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Afghanistan, and one detainee to Morocco following multiple review processes. The transfer still leaves about 110 detainees at Guantanamo who, the US government has determined, are eligible for transfer or release through a comprehensive series of review processes. Their repatriation or release is subject to ongoing discussions between the United States and other nations. ”The United States does not desire to hold detainees for any longer than necessary. The Department expects that there will continue to be other transfers and releases of detainees,” the announcement said. khalid hasan

Mujaddidi for action against 'corrupt officials'

Pajhwok 10/13/2006 By Najib Khelwatgar - KABUL - Speaker of the upper house of parliament and head of the national reconciliation commission Sibghatullah Mujaddidi has warned that he will quit his job unless President Hamid Karzai and the Attorney General pay heed to his advices in certain matters.

Mujaddidi was addressing a ceremony organised to handover the 16 Afghan prisoners to their families, who were released from the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Accusing the Attorney General Abdul Jabbar Sabit of dismissing honest and able officials, the elderly leader said the president should take action against the AG and corrupt officials.

"I will not attend my job from tomorrow unless Presidnet Karzai takes serious action against corrupt officials in the coming two months," Mujaddidi said.

The 16 people were released after found innocent. They are belonging to Khost, Paktia, Kunar and Bamyan provinces.

Qari Esmatullah, one of those people, said he was arrested by Afghan forces while on way to visit a shrine in Gardez, capital of Paktia province. He said he was handed over to US forces, who sent him to the Guantanamo detention facility.

Recalling his agonies at Guantanamo, Esmatullah said the Americans investigators had kept them in cold cells and used to throw cold water over them.

Muhammad Khan, another freed man hailing from the southeastern Khost province, said detainees were being subjected to physical and mental torture. "The Americans used to bring naked women before us to force us to confess to our undone crimes," recalled Khan.

France to be first to see Afghanistan's rediscovered ancient treasures

KABUL (AFP) - Paris 's Guimet Museum of Asian art will in December become the first international museum to exhibit ancient Afghan treasures that resurfaced three years ago, after fears they had been lost to the world.

More than 120 pieces, including from the 2,000-year-old Bactrian collection, will go on display early December, the Guimet Museum director Jean-Francois Jarrige told AFP in the Afghan capital Saturday.

Most had already left and been unpacked with the remainder due to fly out Sunday, he said.

The Afghan parliament in May voted against an international tour of the pieces saying they feared the treasure would be stolen, lost, damaged or copied. The parliament gave the green light in a new vote months later.

"Eventually, the Afghan government, the minister of culture and ourselves insisted on the importance of this exhibition at this time," Jarrige said, insisting the display would show a "positive aspect" of        Afghanistan.

The Afghan government has received requests to show the relics from museums in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands,        South Korea and the United States.

President Hamid Karzai had wanted France to be the first country to show the items because of the strong archeological relationship between the nations that started with the arrival of the first French archeological team here in 1922, the director said.

The Bactrian Treasure, stored in the central bank vaults in the presidential palace, comprises around 21,600 pieces -- more than 20,000 of them in gold, including figurines of beasts, jewellery and gem-encrusted scabbards.

It resurfaced in 2003 after fears that it had been lost during Afghanistan's nearly three decades of war, which included a 1979 Soviet invasion, the 1992-1996 civil conflict and the six-year reign of the Taliban which was ended in 2001.

Pakistan border police arrest Afghan defence ministry official - New Kerala - Oct 13

Islamabad, Oct 13: Pakistan police today arrested an Afghan defence ministry official at Chaman border for entering the country illegally even as 124 Afghan nationals were deported for the same offence.

Frontier Corps Balochistan claimed they arrested Abdur Rehman, retired Afghan army official, who currently works in Afghan defence ministry when he tried to enter Pakistan without any legal documents.

He was arrested in Chaman, the main border crossing with Afghanistan in southwest Balochistan, after the police found an identity card, Pakistani and Afghan currency from him, state run APP newsagency said.

Reports said Pakistan border guards also deported 124 Afghans after holding them for two weeks for entering the country without travel documents.

APP said that the border guards have so far arrested a total of 1,850 Afghans who have entered Pakistan illegally in the last nine months.

The border authorities have sealed all border areas of the province alongwith Afghanistan and Iran.

UK denies parallels in Afghanistan with Soviet invasion    

Source: IRNA, Iran 13 October 2006 - The British government has denied that claims of any parallels between the current deployment of UK and allied troops in Afghanistan and the previously disastrous Soviet occupation of the country.

"I have studied Afghanistan's history and think the important point is that the Soviet campaign and the campaigns of the British Empire were absolutely different in nature from what we are undertaking," Defence Minister Lord Drayson said.

Speaking in the House of Lords on Thursday, Drayson said the point was made clear to him recently by Estonia's defence minister Jurgen Ligi, who said the people of his country were sent to Afghanistan "as a form of punishment under the Soviet empire."

"We, with our coalition partners, are supporting the development of a democracy in Afghanistan, with the complete support of the people of Afghanistan as expressed in their democratic elections. That is completely different," he said.

The minister was responding to a question from Conservative peer, Lord Blaker, asking why the government did not think history will repeat itself following previous foreign interventions in Afghanistan.

Soviet forces were forced to retreat from Afghanistan in 1988 after the failure of its nine-year war to combat anti-government Mujahideen insurgents.

During the debate, the Defence Minister admitted that restrictions from different countries on troops contributing to the UK-commanded Nato forces caused problems on operations in Afghanistan.

It "is correct to say that the national caveats that some countries place on their forces create additional complexity that needs to be managed by NATO force commanders," Drayson said.

But he insisted this has always been the case in NATO operations and is not a new situation. "If we go back into history, this has always been an issue that NATO commanders have had to manage," he said.

"There is no doubt that, if we can move to a position where those caveats become more harmonized, it will lead to a significant force- multiplier effect across NATO," the minister told peers in the House of Lords.

But he rejected that the extended operations in Helmand province were not "without sufficient forethought or consideration of the threat" nor "initially without enough troops on the ground, and with an ongoing shortage of helicopters and logistic backing."
"Earlier this year we discussed the concerns that he and other experienced ex-chiefs had about this operation. I do not believe that the planning for the operation was done incorrectly," Drayson said.

Afghanistan: ISAF warning offers chance to break destructive cycle

By Amin Tarzi - Source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Date: 13 Oct 2006

All of the parties involved in Afghanistan's stabilization process since the fall of the Taliban nearly five years ago (December 2001) tend to agree that security and reconstruction are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, as security has deteriorated to its worst levels since the new political order arose, the rebuilding effort has not fared much better. But while a lack of security is hampering reconstruction, especially in southern and eastern Afghanistan, policies might also be to blame for the lack of sustained progress.

WASHINGTON, October 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) - The commander of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan, the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF), warned on October 8 that without visible improvements in the daily lives of ordinary Afghans in the next six months, up to 70 percent of Afghans could shift their allegiance to the Taliban-led insurgency. It was a stark and urgent reminder that there is still much work to be done in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

British Lieutenant General David Richards' comments led to defensive posturing by the Afghan government rather than turning its attention to a retooling of reconstruction plans.

NATO tried to defuse tensions when ISAF issued a statement three days later. It said ISAF's commander meant that "the next six months have to be used for effective reconstruction and development to ensure" the continuing support that the Afghan government enjoys among citizens. But Richards added ominously that he knows that "ISAF cannot take the support of ordinary Afghans for granted." Richards pledged that having "shown [its] skill and power in combat," NATO is "now putting equal effort into supporting the reconstruction and development that will improve [Afghans'] lives and offer a real future to all."

Richards' warning is a very real one for Afghanistan. The crux of the matter arguably is not whether Afghans will support the resurgent neo-Taliban, but whether -- in the absence of a genuine improvement of their daily lives -- they care to support the current system. The operative word is "genuine."

Security Needed For Reconstruction - Donors are rightfully proud that billions of dollars have poured into Afghanistan. But little of that international aid has filtered down to the average Afghan. In a vicious cycle, security is blamed for slow reconstruction and the failure to rebuild is said to lead to deteriorating security.

A reevaluation of the reconstruction projects implemented in Afghanistan in the last five years would undoubtedly reveal mistakes. Many shortcomings might be related to a focus on shorter-term projects that the donors and Afghan government alike have tried to use to demonstrate progress to their respective constituencies -- or even to each other. In other words, the emphasis thus far has not been on infrastructure but on Potemkin projects. But the infrastructure work is necessary in pursuit of long-term, state-building strategies despite its lack of immediate political benefits.

Another, and more crucial, shortcoming has been a heavy reliance on foreign contractors to rebuild Afghanistan. Foreign contractors continue to boast of multimillion-dollar reconstruction projects while the average Afghan worker remains untrained and unemployed.

Involving Afghans in all aspects of reconstruction would do more than simply employ the countless people who otherwise might find work in the booming narcotics industry. It might also counter the type of frustration to which Richards alluded -- prompting some to join the armed opposition.

Afghan Workers Needed - It is true that there is a serious shortage of skilled laborers in Afghanistan. Foreign expertise is necessary to train Afghans. But allowing Afghans to rebuild their own houses, schools, and roads would give them more than just ownership and pride -- it would also provide them with legal incomes.

"Afghanizing" reconstruction projects would likely slow some work. It might also prove more challenging to adapt to the many demands of international donors and Kabul, possibly preventing them from signing off projects as due dates arise. But as one UN official put it recently, Afghan-built schools have somehow proven to be fireproof. He meant to suggest that those reconstruction projects built by Afghans seem to be targeted less by the insurgents.

If the nation is sufficiently involved in rebuilding the Afghan state, then the massive project that began with the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 might be steered toward the formation of a fully functioning nation-state. Otherwise, in six months, General Richards might regret having toned down his poignant warning.

Albanian commentator suggests new way of defeating Al-Qa'idah

Excerpt from commentary by Blerim Latifi entitled "Introduction of Enlightenment in Iraq, Afghanistan" published by Albanian newspaper Shekulli on 12 October

On the fifth anniversary of what is being called "the global war on terror," many analyses and views are being put forward intended to draw up a balance sheet of this war. As usual, these views are divided in two groups: those that say that this war has been successful and others - more sceptical - that dismiss the idea of success and even go so far as to speak of failure. It seems that the scales are tipping in favour of the sceptics.

Many observers of this war on terror have already begun to talk about an interesting change in the character of the organization headed by Bin-Ladin. They say that it is already more than an organization that uses terrorism to achieve political ends. It has become a sort of ideology and religion. This complicates the war against it. When an organization becomes an ideology or a religion, it does not need an international network to coordinate with its militants, because, in that case, it has a much more powerful instrument: identification. It is enough for people to identify with it and adopt its aims and fanaticism to spring into action. There is no need for instructions from remote mountains or caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Such a development renders obsolete armies, vigilant police, and intelligence agencies - all those monitoring night and day all of the routes on earth and in the sky.

In this way, it seems that the world is facing a big change in the concept of war. The concept of war as muscle flexing is changing to one that includes other factors, such as religion and ideas - factors that modern thinkers, headed by Marx, have almost completely ignored.

Al-Qa'idah's terrorism cannot be defeated as long as it is based on a strong metaphysical foundation, such as the concept of death as an instrument of going to heaven. Al-Qa'idah will wane only when its followers no longer hold this belief and when they start thinking that dying is not a way to heaven, but to oblivion.

The West has had something that can achieve this. It is the Enlightenment, which led to nihilistic metaphysics that equated life after death with oblivion. Before the Enlightenment, Christianity was as brutal as some Islamic sects are today. Let us remember the Catholic Church's inquisition, which used to burn at the stake those who held views that differed from church dogma, and the constant religious wars that ravaged Europe. It was the Enlightenment that put an end to all this by taming Christianity through a process of secularization, which weakened the religion and marginalized its power over the society. Christianity did not reform itself. It was reformed by the Enlightenment.

This model - that is, the Enlightenment - is perhaps the only way to drive a wedge between Islam and terrorist violence, because the Enlightenment teaches religious tolerance among beliefs. It is against exclusion. And it teaches scepticism against fanaticism and narrow-minded dogmatism, which lead to violence and the persecution of others.

All this leads us to the conclusion that, in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of more soldiers and bullets, we must "deploy" the Enlightenment.

Governor escapes life attempt

Pajhwok - 10/13/2006 By Abdul Mateen Sarfaraz - TALOQAN - Deputy governor of the northern Takhar province Abdul Wahid Thursday said he escaped an assassination attempt last night while travelling in the area.

Wahid said gunmen tried to stop his car and open fire at him in Baharak district Wednesday evening. The deputy governor said he was en routed to Taloqan, capital of the northern Takhar province from Khwaja Bahauddin district overnight when he was attacked by the armed men.

He told Pajhwok Afghan News his driver played a trick with gunmen and crossed them safely. The driver drove the car fast and thus escaped the burst that hit windows of the vehicle. Wahid said he could not say who the attackers were.

Security chief of Takhar Gen Noor Aqa Kentouz said guards of the governor retaliated the attackers and thus life of the governor was saved. Blaming the anti-government elements for the attack, a euphemism used for Taliban, wanted to disrupt the security situation in the country and destabilize government, he added.  

He regretted such attacks despite surety given by the local elders they would help in stopping disruptive activities in the area. Some months ago, chief of the provincial legislative council Syed Sadiq Agha was killed in a similar attack by gunmen in Khwaja Ghar district, neighbouring Baharak.

Police arrest Pakistani on charges of spying

Pajhwok - 10/13/2006 By Habib Rahman Ibrahimi - KABUL - Kabul police Thursday claimed arresting a Pakistani overnight on charges of spying for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in this central capital.

Gen Alishah Paktiawal, crime branch chief in Kabul, told Pajhwok Afghan News they had netted the spy in wee hours last night. He said they had nabbed the outlaw in front of defence ministry without any documents.

Though Paktiawal would not substantiate his spying, but said they handed over the detainee to intelligence for further investigations. The detainee belonged to Momand agency of Peshawar, the crime branch chief added. Paktiawal said the detainee had also given them information about his other two accomplices.

Naeem Khan, Pakistan Press Attach in Kabul, showed his unawareness about detention of a Pakistani. Refuting such claims as baseless allegations, he said police should level such charges against a country after thorough investigations.

The Nation Magazine: Taliban Rising

By CHRISTIAN PARENTI- [posted online on October 12, 2006] Afghanistan

Twenty minutes south of Kabul, along one of Afghanistan's few newly paved roads, lies Logar Province. In another country Logar's desert villages and accessible mountains might be a place city dwellers would use for quick rustication. But in Logar the Taliban are back, coming out at night to burn schools, assassinate liberal imams, launch rocket attacks on government buildings and plant mines to kill NATO soldiers.

The drive from Kabul to Logar is a mind-bending lesson in political geography, showing how badly deteriorated the occupation of Afghanistan has become. It seems the infamously insurgency-torn "south" of this country now extends very far north.

"The Italians call that the Valley of Death," says my local guide matter-of-factly as we pass a lush little cluster of villages wedged between two desiccated slopes. We are still in Kabul Province, the Musayi district: "Six of them were killed there a few months ago, and they never went back in." Then, after a pause: "The green is all pistachio trees."

According to NATO only two Italians were killed, with four wounded. Nor does NATO admit that any area of Afghanistan has been ceded to the insurgents-- let alone a valley right outside the capital. Whatever the case, most Afghans are beginning to think that the Taliban are winning. This raises several questions: Who are these insurgents? Why are they fighting? What dynamics fuel their growth? And ultimately, how, when and to whom will the United States and its allies finally leave Afghanistan?

When we arrive at Shaffad Sang, a cluster of villages just off the main road, the tension grows palpably thicker. Our contact, a man named Zibullah Pimon, who works for a foreign construction company, is visibly nervous. Because of the Taliban activity here, Pimon spends all his time in Kabul, returning to his village only once a week to visit his family for a few hours before racing back. We slip into the privacy of his qala, or mud-walled compound, and then into his neatly whitewashed and carpeted guest room, away from the women in the family quarters.

"There were no police here and no Afghan army," explains Pimon. "So the Taliban saw their chance and came in." He says Taliban actions in Logar started about a year ago, when organizers infiltrated from Pakistan, using money and arguments to reactivate networks of former fighters and win over local imams. Opponents were killed or run off with warnings.

Though "Taliban" or "AGEs"--antigovernm ent elements--are the catchall phrases used to describe Afghan insurgents, in provinces near Kabul like Logar, Wardak and Nangarhar, most of the guerrillas are actually members of Hezb-e-Islami, an old mujahedeen party led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. A pathologically ruthless commander, Hekmatyar got his start throwing acid at unveiled women when he was an engineering student in Kabul. In 1975 he formed Hezb-e-Islami with Pakistani support. First he fought the nationalist President Daoud Khan; then, after the Communist coup in 1978, he received more than $600 million in American military aid to fight the Russians.

Now his forces have reorganized, pledged support to Al Qaeda, made peace with their old foes, the Taliban, and are "blowing back" upon their former patrons, the Americans. Like the Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami is made up primarily of Pashtuns, Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group at more than 45 percent of the population.

"They say this is not a national government, that its positions are controlled by only a few," says Pimon, explaining why some of his neighbors support the insurgents. "And there are no jobs, no development.

"The Taliban have told every family to provide one man, and they say they will pay these fighters," explains Pimon, adding that corruption and opium eradication are also angering people.

In recent months insurgent violence has even started in Kabul. Over five weeks this fall the city suffered four suicide bombings, three of which killed or wounded international troops. One attack hit just outside the American Embassy: Three US Humvees were bombed, killing two GIs and sixteen others; twenty-nine people were wounded. The US military now says there are Kabul-based suicide cells.

September saw numerous IEDs uncovered in the capital and some rocket attacks--including one against the airport an hour after I arrived--while security forces arrested several urban-based Taliban, including a group of university students who were storing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and propaganda.

In the south, kidnapping has begun: One German and three Macedonian NGO workers were abducted and murdered in Helmand Province this past spring. Their corpses were booby-trapped, and nine Afghan National Police officers died in the recovery effort. In September a Colombian aid worker and two Afghan nationals were kidnapped in Wardak, west of Kabul, then released three weeks later.

This new pattern of political violence is seen as the "Iraqization" of the Afghan insurgency, which some fear could also lead to an Iraq-style meltdown or ethnically based fragmentation. Even the top NATO general here recently warned that most Afghans will soon support the Taliban if development and security do not significantly improve over the next six months.

So far most Kabulis continue about their business, assured that their chances of being killed in this war are still low. On a day-to-day basis, their worries are more about poverty and the predation of public officials.

The government of Afghanistan under President Hamid Karzai has become a classic rentier state: an institution designed to capture revenue rather than deliver services and facilitate economic growth. Instead of oil, it feeds on the free flow of international aid, which accounts for 92 percent of the nation's income. The government's thirty-two ministries are massively overstaffed, with employees usually earning a mere $30-$100 a month. They sit in squalid offices drinking tea, reading newspapers and watching Bollywood films on TV.

Not surprisingly, they use their positions to demand bribes and peculate public funds. The modus operandi of the ministries is to deny access, deny permission, deny responsibility and sabotage those who might be effective at their job--in case they start capturing more of the aid flow.

This mess is largely the result of a US-led process that--in the lead-up to the Iraq War--sloppily fast-tracked Afghanistan' s reconstruction. Warlords were allowed to control the government and the United States signed off on ridiculous shakedown schemes like paying wages to militia commanders who wildly exaggerated their troop numbers. The result is a nonfunctional state that will probably never be able to "stand up" and allow the international community to successfully "stand down."

Five years after the overthrow of the Taliban, Kabul has only three hours of electricity per day and unsanitary and inadequate drinking water. The healthcare system is nonexistent or run by foreign NGOs, and primary schools lack teachers. The government undertakes almost no public works; there is no food-safety system or program of agricultural extensions; state-owned industries-- such as coal mines, gas works, cement factories, the national airline with its half-dozen planes, a chain of old hotels and several massive granaries--receive little or no investment.

To pay taxes in Kabul one must first bribe the tax collector! No bribe and your taxes (which will be stolen) won't be registered as paid. Without proof of payment a homeowner or shopkeeper could be reported to the police, arrested and repeatedly extorted at every step of the legal process.

Even government offices bribe one another. "To get license plates for our cars we had to bribe the Transportation Ministry," says Naqib, who runs nebulously defined "capacity-building workshops" at the Ministry of Women's Affairs. "We had to pay about $2,000."

Women working in government offices--beyond the control of their husbands but still crushed by poverty--often double and triple their paltry $30 a month salaries through casual prostitution. "Cellphones make it very easy," says an Afghan driver. "The woman I am seeing has just two or three friends. I pay her a month's salary for an hour in the back room of my friend's store."

"Closing the Chinese brothels was a joke," says a friend of mine who contracts for a major Western intelligence service and has access to the highest levels of government in Kabul. "The palace is the biggest brothel of all--half the female screeners in the presidential guard engage in prostitution. "

The corrosive impact of life under a kleptocracy became all too clear when a close friend was extorted by three judges. Ajmal, a successful journalist and well-connected fixer, was ordered to pay the judges $4,000 or go to jail. The issue was an alleged theft at a guesthouse that his brother had managed a year earlier, before moving to Europe.

To top it off, one of the judges involved--a languid man with a poorly dyed beard and penchant for flashy suits--was toying with Ajmal under the guise of negotiating the bribe. The judge would insist that Ajmal come have tea at the office or join the judge's entourage to attend a wedding. Money wasn't enough--Ajmal had to grovel; he had to put on obsequious public displays of appreciation for the judge and his power.

I went along on one trip. The judge's office was devoid of books, files, papers, a computer or anything else that hinted of work. Instead it was lined with chairs in which sat a rotating series of social visitors. "My family is very well known. We are related to King Zahir Shah," says the judge with a leering smirk and a pause. Ajmal chimes in with praise for the elaborate lineage charts on display at the judge's home. "You will have to come visit. You will be my guests," says the judge.

The next time I see Ajmal he explodes into a pro-Taliban diatribe. "Fucking judges! Having long beards, big turbans, acting always very religious." His voice shakes with rage. "They are not even this much Muslim!" Ajmal grabs the tip of his little finger. "If the Taliban come back, I will pray for them! I don't care if I have to grow a beard, go to mosque all the time. I don't care. At least they are not thieves!"

This from a man who has made lots of money in the new Afghanistan, enjoys the occasional drink, rarely prays and was even jailed under the Taliban because he had a Leonardo DiCaprio-style haircut. The club-wielding Talib called it "Titanic hair" and shaved it all off.

In the countryside the Taliban capitalize on the resentments and humiliations of life under kleptocracy and occupation by not being corrupt and by simply killing officials who are. According to most credible reports--including one from a Western intelligence source--the Taliban are known to "always pay for food and gasoline--always. " Government forces are more likely not to pay, in part because their troops and front-line officers are broke. If the corruption of Karzai's government is Afghanistan's new cancer, then the Taliban are increasingly seen as chemotherapy: a very unpleasant but perhaps necessary remedy.

Western officials assert that the Taliban fund themselves by taxing the drug trade. But with opium production accounting for at least half of Afghanistan's GDP, it could be said that even merchants selling plastic buckets to farmers at the local bazaar are "funded by the drug trade."

According to the United Nations, Afghanistan now supplies 92 percent of the world's heroin. Production dipped last year by 21 percent but has now bounced back, to an all-time high. Poppy cultivation directly employs an estimated 2.9 million Afghans, and the country earns about $3 billion annually from it--most of which is parked in foreign bank accounts and laundered through regional real estate schemes.

Karzai has said, "Either Afghanistan destroys opium or opium will destroy Afghanistan." And the UN has described poppy as creating "a state of emergency." But a visit to drug-growing regions indicates that the exact opposite is just as possible: Opium revenue acts as a stabilizing force by keeping poor farmers alive. Eradicate all poppy, and Afghanistan' s 30 million people could plunge back into all-out civil war, with the country disintegrating into two or three parts: the Pashtun south becoming a de facto extension of heavily Pashtun northern Pakistan, and the more ethnically diverse north, around Mazar-e-Sharif, and west, around Herat, being pulled into the orbits of the more developed economies of Central Asia and Iran.

One region where poppy eradication has reportedly been effective is in Nangarhar. Lying east of Kabul, Nangarhar is a long, mountainous province that juts out into the tribal belt of Pakistan; its population is heavily Pashtun. "We are facing a lot of problems," says Ghulam Hazrat, a teacher and farmer in the Derazi village of the Kama district, north of the provincial capital of Jalalabad.

Last year the government promised each farmer here $350 for every half-acre not planted with poppy. But the people in Kama say the money was stolen. "Only some farmers got $150," says Hazrat. "We have no paper or books in the school. The road is bad and there is no clinic. The teachers have not been paid in three months. Maybe we will plant this year. If we don't plant we will suffer, and when people suffer, people fight."

In more remote parts of Nangarhar, eradication is even less effective. The Sherzad district lies several hours southwest of Jalalabad, at the end of a rutted dirt track. The landscape is desert canyons and barren hills punctuated by villages clustered along beleaguered little rivers flowing down from the mountains on the Pakistani border.

In the village of Toto, not far from the border, I meet Wazir, an old-school poppy farmer, who lives in a qala with his two wives. In a manner typical of rural Afghanistan, the neighboring families in this district engage in constant blood feuding, and according to Wazir crime is common throughout south Nangarhar.

Nangarhar's security reports revealed that crime was not the only issue: Twenty-three mostly war-related incidents were listed during the week I made my visit. According to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, there was a kidnapping threat, ongoing counterinsurgency operations and "reported infiltration of a new group of AGE/Insurgents" made up of "Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis." Two vehicles used by "armed Taliban" were spotted in Sherzad, and there were some rocket attacks. The reports paint a picture of a region beyond government control.

"The eradication campaign came, but they just took bribes," says Wazir as we sit in his dera, a shaded outside visiting area, on rope and wooden cots called charpayi. "When we heard that they were coming we went to the district governor and negotiated a price." Wazir says that the local "commander," named Hasil, was chosen as the farmers' envoy.

"If the governor had not accepted the bribe, we were ready to fight. If a farmer loses his poppy he can't even have tea and sugar. He will borrow money from a rich person and lose his land." Wazir says emergency loans carry 100 percent interest rates.

The official rhetoric of poppy eradication is ridiculously ambitious when compared with facts on the ground. Among the "five pillars" of the strategy are "judicial reform" and "alternative livelihoods. " None of that exists here. The only NGO in this district digs wells, but Wazir says that the corrupt drilling team charges a fee for what should be aid.

As the sun starts to slide down in the sky, we head back out. Halfway to Jalalabad, five armed men emerge from behind rocks. One aims an RPG at our truck while another steps into the road and levels his AK-47 at the windshield. It's an ambush. The lead gunman approaches and asks, "Is that police truck still down in the village?"

By freak luck we had noticed a Frontier Police pickup truck getting gas in the village just behind us. Thinking fast, one of my Afghan colleagues answers: "Yes. And they will be following us in a few minutes." The gunman pauses, for one very long second, and then allows us to pass. We assume these men were local thieves, or possibly Taliban, who lay in wait for us or the cops but choked at the last minute.

Northern Afghanistan has been relatively peaceful, but there are increasing signs of trouble--clashes between rival militias, occasional attacks on troops of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF, the UN-sanctioned peacekeeping force), rising banditry.

If the war in the south pits messianic guerrillas against what they see as a sinful puppet government run by foreign infidels, then violence in the north takes on a distinctly ethnic quality, with Uzbeks, Tajiks and others squaring off against the Pashtuns, who once supported the Taliban and oppressed non-Pashtuns. What happens next in the north is a crucial piece of the Afghan puzzle.

We drive to Balkh Province; NATO has recently reported an ambush and firefight in a Pashtun village here. To get safe passage into Pashtun villages, we must find the local Pashtun commander, a former Taliban and mujahedeen landlord named Haji Aktar. Our local Tajik contact is terrified by the idea of approaching Aktar. "The people around here are lawless and wild," he says from the passenger seat. We have traveled a mere five or ten miles from his home, Balkh town, but the man acts like we're in another country.

Eventually we make contact with Haji Aktar and his broodingly handsome son, who is now taking over the family business of, essentially, being the man in charge of the local poppy-farming Pashtuns. We sit on the carpeted veranda of Haji Aktar's adobe qala and look out over the pot fields on the plain that stretches south out of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the base of the blue-gray Hindu Kush mountains. After a lunch of stewed sheep kidneys, okra and greasy rice, Haji Aktar explains why the Pashtun of the north are growing angry. "The government of the north excluded Pashtuns," he says. He is talking about his rival, the Tajik governor, Atta Mohammed. "Every day or two they are searching and raiding the three Pashtun districts. They even arrested me. They came with forty vehicles and three helicopters and took me to [the prison at] Bagram."

Haji Aktar explains how he was handcuffed and blindfolded, while American troops searched his private quarters--"with women and children inside." Being a gracious host, Haji Aktar does not blame the foreigners-- my people. Instead he blames Atta Mohammed for setting him up. Haji Aktar claims he is at peace with the government. But one wonders at what point this honor-obsessed feudal landlord will feel compelled to avenge his humiliation.

"I can't think of a bigger insult for a guy like that," booms G. Whitney Azoy, a former US diplomat turned scholar-adventurer, who knows Haji Aktar. In the 1980s Azoy was involved with support for the mujahedeen's US-backed campaign against the Soviets; more recently he worked as a consultant for the military contractor DynCorp and now runs a State Department-funded research center. He is one of the leading authorities on northern Afghanistan. "Nothing--I mean nothing--could be worse for a Pashtun landlord like that. But a guy like Aktar is also very shrewd and patient. He'll wait and watch. But that sort of thing won't be forgotten."

On one of my last nights in Kabul I retire to the spacious home of my acquaintance the intelligence contractor. Particularly fascinating is his insight into the mindset of Western diplomats and military officers.

"Mention defeat and they say, 'It is unthinkable! ' Well, it is coming, so you better well start thinking about it," says the contractor. He guesses the West's project in Afghanistan has between three and five years, and he thinks negotiation with the Taliban is its "only hope" for a graceful exit.

Surprisingly, that view has gained traction in several countries with ISAF troops. British Deputy Foreign Minister Kim Howells suggested that talks might be useful, and some in the Canadian New Democratic Party have agreed. Then, in early October, US Senate majority leader Bill Frist said the war in Afghanistan could "never" be won militarily and suggested that some Taliban be allowed into the government. One rumor in Kabul was that the Taliban's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, might be offered the Defense Ministry.

But a few posts for some top leaders won't end the war. There are already many ex-Talib in the Parliament and ministries, and they push the Afghan government in fundamentalist directions. As for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, few believe he would settle for anything less than ruling Afghanistan himself. And what about the Al Qaeda network operating on the border northeast of Kabul, in Nuristan and Kunar? It's hard to imagine the Bush Administration placating these champions of international jihad with the offer of an Afghan ministry.

Negotiations may help the West save face as it disengages, but it is unlikely they will do more than that. Ultimately, the US-built state in Afghanistan seems unreformable, and its future looks calamitous. Yet the nation builders in Kabul remain in denial, each concerned with immediate performance and the next promotion rather than the big picture. My host the contractor illustrates this mentality with a historical anecdote.

"Did you know, the US government continued family postings to Vietnam as late as four months before it fell?" he asks. "You might have thought that someone would have smelled the rot earlier and asked, 'Do we really need to bring the 2-year-old to Saigon?' But no--that would have been pessimistic, bad for the career."

Who's Running Afghan Policy? The Nation 10/13/2006 By David Corn

Several months ago a leading American expert on Afghanistan was meeting with Meghan O'Sullivan, a deputy national security adviser in the Bush White House. The topic at hand was the attitude of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani leader, toward the revived Taliban insurgents operating out of Pakistani territory. Musharraf's government seemed (as it does now) to be willfully ignoring the Taliban, or perhaps even providing them with safe harbor and assistance. Why would Musharraf do either?

The expert explained that many factors shape the difficult Pakistani-Afghan relationship. He pointed to the decades-long conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan and mentioned the Durand Line, the supposed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The 1,600-mile-long line, imposed on Afghanistan by the British in 1893, divides Pashtun and Baluch regions and separates Afghanistan from territory it has claimed as its own. Afghanistan has never officially recognized the Durand Line, which has been a great source of strife between the two countries.

By referring to the Durand Line, the expert was noting that US efforts in the region are complicated by pre-9/11 history. O'Sullivan, according to this expert (who wishes not to be named), didn't know what the Durand Line was. The expert was stunned. O'Sullivan is the most senior Bush Administration official handling Afghanistan policy. If she wasn't familiar with this basic point, US policy-making on Afghanistan was in trouble.

After Iraq, Afghanistan is the most profound foreign policy mess the Bush Administration faces. Five years after US forces chased the Taliban out of Kabul, the Taliban are resurgent, adopting tactics used by Iraqi rebels. The central government of President Hamid Karzai remains weak and cannot provide security or basic services to its people. Reconstruction has slowed dramatically. Poppy cultivation has exploded. Tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are affecting the military campaigns against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And the consensus among Afghanistan experts is that many Afghans, seeing little direct benefit from the lagging reconstruction efforts, have lost faith in the US-backed government. According to recent Congressional testimony by Barnett Rubin, a New York University professor who has advised the United Nations on Afghanistan, a former Afghan minister recently said, "The conditions in Afghanistan are ripe for fundamentalism."

Yet George Bush has no senior-level official responsible for policies and actions in Afghanistan. "The situation is worsening," notes former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. "We have to have someone in government responsible for the whole picture--military, economic assistance and political. There's a nexus between each. But there's not one person in the government designated to be in charge of that nexus. It could be the ambassador. It could be someone else--if they have resources and clout and accountability. But this Administration has not been keen on accountability."

O'Sullivan is not the issue. She is a protégé of Richard Haass, who left the State Department as policy director in July 2003 and became president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she is neither a neocon nor an ideologue. She has even earned the suspicion of conservatives for having proposed engaging with Iran and for suggesting--before 9/11--that it is unproductive to brand a state a "rogue regime." The problem is that O'Sullivan, who is in her mid-30s, is not an expert in the field and does not have the stature to take on heavyweights in the Administration (say, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld). Worse, she has two briefs: Afghanistan and Iraq. Either project would (or should) be more than a 24/7 job for a senior Administration official. As a Congressional aide quips, "It's too much to ask anyone to handle two policy failures at once. And what we have now is Administration policy-making that happens mostly by drift, with the White House not caring all that much about it. They'd rather see Afghanistan as 'mission accomplished' and move on." (The White House said O'Sullivan was not available for an interview.)

It has been a year and a half since the Bush Administration had a major player covering Afghanistan. That was Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghan-American named ambassador to Afghanistan and a special presidential envoy in 2003. He was well schooled in the nation's history and culture and its internecine conflicts. In 2002, as a special envoy, he oversaw the loya jirga that led to the establishment of a government there. He later negotiated with regional Afghan leaders. "He would routinely jump into a car and go over to Karzai's office to give him marching orders, for good or bad," says a Congressional aide who witnessed such occasions. A neocon advocate of the Iraq War and a disciple of Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, Khalilzad had direct lines into the White House and the Pentagon. In March 2005 he was named US ambassador to Iraq.

Khalilzad was replaced by Ronald Neumann, a career foreign service office, who previously served in Iraq and Bahrain. Neumann lacked the standing of Khalilzad. "He tries, but he's not able to get stuff done," Rubin says. "He does not have the clout. When I ask him for something difficult, he says, 'It will never get through the bureaucracy.'"

Until this past March, Maureen Quinn, who had been US ambassador to Qatar, was the State Department's coordinator for Afghanistan. But she, too, did not wield much influence. After she left the post the Administration appointed no successor. Instead, her duties were split among four State Department officials: Richard Boucher, the Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, and three of his deputies. But Boucher's bureau is responsible for thirteen countries, including Pakistan, India and Kazakhstan. The Afghanistan and Central Asia brief was added to his bureau only this past February. "The coordination issue has been up in the air for some time," says Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former Afghan interior minister, "and there is less money now. And the country is facing the consequences."

In Washington the bottom line in dollars usually represents the bottom line in policy, and US funding for reconstruction and security assistance in Afghanistan has been on the decline. From fiscal year 2005 to the next, it fell from $4.3 billion to $3 billion. The Administration's request for 2007 funding is $1.2 billion. Of that only about $800 million is tagged for reconstruction and development. "You can't rebuild a country for $1 billion," notes a senior Democratic staffer in the Senate. "To me it says we're just going to hope that things get better without making the necessary commitment." And Congress has not treated Afghanistan as a top-of-the-list concern. (Senate majority leader Bill Frist recently said that the Taliban and their allies ought to be brought into the government. His office later claimed he had meant to refer only to tribal Afghans possibly sympathetic to the Taliban.)

Not only is there no one at the helm of the underfunded policy; the Bush Administration has been unable to forge a consistent approach to the critical issue of Pakistan and the Taliban. In June Ambassador Neumann sidestepped a question about whether Pakistan was supporting the Taliban. In August Gen. John Abizaid, commander of the US Central Command, said that he "absolutely does not believe" that Pakistan has been colluding with the Taliban. But in September Marine Gen. James Jones, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, which has just assumed command of the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, told a Senate committee that it was "generally accepted" that the Taliban maintain their headquarters in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan Province. That would suggest that Pakistan--or elements within its government--is assisting the Taliban. (On October 7 Pakistani police arrested more than forty Taliban suspects, but said they had nabbed no significant Taliban.)

How should the Bush Administration deal with the thorny matter of Pakistan and the Taliban? The Afghanistan desks at the State Department and the National Security Council ponder this and other issues daily, but nongovernment Afghanistan watchers say they see few, if any, signs that senior Administration officials are fully grappling with this dicey subject and the other challenges of Afghanistan.

"The most sensible conversations I have are with three- and four-star generals on the ground there," Rubin says. "The diplomats--they recycle through and have no experience in the area. Everyone in the region assumes that the United States is not serious about succeeding in Afghanistan." Robert Oakley, a former career foreign service officer who was ambassador to Pakistan, notes, "In 2004 I saw a huge surge of interest in the White House, with the President getting directly involved. Now I see less interest. I feel less hopeful. People coming back from Afghanistan are not optimistic." Richard Lugar, Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently said at a hearing that the problems in Afghanistan have "become so daunting that there is a feeling, not of confusion or frustration, but of almost general despair."

In September George W. Bush brought Karzai and Musharraf to Washington for a dinner together. With the two bickering in dueling CNN interviews over the Taliban matter, Bush remarked, "It will be interesting for me to watch the body language of these two leaders to determine how tense things are." (Referring to that comment, Armitage exclaims, "I didn't believe it. This is not a high school football game.") There was no immediate indication Bush achieved much during the meal. But the day before, the President told Karzai, "I know there are some in your country who wonder whether or not America has got the will to do the hard work necessary to help you succeed. We have got that will." Perhaps. But no one to do the work.  (October 30, 2006 issue)

India's Agenda in Afghanistan    

Source: Asian Analysis, Australia - 13 October 2006 - Since the removal of the Taliban, India has been a substantial donor towards reconstruction in Afghanistan and, up to April 2006, had pledged US$650 million, of which some $200 million have already been spent.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has iterated that India and Afghanistan have a long history of friendship and cultural ties that, in post-Taliban days, have reached new levels of cooperation, establishing India's on-going interest in providing economic and material assistance to Afghanistan.

Meeting immediate needs, India is funding food and medical relief, and providing training for paramedics and teachers. It is also building hospitals and schools.

Of national and symbolic importance, India has offered to fund the construction of a new Parliament Building in Kabul, and it has appointed senior diplomats to Kabul, underscoring India's commitment to the bilateral relationship.

Addressing Afghanistan's international needs, the Foreign Service Institute of the Ministry of External Affairs is assisting the Afghan Foreign Affairs Ministry's Institute of Diplomacy in building the expertise of the country's future diplomats.

Restoring communication networks within Afghanistan is another project with Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Ltd setting up satellite facilities and restoring television hardware in Jalalabad and Nangarhar Province.

Amongst its major construction initiatives are the Salma Dam Power Project in Herat, undertaken by Water and Power Consultancy Services (India) Ltd, and the reconstruction and upgrading of the Zaranj-Delaram Road by the Border Roads Organization (BRO). The latter project will help solve a transit problem faced by India in sending goods to Afghanistan, and is viewed unfavourably by Pakistan.

India has opened nine consulates across Afghanistan including at Jalabad, Kandahar, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. These are also of concern to Pakistan, as discussed below.

Besides its generosity to a nation in need, India has another agenda: to extend its move onto the world stage while putting an end to the state of constant hostility with Pakistan over Kashmir and to the cross-border movement of terrorists.

In addition to those unresolved conflicts, Pakistan is wary of India's close involvement with Afghanistan and, identifying initiatives it objects to, fears that transit rights when road construction is complete would swamp Afghanistan with Indian imports. Pakistan desires to maintain its measure of control over trade to Afghanistan, much of which is channelled through its ports at Gwadar and Karachi. Presently trade from Afghanistan to India moves freely.

The killing of a BRO worker by the neo-Taliban last November led to the dispatch of some 200 Indo-Tibetan Border Police to Afghanistan to provide protection for Indians working on various construction sites.

This is the first time since Pakistan became a state in 1947 that Indian security forces have been stationed in Afghanistan, and in this instance not far from the Pakistani border (Amin Tarzi, 16-04-06).

Pakistan also suggests that Indian consulates in Afghanistan are being used to stir unrest in its frontier provinces. The ongoing and unresolved issues between India and Pakistan contribute to instability, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has proposed that India, Pakistan and Afghanistan reach an agreement allowing 'quicker progress and economic betterment' in the region (Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi, 13-04-06).

Such tripolar cooperation may open a way for a Pakistani sense of inclusion in the too-close relationship it perceives developing between the other two nations. Such an outcome might, in turn, facilitate India's broader agenda.

WATCHPOINT: At the recent Non-Aligned Movement's meeting in Havana, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Pakistan's President Musharraf agreed to resume talks and set up a 'joint mechanism' on cross-border terrorism. Can this open a space for a similar mechanism to be established with Afghanistan? Auriol WeigoldUniversity of Canberra

Musharraf and Afghanistan    

by Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad - Source: The Nation, Pakistan 13 October 2006 - America's patience with the ISI is wearing off. The unprecedented upsurge in Taliban's violence in Afghanistan continues to take toll of American and NATO troops. While most of 500 soldiers killed in Afghanistan during the five years of invasion are Americans, the insurgents killed last week 40th Canadian soldier. American and European field commanders in Afghanistan claim they have reliable intelligence that elements in the ISI provide sanctuaries to the religious militia and injured militants are treated in hospitals in neighbouring Quetta.

Two important generals have visited Islamabad this month to take up the issue with President Musharraf and the Pakistani military high command. Centcom chief General Abizad and NATO commander in Afghanistan Lt Gen David Richards have conveyed their concerns to the president. NATO chief Gen James John would be arriving later this month with the same agenda. Matters are getting serious.

It was not uncommon on the part of local US commanders and American ambassador in Kabul to blame Islamabad for doing less than needed to control the militant traffic between Pakistan's tribal areas and Southern and Eastern provinces of Afghanistan. Top-level leadership in Washington had however distanced itself from the accusations. Not this time. A day before his 90 minute meeting with Musharraf, Bush told CNN's Wolf Blitzer he would send forces inside Afghanistan to capture or kill al-Qaeda leaders if solid intelligence proved their presence in that country. Asked again if he would send troops despite Pakistan's claim of sovereignty, he said "we would take the action necessary to bring them to justice."

The Waziristan accord was presented by Islamabad as a move to bring down the militant activity both in Pakistan's tribal areas and in neighbouring provinces of Afghanistan. However, unlike the past when whatever Musharraf told Washington was by and large taken at its face value, the accord was subjected to questioning and Musharraf had to do a lot of explaining.

The Bush administration faces a dilemma. While acknowledging the invaluable cooperation provided by Islamabad in America's war against terrorism it is under pressure from its commanders in Afghanistan, NATO allies and Western media who accuse Islamabad of supporting the Taliban insurgency. It is maintained that Islamabad treats Afghanistan as its backyard, using Taliban to keep Kabul under pressure and in case of a power vacuum in future install through Taliban a government of its own choice. The US may not mind if this does not lead to casualties among the US and NATO led troops.

Foreign media has not failed to take note of Gen Musharraf's statement that support to the US in the war against the Taliban was extended under duress because Pakistan was left with no choice after the threat that it would be bombarded back into stone age if it failed to comply with the directives. This they think proves that left to himself he might still support the religious militia.

Be it as it may, the highly pragmatic Americans continue to praise Gen Musharraf for arresting and handing over key Qaeda figures. In addition, there is a long list of them. What they want is that he keeps it up, which somehow or other he is not seen to be doing as the upsurge in the Taliban activity indicates.

It is widely conceded now that the Afghan insurgency has potent internal reasons like an ineffective administration, which has failed to control the provinces and crack down on the poppy mafia. It is also agreed that had Washington concentrated on Afghanistan instead of diverting full attention and military and economic resources to Iraq, a defeated Taliban would not have been able to regroup and refurbish them.

The problem with successive American administrations is that they do not evaluate client regimes on the basis of services rendered in the past. An ally has to continue to deliver in order to endear himself to Washington. There is an increasing perception that this is not being done in the case of Gen Musharraf.

Usama Bin Laden and Aiman Al-Zawahiri remain unsecured. What is more they continue to issue highly damaging tapes and communicate with their followers. Similarly, Mulla Omar is still at large. It is being openly suggested Islamabad has not done all that it is capable of to capture them. As long as Taliban continue to pour into the Afghan provinces adjoining Pakistan's tribal areas suspicions will continue to lurk.

Next few months are therefore crucial for Gen Musharraf. In case he can help bring down the insurgency in Afghanistan, Washington will continue to back him. If not, he is likely to be in thick soup.

Military Censorship Hiding in Plain Sight - By Bob Bergen The Hamilton Spectator (Oct 13, 2006)

The Canadian military's management and censorship of the news media in Afghanistan is the elephant in the room that few Canadians talk about, but should.

Nowhere is the military's news management more apparent than in an article in a recent edition of the Canadian Military Journal entitled "Reporting Live From Kandahar."

It demonstrates the sophisticated degree to which Canadian Forces public affairs officers study the successes and failures of the Forces' news media embedding program in Afghanistan, with the express purpose of better managing the war news.

"Embedding" means that news media members are able to travel with and report on front-line units -- living, eating and sleeping with them -- for extended periods of time.

To do that, they must sign an agreement that restricts them from reporting 19 specific types of military information or any other information the Force Commander requires in the interest of "operational security."

"Operational security" is the principle of safeguarding the integrity of a military operation or activity, and the safety of Canadian Forces members or others involved.

The Military Journal article discusses the lessons learned by public affairs officers in the Kandahar region operations in late February, regarding injuries and fatalities.

Quite appropriately, the Forces immediately shut down the media's communications when Canadian soldiers are killed or wounded until relatives are officially notified.

The media managers' concern is "unilateral" journalists, those who haven't signed the embed agreement, who operate outside the military umbrella and who are armed with their own communications equipment. They can learn of such news independently, break the story, scoop the locked-up embeds, but unfortunately sometimes get it wrong.

Such media management concerns are really no more controversial than a local police force withholding the names of vehicle accident or shooting victims from the news media until next of kin are notified.

However, just one example of information that the embedded media must not report under any circumstances will illustrate the far-reaching political and military issues involved.

Category 6 of the ground rules forbids the news media from reporting on Rules of Engagement, or ROEs. ROEs dictate when, where and how much force soldier can bring to bear on perceived or apparent enemies in a number of scenarios that can include, for example, pre-emptive self-defence.

Ostensibly, ROEs cannot be reported because enemies might learn of them from media reports in far away lands and adjust their tactics accordingly.

It is worth noting that Omar Samad, Afghanistan's Ambassador to Canada, recently wrote in FrontLine Defence magazine that in order for the public, policy analysts, the media and political decision-makers to understand Canada's mission in Afghanistan, they deserve "the highest level of openness and transparency about strategy, rules, multilateral agreements and rules of engagement ..."

The Canadian rules of engagement are simply not open or transparent to the public. The important censorship issue here is not whether Afghani insurgents can adjust their tactics as a result of what appeared in the news.

Rather, a recent Royal Canadian Armoured Corps Association digest of military news said that NATO commanders are unhappy with the more than 70 ROE restrictions imposed on them by politicians, which determine how much danger troops can be exposed to, where troops may be used and how.

What and whose restrictions those are is not discussed, but it is known, for instance, that German soldiers are only to be used around Kabul. This sets up the argument that commanders could do more with available troops with less risk if they were not limited by ROEs designed to win political points at home.

Given that Canada moved out of Kabul last November, and is sustaining growing fatalities in the most dangerous fighting in Afghanistan, this is no small political issue.

One can accept that, in war, there are going to be military matters that ought to be subject to discretion and secrecy.

Although there has been no war declaration, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has admitted Canada is now at war, but the military's media management and censorship limits what Canadians can know about it.

In the end, there is an inherent clash of competing interests between a military at war and a free press which favours unfettered access to information. Ordinary Canadians who pay for that war -- with their taxes, sons, daughters, husbands and/or wives -- are caught in the middle.

In the public interest, the boundaries of that "information no man's land" ought to be constantly negotiated between the military and the news media industry.

Canadians need to fully understand and appreciate why we are at war and the challenges the military faces in combat in pursuit of the government's foreign policy objectives. Democracy demands no less.

Bob Bergen is research fellow with the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute (CDFAI) in Calgary.

Where the Rhetoric Doesn't Match the Reality

CounterPunch 10/13/2006 By Anne E. Brodsky - Afghanistan is back in the US headlines, but it's not the kind of news many were expecting five years after the US began a bombing campaign that toppled the Taliban regime. Instead of schools and jobs and security there was the assassination of an Afghan woman government official as she left her house for work in Kandahar, the tense White House dinner visit by Presidents Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf in which the two men essential to any successes in Afghanistan failed to even exchange a public handshake, Bill Frist suggesting a solution in Afghanistan would be to invite the Taliban back into the government, a nearly continuous series of suicide bombings in the last few weeks, bringing the total number this year to the low 90s according to the UN, and the high 70s according to NATO, either figure tragically surpassing the 11 suicide bombings reported in all of 2005. And seemingly oblivious to it all, President Bush continues to assert that we are making progress.

It's been five years as well since my first trip to Pakistan to interview Afghan refugees in the summer of 2001, and four years since my first visit to Afghanistan, just 6 months post-Taliban. In the late summer of 2001, I was wondering how Afghan refugees and those in Afghanistan could survive the stunning violence, poverty, trauma, oppression they lived under, and what it would take for the U.S and the world to see how their plight was connected to our actions, past and present, and to care. When I mentioned my travels in those last pre-September 11 days, many people screwed up their faces as they tried to place Afghanistan and Pakistan on a world map in their mind's eye.

The next summer, when I returned and spoke of the utter destruction and poverty, but also the hope I had seen in Afghanistan, there were smiles all around, for the revenge taken against Al Qaeda, and for the liberation and freedom Americans were told we had brought to Afghanistan. This summer, returning from my 5th trip to Afghanistan however, I had little positive news to report, and reaction to my visit was often one of resigned disappointment that life for the average Afghan did not match the ubiquitous rhetoric about the great successes secured there before we turned our attention to Iraq.

So much could have been different, but the truth of the matter is that five years later the everything is different and too much remains unchanged. I have returned from an Afghanistan where people still live in heartbreaking violence, poverty, trauma, oppression. An Afghanistan where the "liberation, freedom, and democracy" orchestrated by the U.S. is experienced by Afghans as the return to power of warlords who destroyed the country from 1992-1996, making the Taliban seem like liberating heroes then and giving them the another excuse now to justify their violent insurgency; where joblessness and internationally inflated prices are juxtaposed with a 60% rise in poppy cultivation; where rule of law is represented by police who took off their uniforms to join rioters in burning Kabul neighborhoods in May; where unreported, daily violence against ordinary women, according to a recent UNIFEM report, continues "with impunity" at "endemic" levels.

While Iraq continues to dominate the news, Afghanistan has mostly become a footnote on page A12. But Afghanistan is the first and prime example of how winning the war is not the same as winning the peace. The 5000 peacekeepers placed solely in and around Kabul after the Taliban fled could not possibly have secured a country of 33 provinces and 25 million. At a rate of just 1 peacekeeper per 5000 Afghans, this paled in comparison to the 1 per 50 and 1 per 60 placed in Bosnia and Kosovo, respectively, after that war. The 7.2 billion in development and reconstruction aid earmarked for Afghanistan sounds enormous, but it lags by 900% the amount spent by the US on military operations there. With Osama and Mullah Omar unaccounted for, the Taliban again on the rise, and the quality of life declining rather than improving, we should all be joining the people of Afghanistan, who rightly question how this money has actually been spent, to whose benefit, and for what end goal.

When Afghans ask me, "is this what the US means by peace, liberation and freedom?" all I can say is I certainly hope not. But this is sadly just one case of many where we must ask, "is this what has become of 'American values'?" Everything is different and nothing has changed and in Afghanistan, the rhetoric can't hide the reality and the juxtaposition of the two makes the horror and the hubris crystal clear. Whether we read about Afghanistan in the headlines, or on A12, we need to remember that both the rhetoric and the reality are created in our name, and we need to ask ourselves, to paraphrase Gandhi, 'is this the change we wish to be in the world?'

Anne E. Brodsky, director of the Gender and Women's Studies program and an associate professor of Psychology at UMBC, has worked with and written about women's struggles and resilience in Afghanistan for over six years.

CDC makes commitment to Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund

13/10/2006. Source: AltAssets.  -- UK government-backed emerging markets fund of funds manager CDC has committed $5.8m to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund, the first private equity fund established for Afghanistan. The fund will invest in small and medium-sized enterprises in Afghanistan with an investment range of $500,000 to $5m.

The Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund is managed by Acap Partners and has also attracted a $5.5m commitment from The Asian Development Bank. It has raised total commitments of $20.3m to date and is looking to close on $30m. The fund is hoping that it might attract funding from offshore Afghan investors, CDC told AltAssets.

Currently, over a third of the fund's deal pipeline relates to agribusiness, with almost a quarter relating to construction materials and construction. About ten per cent of the deal pipeline relates to metals and mining and transport and logistics.

Innes Meek, the CDC portfolio director responsible for the fund, said, 'Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries with GDP per capita of less than $200. However, the economy has grown rapidly in recent years and there has been progress in the reform of the banking sector, the issue of a new currency as well as the construction of roads.

'There currently remains extremely limited funding available for small to medium-sized businesses, mostly through the development finance institutions. We strongly believe that for Afghanistan to return to a normal life, it needs a thriving business environment, which requires capital.

'CDC recognises that there are risks involved in investing in Afghanistan. However, we are confident that Acap Partners has a very capable team able to generate attractive returns and there are significant investment opportunities for the fund in areas including infrastructure, the local production of goods and financial services. We are proud to have incubated this fund,' Meek continued.

CDC targets businesses in the poorer countries of the world with an emphasis on Africa and South Asia. The company's mission is to generate wealth by providing capital for investment in sustainable and responsibly managed private sector businesses.

Justice Ministry issues license to private company    

Source: Pajhwok Afghan News, Kabul - 13 October 2006 - KABUL - Justice Ministry Thursday issued license to a Lebanese private company to mediate between the private companies in Afghanistan and insurance companies abroad.

The officials of the Justice ministry said the private company named SISI insurance group had good insurance commission work experience in Saudi Arabia.

Addressing a ceremony here, Asad Sakhi Farhad, commissioner for insurance of the finance ministry said this company would help in insurance deal with the foreign insurance companies for businessmen and investors working in Afghanistan. Unavailability of insurance companies was the prime reason that investors showed unreadiness to invest in this war-battered country, he added.

On this occasion, head of the SISI Faisal Aaj that SISI insurance group was coordinating with great European and US insurance companies. He said after the beginning of the operations of insurance companies in Afghanistan, the facilities of insurance for people and local organizations would also be paved. There is only one government insurance company functioning in the country which provided only preliminary services in the field of insurance of vehicles.

Farhad said currently permission for founding an insurance company was given to companies in different fields only if they could pay $2 million in one of the credible banks of Afghanistan as initial investment.

Afghanistan's Anti-Narcotics Strategy    

By Samrat Sinha 14 October 2006 - Source: Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies

The United Nations Opium Poppy Survey Report of 2001 highlighted the effectiveness of a ban imposed by the Taliban in July 2000 on poppy cultivation. The UN reported a 91 per cent drop in cultivation from 82,172 hectares to 7,606 hectares. Helmand province, the highest poppy cultivating province in 2000 accounting for 42,853 hectares, reported no cultivation. However, situation seems to have changed in the last five years. An overview of the statistics released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on poppy production in 2005 paints a dismal picture. As of 12 September 2005, opium poppy cultivation stood at 104,000 hectares and affected all 32 provinces surveyed by the UN. Afghanistan now accounts for 87 per cent of the world's illicit opium production with 8.7 per cent of the total population engaged in cultivation of the opium poppy. Helmand has again become the largest source of opium poppy with 26,500 hectares under cultivation.

This expansion has called into question the National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS) and the counter-narcotics (CN) initiatives of Afghanistan since 2003. In 2004, the newly established Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) released a comprehensive strategy which set up bench-marks for measuring progress. According to the latest NDCS, the Government of Afghanistan will strive to "secure a sustainable decrease in cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs with a view to complete and sustainable elimination". This objective rests on four national strategies: disrupting the narcotics trade by targeting traffickers and their support system and eliminating the basis for the trade; strengthening and diversifying legal rural livelihoods; reducing the demand for illicit drugs and increase rehabilitation for drug users; and, strengthening of state institutions both at the centre and in the provinces. Institution building is a critical factor in the anti-narcotics strategy with the United Kingdom being responsible for mentoring the MCN, the Counter Narcotics Police (CNP) and the Afghan Special Narcotics Force (ASNF).

However, the effectiveness of the MCN is debatable. According to the UN Annual Poppy Survey of 2005 there has been a 21 per cent drop in production due to MCN-led eradication efforts since 2005. The MCN says that the 2004-05 season saw government eradication programs (spearheaded by the CNP/ANSF) leading to the destruction of 5,100 hectares. Yet, the UN Report says that the decline in opium production conceals important regional variations. There has been an increase in opium production in northern (+106 per cent), western (+98 per cent) and southern (+30 per cent) Afghanistan. Production however declined in central (-95 per cent), eastern (-85 per cent) and north-eastern (-50 per cent) Afghanistan. It is Helmand and the adjoining regions, where the NATO forces are deployed, that are the most problematic.

The lucrative nature of the Afghan opium trade that links cultivators, traffickers and consumers is one of the biggest threats to effective nation-building and regional stability. The total opium yield in 2005 was estimated at 39 kg/hectare, an increase of 22 per cent compared to the 2004 (32 kg/hectare), while household average yearly gross income from opium grew from $1,700 to $1,800. The increase in production is being matched by an increase in consumption. In 2003, there were 1.2 million drug users in Iran and the figure could be as high as 3 million today. The figures from the Pakistan National Drug Abuse Survey estimated that there were 3.01 million drug users and this number is believed to have risen considerably, since the data for the survey was collected in 1993. The UNODC points to a 17-fold increase in narcotic abuse between 1990 and 2002 in Central Asia. Drug users now make up almost 1% of Central Asia's population. Between 70% and 90% of the heroin found in Europe has been processed from opium produced in Afghanistan: the European Union now has up to 2 million drug users.

Most importantly, drug use in Afghanistan has increased substantially in recent years: it is estimated that there are now more than 920,000 drug users. This includes an estimated 150,000 opium users, 50,000 heroin users and 520,000 hashish users. In Kabul the number of heroin users has doubled in less than three years. What is even more disturbing is the fact that the Taliban-led insurgency is now encouraging poppy cultivation in order to fund its activities.

In conclusion, there are three major problems obstructing the implementation of the NDCS: institutional weakness of the MCN, the lucrative nature of the narcotics trade and the difficulty in providing alternative legally acceptable livelihoods. The increase in poppy cultivation and its linkages with drug traffickers and illegal armed groups poses a strong challenge for reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. Thus, an analysis of its ramifications for India is urgently required.

Afghan TV channel debates shortcomings in judiciary

Afghan independent Tolo TV at 1400 gmt on 12 October broadcast its regular weekly discussion programme "Gozaresh-e Shahonim" (The 6.30 Report) on the state of the judicial system and the appointment of nine new members of the Supreme Court

The presenter said that the judicial system is currently ineffective and corrupt which is why the public do not have faith in it and usually prefer to resolve their judicial problems themselves. He said the newly-appointed group has to tackle many challenges.

Mohammad Ashraf Rasuli, a law professor, spoke about the damage caused to the judicial system during the war years. "The judicial system has really lacked the necessary efficiency and effectiveness over the last few years. This has caused people to lose their trust in it. I do not expect extraordinary performances from the newly-appointed team considering their brief work experience but still I hope the new work team will be able to serve the judicial system in the best possible way," the professor said.

Afghanistan's chief justice also talked about the defects in the judicial system. "We have two different problems, one of which is lack of personnel and the other is lack of judicial experts. Our current high-ranking judicial officials are not sufficiently qualified. They have gained their posts because of the shortage of actual experts," he said.

Bahaoddin Baha, a member of the Supreme Court, justified their performance regarding new appointments in the capital and provincial courts. He stressed that despite their huge workload, they could make time to assess the professional abilities and education of a number of judges and make new appointments to replace those who were inefficient and unprofessional while studying their backgrounds.

Mohammad Ashraf Rasuli said he thought it would have been better if the process of reforms and new appointments had started in the capital and then been extended to the provinces .He added that it was still early to judge the efficiency of the new team so people would have to wait a while before judging their performance.

In a bid to improve the system in the Supreme Court, the presenter said it has been agreed that cameras will be installed in the offices of judges in order to record any possible illegal behaviour such as bribery. He said this action might be part of the publicity measures to be adopted to improve the courts.

Qazi Nazir Ahmad, an MP, welcomed the installation of cameras in judges' offices and said: "I support the decision to install cameras. These cameras will videotape the behaviour and deeds of judges so there can be very clear proof of any kind of corruption that might go on in judge's offices."

Abdol Jalil Mawlawizada, a former chief judge, did not think cameras were the right way to monitor judges' activities: "The camera can only record the flow of sessions in the office of the judge. It cannot go everywhere with the judge. There are lots of opportunities for judges to take bribes outside their offices. Let us pray that God may direct the judges onto the path of honesty."

According to the presenter, there are lots of cases which have not been followed through to the end and are still incomplete and judges must bear a share of responsibility for this. The chief justice said he was determined to pursue this issue: "We will surely punish such elements when we are sure that the person is really guilty. We will be extra cautious about punishing any official of the courts until his crime is proven."

The presenter then discussed the education of judges and said the educational background, training and certificates of judges should be investigated. He said this could improve the judicial system. Mohammad Ashraf Rasuli and the head of the anti-corruption commission, Zabiollah Esmati, confirmed that some appointments had been made without people's educational backgrounds and qualifications being verified. Esmati cited one example of an almost illiterate person being appointed as judge in one court.

The presenter concluded with a quote from the Supreme Court member Bahaoddin Baha, enumerating the challenges currently facing the judiciary. Baha said some judges do not have a proper understanding of the law; thus they can not implement the law. Other challenges pointed out by him included the lack of academic personnel, the lack of safe places where important documents could be stored in order to avoid duplication or illegal changes to documents and the lack of a standard mechanism for pursuing claims.

UNESCO approves new badge to be granted in Mowlana's honor

Paris, Oct 14, IRNA - The executive council of UNESCO in its 175th meeting on Friday afternoon approved a new badge honoring the outstanding 13th century Iranian poet, mystic and philosopher Mowlana Jalaleddin Balkhi Rumi.

Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey jointly prepared an introductory note about Mowlana badge and submitted it to UNESCO, which was unanimously approved by its 58 member states.

According to the document, the badge will be granted to those involved in promoting Mowlana's thoughts and ideals, which in a way reflect the thinking trend of UNESCO on his 800th birth anniversary in 2007.

It referred to Mowlana as a famous Persian spiritual leader, thinker and poet who is considered as one of the world's greatest intellectuals and scientists of Islamic civilization who addressed the humanity as a general body.

"Due to his highly attractive, honest and expressive style, his literary works seem to disseminate divine rays. His thinking trend and training went beyond national, cultural and civilizational borders and are considered as the index of the mysteries of divine truth," it said.

The meeting of UNESCO's Executive Council on Saturday afternoon was attended by representatives of some council members, including India and Afghanistan, as well as representatives of Iran and Turkey who delivered speeches on the significance of Mowlana's heritage as observer members.

Speaking at the meeting, Iran's permanent Ambassador to UNESCO, Ahmad Jalali, declared the country's support for approval of such a badge honoring Mowlana.

"Mowlana belongs to the entire world and he may be taken as the most prominent figure introducing the Islamic civilization in the field of human sciences and one who has taught man the extent of inter-connection between freedom of human soul and the divine message of Islam and other monotheistic religions," he said.

The Iranian diplomat noted that the current condition can be assimilated to a dark house, where there is no hope for peace and harmony, adding that as long as such a darkness persists, it will be impossible to overcome such a problem and reach accord.

"Mowlana clearly tau