In this bulletin:

• 'Lack of coordination in forces causes civilians casualties'
• Nato 'kills 70 Afghan militants'
• ISAF soldier killed, eight wounded in Uruzgan
• Afghan Taleban say no to peace talks
• Renegade Afghan jihadi leader apparently ready for conditional peace talks
• There must be linkages between Hekmatyar, Al Qaeda leader: Musharraf
• Afghan authorities report presence of Hezb-e Eslami terror camps in Pakistan
• Achakzai urges govt to shun interference in Afghanistan
• 'Islamabad in dilemma over Taliban role'
• Taliban plan to fight through winter to throttle Kabul
• Troops 'locked down' by suicide bombers
• Taking the Fight to the Taliban
• Fremont mourns slain Afghan mom

'Lack of coordination in forces causes civilians casualties'

Zubair Babkarkhel - KABUL, Oct 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai Friday said one reason of the civilians casualties in air strikes was the lack of coordination in Afghan and NATO forces.

Talking to reporters here, Karzai said four families had lost much members in the Panjwayee bombing. According to residents, 90 civilians were killed in Zangwad village of the district. Karzai said: "Yesterday I talked to a 75-year-old Haji Abdullah Shah, who has lost all family members in the blast. Only his son was survived in the attack."

He said after talking to Abdullah Shah it was known that unluckily civilians were killed in the bombing. He said: " We want to know whether Taliban have attacked here, and have taken benefit from the public houses or not." The president said it was clear beyond doubt that militants had used houses and mosques in the past that had caused civilians casualties.

Karzai said several times he discussed prevention of such incidents with the international community, but no solid results had been achieved so far. He termed foreign command the reason behind civilians casualties in the operations. The president said: "Aircraft are of the NATO forces, pilots are of also them, oil and other materials including command are in their hands. We tried to strengthen Afghan forces in these three villages and take full control."

He said few problems and great coordination were found in the areas under command of Afghan forces. Karzai said: "Where Afghan forces have control losses are there less, coordination is better in such areas. Our directives and views are respected there and activity is going on in an Afghan environment."

He urged the international community to strengthen Afghan forces. Karzai termed prevention of incidents like Panjwayee difficult until strengthening of the Afghan forces. The president said foreign forces also lost soldiers in operations.

Regarding terrorism, Karzai said: "Terrorism cannot be eliminated with military operations in Afghanistan villages, the root of terrorism is not in Afghanistan, international community should wipe out the roots of terrorism."

Regarding reconciliation with the opponents, the president said they were ready for holding peace talks with every Afghan and every foreigner. Pointing to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Umar, he said if the fugitive leader and other Afghans wanted to talk to Afghan government they were welcomed.

Nato 'kills 70 Afghan militants'

BBC News / Sunday, 29 October 2006 - Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed 70 militants in fierce clashes in southern Uruzgan province. Up to 150 militants attacked the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) troops at their base north of Tarin Kowt, Nato says.

In a battle lasting many hours, the alliance called in jets and attack helicopters to repel the assault. In a separate incident in Uruzgan, a Nato soldier was killed when his convoy hit a roadside bomb. His nationality has not been disclosed.

Uruzgan province is the base for Dutch and Australian Isaf troops, although it is not clear which nationalities were involved in the clash near Tarin Kowt.

Nato said there would be no let up in the battle against the Taliban. "We're going to keep the pressure up... in every region across the country," alliance spokesman Maj Luke Knitting told AP news agency.

The BBC's Dan Isaacs in Kabul says Nato forces have faced increasingly stiff resistance from Taleban fighters in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

Although Nato has claimed significant success in defeating insurgents in the region, alliance commanders believe Taleban fighters have returned to areas where they had previously been routed, our correspondent adds.

Earlier this week, controversy arose over a Nato bombing raid in which at least 12 civilians were killed in Panjwayi district in the southern province of Kandahar.

Gen James Jones, a top Nato commander, apologised for the deaths, but said Taleban were to blame for using villagers as cover.

One Afghan survivor told the BBC that those attacked were nomads who had been living outside a village in tents. Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was "hurt and saddened" by the incident.

ISAF soldier killed, eight wounded in Uruzgan

KABUL, Oct 29 (Pajhwok Afghan News): One soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed and eight more wounded in a landmine blast in the southern Uruzgan province, says a press release issued here late last night.

The ISAF convoy was caught in the blast of an improvised explosive device (IED), said the release. The attack also injured three civilians, who were rushed to an ISAF medical facility for treatment.

According to NATO policy, names of the dead and injured soldiers would be released by their relevant country. A day earlier, 14 people were killed and three wounded when a passenger vehicle hit a landmine in Tirin Kot, capital of the same province.

Afghan Taleban say no to peace talks

Text of report by Afghan independent Pajhwok news agency website

Kabul, 28 October: The Taleban have once again rejected President Karzai's request to hold peace talks.

At a press conference yesterday, President Karzai asked Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taleban, and other armed opponents to stop opposing the government and agree to hold talks.

Karzai said Mullah Omar should abandon foreigners and prepare himself for talks. But Dr Hanif, a Taleban spokesman, strongly rejected Karzai's request.

Dr Hanif told Pajhwok today: "We have already made clear our stance with regard to peace talks and we once again repeat that as long as the country is occupied, it is impossible to hold any kind of talks. Karzai and his administration lack sovereignty. Holding talks with them is meaningless."

Hanif said the Taleban movement was independent and said that the Afghan government was in the shadow of F16 and B52s planes. He once again stressed that their resistance would continue as long as there were foreign troops in Afghanistan.

President Karzai had already asked the Taleban to stop armed opposition and prepare for talks. But the Taleban leaders have always rejected talks.

A number of analyst believe that in the present situation, Karzai's request will not bear fruit and they say that by requesting to hold talks, Karzai wants to show present himself as a peaceful ruler.

Zabihollah Quraishi, a professor of Law and Political Science at Al-Bairuni University in Kapisa, believes that in doing so, Karzai wants to show the nation and the international community that he does not the war.

Quraishi does not believe that war is the solution and says that those who support the war also need peace. But he still believes that at the present situation, Karzai's request is useless.

In an interview with Pajhwok to discuss ending violence in Afghanistan, Quraishi said: "Resolving this problem is impossible as long as Karzai does not give the opponents a share in the government and as long as the opponents feel that they have no share in the government."

Quraishi believes that the present conditions lead to the growth of opposition and added that peace is impossible as long as the conditions remain unchanged.

He added: "Despite all the aid offered to Afghanistan at the Bonn Conference and other international conferences, the people of Kabul still do not have enough petrol to light up their lamps."

He said that since little attention is paid to the actual living conditions of the people, the people lose trust in the government and the opponents benefit from this lack of trust.

He believes that if the government paid attention to the people's living conditions, the people would believe that the government was their's and so, the scope for insurgent activity would be reduced.

Siyamak Herawi, who works for the presidential press office, also believes that there are a number of problems but says that the government makes efforts to solve them. He believes that Karzai's request is valuable because it gives the opponents a chance to review their activities.

Hafiz Mansur, a politician opposed to Karzai, and the editor-in-chief of the Mojahed Weekly, also believes that Karzai's request is useless. He believes that by making such offers, Karzai wants to show that he wants peace. He said: "Such requests show that Karzai has no proper plans and that he is worried."

According to Quraishi, the foreign forces have always said that they have come to Afghanistan to ensure peace and as soon as there is peace, they will leave. Quraishi believes that to this end, the army should be strengthened and security matters should be handed over to the Afghan army.

At yesterday's conference, Karzai asked all opponents without exception to hold talks and said that he wants peace in Afghanistan at any cost.

The request, which does not include any conditions, has been made at a time when preparations are under way for the trans-border Pakistani-Afghan tribal councils, which was agreed upon during the meeting of Karzai and Musharraf in the White House.

Renegade Afghan jihadi leader apparently ready for conditional peace talks - Text of report in English by Afghan independent Pajhwok news agency website

Kabul, 28 October: Golboddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hezb-e Eslami faction Saturday showed readiness for conditional peace talks with the Karzai administration, a stance comparatively more flexible than that of the Taleban movement.

Reacting to Karzai's offer, Hekmatyar said they were ready for certain peace negotiations only if the Afghan government set a deadline for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Talking to reporters on Friday, President Karzai invited both leaders - Golboddin Hekmatyar and Mullah Mohammad Omar - to shed violence and come to the negotiating table. He asked the two leaders to be isolated from the aliens and get ready for talks.

However, purported spokesman for Hezb-e Eslami Engineer Harun Zarghun told Pajhwok Afghan News on Saturday their first condition for peace talks was to have a deadline for about 40,000 foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan under NATO and US leadership.

"Hekmatyar is an independent man and everyone knows he lives in Afghanistan," Hezb's spokesman told this news agency via satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

Hezb-e Eslami has been listed as a terrorist organization by some Western governments and is a key opposition faction fighting the US-backed Afghan government on a 'holy war' against what it calls foreign invaders.

Meanwhile, a political party registered under the same name (Hezb-e Eslami) and comprising figures previously loyal to Hekmatyar has welcomed President Karzai's offer for negotiations.

A member of the splinter group which now has an office in Kabul told this news agency the offer for talks was a positive point that Karzai moved on during the reconciliation process. He lashed out at Karzai's words calling on Hekmatyar to be isolated from aliens, arguing that Karzai was also actually attached to aliens and using such words was not appropriate for peace talks.

Earlier, the Taleban, through its spokesman, rejected unconditionally Karzai's offer for negotiations, saying their movement was independent and Karzai's rule was under foreign influence and that they would continue fighting until all foreign troops were expelled from Afghanistan,.

Earlier, too Hamed Karzai has several times asked the Taleban to banish violence and come forward for peaceful negotiations. However, the Taleban movement has always rejected the government offer.

There must be linkages between Hekmatyar, Al Qaeda leader: Musharraf

Pak Link, Pakistan - 10/28/2006 - WASHINGTON - President Pervez Musharraf has said Osama bin Laden is alive and hiding in Afghanistan's eastern province of Kunar.

Musharraf in an interview in British newspaper suggested that there must be linkages between Hekmatyar and the Al Qaeda leader.

President Musharraf, dismissing a French intelligence report that Osama bin Laden had died of typhoid, said that he believed the al-Qaeda leader to be hiding in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar. He also suggested that Osama was being helped in hiding by Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

"Kunar province borders on Bajaur Agency. We know there are some pockets of al-Qaeda in Bajaur Agency.

"In Kunar province it is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who is operating. There must be some linkages," said General Musharraf. President Musharraf rejected allegations in British military papers that Pakistan's intelligence service has indirectly helped terrorism and extremism.

The claims are in a document written by a UK intelligence official, which says Pakistan's ISI indirectly supporting terrorism and extremism.

Afghan authorities report presence of Hezb-e Eslami terror camps in Pakistan - Text of report by Afghan independent Tolo TV on 28 October

[Presenter] National Security Department sources say members of Golboddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Eslami Party have established military centres offering terrorist training to Afghan refugees in Peshawar, Pakistan.

According to national security officials, members of the Hezb-e Eslami party have banned music and television in Shamshato, a refugee camp in Peshawar.

[Correspondent] The office of the spokesman of the National Security Department says members of the Hezb-e Eslami Party have warned refugees living in the camp that their power will be cut and they will even be forced out of the camp if they oppose the party's decisions. Security officials believe that Hezb-e Eslami members cannot take such measures on their own. They are sure Hezb-e Eslami enjoys the support of the Pakistani intelligence services in taking such measures.

The Afghan authorities have said repeatedly that Pakistani intelligence agencies support terrorist groups. The government of Pakistan has rejected these claims.

The government of Canada previously described Hezb-e Eslami as a terrorist group following the death of a number of Canadian soldiers in clashes with terrorists loyal to Golboddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Eslami party.

Achakzai urges govt to shun interference in Afghanistan

Online - International News Network (Pak) - Sunday 29th October, 2006

PISHIN: President Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM), Mehmood Khan Achakzai, has called for an end to interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan so that Pakistan and the whole region remains safe from any possibilities of an impending war.

He said this while addressing a mammoth public meeting in Quetta on Saturday, which was also addressed by party’s Provincial president Abdul Rauf and others and was replete with revolutionary poetry and anthems orated by Raza Shaidan.

He warned that the country and this region was passing through a critically disastrous phase and the situation of the country was worsening day by day. This would have to be changed through a popular mandate.

He espoused three major allegations currently being faced by Pakistan, which include illegal export of nuclear material and technology to Iran, N. Korea and Libya, labeling every arrested terrorist as being trained in Pakistan, while the third most serious and heinous one blames the incumbent military rulers of Pakistan for constantly meddling in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and which was pushing the entire region towards the brink of a never-ending war.

He said that in the aftermath of 9/11 crises when America wanted to arrest Mullah Omar and Usama Bin Laden, Pakistan offered its total services for the purpose to USA led invasion forces. But after the failure to contain the Taliban elements and their influx into the Pakistan Tribal belt, Pakistan stands constantly accused of harboring them.

He said that this was an outrageous blame considering the fact that allied forces are equipped with latest technology, which can easily assist them with correct details.

He castigated both President Musharraf and MMA for their double standards regarding their condemnations of American interference, despite the fact that the government is fully abetting the allies by providing them full logistics and other support in their operation against the warring rebels.

He publicly appealed to the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and other notable Afghan leaders like Professor Rabbani, Professor Sibghatullah Mujaddadi, Professor Rasool Siyaf, Pir Syed Ahmad Gillani, and associates of the deceased Ahmad Shah Masood to hold a Jirga (tribal consensus) with Pakistani counterparts, Maulana Fazl-Ur-Rehman, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, along with their associates and President Musharraf to solve the thorny Afghan crisis.

He said that Afghan President Karzai has corresponded with him, Asfandyar Wali, and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman and they should be sincere enough to hold the proposed Jirga for the sake and prosperity of Afghanistan.

He said that about 150 notables of Wazirstan have fallen victims to a deliberate target killing and none of their murderers have been arrested to date. He also blamed all the leading Ulema and preachers of Jihad for paying discriminate lip service to Jihad, while none of their kin have ever participated or volunteered for it, and common public is being sacrificed at their cost!

He cautioned the rulers to adopt a conducive and prudent policy if they wanted to avoid a senseless war engulfing and damaging Pakistan.

He said that a despotic rule had been imposed over the country, which is devoid of any sense of justice and fairness, while all evil is rampant in the society., urging a united and cohesive effort to bring a democratic change in the Country.

'Islamabad in dilemma over Taliban role'

KABUL, Oct 27 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf is torn between his desires to support the Taliban and, at the same time, not wanting to offend the United States, according to the imam of Peshawars 17th-century Mahabat Khan Mosque, who is also director of the Jamia Ashrafia, a Deobandi madrassa.

Maulana Yousaf Qureshi told an American newspaper that he met the president twice a year and understands his predicament: "The heart of this government is with the Taliban. The tongue is not."

Qureshi was quoted in the course of an in-depth 10,000-word article in the newspapers magazine section about the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan where its fighters are giving tough time to the coalition troops and Afghan armed forces.

He told the newspaper: "I think they want a weak government and want to support the Taliban without letting them win."

He continued: "Why? We are asking Musharraf, What are you doing, and he says: "Im moving in both ways. I want to support the Taliban, but I cant afford to displease America. I am caught between the devil and the deep sea".

He said that the ISI was supporting the Taliban, because of the "double policy of the government." Even in the 1990s, he added, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was supporting the official Afghan government of Burhanuddin Rabbani while ISI was supporting his opponent, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

He explained: "We are supporting them (the Taliban) to give the Americans a tough time. Leave Afghanistan, and the Taliban and foreign fighters will not give Afghan President Hamid Karzai problems.

"All the administrators of madrassas know what our students are doing, but we wont tell them not to fight in Afghanistan."

A former chief of staff of Pakistan Army, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg told the paper that Muslims who were propelled by the religious belief that they must reach out to defend the tyrannised, are now a "global deterrent force".

"As a believer," he said, "Ill tell you how I understand it. In the Holy Book theres an injunction that the believer must reach out to defend the tyrannised. The words of God are, What restrains you from fighting for those helpless men, women and children who due to their weakness are being brutalised and are calling you to free them from atrocities being perpetuated on them. This is a direct message, and it may not impact the hearts and minds of all believers. Maybe one in 10,000 will leave his home and go to the conflicts where Muslims are engaged in liberation movements, such as Chechnya, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now its a global deterrent force."

The newspaper commented: "Aslam Beg played a leading role in the militarys creation of asymmetrical assets, jargon for the jihadis who have long been used by the military as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan."

In the report headlined In the Land of the Taliban, Times writer says: "Meanwhile, the landscape next door in Afghanistan was changing. The warlords were back in action. The drug economy was surging.

By 2003 and 2004, Musharrafs men were becoming hysterical about what they saw a growing Indian presence in Afghanistan, particularly the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad, the Pashtun strongholds that Pakistan considered its own turf. Karzai was doing business with Indians and Americans and was no longer a Pashtun whom Pakistanis would want to do business with."

The newspaper writer referred to a visit she had had from a former Pakistani general who had been active in the ISI. The general invited Kandahars leaders to lunch and warned them not to let the Indians put a consulate in Kandahar and to remember who their real benefactors were.

"Today there is a consulate there, and Indian films and music are sweeping through the Pashtun lands. What is more, many Pakistanis believe India is backing the Baluch insurgency in Pakistans far south, clouding the prospects for the new, Chinese-built port in Gwadar.

The port is Pakistans single largest investment in its economic future and has been attacked by Baloch rebels.

"In many ways, Pakistani policy is already looking beyond both Karzai and the Americans; they believe it is prudent to imagine a future with neither. That future will be shaped by the past: the past with India, the past with the Soviet Union, the past with America. For Pakistans hard-liners, at least, the obvious choice was to take their assets off the shelf and restart the jihad," according to the correspondent.

She believes that by being co-operative with the present Kabul regime, the Pakistanis may be hoping to force Karzai to recognise the Durand Line in exchange for stability.

Another theory is that Gen Musharraf must appease the religious parties whom he needs to extend his power past the end of his term next year.

Musharraf bought them off, gave them control of the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan and let them use the Taliban. And finally, the Pakistanis see Afghanistan as their rightful client. They want an accommodating regime, not Karzai, whose main backers are the US and India, Pakistans nemesis. Pakistans secular Pashtun leaders point to another layer in Pakistans games: keeping the tribal areas autonomous enables Pakistans intelligence services to ward off the gaze of Westerners and keep their jihadis safely tucked away.

Taliban plan to fight through winter to throttle Kabul

Militia fighters are operating just an hour's drive from the capital's suburbs, confident of undermining Western support for the war

Jason Burke - The Observer (UK) Sunday October 29, 2006 - The Taliban are planning a major winter offensive combining their diverse factions in a push on the Afghan capital, Kabul, intelligence analysts and sources among the militia have revealed.

The thrust will involve a concerted attempt to take control of surrounding provinces, a bid to cut the key commercial highway linking the capital with the eastern city of Jalalabad, and operations designed to tie down British and other Nato troops in the south.

Last week Nato, with a force of 40,000 in the country including around 5,000 from Britain, said it had killed 48 more Taliban in areas thought to have been 'cleared'. 'They have major attacks planned all the way through to the spring and are quite happy for their enemy to know it,' a Pakistan-based source close to the militia told The Observer. 'There will be no winter pause.' The Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Omar, yesterday rejected overtures for peace talks from President Hamid Karzai and said it intended to try him in an Islamic court for the 'massacre' of Afghan civilians.

Since their resurgence earlier this year the Taliban have made steady progress towards Kabul from their heartland in the south-east around Kandahar, establishing a presence in Ghazni province an hour's drive from the suburbs. They do not expect to capture the capital but aim to continue destabilising the increasingly fragile Karzai government and influence Western public opinion to force a withdrawal of troops. 'The aim is clear,' said the source. 'Force the international representatives of the crusader Zionist alliance out, and finish with their puppet government.'

A winter offensive breaks with tradition. 'Usually all Afghans do in the winter is try and stay warm,' said a Western military intelligence specialist in Kabul. 'The coming months are likely to see intense fighting, suicide bombings and unmanned roadside bombs. That is a measure of how much the Taliban have changed.'

The new Taliban, a rough alliance of Islamist zealots, teenagers seeking adventure, disgruntled villagers led by tribal elders alienated from the government, drug dealers and smugglers - is no longer the parochial, traditional militia that seized Kabul almost exactly 10 years ago and was ousted by the American-led coalition in 2001. Tactics, ideology, equipment and organisation have all moved on. The use of suicide bombings, roadside bombs and targeted assassinations of those cooperating with Western forces are methods copied from Iraqi insurgents.

'They can't engage in big groups so... they've moved on to these targeted assassinations,' said Naimatullah Khan, deputy chief of the local council in southern Kandahar province, who has seen several colleagues killed. More than 70 suicide bombings, four times as many as last year, have together killed scores of civilians. In 2001 the tactic was almost unknown among Afghans. French intelligence sources say militants are heading to Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

The Taliban are now exploiting modern propaganda such as recruitment videos and mass-produced DVDs and CDs. This has been copied from international terrorist operators such as Osama bin Laden, thought to be hiding either in the eastern zones along the Afghan border with Pakistan or in the heavily wooded northern province of Kunar where there is continued skirmishing between US troops and militants. Civilian deaths - such as the 50 reported during Nato operations last week near Kandahar - are eagerly exploited for propaganda.

The Taliban remain a local phenomenon and are not believed to be in close liaison with the Saudi-born bin Laden or his Egyptian-born associate Ayman al-Zawahiri. 'It is more an ad hoc co-operation between the Arabs and some of the major figures in the broad Taliban movement, especially in the east,' said a French intelligence source. Those fighting British troops in Helmand province are thought to be linked to major clerics and traffickers in Pakistan.

In the south, the Taliban's strategy has been influenced by the doctrine of Pakistani spymasters who ran the insurgent war against the Russians in the 1980s. 'The idea then was to keep Afghanistan just below boiling point,' said one Pakistan-based veteran of the 'jihad' against Moscow's troops. 'The Taliban don't want an apocalyptic explosion of violence. They want a steady draining of the West's resources, will and patience.'

The Pakistani influence on the Taliban strategy does not surprise many observers. Senior Nato officials speak privately about 'major Taliban infrastructure' in the neighbouring country but Western military intelligence analysis has consistently underestimated the group's depth and breadth - it can almost be considered the army of an unofficial state lying across the Afghan-Pakistani frontier that has no formal borders but is bound together by ethnic, linguistic, ideological and political ties.

Centred on areas dominated by Pashtun tribes, 'Talibanistan' stretches from the Indus river to the mountainous core of Afghanistan and comprises tens of millions of people who, as well as language and traditions, increasingly share an ultra-conservative form of Islam.

A political party linked to the Taliban is in power in the two most western provinces of Pakistan. There are powerful commercial lobbies tied to smuggling of drugs and other commodities, while mainstream businesses such as timber and textiles provide vast amounts of cash which can be funnelled into military operations. 'The problem for the Nato planners is that the Taliban have a safe rear area, cash, arms supplies and the support of much of the population,' said a Western diplomat in Islamabad. 'That's all a successful guerrilla army needs.'

Western soldiers and political leaders insist on the need to win over hearts and minds, but many local observers believe that, at least in the south of Afghanistan, the opportunity offered by the defeat of the Taliban in 2002 to bring security and development to this strategically critical and opium-rich area has been missed.

Troops 'locked down' by suicide bombers

British forces in Afghanistan face a lethal change of strategy as the Taliban turn themselves into 'human Claymore bombs'. By Raymond Whitaker in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan The Independent (UK) Published: 29 October 2006

British forces in southern Afghanistan are experiencing periods of lockdown in two key areas, halting patrols to avoid suicide bombings by the Taliban. A senior officer called the security threat "critical".

Lt-Col Andy Price, military spokesman of the British task force in Helmand province, said troops had been staying off the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and the town of Gereshk, because "suicide bombers are walking around, looking for us", waiting for a convoy or patrol to go past.

A Royal Marine was killed in Lashkar Gah on 19 October by the first suicide attack on British forces in the province. While patrols have now been resumed, high risk areas like the centre of town are still being avoided.

The bombing signalled a change of strategy by the Taliban. In August and September the movement suffered heavy losses in "swarm attacks" on isolated British outposts in northern Helmand. Seventeen soldiers of the Parachute Regiment were killed in the fighting, described as the most intense British forces had seen since the Korean war.

But the last serious clash was on 27 September, as 42 Commando of the Royal Marines took over from 3 Para, and Taliban commanders said they would resort to suicide attacks instead. One boasted that the movement had "hundreds" of volunteers waiting to cross the border from Pakistan.

Lt-Col Price did not give an estimate of numbers, but said the Marines were less confident than 3 Para that the Taliban had suffered significant attrition: "For every Taliban you kill, you recruit three or four more." The bombers, while not getting help directly from Iraq, were following the Iraqi example "more and more", he added. The lethal effect of their attacks had been increased by placing a vest full of ball bearings and nails over the explosives, turning the wearers into "human Claymore mines".

To counter the risk of vehicle bombs, British forces have broadcast messages on local radio, warning Afghans to stay at least 20 yards behind military convoys. The same message is carried on the back of vehicles.

The limits on patrolling is a setback for commanders' hopes of returning to the original purpose of the British deployment in Helmand, which is to support redevelopment efforts. While the summer's fighting took place in an area where British troops were sent only at the request of the provincial governor, Lashkar Gah and Gereshk are supposed to be more stable centres from which the beneficial effects of redevelopment can spread, winning local support for the government in Kabul.

The danger is that British forces might end up in the same position as those in the Iraqi city of Basra, where troops have largely remained within their bases since a spate of roadside bombings and suicide attacks a year ago. Apart from protecting British lives, the aim is to avoid losing support because of local casualties. Two Afghan children died in the blast which killed Marine Gary Wright in Lashkar Gah 10 days ago.

The head of 42 Commando, Lt-Col Matt Holmes, insisted that the main priority over the next six months remained "to provide security where needed to support reconstruction". Killing Taliban fighters was not the primary purpose, although "if the Taliban want a fight, they will get one". Asked if the Taliban could be defeated, he said: "That is up to the Afghan people. It is not necessarily entirely a military solution. We hope that local people will come to see the Taliban for what they are, a movement acting purely in their own interests."

Commanders are angry at Taliban claims to have driven British troops out of Musa Qala, one of the towns in northern Helmand which saw the heaviest fighting. The British withdrew in mid-October after a deal brokered by the provincial governor, who set conditions including a 35-day cessation in fighting and local acknowledgement of the Afghan government's authority.

Far from being a climbdown, said Lt-Col Price, it was the "first seed of an Afghan solution" which would free British forces for redevelopment. A similar agreement is under discussion in the town of Sangin, where the Paras beat off wave after wave of Taliban attacks in the summer.

Although northern outposts such as Now Zad and Kajaki are still seeing occasional small-arms clashes, there has been a relative lull in fighting since 42 Commando arrived. Some have suggested that the Taliban held back during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which has just ended with the festival of Eid al-Fitr. Other theories are that many fighters have returned home to plant opium poppies, or that fighting in Afghanistan traditionally eases as winter approaches. But Lt-Col Holmes said: "I am not expecting a quiet winter."

* Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar has rejected the latest offer of peace talks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a rebel spokesman said yesterday. Instead, the one-eyed leader with a $10m bounty on his head has repeated his threat to prosecute Mr Karzai in an Islamic court for the "massacre" of Afghans. Mr Karzai on Friday repeated his offer for talks if the Taliban met several conditions, including ending support from elements in Pakistan and the involvement of foreign fighters. The Taliban has rejected all previous offers.

Taking the Fight to the Taliban

By ELIZABETH RUBIN - New York Times Magazine October 29, 2006

One morning this summer, I headed out with a U.S. Army convoy of Humvees, a truck called a wrecker and a packed supply truck into the Afghan mountains. I was among some two dozen American and Afghan soldiers from Task Force Warrior, an infantry battalion based in Zabul Province, just north of Kandahar. We trundled up a path fit for goats because the nearby riverbed was perfect for concealing improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s. Soon enough, the truck keeled over into the riverbed anyway. To hoist it up, the wrecker had to crash through wheat fields, and within minutes a gray-bearded farmer appeared brandishing his stick. “Are you Afghan?” he shouted at Farooq, my interpreter. “I have 30 members in my family. Why did you destroy my wheat?” The old farmer then clasped my wrist with his ancient garden tool of a hand. “You Americans are all friends of Bush the persecutor. You see this area” — he swept his other arm in every direction — “these are all Taliban. But they don’t have power. As soon as we find power, I will kill all of you.”

Farooq tried to calm him, but the farmer was fixated on his crushed wheat stalks until he spotted First Sgt. Ruel Robbins, a red-cheeked, chest-first sort. Robbins looked the farmer over, then said, “Tell him I’m real sorry to drive over his wheat, but I had to ’cause my vehicle turned over.” The farmer eyed the sacks in the supply truck; Robbins gave him one of rice and two of flour.

The farmer watched us take off in a swirl of dust, and Specialist Melissa Elliot, who was driving our Humvee, said to Farooq: “We’re not trying to hurt them. We’re trying to protect their security. Why’d he get so upset with us? Is their wheat part of their religion or something?”

“It’s the food for his family, ma’am,” Farooq said patiently.

And so began our mission into the mountains of Zabul Province, 6,500 square miles of desert, farmland and 9,000-foot peaks with almost no paved roads to link one patch to the next. It’s a place where, just decades ago, families lived as nomads, until King Mohammad Zahir Shah gave them government land to settle on, and where national politics is superseded by Pashtunwali — the Pashtun codes for tribal coexistence, based on retaliation, mediation and hospitality. In 1994, when the Taliban movement of young religious students swept into Zabul offering an end to illegal road taxes and warlord rule, Zabul’s leaders simply joined hands with their Pashtun brothers. After the Taliban’s fall, President Hamid Karzai’s nephew was dispatched to head the Zabul Police; in July 2002, I found him besieged by locals, who put feces in his food and threatened to kill him. For five years now American forces have been chasing the Taliban in Zabul and attempting reconstruction. The police buildings have improved. A new hospital (financed by the United Arab Emirates) was finished. Roads were being laid in terrain so remote that when the Americans turned up, the villagers thought they must be Russians. The Americans opened a trade school in Qalat, the capital. But the pace of progress has been painfully slow. These remain the Taliban’s mountains.

There are 42,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan today, trying to secure a country that is a third again the size of Iraq, where there are almost 150,000 U.S.-led troops. In the past two years, more than 300 American and NATO soldiers have died trying to stave off a resurgent Taliban. Already this year, some 1,500 Afghans have been killed. And while there were just two suicide bombings in 2002, there is now one about every five days.

With the Taliban’s alarming offensive, which began last spring, American generals began speaking of a different war — not a war against terror but a war of ideas. In military jargon this meant balancing kinetic and nonkinetic activity. Or, in plain speech, fighting the Taliban versus nation-building, two goals often at odds. “This is the war for the people,” Lt. Col. Frank Sturek, the battalion commander of Task Force Warrior, told me. Sturek served in Iraq under Lt. Gen. David Petraeus — one of the military’s leading thinkers on counterinsurgency — in Mosul, a city with 50,000 university students. In Zabul, by contrast, the literacy rate is 15 percent, at best. Sometimes Sturek couldn’t tell if people wanted to be catapulted to the 21st century or just left alone. On that he deferred to Delbar Jan Arman, the governor of Zabul Province and a former anti-Soviet mujahedeen, who mentored him on local ways — distinguishing a Taliban killing from a tribal feud or a quarrel over a boy lover. Arman explained cultural sensitivities: how pulling off a man’s turban or opening the clothing box of a woman could set off a revolt. Sturek would nod. “The standard military play is, Land in, round up the men, find someone who is nasty and mean and arrest him, drop off supplies and split,” Sturek told me. “We’re trying to humanize ourselves. It’s uncomfortable. You train an infantry battalion to kill the enemy, and it’s hard to tone it down.” The governor’s response was always: “The people are simple. We can win this war if the Army stays nice with the people and if we embrace them.”

After many sweaty hours, we rumbled into the Alamo Bar and Grill in Kharnay, elevation 8,000 feet. It was a fitting name for an outpost fashioned from a mud schoolhouse — dusty, waterless and powerless except for what the soldiers slurped off a Humvee battery. Charlie Company, Fourth Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, had been based here for nine weeks already when we arrived. They had been living on meals ready to eat, or M.R.E.’s, patrolling the mountains with packs weighing 60 pounds or more, befriending locals and being mortared and ambushed once or twice a week. Their skin was burned, their uniforms ripped. But for this evening, all suffering was suspended for barbecue night. The Humvees had brought frozen slabs of beef from the United States.

In downtime, the soldiers of Charlie Company would cram into a mud room to imbibe American culture — “Shark Tale,” “The Bourne Supremacy,” Lil Wayne, Toby Keith singing his “Taliban Song” — all courtesy of Pvt. Dennis Taylor and his DVD and CD collection. A teenager from Tampa’s housing projects, Taylor grew up with the Bloods. The Army has set him straight, even if his buddies teased him because they couldn’t decipher his lingo and he wasn’t sure what continent he was on or what the Koran was. “It’s Islam’s holy book,” said one soldier. “Man, how can you be fighting here and not know that,” another teased. Taylor laughed and shrugged.

At the other end of the spectrum was Cpl. Kyle Hayes, who had made Taylor his project and, like Sgt. Jon Terry, a sentimental tough guy from Louisiana, often shared meals with the Afghan soldiers accompanying their unit to taste their culture and to bond. Hayes owned a Web design company in New York City and until two years ago was touring with his band, “Half Left.” The band had a revelation while producing a record near ground zero in Manhattan, and they all joined the Army. Hayes’s family was stunned. “I was the only guy at basic training who voted for Kerry,” he told me. Sometimes he felt weird on leave in New York City, where people gawk at uniforms, though a few older people thanked him. His life plan, as inscribed in his diary, is to be a rock star, business mogul and founder of a Texan city by 35, governor of Texas by 45 and president by 55.

Anticipation hung over the Alamo. Charlie Company’s next mission was a bit of deceptive theater intended to lure the Taliban into ambushing the soldiers so they could counterattack. Part of the strategy involved Lt. Nathan Shields — a smiling, easygoing officer from Rochester — posing as a gullible new commander. Meanwhile, units hiding in the mountains would block the Taliban’s escape. That night, a few squads hiked up a thousand feet, each soldier hauling water (temperatures in the day are usually in the 100’s), food, rifle, knife, flashlight and first-aid kit, all atop 35 pounds of armor and ammunition. The Afghan soldiers carried little besides a rifle and ammunition. The American infantryman’s burden is the Taliban’s biggest advantage. Fleet-footed, carrying little more than an AK and a walkie-talkie, Taliban fighters could sail over the mountains.

The next morning we headed toward Solan, a village so unfriendly that when American soldiers airlifted in a bridge months earlier, it was burned down the next day. “We don’t know if the Taliban burnt it or the villagers,” Lt. David Patton, a tall, circumspect Texan with Task Force Warrior, said of the bridge in Solan. “Everyone believes in the mission,” he added, “but there’s an underlying thought that when we leave, it’ll go back to the way it was.” As Zabul’s governor, Arman, had told me, Zabul’s religious leaders all supported the Taliban, and in Afghanistan the most powerful platform is the minbar, a pulpit where the mullah delivers his Friday sermon. So although villagers were friendly when the Americans patrolled, they refused to help rebuild a school and a bazaar, for example, fearing retaliation from the Taliban who had destroyed them.

Shortly after we left the first village on our route to Solan, the Afghan soldiers began picking up Taliban radio chatter about the new Americans. Robbins was pleased. We were the bait, and the plan was working. We spread out along the gorge for a long, edgy march. Outside Solan, we met Sayed Ali Sheikh, an elder of the area, in whose compound the Americans had stayed before. He said he couldn’t guarantee that the place wasn’t rigged with explosives, but nevertheless he handed Robbins the key, showed us shrapnel the size of a skateboard that had ricocheted off a mountain when American planes dropped a 500-pound bomb — and vanished. In no time, the soldiers transformed Ali Sheikh’s compound into a base of operations: satellite hookup to call the Air Force for cover, mortar base near the well, sniper positions.

Ten lean men in turbans came to meet Shields, who played his role as new commander somewhat awkwardly. A strange dialogue ensued, led by one of the 10 men, Haji Gailani, whose oversize glasses, gabardine vest and cane denoted authority. He said that they didn’t deny Taliban fighters were nearby. “If you can catch those people, thank you,” he said. “If you want to slaughter my neck, please do.” There was a little nervous laughter. No, no, Shields said, of course not. Then Gailani said: “You have planes. You can hear the Taliban on your radios. And still you cannot force them out of here. How can we?”

Others began to speak up. Planes had attacked the mountains the night before, the men said. They had heard about the bombing of civilians in Kandahar. They wanted to know if they were about to be bombed. Robbins advised them to stay near the thickest walls and shut off the lights. Then they left.

And the waiting began. Pvt. Andrew Richards pulled out photos of his family, who lived in Colombia. Specialist Jonathon Routledge, whose voice still cracked and who couldn’t believe he was roped into the Army by some cool recruitment videos, poked at a chick that was pecking at spilled tea. Shields and the medic climbed onto the compound roof to give coordinates in case of a medevac. Pvt. Jason Belford was so itchy that he played can-you-down-a-pack-of-crackers-in-two-minutes.

The radio began sputtering with Taliban voices. An Afghan policeman, who went by the code name No. 5, had found their frequency. He heard them discussing our compound. They knew everything: how many Americans and Afghans, the location of the mortar, the sniper positions, the satellite and the flower (code for me, the woman in the group). Presumably one of our earlier visitors was an informant. No. 5 seemed a little dodgy, too — perhaps working only for the troops, perhaps the Taliban, perhaps both.

Shields, Sgt. Jeff Griffin, Belford and a few others moved out to check the area around the compound for mines. Just as we neared the rock garden, a detonation jolted us. A deafening sound. A black smoke squall. Amazingly, no one was hurt. But something was wrong. They had been out to that rock garden twice and found nothing. Suspicion fell on No. 5.

“Fire a mortar,” shouted one of the soldiers. Dan Guenther, a sniper from Texas, spotted something. Everyone assumed an imminent showdown. Someone threw a grenade into an outcropping to see if it was booby-trapped.

“If you’re gonna come to the party, come already!” shouted Guenther. Then he suggested they should all run out in front of the house, smack their butts and provoke a fight. It was 6:42 p.m., and the light was fading. Shields and a few others popped out of the compound’s shelter, hoping to draw fire. As darkness fell, I climbed up to talk to Specialist Tommy Glasgow, who was perched on the roof. He said that there was no way the Taliban would pick a fight after seeing all the U.S. fire power and listening to the bombers occasionally buzzing overhead. We talked about the mission in Zabul, and Glasgow said: “As bad as I don’t want to be here, we should be. The Romanians are coming to take over from us, and the Taliban are just gonna cream ’em.”

The fight never did come, and when we got back to the Alamo, the Americans were packing, and the Afghan police and soldiers appeared bewildered, convinced they would be dead in 24 hours. One policeman had already defected to the Taliban, I was told. “We’ll be bombing this compound in a few weeks ’cause it’ll be filled with Taliban,” Hayes told me. He tried to find an hour every day to write in his diary. On May 12, for example, he had written: “I killed some people last night. Second squad is out looking for corpses right now. We got mortared right around dark ... when I was getting all the last stuff done for the day, and I got a hypoglycemic attack when I was doing sit-ups. It was still a good day, though. I got a lot done. Everyday I grow stronger.”

A few days later, the Alamo was indeed abandoned by the Afghan forces.

The final draft of the U.S. military’s latest counterinsurgency manual, written under the direction of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. James Mattis, emphasizes that if you skimp on resources, endurance and meeting the population’s security requirements, you lose. Yet for the past five years, the Pashtun provinces have been plagued by a lack of troops and resources. James Dobbins, President George W. Bush’s former special envoy to Afghanistan, blames the White House, which he said had a predisposition against nation-building and international peacekeeping. The Bush administration rejected Afghan and State Department appeals to deploy a peacekeeping force in the provinces, dismissed European offers of troops and had already begun shifting military resources to Iraq, Dobbins told me, while U.S. troops in Afghanistan were to be limited to counterterrorism. “In manpower and money,” he added, “this was the least resourced American nation-building effort in our history.” In Afghanistan, the White House spent 25 times less per capita than in Bosnia and deployed one-fiftieth the troops. Much of the money that was pledged didn’t show up for years. “The main lesson of Afghanistan is low input, low output,” Dobbins said. “If you commit low levels of military manpower and economic assistance, what you get are low levels of security and economic growth.”

The draft counterinsurgency manual is thoughtful, full of details and warnings like these: losing moral legitimacy means losing the war; the more force is used, the less effective it is; provoking combat usually plays into the enemy’s hands; and building a government through illegitimate actions like unlawful detention and torture is self-defeating, even against fighters who conceal themselves among noncombatants.

Yet while I was in the south, I saw how readily vicious practices are condoned. An Afghan security official who insisted that I not use his name but who was an aide to a prominent southern governor, told of an instance when they couldn’t find a boy suspected of plotting an attack. “We sent out a command — arrest all his brothers, uncles, cousins, relatives, all of them,” he said. “When we arrested the relatives, no one knew what that boy was doing. Still we beat them all until they would shout, ‘Write that we killed 5 or 10 people, whatever you want, and I will say anything.’ ” In Zabul’s provincial capital, Qalat, the police proudly showed me three “Taliban” they had just captured. One of them had been beaten so badly he could hardly walk, and his feet were oozing puss. His eyes were mere wrinkles in swollen tissue. An American intelligence officer looked slightly embarrassed when he walked into the police station.

With a corrupt justice system, young Afghan men on the receiving end of injustice have often felt their honor could only be restored through acts of revenge. One night, a doctor introduced me to a young farmer who asked me not to use his name. He had been shot by U.S. forces in a gunfight a year earlier. Seven metal clamps were holding his leg in place. Though deeply religious, he never liked the Taliban regime. His family was relieved when Mullah Omar and the “Afghan Arabs” who first came to fight the Soviets in the 1980’s fled Kandahar. He believed that Karzai and the international community would help build the country. “But they didn’t,” he said in the dark little flat where we met. “They just came to arrest the people.” His father was a tribal leader with pomegranate orchards, and relatives often appealed to him to get their family members out of Afghan and American prisons. He would urge the Americans not to be fooled by false reports naming “Taliban.” The real Taliban had mostly fled to Pakistan.

About a year and a half ago, he told me, a mine exploded next to an American convoy. His father was sitting in a mosque when he was rounded up by coalition troops. Twenty days later, his father’s body was dropped off at a hospital. “I couldn’t control myself,” the young man said, nearly knocking over the gas lamp with his awkward, pogo-stick leg. “I wanted to avenge. I knew where the Taliban operated, because they would come at night, and so I found the commander of a small group. He welcomed me warmly and told me: ‘It is the time of jihad. You are a lion and a hero.’ ”

Colonel Sturek, a powerfully built, blue-eyed Maryland man so cleanshaven that he appeared bald, and Governor Arman, a heavily bearded engineer, made an unlikely team. They shared a meal of sheep, rice and melon four times a week to talk strategy. Sturek loved Arman’s vision of a network of roads by 2008, linking up Zabul’s remote districts, where they would build schools and markets. Zabul straddled the most dangerous stretch of highway in Afghanistan. After 3 each afternoon, Taliban blocked the roads, looking for foreigners, money, spies, satellite phones. Sometimes they would just burn up buses or trucks. They even set loose a donkey on the path to an American base, rigged with rockets, mortars and a detonation card.

Across Afghanistan’s southern provinces, American and Afghan troops were responding to the Taliban resurgence with Operation Mountain Thrust. In Zabul, the focus was on Taliban fighters in the Day Chopan mountains. Sturek’s goal was to disable the Taliban leadership, allow the Americans to find weapons caches, bring in aid and persuade people that they had no intention of interfering with their religion. As the full moon moved into place last May, enabling a predawn landing, Afghan and American soldiers with Charlie Company, Special Forces and U.S. doctors air-assaulted into the Day Chopan mountains, taking scattered gunfire, and descended on the tiny village of Hazarbuz. Special Forces soldiers with goggled sniffer dogs rounded up the men, numbered their hands with markers and interrogated them. Some were arrested and flown back to base camp. I followed Jeff Griffin and his squad, who were dispatched to the villagers’ homes with a message: Governor Arman is coming here to find out what you need, and a medical team has come to treat sick people and animals. This was typical of the American balancing act in Afghanistan. The Village Medical Outreach unit consists of reservist doctors who bring chests full of hygiene kits and medicine to villages that have just been raided by fighting forces.

We climbed up a hill through apricot and almond orchards to reach the scattered homes. We found a woman in a red velvet dress, who had beaded necklaces and a pair of scissors dangling from her neck. She said that the men were all sleeping. Then she said that they had left when we came. Griffin told her about the doctors, but she seemed frightened and said that she didn’t want medical attention. We wandered from house to house until a radio call came in from an observation unit. They had seen a boy wearing black, possibly an informant, running toward one of the houses.

More climbing, more rocks, until we reached a wind-swept mountain top where an old crippled man emerged to hug Griffin, who hugged him back, uncomfortably — after all, he had come to search his house. He then ordered the boy in black to move to a clearing so the observation unit, on a nearby mountain, could see if he was the runner. The soldiers rummaged through the house, turning up small piles of paper and boxes that seemed suspect. It turned out that the boxes were full of snuff and the house was just a shop. As we were about to leave, the radio blared out to Griffin: Don’t forget to tell them about the Village Medical Outreach.

As we rambled back down under the noonday sun, exhausted and thirsty, plucking apricots, almonds and mulberries off the trees, I remembered the Afghans I’d met complaining about Americans pillaging their harvest. It wasn’t hard to see how a few apricots could transmute into theft or how speaking to a woman after you have rounded up all the men could transmute into “Americans are abusing our women.” One afternoon, I had a car accident in Zabul. Within minutes, some 100 men pulled over and began heaving the wreck out of the ditch. As I crouched in the dirt wrapped in a tentlike Kuchi shawl, not a single man glanced my way. Rather, they asked my wounded translator if his wife was O.K. Someone must have sensed a foreigner, however, because 10 minutes after we left for the hospital, the Taliban showed up. They pummeled the driver, demanding to know what happened to the foreigner. He lied and saved his life. But that moment, when not one person glanced my way, offered a window into how seriously they abide by rules that are utterly alien to a 19-year-old American soldier. Sturek constantly struggled with pushing “cultural sensitivity” down the chain of command. It was nearly impossible.

On our long walk back down the mountain, two privates were trying to grapple with the contingencies of their lives, free will, U.S. history and America’s intangible objectives. They were having an existential moment and craving a meal at Red Lobster. This valley in Zabul reminded one of them, Specialist Joshua Pete, of canyons where the U.S. Army once fought his Navajo ancestors. Pete thought he had had a calling, that his country needed him. But because of Afghanistan, he had lost both his scholarship to Dartmouth and his fiancée. He didn’t believe in “this” anymore. Half the Afghans, he said, didn’t even want “our billions to build this country.” He wanted to be home fighting drug gangs in downtown L.A. or helping impoverished people in Flagstaff.

Back in the village of Hazarbuz, I found Governor Arman in his white robes, blazer and turban, sipping tea with Colonel Sturek. After one week, the governor said, once we were all gone, the Taliban would punish the people for sitting with Americans and the governor. Sturek agreed, but added that if the Americans didn’t come, the people would have no idea there was an alternative.

Men and boys filtered down to meet the governor. They sat cross-legged, skeptical, nervous. Arman was an earthy man, and while kind (“Tell anyone who has run to the mountains to come talk, there’ll be no trouble. I am your governor. Why am I here? To hear your problems.”), he also let them have it.

“Look at your kids,” he said, pointing to the boys. The men did, and he winced. “Look at their hands and feet, the infections on their skin, their bad education. Everyone looks sick. Don’t they have the right to be educated?

“Are the Punjabi kids in this situation?” he then asked, referring to the children of the ruling ethnic group in Pakistan. “Why do people call it jihad here in Afghanistan? Why don’t they fight this jihad in Quetta and Pakistan? We need to defend our country from the Punjabis.”

He told them that this war was a Pakistani drama. The Pakistanis were sending Taliban to burn Afghan schools while their own children were being educated. If America leaves, he warned, you will all be slaves of Pakistan.

Over the three days we stayed, Arman’s speeches grew harsher, and the men who visited him and Sturek grew more numerous and more attentive. The governor and the colonel could pick out the Taliban informants — like the young man with good sneakers whom everyone deferred to. Jin Kong radios, which work with solar power, batteries or a hand crank, were handed out by the U.S. military to the locals. The elders got bicycles; kids, school bags with pencils and other supplies.

Why did these Americans come here, the governor bellowed? Because the Taliban had not been nice with the people of this country. The Taliban beat the women, cut the heads off people, went to the north and made tribal enmity for Afghan people. How many Hazara, he asked, were killed in Shajoy (a district of Zabul)? Taliban had slaughtered hundreds of Hazara, an ethnic group descended from the Mongols and primarily Shiite. Arman repeated the accounts of Taliban cutting the throat of a little girl in front of her mother, then killing the mother, of the Taliban putting a gun in the mouth of a boy, who began to suck it and then they shot him. “Don’t you have sons?” he asked. Some of the men averted their eyes, fidgeting in the dust.

On one occasion, Arman asked the men who had come if any among them could read and write. He held up a paper with the word God written on it. None of them could read. “If you can’t read the name of God, you are blind,” he said. Trying to raise their Pashtun pride, he pointed to one of the interpreters, a Hazara from the neighboring district of Jaghori. “What is your district like?” he asked the interpreter, who dutifully reported it had 72 schools, 32 of them high schools, and that all boys and girls were educated. They had electricity, radio stations, lawyers and engineers. “Why are we Pashtuns always fighting?” asked the governor. “You will all be laborers to the Jaghori people because you are illiterate and uneducated.”

Perhaps, but the men wanted to know when their relatives would be let out of U.S. prisons in Kandahar and Bagram. And then a rocket exploded, then another, then gunfire began to echo back and forth between the valley walls. I trekked up to where snipers were perched on a small slope in front of a boulder. On the radio, we could hear Shields, who had taken some men and gone to patrol a valley. He was amazingly calm. “We’re under fire,” he said. “We’re in a riverbed on the side of a hill.” In fact, they were pinned down in an irrigation ditch with bullets throwing up dust and rocks all around them. An A-10 Warthog screeched across the sky as a 500-pound bomb smacked the side of the mountain.

We could still hear Shields breathing as he walked up the mountain. And that oddly calm voice: “We’re definitely putting ourselves at a disadvantage. Pretty much anywhere I’m standing they could take us out.”

A donkey began braying as the full moon drifted up above the mountains. Capt. Craig Johnson told Lieutenant Shields to watch out because shadows would cast long with that moon.

The Taliban, judging from the radio communications we were monitoring, seemed to be wounded and out of ammunition. One of them invited another to prayer. The other demurred, saying he was worried that he would be spotted. “O.K., then pray there, and I’ll pray here,” the first man said. Later, when I met a Taliban commander in Pakistan, he told me that they knew the Americans listened to their radios, so that the five daily prayers were often used as code to signal anything from “I’ve run out of food” to “Ambush them.”

The next afternoon, we flew by helicopter to Andar, a nearby village. I sat in the fields with a former teacher named Anwarjan. The governor had appointed him district chief for all of Day Chopan, but Anwarjan could barely travel. The entire province, he said, was Taliban. Still, he was busy with Shields getting hundreds of kids to school in the central town. He had convinced the parents that Pakistan wants their children to stay wild and uneducated. “I have 300 students now,” he said. “They’re changed. They are polite, greet people, treat their mothers well. One man can change a generation.”

But his efforts, he said, were being undermined by the constant incursions of Taliiban from Pakistan. “The leader of Day Chopan, Mullah Kahar, lives in Quetta,” in Pakistan, Anwarjan said. “All the heads are there. So why don’t you do anything?”

U.S. intelligence knows the same thing. As Seth Jones, an analyst with Rand, told The New York Times earlier this year, Pakistani intelligence agents are advising the Taliban about coalition plans and tactical operations and provide housing, support and security for Taliban leaders. Sturek told me that the U.S. is well aware that the Taliban heads are in Quetta. On one side, he said, most U.S. policy makers argue that the Pakistanis are our friends. On the other side are those, including some in the military, who say, “Let’s just drive into Quetta.”

I often received updates from Charlie Company soldiers after leaving Afghanistan. One of their platoon was killed heading up to an observation post in Day Chopan. After they pulled out of Day Chopan, one of the soldiers told me, they heard that things weren’t going so well and that the Taliban were using the fact that the Romanians had taken over to claim the Russians were back. And another soldier wrote: “Our platoon got sent to a National Guard unit to help them out. They’ve lost like six people in the last week, but none of them were from our platoon.We were in Kandahar for a little while to get resupplied, and you’re notkidding about the Canadians going down.We kept having to go to the big ceremonies for their bodies to get loaded on the plane.It seemed like they were getting messed up pretty bad. I definitely don’t get the whole ‘success story’ thing.”

Elizabeth Rubin, a contributing writer for the magazine, has reported extensively about Afghanistan. This is the second of two articles.

Fremont mourns slain Afghan mom

Community gathers at memorial service to 'stand against the violence'

By Jonathan Jones Inside Bay Area October 29, 2006 - FREMONT — Days before her death, Alia Ansari told her husband, Ahmad, that she had seen her late grandfather in a dream.

In the dream, her grandfather had given her a message: the end of her worldly struggles was near. A resting place in paradise would soon be hers, said Zaid Shakir, an imam from the Islamic Zaytuna Institute who relayed the story.

"It was a tiding that would be in a better place soon," Shakir said. "Some people — their stories, their life, their symbolism — touch people's life. And I think she was one of those people."

Around 75 people of various faiths gathered on a solemn Saturday morning in the gymnasium of Centerville Presbyterian Church for one of three services this weekend to mourn Alia Ansari, a 38-year-old Afghan mother of six from Fremont who was gunned down Oct. 19 in broad daylight.

Ansari was shot to death by an unidentified assailant as she walked with her 3-year-old to Glenmoor Elementary School.

At Saturday's service, Ahmad Ansari sat in the front row with his six children, their grandmothers and his brother. Alia's younger brother, Hassan Ansari, recalled how the family arrived in the United States in 1986 as refugees from Afghanistan when Alia was 17.

After her father died shortly after coming to the United States, Alia became the second parent to her younger brothers, who were toddlers at the time, and she helped them navigate through their new American community and culture.

"We really needed Alia at that time and she gave us a lot," said Hassan Ansari.

"Alia was truly a very special person," said the family's pediatrician, Debra Witter, in a tearful tribute. "In my brief encounters with her, I experienced her warmth, intelligence and kindness."

Witter said Alia's mother intends to plant a garden in Afghanistan in honor of her, and Witter said she hopes someday to travel to Afghanistan to see the flowers.

The service at the church comes a day after a very public Islamic memorial at Central Park in Fremont. And the Rev. Bruce Green, a bridge-building minister who works out of the church, took the opportunity to show scenes of the service.

Mohammad "Mo" Qayoumi, president of California State University, East Bay, in Hayward, explained how Muslims carry out the Janaza prayer at Islamic funerals and memorials.

Rona Popal of the Afghan Coalition called Ansari a "martyr" and urged those in attendance to help create a bright future for her children.

"I want to tell people who want to bring hate to this community that we all stand together and we're going to stand against the violence," said Popal.

Moments before the service was over, the Ansari family slipped out the front of the gymnasium without public comment. The family was expected to board a plane Saturday night to Marz-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, where Alia Ansari will be buried.

Later in the evening, the Zaytuna Institute planned to hold a poetry and prayer service for her at the center in Hayward. To donate to a fund for the Ansari children, checks can be made to the "Ansari Family," at Washington Mutual, account No. 3091558830.

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