In this bulletin:

• 14 Brit troops die in Afghan plane crash
• President Karzai Expresses His Regret at the Death of 29 People in Iran
• Afghan, NATO forces commence stability operations in Panjwayi district of Kandahar
• Truces fueling resurgence of Taliban, critics say
• Pak-Canada agree to cooperate war against terror
• ‘We must do something about Pakistan'
• School rocketed in Paktika
• Afghanistan: Pakistani Tribal Leader's Killing Touches Nerve
• UK soldier killed in Afghanistan
• District chief shot dead in Ghazni
• UN to announce 'significant increase' in Afghan opium crops : US
• A dangerous cliche
• Afghan Interior Ministry Takes on Armed Factions

14 Brit troops die in Afghan plane crash

Kandahar (AP) - A NATO aircraft crashed Saturday in southern Afghanistan, killing 14 British servicemen, but the alliance said there was no indication hostile fire was involved.

The crash came a day after fighting across the volatile south killed nine Afghan policemen, at least 13 suspected Taliban and a British soldier.

The "aircraft was supporting a NATO mission. It went off the radar and crashed in an open area in Kandahar" province, about 12 miles west of Kandahar city, said Maj. Scott Lundy, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

The British Ministry of Defense said the dead included 12 Royal Air Force personnel, a Royal Marine and an army soldier.

Lundy said "there was no indication of an enemy attack." He gave no other details, but an ISAF statement said the plane's crew reported a technical problem before going down. It also said that "enemy action has been discounted at this stage."

However, shortly after the crash, a purported spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Khaliq, claimed responsibility. "We used a Stinger missile to shoot down the aircraft," he said.

Haji Eisamuddin, a local tribal elder, told The Associated Press by phone that the plane's wreckage was burning in an open field. "I can see three, four helicopters in the sky, and coalition forces are also arriving in the area," he said.

In the deadliest clash Friday, insurgents attacked a police checkpoint, killing five officers and wounding seven in the Grieshk district of Helmand province, about 250 miles southwest of Kabul, said Ghulam Muhiddin, the Helmand governor's spokesman.

Police returned fire and killed three Taliban and wounded two, he said, but the attackers fled with four captured officers. Muhiddin said hundreds of police were hunting for them Saturday.

Suspected Taliban militants also ambushed a convoy carrying a district police chief in southwestern Nimroz province, killing the commander, Juma Khan, and three policemen, Nimroz Gov. Ghulam Dasthaqir said. Police killed three of the ambushers, he said.

Four Taliban were killed in an exchange of fire with police in the Garamsair district of southern Zabul province, district police chief Ghulam Rasool said. He said police suffered no casualties.

In a remote part of Zabul, a police raid on a Taliban hide-out triggered a shootout that killed three insurgents, provincial police chief Noor Mohammad Paktin said.

Insurgents killed a British soldier and wounded another in Helmand, where Britain has deployed nearly 4,000 troops as part of the NATO-led security force.

In eastern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber in an explosives-laden Toyota attacked a convoy of Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops in Nangarhar province, provincial police spokesman Ghafor Khan said. He said a coalition solider, an Afghan soldier and an Afghan translator were wounded.

A coalition spokeswoman, Lt. Tamara Lawrence, confirmed a coalition soldier and an Afghan soldier were wounded, but said it was a roadside bomb.

President Karzai Expresses His Regret at the Death of 29 People in Iran - Date of Release: 02 September 2006

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, expressed his deep regret at the unfortunate death of 29 people in Iran According to reports, a passenger plane has skidded off a runway and bursted in flames in Iran 's north-eastern city of Mashhad , killing 29 people on board.

The President, on behalf of the people of Afghanistan , expressed his heartfelt sympathies and condolences to the families of the victims and to the people and Government of Iran, and prayed for the full and speedy recovery of the injured.

Released by the Office of the Spokesman to the President - Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Afghan, NATO forces commence stability operations in Panjwayi district of Kandahar - ISAF Public Information Office

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (2 September 2006) – Early today, Afghan and NATO forces began a deliberate operation against several known Taliban strongholds in Kandahar's Panjwayi district designed to drive Taliban fighters out and allow displaced residents to return to their homes and resume their lives.

The goal is to remove the Taliban threat from Panjwayi and stabilize the district so that much-needed reconstruction and development projects can resume.

Afghan and NATO forces spent more than a month planning this complex operation, and a key consideration throughout has been to minimise the risks to the civilian population and has involved extensive consultation with local tribal elders.

This operation, known as Operation MEDUSA, will continue for some time.

Truces fueling resurgence of Taliban, critics say - Charlotte Observer - 09/01/2006 By Jonathan S. Landay

KABUL - The Pakistani military is striking truces with Islamic separatists along the country's border with Afghanistan, freeing Pakistani militants and al-Qaida fighters to join Taliban insurgents battling U.S.-led troops and government forces in Afghanistan.

Western and Afghan officials said the new infiltration came as the United States, its NATO allies and the Afghan government were struggling to stem a resurgence of the Taliban across large swaths of southern and eastern Afghanistan.

The fighting in Afghanistan is the bloodiest since U.S. forces drove the Taliban from power after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Many of the movement's top leaders, along with Osama bin Laden and many of his followers, escaped to Pakistan and have never been caught.

The Pakistani regime of Gen. Pervez Musharraf has been negotiating truces - with the Bush administration's encouragement - with Islamic separatists in North Waziristan and South Waziristan, mountainous tribal areas along the Afghan border where U.S. officials think bin Laden may be hiding.
In return, Pakistani officials are promising to restrict the country's troops in the area to major bases and towns and to pour huge amounts of aid - much of it from the United States and other nations - into the destitute region, according to American officials.

But as the truces take hold, separatists have been crossing into Afghanistan to fight alongside Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, according to Western and Afghan officials.

Diplomats who discussed the issue requested anonymity because the problem is the subject of highly sensitive discussions among Pakistan, Afghanistan, the United States and major contributing countries to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

The separatists and the Taliban are Pashtuns, the ethnic group that dominates Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal region. It's unclear whether the flow is an unintended consequence of the truces or is being ignored - or encouraged - by Musharraf's regime as part of the price for peace with the separatists.

Pakistan, which backed the Taliban before Sept. 11, says it's doing its best to seal the frontier of towering mountains and isolated valleys and denies that it's resumed support for its former clients.

Musharraf deployed 80,000 troops in mid-2003 to seal the Afghan-Pakistani border, subdue the separatists and track down bin Laden and his followers. But the military's heavy artillery and helicopter gunships failed to conquer the separatists and establish government control over the border region, a tribal area where the government has never established its dominance.

The United States reportedly has spent more than $1 billion underwriting the border fight, but when the military failed to crush the separatists, the Bush administration agreed to support Pakistan's truce-making efforts and pledged millions of dollars in additional aid.

The truces between Pakistan's military and the separatists have coincided with rising violence against civilians and increased attacks by the Taliban in four Afghan provinces along the Pakistani border, according to a United Nations-run security-monitoring program that Western diplomats consider highly reliable.

"The Waziristan border is like somebody swung the gate open," one Western diplomat said. "They (the Pakistanis) have bought peace there by exporting the problem."

A second Western diplomat said the U.N. monitoring tracked more incidents in Paktia, Paktika, Ghazni and Khost provinces Aug. 13-27 than in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban resurgence has been focused.

"What's pretty clear is that a subtext" of the truces is that the Islamic rebels in Waziristan "have a free hand across the border," he said, adding that al-Qaida fighters who've backed the separatists also are crossing into Afghanistan.

"It points to a real probability of even higher levels of violence" in Afghanistan, he said.

Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for the 23,000-strong American force responsible for southeastern areas of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan, said he couldn't confirm or deny greater infiltration from Waziristan.

"But there has been a definite increase in Taliban activity in Ghazni province," one of the provinces near the border, along the main highway linking Kabul with Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, he said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top aides have charged repeatedly that Musharraf's regime is supporting the Taliban, harboring their leaders and allowing them to maintain training camps and supply bases in Pakistan.

Zia Mojadedi, a senior national security aide to Karzai, criticized the Bush administration for accepting Pakistani assurances that the new truces include rebel promises not to join the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

"The thrust of (Pakistan's) strategy remains the same: how to milk the Americans" for more money, he said.

The Pakistanis' use of artillery and air power in the border fight - as well as cross-border U.S. strikes on suspected al-Qaida targets - claimed numerous civilian casualties, forced thousands of people to flee their homes and stoked support for the separatists. Hundreds have been killed on both sides.

The separatists have imposed rigid Islamic rule in Waziristan, where Pakistani troops reportedly are suffering serious morale problems and the violence has helped fuel popular anger at Musharraf and the United States.

More seriously, some experts said, discontent with Musharraf is growing within Pakistan's officer corps because of the army's humiliating setbacks in Waziristan.

Musharraf is a key ally in the Bush administration's war on al-Qaida. He's refused to relinquish the post of army chief of staff since he seized power in a military coup in 1999.

Pak-Canada agree to cooperate war against terror

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan and Canada has underscored the need for close cooperation in their struggle against the war on terror.

This was discussed during a meeting between senior Federal Minister and Minister for Defence Rao Sikandar Iqbal and the visiting Minister of National Defence of Canada Gordon O’Connor here on Friday.

The meeting discussed the geo-political situation of the region with special focus on developments in Afghanistan.

The Minister told the visiting dignitary that it was the earnest desire of Pakistan to see peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Minister highlighted the steps taken by Pakistan against fighting the menace of terrorism and extremism.

The Minister told his Canadian counterpart that Pakistan was cooperating with 50 countries of the world against fighting terrorism and making all out efforts to curb the menace.

The Canadian Defence Minister said that Canada wanted to reinforce its ties with Pakistan for the mutual benefit of the two countries. He briefed the Minister about the developments taking place in Afghanistan.

The meeting also stressed the need for exchange of visits by the Military personnel of the two countries so as to benefit of each other’s experience.

Earlier, the Canadian defence minister called on Secretary Defence Lt General (Retd) Tariq Waseem Ghazi and discussed with him matters of bilateral importance.

The secretary told the Canadian Defence Minister that stable Afghanistan was vital for the economic interest of Pakistan as it would help to provide access to corridor to Pakistan to Central Asian States.

The Secretary emphasized the need for institutionalization of defence cooperation between the two countries. Gordon O’Connor also called on Federal Minister for Defence Production Habib Ullah Warriach and discussed with him matters of mutual interest.

Both sides exchanged views on the security environment of the region. The Ministry told the Defence Minister of Canada that the government of Pakistan wanted to see peace and stability in Afghanistan. The Minister apprised the Canadian Defence delegation about the role played by Pakistan against combating the monster of terrorism.

‘We must do something about Pakistan' - GRAEME SMITH From Saturday's Globe and Mail 9/2/06

MAYWAND, AFGHANISTAN — Under a waning moon, with no electricity for light, the headquarters of Afghan forces in the Maywand district of southern Afghanistan was cloaked in heavy darkness.

Despite the late hour, district leader Haji Safullah remained awake in his concrete bunker, sitting cross-legged on ragged carpets, talking with police commanders about how to defeat the Taliban.

“Pakistan,” the former mujahedeen warrior said, his voice a growl in the dark. “We must do something about Pakistan.”

As the Taliban insurgency grows in southern Afghanistan, so do suspicions about Pakistan's role in the war. Afghans tend to blame their old nemesis for everything wrong in their country, but their accusations about the Taliban finding money, shelter, weapons and fighters on the other side of the border are getting more specific these days. Mr. Safullah rhymed off the names of Taliban leaders living in neighbourhoods and compounds around Quetta, in west-central Pakistan, and complained bitterly that his men can't hunt insurgents in those havens.

The frustration of such front-line commanders has been percolating upward in recent months, through the ranks of foreign soldiers, NATO officials, and Western diplomats. During a visit to Islamabad yesterday, Canada's Defence Minister praised Pakistan's assistance but pressed for more. “In my ideal world, they could do even better because that way our troops will be safe,” said Gordon O'Connor, who was on a tour this week through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And diplomats say that each NATO soldier killed by a Taliban bomb or ambush adds weight to an emerging consensus among Western allies, roughly mirroring the conclusion of the battle-scarred Afghan commander: Something must change inside Pakistan, quickly.

On a leafy patio in Kabul, a senior Western diplomat took a long sip of sparkling water when asked whether foreign troops are really fighting a local uprising in the country's south. What about the argument, he was asked, that the NATO forces have been drawn into a proxy war, a struggle against fighters whose instructions come from a neighbouring country? “It's a bit of both,” the official said, with an uncertain shrug.

The answer wasn't vague for the sake of diplomacy. Nobody has a clear picture of the connections between elements in Pakistan and the Taliban, or how the insurgents draw support from inside the country without, apparently, any meaningful interference from Pakistani authorities. Analysts often point to the deep historical ties between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which helped nurture the Taliban in the early 1990s, giving them support that helped the movement grow from a religious backlash against corrupt warlords into a theocracy that dominated most of the country.

Some published reports, such as one about Taliban leaders travelling in cars with official ISI licence plates, suggest that Pakistan intelligence retains its links with the insurgents. But does the military regime in Islamabad know about, or control, its ISI agents in the borderlands?

“We don't have evidence of that. But we know Pakistan could, and should, be doing more to stop the Taliban,” a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad said. Canadian diplomats interviewed in Pakistan last month suggested that Canada must push Islamabad more vigorously for co-operation. “We're not as aggressive as we could be,” one diplomat said.

Mr. O'Connor's visit this week is the 18th known delegation from Ottawa to Islamabad since the beginning of 2005. That means the Canadian High Commission in Pakistan is busier than most of Canada's missions abroad, but the diplomatic traffic is slower than the bustle among other Western countries. Britain's High Commission in Islamabad says it welcomed 40 official visits, not including military delegations, in the same time period. The U.S. embassy reported “30 to 35,” also excluding military guests.

The Western allies have similar goals in Pakistan, analysts say, but Canada's aims grew more distinct since it took responsibility for security in the troubled Afghan province of Kandahar this year. Kandahar shares a mountainous border with Balochistan, the vast swath of Pakistan's tribal regions. Balochistan has a reputation as a Taliban recruiting ground, a haven for insurgent training camps and home to many of the movement's leaders.

Canada wants Pakistan to crack down on the insurgents coming from Balochistan, but diplomats say it's difficult to reverse the habitual neglect with which counterterrorism officials inside and outside Pakistan have treated the southern tribal belt.

Within Pakistan, the biggest obstacle to a crackdown is the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), a staunchly anti-imperialist party that promotes a rigid enforcement of Islamic law. A political summary prepared for Canadian diplomats in Islamabad says the JUI “is still believed to be supporting the uprising of the ‘local' Taliban from the tribal areas, and Balochistan.”

The document adds: “Taliban fighters are apparently recruited and trained in these areas.” Despite the JUI's unsavory connections, President Pervez Musharraf has relied on the party's strong regional voting base in previous elections.

“Part of the quid pro quo with the JUI was, ‘If you want to go after al-Qaeda because of the American pressure, fine, but we will differentiate between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, because we the JUI support the Taliban,'” said Ahmed Rashid, a prominent writer on Afghan issues.

Sitting in the elegant study of his home in Lahore, Pakistan, Mr. Rashid leaned forward in his chair to emphasize his next point: The United States focused on hunting al-Qaeda after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, at the expense of fighting the Taliban.

“What happened after the war ended was simply that the Americans were insisting on a wrap-up of al-Qaeda,” he said. “That was translated by the Americans, very conveniently, as meaning Arabs; not Afghans, not Pakistanis. The focus was on the NWFP,” he said, referring to the North West Frontier Province on the northern side of Pakistan's tribal areas where Osama bin Laden was believed to be hiding.

“Because the focus was there, that very conveniently left the Taliban, who were based essentially in Balochistan, completely alone,” he continued. “Which is why they were able to revive and resurge.”

For the United States, this strategy in Pakistan has achieved significant goals. Since 2001, Pakistan has arrested more than 600 al-Qaeda operatives, including major terrorism suspects such as Ramzi bin Al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, alleged organizers of the 9/11 attacks.

But the U.S. strategy left NATO with an unpleasant surprise when the international force assumed responsibility for Afghanistan this year: U.S. intelligence agencies had little useful information about the Taliban revival in the south. Foreign militaries have misunderstood their enemy, said Mohammad Ziauddin, resident editor at the Dawn newspaper group in Islamabad.

Western officials often refer to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed former leader of the Taliban government, and his sadistic field marshal, Mullah Dadullah, as key leaders of the insurgency.
But those two leaders are merely “foot soldiers,” Mr. Ziauddin said. “They take orders from the JUI,” he said. “It's not a Taliban uprising. It's a section of the Pashtuns who are pissed off, and they're organized by the JUI to take back Kabul.”

Some diplomats and analysts disagree with Mr. Ziauddin, saying it's not clear whether the JUI has such control over the militants. But there's broad agreement with his two main points: That the JUI feeds the insurgency with its support, whether material, or merely ideological, as the party claims; and that the Pashtun tribe feels marginalized in the new Kabul government.

The Pashtuns have dominated Afghanistan for centuries. As the main ethnic group of southern Afghanistan, Pashtuns led the Durrani Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, and they formed the core of the Taliban movement that conquered Kabul in 1996.

Pashtun resentment may slowly decline, analysts say, as the northern tribes that overthrew the Taliban in 2001 are increasingly balanced with representation from elsewhere in the country.

But the JUI's influence in Pakistan seems poised to grow. The leader of the JUI's largest faction, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, was appointed as the leader of the opposition in 2004, and his party now dominates the provincial governments in Balochistan and the NWFP. Among the JUI's ardent followers, Taliban victories in Afghanistan only increase the Islamic party's prestige inside Pakistan.

And while General Musharraf is a moderate politician, analysts say, recent defections from his governing coalition will force him to rely even more heavily on the JUI's support during the election next year.

This leaves Canadian diplomats with an exceptionally difficult task in Pakistan, Mr. Rashid said: “We are heading for an even bigger catastrophe.”

School rocketed in Paktika

SHARAN, Sep 1 - Pajhwok Afghan News) - Several rockets, fired from the Pakistani side of the border, hit a school in the southeastern Paktika province Friday morning.

The rockets were rained at the middle school in the Malakhchi area of Barmal, the district abutting the border areas of the neighbouring Pakistan.

Provincial Governor Akram Khpalwak told Pajhwok Afghan News 20 rockets were fired from the other side of the border at the school this morning. He said half part of the building was destroyed in the attack.

Describing the perpetrators of the attack as enemies of Afghanistan and peace, he said the attack was violation of border laws of Afghanistan. Afghan officials usually complain the miscreants enter Afghanistan from the other side of the border to carry out terrorist attacks.

Afghanistan: Pakistani Tribal Leader's Killing Touches Nerve - RFE By Amin Tarzi WASHINGTON August 31, 2006 (RFE/RL)

As Pakistan faces a backlash after the killing of Baluch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti on August 26, Islamabad has rejected criticism from New Delhi and Kabul, calling the incident an internal affair.

Violent protests have raged in Pakistan, especially in Baluchistan, since Baluch tribal leader Bugti was killed in unclear circumstances during an attack by Pakistani security forces on his cave hideout on August 26.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz survived a confidence vote on August 29 -- only the second time a no-confidence motion has been made in parliament against a prime minister since Pakistan's establishment in 1947.

Bugti's relationship with the central government in Pakistan was marked by highs and lows, but in general the tribal leader had advocated more economic and political autonomy for Baluchistan through insurgencies and by using the Jamhuri Watan Party, which he founded and has led since 1990.

There are reports that Bugti -- who actually served briefly as governor of Baluchistan in the 1970s -- was a backer of the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), a group that advocates violence in seeking an independent Baluch state.

While Pakistan deals with the fallout from Bugti's death, Islamabad has made it explicitly clear that the entire affair is an internal matter, specifically telling Afghanistan and India to refrain from meddling.

Reaction From Kabul, New Delhi - Afghan President Hamid Karzai's spokesman and the country's National Assembly have condemned Bugti's killing. During a debate in the Wolesi Jirga (People's Council), members of parliament on August 28 debated the issue. While some Afghan lawmakers pointed out that Bugti's killing was Pakistan's internal affair, many called the action by Pakistan "an inhumane act." Pakistan says it did not intend to harm Bugti and that he was killed by explosives that went off after a Pakistani bomb attack.

Bugti's case is "indeed the internal affair of Pakistan, but it also has a connection with the people of Afghanistan, because we have always defended the rights of the Baluch and Afghans [Pashtuns living in the Northwest Frontier Province]," Kabul-based Tolu Television quoted an unidentified Afghan parliamentarian as saying. Another unnamed Wolesi Jirga member condemned Bugti's killing on "behalf of the people of Afghanistan," and expressed sympathy to the "Baluch tribe and all freedom fighters of the world."

The Indian Foreign Ministry called the killing of Bugti "unfortunate" and a "tragic loss to the people of Baluchistan and Pakistan." Indian media has generally been much more critical of Pakistan's handling of the affairs in Baluchistan.

Islamabad's Concerns - Substantiated or not, since 2003 Islamabad has accused its arch-nemesis India of setting up camps in Afghanistan to train Afghans and Pakistanis as terrorists to destabilize Pakistan, especially in Baluchistan.

Pakistan charges that with the presence of Indian troops in Afghanistan, New Delhi is encircling Pakistan with consulates and commandos and is financing militant organizations, namely the BLA.

While Karzai has repeatedly said that Afghanistan's relations with India "in no way" have an impact on ties between Kabul and Islamabad, the similar reaction from New Delhi and Kabul regarding Bugti's killing certainly does not help to quiet Islamabad's anxieties (see "RFE/RL Afghanistan Report," April 26, 2006).

Responding to a question about Afghan and Indian concerns about Bugti's killing, Pakistani military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said on August 29 that his country's Foreign Office has issued a clear statement on the comments made by Kabul and New Delhi, deeming them a "violation of all diplomatic norms."

Sultan added that these comments "point to the fact that if something happens in Baluchistan, [we know] who is involved in it." He did not elaborate but left no doubt that Pakistan sees an Indian hand with Afghan collaboration in Baluchistan unrest.

The Bugti affair once again brings attention to the need for Kabul not to exacerbate its already troubled relationship with Islamabad. While Pakistan needs to accept Afghanistan as an independent country -- one not subservient to its demands -- Kabul has to be careful not to play the Pashtun and Baluch card or get involved in the Indian-Pakistani games so much that Islamabad goes on high alert.

UK soldier killed in Afghanistan – BBC

A British soldier has been killed by insurgents in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence has announced. A further UK soldier is being treated for serious injuries after the attack by insurgents in northern Helmand, an MoD spokesman said.

No further details will be released until the dead soldier's next-of-kin have been informed. The death takes the total number of UK troops killed while on operations in Afghanistan since 2001 to 22.

During August, six British soldiers were killed in action in Afghanistan. The most recent was Lance Corporal Jonathan Hetherington, 22, who was shot dead on Sunday while fighting rebels during an assault on his platoon house in Musa Qaleh in northern Helmand province.

The soldier, from 14 Signal Regiment based in Pembrokeshire, joined the Army in September 2000. Nearly 4,000 British troops are deployed in Afghanistan.

Helmand, in the south west of the country and the area where most of Afghanistan's opium production is concentrated, sees regular deadly violence blamed on Taleban fighters or drug lords.

Although the Taleban was ousted from power five years ago, supporters have this year stepped up attacks on foreign and Afghan troops.

District chief shot dead in Ghazni

GHAZNI CITY , Sep 1 - (Pajhwok Afghan News) - Taliban fighters shot dead chief of the Maqur district of the southern Ghazni province on Friday.

The attack was carried out a few kilometres from the provincial capital and a US military base. Several policemen accompanying the district chief are also feared dead in the ambush; however, officials did not give the exact number of casualties.

Commander of the 3rd highway brigade General Pashtun Momand said the slain district chief Habibullah was on way to the Ghazni City , when his car was ambushed in Shahbaz town, some five kilometres south of the provincial capital.

He said several security personnel were accompanying him in the car. However, he would not say whether they had been killed or injured in the attack.

Claiming responsibility for the attack, a Taliban commander Mulla Mohammad Haroon said the district chief and five of his bodyguards were killed in the ambush.

Last week, Taliban had burned headquarters of the Maqur district in an overnight attack. The US-led coalition and Afghan forces have recently launched operation to hunt down the militants and wipe out their sanctuaries in the province.

UN to announce 'significant increase' in Afghan opium crops : US - by P. Parameswaran - Thu Aug 31

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United Nations is expected to declare a "significant increase" in cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan stemming from weak eradication, alternative livelihood and interdiction programs, the US State Department said.

"Obviously that is very bad news but not a surprise at all because early indications came in that it is going to be significantly higher," Thomas Schweich, the deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement, told reporters.

Insurgency-wracked Afghanistan is by far the world's largest producer of opium -- used to make heroin and morphine -- despite years of costly, internationally-backed efforts to cut back the drug. It supplies 90 percent of the heroin sold in Europe.

Schweich said that despite the big increase in cultivation, an international counternarcotics strategy launched in 2005 and driven largely by Britain and the United States remained effective "though it definitely needs sharpening and refining."

"We are not saying all is well. In fact, it is a big problem there, but the reason why you have so much poppy being planted last fall is because of the fact that the current anti-drug strategy was in its first year in 2005," he explained.

"There was very little eradication done, alternative livelihoods were delivered in a spotty manner, there was very little interdiction, there was no counternarcotics tribunal at that time to prosecute the offenders," he said.

A Western security official said in Kabul last week that 78 percent more land in Afghanistan has been planted with opium poppies this year than last, according to latest satellite images.

In what would be a new record, a first assessment of the images showed 185,000 hectares (456,950 acres) of poppy fields compared to 104,000 hectares (256,989 acres) in 2005, the official said on condition of anonymity.

Afghanistan produced about 4,100 tonnes of opium last year, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, with the crop estimated to be worth 2.7 billion dollars.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has described opium cultivation as Afghanistan's number-one enemy, warning that it was funding terrorism and threatening to destroy his country.

Schweich said there had been some progress in anti-drug efforts in 2006 that would not be reflected in the upcoming UN figures.

For example, he said, a counternarcotics tribunal has been set up since and tackled about 100 "active" cases. "Not a big number, but shows progress," he said.

Furthermore, in the "past several months" 15,000 to 16,000 hectares or about 10 percent of the crop had been eradicated, "an improvement over the four percent in 2005," Schweich said.

Alternative livelihood programs have been delivered more effectively and more "disincentives" to planting opium launched to signal a "more credible threat of prosecution and eradication," he said.

The United States has spent about 300 million dollars over the past two years delivering alternative livelihood programs to Afghans dependent on drug cultivation.

A dangerous cliche - Conor Foley – The Guardian - September 1, 2006 02:12 PM - http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/conor_foley/2006/09/afghanistan_is_not_iraq.html

A depressing feature of the debate about international interventions is how many commentators now refer to Afghanistan and Iraq in the same breath.

While I can understand why George Bush and Tony Blair would want to reduce the whole discussion about international relations into a global "clash of civilisations", I cannot understand why so many others feel the need to do the same.

It has become a stock cliché for many Muslim commentators to talk of the "wars against Afghanistan and Iraq" as if they were part of the same policy. Both "liberal hawks"and "anti-imperialists" also tend to take a position either for or against the two interventions together. Even centrist pragmatists now see the two as part of a continuum in which we should either stay the course or cut and run from both.

Obviously there are similarities, in that western military forces are fighting Islamic insurgents, having previously deposed anti-western regimes with appalling human rights records. In neither country has the transition to democracy gone smoothly: the occupying forces have also committed serious violations and ignored corruption and other abuses by both new regimes.

Beyond this, however, the comparisons fade and the differences are far more significant - at least as far as the debate about future military interventions is concerned.

The main justifications offered for the invasion of Iraq were its non-existent weapons of mass destruction and its illusory links to al-Qaida. The invasion was opposed by most of the world, including a majority of the UN security council, and was carried out in defiance of international law. Prior to the invasion, Iraq was a modern, developed state, rich in oil and with a unified central government. It has subsequently been systematically looted, pulled apart by ethnic tensions and now looks set to collapse into bloody civil war. The main lesson from this intervention must be "don't do it again".

By contrast, the links between the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan are uncontested, as is the latter's responsibility for September 11. The US was legally justified in taking "defensive counter-measures" after this attack and it reported them to the security council as it is obliged to do under Article 51 of the UN charter.

The nature of the intervention was more contentious, but not for the reasons that most of its opponents now argue. Afghanistan had been in the grip of a long-running civil war since the departure of Soviet troops. In the mid-1990s the Taliban, a Pashtun ultra-nationalist and Sunni fundamentalist group, began a military conquest of the country with the support of the Pakistan security services. Pashtuns are a minority within Afghanistan and, although the Taliban were military successful, they could never have claimed to represent the entire Afghan nation. Even among Pashtuns their virulently anti-women policies, medieval social attitudes, complete neglect of welfare programmes, corruption and internal divisions soon alienated most of their original supporters.

Operation Enduring Freedom consisted of deploying a handful of US special forces, with large suitcases of cash, to provide logistical support to the Taliban's opponents and bribe other commanders to change sides. Air strikes played a role in the spectacularly sudden collapse of the Taliban frontline, but probably not as great as is imagined. From the first day of the campaign, pilots were returning with full payloads because the destruction of one of the poorest countries in the world over previous decades meant that there were simply not that many targets worth bombing.

I spent a year and a half working in Afghanistan for two relief agencies and the complaint of most Afghans that I spoke to was not that there were too many international soldiers, but that there were too few. The international security force, ISAF, remained largely confined to Kabul and many of the problems, including the lawlessness, corruption and human rights violations that afflicted the country, were down to the lack of security. It was a backlash against these that has largely fuelled the Taliban's revival since the autumn of 2003.

Even here, though, it is dangerous to draw simplistic comparisons. This year has been the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and almost 2,000 people have so far lost their lives. However, more people than that are currently dying every month in Iraq and the fighting in Afghanistan is concentrated in the south and east of the country, along the borders with Pakistan.

As others have pointed out, the current conflict is about a complex mixture of issues including narcotics, corruption, tribal tensions, warlordism, illegal armed groups and external powers. It cannot be reduced to "foreigners versus fundamentalists" and certainly not "Islam versus the west".

There are important lessons to be learnt from the intervention in Afghanistan, including Britain's military preparedness for such operations, but these should not be confused with other failures of British foreign policy nor the current alienation of a section of its Muslim population.

No one seriously now doubts that Blair and Bush's blunders in the Middle East have increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks in Britain and an increasing body of opinion is concluding that withdrawal from Iraq may be the least bad option. But it would be completely crazy to pull out of Afghanistan or to abandon the current policies of "nation-building". The country now needs sustained support and long-term assistance from the international community. The world turned its back on Afghanistan in the 1990s once it lost its strategic significance in the cold war and this helped to turn it into a haven for al-Qaida. It would be a tragedy if the debate about the country's future became a new proxy ideological battleground.

Afghan Interior Ministry Takes on Armed Factions

The interior ministry takes a bold step to curb the power of warring paramilitary groups, but the government may still be too weak to dismantle their political support.
Institute for War and Peace Reporting - By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No.228, 1-Sep-06)

A clash between two armed factions in northern Afghanistan looks set to test the government’s resolve to take on armed militias and the politicians associated with them.

Police in the north-western province of Faryab reported that 14 people including four civilians died in a week of fighting in the Pashtun Kot district at the beginning of August. The clash involved close to 300 militia members aligned with rival commanders Abdul Rahman Shamal and Khalifa Saleh.

News reports are full of the conflict with the Taleban in the south of Afghanistan, but this northern confrontation involved combatants linked to figures who are supposed to share the government’s vision of stability and rule of law. Saleh has been linked to Junbesh-e-Melli-ye-Islami, the faction formerly led by General Abdul Rashid Dostum, while Shamal is said to be part of the Hizb-e-Azadi faction led by General Abdul Malik Pahlavan,

Abdul Malik used to be one of Dostum’s lieutenants in the Junbesh military, but fell out with him in the mid-Nineties after accusing him of having his brother killed. He then changed sides and helped the Taleban invade northern Afghanistan, forcing Dostum to flee the country.

When United States-led Coalition forces arrived in late 2001, Dostum became a key ally in the struggle to oust the Taleban. Since then, his and Abdul Malik’s factions have maintained an uneasy coexistence in the north. Dostum has served as deputy defence minister and currently holds the posts of adviser to President Hamed Karzai and chief-of-staff under the overall commander of Afghan armed forces.

The conflict underlines the obvious persistence of armed groups with political links, despite two major United Nations-backed efforts to disarm and demobilise first semi-formal military forces and then looser bands of illegal paramilitaries.

Now the interior ministry in Kabul, which controls the police who have struggled to cope in Faryab, has decided to do something about it.

Citing a constitutional provision that bans political parties with armed retinues, the ministry asked the justice ministry to outlaw Junbesh and Hizb-e-Azadi, both of which have official status as parties.

"These parties have military wings, so they must be dissolve because the presence of these armed wings in the provinces has created serious problems for the public," Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Muqbel told the media in mid-August.

Leaders of the two parties rejected the allegations, saying the interior ministry did not possess documentation to prove that either of the men was affiliated to their respective parties.

Sayed Nurullah, the acting head of Junbesh since Dostum stepped back last year to take up his current posts, told IWPR his group had no armed forces of any kind.

"The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan [Junbesh] is one of the powerful parties which fought against the Taleban, so it did have strong military units. It became the first party to disband its military wing in line with the [2001] Bonn agreement, and we handed over all our heavy and light weapons to the government through the DDR [Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration] and DIAG [Disarmament of Illegal Armed Groups] programmes,” he said.

“There are no armed men within the Junbish party.... There are local commanders present in many parts of the country, and they sometimes fight each other, so it isn’t fair to link that to a political party."

Contacted by IWPR early on when the clashes first broke out, General Abdul Malik said Saleh was a member of his party, but insisted he did not possess weapons. After several days during which the fighting intensified, Abdul Malik went back on that statement and said Saleh did not belong to Hizb-e-Azadi.

The general said the interior ministry was trying to shift the blame for the Faryab unrest away from itself.

"The interior ministry wants to blame the two parties for the incompetence of its own police in Faryab, who were unable to halt the fighting between two local commanders, and for its inability to ensure security and collect weapons across the country," he said.

Abdul Malik said his party could not logically have an armed following because if it did, the justice ministry would never have registered it.

He concluded by suggesting that the ministry should first try to capture the errant commanders and then find out if they had any political affiliations.

The interior ministry said it was trying to do just that, and asserted that it did have sufficient proof to implicate both parties.

"The reports we have received from Faryab are completely authentic and demonstrate that commander Abdul Rahman Shamal and Khalifa Saleh belong to the Junbesh and Hizbe-e-Azadi parties, respectively,” ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai told IWPR.

"The documents we have in our hands show that these commanders belong to Junbesh and Hizb-e-Azadi, that they have armed men, and that a week of fighting in Faryab left several people dead and was damaging to the local population. We will shortly be submitting all these documents to the justice ministry."

Saleh and 15 of his men were detained by the Afghan National Army immediately after the fighting, while police and army units are currently pursuing Shamal, who fled with his forces into the mountains nearby.

The justice ministry has so far responded with extreme caution to the suggestion it should take tough action against the two parties.

"When we were registering these two parties, the interior and defence ministries and the security agency reported to us that neither of them had a military wing,” Elyas Ghiasi, the justice ministry official in charge of registering political parties, told IWPR.

"The interior ministry has yet to send us reliable documents, but if we receive proof that a given party has a military force, we will begin the process of dissolving it."

Ghiasi explained that the procedure was that the justice ministry filed documents submitted by the security agencies in an application to the Supreme Court, which then rules that the offending party should be dissolved.

Whatever evidence the justice ministry is presented with, officials and ordinary Afghans in the north seem pretty convinced that Dostum and Abdul Malik and their respective factions remain major players.

“The government has no power in this province. The entire province is ruled by Dostum and Abdul Malik. These people extort money from local residents by torturing them. People cannot even marry off their daughters without getting permission from these commanders," said one local man who did not want to be named.

"The district chiefs obey these commanders rather than the government. We don’t know who to turn to."

The provincial governor of Faryab, Abdul Latif Ibrahimi, confirmed that militia commanders with ties to both Dostum and Abdul Malik were still active, adding, "If they were not armed, there would be no clashes in Faryab."

The NATO peacekeepers in northern Afghanistan, part of the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, appear to treat Dostum and Abdul Malik as the de facto powerbrokers in Faryab.

At a press conference in Mazar-e-Sharif, Brigadier-General Markus Kneip, the commander of ISAF forces in northern Afghanistan, said, "I held meetings with Dostum and Malik in order to halt the fighting in Faryab. These two Afghan generals helped us halt the fighting by exercising their power in this area.”

Kneip said further meetings would take place with representatives of both Dostum and Malik to press for the militias to disarm - without which, he predicted, there would be recurring violent incidents.

If senior Afghan officials are controlling or at least influencing illegal paramilitary groups that roam the countryside, why does the government in Kabul appear to turn a blind eye to it?

The United Nations-sponsored vetting process that preceded last year’s parliamentary election was supposed to have weeded out parties that were really political fronts for the old paramilitary factions. The interior ministry’s actions now suggest the process was flawed.

The problem extends to much of the country, with paramilitary groups - mostly rooted in the mujahedin war against the Soviets and claiming to represent a particular regional or ethnic group - still holding sway on the ground, and maintaining links with politicians at various levels.

The support these political-military factions lent to the Coalition and the Karzai government has made it hard to dispense with them altogether, despite the best efforts of the DDR and DIAG programmes to reduce their lethal capacity. Some members of Karzai’s cabinet and the parliament formed this year have links with the factions, making government an uneasy mix of compromise and pragmatism.

The war with the Taleban has kept attention on the unrest in the south of the country, compared with which the Faryab clashes seemed a mere spat.

However, Afghan political analysts interviewed by IWPR expressed cautious optimism that the Karzai administration is slowly beginning to attempt to curb the power of the armed factions.

"When these parties were being registered, the government was not in a position to deny them registration and it granted this right to the commanders as an incentive, in order to prevent inter-ethnic conflict, just as it appointed some of their people to ministries and provincial posts," said Kabul based analyst Mohammad Hassan Wolesmal. "Now the government wants to disband these parties, as it has removed warlords and some jihadi factions from the ministries."

But Wolesmal predicted that progress will be incremental, since the government is not yet strong enough to dislodge the factions.

In a reference to the General Dostum’s current advisory role and his power-base among the Uzbek community of northern Afghanistan, Wolesmal said, "Dostum himself is now sitting under Karzai’s beard. And a large number of this warlord’s followers are in parliament. So if this happens [Junbesh is dissolved], the Uzbek people will rise up.”

Qayoum Babak, a political analyst based in Mazar-e-Sharif, agreed that the Karzai administration was still testing the water, but was to weak to deal the final blow to the parties.

He said the interior ministry’s action against Junbesh and Hizb-e-Azadi signalled that "the government wants to test the power of these warlords to see how many followers they still have".

Babak noted, "After the interior minister filed his request, Junbesh - most of them Uzbek - staged demonstrations in northern Afghanistan. The government will fall silent once it realises it still needs a fair amount of time to push these warlords out of political life."

Junbesh leader Nurullah also hinted at the difficulties of neutralising factions that often exercise more influence in their regions than central government does. "We are a people's party and no one can disband us so easily," he warned.

Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.

[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.]