In this bulletin:

• Afghan women's official shot dead – BBC
• Afghan workers killed in ambush –
• 60 more Taliban killed in Afghanistan push
  Karzai Says bin Laden Not in Afghanistan
• Karzai's message: 'Merci mille fois
• Local MP gives feedback on Karzai speech
• Foreign jihadists seen as key to spike in Afghan attacks
  'Straight-out-of-Iraq' tactics observed as revived Taliban increases assaults
• Omar role in truce reinforces fears that Pakistan 'caved in' to Taliban No evidence' of Bin Laden death
• NATO wants Indian troops to operate in Afghanistan
• You will be driven from Afghanistan just as we were, Russian generals warn Suspicion reigns in Panjwaii
• Blair: Afghan war tougher than expected
• Troops in Afghanistan "not over-stretched": British Foreign Secretary
• Afghanistan to buy passenger planes from China

Afghan women's official shot dead – BBC

A leading Afghan official working on women's rights has been shot dead in the southern province of Kandahar. Safia Amajan, head of the province's women's department, was leaving her home for work when a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire, police said.

She may have been targeted by Taleban militants because of their opposition to women taking part in politics and education, the BBC's Dan Isaacs says. Hundreds have died in clashes between troops and Taleban fighters this year.

Nato-led forces have been battling a resurgent Taleban militia, with some of the fiercest fighting taking place in the south of the country.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack on Safia Amajan. She had served as head of women's affairs in Kandahar's provincial government since the Taleban government was toppled by US-led forces in 2001.

In her speeches, she had openly condemned the Taleban for their treatment of women. Her requests for secure official transport and personal bodyguards had not been granted by the government. At the time of the attack, she was travelling in a taxi.

A spokesman for the UN agency overseeing development in Afghanistan condemned the "senseless murder of a woman who was simply working to ensure that all Afghan women play a full and equal part in the future of Afghanistan".

Earlier this month, a suicide bomber killed the governor of eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province - the highest-ranking official to die in the insurgency.

Abdul Hakim Taniwal was attacked outside his office. The Taleban said it carried out the attack.

Afghan workers killed in ambush – BBC

Nineteen construction workers have been killed in southern Afghanistan when their bus was hit by a bomb and then fired on by insurgents, officials say. Three other workers were hurt in the attack in southern Kandahar province, the interior ministry said.

Meanwhile police say they have killed 20 suspected Taleban in central Uruzgan province. One policeman also died. A spokesperson for the Taleban said that they had killed 14 policemen in the incident and denied losing any men.

The incidents come as Afghan President Hamid Karzai attempts to shore up support for military and financial aid to Afghanistan during a trip to Canada. On Sunday, Afghan and Nato forces had hailed the success of a joint operation, codenamed Operation Medusa, in Panjwayi district of Kandahar.

The British commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan, Lt Gen David Richards, said Operation Medusa had been a "significant success" in clearing at least 400 Taleban fighters from Panjwayi.

A day later at least four Canadian soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber during a Nato patrol in Panjwayi. Hundreds of people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this year.

60 more Taliban killed in Afghanistan push - September 24, 2006 KABUL (AFP)

Security forces in Afghanistan announced they had killed more than 60 Taliban in new clashes, as a British minister played down suggestions the nation's troops deployed here are over-stretched.

The rebels were killed in separate incidents in southern Helmand province, where the bulk of a British deployment of about 4,500 troops is based and has come under fierce attack to mounting concern at home.

On Saturday, NATO-led and Afghan security forces backed by war planes killed 40 of the rebels in the province's Greshk district, the Afghan defence ministry said on Sunday.

A rebel stronghold was also "totally" destroyed in the raid in which Afghan and foreign troops sustained no casualties, it added.

Security forces meanwhile captured 21 suspected Taliban combatants across insurgency-hit southern and eastern Afghanistan, the ministry said in a separate statement.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced that it had killed 15 insurgents in the province's Now Zad district on Friday after the troops called in air support when they came under fire from about 20 men.

Eight more insurgents were killed on Thursday in neighbouring Sangin district after they attacked a helicopter with rocket-propelled grenades as the aircraft was lifting off, another ISAF statement said.

Helmand, Afghanistan's top drug-producing province, has seen an escalation of violence this year as ISAF troops have moved into remote areas and confronted rebels and drug lords who have operated for years outside the law.

British commanders have called for more troops and equipment to deal with the stronger-than-expected resistance. British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Sunday the troops were "stretched but not over-stretched".

Her comments came after an army major criticised the Royal Air Force as "utterly, utterly useless" in Afghanistan and called for more equipment in leaked e-mails.

"All the advice that we are having from our military commanders is that they are stretched but not over-stretched and I think that the thing is very clear that they are doing, as ever, an absolutely fantastic job," Beckett told Sky News.

With more than 30 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan already this year, there are growing calls at home for the force to pull out.

At least 10,000 people marched in Manchester Saturday, the eve of the governing Labour Party's annual conference, to demand an immediate British pull-out from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But President Hamid Karzai has urged Afghanistan's allies to stay the course, warning in Canada again last week of the dangers for the world if the country were to again fall under the control of "foreign extremists," a reference to the Al-Qaeda terror network behind the 9/11 attacks.

On Saturday Karzai urged in an address in Montreal that the international community close Islamic schools that teach hatred and produce suicide bombers.

Afghan officials allege the Taliban fighting force is being fed in part by men taught in such schools, called madrassas, in neighbouring Pakistan.

In an interview with the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper, Karzai said Pakistan must find the political will to eliminate its breeding grounds of terrorism if Afghanistan is to know peace.

The leaders of the neighbouring Islamic countries have been at odds this year about the rising insurgency, with Pakistan -- which helped nurture the Taliban in the 1990s -- insisting Afghanistan needs to accept that much of the violence is home-grown.

The two leaders are due to meet together with US President George W. Bush in Washington Wednesday.

Karzai Says bin Laden Not in Afghanistan

By FOSTER KLUG The Associated Press Sunday, September 24, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Afghan's president asserted on Sunday that Osama bin Laden has not been in his country since being chased out after the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago. But Hamid Karzai acknowledged that the al-Qaida leader's exact location is unknown.

"He has never been in our country after Sept. 11, after the strikes against him, after we chased his organization out of Afghanistan," Karzai told CNN's "Late Edition." He suggested the al-Qaida leader was in Pakistan.

When asked about a leaked French intelligence document that raised the possibility bin Laden died in Pakistan of an illness last month, Karzai said Afghanistan does not have "accurate information as to the precise location" of Osama bin Laden."

Separately, Karzai told NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview taped last week but broadcast Sunday, that his country would be "heaven in less than a year" if it got the $300 billion the United States has spent in Iraq.

Critics of President Bush say the United States has not been able to finish rebuilding Afghanistan because it is distracted by the increasingly expensive war in Iraq.

"Three hundred billion dollars: You give that to Afghanistan and we will be in heaven in less than a year," Karzai said when asked if the money spent on Iraq would have been better spent in Afghanistan. "We definitely need more money for reconstruction."

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said the war in Iraq had hurt the hunt for bin Laden. She said it was a "fair certainty" the al-Qaida chief was in Pakistan's tribal area, not Afghanistan.

"Resources were not focused on this problem as we got bogged down in Iraq," she told CNN. "We should have been able to capture him within the last five years."

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., warned against making the search for bin Laden a political issue with elections weeks away. "Everybody wants to capture Osama bin Laden, and one day we will," he said.

Specter said trying to find bin Laden is "like looking for a needle in a haystack. I don't think you can say that it's anybody's fault. It's a big world. There are lots of places for him to hide."

The issue has caused friction between Karzai and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Last week, they spent much of the U.N. General Assembly meeting trading barbs and criticizing each other's efforts to fight terrorists along their long, remote, mountainous border.

The United States views the region as crucial to stopping terrorism. Bush will try to diffuse tensions when the three leaders meet this week.

Pakistan rejects the accusation that it is not doing enough to stop terrorists, pointing out that it has deployed 80,000 troops along the porous border. Musharraf said last week that "the problem lies in Afghanistan, and that is creating the problem in Pakistan."

Karzai's message: 'Merci mille fois' - The Gazette

Meets Layton in Montreal. Afghan leader agrees military force alone can't bring stability to war-torn region - Sunday, September 24, 2006

As the bodies of four Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan arrived home yesterday, Jack Layton said he and Hamid Karzai agreed that military force alone will not bring stability to the war-torn country.

The NDP leader and Afghan president met briefly in a downtown Montreal hotel yesterday before Karzai addressed the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations during a luncheon.

During his three-day visit, Karzai has pleaded for Canada's continued military presence in his war-torn homeland.

Canada has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in the southern part of the country.

Layton, who has called for the pullout of Canadian troops from southern Afghanistan, was unable to get a meeting with Karzai in Ottawa on Friday.

"I told the president that Canadians do not want to abandon Afghanistan," Layton told reporters after his conversation with Karzai. Layton also said any political solution to Afghanistan's problems must include Pakistan, and called for a comprehensive peace plan.

Karzai said Canadians should remember the four soldiers killed on Monday were helping provide a ravaged country with a future. "Now we see difficulties, and that sometimes blinds us to the accomplishments that we have achieved."

Pte. David Byers, Cpl. Glen Arnold, Cpl. Shane Keating and Cpl. Keith Morley died and 17 children were injured when a man on a bicycle detonated a bomb near Canadian troops on foot patrol in the Panjwaii district.

Hundreds of friends and family shared tears and hugs on the tarmac at CFB Trenton in eastern Ontario yesterday, in an emotional repatriation ceremony. "It is for (those soldiers') sacrifice that we must make sure that the Canadian mission in Afghanistan ... succeeds," Karzai said.

At the luncheon, Karzai echoed his speech on Friday to the House of Commons. Terrorist training camps were able to flourish in Afghanistan because the world abandoned the country after the Soviets left in the '80s. It was a "free for all" he said. The result was the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, he said.

"Afghanistan - effectively, ladies and gentleman - prior to (September) 2001, was ruled by terrorism. Can you imagine?" Karzai also reportedly met with Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe at city hall. Details of their meeting were not immediately available. Duceppe has demanded an emergency parliamentary debate on this country's foreign policy.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has reassured Karzai that Canadian troops will keep their commitment to remain in Afghanistan at least until February 2009.

Outside the downtown hotel yesterday, about 35 anti-war protesters staged a demonstration and at least one person was arrested. Posters read: Canada out of Afghanistan.

At the luncheon, International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner announced that Canada, through the Canadian International Development Agency, will provide $12 million to Afghanistan for a sustainable development project. "Through the microcredit program, Afghans - women in particular - are starting new businesses, which strengthen the country's economy as well as their local communities," Verner said.

The Afghan leader was effusive in his thanks throughout the day. Following a brief visit with Mayor Gerald Tremblay at city hall, the two crossed the street, where Karzai mingled with stunned Montrealers.

"(Canada's support) means a lot to us," Karzai told a slightly bemused woman. "For the taxpayers' money that you send, for the soldiers that you send, your sons and daughters - they help us immensely."

"Merci mille fois," he added.

Karzai is scheduled to leave Canada today. He plans to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf this week at the White House.

Local MP gives feedback on Karzai speech

Yellowhead MP Rob Merrifield said that he appreciated the speech by by Afghan president Hamid Karzai in Parliament on Friday.

Catherine Adair - Leader Staff Monday September 25, 2006

"I believe it was a great speech, passionate, emotional, heartfelt, and very revealing to Canadians why we’re actually in this mission," Merrifield said.
"It was good for Canadians to hear from the president on the issues, because I think Canadians are wrestling in their own minds why are we there."

Merrifield added that he appreciated the president addressing both the military and non-military aspects of Canada’s mission. "Before the mission started there were only 600,000 boys that were being educated and now there are six million and 35 per cent of those are female," he said.

He added that much of this was not covered in the media as they were more focused on the military aspect. Merrifield said he understood that current support was low for the mission in Afghanistan but that was because Canadians didn’t understand the reasons behind it.

"We’ve got to do a better job explaining why we’re there. Nobody likes war, and the last thing we want to see are Canadians soldiers dying in battle, and it makes no sense to us if we don’t understand why we’re in the mission."

"We’ve got to do a better job of explaining that and I believe that the majority of Canadians, if they understand, will say yes. We have to destroy the Taliban there. It’s the re-building of this nation and building it into a democratically-ran country."

Merrifield said that President Karzai sympathized with Canadians who didn’t see the point of fighting halfway around the world. "[Karzai] understands what it would feel like if an Afghanistan person were to come to Canada to fight in the same situation in reverse, and how difficult that would be to explain to his homeland people."

"I thought that was a very interesting angle on it, that he understood the difficulty that we might be having at home." However, the Conservative government was clear in its determination to complete the mission, Merrifield said.
"The Prime Minister made it very clear that our exit strategy is to win and to accomplish what we set out to do, and I believe that’s what we should be doing."

Foreign jihadists seen as key to spike in Afghan attacks
'Straight-out-of-Iraq' tactics observed as revived Taliban increases assaults - Anna Badkhen, Chronicle , September 25, 2006

Before the Taliban regime fell five years ago, al Qaeda trained its fighters in Afghanistan's cavernous mountains and dusty valleys, and then exported them to wage war in places like Chechnya and Kashmir.

Today, terrorism experts say, the direction of trade has reversed: Afghanistan now imports international jihadists who have honed their fighting skills in the vast deserts and shrapnel-scarred city streets of Iraq.

The growing involvement of veterans of the Iraq insurgency is a major factor behind the surge of attacks in Afghanistan -- the heaviest since the Taliban government fell in 2001, observers say.

Under their influence, a revived Taliban movement and newer groups are using suicide bombs and remote-controlled bombs to attack U.S. and coalition forces and Afghan civilians, instead of the Kalashnikov rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and unsophisticated land mines that were once the hallmarks of the Afghan guerrilla movement.

"The increase in vehicle bombings in Kabul -- that's straight-out-of-Iraq stuff," said Brian Jenkins, an expert on terrorism at the Rand think tank. "Now Iraq is the source of the expertise, and Afghanistan is receiving."

Last Monday, three bombings in different parts of the country killed at least 19 people, including four Canadian soldiers. On Tuesday, Afghan police arrested four militants in Kabul who had been hiding more than 15 highly sophisticated explosives in a mosque. Senior police official Ali Shah Paktiawal told Reuters that the bombs must have come from outside the country.

Scattered reports that veterans of the Iraqi insurgency were traveling to Afghanistan started to appear last year, after radical Islamist Internet forums published calls for fighters to help the Taliban.

"In the summer of 2005 ... there was suddenly an unbelievable increase of publications coming from Afghanistan," said Rita Katz, whose SITE Institute monitors terrorist Web sites, publications and electronic media worldwide.

According to the institute, extremists had set up terrorist training camps in the craggy mountains of northern Iraq and in the country's western desert along the desolate 450-mile border with Syria, modeling them on former al Qaeda training grounds in Afghanistan. The trainees also took part in operations involving attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces, according to SITE.

"Videos and publications said: 'Stop going to Iraq, start going to Afghanistan; we need you here; we will establish (in Afghanistan) the fighting we have now in Iraq,' " Katz said.

Last fall, two Taliban commanders in Afghanistan told Newsweek about their training in Iraq. "I'm explaining to my fighters every day the lessons I learned and my experience in Iraq," said one commander, identified as Mohammed Daud, who at the time claimed he led a force of 300 fighters in the southern Afghan province of Ghazni. "I want to copy in Afghanistan the tactics and spirit of the glorious Iraqi resistance."

In May, U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who commands the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, disputed reports that Iraq was an emerging breeding ground for insurgents in Afghanistan.

"We have not seen conclusive evidence that there has been any migration from Iraq to Afghanistan of foreign fighters that are bringing with them skills or capabilities," he said.

A U.S. military spokesman at the Combined Forces in Afghanistan reached by telephone last week said he was not authorized to comment. But a NATO spokesman in Kabul, in a telephone interview with The Chronicle, did not dispute the reports.

"I have no reason to refute that or think that it's wrong," said the spokesman, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the issue.

The secretive nature of the insurgency makes it difficult to determine how many fighters have traveled from Iraq to Afghanistan.

In March, Asia Times Online reported that 500 fighters who had trained in Iraq were in Afghanistan or Pakistan, where the tribal region on the porous border with Afghanistan serves as a safe haven for the Taliban -- and, some analysts believe, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Jenkins said he thought the number was lower. "There's no shortage of manpower for the Afghan part of this thing," he said.

The Taliban, who are the major force behind the Afghan insurgency, find their recruits among Pashtuns, who live in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, make up about half of the Afghan population and share ethnic ties with the Taliban.

But terrorism experts said the new, Iraqi-style insurgency relies heavily on foreigners for suicide missions.

Suicide bombings are "something that the Afghan people still abhor," said Nathan Hughes, a military analyst at Strategic Forecasting, a Texas security consulting group.

SITE's Katz said that on videos of suicide missions from Afghanistan posted on Islamist Web sites, "you will see Taliban attack, but the suicide bomber speaks Arabic." Such videos, which terrorist groups have long used for propaganda and recruitment purposes in Iraq, have proliferated in Afghanistan. "All the Taliban communiqués in which they take responsibility for attacks are posted on the same jihadi forums where they post Iraqi communiqués," she said.

Tactics similar to those the insurgents employ in Iraq also have included the use of kidnappings and the "refinement of techniques, including fairly sophisticated explosive devices," said Hughes. "It's the expertise and the know-how that is basically exported from the Iraqi insurgency."

Veterans of the Iraqi insurgency lead training workshops for Taliban fighters in Waziristan, the tribal areas of western Pakistan, the French newspaper Le Monde reported this month. Critics say Pakistan has virtually allowed North Waziristan to become a safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Afghan insurgency itself is metastasizing, Iraqi-style, with at least four insurgent groups -- not just the Taliban -- now attacking Afghan and coalition troops and Afghan civilians, said Katz.

The other three groups, according to Katz, are al Qaeda; a group led by Abu Yahya al-Libi, a Libyan-born al Qaeda member who escaped from the U.S. prison at the Bagram Air Base in 2005; and Jeish al-Mahdi (al-Mahdi Army), a group composed mainly of Afghans and Pakistanis. (The Afghan Jeish al-Mahdi is a Sunni group and bears no relation to its Iraqi namesake, the militant organization of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.)

The proliferation of insurgent groups means that they do not respond to a single authority, which makes it harder for the international forces to contain them, analysts said.

"I think we will see more insurgency groups in the future," Katz said. "This time last year, there was only the Taliban." Such transformations also point to a larger problem for the international community, and for the Bush administration's war on terror, said Jenkins.

"The future concern is that down the road we'll be dealing with an entire cohort of veterans of fighting in Iraq ... that is just going to go ahead and spread throughout the entire jihadist universe," he said. "What we see in Baghdad today is what we're going to be dealing with tomorrow in a whole bunch of places."

Omar role in truce reinforces fears that Pakistan 'caved in' to Taliban

By Massoud Ansari in Peshawar and Colin Freeman - The Telegraph (UK) September 24, 2006

The fugitive Taliban commander Mullah Omar has emerged as the key player behind the movement's controversial peace deal with Pakistan.

The Taliban's one-eyed spiritual leader, who has a $10 million price on his head for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden after the September 11 attacks, signed a letter explicitly endorsing the truce announced this month. The deal between the Pakistani authorities and pro-Taliban militants in the tribal provinces bordering Afghanistan was designed to end five years of bloodshed in the area.

In return for an end to the US-backed government campaign in Waziristan, the tribal leaders - who have harboured Taliban and al-Qaeda units for more than five years - agreed to halt attacks on Pakistani troops, more than 500 of whom have been killed. The deal has been widely criticised as over-generous, with no way to enforce the Taliban's promise not to enter Afghanistan to attack coalition troops.

The disclosure that Mullah Omar personally backed the deal will come as a fresh embarrassment to Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, who met President Bush in Washington on Friday to discuss security in the region.

While officially a US ally in the war on terror, Pakistan has been repeatedly accused by Afghanistan of not doing enough to clear Taliban militants out of its border regions, allegations it denies. However, Mullah Omar clearly felt that the deal benefited the Taliban, adding force to criticisms that it was in effect a cave-in. Tribal elders in south Waziristan said that Mullah Omar had sent one of his most trusted and feared commanders, Mullah Dadullah, to ask local militants to sign the truce. Dadullah, a one-legged fighter known for his fondness for beheading his enemies, is believed to be the man leading the campaign in southern Afghanistan in which 18 British troops have been killed.

"Had they been not asked by Mullah Omar, none of them were willing to sign an agreement," said Lateef Afridi, a tribal elder and former national assembly member. "This is no peace agreement, it is accepting Taliban rule in Pakistan's territory."

Waziristan has a 50-mile border with Afghanistan's Paktika province, long a trouble spot for US and Afghan forces in their battle against al-Qaeda and Taliban renegades. It is home to three tiers of Islamists who operate freely. Of greatest security concern is the al-Qaeda element, followed by Afghani Taliban and then local Taliban.

In return for a reduction in the Pakistani army's 80,000-strong presence and the release of about 165 hardcore militants arrested for attacks on Pakistani armed forces, local Taliban agreed to stop supporting the foreign militants in their midst, and promised not to set up their own fundamentalist administrations.

The government also agreed to compensate tribal leaders for the loss of life and property, and to return all weapons and vehicles seized during army operations.

Critics say the deal is a dangerous climb-down by Gen Musharraf, who is under huge pressure from religious conservatives in his own country to curb his US-backed fight against militant Islam.

'No evidence' of Bin Laden death - BBC Online

Bin Laden is blamed for attacks across the world The Saudi government has denied a French newspaper report saying France's secret services believe Osama Bin Laden is dead. The newspaper quoted the Saudi secret services as saying the al-Qaeda leader had died of typhoid in Pakistan.

But, in a statement, the Saudi government said it had "no evidence" that Bin Laden was dead. The French president has ordered an inquiry into the leaked French secret service memo containing the claim. "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no evidence to support recent media reports that Osama Bin Laden is dead," the Saudi government said.

It would be very nice to confirm that he is dead - in Pakistan, Afghanistan, New York or wherever, but I think such claims are unsubstantiated. "Information that has been reported otherwise is purely speculative and cannot be independently verified."

French newspaper L'Est Republicain quoted a document as saying that the Saudi secret services were convinced the al-Qaeda leader had died of typhoid in Pakistan in late August.

Officials in Pakistan and the US said they could not confirm the account. Pakistan's ambassador to the US, Mahmud Ali Durrani told BBC News 24 that he doubted the claims were true:

"It would be very nice to confirm that he is dead - in Pakistan, Afghanistan, New York or wherever, but I think such claims are unsubstantiated." Saudi-born Bin Laden was based in Afghanistan until the Taleban government there was overthrown by US-backed forces in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.

Since then, US and Pakistani officials have regularly said they believe he is hiding in the lawless border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

His last videotaped message was released in late 2004, but several audio tapes have been released this year - the last at the end of June, in which Bin Laden praised Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in an American air strike.

In its report, the French regional daily said it had obtained a copy of a DGSE foreign intelligence service report dated 21 September. "According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi services are now convinced that Osama Bin Laden is dead," it read.

"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs."

Mr Chirac said: "I am surprised that a confidential memo from the secret services has been published, therefore I've ordered the defence minister to start an inquiry.

"As far as the information itself is concerned, it's not confirmed in any way. Therefore I have no comment at all." The Washington-based IntelCenter, which monitors terrorism communications, said it was not aware of any similar reports on the internet.

"We've seen nothing from any al-Qaeda messaging or other indicators that would point to the death of Osama Bin Laden," director Ben Venzke told the Associated Press news agency.

NATO wants Indian troops to operate in Afghanistan

Online News - Pakistan http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=102761 

BRUSSELS: NATO - the US led western military alliance, wants Indian troops for its missions in volatile regions like Afghanistan and Kosovo, according to newspaper reports.

NATO officials here at Brussels, its headquarters, said Indian troops would be part of a wider engagement the alliance envisages with non-member states.

The alliance does not expect Indian troops for its missions overnight but as a consequence of a protracted engagement that will drive policy change in New Delhi and reforms within NATO.

Beginnings have been made at two levels. NATO headquarters has briefed Indian diplomats here. Its secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Schaffer has met defence minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Pakistan’s support in the U.S. lead War Against Terror (WoT) however has been conditional. General Musharraf’s Regime seemed to have made it clear that an Indian presence in Afghanistan would have to be avoided.

General Musharraf however comes under increasing pressure for not doing enough against the Taliban and Al Qaeda based in Pakistan. North Afghan leaders and on the ground U.S. and NATO officers based sections of the Pakistani establishment for aiding the anti-government insurgency in Afghanistan.

Five years on both the Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Taliban head Mullah Omar roam free, apparently within Pakistan’s tribal regions in the west along the border with Afghanistan.

You will be driven from Afghanistan just as we were, Russian generals warn

By Helen Womack in Moscow The Telegraph (UK) September 24, 2006

British troops will be forced to flee Afghanistan, say former Soviet commanders who oversaw Moscow's disastrous campaign against the mujahedeen in the 1980s.

In a withering assessment of the "hopeless" campaign being waged there, they have told The Sunday Telegraph that mounting casualties will drive out Britain and its Nato allies. Chillingly, Gen Ruslan Aushev, who was injured during fighting with mujahedeen rebels, predicted: "You will flee from there."

He added: "Many have fought in Afghanistan; first and foremost, the British fought there in the 19th century. The astonishing thing today is that Nato and the coalition seem to have learnt nothing, neither from their own experience nor from our experience."

The bleak analysis comes only days after Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, admitted that "the Taliban's tenacity has been a surprise", an acknowledgement of recent disclosures in this newspaper that troops are on the point of "exhaustion" because of the lack of numbers and equipment.

It will add to mounting concern over the deployment of 3,600 - British troops to Afghanistan's troubled southern provinces this summer, which has led to the deaths of 15 servicemen at the hands of a rejuvenated Taliban.

Yesterday, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the chief of the General Staff, was forced to deny claims by a senior officer that the RAF's performance in Afghanistan had been "utterly, utterly useless".

Responding to emails written by Major James Loden of 3 Para, he said: "This is difficult and dangerous work but we are doing it successfully because we are doing it as a team."

Numbers of wounded are far higher than has been made public, according to a major in the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers last week, a concern first revealed in The Sunday Telegraph. Gen Dannatt denied there was any deliberate cover-up.

It is a far cry from John Reid's declaration on a visit to Afghanistan as defence secretary in April that he would "be perfectly happy to leave in three years and without firing one shot".

Veterans of the former Soviet forces know all too well the risks and dangers facing British troops and their Nato counterparts.

Having invaded to support Kabul's pro-communist government in 1979, they soon found themselves fighting American-backed tribal mujahedeen at a cost of 15,000 Russian lives, despite brutal efforts to suppress the uprising.

The Soviet Union pulled out its 100,000-strong force a decade later, a demoralising defeat that was a factor in the eventual collapse of the communist regime.

Gen Boris Gromov, overall commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan who supervised their withdrawal in 1989, said in written correspondence with The Sunday Telegraph that Britain, America and their Nato allies appeared to be suffering the same backlash.

Whatever their disagreements with Taliban militants or warlords in their midst, said Gen Gromov, Afghans tended to unite against outsiders when they deemed them no longer welcome. He said there had been a "large number of victims" on both sides, a possible reference to American airstrikes against suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda militants in which civilians are also reported to have died.

"The Afghan resistance is, in my opinion, growing," he wrote. "Such behaviour on the part of the intractable Afghans is to my mind understandable. It is conditioned by centuries of tradition geography, climate and religion.

"We saw over a period of many years how the country was torn apart by civil war But in the face of outside aggression, Afghans have always put aside their differences and united. Evidently, the coalition forces have also been seen as a threat to the nation."

The former Soviet commanders point out that they had enjoyed the advantages of a functioning and politically sympathetic domestic government in Kabul, and a 100,000 strong Afghan army on their side. Its equivalent today is a quarter of the size and still being trained by coalition forces.

"It was a 100,000 strong army with aviation, armoured vehicles and artillery," said Gen Aushev. "Their officers were trained in Moscow and they were more or less battle-ready. Now I just don't see the Afghan army."

Opium was a local crop, instead of the export industry that it has become. "Now opium is a major business and no one is going to get rid of that," added Col Oleg Kulakov, who served as a military translator during the Afghan war and is now Professor of Geopolitics at the Moscow Defence University. "Each warlord has his own stake in it; sometime his power is completely based on drugs."

He added: "The only thing in the West's favour is that you have allies, while we were isolated."

Gen Aushev believed that the Americans, who have 18,000 troops in Afghanistan, were attempting to pave the way for a quiet exit by asking for more soldiers from allies such as Britain and Poland.

"The Americans can't have another Vietnam, so they are saving face. They will say, 'We did not withdraw; it was the Australians, the British who withdrew'."

Suspicion reigns in Panjwaii

Sep. 25, 2006. MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU

PARMALUK, AFGHANISTAN—It was Canadian foot soldiers that cleared this sprawling village early yesterday, advancing field by field and lane by lane. And whatever resistance may have remained chose not to show itself. Not on this day, not in the face of such overwhelming firepower.

Here in the outer reaches of Panjwaii district west of Kandahar the Taliban still roam, albeit in numbers fewer than they did prior to the enormous two-week Canadian-led campaign to reclaim this strategic gateway to the provincial capital on behalf of the fledgling Afghan government.

But yesterday, all that emerged from these mud-brick dwellings were 34 war-weary civilians, their faces etched with suspicion and doubt. Taliban they are not. But neither are they friendly.

With the military battle of Panjwaii all but done, an arguably greater battle — the political battle — looms in every glowering gaze. The daunting task now: to persuade villagers like the naysayers of Parmaluk that the Afghan government is something to believe in. And that the Taliban is not.

The burden of persuasion yesterday fell not on the Canadians, but on one Hazar Mir Khan, an Afghan National Army captain who delivered an emotional plea yesterday, as two platoons of Afghan regulars and the Canadian soldiers looked on.

Speaking in Pashtu, the tribal language of southern Afghanistan, Khan repeatedly told the villagers he and his soldiers "are good Muslim people. All we want to do is bring security to your village. We need to put aside our differences and work together as Afghans to make all our lives better. "The Taliban are the enemy of this hope. You have to understand that they have no future in Afghanistan."

Khan addressed the legendary Pashtun dislike of foreign interlopers and reminded the people of Parmaluk there are two dimensions to the foreign presence in Afghanistan — foreign soldiers under the auspices of NATO and foreign Taliban insurgents under the auspices of holy war. "The Canadians and the British, yes, they are foreigners. Foreigners who want to help us with schools, medicine, irrigation and road construction, once this area is secure," he said.

"The foreign Taliban have nothing to offer. If you see them again in this village, I promise you we will come and kill them. "But the Taliban who are Afghans, I promise you, they are our brothers. If you bring them to us, we will not harm them. We will give them jobs."

Speeches like Khan's mark a tactical change since Canada's deployment to Kandahar earlier this year, which began with the soldiers themselves — usually company commanders and civil-military affairs officers — as the primary point of contact with Afghan villagers.

"It has to be Afghans convincing Afghans. We are doing everything we can do. But in the end, the Afghans themselves must provide the answer in deciding how they want to move forward," said Canadian Maj. Steve Brown, who commands Charles Company, part of 1st Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment Battle Group, the unit leading yesterday's mission to Parmaluk.

Brown also spoke briefly to the villagers, apologizing for entering Parmaluk in full battle regalia. "I hope you can understand that there are Taliban who are trying to kill Canadians with suicide bombs, and it is very difficult for us to know who is hostile and who is friendly," he explained. "This is why we had to enter your village with weapons pointed."

In the background of yesterday's shura meeting, Warrant Officer Dean Henley, a Canadian Forces reservist from Richmond Hill, watched closely, gauging the villagers' reactions. A civil-military affairs officer, he is already active in nearby Panjwaii village organizing humanitarian food aid and other work projects to help provide an immediate boost to the local economy and he hopes to expand to places like Parmaluk.

"We have to be careful not to create a false economy by pouring in money. But I already have a crew of locals cleaning the gutters in Panjwaii for 65 Afghanis ($1.40) an hour," said Henley.

"That is an excellent wage by Afghan standards. Obviously it won't be in place of the actual reconstruction projects in the planning stages. But my mandate allows me to spend up to $5,000 per project in immediate aid while the bigger stuff comes together."

Whether Parmaluk is likely to partake in such projects remains to be seen. Yesterday's shura was a sullen affair in which various menfolk, none of whom could claim title to overall leadership, provided a laundry list of complaints.

Their paramount concern was the fear of attack from Canadian and Afghan army forces in the event that they light their oil lamps after dark. As this is the holy month of Ramadan, they asked to be able to illuminate their nightly meals that break the daylong fast.

They voice the complaint endemic throughout most of Afghanistan — "We have no water." What little could be seen in the village's largely bone-dry irrigation canals was feeding many hectares of marijuana plants that, together with extensive grape vines, appear to provide Parmaluk's only income.

Canadian troops, unlike their U.S. and British counterparts, have had no involvement in the controversial drug eradication efforts that are part of the drive to deepen the reach of Afghan government institutions to rural areas.

One Canadian soldier rolled his eyes when asked yesterday whether he objected to the ripening fields of sticky green pot plants, saying: "Sure, kill their harvest. That would make friends fast, wouldn't it?"

The villagers also complained of civilian deaths during the bombing raids that accompanied Operation Medusa, with one man, identifying himself by the single name Tourjan, saying 26 of his relatives died in air strikes. None of the victims, he said, carried arms.

The claims were impossible to verify, but the mention caused an angry stirring amongst the crowd. "We want the Canadians here, but we don't want to be bombed," he said.

Blair: Afghan war tougher than expected

By JENNIFER QUINN Associated Press September 24, 2006

MANCHESTER, England - Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that NATO's battle with Afghan insurgents has been more difficult than anticipated but must continue.

"I think the particular mission was tougher than anyone expected. But I'm not surprised it was tough," Blair said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. TV in Manchester, where his Labour Party is holding its annual meeting. "The British troops there are doing just an incredible job."

"The whole reason we've gone into that as part of the NATO force under the U.N. resolution is because it is essential for the Taliban and al-Qaida to come back into the southern part of Afghanistan and it's essential for us to keep them out," Blair said.

Over the last few months, southern Afghanistan has seen some of the fiercest fighting since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the Taliban regime. Blair's government has had to cope with charges by middle-ranking officers in Afghanistan that ground troops have not received adequate air support and other backing.

With around 5,000 troops in the restive Helmand province in the south, Britain is an important part of a NATO force trying to subdue insurgents to permit reconstruction.

Britain's army has been defending itself in response to critical e-mail messages from officers that were leaked to the news media.

On Thursday, Maj. Jon Swift said in a message from Afghanistan that, "The scale of casualties has not been properly reported and shows no sign of reducing." His comments were posted on a regimental Web site, but were quickly withdrawn, the BBC reported. On Friday, several British broadcasters quoted from an e-mail message written by Maj. James Loden.

"The R.A.F. have been utterly, utterly useless," Maj. Loden was quoted as saying, referring to two instances involving Harrier warplanes during which pilots allegedly missed enemy forces and jeopardized British troops.

Sir Richard Dannatt, Britain's chief of general staff, said in a written statement that, "The way the R.A.F. has performed in support of our operations in Afghanistan has been exceptional. Irresponsible comments, based on a snapshot, are regrettable."

In a television interview, Dannatt denied that the British authorities were seeking to underreport casualty figures. "We have got nothing to hide as far as that is concerned," he said. "The truth is what matters."

Britain's defense ministry said of Loden's comments: "It must be remembered that this is the opinion of only one man. The general view is very different."

Defense Minister Des Browne acknowledged in an address to the Royal United Services Institute think-tank this week that the battle in southern Afghanistan had been harder than expected. He rejected suggestions that British forces were poorly supported.

Troops in Afghanistan "not over-stretched": British Foreign Secretary

Sun Sep 24 - LONDON (AFP) - British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said that British troops were "stretched but not over-stretched" in Afghanistan after the country's highest ranking officer spoke out against criticism of the air force.

Beckett told Sky News television Sunday: "All the advice that we are having from our military commanders is that they are stretched but not over-stretched and I think that the thing is very clear that they are doing, as ever, an absolutely fantastic job."

She added Sunday it would be "helpful" if they had more resources and ministers were considering this.

On Saturday, the chief of the general staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, moved to defend troops facing stronger than expected resistance from resurgent Taliban.

He spoke out after an army major criticised the Royal Air Force as "utterly, utterly useless" and called for more equipment in leaked emails.

"If the odd person has had a disappointment in that an airstrike being called in has not identified the target or has identified the wrong target, that is understandable in the fog of war and the heat of battle," he told BBC radio.

Beckett was also phlegmatic about the cross-force row, saying that it was "in the nature of human relationships".

Afghanistan to buy passenger planes from China

Afghanistan's Ministry for Transport and Aviation is considering buying some passenger planes from China, a Kabul-based English newspaper reported Sunday.

In talks with the daily Afghanistan Times, Minister for Transport and Aviation Nimatullah Ehsan Jawid said his ministry would buy five small planes from China to restore Afghanistan's former domestic airliner company the Bakhter.

"With buying such planes from China the Bakhter's activities would be revived," Ehsan Jawid told Afghanistan Times.

Bakhter, a small company providing domestic flight services in the past, stopped its services due to over two and a half decades of war.

Currently Afghanistan's state-owned national carrier Ariana and a private airline company the KamAir are in operation.

Ariana has only three Boeing 727 and two Air Bus 300 and KamAir has a few planes connecting post-Taliban Afghanistan with outside world.

Source: Xinhua

[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.]