In this bulletin:

• Iran president denies arming Taliban in Afghanistan
• Iran, Afghanistan presidents hold official talks
• Iran, Afghanistan sign six cooperation agreements
• 100 Iran-made bombs seized, claim Afghan officials
• A balancing act of Iran's enemies
• AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Afghan deportees complain of lack of aid
• Two freed Koreans to leave Afghanistan soon
• 11 killed in Afghanistan violence
• Senate chairman tenders resignation to Karzai
• Police have Afghanistan's most dangerous job - for $70 a month
• Ex-warlords moving to reclaim fiefdoms
• U.S. public wakens to forgotten war
• Benazir blames Musharraf’s partners for rise in extremism
• Suicides Up Among Afghans

Iran president denies arming Taliban in Afghanistan

By Hamid Shalizi, August 14, 2007

KABUL (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied on Tuesday U.S. accusations his country was arming Taliban insurgents in neighbouring Afghanistan.

U.S. officials say Iranian weapons are entering Afghanistan on such a scale it is hard to believe Tehran is not aware of the shipments. High-powered roadside bombs, which Washington says Iran sends to Iraq, have also begun to appear in Afghanistan.

Asked about the accusations, Ahmadinejad told a news conference in the Afghan capital, Kabul: "I strongly doubt that, there is no truth in it... even in Iraq such claims are made."

Ahmadinejad was in Afghanistan just a week after Afghan President Hamid Karzai returned from a visit to Iran's arch foe, the United States, where President George W. Bush warned his guest that Iran was "not a force for good".

The United States accuses Iran of arming militant groups throughout the Middle East, attempting to destabilise its neighbours Iraq and Afghanistan and seeking to develop a nuclear arsenal, all charges Tehran denies.

Karzai's pro-Western government has rarely criticised Iran, with which it shares a long and porous border and enjoys strong trading ties.

"We strongly support the political process of Afghanistan," Ahmadinejad said. "The security of Afghanistan has a primary impact on Iran because we have long borders. For us, a strong and stable Afghanistan is the best option."

The Iranian president blamed the West for terrorism. "The Afghan and Iranian governments are both victims of terrorism. Terrorism is supported by super-powers," he said.

Shi'ite Iran almost went to war with the staunchly Sunni Taliban movement when it controlled Afghanistan in the late 1990s, but Western analysts say Tehran has an interest in making life uncomfortable for U.S. troops by arming its former foe.

Karzai said his country might be able to bridge the divide between the United States and Iran, at odds since the Iranian revolution deposed the U.S.-backed shah in 1979.

"Afghanistan has strong ties with Iran, we share the same religion and language. Also, we are a strategic partner of the United States," Karzai told the news conference.

"If Afghanistan can bring these countries closer together, it will be a great happiness for Afghanistan... but it all depends on what those two nations think," he said.

Iran is host to some 1 million Afghan refugees and migrant workers, but has angered Afghan leaders by deporting some 160,000 Afghans since April, often without allowing them to take any of their belongings or savings with them.

Afghan authorities and international agencies are struggling to cope with the influx and many returnees are living in temporary accommodation while others were deported by Iran into areas of conflict with Taliban insurgents.

"There are 2.5 million Afghans living in Iran right now, they have (the) same rights, we have no problems. We have problems with those who enter Iran illegally through our borders, naturally they create problems," Ahmadinejad said.

Iran, Afghanistan presidents hold official talks

Kabul, Aug 14, IRNA - High ranking Iranian and Afghan delegations, headed by the two countries' presidents, held talks here Tuesday.

At the meeting, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his satisfaction with his trip to Afghanistan and termed ties between the two nations as friendly and brotherly. He said that Iran wants an advanced and stable Afghanistan which will be beneficial to the region and the whole world.

Referring to Afghans as faithful, hardworking and brave people, he added that Afghanistan deserves progress and prosperity and that Iran is happy to see that Afghan leaders and officials were leading the nation towards development, prosperity and stability.

The president also expressed Tehran's readiness to make all-out efforts to help the Afghan people attain peace and development.

Underlining the need for expansion of economic, cultural, educational and trade relations between the two countries, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is ready to put its experiences in the fields of industry, agriculture, health, urban development and job creation at the disposal of Afghanistan.

He referred to the human and material losses imposed on Iran by its campaign against drug trafficking and said that Tehran and Kabul can implement joint programs in this regard.

Ahmadinejad further invited his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to pay an official visit to Tehran.

Karzai, on his part, expressed satisfaction with his Iranian counterpart's visit to Afghanistan, saying, "I, on behalf of the Afghan government and nation, appreciate you for your attempts to restore peace and security to my country, particularly for your hospitality towards Afghan refugees and campaign against terrorism." The Afghan president called for expansion of commercial, economic, cultural and educational ties between the two neighboring countries.

Karzai also termed attempts to fight drug trafficking as serious and praised the efforts made by the Islamic Republic of Iran in this respect.

After the official negotiations, Ahmadinejad took part in a joint press conference and attended a luncheon given in his honor by Karzai.

The Afghan parliament speaker and vice presidents are expected to meet the Iranian president and his entourage.

Iran, Afghanistan sign six cooperation agreements

Kabul, Aug 14, IRNA - Six bilateral cooperation agreements were signed here Tuesday by the visiting President of Iran mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai.

The documents were inked in the fields of road building, fighting against drugs smuggling and anti-terrorism campaign as well as scientific and research cooperation in the field of mining.

The two presidents attended a joint press conference after the document signing ceremony.

President Ahmadinejad arrived in Afghanistan Tuesday morning on the first leg of his three-nation tour of Central Asia which would later take him to Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan.

His visit to Afghanistan is the second made by an Iranian president after his predecessor Mohammad Khatami's visit to the country in August 2002.

100 Iran-made bombs seized, claim Afghan officials

Pajhwok Afghan News, /14/2007 - MAZAR-I-SHARIF - Balkh intelligence officials have claimed seizing a hundred Iranian-made improvised explosive devices (IED) in the Hairatan border town on the eve of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejads maiden visit to Kabul.

An intelligence official, who did not want to be named, confided to Pajhwok Afghan News on Tuesday they recovered the bombs were recently smuggled into the northern province for disruptive activities.

The YM-type landmines - manufactured in 1997 by the neighbouring country - were to be used for blowing up gas and oil installations in the region, claimed the intelligence official, who offered no concrete proof in support of his assertion.

Initial investigations indicated the explosive devices were smuggled into Afghanistan from Uzbekistan by loyalists of warlord Tahir Yoldashev, said the source, who alleged the dreaded militant leader was fighting alongside al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistans lawless tribal areas.

Intelligence personnel are combing certain locations to track down the smugglers, according to the official, familiar with the seizure and the ongoing probe. He declined to give more details, arguing such information could hurt the manhunt and the investigation.

A senior official based in Hairatan, Qazi Najibullah, confirmed the sleuths recovered the bombs in his presence last evening. The official, who would not reveal more details for security reasons, added the explosives had been shifted to Mazar-i-Sharif.

Less than two weeks back, 16 Iranian-made landmines were found from a hideout in the mountainous district of Ghorian in the western Herat province that borders with Iran. On June 2, officials said five anti-tank mines - with all the Iranian hallmarks - were seized from a cave in the same district.

In mid-June, a top-ranking Bush administration official, in a departure from his previous stand, hinted the Iranian government was aware of large-scale weapons shipments to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he had seen a new intelligence analysis that broadly suggested 'a fairly substantial flow of illegal weapons' from Iran to Taliban. The arms were being shipped with the knowledge of the Iranian government, presumed.

"Given the quantities that were seeing, it is difficult to believe that its associated with smuggling or the drug business or that its taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government, remarked Gates.

But Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, who met the Iranian president in Kabul today, tends to dispel the impression that Iran is arming his foes or trying to create instability in his country. Earlier in the month, he disagreed on the issue with President Bush during media appearance at Camp David.

A balancing act of Iran's enemies

Tehran seems to play neighbors and foes against one another

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2007

TEHRAN — They do the jobs that few Iranians would consider. For $11 a day, the Afghans mend shoes, haul bricks, dig drainage channels, push giant wheelbarrows of scavenged debris through treacherous ribbons of cars.

It has been this way since the various wars in Afghanistan sent an estimated 2 million refugees flooding into neighboring Iran. Since April, however, more than 160,000 Afghans have been rounded up and sent home.

Iran plans to expel up to 1 million in what it asserts is an effort to cut down on illegal immigrants and open up new jobs for Iranians. But Afghanistan warns that the exodus could jeopardize its fragile new stability, and for the U.S. and others, the move by Tehran offers an unsettling hint of Iranian mischief-making in the region.

One of the givens of the Middle East's dense diplomacy is Shiite Iran's enduring hostility toward the Taliban, the radical Sunni movement whose fall from power in 2001 was welcomed nowhere as much as in Tehran.

Yet the growing international pressure aimed at Iran's nuclear program appears to have prompted a more complex new strategy for Iran in Afghanistan, interviews with Iranian analysts here suggest. Iran still supports the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, they say, but the Islamic Republic is also not averse to asserting itself in a conflict that Washington once thought was over.

"It is better for Iran if America is entangled in Afghanistan with the Taliban," said Abulfazl Amooei, a political analyst for the Hamshahri diplomatic magazine, which closely reflects the views of Iran's Islamic hard-liners. "Because as soon as the U.S. has no problem in Afghanistan, it can turn to the next area in the Middle East. It can come to Iran and say, 'I am in your neighborhood, and I will attack you if you do not suspend your nuclear enrichment activities.' "

Iran appears to be mounting a high-profile anti-U.S. publicity campaign to the west in Iraq and neighboring Sunni nations. At the same time, it is working below the radar to keep its options open to the east, in Afghanistan.

For years, Iran's power in the Middle East was held in check through a combination of U.S. sanctions and a long war in the 1980s with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, whose regime received aid from the United States and Sunni Arab nations that feared the growing influence of the Islamic Republic and the potential expansion of its hard-line theological revolution.

But the U.S.-led military ouster of Hussein in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan during the Bush administration opened a new chapter for Tehran. Now Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has forged cordial relationships with Iraq's new Shiite-dominated government and with Karzai. Last week, the Afghan president rebuffed President Bush's attempts to characterize Iran as a destabilizing force in the region, contending in an earlier interview with CNN that Iran had been "a helper" on such issues as fighting terrorism and narcotics.

Just as worrying for Sunni Arab governments in the Middle East, Ahmadinejad's tough talk against the U.S. and Israel has won Iran unexpected and growing popularity in the Sunni Muslim world. Tehran now sees itself poised to become the dominant power broker in the Mideast and deeper into Asia.

The Bush administration has charged that Iran is supplying weapons to anti-American fighters in Iraq. And recently, U.S. and British officials disclosed that they had intercepted Iranian-made weapons in Afghanistan, bound for the Taliban. The Iranian government has vehemently denied any connection, and the Afghan government has also expressed doubts. But if such shipments are eventually traced to the Iranian government, this would represent a worrying new development for the U.S. and others.

For its part, Iran is furious at America's recent $20-billion weapons package initialed with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations.

Analysts say that Tehran, with its latest maneuvering, appears to be declaring: Backing us into a corner could result in unforeseen misfortunes for the U.S. -- in Iraq, in Lebanon, in the Palestinian territories and also in Afghanistan.

"All Muslim nations, you who are buying weapons from Washington, those who have been deceived by Washington, listen to the words of God," Ayatollah Emami Kashani said at Friday prayers in Tehran early this month. "Don't accept leadership from outside. Don't expose your private parts. . . . The Zionists and the Americans want to make you weak, humiliated and miserable."

Iran's strategy in Afghanistan appears aimed at ensuring that Karzai's government remains in power while Tehran loses no sleep if his opponents keep the U.S. and Britain bogged down in combat there, interviews with analysts and government officials in Tehran suggest.

"You cannot say that Iran is arming the Taliban, but at the same time we should admit that Iran, bearing in mind the circumstances in the region, is not satisfied if the Taliban is totally banished from Afghanistan. And the status quo in Afghanistan is the best for our foreign policy," said Amooei, the political analyst.

Although Iran in the long term is hoping to achieve stability on its eastern border, he said, in the short term it does not want the U.S. to emerge as the peacemaker. "Iran says it is better for Afghanistan and its neighbor states to solve the problem," he said. "Why should Afghanistan be a victory for the U.S.?"

Mohammad Kazem Anbarlouee, former head of a conservative Islamic faction in the parliament and editor of Resalat, a hard-line newspaper, described Iran's strategy in Afghanistan as a delicate balancing act between two enemies: the Taliban on the one hand, and the U.S. and Britain on the other.

"Theologically, we are antagonistic toward the Taliban. They have a very harsh and violent version of Islam. Even on our border at the time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, they attacked our soldiers," Anbarlouee said.

But "we have always faced multiple enemies," he said. "So we attach to them different levels of importance. We classify some enemies as archenemies. And the other, a lesser enemy. And as you see, we are now facing two kinds of enemies in Afghanistan. . . . And we know how to deal with two opponents at the same time. So we play this game, confronting the two opponents at the same time.

"You see, the world of politics is not the world of romantic scenes or smiles. It's not like Indian films, where there's a flow of tears followed by a happy ending. It's a world of interests."

Yet Anbarlouee and others said it was not possible that Tehran would go so far as to supply weapons to the Taliban, with which Iran nearly went to war in 1999 after its militia killed eight Iranian diplomats.

The U.S. has not directly pointed a finger at the Iranian government.

"We absolutely are certain that there are Iranian-origin weapons flowing into Afghanistan to the Taliban," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in June. "We do not know the extent of any Iranian government involvement at this point, but given the nature of the regime and also some of its past behaviors elsewhere -- whether in the Palestinian areas or in Iraq -- it certainly raises very serious questions, and we are quite concerned about it."

Hamidreza Babaei, a deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, flatly denied any weapons supplies to the Taliban and said his government's primary concern was to promote stability in Afghanistan, because unrest there spills over into Iran.

"I don't know why the Americans are confused and suffering from these sorts of hallucinations," Babaei said. "Everybody who is an enemy, they claim that we're helping that enemy.

"We regard the American administration as our enemy. We also regard the Taliban as our enemy. So there is no reason, no motivation, to support the Taliban. We believe that both of them are menaces to the Afghanistan people."

AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Afghan deportees complain of lack of aid

HERAT, 14 August 2007 (IRIN) - Two months after their forced deportation from Iran, Afghan citizen Mohammad Alim and his six-member family still have an unsettled life in Herat Province, western Afghanistan.

They live in a tent in Jami camp, about 5km northwest of Herat city, where his wife Amina, and sister Parween, spend many hours trying to give his three children aged 5-10 an education, as they do not go to school.

"Except for a tent and some kitchen utensils we have not received any assistance," said Alim, 42, adding that his family had never before gone to bed hungry.

Living nearby is another destitute Afghan family. They cannot return to the south of Afghanistan owing to insecurity, lack of work and a variety of other problems.

"All our property and earnings have been left behind in Iran," said Abdul Gafoor, a member of one of the families. "Without shelter and other basic necessities it is very difficult to establish a new life here."

Since April, some 200,000 Afghans living in Iran illegally have been deported to their home country, according to the Afghan government.

"A lot of deported families are poor, unskilled and in a state of shock; their lives were changed within hours," said Fernando Arocena, country representative for the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

In July the UN allocated US$5 million through the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to ease the suffering of thousands of Afghan families deported from Iran.

The fund has enabled different UN agencies to come up with promises of food and non-food humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable deportees.

"It is a comprehensive response in which the WHO [World Health Organization] provides health assistance, WFP [World Food Programme] distributes food items, UNICEF [UN Children's Fund] helps children and the IOM contributes non-food items and transportation assistance," said Arocena.

The IOM country representative said deported families had received assistance based on their specific needs and that is was a comprehensive response.

However, some deported families who live in transit camps in Herat and Nimruz provinces, bordering Iran, have complained about both the quality and quantity of humanitarian aid.

One angry deportee said: "In this hot weather they [aid agencies] have given us blankets instead of tents, food and drinking water."

Shojauddin Shoja, an adviser in Afghanistan's Ministry of Refugees and Returnees, also criticised aid agencies' humanitarian response.

"Unfortunately we were not consulted in determining what is urgently needed and in what quantities," Shoja told IRIN on 13 August.

The UN and the IOM say they are working closely with Afghan authorities and local NGOs to meet the humanitarian requirements of the most vulnerable deportees.

In April two Afghan cabinet ministers were sacked for failing to deal with an unexpected influx of tens of thousands of deportees.

Afghan officials have meanwhile stepped up diplomatic efforts to encourage Iran to slow down the deportation of Afghans living and working illegally there.

The issue will be on the agenda of talks between President Karzai and his Iranian counterpart Ahmadinejad, who was in Kabul on 14 August. "President Karzai will ask for a humane, gradual and dignified deportation of Afghans from Iran," Shoja added.

Over 900,000 Afghans are registered as refugees in Iran and are allowed to live and work there, according to the UN Refugee Agency. However, at the same time there are tens of thousands of Afghan nationals in Iran who are there illegally.

Two freed Koreans to leave Afghanistan soon

By Jon Hemming, Tuesday, August 14, 2007

KABUL (Reuters) - Two South Korean women freed by Taliban kidnappers are in a good condition and undergoing medical checks in Afghanistan on Tuesday before flying home "very soon," a Korean embassy spokesman said.

The pair were the first hostages to be released by Taliban kidnappers who seized 23 Korean church volunteers from a bus in Ghazni province on the main road south from the capital Kabul last month. The Taliban have killed two male hostages.

"They are in a good condition and they are staying in a safe place under our protection and are undergoing medical checks," the spokesman said. He said they would return to Korea "very soon, but still their flight schedule has not been fixed yet."

South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun thanked officials who worked to secure the release. "I hope it is a good indication for the release of all the others," he told a cabinet meeting.

Taliban insurgents said they had freed the two women as they were seriously ill, but they were able to walk to a waiting Red Cross vehicle at their handover on Monday and both Korean and Afghan officials said they were relatively well.

The rebels said the release was also a gesture of goodwill, to encourage the Afghan government to free rebel prisoners in exchange for the remaining 19 captives, 16 of them women.

The Taliban have threatened to kill the remaining hostages if their demand is not met.

The Afghan government has refused to free Taliban prisoners, saying that would just encourage more kidnapping.

Since the pair were freed on Monday, there have been no further talks to release the remaining hostages

"No words have been spoken since the release of the two hostages," said the governor of Ghazni province, Merajuddin Pattan. "We are expecting more negotiations soon, but I don't know when."

(Additional reporting by Jack Kim in Seoul and Hamid Shalizi in Kabul)

11 killed in Afghanistan violence

Tue Aug 14, 6:12 AM ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Six Afghan civilians were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade blew up their vehicle during a Taliban attack on a military convoy in southern Afghanistan, police said.

The men had been travelling in a minibus near a convoy bringing supplies to NATO-led troops that came under attack in the southern province of Kandahar on Monday, the provincial police commander said.

An Afghan guard with a US private security firm was also killed in the attack, Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP. Five vehicles, including three trucks, were destroyed, Saqeb said.

The attack was in the Zhari district, just west of Kandahar city, which sees regular clashes between Taliban-led insurgents and troops. Kandahar is the birthplace of the radical Islamist movement that swept to power in 1996 and was removed in 2001 by a US-led coalition.

A separate clash between troops and insurgents on Monday in Ghazni province, further north, left four Taliban dead, provincial police chief Alishah Ahamdzai said. Another was arrested.

Ghazni has been in the headlines since the July 19 kidnapping of 23 South Korean aid workers. Two of the hostages were freed Monday. Two others were shot dead by the Taliban last month.

The Taliban wants the release from jail of some of their fighters in exchange for the hostages but the government has rejected the demand.

The Taliban's Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency has intensified this year, despite the efforts of nearly 50,000 international troops working with the Afghan security forces to end the rebellion.

Senate chairman tenders resignation to Karzai

Pajhwok News Agency, 08/14/2007 Najib Khilwatgar - KABUL - Senate Chairman Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, citing his preoccupations with a reconciliation campaign, has tendered his resignation to President Hamid Karzai, an official said on Tuesday.

Meshrano Jirga (Upper House of Parliament) Secretary Aminuddin Muzaffari told Pajhwok Afghan News most senators voiced aversion to the resignation of Mujaddedi - known for his anti-Pakistan diatribe.

The secretary quoted the Senate chairman as saying in the resignation letter that he was unable to continue with his job owing to pressing engagements as head of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) - tasked with wooing opponents of the government.

Additionally, Muzaffari pointed out, the elderly politician had complained of incompliance with his advice by government officials - something that hurt his reputation. The official would not explain whether or not the president had accepted his resignation.

Meanwhile, a female senator confirmed that Mujaddedi had put in his papers but most members were opposed to the move. Requesting not to be named, the parliamentarian said the legislators wanted the former president to continue in his office.

Under Mujaddedis leadership, the NRC has been able to convince around 4,000 Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) adherents into renouncing violence and supporting the government led by President Hamid Karzai.

The Senate chairman, it will be pertinent to recall, had also threatened to stand down last year when Attorney-General Abdul Jabar Sabit accused Herat Mayor Muhammad Rafiq Mujaddedi of corruption and other illegal practices.

However, Mujaddedi did not make good on his threat prompted by the corruption charges against his clansman. It remains to be seen whether the NRC chairman will stick to his decision this time around.

Police have Afghanistan's most dangerous job - for $70 a month

Jason Motlagh, San Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, August 14, 2007

(08-14) 04:00 PDT Kabul, Afghanistan -- Ahmed Haidari has spent nearly three years inside the blast walls of the Kabul police academy, learning to become an officer along with 1,000 other trainees. But when he graduates later this month, he will assume the most dangerous job in Afghanistan.

After losing hundreds of fighters in direct confrontations with NATO forces last summer, the Taliban have increasingly turned to suicide and hit-and-run tactics that target underpaid, ill-equipped police who are dying at a record pace. According to the Interior Ministry, more than 400 police have been killed since late March.

Just last month, the Taliban claimed responsibility for killing 35 people and injuring scores more outside Kabul police headquarters. It was the second such attack in as many days, and most of the victims were trainees.

"These days, (the Taliban) are killing police, not Army soldiers so much," said Haidari 23, as a group of trainees nodded in agreement. "We are still ready."

In some provincial districts with more than 100,000 people, there are just 25 to 30 police stretched thin, battling insurgents and lending a hand in drug eradication, all of which makes them easy targets, Afghan officials say.

"In remote areas of the country, the only force that you can find that is active there, that is working there, is the police of Afghanistan," said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary.

The upgraded Afghan National Army typically remains inside barracks until there is an attack, Bashary explained.

Analysts say the Taliban sent a two-fold message by attacking the Kabul police headquarters: no amount of international support can ensure security; and those who cooperate with the government are targets.

"Strategically, it makes sense to attack Afghan security forces where morally it gives people a complex about whether it is worth joining," said Hekmat Karzai, head of Kabul's Center for Conflict and Peace Studies.

Some attacks have even killed a handful of relatives of police officials, including a family of five in Ghazni province. Police often find it difficult to defend themselves when targeted for assassination. While insurgents strike with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, police are limited to used AK-47 assault rifles and other dated weaponry.

A joint report by the U.S. Defense and State departments estimated it would cost $600 million a year for years to come to bring the police force up to par, provided such funding is not siphoned off by corruption.

Even though police officers earn only $70 a month, some have not been paid in more than a year because of graft, according to the nonprofit International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. As a result, some police extort money from opium poppy farmers who have produced another record harvest this year, and destroy crops of those who don't pay them bribes.

Last year, a U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and World Bank report accused the interior ministry - the ministry in charge of security and anti-drug campaign - of playing an increasing role in organizing protection for criminal markets.

To be sure, efforts are under way to create a more honest police force. The European Union is taking over police training duties from Germany and has sent advisers to restive provinces where they are expected to work with local governments to attract and train new men and women. The plan is to add 20,000 more police to the current level of about 62,000 officers over the next couple of years, spokesman Bashary said.

The Afghan government is also putting together a 5,000-man reserve force based in central provinces to provide "quick-response support wherever police are attacked," he said. "They will go in and pound the enemy, and then withdraw."

And still another program aims to hire 11,200 auxiliary officers to supplement forces in high risk security areas, notably the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand where the Taliban has its strongest presence. Some critics say the 10-day crash training course for these officers will undermine the overall strength and integrity of the national police, increasing the likelihood of graft and infiltration by insurgents. Some U.S. trainers have said that 1 in 10 new Afghan recruits have links to the Taliban.

"While it has been emphasized that the (auxiliary police) would be recruited individually, many fear the result will be the regularization of militias," according to a report by the International Crisis Group.

Just days before his long-awaited graduation, Haidari worries more about being placed under the command of a corrupt officer than the resurgent Taliban.

"My friends who have been sent to the provinces say their officers have told them to steal from the people and take money from criminals," he said. "I'm scared of getting a police commander who works with the Taliban."

Ex-warlords moving to reclaim fiefdoms

The Washington Times, 08/13/2007 By Anuj Chopra

HERAT - While the government battles the Taliban in violence-infested southern Afghanistan, former warlords in the relatively peaceful north and west are moving to reclaim their old fiefdoms and fostering resentment toward the presence of foreign troops.

Heading this challenge to foreign forces include one-time Taliban members, leaders of the Hizb-e-Islami party of fugitive former Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and disenchanted mujahedeen commanders of the Northern Alliance that helped remove the Taliban from power in 2001.

Mr. Hekmatyar — who claims to have helped Osama bin Laden escape Tora Bora in 2001 — is thought to be hiding somewhere in the mountainous regions of northern Afghanistan. He reportedly sends regular messages to influential former mujahedeen commanders, inviting them to join the fight against Western forces.

Mr. Hekmatyar "is likely to see his influence grow in northern and even western Afghanistan as he takes advantage of the decreasing security situation and allies himself with powerful regional figures," warned a report last month in Jane's Defense Weekly.

"This growing challenge to the government in the north ... could lead to increasing instability in the previously quiet region in the medium term."

Mr. Hekmatyar's political party, the Hizb-e-Islami (HIA), opened several new offices in recent months, including one in Herat two months ago.

Hizb-e-Islami leaders say officially that they have no contact with Mr. Hekmatyar or the United National Front, an anti-government alliance established this year that groups various leaders of the anti-Soviet fight of the 1980s.

Behind closed doors, however, many HIA leaders say they still have clandestine links to Mr. Hekmatyar and the Taliban.

"Afghanistan is slowly losing confidence in foreigners here," said Bismillah Bismil, the 55-year-old head of the HIA in Herat who acknowledged that Mr. Hekmatyar might hold sway over some of his party leaders. "If they stay here longer, there'll be widespread unrest."

The central government of President Hamid Karzai, he said in an interview, acts as a "puppet of the West" and failed to put forward a clear vision to bring good governance and economic development to the northern provinces.

Mr. Hekmatyar is reported to have joined forces with Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord and a founding member of the United National Front (UNF). Thirteen of his followers were killed by police during an anti-government protest in May.

In March last year, authorities discovered a large cache of arms belonging to Mr. Dostum's forces, including a bunker filled with detonators, two bunkers containing 80 tons of Russian TNT and one bunker with 15,000 anti-personnel and 10,000 anti-tank mines.

With several NATO countries deliberately posting their forces in the north to keep them out of harm's way, analysts fear that the UNF may turn its weapons on these ill-prepared troops while the best NATO combat forces are engaged in the south.

Mr. Hekmatyar and Mr. Dostum are capitalizing on public frustration over the lack of development, even though the Taliban remains deeply unpopular in the region.

"Growing public frustration provides an opportunity for anti-government forces to thrive and recruit among the population," said Haroun Mir, who was an aide to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military leader assassinated by al Qaeda in September 2001. Mr. Mir is now a policy analyst for the International Affairs Forum in Kabul.

A report by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) warned donors in April of an unbalanced distribution of aid in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), by far the largest donors, allocate more than half their aid to the four restive southern provinces.

Massive development needs in comparatively stable areas in the north and west are being ignored, creating "perverse incentives for provinces to create insecurity to attract resources," the report said.

U.S. public wakens to forgotten war

Ottawa Citizen, 08/14/2007 By Norma Greenaway - Almost no debate on merits of involvement in Afghanistan except to beat up on Bush

Some U.S. commentators have called Afghanistan the first and most unfortunate orphan of the Iraq war. They have also dubbed it the United States' forgotten war.

Indeed, compared to Canada, the United States almost feels like an Afghanistan-free zone. The conflict gets scant attention in the mainstream U.S. media, especially on the television networks, despite the significant toll the conflict, after almost six years, has taken on U.S. lives and the U.S. treasury.

This oft-forgotten first front in the U.S.-led war on terrorism is, however, creeping back on the radar screen, pushed by reports of a reconstituted and emboldened Al-Qa'ida movement in Pakistan, an unexpectedly resilient Taliban, the recent U.S. visit of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and U.S. election politics.

Afghanistan cannot rival the bloody and politically charged war in Iraq for attention in the United States. The toll of about 350 U.S. lives lost and about $127 billion in Congress-approved spending in Afghanistan pales beside the more than 3,600 U.S. lives lost in Iraq, and approved spending of $450 billion.

Iraq "is a political football here, as well as a nightmare in trying to figure out how we can get out of this without leaving behind a horrendous civil war," said Marvin Weinbaum, who worked as an analyst on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the U.S. State Department from 1999 through 2003.

The U.S. troop and financial commitment to the NATO-led military offensive in Afghanistan is nowhere near as controversial.

Unlike Canada, where debate rages over whether and for how long Canadian forces should remain engaged in a military role in Afghanistan, there is almost no debate on this side of the border about the merits of U.S. involvement in what the government calls Operation Enduring Freedom.

"Both the Republicans and the Democrats have signed on," Weinbaum said. "Except to use it (Afghanistan) to beat up on (President George W.) Bush over Iraq, no one has said we should be looking for a way out of this."

Weinbaum, scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute in Washington, also said the U.S. public sees Afghanistan as fertile ground for Al-Qa'ida and other terrorist organizations. Most U.S. residents are persuaded, therefore, that the United States needs to be there and that failure is not an option.

"If (the military intervention in) Afghanistan fails, there will be no state, no economy and no government," Weinbaum said. "In that kind of soil, certainly the enemies of the United States and everybody else will be able to flourish."

Weinbaum said Canadians need to wake up to that prospect. "Bombs go off in Britain. Bombs go off in Spain. They could go off in Toronto. They (Canadians) are not going to be able to buy out of this. We are talking now about hard-core terrorists. And, for the time being, their safest place is Afghanistan."

Weinbaum said Afghanistan is inching back into the public eye for good reason.
But the news is not good, he said, despite the "Pollyanna-ish" note struck last Monday when Bush and Karzai spoke to reporters after their meeting at Camp David. Karzai asserted that the Taliban forces are "defeated" and pose no threat to his government or the country's institutions.

Fresh British parliamentary and U.S. intelligence reports, by contrast, say Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida and a regrouped Taliban have found safe haven in largely ungoverned territory along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

The worsening state of affairs in Pakistan also has some of the Democratic rivals for the presidential nomination at each others' throats over, for example, whether the U.S. should unilaterally send troops into Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf were to fail to act on solid intelligence to have his own forces flush the insurgents from hiding.

Benazir blames Musharraf’s partners for rise in extremism

Daily Times Monitor 13 August 2007

NEW YORK: Pakistan People’s Party Chairwoman Benazir Bhutto has said that her party has been in negotiations with President General Pervez Musharraf and that democracy is the only remedy to the country’s problems.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published on Sunday, she said her recent meeting with General Musharraf was the most famous non-meeting because neither he nor she had officially confirmed that the meeting had taken place. “I don’t know why ... but we haven’t officially confirmed it. But the party has been in negotiations with General Musharraf.”

Commenting on allegations of corruption against her, she said the graft charges were an effort “to divert attention from the institutionalised corruption of the military”. Regarding the events in the wake of the presidential reference against the chief justice of Pakistan, operation against Lal Masjid and the subsequent wave of terrorist activities, she told the WSJ that Musharraf was facing two problems, one narrowly political and the other fundamentally philosophical.

She said, “On the political front Musharraf has had a set of partners since 2002, the last elections, and it’s under those partners that extremism has spread in the country. Now as these negotiations have been going on with the PPP, that group is worried that it’s going to lose control … so they are trying to jettison the return to democracy.” Calling Musharraf’s policies towards Islamic militants “ambiguous”, she said the military regime needed the threat of Al Qaeda and the militants to justify military rule, besides “getting money”. If there was no threat, there was no money, she observed.

When asked to comment on Barack Obama’s recent statements about launching unilateral attacks on the Pakistani tribal region, she said that she was disturbed by Obama’s comments. Any unilateral attack would unite all Pakistanis against the US, as they would see it as a threat against Pakistan, she observed.

She said enough efforts had not been made by Pakistan in fighting against the militants, adding that if the government had the consistent and persistent will to take them then the government writ could be established. “We’d like to work closely with NATO and the United States in eliminating militancy,” she added.

Giving the example of the Inter Service Intelligence’s (ISI) Brigadier Ijaz Shah, she said, “Brigadier Shah and the ISI recruited Omar Sheikh, who killed Danny Pearl. So I would feel very uncomfortable making the intelligence bureau, which has more than 100,000 people underneath it, run by a man who worked so closely with militants and extremists.”

She said radicals were not enough to tilt an election. “But they are enough to unleash terrorism against the population, to rig an election, to kidnap police, to kill the army, and therefore to make it possible to take over the state,” she observed.

Bhutto said that she planned to return to Pakistan soon, but said she was worried that Musharraf could have her arrested or he would declare a state of emergency or the elections would be rigged.

Suicides Up Among Afghans

Iran daily 13 August 2007 - Decades of civil and social upheaval have intensified traditional social pressures on Afghan women who were already suffering at the hands of poverty and decadent social traditions.

All this was coupled by the economic dislocation of a large section of Afghanistan society. In such a situation, Afghan women found an easy escape in suicides. The trend of suicide, which started in the early years of this decade, is now practiced by desperate Afghan women throughout most parts of Afghanistan, reported English.ohmynews.com.

Apparently, the removal of the Taliban has brought about a positive change in Afghan society and the new government of President Hamid Karzai has enacted certain laws to improve the social condition of women in Afghanistan. However, this has only a marginal affect on the growing trend in Afghan society of women committing suicide.

According to the latest survey conducted by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) in Afghanistan, 65 percent of the 50,000 war widows living in Kabul see suicide as the only option to escape their misery and desolation.

These widows were interviewed by UNIFEM in 2004. It took UNIFEM and associated nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) one year to complete the survey. More than half these war widows said that they were practically considering committing suicide to escape the miseries they find themselves in.

The UNIFEM survey indicates that the majority of Afghan women are victims of mental and sexual violence, which compels them either towards committing suicide or drug addiction. UNIFEM prepared the reports based on this survey in cooperation with other Afghan nongovernmental organizations.

A representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) described the conditions of war widows, especially those living in Kabul, as terrible. She said widows living in Kabul have to look after their families where there is little opportunity to earn a livelihood.

She said 16 women had already ended their lives since the interviews were conducted. Highlighting the social structure, she said family and gender discrimination and violence against women were common in most parts of Afghanistan.

However, women in other parts of Afghanistan are not far behind when it comes to committing suicide in the face of growing social problems.

According to Kabul-based human rights organizations, some 100 women during the last eight months have attempted suicide in Kandahar by committing self-immolation or taking poison.

In Helmand province, which is also known as the center of poppy cultivation, more than 100 women committed suicide, according to the figures provided by the Women’s Affairs department of the government of Afghanistan.

In Herat province, where the practice has been most reported and publicized, there were 93 cases of attempted suicide last year and 54 so far this year. According to figures released by the department, more than 70 percent of these women die.

According to the Women’s Affairs department, domestic disputes and economic problems are behind the increasing incidents of women committing suicide in Afghanistan.

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