In this bulletin:

• Car bomb kills 15 in Afghanistan
• German woman abducted in Kabul, talks for SKoreans over
• Omar urges Afghans to unite against Western troops
• Dion: End combat by '09
• Afghan Media Wars
• 2 Tajik Guantanamo inmates sentenced
• Afghan women footballers kick off
• Afghanistan's ball back in Pakistan's court

Car bomb kills 15 in Afghanistan

Associated Press / Sat Aug 18, KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A suicide car bomber detonated near a convoy of private security forces Saturday in southern Afghanistan, killing four Afghan guards and 11 civilians, including women and children, police said.

Meanwhile, armed assailants abducted a German woman from a restaurant in western Kabul on Saturday, officials said.

The suicide car bombing went off west of Kandahar city and also wounded six other guards as well as 20 civilians who were in two minivans passing by the convoy, Kandahar provincial police chief Syed Agha Saqib said.

Three women and two children died in the blast, and five women and three children were among the civilians wounded. Women's and children's shoes were scattered about the area. A stuffed animal toy was left in one of the destroyed minivans.

Saqib said the guards worked for U.S. Protection and Investigations security firm. Company representatives could not immediately be reached to confirm that their employees were attacked.

In neighboring Helmand province, insurgents holed up in buildings and trenches attacked Afghan police and coalition forces Friday near Fire Base Robinson, the coalition said in a statement. Nearly a dozen suspected militants were killed in the ensuing battle.

It was the third insurgent attack on the joint forces in as many days, the statement said. No Afghan or coalition forces were wounded in the three days of fighting.

Since early spring, Afghan and international forces have been battling insurgents in Helmand — scene of some of the heaviest fighting over the last two years and the largest opium poppy-growing region in the world.

Violence in Afghanistan has risen sharply during the last two months. More than 3,700 people have died so far this year, most of them militants, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.

In the Kabul kidnapping, the armed men pulled up next to a barbecue and fast food restaurant, and one of the men went inside the restaurant and asked to order a pizza, said an intelligence official investigating the incident.

He then pulled out a pistol, walked up to a table where the woman was sitting with her boyfriend, and took her from the restaurant, the official said on condition of anonymity because of policy. The boyfriend was not kidnapped.

Interior Ministry spokesman Zemerai Bashary said the woman, who was not identified, was kidnapped by men armed with pistols around 1 p.m. local time, but he did not have any further details.

The German Embassy in Kabul said that they were checking reports, but could not confirm the incident.

U.N. staff in Kabul, meanwhile, were put on lockdown Saturday afternoon and told to remain in their locations as authorities investigated the abduction, an official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on security matters. Other foreigners were also placed under tight security.

German woman abducted in Kabul, talks for SKoreans over

by Waheedullah Massoud, Saturday, August 18, 2007

KABUL (AFP) - Afghan authorities were grappling with a third hostage crisis involving foreigners Saturday after a German woman was abducted by armed men in the capital Kabul.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the woman's abduction, which one local police source said was the work of a criminal gang -- not the Taliban militants holding 19 South Korean aid workers and a German engineer elsewhere.

Members of the hardline militia have also kidnapped four Afghan engineers working on a bridge project in the south of the central Asian country. In Kabul, Afghan officials confirmed the abduction of the German woman, but gave little details about the circumstances of the kidnapping.

"Today at 1:30 in the afternoon (0900 GMT), a German woman was abducted by unknown armed men in an alley," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

Police had cordoned off the area and were searching for the gunmen and their captive, Bashary and police said.

A police official who asked not to be named said the woman was having lunch with a male companion at a pizza parlour on a quiet road in western Kabul when four men with pistols entered and forced her into their vehicle at gunpoint.

The German embassy in Kabul was unable to immediately confirm the incident and in Berlin, the German foreign ministry had no comment.

But a spokesman for a Christian aid organisation, Ora International, said the woman kidnapped had worked in its Kabul office for the past year. Ulf Baumann, Ora's spokesman, said the 31-year-old woman, who he did not name, had been abducted while in a restaurant with her husband, who escaped.

Ora International, based at Aumuehle, near Hamburg, describes itself on its website as "a non-denominational Christian relief and development organisation that serves people in need around the world".

Earlier, a 12-year-old boy told AFP he had witnessed the abduction and that it had taken place as the couple crossed a road. Another police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said police had pinpointed several areas where the kidnappers could be hiding.

"This is not the work of Taliban, this is a criminal case and abduction for ransom," he said. "We most probably will carry out a police raid of suspected compounds in a bid to release the hostage."

The official said a taxi driver caught in crossfire between a police officer and the kidnappers as they sped from the scene had been killed.

A taxi with a bullet hole in its rear window and blood stains on the driver's seat was parked in the area. The Taliban usually claim immediate responsibility for abductions, but have so far made no comment on the German woman's disappearance.

The Taliban and their Al-Qaeda backers have said kidnapping foreigners is a new strategy in their aim of forcing the withdrawal of international troops from the country.

Earlier Saturday, a spokesman for the hardline militia said the Taliban were deciding the fate of the Koreans, abducted in volatile southern Ghazni province nearly a month ago, as negotiations aimed at securing their release had failed.

The Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said further negotiations seemed unlikely. The extremists are also holding a German man, Rudolph Blechschmidt, 62, who was kidnapped with a colleague on July 18 in Wardak province.

The other German man suffered circulatory failure a few days after his capture and was shot dead by his captors.

And Kandahar police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said the four Afghan engineers were taken hostage on Friday when militants opened fire on a construction site in Shah Wali Kot district, killing one labourer in the process.

The Afghan government has said it will not bow to the Taliban demands as doing so would help create a kidnapping industry.

The US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai was heavily criticised, notably by Washington, after it freed five Taliban in March in exchange for an Italian journalist.

Omar urges Afghans to unite against Western troops

By Sayed Salahuddin - Sat Aug 18 - KABUL (Reuters) - The Taliban's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in a rare message on Saturday called on Afghans to shun their differences and join the militant Islamic movement's campaign to drive Western troops from Afghanistan.

Omar made the appeal in a message through a Taliban spokesmen, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Afghanistan's independence from Britain.

He said Afghanistan was once again "occupied by colonialist forces," referring to the nearly 50,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military in the country.

"The enemies of the religion of Islam and independence of the country have launched satanic propagandas under the slogans of democracy and freedom and are trying to disperse Afghans and exploit from it," said the message.

"We have to ... put aside all of our internal, regional and linguistic differences and get united against the enemy," said the message, which was read to Reuters over the telephone by Yousuf from an undisclosed location.

The one-eyed elusive Omar carries a bounty of $10 million from U.S. government for his head. Omar's whereabouts have been a mystery since U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 after he refused to hand over al Qaeda chief, Osama bin Laden, the architect of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The Taliban have stepped up their guerrilla warfare in the past 19 months, the bloodiest period since the movement's removal from power, particularly in the south and east of the country close to the border with Pakistan.

Inspired by insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban largely rely on suicide raids and roadside bomb attacks as part of their campaign against the Afghan government and the foreign troops.

In the message, Omar also urged Taliban guerrillas to avoid civilian casualties while fighting the Afghan government and the Western troops.

He has called on Afghan military and civilian officials to join the Taliban ranks for "Afghanistan's freedom and also for their own safety so that the honor of freedom be gained unitedly."

Dion: End combat by '09

Wants Canadian troops pulled from frontline role when engagement in Kandahar is over, August 18, 2007 - Bruce Campion-Smith – Toronto Star

OTTAWA–Canadian troops should be pulled off the frontlines and kept far from any engagements with insurgents once the current combat mission in Kandahar ends in 2009, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion says.

Dion's vision of Canada's next role in Afghanistan, where troops wouldn't be in the line of fire, could be a major stumbling block in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's attempt to seek a political consensus on the future of the mission this fall.

The Prime Minister is unlikely to agree with Dion's demand that troops not be exposed to combat of any sort, even if they are helping mentor Afghan soldiers.

In the advance of next week's meeting of the leaders of Mexico, the United States and Canada, Dion yesterday called on Harper to tell U.S. President George W. Bush that Canada's "combat role" in Kandahar will end when the current commitment ends in February 2009.

Dion wants negotiations to begin with NATO to find another nation to take Canada's place. "Clarity is needed," he told a news conference.

"After three years to be at the front, having so much of the burden to do, I think it would be very legitimate ... to say that we will do something else, but the combat mission in Kandahar as such ends."

He said he was open to another mission "in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the world ... we are always (ready) to help for development, always there to help for reconstruction, training.

"There are certainly different things that we may do in good partnership with the international community."

It's not the first time Dion has demanded an end to the combat mission. But yesterday, he went further in saying he doesn't want troops to see combat of any sort if they remain in the country.

A statement released later by his spokesperson seemed to place tight restrictions on what kind of military role the Liberals might agree to if another Afghan mission were authorized.

"It cannot involve a combat role," said the statement sent yesterday by email from Jean-François Del Torchio. "That means, Canadian soldiers will in no way be involved in a mission where engagement with the Taliban or other hostile forces is proactively sought.

"That also means that our soldiers would not accompany any other country's forces (Afghanistan or other) as they engage in those types of operations." In June, Harper said the military mission in Kandahar would continue only if he received a consensus from the opposition parties.

Afghan Media Wars

Ethnic and regional rivalries are rife in Afghanistan’s fledgling press, threatening the country’s fragile unity. By Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 264, 18-Aug-07)

At least on the surface, media is one of the more successful areas of development in Afghanistan.

According to figures from the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs, more than 500 print publications have opened since the fall of the Taleban in 2001, as well as 70 radio and 18 television stations, both government-owned and private.

But a closer look reveals a pattern of ethnic, linguistic and regional rivalries that are threatening all the gains the press has made. Some observers believe the squabbling has reached such a pitch that the country’s very unity is at stake.

Much of the media is seen as highly biased, or at least weighted towards one side or another of the political and ethnic divide.

Tolo TV, the popular station launched in 2004 by the Mohseni brothers, Afghan-Australians who have built a media empire in the country, is commonly perceived to be anti-Pashtun.

Shamshad, a new TV station, is by contrast all Pashtun, while Aina TV is backed by the Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum and is seen as defending his interests.

Newspapers are similarly engaged - Kabul Weekly, an attractive full-colour publication in English and Dari, is regarded as representing the Panjshiris, while Arman-e-Milli is seen as the mouthpiece of Jamiat-e-Islami, the political party associated with the Northern Alliance.

There are almost no publications that are held up as fair and balanced by all sides. Fahim Dashty, the editor of Kabul Weekly, is worried that the widening gaps between various media organisations will damage the authority of the press in the eyes of the public.

“I really don’t think we can speak of an independent media,” he told IWPR. “Most of the media are funded by the government, by foreign associations or by private individuals. So journalists are divided into groups, and the funders have very specific demands. For those who want to fan the flames of ethnic disunity, this is very good.”

Journalists cannot even agree on professional associations, he added. “Look at Kabul’s butchers. They have one professional association. Journalists have six,” he said.

But Dashty remains upbeat despite all the problems. “The media have grown a lot over the past five years,” he said. “If things continue, our media will be very strong in the region.”

Political analyst Habibullah Rafi traces Afghanistan’s ethnic divisions back centuries. The seeds of discord were sown by the British in the 19th century, he said, cultivated by the Russians in the 20th, and are now being brought to fruition by the Iranians.

”After the communist coup d’etat of 1978, when people sought refuge in Iran, the Iranians taught them bad things about the history, ethnic situation and languages of Afghanistan. They have trained them to be anti-Afghan,” said Rafi.

Now that the diaspora is returning, he complained, these sentiments are finding their way into the mainstream, “Afghans trained in Iran are now the heads of media organisations. They preach against national unity and sometimes use curse words against the ethnic groups and languages of Afghanistan. And they call that a free press.”

Marie Nabard, the editor of Seerat, a women’s newspaper, is worried about the wider damage that divisions in the media might do.

“We should not take this problem lightly,” she said. The media is drowning in baseless discrimination and conflict. It is the enemies of Afghanistan who win in this situation. People tell me that if the country heads for disaster, journalists will be to blame. History will judge us harshly.”

Najibullah Manalai, general advisor to the Ministry of Culture and Youth Affairs, disagrees with such negative views of the media.

“The level of bias is very low in the media,” he said. “Those who are fanning the flames of ethnic discord are quite a small minority, and while there are some sick and fascistic media, they are no real danger to society.”

Manalai agrees that the Russians bear some of the blame for ethnic problems in the country.

“When the Russians conquered Central Asia, they divided its countries along ethnic lines. They did this in Afghanistan as well, and the division spread even into the trenches of the jihad. But it is not the job of the government to deal with this - we leave that to journalists and intellectuals.”

Sayed Aka Hossein Fazel Sancharaki, the head of the National Association of Afghan Journalists and a former deputy minister of information and culture, cites the low level of education and literacy in the country as an added factor.

“People have not reached cultural maturity in this society,” he said. “They have not yet learned to place human, national, and supra-national values above ethnicity, language and regionalism.”

Politicians, he added, have become adept at using ethnicity as a weapon. “We can see this particularly among the jihadi leaders. It was especially apparent during the presidential and parliamentary elections,” said Sancharaki.

Within the government, he added, hiring and firing were based largely on ethnic considerations.

A recent very public dispute between the Ministry of Culture nd Youth Affairs and Radio and Television Afghanistan, RTA, which resulted in the resignation of RTA head Najib Roshan, is a case in point.

Karim Khoram, the minister, is Pashtun; Roshan is Tajik. Each had his own staff members in the media organisation. When Khoram insisted on installing Abdul Ghani Modaqeq as deputy head of RTA, Roshan stormed out, accusing Khoram of pursuing “an ethnic game”.

According to Sancharaki, “If the government does not find a way out of this, this fighting in the media will not only destroy the media and freedom of speech, it will throw the whole country into the abyss.”

A journalist from a prominent media organisation in Kabul, who did not want to give his name, confirmed that ethnic backbiting was rife in the media.

“The place where I work is dominated almost entirely by one ethnic group. Only myself and three others are from a different ethnicity,” he said. “I hear my ethnicity and national heroes being insulted every day. But I have to close my ears. If I say anything I will be kicked out, and I have to make a living for my family.”

A newspaper editor who did not want to be named insisted things were gradually getting better. “Once we stop fighting with guns and start fighting with our pens, this is a good development,” he said, adding that just as the time for guns has passed, the phase of media warfare will also come to an end. “Afghanistan’s media is still immature. We should be patient and wait for it to grow up.”

Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s editor in Kabul.

2 Tajik Guantanamo inmates sentenced

Associated Press, Fri Aug 17, 10:00 PM ET

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Tajikistan's high court on Friday sentenced two former detainees of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to 17-year terms for serving as mercenaries in Afghanistan, a court judge said.

Mukit Vokhidov and Rukhiddin Sharopov were also found guilty of illegal border crossing, Judge Musammir Urakov said.

Vokhidov and Sharopov were accused of entering Afghanistan in 2001 and serving as mercenaries for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an al-Qaida connected militant group responsible for several bombings and armed incursions across ex-Soviet Central Asia

They were detained by the U.S. military in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to the U.S. Guantanamo base. In March, they were handed over to Tajik authorities.

Urakov said the two maintained their innocence. "In their last words, they said they didn't expect such consequences for acts they committed," he said. The IMU is blamed for bomb blasts outside the Tajik Emergencies Ministry in 2005 that killed two people and injured three.

Afghan women footballers kick off

By Charles Haviland, BBC News, Kabul Thursday, 16 August 2007

The Afghanistan women's international football team is travelling abroad for the first time to join Pakistani teams in a series of friendly matches. Like many other sports in Afghanistan, football has regained a popularity which was dampened during the five years of Taleban rule.

It is a sport which has thrived among women, alongside other games including boxing and tae-kwondo. But now the game is being played with enthusiasm all over the country.

"When I was a child I always wanted to be a good football player," the 18-year-old captain of the team, Shamila Khostani, told the BBC's World Today programme.

"But, unfortunately under the period of the Taleban I couldn't play football or any sport... when the Taleban went I found the opportunity and started playing soccer."

"We wanted to show that girls can also play football like boys," she said.

Team member, Palwasha Daud, also played football as a child growing up in Pakistan. "When I returned home to Afghanistan," she told the BBC, "I played football during school sports classes."

"After that, when football teams were created, I wanted to register." Later still, she was introduced to the country's Olympic Committee and chosen for the national team.

Twenty players are travelling, along with two female coaches and the male chief coach, Abdul Saboor Walizadah. Although there are now 500 registered women players across Afghanistan, the game has had to develop in a cautious way given the conservative society here.

Coach Abdul Saboor Walizadah says: "At the beginning we had lots of problems. Most families didn't want their daughters to play football."

"We kept being in contact with the parents to try to convince them there was nothing wrong with it."

Now, says the coach, all these players' families are quite comfortable with what their daughters are doing. The only problem the Afghan women's team has is that it lacks a suitable venue for regular football training.

A Pakistani Football Federation spokesman has said these matches will be great for the relationship between the two countries. The teams will be taking part in a friendly tournament in Islamabad, involving 15 Pakistani teams and lasting a week.

Afghanistan's ball back in Pakistan's court

By M K Bhadrakumar – Asia Times

In May, when Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles arrived in Kabul as the new British ambassador, there was intense speculation about London's choice of a senior diplomat of the highest caliber for an assignment in a losing war.

This was natural, since within the Anglo-American condominium in Afghanistan, Britain has all along been the "brains trust". The intriguing question was, what was there in the war at that point for Cowper-Coles to salvage at all for Britain? However, soon after taking over in Kabul, in an interview with BBC Radio 4, Cowper-Coles firmly rejected all suggestions that the coalition forces were losing the fight against the Taliban.

The ambassador took a big step further last week when he termed the four-day peace jirga, which concluded in Kabul last Sunday, a historic occasion. "There was a palpable sense of relief, pleasure, and of history being made," he told The Guardian newspaper.

Significantly, British Defense Secretary Des Browne forcefully echoed the ambassador's optimism by asserting in a media interview last week that the situation in southern Afghanistan had reached a "turning point".

What warrants such optimism? The jirga itself, comprising more than 600 representatives of Pashtun tribes, originated as an idea from Afghan President Hamid Karzai a year ago with the backing of the administration of US President George W Bush - as an experimental effort to employ the vehicle of traditional Afghan assembly for fostering good-neighborly relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It was to have been held last December in Jalalabad. Pakistan was lukewarm about it. And, when it finally got under way in Kabul, there was considerable skepticism. But it ended on a high note. The jirga authorized a 50-man team to be drawn equally from the two countries to hold regular monthly meetings and to work to "expedite the ongoing process of dialogue for peace and reconciliation with the opposition".

In plain terms, the jirga has launched an intra-Afghan peace process with a comprehensive approach that aims to include the Taliban and its ally Hezb-i-Islami. Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, who attended the closing session of the jirga, said after his return to Pakistan that the proposed 50-member team should "engage warring forces in Afghanistan to bring terrorism and extremism to an end".

Musharraf played his cards astutely. Addressing the jirga, he admitted with disarming candor that, yes, the Taliban enjoy support from Pakistan. "I realize this problem goes deeper; there is support from these areas," he told delegates. Karzai, who sat beside the general, nodded in approval.

There was no acrimony over Musharraf's dramatic turnaround from his consistent plea that the Taliban are an indigenous Afghan force. Musharraf added, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistani soil. The problem that you have in your region is because support is provided from our side."

In his characteristic way of mixing bravado and bluster, the general underscored the criticality of his government's role in the forthcoming intra-Afghan peace process. Again, Musharraf was forthright in asserting that any meaningful settlement will have to be on the basis of a political accommodation with the Taliban. He said, "The Taliban are part of Afghan society. Most of them may be ignorant and misguided, but all of them aren't diehard militants and fanatics who defy even the most fundamental values of our culture and our faith."

Clearly, an initiative that began as a modest effort aimed at defining the role of Pashtun tribes in mending Afghan-Pakistan relations seems to have galloped away. Sitting in the white tent where the jirga was held, the Guardian correspondent observed, "After four days of talk, the language was at times more Woodstock than Waziristan."

The jirga's agreement to push for reconciliation with the Taliban and other opposition groups constitutes a vindication of Pakistan's stand that options other than a military solution should be adopted in reaching a settlement in Afghanistan. The high drama surrounding Musharraf's appearance in Kabul at the concluding session of the jirga - allowing himself to be persuaded to attend by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who phoned him thrice - has enabled Pakistan to move to the center stage of the negotiations involving the Taliban.

Musharraf made it clear that the key to making success out of any conceivable Afghan peace process in the near future will be winning Pakistan's support, and that cannot be extracted through threats and exhortations. He underlined that the West can certainly aspire to make progress with him, provided Pakistan's legitimate concerns and interests are recognized.

Accordingly, the jirga proposed in a draft agreement that a 50-member team of tribal representatives should "immediately undertake the opening of negotiations with the resistance on how best and how soon to end the violence in the country". Furthermore, it said, as soon as the peace and conciliation jirga begins its consultations with the opposition, a ceasefire should come into effect between the Taliban and the US-led coalition forces for a period to be mutually agreed on.

The draft document continued, "This would give a respite to both the resistance and the [Afghan] government to consider coolly and dispassionately the grave situation confronting the nation and the likely options on how best to resolve the conflict."

The most important gain for Pakistan is that the jirga affirmed that a key component for peace in Afghanistan would be the security and stability of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, commonly known as the Durand Line. "All possible measures, therefore, must be adopted to ensure that this becomes a border of peace and friendship bringing the two countries closer together."

Thus border-monitoring committees comprising tribesmen inhabiting the region of the Durand Line, with the assistance of Pakistani and Afghan officials, will undertake monitoring of the cross-border movement of people and identify the main routes for crossing the border. The two governments will also draw up a comprehensive Border Infrastructure Development Project and involve the international community for the speedy development of the region of the Durand Line. Pakistan has also sought the creation of a permanent body, the Pakistan-Afghanistan Peace and Friendship Commission, for fostering good-neighborly relations.

All in all, Pakistan has come nearer than ever in the past 60 years in securing a Pashtun affirmation of the sanctity of the Durand Line. The stamp of the international community (read the US and other major Western powers) guarantees the political gain for Islamabad.

The jirga's co-chairmen, interestingly, were Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao and former Afghan foreign minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who was a prominent leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and a close aide of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. Talking to journalists in Kabul, both Sherpao and Abdullah affirmed that the jirga will have a far-reaching impact on the restoration of durable peace in the region.

Abdullah, in particular, brings into the jirga's decisions a truly "bipartisan" Afghan character, given his prominent role in the democratic opposition to Karzai's government. The US has made a brilliant choice by calling on Abdullah to be a bridge-builder. He is partly Kandahari Pashtun and partly Tajik; he is a jihadi with impeccable pedigree; he belonged to the Jamiat-i-Islami (one of the original Islamist parties in Afghanistan) and is a staunch Afghan nationalist; and above all he is a forward-looking intellectual and accomplished politician who enjoys great credibility in the international arena.

The heart of the matter is the recognition by the United States and other Western powers that it is only through recognition of Pakistan's long-standing national interests that the Afghanistan problem can be resolved. Indeed, influential Western opinion-makers on both sides of the Atlantic have been harping on three directions in which Pakistani interests must be accommodated.

First, by encouraging India to reduce its presence in Afghanistan. To quote Professor Vali Nasr of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor, "Pakistan does not view Afghanistan through the prism of the 'war on terror', but in the context of its own vulnerabilities in the competition for power and influence with India. That's why Islamabad has everything to gain by playing the Taliban card ... to keep Kabul weak and southern Afghanistan free of Indian influence."

The jirga as such has not taken a view on this tendentious issue. Interestingly, Musharraf didn't press for it, either. But then the jirga also neatly sidestepped the sensitive issue of setting any timeline for the presence of foreign military forces in Afghanistan. It remains to be seen, therefore, how the diplomatic tango involving the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India will play out in the coming period.

Second, there has been a growing realization in Western capitals in the past year or so that the time has come to press Karzai's government to recognize the Durand Line. But Karzai would have a problem on this score if he didn't carry Pashtun opinion with him in any such venture. As it is, his Pashtun support base remains tenuous. It is in this respect that the Afghan jirga has kick-started a historic move in the direction of settling the Durand Line. The jirga's decision to strengthen the security and stability of the Afghan-Pakistan border is tantamount to a pan-Pashtun recognition of the sanctity of the Durand Line. At a minimum, there is scope to build up a consensus rapidly.

Third, the US has recognized the importance of constructively engaging the Taliban and offering them a role as "stakeholders" in Afghanistan. This becomes important for several reasons. A roll-back of the Pashtun tribal structures to their old modes (prior to the radicalization of the 1980s) cannot be achieved as long as the Taliban remain as the force of an irredentist opposition. That is to say, any reversal of the so-called "Talibanization" of Pakistan's tribal areas must begin with a rehabilitation of the Taliban in the power structures in Afghanistan. Again, an intra-Afghan settlement is a necessary prerequisite to enduring peace. It has become clear by now that there is no military solution to the Afghanistan problem.

Since the US intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001, 425 American soldiers and 226 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops have been killed. But the palpable sense of urgency in Washington in working for a settlement must be seen from different angles.

Of course, the prospect of a terrorist threat to the US and Britain remains very real. Second, the new imperatives in the geopolitics of the region cannot be overlooked. Washington has calculated that armed with the jirga's decisions, Karzai has a solid case to stall any attempt by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, this weekend to force its way into the arena of conflict-resolution in Afghanistan. Russia and China spearhead the grouping.

Besides, an intra-Afghan peace process of the kind mooted at the jirga will remain exclusively under the control of the US, Britain and Pakistan. Iran and Russia remain excluded, despite their robust efforts in recent months to barge in. According to Browne, Iran in particular may have begun "backing every horse in the race" in Afghanistan.

The US would prefer to address China's concerns in Afghanistan separately, despite China's involvement in the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group. In fact, soon after the SCO summit in Bishkek, which Karzai will attend, Afghan Foreign Minister Dadfar Spanta proceeds to China on a four-day visit.

The prospect of a ceasefire can be expected to give NATO forces much-needed breathing space. This would enable NATO (under Washington's tutelage) to rethink its strategy toward Central Asia. Most of the supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan come via Pakistani territory. Therefore, the jirga's peace process, which will incrementally free Pakistan from the distractions over the frontier problems in its western region, will lead to more wholehearted cooperation from Islamabad for the consolidation of a long-term NATO presence in the region.

Given the fluidity of security in the Persian Gulf region, especially over Iran, the US and Britain have calculated that a Pakistan at ease with the integrity of its state will make a reliable ally for NATO in the medium and long terms.

But both Musharraf and Karzai have been weakened politically in the recent period. The main challenge for the emergent peace process arises on the Pakistani side rather than the Afghan one. The jirga carried moral authority, but is that sufficient for translating changes on the ground? First, to make the peace process work, the US and Britain will have to depend on the military leadership in Pakistan - Musharraf in particular. This has implications for the overheated Pakistani domestic politics. The jirga has raised dust within Pakistan.

The fact is, Musharraf has emerged from the jirga 10 feet tall. That isn't a pleasant sight for many in Pakistan at the moment. Musharraf, in turn, will have taken careful note of the extended standing ovation he received at the jirga. He was indeed the cynosure of all eyes last Sunday. He finds himself catapulted into the lead role as peacemaker in Afghanistan. To quote the New York Times, "His presence at the final ceremony of the jirga lent weight to the proceedings." No one is disputing his prerogative to call the shots. The name-calling by Kabul that used to be a daily occurrence has given way to a gush of camaraderie.

On his return from Kabul, he told the media in Islamabad, "The joint declaration and the formation of the 50-member committee [are] a step in the right direction, but it is not an end in itself, rather a beginning of [a] peace process." He gently flagged that his role is only beginning. That was a reminder to Washington that his position as Pakistan's leader is going to be highly critical in steering the peace process through.

Musharraf expressed confidence that the 50-member committee will engage the Taliban and push the peace process forward. But he held out a thinly veiled warning for the benefit of Pakistan's Islamic parties, which have lately become somewhat recalcitrant in their opposition to him. He hinted that it is he who will hand-pick the people to be included as protagonists in the peace process. He said his nominees should have "credibility and standing" - a tall order for Pakistan's Islamic leaders.

Not surprisingly, the two prominent Islamic leaders in Pakistan who claim to have strong political bases in North-West Frontier Province and Balochistan and who are strong supporters of the Taliban - Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam and Qazi Hussain Ahmad of Jamaat-i-Islami - were kept out of the jirga in Kabul. (A second jirga is expected to be convened in Pakistan.) Both have shown their frustration by resorting to anti-US rhetoric. Musharraf now has the upper hand in selectively "engaging" them, if he chooses to, which he can use to advantage in the broader lineup of political forces as Pakistan moves toward presidential and parliamentary elections.

But even detractors in Pakistan grudgingly admit the salience of the jirga. The former interior minister in Benazir Bhutto's government in the early 1990s, Naseerullah Baber, who is a retired general and often touted as the "Father of the Taliban", predictably criticized the jirga but was forced to admit, "The US has recognized the identity and political clout of the Taliban by inviting them to the jirga, which amounted to a confession of defeat on their part, for they had never accepted the Taliban as a party to the Afghan conflict."

Equally, liberal, secular-minded sections of the Pashtun community in Pakistan, especially the Awami National Party, have enthusiastically welcomed the outcome of the jirga. From this perspective alone, the jirga holds the potential to squeeze the jihadist culture out of Pakistan. Putting faith in Musharraf may still work.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

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