In this bulletin:

• British attack Taliban in Afghanistan
• Taliban leaders seized in assault on Afghan town
• Browne seeks Afghanistan support
• Afghan police arrest 4 suspected Taliban insurgents
• Police claims capturing 31 militants in Maidan Wardak
• Afghan president says Soviet invasion led to death of human rights
• Bangladeshi hostage freed in Afghanistan: NGO
• UN envoy in Afghanistan appreciates Iran's constructive role
• President Karzai to leave for Kuwait next week
• Reconstruction a long-term mission, says Afghan envoy
• ANA to receive 100,000 M-16 rifles: Afghan envoy
• Afghan education and humanitarian programs at risk from violence
• Ministry assailed for blocking power project in Nangarhar
• Wheat crisis: ‘Higher exports to Afghanistan lead to flour shortage’
• Pomegranates: A Fruitful Trade
• Cannabis is the new drug of choice for Afghanistan's former opium poppy farms
• Badakhshan forests, meadows grabbed by strongmen
• Local Afghans Weary Of Taliban In Paktika Province
• Afghans close road to save minarets
• How we put our foot in it, in Afghanistan
• The Post editorial board: Stay the course in Afghanistan
• John Robson. Afghanistan's potential
• "Kite Runner" Author Soars To New Heights

British attack Taliban in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- One soldier was killed and several wounded in the largest combat operation undertaken yet by British troops against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

As many as 3,000 of the 7,000 British troops in Afghanistan were involved in Saturday night's battle against the Taliban's most strategic stronghold in southern Afghanistan, Britain's Telegraph reported Sunday.

One British soldier died Saturday as helicopters and combat jets attacked the Taliban stronghold in Musa Qala in Helmand province, where the Taliban claim to have nearly 2,000 fighters, the Telegraph reported. The number of Taliban casualties was not known.

In fighting during the past several days, Taliban commanders have said their fighters were prepared to fight to the death while others would engage in suicide attacks against advancing British soldiers, the Telegraph reported.

The Taliban reportedly have spent months laying minefields, building bunkers and digging trenches in preparation for the British attack.

Taliban leaders seized in assault on Afghan town

By Samar Zwak - Sun Dec 9, 7:47 AM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan and NATO-led forces have captured two senior Taliban leaders during an offensive to retake the insurgents' most important stronghold in Afghanistan, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday.

Musa Qala, in the southern province of Helmand, is symbolic for both sides in the conflict in Afghanistan as the only sizeable Afghan town controlled by the Taliban.

Forty-eight hours after the operation began, there was less fighting on Sunday as troops resupplied and positioned themselves for the assault on the town.

"If you think of it like a house, the house is surrounded, the Afghan army is waiting outside. We are in the process of kicking the door in, then the Afghan army is going through it," said British army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Eaton.

"Right now it is going according to plan. As to how tough the fighting will or will not be, that is up to the insurgents," General Dan McNeill, the commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, told reporters.

"If the insurgent wants to fight then the Afghan forces going into Musa Qala will be up to the task," he said.

The operation is expected to last several days, but Afghan and foreign forces appeared to have scored an early victory with the capture of two Taliban civilian leaders in Helmand.

"During the operation, two Taliban commanders named Mullah Mateen Akhond and Mullah Rahim Akhond have been captured by joint forces," the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Mullah Rahim Akhond is the Taliban-appointed governor of Helmand, while Mullah Mateen Akhond is the Taliban district governor of Musa Qala.

The Afghan government appealed to Taliban fighters to lay down their arms. "The Taliban in Musa Qala must put their weapons down and surrender or they will face an offensive by Afghan forces," the Defense Ministry statement said.

A dozen or more insurgents were killed when Taliban fighters attacked an Afghan army checkpoint on the edge of Musa Qala, McNeill said, and two civilians also died in the crossfire.

A British soldier was killed in the operation around Musa Qala on Saturday, and ISAF said another of its soldiers was killed in southern Afghanistan on Sunday.

Up to 300 civilians have fled the fighting, the Afghan Defense Ministry said, but ISAF commander McNeill said there were still many non-combatants in the centre of Musa Qala.

"We have some photo imagery of Musa Qala district centre that we have been taking on a regular basis and I don't agree with your premise that a lot of people are vacating it. We have seen some people vacating but not the hordes you suggest," he said.

A Taliban spokesman said insurgents had killed more than 30 NATO and Afghan troops and said four Taliban fighters had been killed. Qari Mohammad Yousuf said the insurgents were dug-in in fortified bunkers in Musa Qala and warned of heavy casualties if NATO and Afghan troops attempted a final assault on the town.

After coming under sustained Taliban attacks, British troops pulled out of Musa Qala in October last year in a truce criticized by U.S. commanders that handed control of the town to tribal elders. The Taliban then seized Musa Qala in February.

U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban for refusing to give up al Qaeda leaders after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But foreign forces had only a limited presence in Helmand, allowing the Taliban to regroup and take control of large parts of the mainly desert province until around 7,000 British troops moved in to the province around 18 months ago.

Since then, mainly British and Afghan forces have been fighting for control of the towns and villages along the fertile strip of land on the banks of the Helmand River and its tributaries, where nearly half the world's opium is grown.

The Taliban relaunched their insurgency two years ago with guerrilla attacks in the south and east and suicide bombings on cities across the country aimed at convincing Afghans their government and its Western allies cannot bring security.

(Reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Browne seeks Afghanistan support

BBC News / Sunday, 9 December 2007

Members of the international community should provide more troops to fight the Taleban in Afghanistan, Defence Secretary Des Browne has said.

He said the demands set by commanders from Nato's International Security Assistance Force were not being met.

Mr Browne said the UK continued to ask countries for "additional support".

Meanwhile, a British soldier was killed in a battle on Saturday during efforts to recapture the southern town of Musa Qala from the Taleban.

The Ministry of Defence has confirmed the death of the soldier from the 2nd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, but further details have not been provided.

The death raised the toll of British dead to 86 since October 2001.

The defence secretary told the BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend that the demands set by commanders from Nato's International Security Assistance Force were not being met.

Mr Browne said: "What is known as the requirement has not yet been met and I think that is well known.

"And we continue to discuss with our allies and our friends across the international community who can help provide the additional support that that military effort needs."

Mr Browne also acknowledged that keeping the Taleban out of parts of southern Afghanistan from which they had been driven would be an arduous task.

"This is going to be a long-term project and I do not personally feel any sense of disappointment that we have made this much progress in six years," he said.

The defence secretary said challenges remained and "the insurgency is still strong in parts".

However, wherever this had occurred, British troops had "overmatched" the Taleban.

"I believe that over this winter again, we will see another significant shift in our ability to be able to create security, which I hope the Afghans can then take advantage of," said Mr Browne.

Afghan police arrest 4 suspected Taliban insurgents

KABUL, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Police in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province took into custody four suspected insurgents on charge of involvement in conducting subversive activities, said a statement of the Interior Ministry released here Sunday.

"These four terrorists were captured from Zornakam area on Saturday," it added. The arrest took place in the wake of a mine explosion in the area where Polish troops were patrolling but caused no loss of life or damage, the statement said.

All the arrested men are Afghans, it added. Taliban insurgents have yet to make any comment.

Conflicts and Taliban-related militancy have claimed the lives of nearly 6,000 people so far this year in the post-Taliban central Asian state.

Police claims capturing 31 militants in Maidan Wardak

MAIDAN SHAHR, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Police Thursday claimed capturing 30 militants and a Taliban commander in the central Maidan Wardak province.

Sources in national intelligence department said the commander named Shah Ahmad is from Aonkhi village of Syedabad district and he has confessed of his crimes including attacks on the district, setting ablaze radio station and ambushing containers on Kabul-Ghazni highway.

Taliban fighters have so far issued no statement about the claim. Police during their routine patrol also arrested two persons carrying arms in the western Herat province.

Meanwhile in another clash Taliban fighters strangulated an Afghan policeman in the restive Helmand province.

Police chief Brig. Gen. Muhammad Hussain Andiwal confirming the killing said the insurgents after murdering a policeman of the border brigade threw the dead body in a market of Lashkargah city.

In another incidence of violence a drug-addict gunned down his 25-years old wife in Mangalkhel area of the southeastern Khost province.

Police chief Col. Muhammad Yaqub told this news agency, made his escape good after commiting the crime.

Afghan president says Soviet invasion led to death of human rights

KABUL, December 8 (RIA Novosti) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on Saturday the 1979 Soviet invasion of the country the beginning of the "trampling down of human rights" in Afghanistan.

Soviet troops entered Afghanistan on December 25, 1979 in support of the Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and left 13 years later, on February 15, 1988.

Speaking at a ceremony to mark the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which comes on December 10, Karzai said that the Soviet invasion had led to almost 30 years of continuous war, ushering in a long period of widespread human rights abuse.

He said that human rights in Afghanistan had been finally extinguished under the rule of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic group that ruled most of the country from 1996 to 2001, before being toppled by a U.S.-led military force.

"There is not a single Afghan family which has not suffered from war. In the period of Soviet occupation, people were thrown into prison...and killed. Unfortunately, there were some people in our country who supported the invasion. The Soviet forces left, but then battles between different groups of Mujahedeen began, and then the Taliban came," he said.

"The observance of human rights is currently better than last year, and in five years' time it will have improved significantly," he went on.

Karzai noted, however, that Taliban forces were continuing human rights abuses in some parts of the country, speaking of a recent incident in which a 15-year old boy was burnt alive and three-year old child shot dead, saying such cases could make "even beasts weep."

Bangladeshi hostage freed in Afghanistan: NGO

Sat Dec 8, KABUL (AFP) - A Bangladeshi development worker kidnapped in Afghanistan by unknown armed men has been released nearly three months after his abduction, his organisation said Saturday.

Nurul Islam, who works for Bangladesh's biggest non-government organisation BRAC, was set free by his abductors late Friday and taken into the custody of Afghan authorities, BRAC officials in Kabul and Dhaka said.

He was later handed to the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Kabul, head of mission Gunendu Roy told AFP.

"He is keeping more or less ok," Roy said. "They did not misbehave with him and they have kept him well."

Islam, 39, was seized in broad daylight on September 15 from a BRAC office in a town about 60 kilometres (37 miles) south of Kabul.

After his abduction, an Afghan television station aired videotape showing a blindfolded man said to be the kidnapped Bangladeshi national and said his abductors threatened to cut off some of his limbs unless a ransom was paid.

It said the men who delivered the tape did not say whether they were with the insurgent Taliban movement, which has been behind a string of abductions of Afghan and foreign nationals in Afghanistan.

Roy said it was still not clear who had abducted Islam.

"We are not sure, but somebody kept him and ultimately he was released through the pressure of the government," he said, adding his group had paid no ransom.

The Taliban have tried to use hostages to barter with the government and have killed a number of them -- mostly Afghans.

Crime has soared in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001, with regular reports of Afghans kidnapped by ransom-seekers.

In Dhaka, BRAC spokesman M. Anwarul Haq said preliminary reports indicated Islam was in good health.

"We enjoy a tremendous amount of goodwill in Afghanistan. We're the biggest charity there. Persistent pressure by the Afghan government coupled with our request led to Islam's release," Haq said.

Brac is the biggest private charity working in the war-torn Afghanistan since 2002. It also operates a bank in the country.

The charity employs 4,700 people, the majority of whom are Afghans, in the health, education and micro-credit sectors.

UN envoy in Afghanistan appreciates Iran's constructive role

Tehran, Dec 8, IRNA

United Nations representative to Afghanistan Tom Koenings said on Saturday that Iran has undertaken constructive role in Afghanistan.

In a meeting with Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police (IRIP) Brigadier General Ismail Moqaddam, Koenings said that Iran has played an effective role in maintaining tranquility of Afghanistan and that only the US is denying Iran's positive role in Afghanistan.

He said that it is normal that two nations may have dispute on political field, but, they must cooperate in the international campaign against drug trafficking.

Koenings said that Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia and India are the main countries in the region which should be included in the category of 24 states known as effective partners in the international campaign against drug trafficking.

He said that Iran has effective and practical experience in the campaign against drug trafficking.

For his part, Moqaddam said that Iran has doubled its police force in its eastern borders and intensified campaign against illicit drugs being shipped to Europe.

Iranian police commander said that some 400 tons of illicit drugs have been seized from traffickers since the beginning of Iranian year (March 2007) and predicted that the amount of seizure may reach 800 tons.

Moqaddam said that the amount confiscated may seem large, but, it is little compared with the the large amount of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.

President Karzai to leave for Kuwait next week

KABUL, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan President Hamid Karzai will leave for Kuwait next week, while his foreign minister will visit Turkmenistan after attending a summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in India.

Karzai would meet the amir of the brotherly Muslim country and the Kuwait Fund head to discuss bilateral relations and the reconstruction of Afghanistan, a foreign ministry spokesman said here on Thursday.

Sultan Ahmad Baheen told a news conference here the president would be flying to Kuwait on his first official visit aimed at forging closer cooperation between the two countries, with strong religious and cultural bonds.

Also on Thursday, the spokesman added, Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta left for New Delhi to attend the SAARC summit. Member countries will discuss the economic, political and cultural situation in the region.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives are members of the grouping, which has long been hostage to Islamabad-Delhi rivalries and perennial mistrust.

Baheen said the foreign minister was scheduled to visit Turkmenistan on December 10 for participation in a three-day international conference on preventive diplomacy and international cooperation.

On the occasion, the UN-established Preventive Diplomacy Centre will be inaugurated in Ashgabat to monitor the situation in the region and discuss international peace. The spokesman said the foreign minister would address the moot on the political situation in the region and restoration of peace in Afghanistan.

Reconstruction a long-term mission, says Afghan envoy

NEW YORK, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Afghan ambassador to Canada has said rebuilding his war-hit country needs a long-term mission. Many pitfalls were involved in the reconstruction campaign, he argued.

"In Afghanistan being in a fragile state, one cannot always expect quick fixes and immediate solutions that can satisfy all stakeholders, domestic and foreign, Omar Samad told the Canadian Parliament's Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in Ottawa.

He said: "Given Afghan conditions, the rebuilding process is a long-term mission with many pitfalls along the way, and will require statesmanship, strong political will, sacrifice, leadership skills, perseverance and sustainable support to attain its objectives.

The military component was a critical part of the equation, but not necessarily the only option for a final outcome, observed Samad, who pointed out: "That is why Canada and other partners have adopted a multi-prong approach to dealing with all aspects of the situation on the ground."

However, he explained, the fact that security and relative stability were pre-requisites for the successful implementation of sustainable development could not be ignored. Better coordination and management of the daunting tasks at all levels were equally important, he felt.

While argued for a continued international presence in his country, he stressed the stakes were too high in Afghanistan. Samad said: "We all need to contemplate for a minute what the consequences of failure would mean to Afghans, to the region, to the forces of oppression and to those in the family of nations who have invested in blood and in kind."

Samad also mentioned the work of a prominent independent panel carefully studying the task of providing their countrymen with balanced recommendations that would help the government decide its future role in Afghanistan. Lalit K Jha

ANA to receive 100,000 M-16 rifles: Afghan envoy

NEW YORK, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The fledgling Afghan National Army (ANA) would soon receive 100,000 state-of-the-art M-16 rifles from the United States, a diplomat said here on Wednesday.

In an exclusive interview with Pajhwok Afghan News, Afghanistan's Ambassador to the US Said Jawad said the ANA was expected to take delivery of the guns over the next few months.

The M-16s would replace the AK-47 or Kalashnikovs, boosting the fighting prowess of the army and bringing it close to the combat capacity of NATO and US forces stationed in Afghanistan, Jawad said.

"Any time we switch to better equipment comparable with that of NATO, it makes (security) operations a lot easier and helps forge closer coordination, the ambassador added.

However, this is not for the first time that M-16s are being supplied to Afghanistan. Some of the Afghan Special Forces have already been equipped with the rifles. So this would be a great boost for the ANA switching from AK-47s to M-16, he observed.

Jawad believed the existing number of security forces, including NATO, US and Afghan troops, is not enough to respond effectively to increased security challenges facing the country. "So, we have to simultaneously improve the quality of international troops and build ANA capacity."

Afghanistan had been facing a serious shortage of equipment, he pointed out, recalling the issue was recently discussed at the highest level. "There has been significant progress in this respect (meeting the shortfall).

"We have received a number of helicopters from our NATO partners. The plan to establish the Afghan Air Force is being finalised by the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence, he concluded. Lalit K Jha

Afghan education and humanitarian programs at risk from violence

Kelly Cryderman - CanWest News Service Saturday, December 08, 2007

Qala-i-Naw, Afghanistan -- Bibi Hoor, an Afghan woman who believes her age to be about 32, has an elegant, almost regal beauty about her.

This is why it's such a shock when she lifts up her baby and you can see her hands, which are thick and clawlike. In their coarseness you can see the lifetime of poverty, washing clothes in cold water, and an early marriage at age 12 that led to eight children in less than 20 years.

"We as Afghans have too many children. With the current state of affairs it is difficult to educate them, feed them and bring them up as good citizens," said Bibi Hoor, whose family lives on about $80 US a month.

Bibi Hoor has more pressing concerns than the insurgency in Afghanistan, like how to feed her family this winter. But Talibs are now riding their motorcycles across the countryside just outside her town of Qala-i-Naw, and a spate of attacks was seen this fall in local districts that until recently had been spared much of the violence commonly seen in the southern part of the country.

And at some point, the worsening security situation in the surrounding areas could eventually affect the family.

For the past three years, Bibi Hoor has been attending literacy classes sponsored by World Vision Afghanistan. Helping her family is another World Vision Food for Education program that gives the family two kilograms of rice and one litre of cooking oil every month, for each child who attends school.

"If this program was ended it would be very hard," said Bibi Hoor.

Right now there is no concern that the programs will end. But increasingly the services delivered to families like Bibi Hoor's are facing far greater stresses.

It has been a year that may be the most violent since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001. People working to help redevelop and educate the country -- they say they are on a mission to help ease Afghanistan's grinding poverty -- are being threatened alongside the military and security forces. And increasingly there are security concerns in provinces such as Badghis, which previously had been considered relatively quiet.

Just this week in Kabul, senior defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said 2007 was the "bloodiest" the country has experienced.

A recent report from the United Nations Department of Safety and Security paints a grim picture, saying that most analysts believe the situation has deteriorated across the country in 2007. The report displays a list of abducted aid workers and a quote from a senior Taliban commander that those working for the United States, United Nations or Afghan government will be targeted.

"The Afghan National Police (ANP) has become a primary target of insurgents and intimidation of all kinds has increased against the civilian population, especially those perceived to be in support of the government, international military forces as well as the humanitarian and development community," said the report.

The report listed Badghis province as an area it is "watching closely." And the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said of Badghis, "insurgents have occupied most of the mountainous parts of three of the province's seven districts. They have also established intelligence and operational networks in most district centres."

For World Vision, the new security reality means the organization is constantly looking at how to protect its staff, said Mary Kate MacIsaac, a Calgarian who is working as communications manager in Herat, and also working in Badghis and Ghor provinces.

Last year, four local World Vision workers were killed in attacks. MacIsaac and other staff based in Herat are no longer driving to Qala-i-Naw when they go to pay teachers or assess the programming, and are now taking charter flights. A home school program in Bala Murghab district, the site of much recent Taliban activity, has been closed because of worries over security.

"It's affected everything," MacIsaac said. "It's central to our work here. Especially since we lost four colleagues it's become our first concern.

"We're no good to anyone dead."

The problem for development workers and educators is perhaps most acute where Canadian Forces operate, in volatile Kandahar province in the south. There, work by non-governmental organizations or the military's development arms is extremely limited by the threat of kidnappings, suicide bombs or other attacks.

At the Afghan-Canadian Community Centre in Kandahar, 250 girls and women studying in vocational courses for free - some online through the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology - regularly have to put up with taunts and teasing on their way to school from men who don't believe they should be attending classes.

However it is the male director of the school that perhaps deals with the most serious threats.

Ehsanullah Ehsan is hesitant to talk about it in front of his teachers, but he acknowledges that he regularly receives angry letters and phone calls from "extremists" who don't like the education the centre is providing to girls and women, and in the last two weeks a handful of boys and men. He closely watches every house and car as he passes by on his way to work.

"I don't think we receive all the threats from the Taliban. There are people who are jealous. There are people who don't want light in Afghanistan. The school is intolerable for them," Ehsan said.

But Ehsan seems adamant that no matter the risks, his work must go on. "The only end to the war and destruction can be education. It's education that brings development."

Ministry assailed for blocking power project in Nangarhar

JALALABAD, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Water and Energy Ministry seeks to shift a one million dollars investment from Nangarhar to a northern province, a senior government official alleged on Thursday.

Engineer Mohammad Qasim Yousafi, head of trade promotion centre in the eastern zone, told Pajhwok Afghan News the centre had been trying for year to resolve the energy problem in eastern provinces on a priority basis.

"We convinced an Afghan entrepreneur living in Dubai to invest one million dollars in the construction of a dam on Kama River and a hydro-electric power station in Jalalabad," the official said.

Initially the ministry agreed and the provincial government conducted a survey of the projects, he added. After the completion of the survey, the official explained, they again contacted the ministry, which opposed the project for reasons best known to it.

An assistant at the ministry, Eng. Muhammad Sadiq Eshsan told him they had no energy policy for Nangarhar. Qasim Yousafi complained that Eshan told him the project was workable if shifted to a northern province. Eshan, however, argued such projects required meticulous planning and homework

About 200 traders recently met Governor Gul Agha Sherzai in this regard, a gubernatorial spokesman revealed. Noor Agha Zwak said the governor assured the traders he would soon meet President Hamid Karzai and talk to him about the rights of the province.

Wheat crisis: ‘Higher exports to Afghanistan lead to flour shortage’

By Ijaz Kakakhel, Daily Times (Pakistan) Sunday, December 09, 2007

ISLAMABAD: Export of wheat flour to Afghanistan in large quantities lead to a flour shortage in the country that forms the very genesis of the current wheat crisis, officials in the ministry of food, agriculture and livestock (MINFAL) told Daily Times here on Saturday.

As usual 1,200 to 1,300 tonnes of flour was exported to Afghanistan per day and the government made proper preparation for it but recently about 2,000 tonnes of wheat were exported to Afghanistan, said Additional Secretary and Spokesman, MINFAL Raja Hussain Shahid. The demand for flour has jumped up in Afghanistan that was why the export to Afghanistan increases.

In order to ensure smooth supply of flour in domestic market, the government has imposed 35 percent duty on export of the commodity to Afghanistan. However, the imposition of such duty has no impact on export of wheat flour to Afghanistan due to higher demand as well as higher prices there, he maintained.

The government provides subsidy on wheat to flour mills for selling the commodity in local markets on lower prices. But the millers are exporting the commodity to Afghanistan to earn abnormal profits instead of selling it in the local markets.

Keeping in view higher demand for flour export to Afghanistan, the private sector had announced the export of one million tonnes flour to Afghanistan this year. Earlier, the private sector exported 0.6 million tonnes of flour to Afghanistan.

The government took several measures to ensure smooth supply of flour to residents through utility stores and other means. A 20-kg flour bag is being sold for Rs 260 at utility stores, but store managers said that the demand was high because of artificial shortage. Although, the government was supplying the grain to the flourmills at the lowest possible rates, the mills were selling their quota in the local market at high rates and the MINFAL termed it a reason behind the present flour crises in the country.

Although the prices of flour did not register a big increase in its price but the people expected that it might be increased in next few days as happened during the month of Ramdan, said another official. At present the prices of flour in the local market vary from Rs 300 to Rs 320 per 20 kg bag. People demand flour at reasonable prices in the markets, not only at a handful of utility stores.

The government seems helpless to control such type of crises (either wheat or sugar), which has made the lives of common people miserable. Due to unemployment and price hike, the middle and lower middle classes are more under pressure as compared to other segments of the society. Hoarding, unethical and illegal practices under the connivance of the authorities concerned, the big businesses, middlemen and retailers are in nexus to exploit the situation. These three form a mafia and they create artificial shortage of a commodity to reap huge profit at the cost of the poor.

People accused the authorities of giving a free hand to the profiteers. No action is being taken against hoarders, who are artificially raising the prices of flour, flour purchasers told this scribe.

Pomegranates: A Fruitful Trade

By SIMON ROBINSON TIME.COM / Wednesday, Dec. 05, 2007

A week or so ago I bought some pomegranates in my local fruit market in New Delhi. They were huge and glowed bright red, and the small juicy crystals of flesh inside tasted as good as they looked. But the most remarkable thing about the fruit was the box they came in. It was stamped in big, bold letters with the words "Kandahari Pomegranates. Export Quality. Products of Afghanistan."

It's not often that you see a product made in Afghanistan. The country is the world's biggest opium producer, but that's not an export government officials shout about. Yet before its descent into chaos in the late 1970s, Afghanistan was famous for its pomegranates, grapes, apricots and other fruit. Since then, as war cut the old trade routes and Afghanistan became isolated, traditional markets have been lost. So what were these pomegranates doing in my local fruit shop? And if they were available in Delhi, why aren't they in North America or Europe, where pomegranate popularity has boomed thanks to their health properties (mmm, antioxidants!), use in cocktails (mmm, pomegranate Manhattans!) and the recent revelation by California scientists that pomegranate juice may be a good alternative to Viagra (ahem)? Could Afghanistan be on the brink of a pomegranate-led recovery?

Not quite. The pomegranates I enjoyed were shipped as part of a USAID-funded Alternative Livelihoods program. The idea, explains Loren Stoddard, head of USAID's Alternative Development and Agriculture program in Afghanistan, is to restore "some of the old trade routes that were broken." Since the Taliban regime fell six years ago, USAID has helped plant more than a million pomegranate trees, Stoddard claims, and this year Afghan farmers harvested between 33,000 and 44,000 tons (30,000 and 40,000 metric tons) of the fruit, of which some 1,102 tons (1,000 metric tons) were flown or trucked out. Most of it went to India, Dubai and Singapore, but tiny quantities found their way to London and Vancouver. Alas, strict phytosanitary requirements, which guard against the importation of bugs, have so far kept Kandahari pomegranates out of the U.S. Stoddard predicts that next year's harvest will be as big as 68,000 tons, with exports rising to as much as 3,000 tons. "The demand we're seeing has been incredible," he told me by phone from Kabul. "And this is a licit agricultural product … something that there's a lot of pride in."

All that said, pomegranate exports this year will bring in about $1 million for Afghanistan, a blip compared to the more than $1 billion that poppies will earn. Stoddard says that farmers who manage to export their fruit can make as much as poppy farmers per acre — around $1,600 to $2,000 per year. The problem is that most farmers are not selling for export, and earn just a few hundred dollars per acre a year from fruit. That keeps poppies looking pretty attractive.

It's not all about price, though. Sarah Chayes, a former reporter for National Public Radio of the U.S., has worked with Afghan business partners over the past two years to produce fruit-based soap and body oils. Their Kandahar-based cooperative Arghand now exports to Canada and the U.S. "You don't even need to compete with opium on a straight price level, since there are other risks and taboos associated with growing opium," explains Chayes. "The best way to combat opium production is to expand the market for Afghanistan's fruit."

There's a big problem, of course. As Chayes says, "expanding in an active theater of war is an increasingly tricky notion." At the moment, Arghand relies on the generosity of the Canadian army, which lets Chayes use its post office for shipping. A commercial air-freight service, she says, would give a huge boost to the growing number of Afghan traders who want to export. It's a classic catch-22: freight companies shy away from Afghanistan because it's so unstable, but stability will come only when Afghanistan's economy improves, which will require more investment, such as freight services.

So what to do? Afghanistan's pomegranates are not going to drag the country out of poverty or end the drug trade any time soon. But perhaps the countries fighting extremism in the region could look at some sort of regularized freight service to boost the economy. Even better would be for foreign companies to see opportunity and profits in Afghanistan despite its problems. If, like me, you love pomegranates and want to help one of the most neglected places on the planet, then demand that your local shops stock the Kandahari good stuff — the fruit that's better than any drug you could ever try.

Cannabis is the new drug of choice for Afghanistan's former opium poppy farms

Nick Meo in Balkh province - The Times (UK) / December 8, 2007

Where opium poppies used to colour the plains of northern Afghanistan, towering cannabis plants now sway in the wind, filling the air with their pungent odour.

Farmers in Balkh province were banned from cultivating opium last year and have switched to another cash crop, a rich source of income that is still tolerated by the authorities.

Balkh's burgeoning hashish industry does not pay farmers quite as much as the heroin factories used to for good-quality opium. But the rich black cannabis resin produced around the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif still pays about four times the price of cotton or wheat. It is highly prized by Afghan usersand is exported in large quantities to Pakistan and Europe.

Growing cannabis is nothing new for Afghan farmers, but the opium clampdown has transformed a minor cash crop into big business. The 2007 annual report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimated a 40 per cent rise in Afghanistan's cannabis production this year from 50,000 hectares (123,550 acres) last year to 70,000 hectares this year.

The switch from opium to cannabis is the latest embarrassment to Western attempts at eradication. It also illustrates the desperation of poor farmers.

Western officials are deeply concerned that the booming drugs trade is funding the insurgency against Nato troops and driving corruption that undermines the Government in Kabul.

The UN report has found that Afghanistan now produces 93 per cent of the world's opium, mostly in the southern provinces. It highlighted poppy eradication in Balkh as a rare bright spot. But the gloss was tarnished by Balkh's cannabis problem.

This week, as gusts of snow blew in from the north, farmers were busily harvesting their plants in the flat, wintery landscape around Mazar-i-Sharif near the border with Uzbekistan.

Roadside stores keep hashish hidden among the onions and biscuits, producing thin sticks or sheets for users who drive out from Mazar-i-Sharif. “It is the best quality in Afghanistan,” one shopkeeper said with a lazy smile. “I don't keep opium any more because it is too much trouble. But hashish is good business.”

Unlike opium, cannabis is smoked by some farmers without serious social consequences. “The only thing is there seem to be more layabouts now that we grow so much cannabis.” one said.

Muhammad Qol, 44, said that nearly three quarters of his income came from cannabis. He said: “We don't smoke it, and we know it is a sin and against Islam. But my family needs the money and the Government stopped us from growing opium, so what can we do? We are saving up for a Toyota Corolla. Everyone else has a car these days. Why shouldn't poor farmers like us have one?”

Some Western officials try to look on the bright side. One said: “At least they've gone from producing hard drugs to soft drugs. It's progress, sort of.”

Badakhshan forests, meadows grabbed by strongmen

FAIZABAD, Dec 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Over 40 percent of a forest trees have been felled and meadows grabbed illegally by powerful people in the northern Badakhshan province, officials confirmed on Thursday.

Agriculture Director Muhammad Alam Alami, in a chat with Pajhwok Afghan News, the damage to the forested area in the province resulted from decades of war. Badakhshan contained vast grazing land and a useful habitat for wild life.

With the forest cover in the province shrinking, wild animals and birds including eagles are migrating to neighbouring countries Pakistan, China and Tajikistan. Alami recalled more than 60,000 hectares of forests and meadows in Badakhshan attracted cattle from Baghlan, Takhar, Kunduz and southern provinces in the past.

The jungles needed to be revived and the unlawfully occupied pastures vacated by strongmen to prevent precious wild life from imminent distinction and help poor people reliant on income from animal products, the director stressed.

On Wednesday, a three-day workshop - organised by the National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA) and sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded in Faizabad.

UNEP Law Department head in Afghanistan Abdul Qadir Karyab said 50 government officials were trained in law and environmental protection. The participants were educated on how to promote awareness among locals about the importance of forests and pastures.

Meanwhile, deputy police chief said they were ready to take action against the land grabbers, if approached by the Agriculture Department.

Local Afghans Weary Of Taliban In Paktika Province

Daily Afghan Report - December 7, 2007
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

Pajhwak Afghan News reported on December 5 that residents of remote areas of eastern Afghanistan, such as the Wazikhwa district of Paktika Province, live in constant fear of Taliban attacks, while commercial and reconstruction activities have stopped in the area. "There is no school, no health facility in the entire village," said Ramazan, a resident of Nangarkhel village. He blamed the Taliban for being "dead-set against the establishment of schools and other facilities in the village," despite the total lack of public services in the area. Abdul Hayee, administrative chief of Wazikhwa, did not dispute the Taliban's enormous influence in the district, and noted that "Some quarters are supportive of the government while others are firmly behind the Taliban." He added, "Murderous militant activities have effectively stymied the reconstruction process." MM

Afghans close road to save minarets

Sat Dec 8, 2:15 AM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan has closed a road that threatened the foundation of a group of mediaeval minarets which Kabul wants to see listed among the World's Cultural Heritage sites.

The minarets, standing at more than 100 feet, are all that remain of what was once a brilliantly decorated complex for Islamic learning and devotion along the Silk Road on the outskirts of the western city of Herat.

Just over a century ago, more than a dozen minarets stood in Herat, part of a madrasa-mosque complex built in the 15th century.

Most of the camel-colored, mud-brick towers, which were once sheathed in sparkling blue, green, white and black mosaic tiles, have toppled during decades of war and neglect.

Experts had hoped the end of Taliban rule in 2001 and the advent of a new government would save the remaining towers.

However, the city's new-found wealth in the post-Taliban era had served only to heighten concerns about the towers' stability.

Heavy trucks and cars rumble along a road that runs through the middle of the remaining minarets, shaking the ground and threatening their foundations.

Following repeated concerns from the U.N. cultural and educational agency, (UNESCO), authorities in October banned heavy trucks from using the road.

On Friday, it was completely shut down for all traffic, the information ministry said in a statement published on Saturday.

"The information ministry praises this and hopes such moves could stop the destruction of cultural heritages across the country," the statement said.

Once a bastion of culture and literature, Herat has prospered compared to other parts of Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, due largely to trade links with Turkmenistan and Iran.

New buildings of glass and concrete are sprouting up, overlooking the old city and challenging the minarets' command of the skyline for the first time in six centuries.

The old city of Herat is already on the tentative list for inclusion on UNESCO's register of World Heritage sites.

(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Bill Tarrant)

How we put our foot in it, in Afghanistan

JEFFREY SIMPSON - From Saturday's Globe and Mail - December 7, 2007

‘It is almost always far easier to get in than it is to get out,” write Janice Gross Stein and Eugene Lang in their must-read book about how Canada wound up in Kandahar.

Canada involved itself in that volatile Afghan province based on almost entirely false premises. Now there is no easy way out.

No NATO country wants to replace us, but Canada cannot leave Kandahar unoccupied, for it would soon be overrun by the Taliban and its disparate allies. Canada cannot leave without inviting defeat; Canada cannot stay with any reasonable assurance of success.

Canada is fighting a counterinsurgency war – against almost all the rules of that kind of combat. Our soldiers are undoubtedly brave and skilled, but there are too few of them, as there are too few NATO forces for the entire country. The ratio of troops to insurgents needed to “win” such a conflict is too low; the ratio of military to development deployment is too large.

The enemy has easy recourse to escape (into the hills, over the border to Pakistan), to money (from the drug trade, extortion and sympathizers elsewhere) and to time. Some of our allies in the Afghan government are corrupt; some of our allies in NATO are craven.

We are trying to win the “hearts and minds” of a people we barely know and who would or could scarcely distinguish a Canadian from a German or a Brit. We are all Westerners to them and, therefore, aliens to their culture – well-meaning perhaps, but alien.

We have brought them some security, but not as much as they would like; we have delivered some assistance, but not as much as they need. We are a kind of thin red line separating them from the Taliban, whom the majority, if polls and other indications are broadly right, would prefer not to see return.

Co-authors Stein and Lang cite Ken Calder, the top civilian policy-maker in the Department of National Defence, saying of Afghanistan in 2003, “We don't know anything about this country.” Presumably, our forces know the Pashtuns of the region better now, but they can never know them as well as their adversaries do.

Time is our adversaries' ally, but it is our foe. Anyone who looks dispassionately at poor, battered, tribal and post-medieval Afghanistan understands that realizing the twin goals of stabilization and economic development will take many years, perhaps decades.

The country is already the leading recipient of Canadian aid and, of course, military assistance. Are we prepared to remain there – in Kandahar? elsewhere in Afghanistan? – for “as long as it takes” to “get the job done,” to use the defence lobby's favourite clichés? If we are, then the commitment will extend far, far beyond the expiration of our current mandate in February, 2009.

And what is the goal of commitment? It has never been clear, as Ms. Stein and Mr. Lang compellingly recount in The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. The rationale for the Canadian (and NATO) mission has been shifting from the beginning. In 2002, the government committed to a short-term combat mission, then, in 2003-04, to a stabilization mission, then to a lead role in Kandahar that was not supposed to lead to as many casualties as have been suffered. Among the fascinating vignettes of official Ottawa the two authors offer are two that reflect the prime ministers of the time.

In one, prime minister Paul Martin rambles on (and on) about Darfur and Haiti as more important missions than anything in Afghanistan, seeking assurances from the military brass that Canada could do Kandahar and also lead, or at least participate in, an international mission in Darfur and help Haiti too. The lack of focus was mind-boggling.

In another, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (and a few senior advisers and civil servants) decides to extend the Afghan mission without consulting cabinet (until after the fact), a template for how decisions get made in this government, and by whom.

Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier, more than anyone else, drove the Kandahar mission. He got the top military job for many reasons, but one was his vision for the military as a fighting force, centred on the army, to be used in failed states that he believed posed the greatest future threat to world order. Afghanistan would be the testing ground for the vision.

Gen. Hillier has apparently asked for an extension of his three-year term, a time frame of convention rather than law. The Harper government is now considering his request. Obviously, the Conservatives don't like his outspokenness in a government obsessed by control of message, but can they let the principal architect of this Canadian commitment depart while the going is tough?

All through the piece, governments and especially the military worried incessantly about how the Americans would react to this or that decision. In fact, the Americans didn't much care, just as long as Canada decided something. Canada has been, and remains, in Afghanistan as a way of not being in Iraq. The two situations are vastly different in every way but one: The Americans in Iraq, like NATO and Canada in Afghanistan, got in easily but do not know how to get out.

The Post editorial board: Stay the course in Afghanistan

Posted: December 06, 2007, 11:19 AM by Marni Soupcoff

Editorial

Roland Paris, a University of Ottawa professor and former Privy Council Office foreign-policy analyst, told the Toronto Star Wednesday that the chances of finding a NATO country to take Canada's place in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Kandahar are "quite low." He added that if a replacement military force cannot be found before next spring, our deadly mission (73 Canadians dead to date) will likely have to continue well beyond our planned withdrawal date of February, 2009. While that may be frustrating to those who would have us leave sooner than later, the alternative--leaving Afghanistan to be overrun by the Taliban--is even worse.

Mr. Paris told the Star that even a "partial drawdown" would be disastrous. We agree. Even though we wish one of our NATO partners would step up to relieve us, it would be the people of southern Afghanistan who suffered if we left before reinforcements were ready. Taliban militia would feel free to step up their roadside and suicide bomb attacks. They would close schools again, and confine women to their homes. They might even let al-Qaeda set up protected training bases again.

Our troops are good at what they do in Afghanistan. True, some aid groups have recently said their convoys are being inspected at Taliban checkpoints that operate in the open. And the controversy over the treatment of prisoners we turn over to the Afghan authorities lingers still -- at least in opposition politicians' minds. But the important thing is that the areas Canada patrols are generally as secure as they can be. Attacks are down. Civilian life is returning to some semblance of normality. More markets and schools are open.

Without our troops, all the progress made in the past five years could be lost. After 30 years of upheaval, Afghanistan's fragile emerging democracy could not handle the strain. We owe it to the people of Afghanistan to stick by them for the long haul.

John Robson. Afghanistan's potential
John Robson The Ottawa Citizen Friday, December 07, 2007

With everyone off in Bali dealing with the urgent menace of global warming or panting over Karlheinz Schreiber's semi-revelations, might I interest you in some malaria?

No thanks? Lacks glamour? OK, malaria doesn't hand you $100,000 in cash and not ask for a receipt. It doesn't excite Hollywood celebrities or in a pinch make you one. But it is the No. 1 killer of children in Africa. Plus I found something new and encouraging to say about it in an unexpected venue: a Senlis Council press conference on Afghanistan. I confess to going in with vague suspicions that the council were among the usual suspects on foreign policy. They seemed to be calling the Afghan mission a disaster and most people who do so are engaged in wishful thinking like, of course, most of those calling it a success.

One of the weird and wearying things about issues like Iraq or Afghanistan is the way people's assessment of what is happening so often reflects what they wish was happening. Like the Wednesday New York Times headline, "A Calmer Iraq: Fragile, and Possibly Fleeting." Who knew they'd say that? I started reading the Senlis handouts about Afghanistan unravelling and the Taliban taking over and I'm thinking "Yeah, yeah." And then suddenly they're demanding that NATO double its expeditionary force and the Euro-slackers send more troops into the dangerous south and into parts of Pakistan. Then Senlis warned that setting a timetable for Canadian withdrawal was a recipe for another Rwanda or Srebernica.

I already knew the Senlis Council thought paying Afghan farmers to cultivate poppies for medical purposes instead of heroin is far better than U.S.-backed crop eradication that alienates Afghans without staunching the flow of illegal drugs. And I suppose ideas make strange bedfellows because I already agreed. But I was pleasantly surprised when council president Norine MacDonald told the press conference CIDA was doing such a wretched job of delivering aid in southern Afghanistan that the Canadian Forces should take over. When questioned later about the impression it would create if we militarized aid, she said it would create the impression starving people were getting food and she wasn't going to heed "theological" objections from the "aid and development community" who didn't have a better plan or any plan at all. Cool. She also reminded us how horribly the Taliban treated women last time. Are you listening, Mr. Dion and Mr. Layton?

Then she handed the microphone to Amir Attaran, Canada Research Chair in in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy at the University of Ottawa, to discuss the link between Afghanistan and fighting malaria. Yes, he's also the guy in a dispute with DND over treatment of Afghan prisoners and Access to Information. Which again made me skeptical because while I dislike government secrecy, I'm not inclined to fuss unduly about the fate of irregular combatants in hideous guerrilla wars, nor to reproach the Afghan government for the quality of its paperwork when it can't even pay its police. Anyway, the good professor turned out to be a malaria enthusiast. Uh, let me rephrase that. He's a passionately committed expert who wants the "international community" to do more about malaria.

There is no "international community" (fortunately) but let me recommend the rest of his plan. I had somehow acquired the impression malaria was manageable, not curable, that retired Indian army majors tended to start shaking every few months for the rest of their lives and downing quinine cocktails (a.k.a. gin and tonic) to suppress symptoms. It turns out one type of malaria does recur but not the lethal Plasmodium falciparum variety ravaging Africa. And that one, falciparum, is curable. Dr. Attaran says a simple course of pills, usually for three days for about a dollar, does the trick. Here's the punch-line: The medicine he advocates (Artemisinin Combination Therapy or ACT) is in short supply but is principally derived from a hardy plant called Artemisia, or "sweet wormwood," easy to grow in Afghanistan. So his idea is to raise charitable funds to pay Afghan farmers to grow sweet wormwood, pay other Afghans to extract the key ingredient, then donate it to the World Health Organization to process into medicine. I don't think this idea, alone or combined with the medical poppy plan, would completely stop the flow of illegal drug money to the Taliban. But it would contribute to the success of the Afghan mission while saving hundreds of thousands of lives a year cheaply. When the muckamucks get back from their Bali yak-fest and finish shovelling their snow maybe they should look into it. Or we could just go ahead without them.

"Kite Runner" Author Soars To New Heights

SAN JOSE, Calif., Dec. 9, 2007

(CBS) Khaled Hosseini loved flying kites as a little boy in Afghanistan. Now, that childhood pastime has become the perfect metaphor for the heights Hosseini says he never imagined he would reach with his pen.

He's got not one, but two current best-sellers, both set in Afghanistan; "A Thousand Splendid Suns," and his runaway best-selling first novel, "The Kite Runner." But he never actually thought he would be a professional writer.

"I never thought I had the chops to do it," he told CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras. "I never thought it was, you know, a realistic, viable profession."

This week he's witnessing the nationwide release of the movie version of "The Kite Runner."

"In many ways, it's a first in Hollywood. Because here's a major Hollywood production about a family of Muslims," Hosseini said. "And it doesn't begin with terrorism. It doesn't begin with extremism. It's a human story. It's a family story."

Hosseini says it's his focus on human nature - both loving and cruel - that's captivated millions of American readers, who until a few years ago, had barely even heard of Afghanistan. It's where Hosseini's own story begins.

"I have vivid memories of growing up in Kabul," he said. "It is so different than what you see on television now. At that time, Kabul was this kind of sprawling cosmopolitan city."

Hosseini's family was well-off in the 1970s. He was the oldest of five children.

"I wouldn't say privileged but certainly comfortable," he said. "My father was a diplomat, worked for the foreign ministry. My mother taught Farsi and history at a very large high school for girls."

And, unlike today, there was no war in Afghanistan.

"I never heard a gunshot in my childhood, I never saw a tank move," Hosseini said. "It was a time when the country was living in a very kind of peaceful anonymity."

When Hosseini was a young teenager, the family moved to Paris. His father was assigned to the Afghan embassy.

"It was supposed to be 3 1/2, four years and we were gonna come back," he said. But in 1979 the way back was slammed shut. The family watched their lives changing on television as the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

"I remember the expression on my parents' faces," Hosseini said. "When they saw the Soviets, I think at that point they realized that, wow, we may never go home again. And we have to start thinking about a new life."

It started in San Jose, Calif., when the family was granted political asylum by the U.S. government.

"Well, this is the first home where we lived," he said while walking Assuras through his old neighborhood. "A three-bedroom house. There were nine of us. We were pretty cramped."

They arrived with only suitcases, so his parents were forced on welfare for a time.

"They'd never been in a position before to be given free money," Hosseini said. "And I think that was shameful to them."

It was hard for Hosseini, too. He was 15 years old and didn't really fit in with the other kids.

"Those first couple of years where really rough," he said. "Because I didn't speak any English and I just did not get the whole high school culture at all."

But he got good grades and eventually became a doctor. It's a classic immigrant success story with two cultures constantly at play.

"This is the largest community of Afghans outside of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. There are maybe 80-90,000 Afghans," he said, referring to his old neighborhood, Fremont, Calif., which is near San Jose.

In Freemont, Hosseini's Afghan roots run deep. A cousin owns a rug store, and dried goods from Afghanistan fill the aisles in a local market where fresh flatbread is baked daily. His two worlds, says Hosseini, fit together easily.

"I rarely think about the Afghan and the American sides as separate parts of my life. It's just kind of become this organic existence."

Yet love was an entirely Afghan affair when Hosseini met his future wife Roya, an Afghan-American, 14 years ago. It was at a party when he was away at medical school. He was smitten within an hour of meeting her.

"I gave her a call five days later, proposed over the phone," Hosseini said. "And she was duly stunned. But I had made an impression on her. And so she accepted. More importantly her father accepted."

He asked his father to seek Roya's hand from her father in the traditional Afghan way. That tradition is played out on scene in what Hosseini says is a favorite sequence in "The Kite Runner," which was originally a short story. He says he's been writing since he was 8 years old.

"I've always been happiest when I'm kind of indulging the compulsion," Hosseini said. "And it is a compulsion to me. I really wrote all my life until I went to medical school. And then that takes over your whole life."

He only tried to get some of his work published after his wife Roya nudged him a bit. He said portions of the book are autobiographical.

"It's early on especially, he said. "That's the life I loved in those early chapters of 'The Kite Runner.' There's almost this kind of idyllic, romantic feel to those chapters."

But Hosseini's books are far from romantic. Both novels reflect many of Afghanistan's darkest days and the worst of human nature.

"I became what I am today at the age of 12 on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975," he writes in "The Kite Runner." "I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. Looking back, I realize I've been peeking into that deserted alley for the last 26 years. I don't want to forget anymore."

The central character, Amir, must live with the fact that he was too afraid to help his best friend from being raped. It's a scene that's causing controversy. The main issue is that Muslim sensibilities will be inflamed by the rape sequence. Fearing reprisals, the studio delayed the release of the film until they could move the child actors out of Afghanistan for their own protection.

"It's very, very upsetting," Hosseini said. "If you see the film, the children are tremendous. I actually met them when they were on the set, and they're beautiful people. The idea that somebody would want to harm them because of their performance in the film, the idea is reprehensible. It bothers me, especially because I think ultimately the film is antithetical to any notions of ugliness and exploitation."

Amir, who also had to leave Afghanistan, eventually returns as an adult, just like Hosseini, who returned after he finished "The Kite Runner."

"It was so surreal," he said. "I spoke to people, it turned out that a lot of things I said in the novel were real. In fact, the reality of what I found in Kabul was in many ways even worse. The brutality of the Taliban was incredible. Children watching their parents being killed in front of them, young girls sold into prostitution, forced into marriage, raped."

It was the stories he heard there about Afghan women that set Hosseini, who has since stopped working as a doctor, on a mission to write his next novel, "A Thousand Splendid Suns."

"Afghan women, as a group, I think their suffering has been equaled by very few other groups in recent world history," Hosseini said.

There would be no fanciful images of kites to inspire this story. Hosseini says he was haunted by videotape, smuggled out of Afghanistan, of a woman being executed by the Taliban.

"That clip played in my mind over and over again," he said. "I remember the writer in me saw that woman walking her final steps. And I began in my mind somehow creating a life, a background, a history for this woman."

In the novel, that woman is Mariam, who's beaten and abused by a monstrous husband.

"It wasn't easy tolerating him talking to her this way," he writes in "A Thousand Splendid Suns." "To bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid."

The novel debuted in January at the top of bestseller lists across the country, and Hosseini now finds himself arguably the most famous voice of Afghanistan.

"I hope people read these books and think about Afghanistan and the people who live there as real people," Hosseini said. "And for what happened, the tragedy in Afghanistan, to not be some flat statistic which doesn't echo in any kind of real way with you. But it happened to real people who are not that different from us."

[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.]