In this bulletin:

• Berlin Investigates Report of German Kidnapped in Afghanistan
• Laden is hiding in Bajaur area of Afghanistan: Musharraf
• 2007 is bloodiest year in Afghanistan insurgency
• US orders review of mission in Afghanistan: report
• Violence rising in northern Afghanistan
• US: Afghan border attacks drop 40 pct.
• A victory, but little to cheer
• Australian defense chief warns allies over Afghanistan war
• Afghanistan mission won't end soon: NATO
• Dutch government announces redevelopment aid for Afghanistan
• Pakistan, Afghanistan, ISAF discuss ways to counter explosive threat
• Family grieve after death in Afghanistan
• 'The Kite Runner' entailed risks
• From Bosnia to Afghanistan?
• Germany Faces Taliban Pincer in Afghanistan
• Pakistani insurgents join forces on Afghan border
• AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian space must be regained – UNAMA
• Afghan province shows promise despite bombings, attacks elsewhere
• US reviewing plans for Afghanistan
• Humanitarian space must be regained - UNAMA
• Swat Valley picks up the pieces after clashes
• Rupert Everett: acting in Hollywood is like living in Afghanistan

Berlin Investigates Report of German Kidnapped in Afghanistan
Afghanistan | 17.12.2007

The German government is looking into a reported abduction of a German aid worker in Afghanistan, according to media reports.

The 42-year-old German citizen had reportedly been living in Afghanistan since 2003 and was a convert to Islam. According to various media reports he was abducted by armed gunmen on Sunday, Dec. 16.

"We are pursuing a tip at the moment and are trying to clarify the situation," German Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Julia Gross said Monday.

Gross refused to comment further on the case. Afghan officials confirmed Monday that the kidnapping had taken place, according to the Associated Press.

Hostage had high profile in Afghanistan
German public broadcaster ARD said it had received confirmation from the Green Helmets that one of its aid workers had been kidnapped. The Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported the man is a Bavarian who had settled in Afghanistan's western Herat province.

"He decided to stay in Herat and married an Afghan woman," Green Helmets founder Rupert Neudeck told the Associated Press. "We are very worried."

Afghanistan's Mnister of Commerce and Industry Amin Farhang said he got to know the German carpenter through the man's work to get official government recognition for the aid organization. The men became friends, Farhang told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung.

"I know him personally," Farhang said. "He is a very nice, very engaged German Muslim."

Farhang said he would do everything possible to make sure the man was released. Farhang said he didn't believe the man was kidnapped by the Taliban, but rather by a criminal gang wanting money.

A German engineer was kidnapped in Afghanistan in July. He was released after three months, although a second man taken hostage with him was killed during captivity. The German government said Rudolf Blechschmidt was kidnapped by a criminal gang, although the former hostage said the Taliban was involved.

Germany remains involved in Afghanistan
The German government has repeatedly said it doesn't pay ransom money to free kidnapped nationals. Yet it's unclear if promises are made during secret negotiations and media report cite anonymous sources alleging Berlin has made ransom payments in the past.

Germany has some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of an international peacekeeping mission. There has been concern that Germany's involvement makes it a target for terrorist attacks. Last month, a group calling itself the Global Islamic Media Front released a video which threatened attacks on Germany and Austria if the two countries did not pull troops from Afghanistan.

DW staff (th)

Laden is hiding in Bajaur area of Afghanistan: Musharraf

Punjab Newsline Network Monday, 17 December 2007

ISLAMABAD:The Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Monday asserted that the well known terrorist and AI-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden is hiding in Bajaur area of Afghanistan.

Interacting with the media Musharraf said that he could be in the area that borders Pakistan's Bajaur tribal agency and Afghanistan's Kunar province.

Responding to, whether Pakistan can contain the threat from the extremists, Musharraf said "We are combating it, and I think we are on the winning side."

He further said that "No, these are settled districts. Osama could be in Bajaur – this is the tribal agency bordering Kunar province, where there were no coalition forces in the past," he said. "On the Afghan side – that's in Afghanistan," he added.

When asked whether the U.S. had abandoned him, Musharraf said, "I have nothing against President Bush. I think he has been most supportive; he has been a very sincere friend. I must say he understands fully the Pakistan environment. He understands why I had to act and what I'm facing."

2007 is bloodiest year in Afghanistan insurgency

KABUL (AFP) — Ahmad Shkeb recalls seeing a dark-blue car ram into a bus. Then he heard a terrible bang, and a huge light flashed before his eyes.

It took him several seconds to realise it was yet another Taliban suicide bombing, this time in his own neighbourhood in the southern Kabul. At least 13 people were killed, including six soldiers and four children, in the December 5 attack.

"It was the most horrific scene I'd ever seen in my life," said Shkeb, a tailor in his late 20s. Torn-apart bodies, some missing an arm or a leg, lay next to the mangled wreckage of a smoking and bloodied army bus.

2007 stood out for many things in Afghanistan: the death of the last king, Zahir Shah; a jump in the opium crop to account for 93 percent of the world supply; an urgent focus on the need to develop the Afghan security forces.

But it was the violence that was arguably uppermost, with 2007 the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since the extremist Taliban were ousted from power in late 2001 for harbouring Al-Qaeda.

There were 77 suicide attacks just in the first six months -- about twice the number for the same period last year and 26 times higher than from January to June 2005, according to a United Nations survey.

Toward the end of this year that figure had risen to around 140, including the deadliest of all: in November a suicide bomber blew himself up in Baghlan province as school children welcomed visiting lawmakers.

The nearly 80 dead included 59 school pupils and six parliamentarians.

Baghlan is in the north, and the attack -- besides targeting Afghanistan's first democratically elected parliament -- illustrated how the Taliban-led insurgency has spread out of hotspots in the east and south.

"Even here you don't feel safe," said shopkeeper Mohammad Esah in the town of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, where German troops admit their movements are restricted after a March suicide attack in Kunduz killed three of their own.

The military says suicide attacks show the weakness of the rebels and that they are not able to act as a proper military force.

But they have ratcheted up civilian casualties, although the military has also been accused of killing hundreds in their operations, sowing a fear that has undermined confidence in the authorities.

Casualties were also high among the 60,000 international troops, mainly from the United States, who are helping the fragile government fight the insurgents and build up its own forces.

Nearly 220 lost their lives, most of them in combat, up from about 190 last year.

However, the biggest losses among the security forces were for the Afghan police, which lost around 700 men.

In all about 6,000 people were killed -- most of them rebels and many from Pakistan, which has come under mounting international pressure to clean up its pro-Taliban areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the Taliban may have stepped up attacks to avenge the killing of leaders like military mastermind Mullah Dadullah, whose death in May was the biggest success against the insurgents.

In a visit in December, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the increase in violence was in part because security forces were going after the rebels more aggressively.

He called on Afghanistan's allies to step up their support for the NATO-led force; the alliance's chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made similar pleas throughout the year, saying in December it was 10 percent short.

President Hamid Karzai blamed "terrorist hideouts outside Afghanistan" and support in some countries for "terrorist elements and Al-Qaeda" -- a probable reference to Pakistan.

But Mohammad Akbar, a tribal chief in southern Kandahar province, where the Taliban took up arms in the early 1900s -- said the problem was the government had not reached people "living under the shadow of the Taliban."

"When the government cannot reach these communities, obviously they slide to the Taliban side," he said.

Billions of dollars in aid has entered Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban but the reconstruction effort has been hampered by insecurity with 41 humanitarian workers killed this year.

A report in November said that despite international efforts, Afghanistan was still fifth from last on a global index of human development.

US orders review of mission in Afghanistan: report

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush's administration has launched an elaborate review of the US mission in Afghanistan amid fears Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces are gaining ground, the New York Times reported.

The review comes amid a rise in attacks by Taliban insurgents this year, the bloodiest since US-led forces ousted Al-Qaeda's allies in the Taliban regime after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Reflecting an anxiety in the White House that its early success in defeating the Taliban could be unraveling, the administration plans three assessments -- one by the US military, one by diplomats in the State Department and one by the NATO alliance -- looking at the security, economic and diplomatic aspects of the Afghan mission.

"We are looking for ways to gain greater strategic coherence," an unnamed senior administration official told the Times.

Plans for US assessments come after NATO allies with troops in Afghanistan agreed Friday in Edinburgh to come up with a longterm three- to five-year plan to bring stability to the country over the next five years.

The US administration is increasingly concerned over shortfalls in the 40,000-member NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and a mounting Taliban insurgency.

The reviews will be designed to better coordinate efforts to fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, counter rising opium production and trafficking and bolster the Kabul government's position, the Times said.

The administration also favors an international coordinator or "super envoy" to oversee the entire international effort in Afghanistan, the paper said, citing US officials.

An earlier evaluation of Iraq policy led to deploying more US troops but there are no extra troops available for Afghanistan.

When contacted by AFP, spokespeople for the State Department and Pentagon could not immediately confirm the reported US reviews.

In Afghanistan, a top US commander said Sunday while more than 50 insurgent leaders have been killed or captured in the past year the rebels' fighting ability has improved.

The insurgents also clearly have outside support, including perhaps from Arab countries, in their battle against the Afghan and international security forces confronting them, Brigadier General Joseph Votel told reporters.

At the NATO meeting last week, Gates and other ministers agreed to look for other ways NATO countries can make contributions that would be politically more palatable to them but still free up other countries' troops for combat duties.

"We're going to try to look at this more creatively than we have perhaps in the past where we basically have just been hammering on people to provide more people," Gates told reporters travelling with him.

He suggested that other NATO countries could head up provincial reconstruction teams in more secure areas, guard facilities or finance the re-engineering of other countries' helicopters for use in Afghanistan.

Britain, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, Estonia and the United States all have troops with ISAF's 11,000-strong command in southern Afghanistan, where insurgent violence has increased sharply over the past year.

But NATO has so far failed to provide three infantry battalions, some 3,000 trainers and 20 transport and attack helicopters that were promised by allies.

Violence rising in northern Afghanistan

By Tahir Qadiry Updated Dec 17, 2007, 07:41 pm

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (IPS/GIN) - Militancy has spread from southern Afghanistan to the country’s northern provinces—a region that had been relatively peaceful since the Taliban regime was ousted from Kabul near the end of 2001.

Some 79 people were killed, including schoolchildren, teachers and six parliamentarians in Baghlan province on Nov. 6 in a suicide attack, the bloodiest incident in six years. An Interior Ministry committee has been dispatched by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to investigate the human bombing.

The attack occurred when parliamentarians were visiting a sugarcane factory in the industrial city of the province.

Two people, including a spiritual prayer leader, have been detained in connection with the attack.

Mohammad Jamshid, who lost a daughter in the attack, said he has lost confidence in the government’s ability to provide security. “My daughter was studying when she was brought to welcome the delegation. She was 12nyears-old. How dared they kill her?” he lamented. “The government has to give me an answer,” he said in tears.

The Afghan government immediately announced a compensation of $2,000 to the relatives of each victim. The injured would be given $100 each. The families want the government to find the people behind the attack.

Immediately after the suicide bomb, rumors flew that some of the wounded and the dead suffered bullet wounds. But that was ruled out by the head of the Baghlan hospital, who said he could not confirm such injuries.

However, supporters of Parliamentarian Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, who died in the blast, said the attack was deliberate. In a press release, they called for an international investigation into the murder of their leader and other parliamentarians and people.

Taliban insurgents, who have carried out more than 130 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, denied having a hand in the Baghlan attack, which was denounced by various groups in Afghanistan, and the international peacekeeping force.

Mohammad Alam Ishaqzai, the governor of Baghlan province, called it a suicide attack and said the government’s enemies were behind it. The governor, who was accused of wavering over ensuring adequate security for the visiting parliamentarians, said the authorities had not expected an attack on such a scale.

“Northern Baghlan has always been safe. Who knew what was to happen?” he added. The governor confirmed that the suicide bomber blew himself up just as schoolboys had lined up to greet the parliamentary delegation. But he said it was too early to announce who was behind the attack.

Gen. Abdul Jamil, chief of the Baghlan security command, accused the Taliban insurgents of the attack. “Taliban have always been behind the suicide attacks in Afghanistan. This could have been done by them,” he added, saying investigations will soon reveal the truth.

US: Afghan border attacks drop 40 pct.

By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press Sun Dec 16, 6:33 PM ET

BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A top American general said Sunday that attacks along the Afghan-Pakistan border have dropped more than 40 percent since July and the U.S. and its allies are making progress in the fight against the Taliban.

Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel said the decrease in insurgent activity along the border could be attributed to the onset of winter, a rise in insurgent attacks in Pakistan and an increase in communication and coordination among NATO, Afghan and Pakistani forces.

Recent media and analysts' reports have said the international mission is not succeeding and Afghanistan is becoming increasingly unstable. This year has been the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, with more than 6,300 people killed in the violence, mostly militants, according to an Associated Press count based on official figures.

The country has also seen a record number of suicide bomb attacks — more than 140 — this year.

But Votel, the deputy commanding general of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said Sunday that the international mission is making progress.

"I don't agree that we're moving in a negative direction," Votel told journalists at Bagram, the main U.S. base.

"I think we are making progress. This is a long-term proposition and there is a long way to go in security and development and other aspects here, but we are making progress and moving forward," he said.

Votel said that, by U.S. measurements, security has increased in 25 districts that American forces oversee in eastern Afghanistan, governance has improved in 12 and development work has improved in 27. There is a total of 159 districts in the eastern region of Afghanistan where U.S. troops primarily operate.

He said the U.S. military has killed or captured more than 50 "significant" insurgent leaders this year, action that has created a "void on the battlefield." He said despite those losses, insurgents have shown some improvements in their effectiveness.

Progress by the Afghan army, which has had an increased role in operations this year, has been the biggest achievement the U.S. helped oversee in 2007, Votel said. Asked if al-Qaida fighters could be moving from Iraq into the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, he said it was a "distinct possibility."

In a new assessment published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week, analyst Julianne Smith cautioned that the situation in Afghanistan is growing increasingly unstable, saying the country is headed in the wrong direction and that a complete overhaul of NATO strategy was needed.

The New York Times reported Sunday the Bush administration was deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, and Washington and NATO have opened three reviews of the Afghan mission.

White House press secretary Dana Perino declined to comment on the report, saying, "We are constantly reviewing the situation in Afghanistan to ensure the coalition is doing all it can to beat back the Taliban."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged during questioning by a Congressional committee last week in Washington that opinion polls of Afghans show increasing support for the radical Taliban.

Gates, who met with U.S. allies in Scotland last week, said the U.S. would "brainstorm" for ideas on how other NATO allies might contribute more troops or equipment in Afghanistan. Gates has been pressing for more helicopters, 3,500 police trainers and three battalions of ground troops.

A roadside bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan killed two Afghan civilians and wounded five others Sunday, while a clash in the south left four Taliban dead, officials said.

The explosion happened in Yaqoubi district in eastern Khost province, said Wazir Pacha, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.

Pacha accused the Taliban of carrying out the attack.

Militants often use roadside and suicide bomb attacks against Afghan and foreign troops in the country. Most victims of such attacks have been civilians.

In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, Afghan security forces clashed with Taliban militants outside the town of Musa Qala in Helmand province, killing four insurgents, the Defense Ministry said.

The clash occurred just days after an offensive by Afghan, British and American troops pushed the militants out of the town, which they had controlled for more than 10 months.

A victory, but little to cheer

Dec 17th 2007 | KABUL From Economist.com

Afghanistan's bleak north-south divide
THE confrontation probably marked the end the current fighting season. As some 5,000 NATO and Afghan soldiers last week massed around Musa Qala, a town in southern Afghanistan’s troubled Helmand province, its Taliban defenders held on for four days before their resistance melted. The local fighters then slipped away into nearby hills, making the unconvincing claim that their retreat was out of concern for the safety of the civilian population.

The recapture of a town that was previously controlled by Western troops is welcome, but it represents a limited triumph for the outsiders as winter freezes much of the country quiet. The year has seen neither the Taliban nor outside troops gain telling advantage. NATO has won all the battles and has managed to preserve the support of most Afghans: if opinion polls can be believed Afghans still support an international military presence in their country (one published by the BBC this month suggested that 71% of Afghans want American forces to stay). Yet overall levels of Taliban violence continue to rise across southern and eastern Afghanistan. Worse, they have spread significantly into the border areas of Pakistan.

Across southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban effort is focused, the upward trend of violence coincides with continuing weakness and problems of legitimacy for the government. In practice this means the uneven development of Afghanistan’s own security forces, startlingly high levels of narcotics production and corruption (the latter fuelled by the drugs industry), and a general malaise in the legitimate economy in the region.

Elsewhere matters are more complex. In the north, and in some provinces along the eastern border patrolled by the Americans, security has improved. The northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif is enjoying an economic boom. The warlords who once dominated the north are now somewhat diminished figures, and many have turned away from brute force to profit instead from business or politics (albeit of a dubious hue). And in the north opium cultivation is also down, although many farmers have simply planted cannabis instead of poppy.

But the rough division between north and south looks more stark now. The south continues to move steadily in the wrong direction. Instability has spread to a number of previously benign provinces. Some countries, especially in Europe, which are contributing to NATO’s forces are unenthusiastic about the shooting war they find themselves involved in. After a summer of repeatedly retaking the same two districts of Kandahar province, Canadian commander Brigadier-General Guy Laroche commented: “Everything we have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close to it”.

There are signs, too, that as the insurgency meshes itself tightly with the drugs trade, a sizeable proportion of the population may feel it has a vested interest in prolonged insecurity which allows narcotics production to flourish.

The winter is at least a moment to pause and reflect on strategy for next year. At Musa Qala NATO and Afghan forces easily defeated the Taliban but, as diplomats in Kabul, the capital, concede, a far greater challenge is then defending against reinfiltration. Securing territory means getting the support of local people. In Helmand, for example, this requires teams of anthropologists and political officers to deal with a mosaic of tribal interest groups, an approach used American forces elsewhere in the country. That means a greater emphasis on reconciliation and negotiation with local Taliban leaders, as well as training Afghan forces so they are able to take the lead in military operations.

Politically the challenges are no easier. The Afghan public, particularly in the south, is gloomy about the future. Dismay over corruption and wrangling between different ethnic groups suggest that Afghan leaders, such as president Hamid Karzai, will need substantial support from outsiders for a long time yet. America is backing the idea of sending a “super envoy” to co-ordinate international efforts in Afghanistan. But the government remains unable even to reach out across areas of the south. Where it cannot reach there may need to be more controversial, local, “tribal solutions”, such as village militias to provide local security and efforts to empower tribal elders and local systems of justice.

Australian defense chief warns allies over Afghanistan war
Mon December 17, 2007

(CNN) -- Australia's new defense minister warned U.S. and NATO allies over the weekend that they risk losing the war in Afghanistan without a sharp shift in military and reconstruction efforts there, according to his office.
Joel Fitzgibbon, who took office with the newly elected government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, told the allies during a weekend conference in Scotland that more work needs to be done to win the "hearts and minds" of the people of Afghanistan in the 6-year-old war against the country's former Taliban rulers and their al Qaeda allies.

While the U.S.-led coalition has been "stomping on lots of ants, we have not been dealing with the ants' nest," Fitzgibbon said.

The defense minister's comments were first reported in The Australian newspaper and confirmed by his office in Canberra. Fitzgibbon told his fellow defense ministers -- including U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- that "We need much more than a military response" to a rise in attacks by the Taliban.

"We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view," Fitzgibbon told the newspaper. "We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban, but it's having no real strategic effect." Video Watch images from the scene of an attack on Kabul police headquarters »

Rudd's government has pledged to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq -- an effort his predecessor, John Howard, had staunchly supported -- but Rudd has said he will keep Australia's commitment to Afghanistan. The country is the largest non-NATO contributor to the war in Afghanistan, with nearly 1,000 troops stationed mostly in the southern province of Oruzgan.

Fitzgibbon said the coalition needs more political advisers, more training for the Afghan police and army and a senior envoy to coordinate the reconstruction effort, a proposal Gates has endorsed as well.

Fitzgibbon's comments echo those of a leading candidate for the coordinator's job, British diplomat Paddy Ashdown. Ashdown, the former U.N. high representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, told a British newspaper in October that the allies were at risk of losing Afghanistan.

Gates used the weekend conference in Edinburgh to push for greater contributions of troops and helicopters from NATO allies. And amid rising U.S. concerns about lagging progress in the war, launched after the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, the top U.S. commander in the region has launched a review of the American mission, a senior U.S. military official said Sunday.
The study is focused on efforts by U.S. troops along Afghanistan's rugged border with Pakistan, the official said. U.S. intelligence concluded early this year that al Qaeda has carved out a new safe haven since the overthrow of its Taliban hosts in 2001.

While the U.S. military feels it maintains a battlefield advantage over the Taliban, the senior military official told CNN that "there are far too many bombings and far too many IEDs." He said the Taliban has become more diverse, with religious ideologues joined by local fighters hired for pay, warlords, drug bosses and those simply fighting over local disputes.

Afghanistan mission won't end soon: NATO

Updated Fri. Dec. 14 2007 8:10 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff

NATO members with troops fighting in southern Afghanistan concluded a conference Friday with the announcement that more needs to be done if that country is ever to be made secure.

Representatives from eight countries with troops fighting in Afghanistan wrapped up two-day talks in Scotland where they sought to strengthen NATO's role in stabilizing Afghanistan.

Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay said that NATO troops are protecting the Canadian values of democracy, the rule of law and protection of human rights.

MacKay was joined at the conference by Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier and met with representatives from Britain, the United States, Netherlands, Australia, Denmark, Romania and Estonia.

NATO's presence in Afghanistan is now into its sixth year and has proved more difficult than most countries expected.

The mission length has been stretched by a weak central government in Kabul and a seemingly endless insurgency.

The latest U.S. estimate is that insurgent attacks have risen by a quarter in the past year.

In the particularly violent south, where Canadian soldiers are based, attacks are up 60 per cent.

But Dr. Abdullah, the former foreign minister of Afghanistan who only uses one name, said the NATO presence has made a difference in the country.

"There has been improvement because of the contributions Canada has made and the international community has made on a whole," he told CTV Newsnet Friday.

NATO's Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan will not end soon.

"Afghanistan is not a commitment that you enter into for two or three years," he said from Japan. "Developing that nation will take a generation, or generations."

At the conference, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested a three- to five-year plan that includes more troops, 3,500 more staff to help train the Afghan military and more economic assistance.

"The long-term commitment is something that is needed in Afghanistan because of the security instability in that country," Abdullah said on Friday.

But Afghans expect the country to be independent sooner, rather than later.

The problem is that the alliance is having trouble getting member nations to commit - even for the short-term.

The reluctance of NATO members to send troops to Afghanistan has also caused a host of problems for countries signed on for the task.

At the conference, British Defence Secretary Des Browne called Canada's support an extraordinary contribution in Afghanistan.

MacKay has made a number of calls for other NATO countries to lend troops or other forms of support, particularly in the southern part of the country.

Canada's military commitment ends in early 2009. But there have not been any volunteers to take their spot in Afghanistan.

The Dutch Defence Minister, Eimert van Middelkoop, openly asked Canada not to pull its troops from southern Afghanistan.

Gates told reporters that the countries attending the conference were not asked to contribute more, since they already are bearing the brunt of the military load.

There are nearly 2,500 Canadian troops serving in Afghanistan. There are also about 26,000 U.S. troops and 7,800 British troops.

With a report from CTV's Tom Kennedy

Dutch government announces redevelopment aid for Afghanistan

The Associated Press Monday, December 17, 2007

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The Dutch government announced Monday it has awarded a €34 million (US$49 million) contract to a German development organization to rebuild roads and help farmers in a southern Afghan province after years of conflict and neglect.

Overseas Development Minister Bert Koenders said the three-year contract for German group Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit, or GTZ, would fund construction of a road between two key towns in Uruzgan province, Tirin Kot and Chora, and allow the group to help farmers find new markets for their goods.

GTZ, based in Eschborn near Frankfurt am Main, also will use the money to help set up small businesses and support local government.

The announcement came as lawmakers in the Dutch parliament prepared to debate the government's decision to extend its military mission with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan by two years until 2010. The coalition government is guaranteed of a majority of the country's 120 lawmakers supporting the deployment.

However, critics of the mission have said that the 1,650 Dutch troops in the southern province of Uruzgan are spending too much time fighting Taliban insurgents in the region and not enough restoring shattered infrastructure like roads and schools.

A dozen Dutch troops have died since their mission began in Afghanistan last year.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, ISAF discuss ways to counter explosive threat
2007-12-17 21:46:55 Editor: Du Guodong

ISLAMABAD, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Experts on the Improvised Explosives Devices (IED) from Pakistan, Afghanistan and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) met in Pakistan Monday and reviewed measures to counter the IED threat, the Pakistani army said.

A statement from the army's Inter-Services Public Relations said that the civil population as well as security forces on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border were faced with the IED threat.

The delegates at the 13th Counter IED Working Group meeting attended by the Afghan National Army (ANA), ISAF and Pakistan Armyand had a day-long discussion at the General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, a city some 30 kms south from Islamabad.

At the end of the meeting, participants expressed their satisfaction over the progress made so far since the establishment of the working group as a sub-committee of the tripartite commission, it said.

The working group resolved to take forward the good work already done through more intimate cooperation in the field of fight on IED, the statement said.

Brigadier General Mohammad Salim, Director General Disaster Response of the ANA, led the Afghan delegation while Brigadier Pevil Matsko of the Slovakian Army headed the ISAF delegation. Brigadier Farooq Murrawat led the Pakistan side.

Family grieve after death in Afghanistan

5:00AM Monday December 17, 2007

A New Zealand father of three killed in a road crash while working for a British security firm in Afghanistan was a loving, caring man, his family say.

Kelly Clark, 51, a former soldier, died when the truck he was a passenger in hit a patch of ice and crashed on December 9.

Mr Clark was born and raised in Te Puke but lived in Wanganui with his wife, Alaina, the Bay of Plenty Times reported.

He was married in 1989 and the couple have three children - Sunny, 18, Sarah, 11, and Kelly, 10.

His body is being flown back from Afghanistan and is expected to arrive at the family marae on Manoeka Rd, Te Puke, early this week.

Mr Clark's mother, Hiki Clark, 72, of Te Puke, said he was the fourth of her 12 children.

His older brother Marshall encouraged him to join the Army in July 1977. He served for 21 years in the 1st Battalion and 2nd/1st Battalion of the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment before retiring in June 1998 as a warrant officer 2nd class (company sergeant major).

Younger sister Judy Clark described her lost sibling as a "loving, caring brother" who got on with everybody. "He never forgot his mates," she said. "Kelly will be sadly missed by all those who knew him."

Mr Clark had been based in Afghanistan for just over two years, returning home every eight weeks to spend two weeks in New Zealand with family and friends.

- NZPA

'The Kite Runner' entailed risks

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- "The Kite Runner" filmmakers strove for authenticity when they shot the adaptation of the best-selling novel, featuring a largely unknown cast of actors and having some dialogue in Dari (an Afghan language).

But they stumbled into an international controversy when the child actors said they feared being harmed by Afghans offended by a rape scene.

The film's theatrical debut was delayed six weeks to allow four boys to get out of Kabul, underscoring the political and financial risks filmmakers take when they make movies in conflict zones.

"The Kite Runner," based on the 2003 novel by Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini, is about two boys whose friendship in 1970s Kabul is torn by betrayal and ethnic rivalry. The film spans three decades -- from before the Soviet invasion to the rise of the Taliban -- and tells the plight of Afghan refugees as well as those who stayed in the country as it was ravaged by civil war.

But the turning point -- when the main character Amir does nothing to stop the rape of his friend Hassan -- took center stage after the film wrapped. VideoWatch a clip of the film »

Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada, who plays the role of young Hassan, told reporters that he feared he and his family could be ostracized or even attacked because of the scene. The boy, now 13, said he was reluctant to do the scene.

The film's producers, Bennett Walsh and Rebecca Yeldham, have said the child actors and their families told them they were comfortable with it.

Hosseini said the children were cast during a more stable time in Afghanistan, and he believed their concern arose as violence escalated in the last year.

"When the children were cast, if I thought that they might be victims of violence because of participating in this movie, we would have chosen children from outside this country," Hosseini said in a recent interview.

The author first returned to his native country in 2003, and felt safer then than he did two months ago, when he made a second trip as a goodwill envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "Now, especially in public places, you always have that unease," Hosseini said.

Paramount Classics, the studio distributing "The Kite Runner," sought the help of regional experts and dispatched a consultant to the area, as it kept an eye on the political situation in Afghanistan.

It decided to delay the film's release so that Ahmad Khan and three other child actors could be moved to the United Arab Emirates as a precaution.

A consultant for a company that provides risk and insurance services to entertainment companies said such measures could be "extremely costly" for the studio.

"If a production does not absolutely have to film in or near a conflicted area, it's strongly suggested that they do not," said John Hamby, a managing director of Marsh Inc.

The risks include the security of the cast and crew, the possibility that local officials or critics could confiscate equipment or film, or worse shut down production if they don't agree with the film's content, Hamby said.

Sylvester Stallone said in an October interview that he and his movie crew came under fire and were in jeopardy while filming "John Rambo" along the Thailand-Myanmar border this year. Shots were fired over the heads of crew members and they had to travel by boat because trails were heavily mined.

"The Kite Runner" was mostly shot in Kashgar, China, near the Afghanistan border because its landscape and architecture resembles Kabul in the 1970s. Hosseini said that when he visited the film set, he was struck by the similarities with the Kabul of his youth.

He said the movie is faithful to his novel.

"Art is supposed to reflect the reality of the world and I try to write these books as truthfully as I could," Hosseini said.

He added that he saw the movie as an opportunity for Afghans to tell their stories, and that it would have been "disingenuous" to have non-Afghans to play certain roles.

"Just seeing the way the audience connect with these children and falling in love with them -- it's very powerful," he said.

From Bosnia to Afghanistan?

Daniel Korski December 17, 2007 3:30 PM

Amid rumours that Paddy Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, will take up a role as the international community's "super envoy" in Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has set out a new UK Afghan strategy.

By many standards, Afghanistan's recent history is a story of progress. A progressive constitution has been adopted, elections have been held, and non-opium GDP grew at 8% in 2006. But the country is still at risk. Insurgents remain a threat, with violence reaching even the capital, Kabul. Reconstruction is uneven, the opium economy is growing and corruption is undermining the government. Rather than act, the president and parliament are locked in battle. Clearly, outright success is no longer possible. But it is still possible for Afghanistan to become a relatively stable, poor but developing, conservative Islamic democracy. So what should be done?

As in Bosnia, the international community needs to reconfigure itself, accept one person's leadership and focus on a small set of priorities. Before anyone says it, allow me: Bosnia is different from Afghanistan. Lessons cannot be directly transferred. Perhaps most important, Afghanistan is a sovereign country.

All true. But there are important lessons from the time Ashdown sat in Sarajevo and ran the office of the high representative (OHR). As in Bosnia, a new plan is needed. By 2002 in Bosnia, Nato, the EU and OHR were working to different plans. The same is the case in Afghanistan. Both Nato and the UN have begun separate efforts to develop new plans, the UN's due in spring and Nato's at the Bucharest summit in April 2008.

These processes need to be folded into a cross-alliance effort to develop a detailed, prioritised civil-military plan, like the OHR's mission implementation plan (MIP).

As with Bosnia, there is increasing focus on elections. Hamid Karzai is looking for re-election. Everyone else is looking to move away from the "monarchial presidentialism" of his administration to a parliamentary system with some form of proportional representation. Many also those think that elections will become an "exit strategy".

No doubt political reforms are needed. Elections have to be held. But beside the logistical problems, elections will not provide a solution to the country's problems. Again, the experience in Bosnia is instructive. Here elections were precisely the wrong indicator on which to base exit strategies.

What does this mean? First, that priority must be given to life-improving reforms, including focusing on local security, justice, governance, and jobs.

Second, a new plan needs to be overseen by a unified leadership, much like the post of high representative in Bosnia.

This should come in the shape of a "super UN envoy", who can represent the UN, EU and Nato. When, in Bosnia, one person represented the UN and EU it became easier to align the international community's policies.

Third, this envoy needs a localised UN security council-style committee of the main donors and military contributors. In Bosnia, this was done by a steering board. It was only seven nations large, but provided for a manageable decision making body. The existing structures in Kabul are cumbersome. A steering board-style body is needed.

Finally, a key to success in Bosnia was Euro-Atlantic unity. Because of this, there was a willingness by Europeans to deploy troops and ramp up aid. The contrast with Afghanistan is sharp where military commanders have pleaded for more troops.

Like in Bosnia, to achieve success, a new Euro-Atlantic consensus is required on what the mission is seeking to achieve and the means for doing so.

The deal is simple: Europe should boost troop numbers and remove many of the caveats that hamper Nato operations. They should make up the shortfall in training teams for the Afghan army from the 23 to 60. But, in exchange, the US needs to recast its counter-insurgency strategy, putting the population's security first and minimising civilian casualties.

Whether Paddy Ashdown ends up leading the Afghan mission or not, there are lessons learned from his time in Bosnia that could be adapted for Afghanistan.

Germany Faces Taliban Pincer in Afghanistan
December 17, 2007 By Alexander Szandar and Susanne Koelbl

The mission in Afghanistan is becoming more and more dangerous for members of Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr. As large numbers of Taliban fighters move northward, NATO officials expect the situation to become increasingly precarious.

The guest from Afghanistan charmed his German audience with his measured words and soft voice. Asadullah Khalid, the 37-year-old governor of Kandahar Province in southern Afghanistan, praised the Germans for helping develop Afghanistan shortly after the end of British colonial rule in 1919. Six years ago, after the fall of the Taliban regime, the "traditional friendship" became "even deeper," Khalid, clearly in an attempt to flatter the Germans. "Your soldiers are now fighting for freedom and democracy in Afghanistan," he said.

But the praise Khalid was heaping on Germany last Wednesday in speeches to foreign policy experts in the German parliament, the Bundestag, at the Foreign Office and to journalists in Berlin was merely a polite introduction to a series of concrete requests. The Taliban are "not as strong as they were last year" in their former stronghold of Kandahar, the governor said. But, he added, "coping with" the enemy will require more civilian reconstruction helpers, additional ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) troops and "especially more German troops."

Khalid's requests had been orchestrated elsewhere. The US government arranged his trip, which also took him to the NATO headquarters in Brussels, and US diplomats accompanied him every step of the way. Meanwhile in Washington, almost concurrently with the Afghan's visit to Berlin, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates fired a broadside against his country's European allies. According to Gates, the Europeans' contributions, in terms of troops and materiel, to the war against the Taliban and terrorists are "inadequate." "I am not ready to let NATO off the hook in Afghanistan at this point," he added.

Washington has long criticized the Bundeswehr for remaining in the relatively calm north, while the United States and allies like Great Britain, Canada and the Netherlands face high casualties in the more volatile south. New British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called several times for a fair "distribution of the burden," a reference to both troop strength (London, with close to 7,800 troops, has the second-largest contingent in Afghanistan next to the United States) and casualties. The British have lost 42 soldiers in fighting and attacks in Afghanistan this year alone. Meanwhile the Germans, who, with their roughly 3,200 troops, have the third-largest contingent in the country, have lost only 3 soldiers in 2007.
Could German soldiers soon find themselves fighting in the embattled south and east of the country, in explosive provinces like Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand? So far the government in Berlin has successfully managed to avoid sending the Bundeswehr on combat missions in the Taliban's strongholds.

"We are concentrating on the north, and that's how we plan to keep it," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a brief visit to Kabul in November. Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, a member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has also stood his ground when confronted with the demands of Germany's allies and Khalid's recent requests. "The question as to whether we will have to expand our Bundeswehr contingent is not an issue at this time," Jung said.

But it could become an issue sooner than the minister would like. Allies like the Czech Republic, Denmark and Norway are withdrawing their units from northern Afghanistan. Because the troops, close to 400 in number, are unlikely to be replaced anytime soon, the Bundeswehr's troops will have to shoulder their responsibilities themselves.

According to senior military officials in Berlin, the maximum troop strength of 3,500 soldiers approved by the Bundestag is already "pushing the limits" and is in fact too low.

To make matters worse, the Taliban is upping the pressure on northern Afghanistan. The group's Islamist holy warriors have begun to march northward and are already practically at the Bundeswehr's doorstep.

Western intelligence agents have noticed that the Taliban is advancing in two directions in a pincer movement. Some Taliban groups are moving north from Helmand Province, Afghanistan's center of opium poppy cultivation, toward the capital Kabul. Other Taliban units are moving away from Helmand and Kandahar and sweeping up westwards through provinces like Herat and Badghis, and toward Kunduz, where the Bundeswehr maintains a reconstruction team of 400 troops. The Germans, as it turns out, are being wedged in on both sides.

Taliban Repeats its 1990s Strategy

The Taliban's strategy reminds military officials of the early 1990s. That was when the Taliban movement began in southern Afghanistan, almost exclusively home to ethnic Pashtuns. The group's army of religious warriors began its campaign in Kandahar in 1994. Three years later it was positioned just outside Mazar-i-Sharif, where, at Camp Marmal, the Germans now maintain their central command headquarters for nine provinces.

Mazar-i-Sharif is the main city in the north. It is home to Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and Turkmen, all traditional enemies of the Taliban. But Pashtuns have also settled in Kunduz Province, enabling the Taliban to gain a foothold there in the 1990s. In the interplay of relations among Afghans, clan membership has traditionally been the strongest binding force.

In 1997, with the support of Kunduz's Pashtuns, the Taliban launched a successful attack on Mazar-i-Sharif. They captured the city's downtown, lost it again for a brief period, but then eventually took the city and held it until the Americans and their Afghan allies arrived in November 2001.

It appears that the Taliban now plan to repeat their 1990s strategy. In October, close to 300 fighters gathered in the border region in Faryab and Badghis provinces, both on the western edge of the German zone. They overran police stations, occupied several districts and blocked the "Ring Road," the country's main road connecting Kabul with other cities. They received support from Pashtun settlers and poor refugees from the civil war who had returned from Pakistan and Iran.

The counteroffensive began in late October. Under the command of German General Dieter Warnecke, roughly 900 Afghan soldiers, accompanied by about 300 Germans and a rapid intervention force of more than 200 Norwegians, set out into Badghis Province.
For the first time since they joined the mission in Afghanistan, the Germans, in an operation known as "Harekate Yolo-2," requested air support from allied fighter jets. More than a dozen Taliban fighters were killed in the bombing attacks, while Afghan forces took many others prisoner. But most of the Taliban fighters managed to escape into the countryside.

The intelligence agencies believe that the Taliban plans to recapture its old base at Kunduz, using tactics that would presumably resemble its strategy in the south. It promises poor farmers money and protection for their poppy fields, intimidates the local population with brutal attacks on supposed ISAF collaborators and attempts to weaken the NATO forces with attacks and force them to retreat to their fortified military bases.

The suicide attack on a German patrol in the market at Kunduz on May 19, 2007 may have represented the first step in a strategy meant to destabilize the region, which had been relatively quiet until then. Three German soldiers and five Afghans were killed in the attack.

The Taliban has since ramped up its attacks, routinely shooting at Bundeswehr vehicles and firing rockets and rocket-propelled grenades into camps and threatening German soldiers with booby traps and mines. Reconnaissance photos reveal that the Taliban fighters have no qualms about disguising themselves and their weapons under burkas, the traditional women's clothing.

Part 2: NATO Considers Worst-Case Scenarios

The tension in Afghanistan could become even worse if the situation in neighboring Pakistan, the hub for ISAF's logistics operations, spins out of control. In the wake of the confusion Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf triggered by imposing a state of emergency, senior NATO military leaders now fear that the country could very well descend into total chaos after the elections scheduled for January. If US ally Musharraf does not manage to retain his hold on power, the already half-hearted efforts by the Pakistani military leadership, permeated with Islamists, to stem Taliban and al-Qaida activities in the Pashtun tribal regions could fail completely.
NATO military leaders are already considering a number of worst-case scenarios. According to one model, if the ISAF's adversaries in Pakistan are given free rein, the NATO Response Force (NRF), which will include about 5,700 German troops beginning in January, could be brought in as reinforcements. The military officials are also examining the extreme worst-case scenario -- purely as a theory and only in the form of a computer simulation -- the withdrawal of ISAF forces that have been cut off from supplies.

Nevertheless, these strategy games are merely a secondary pursuit for a handful of selected officers, instructed to maintain absolute secrecy, in Kabul, at NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Headquarters in Brunssum, the Netherlands, and at NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium. The overwhelming majority of the organization's senior military personnel are involved in the ongoing operations against the Taliban.

But the allies seriously disagree over what should come next after the winter offensive.

NATO must finally "define the goals of its commitment precisely," German Defense Minister Jung wrote in a classified document he presented to his counterparts at a meeting in the Dutch town of Noordwijk in October. According to Jung, NATO needs a "plan of campaigns" for the next few years and clear "criteria to define and measure success and failure." Besides, he added, "closer coordination" with civilian aid organizations, as well as with the United Nations, the European Union and the Afghan government in Kabul is needed to advance the approach of "networked security" with civilian-military reconstruction teams.

But the allies chose to ignore Jung's suggestions. Instead, the NATO Council reverted to its usual method of addressing differences of opinion and assembled a project group.

But US Defense Secretary Gates, on behalf of the United States, the dominant NATO power, has already determined where the organization should be headed. In a hearing before the US House Armed Services Committee, Gates said that the alliance's focus in the coming years should be "to counter terrorist networks and triumph over insurgencies." To defeat the Taliban, Gates said, the US's European allies will need to provide more troops, helicopters and other weaponry.

Public Mood Is Shifting

But the allies are not exactly inclined to heed Gates's words. Only a few small nations like Croatia, Albania and Georgia offered significant numbers of troops, hoping this would improve their chances of swift admittance to NATO.

In many other countries, however, a heated public debate has erupted over how long the alliance's troops should continue to support a country in which drug production continues to reach new record highs and corruption has eaten its way into the highest levels of government.

In Germany, at any rate, the mood has already shifted. According to recent opinion polls, half of all Germans no longer support the country's Afghanistan mission and favor withdrawing the Bundeswehr from the country.

Public opinion is similar in Canada, which has more than 1,700 troops fighting in southern Afghanistan and has already lost 29 soldiers this year. According to an official who Peter Struck, the floor leader of Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), recently sent to Canada to sound out the political mood there, the government in Ottawa is coming under increasing pressure. According to the official, if the current opposition wins next year's election, its first move will be to "announce the withdrawal of troops."

The Dutch have already taken that step. After losing eight soldiers in Afghanistan this year, the cabinet ended a series of heated debates with a clear resolution. The government in The Hague announced that it had reached an irrevocable decision to begin withdrawing its troops, stationed primarily in war-torn Uruzgan Province, in August 2010. Under the resolution, the last of the Dutch soldiers will be home by Christmas 2010.

The Dutch decision may have set a precedent, raising concerns among NATO military leaders over a possible domino effect. If only one major NATO country yields to domestic pressure and decides to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, it could set off an avalanche, a Norwegian general recently told Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the inspector general of the Bundeswehr. "It would be a strategic defeat for the alliance."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Pakistani insurgents join forces on Afghan border

SAEED SHAH Special to The Globe and Mail December 17, 2007
Unity deal bodes ill for Canadian troops

ISLAMABAD -- Militant groups in Pakistan's wild northwest region have come together in a single organization for the first time, threatening to step up operations against the Pakistan army and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The insurgents have named Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal chief from the Waziristan area, which borders Afghanistan, as their chief, or Emir.

Mr. Mehsud, a charismatic figure in his early 30s with a fearsome reputation, took more than 200 Pakistani soldiers prisoner this year. They were only let go after authorities agreed to release some Taliban prisoners. He is also blamed for organizing a series of suicide-bomb attacks.

The Tehrik Taliban-i-Pakistan was launched after a meeting of 40 Taliban leaders in Waziristan. They came not only from the semi-autonomous tribal belt, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Area, which runs along the Afghan border, but from several "settled" areas of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, including Swat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan.
"The sole objective of the meeting was to unite the Taliban against NATO forces in Afghanistan and to wage a defensive jihad against Pakistani forces here," said Mr. Mehsud's spokesman, Maulvi Omar.

The news is especially troubling for Canadian troops, who are fighting nearby in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.

Pakistani troops have only just managed to expel a band of around 5,000 Taliban warriors who had taken over the valley of Swat, previously known as a holiday destination.

Khalid Aziz, a political consultant based in Peshawar, said that, like the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s, the Pakistani militants were coming together to further their political goals.

"This is a dual-track strategy: They will use force and also negotiate," Mr. Aziz said. "It is like an armed political party."

He said the timing of the Pakistani Taliban's unity move appeared to be linked to the upcoming general election. Pakistan has previously held talks with the militants and come to short-lived peace agreements.

"What we are getting here is the beginning of a separate mini-state which will be run by a FATA warlord but which will take orders from al-Qaeda," Pakistan's Daily Times newspaper said in an editorial published yesterday. "The sooner we tackle this menace the better."

The Taliban was originally a Pakistan-backed militia that came up in Afghanistan under Mullah Mohammed Omar. It became powerful enough to seize political power in 1996. It always had strong ethnic and cultural ties to tribesmen in northwest Pakistan, but the FATA's fiercely independent people were always left alone to run their own affairs by the Pakistani state.

After Sept. 11, 2001, when the U.S.-led coalition went to war in Afghanistan, many Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters took refuge across the border in the FATA. The Pakistani tribes turned against the state when, under intense U.S. pressure, Pakistan first turned its back on the Taliban and then sent its army into the tribal belt to fight the extremists there. That has resulted in the development of an indigenous Pakistani version of the Taliban, with close ties to al-Qaeda. However, the various Pakistani tribal militants had only informal links until now.

Mehmood Shah, a former senior civil servant in charge of the FATA, said that the tribes had different traditions and historically always found it difficult to come together, often fighting each other. He said that the Pakistani state must sow discord to ensure that disunity remained - the old colonial game of divide and rule.

"The government must do its job well now," Mr. Shah said..

Like Mullah Omar, there are almost no photographs of the media-shy Baitullah Mehsud. He runs his own private army, with thousands of warriors, which enforces strict Islamic law in Waziristan. Pakistan has virtually ceded control of Waziristan to the Taliban. Some fear that Taliban control could spread to other parts of the tribal belt and then on to the settled areas of the northwest, resulting in a break-away state run by extremists.

AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian space must be regained – UNAMA

KABUL, 17 December 2007 (IRIN) - UN agencies and international humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan face “much tighter security restrictions” than before while the needs of Afghan people have “risen”, a senior UN official in Kabul said on 17 December.

“This is the inevitable consequence of a worsening security situation,” Charlie Heggins, an official with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told reporters in Kabul.

Increasingly affected by insurgency-related violence and insecurity, Afghanistan’s “squeezing humanitarian space” has experienced over 130 “serious security incidents” involving humanitarian actors in which at least 15 aid workers (11 Afghans and four internationals) have lost their lives over the past year, said Heggins, who heads UNAMA’s humanitarian unit.

Security restrictions have impeded UN agencies’ access to more than 77 districts in the southern, eastern and southeastern parts of the country since the beginning of 2007.

Humanitarian access restrictions have also adversely affected the living conditions of millions of vulnerable Afghans who are in need of assistance, UNAMA said.

To overcome the growing challenge of shrinking humanitarian space, aid agencies should uphold and re-demonstrate the principles of neutrality and impartiality, Heggins said.

All sides to the conflict must also ensure a “free space” for independent humanitarian action, Heggins said, adding: “We need to regain the space that humanitarian action needs, in order for agencies to deliver fundamental life-saving services to the population”.

Successful pre-positioning of aid

Despite movement restrictions, UN agencies have been successful in pre-positioning food and non-food relief items across 17 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, UNAMA said.

UN officials said that of the planned 22,000-plus metric tonnes (mt) of mixed food aid and non-food items for high elevation areas, where heavy snow and rainfall block roads during winter, up to 90 percent of the aid had already been delivered and stocked in different locations across the country.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on 25 November resumed deliveries through a dangerous intersection in southern Afghanistan, and despatched 254 mt of food aid to Herat Province, western Afghanistan.

In June 2007 WFP had been forced to suspend deliveries in the area following increased attacks on its food convoys. Unidentified gunmen torched a truck hired by WFP and looted its 15,000 mt of fortified biscuits in the second week of December, UNAMA confirmed.

According to UNAMA, over four million needy Afghans have received humanitarian relief - mostly food aid, in 2007.

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Afghan province shows promise despite bombings, attacks elsewhere
Published on Monday, December 17, 2007

The Associated Press KHOST, Afghanistan

Lt. Col. Scottie Custer is an 82nd Airborne Division artillery officer in a place where the big guns he's trained to use are worthless.

Navy Cmdr. David Adams is a former submarine driver leading a team of Fort Bragg-trained sailors in a landlocked country.

And Arsala Jamal _ a man schooled in accounting who once kept the books for the University of Nebraska's education center in Pakistan _ is the appointed governor of a war-torn province in Afghanistan.

These three are the authors of a seemingly unlikely success story. A story producing something rare in Afghanistan _ hope.

Khost Province is one of the few bright spots in a country increasingly plagued by suicide bombings, insurgent attacks, lagging redevelopment and a lack of faith in the Afghan government's ability to lead.

Conventional wisdom says that if something is working in Afghanistan, it shouldn't be here. A case could be made that the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq have roots in Khost Province: This is one of the places where the hijackers who crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon trained.

As recently as two years ago, the province's main city _ Khost _ was a dreary place with crumbling Soviet-era concrete office buildings, garbage-strewn streets and only a few paved roads. The smell of raw sewage hung in the air.

Last year, Khost was plagued by suicide bombers and attacks by insurgents. Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters were constantly in the province, slipping easily in and out of neighboring Pakistan.

These days, the signs of a community coming back to life are impossible to miss.

The market at the center of Khost city is clogged with shoppers and carts bringing goods to the stalls that line the road. Teenagers with motorized rickshas wait for fares on the outskirts of the shopping district.

Towering over everything is a brand new purple building with glass windows from floor to ceiling.

But even as the people of Khost take the first steps away from war and poverty, a question hangs over the region: How long can it last?

Khost is a pocket of success surrounded by provinces still wracked by violence, a booming drug economy and other problems.

"Khost will be affected by the larger insecurity, opium production and corruption," said Caroline Wadhams, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a think tank. "If you don't deal with the larger problems, Khost is doomed in the long term."

Khost's success is also the result of the collaboration of three men, two of them Americans who will leave next year.

The roots of the turnaround were planted a year ago over servings of homemade lasagna.

Adams and Custer met for dinner at Custer's house on Fort Bragg. It was their first chance to get to know one another before they took up commands in the volatile province on the Pakistan border.

Security of the province would fall to Custer _ a dead ringer for Robert Duvall's character in "Apocalypse Now." A workaholic, Custer is often up firing e-mails to his staff at 2 a.m. He seems made of equal parts enthusiasm and confidence, fueled by the diet Coke or a cup of coffee always in one fist. Anyone not in agreement with him is a "whacker."

Adams, a former speech-writer for the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington, would head up reconstruction. He's the quieter partner, with the measured speech of a college professor.

Adams volunteered to take over the Provisional Reconstruction Team in Khost. He had tracked terrorists in the province in the 1990s on board submarines _ at one point almost shooting Tomahawk missiles at a training camp where Osama bin Laden was thought to be hiding _ and continued to follow developments there even after he left the fleet.

Both men agreed that stopping the violence depended on getting soldiers out where the people would see them and the insurgents would fear them. To put their plan in place, they knew they needed a man with whom they could work.

They had yet to meet Jamal.

About the time that Custer and Adams were meeting over dinner, Jamal was in Kabul working for the United Nations as a project manager.

When he mentioned to friends in the central government that he would like to serve, he got a call from Afghan President Hamid Karzai: Would he take the governor's job in Khost?

Jamal is a native of Paktika, a neighboring province. He knew how bad conditions were in Khost, and he didn't really want the job. But, against his better judgment, he took it.

A month after he assumed power last year, Khost city was hit by 13 suicide bombers.

Custer arrived in Afghanistan in February.

As one of his first moves, he worked with Jamal to have Afghan forces _ the national police and army _ take over security for Khost city. A key to that was the construction of checkpoints on roads leading into the city. Those checkpoints, manned by the Afghan forces, were a safeguard against insurgents bringing in guns and bombs.

Turning those duties over to the Afghans left his paratroopers _ about 130 of them _ to cover the province's 11 subdistricts.

It was in deciding how to use his men that Custer really got creative.

Custer injured his neck on a jump at Fort Bragg years ago and knew that he couldn't make the bone-jarring rides over the rocky paths out to the districts on a regular basis. Plus, convoys to some of the outlying districts can take several hours _ too long for troops based at Forward Operating Salerno outside Khost city to react effectively to Taliban insurgents.

Custer's solution? He moved his men out into the subdistricts.

At first, the soldiers spent only a few nights in the subdistricts at a time, then returned to Salerno for supplies and rest. One day on the treadmill in the gym _ Custer runs six miles a day _ he decided to kick his troops off the big American base and force them to live out in the province.

Soldiers grumbled. The shift meant they were in spartan conditions, away from the hot showers and hot food of Salerno.

But Custer sees success in the strategy. Standing in front of a new district center in Sabari this fall, he got a big smile and a fist pump from the sub-governor, Luftallah.

"They know the people by name now," he said. "They know the towns."

Luftallah said through an interpreter that since the paratroopers had moved into the district, the Taliban had moved out.

Numbers bear that out. Insurgent attacks and roadside bombs are down significantly compared with February, when the paratroopers arrived.

With the Taliban staying out, aid money has poured in. Adams says the improved security makes it easier for him to lobby for funding of reconstruction projects.

His job has been to put that money to work. It's a role he believes is an important piece of winning in Afghanistan.

"There are two paths for Afghanistan," he says. "Roads and schools, or war and destruction."

It is not unusual in either Iraq or Afghanistan to see local leaders deferring to U.S. military officers when it comes to making decisions. But in the weekly security meetings in Khost, Jamal is clearly in charge.

At one gathering in the fall, Jamal sat at the head of the table. He kept the meeting on track, and all decisions came from him. At one point, Custer forcefully made the case that the Afghan National Police should provide men for an upcoming mission. But it didn't happen until Jamal approved it.

"We all work for the governor," Custer says, almost like a mantra. He often forces Afghans to swear allegiance to Jamal before he will deal with them.

The governor's cooperation and leadership have been key to improving security in the province. But his leadership is most apparent in the reconstruction effort.

Adams negotiates through the bureaucracy of the approval process. It is Jamal who makes sure the funding is going to projects worth the money.

"The more bricks and rocks that are put together, the more people realize something is happening," Jamal said. "If you really work, there is an opportunity to make your dreams come true."

In six months, aid spending in the province has tripled. The money has gone to build 30 diversion dams, six municipal buildings and 56 schools.

All that pales, though, next to the paved roads that are changing life for so many in the province.

In the previous five years, the province added only 19 miles of paved road. In six months with Adams and Custer this year, Jamal's government added 50 miles to the network.

Jamal said when Afghans see paved roads, they smile.

In Afghanistan, success comes with a price.

Five times, the Taliban has tried to assassinate Jamal. In October, he escaped harm but two civilians and three of his bodyguards were hurt when a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into the governor's convoy.

At night, Adams likes to sit on the roof of his headquarters smoking a cigar and listening to James Taylor on his iPod. He can see the city only a few miles away, down a newly paved road that will be clogged with people headed to jobs or school in the morning.

The improvements are readily apparent. But he worries.

"Khost is fragile," he warns. "We've improved this place in six months, but don't think that can't change."

Khost may be a glimpse of the best the U.S. and its allies can hope for in Afghanistan.

The province is more peaceful than those around it. American money is producing real results that make people's lives better. But the threat of the Taliban isn't over, and it is doubtful that the Afghan forces are ready to keep the peace if the U.S. soldiers leave.

"It is Afghanistan," Custer said. "But we are going to hand off Khost a lot better than we received it."

Information from: The Fayetteville Observer,

US reviewing plans for Afghanistan

December 17, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A Pentagon spokesman confirmed Monday that the United States military was, like its NATO partners, reviewing its plans for Afghanistan to develop a long-range strategy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates "encouraged NATO to take a longer range view on Afghanistan" and "as a result of that Centcom will tell you they are reviewing their own Afghanistan plan," spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters.

"These are things that complement each other."

The New York Times reported Sunday that the United States had launched a thorough review of its military, economic and diplomatic strategy amid worries about progress.

"There is no secret that some of the capabilities have been lacking and that we have been wanting to fill in in order to achieve greater progress at a faster rate," a Pentagon spokesman said privately, but noting "I don't know that I would call it a review of strategy."

Whitman did not say if sending additional US troops was being considered.

NATO, which runs the 40,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, defense ministers of the United States, Britain and six other countries working in southern Afghanistan on Friday launched talks in Edinburgh on a long-term strategy toward the Taliban.

Humanitarian space must be regained - UNAMA

KABUL, 17 December 2007 (IRIN) - UN agencies and international humanitarian organisations in Afghanistan face "much tighter security restrictions" than before while the needs of Afghan people have "risen", a senior UN official in Kabul said on 17 December.

"This is the inevitable consequence of a worsening security situation," Charlie Heggins, an official with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told reporters in Kabul.

Increasingly affected by insurgency-related violence and insecurity, Afghanistan's "squeezing humanitarian space" has experienced over 130 "serious security incidents" involving humanitarian actors in which at least 15 aid workers (11 Afghans and four internationals) have lost their lives over the past year, said Heggins, who heads UNAMA's humanitarian unit.

Security restrictions have impeded UN agencies' access to more than 77 districts in the southern, eastern and southeastern parts of the country since the beginning of 2007.

Humanitarian access restrictions have also adversely affected the living conditions of millions of vulnerable Afghans who are in need of assistance, UNAMA said.

To overcome the growing challenge of shrinking humanitarian space, aid agencies should uphold and re-demonstrate the principles of neutrality and impartiality, Heggins said.

All sides to the conflict must also ensure a "free space" for independent humanitarian action, Heggins said, adding: "We need to regain the space that humanitarian action needs, in order for agencies to deliver fundamental life-saving services to the population".

Successful pre-positioning of aid

Despite movement restrictions, UN agencies have been successful in pre-positioning food and non-food relief items across 17 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, UNAMA said.

UN officials said that of the planned 22,000-plus metric tonnes (mt) of mixed food aid and non-food items for high elevation areas, where heavy snow and rainfall block roads during winter, up to 90 percent of the aid had already been delivered and stocked in different locations across the country.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) on 25 November resumed deliveries through a dangerous intersection in southern Afghanistan, and despatched 254 mt of food aid to Herat Province, western Afghanistan.

In June 2007 WFP had been forced to suspend deliveries in the area following increased attacks on its food convoys. Unidentified gunmen torched a truck hired by WFP and looted its 15,000 mt of fortified biscuits in the second week of December, UNAMA confirmed.

According to UNAMA, over four million needy Afghans have received humanitarian relief - mostly food aid, in 2007.

Swat Valley picks up the pieces after clashes

ABBOTABAD, 17 December 2007 (IRIN) - With his four children, Khurram Ahmed, 36, huddles around a fire in his cousin's house in the mountain city of Abbotabad, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Temperatures have fallen to zero degrees Centigrade and Khurram's children, the eldest aged 12, complain of "always being cold".

There is a shortage of warm bedding in a house that normally accommodated five prior to the arrival of Khurram's family, which arrived two weeks ago.

"We all wish to return to our home, in a village near the town of Matta in the Swat Valley. But our house was damaged by army bombing and it is impossible to live in it yet. We will repair it in spring, after the winter," says Khurram.

By then, Khurram also hopes to have saved up enough money to replace some of the belongings he has lost.

"We saved our TV and a cassette player, but we lost so many other things - including my sewing machine, our clothes and my pots and pans," said Razika Bibi, 30, Khurram's wife.

Violent clashes

The scenic Swat Valley, 250km northwest of Abbotabad, has for over a month been the setting for violent clashes between government forces and pro-Taliban militants, led by Maulana Fazalullah - a religious leader who has made attempts to establish his own writ over the area.

Over the past two weeks fighting has died down, with many of the militants' strongholds taken over, but residents of Swat Valley, home to around 1.5 million people, have paid a heavy price, residents and non-governmental organisations say.

Homes destroyed

"According to what preliminary data we have, over 1,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed and there have been at least 400 civilian casualties," Shaukat Saleem, core group coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IRIN from Swat.

This belies an official death toll of 230 civilians and 90 military personnel killed.

Much of the destruction was caused by heavy use of helicopter gunships against villages believed by the Pakistan military to harbour militants.

However, Sher Muhammad Khan, a Swat-based activist, described the bombing as "indiscriminate", particularly in hilly areas where villages were bombed and houses destroyed. He said a curfew in the area made it difficult to assess the full scale of the damage.

"For years, we faced difficulties due to the militants whose actions drove away tourists and deprived us of a major source of income. Therefore we supported the military action, but it also caused great destruction," Afsar Khan, 30, a resident of the Miandam tourist area, said.

Afsar, whose family remains in Swat, has travelled to Abbotabad - about 116km north of Islamabad - to find work, as tourism was not expected to resume in the affected areas of Swat for at least a year.

Estimates vary as to the extent of displacement, but at the height of the conflict, some reports suggested that up to 60 percent of people in the valley had fled, mainly to the homes of friends and relatives.

But many have since returned, although some have chosen to move out of the area altogether.

"Who knows when things will become violent here again," said Sher Mir, 45, a bus driver from the Kalam area in Swat, who hopes to move to Islamabad or Peshawar in the near future.

Schools affected, children traumatised

Meanwhile, fighting and curfews have badly disrupted life, particularly education, with over 2,000 schools reportedly closing down for varying periods.

"The school term has been shattered for children here," said Amjad Abbas, a high-school teacher speaking from the city of Mingora. He said that "most likely" future holidays for affected schools would be cut short to make up for lost time.

Curfews continue and there are still outbursts of fighting between troops and fighters in a few villages. But overall, a process of recovery is now under way. There is also a lingering sense of trauma. "The children in particular have been deeply affected. They feel unsafe," said Abbas.

Apart from bombing raids, acts of revenge by militants against those whom they believed were sympathetic to the government have also led to violence and death. However, there now seems to be some sense of relief that the worst is over.

"The action in Swat was carried out for the sake of local people who have suffered a great deal due to militancy," said Brig (rtd) Javed Iqbal Cheema, spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry.

As normalcy returns to the region, people hope the peace for which Swat has long been known will now return, and there will be no repetition of the violence witnessed here over the past six or seven weeks.

Rupert Everett: acting in Hollywood is like living in Afghanistan

Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter From The Times December 17, 2007

Hollywood has the moral compass of the Taleban or al-Qaeda, the British actor Rupert Everett has claimed.

Everett, who starred opposite Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, cited the studios’ attitudes towards women, gays, abortion and addiction.

He told The Times: “Hollywood is a place that pretends it’s very liberal but it’s not remotely. It’s like al-Qaeda.”

Everett, who is gay, believes that he has been refused leading roles because of his sexuality. In his autobiography Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins he claimed that the head of MGM once vetoed his casting as the male lead opposite Sharon Stone in a film, saying that “to all intents and purposes a homosexual was a pervert in the eyes of America and the world would never accept me in the role and therefore MGM would never hire me”.

He said that his role as the voice of Prince Charming in the Shrek films was one that he would never get in a live-action film. In his latest film, St Trinian’s, Everett is in drag to play the headmistress Camilla Fritton.

This month Jodie Foster thanked her partner Cydney Bernard at an awards breakfast, becoming one of the few openly homosexual Hollywood stars. But Everett said that this did not mean that the climate for gay actors was becoming easier.

“It’s the opposite. She is 45 and she just couldn’t be bothered any more. After a certain age you can be gay. Before that it’s not only not good, it’s impossible.”

He claimed that making films in America was “like being in Afghanistan” in other respects too. He said that Hollywood was much easier to negotiate for straight male actors than for even the highest-paid female stars.

“The treatment of women is quite extraordinary,” he said. If you compare being a 70-year-old woman to a 70-year-old man, the old woman will maybe get to play a grandmother. The old man will do a film with a 20-year-old girl. On abortion, [the studios] are for it in private because they don’t want actresses to clog up their schedules [by taking time off to have babies]. But in films if you get pregnant you have to keep the baby and end up with the man.

“A 50-year-old male drug addict will be supported. Female alcoholics and drug addicts are absolutely rejected.”

The assessment is being handled by Admiral William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military activity in the Middle East and East Africa, as well as Afghanistan.

The official who spoke to VOA Sunday on condition of anonymity said Central Command is constantly assessing strategy and progress in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but that this effort by the admiral goes beyond the usual process.

The New York Times reports that Admiral Fallon's assessment is one of three that will feed into a broader Afghanistan policy review early next year.

The Times says the others are being done by the State Department and the NATO alliance.

On Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates got approval for the development of a long term plan for achieving stability in the country during a meeting of key NATO members with troops in Afghanistan.

NATO has a total of 40,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 14,000 Americans. In addition, the United States has another 12,000 troops in the country conducting counter-terrorism operations outside the NATO structure.

In other news, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry says its troops have killed four Taliban members near Musa Qala, in the first fighting since the militants were ousted from the southern town.

[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.]