In this bulletin:

• 15 guards, several Taliban killed in Afghanistan: officials
• Danish military says Danes in Afghanistan were killed by British friendly fired
• U.S. reviews Afghanistan mission amid fears of losing battle against Taliban
• New Zealand considers boosting troops in Afghanistan
• Broad support for Afghanistan mission (update)
• A better Afghanistan policy
• Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa
• The man who heals Canada's healers
• Taliban leader taunts NATO and calls for Afghan pullout
• German kidnapped in Afghanistan wanted for fraud: prosecutor
• Terror Across The Durand Line
• The true enemy: human tribalism

15 guards, several Taliban killed in Afghanistan: officials

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Fifteen Afghan security guards were killed in a Taliban ambush in western Afghanistan Tuesday, police said, as two police and several Taliban rebels died in other clashes across the country.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar meanwhile vowed to keep fighting through the winter and attack Afghan and international troops who drove his fighters from a southern town last week.

The guards working for a private US firm identified as USPI were killed when Taliban fighters ambushed them in Bala Buluk district of the western province of Farah early Tuesday, police official Colonel Saydo Khan told AFP.

Nine other guards were injured in the ambush on a civilian supply convoy headed to a Western military base in the region, Khan said.

"We have evacuated the wounded to the hospital," he said.

Provincial governor Mohaiuddin Baluch confirmed the incident but had no details about the casualties.

The insurgents regularly attack convoys that supply military bases in the region and have also targeted food aid convoys from the World Food Programme.

Farah neighbours southern Helmand province -- the Taliban's biggest stronghold -- and has seen growing unrest in the past year, with the militants able to briefly capture several districts in recent months.

In a new offensive, dozens of rebels stormed the Khak-i-Safed district overnight but were pushed back by police, Baluch said. The rebels lost three fighters, he said.

The Islamic rebels briefly captured Khak-i-Safed and adjoining Gulistan districts late last month but were ejected after Afghan and NATO troops moved in.

The rebels, in government from 1996 to 2001, have seized remote districts from time to time, mainly in southern Afghanistan, but have usually not been able to hold them for long.

They did hold Musa Qala in Helmand for 10 months before escaping a four-day advance by soldiers who entered the town in a high-profile operation last week.

Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who is wanted by US and Afghan governments, said in a statement to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha that starts here Wednesday that his men would "not allow rest for invading forces in Musa Qala."

"We've supplied our fronts across Afghanistan," Omar added in a statement read to AFP over the telephone by one of his main spokesmen, Yousuf Ahmadi.

"We'll continue to attack the invading forces and their Afghan servants throughout the winter."

The US-led coalition that also operates in Afghanistan said meanwhile security forces had killed several insurgents in a day-long battle in the southern province of Uruzgan on Monday.

Several more were killed in air strikes and ground fighting in Helmand's Kajaki district, which adjoins Musa Qala, it said.

Four others were killed near the border with Pakistan on Tuesday when warplanes were called in after the rebels launched several rockets over the town of Urgun, US Major Christine Nelson-Chung told AFP.

Two policemen and two militants were killed in a rebel attack in Ghazni province, police said.

Danish military says Danes in Afghanistan were killed by British friendly fired

The Associated Press Tuesday, December 18, 2007

COPENHAGEN, Denmark: Two Danish soldiers were accidentally killed by British friendly fire during an operation in September against Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, the Danish army said Tuesday.

The soldiers were killed Sept. 26 in the Upper Geresk Valley of Helmand province during an operation that involved another unit under NATO's International Security Assistance Force. A third Danish soldier was slightly injured.

Peter Otken, the head of Denmark's military prosecutors, said an investigation had revealed that the British forces, under whom the Danish unit served, fired missiles at what they thought were Taliban positions.

"Private Thorbjoern Ole Reese and Private Mikkel Keil Soerensen were killed as a result of strikes by British soldiers which by a tragic mistake were directed towards the compound where the Danish soldiers were in position," Otken said in a statement.

Both Danes died after being hit by shrapnel, according to the four-page statement.

Otken could not give the reason for the mix-up because a British investigation of the incident had not been completed yet. It was unclear when the British investigation would be finished, he said.

Denmark has some 600 troops in Afghanistan, most of them based in the volatile Helmand province.

A total of nine Danish soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since Denmark joined the U.S.-led coalition in 2002.

U.S. reviews Afghanistan mission amid fears of losing battle against Taliban

WASHINGTON - The United States is turning more attention to the war in Afghanistan amid concerns about rising violence and fears of losing the battle against the Taliban.

American officials are reviewing all facets of their operation and President George W. Bush, under pressure to shift American troops from Iraq, will start holding regular videoconferences with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The United States is considering its long-term strategy as NATO conducts its own review of the mission. Other countries like Canada are assessing their future in the country, plagued this year by a resurgent Taliban, increased opium harvests and signs that al-Qaida terrorists are regrouping.

"There are reviews under way, as I understand it, that the British are looking at, that the Canadians are considering, and we are doing our ongoing assessment as well," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

"I can assure you that there are many people considering the situation in Afghanistan on an ongoing basis. They're constantly reviewing our posture and that includes having dialogue with our allies in NATO."

Former deputy prime minister John Manley is conducting Canada's review. His report is due in early January and Parliament is expected to vote on the mission this winter.

Britain is also looking at its participation, especially in Afghanistan's dangerous southern provinces where many European countries have refused to send soldiers.

The U.S. review of Afghanistan is not as extensive and nowhere near as high-profile as the report on Iraq that led to a surge of American soldiers in Baghdad.

American officials would not say if they are considering sending more troops but many consider it an unlikely prospect given the commitment in Iraq.

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said last week it wouldn't happen in the short term.

The top general of the U.S. Marine Corps has been pushing hard to deploy marines to Afghanistan from Iraq, but Gates rejected the idea.

Other Pentagon officials have suggested accelerated withdrawals from Iraq, where five of 20 brigades are supposed to return home by the end of next summer.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff want to pull out another five brigades by the end of 2008.

Bush, meantime, has decided to hold regular meetings with Karzai, similar to ones with the Iraqi prime minister.

Gates, who met with Canadian officials and other NATO allies in Scotland last week, has been pushing for more helicopters, police trainers and ground troops.

The United States is also considering whether to appoint a well-known political figure to co-ordinate efforts in Afghanistan, where the violence this year has been the worst since the 2001 invasion.

Canada called in October for a new high-profile United Nations envoy who could attract more help and ensure that all the diverse efforts like reconstruction and expanding the government are effective.

The U.S. review reportedly includes an update on the hunt for Taliban and al-Qaida leaders and whether Americans have done enough to promote economic development.

To some in the United States, Afghanistan is known as "the forgotten war." Many legislators have long complained that Iraq is taking far too many resources from a battle considered a major success until this year.

"In Afghanistan, we do what we can," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, told Congress last week. "In Iraq, we do what we must."

Progress has been "mixed and uneven" he said Monday.

"There's an awful lot of work that not just the military has to do, but across all government agencies ... We've really got to come together in a way that continues to move this country forward."

The country's record poppy cultivation is particularly troublesome since much of the money ends up with the Taliban.

Canada has nearly 2,500 troops in Afghanistan as part of NATO's International Security Assistance Force. The U.S. has about 26,000 soldiers, although nearly half of them are conducting special counterterrorism missions.

Canada's Conservative government wants to extend the mission by two years to 2011 but opposition parties are firm on ending it on schedule by February 2009.

New Zealand considers boosting troops in Afghanistan

WELLINGTON, N.Z. - New Zealand is considering whether to increase its troops in Afghanistan and assume a combat role because of a rising threat from Taliban fighters, a military commander said Tuesday.

Joint forces chief Maj.-Gen. Rhys Jones said the 107-strong New Zealand team working on construction in Bamiyan province has had reports recently that Taliban fighters are moving into the region, northeast of the capital Kabul.

Direct threats had been made against the provincial governor and "that gives us concern there may be attacks in our area," Jones told New Zealand's National Radio network.

New Zealand military commanders are considering all options, including more troops and carrying out combat patrols in the province.

"When we have done our assessment, we will put those options to government should it require them to decide on extra numbers, extra equipment or extra tasks," he said.

Jones said Bamiyan, where New Zealand has placed military reconstruction teams since 2003, was relatively peaceful but is gradually becoming more dangerous. The government recently extended the team's stint through September 2009.

Defence Minister Phil Goff said there is no plan for "a major change in tactics."

"The threat level in Bamiyan remains at medium," he said.

"The situation...has remained predominantly quiet. There is no intention at this point...to increase troop numbers significantly in Afghanistan."

The debate in New Zealand came a day after the prime minister of neighbouring Australia, Kevin Rudd, said it is "critical" that NATO countries do more to stabilize Afghanistan amid a Taliban resurgence.

Contingents of New Zealand commando troops have had tours of duty in southern Afghanistan since 2001. The current deployment has no combat role and is armed only to protect the force from attacks.

Broad support for Afghanistan mission (update)

Tuesday 18 December 2007

The cabinet looks almost certain to get its desired broad-based support for its decision to extend the Dutch military mission to Afghanistan, reports ANP news service on Tuesday afternoon.

MP Hans van Baalen told ANP that the opposition liberal VVD party would stand firmly behind the government on one condition. It wants the cabinet to repeat its promise that all Dutch troops will be withdrawn from the province of Uruzgan by the end of 2010 during the final parliamentary debate on the issue on Tuesday evening.

The government’s decision now has the support of the three coalition parties, the VVD and the orthodox Christian SGP and is expected to have the support of 103 of parliament’s 150 MPs, considerably fewer than last year when Dutch soldiers were first sent to participate in the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

On Monday defence minister Eimert van Middelkoop pledged that the armed forces would not lose out on operational capacity as a result of the extension to the Uruzgan mission.

The cabinet also agreed that there will be more attention given to the reconstruction aims of the mission, but said offensive operations like that currently taking place in the Baluchi Valley could not be ruled out.

On Monday, the International Herald Tribune reported that the Dutch government has awarded a €34 million contract to a German development organisation to rebuild roads and help farmers in Uruzgan.

© DutchNews.nl

A better Afghanistan policy

Elinor Sloan Citizen Special Tuesday, December 18, 2007

In an article that appeared last week in this newspaper, political scientist Michael Byers argued that the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan is a sham. The panel, he alleged, is made up of people who are likely to recommend an extension of Canada's military mission there, and the outcome is predetermined because all of the panel's options have some sort of a military role. Mr. Byers seems to suggest that Canada is in Afghanistan mainly to follow America's bidding.

Mr. Byers' effort to delegitimize the Manley panel does not stand up to scrutiny. For example, part of his case against John Manley, the panel's chair, is that last fall Mr. Manley wrote an article in the journal Policy Options stating that we should not abandon Afghanistan. In fact, Mr. Manley wrote the article in his capacity as a director of CARE Canada. It is based on a May 2007 trip to Afghanistan, and it focuses almost entirely on Canada's humanitarian involvement there. It concludes with observations like the need to build roads and bridges, and to restore electricity.

To any fair-minded reader, the article shows only that Mr. Manley understands the complexities of creating a sustainable society in Afghanistan and, perhaps more importantly, that he cares about what happens there. (Full disclosure: In 2005 Mr. Manley wrote a statement praising my book Security and Defence in the Terrorist Era.)

Mr. Manley's knowledge of Afghanistan - he served as Canada's foreign minister - was likely a big part of why he was asked to chair this panel and why he accepted. Mr. Byers suggests that Mr. Manley, a Liberal, agreed to chair a panel for the Conservative government not because he has real expertise and interest in the future of that country, but simply because he felt duty bound to answer a prime minister's call. Yet as Janice Stein, a University of Toronto academic who accompanied Mr. Manley on his trip, notes in her recent book Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar, Mr. Manley felt no such duty to answer former prime minister Paul Martin's call to be ambassador to the United States in 2003, despite the fact that he was from the same party and government.

Mr. Byers also implies that the ties of two other panel members - Derek Burney and Paul Tellier - to the Canadian defence industry would somehow incline them to support the mission in Afghanistan. But Canadians know there is no shortage of work for the Canadian Forces around the world. If the Afghanistan mission were to end tomorrow, there would be plenty of other spots where the military could be asked to go. Already there is considerable pressure for a military role in Sudan.

Mr. Byers invokes the Iraq Study Group as a model of an independent panel with a mandate to look at the full range of issues surrounding a policy decision. Co-chaired as it was by James Baker, secretary of state in the first George Bush's administration and a close Bush family friend, this may not be a good example.

However, the the Iraq Study Group did have the luxury, as Mr. Byers points out, of operating "on its own timetable," which ended up being about nine months. By contrast, Canada's panel has been given only three months.

The short deadline of January 31, 2008 is driven by the fact that Canada is committed to Afghanistan until February 2009. We need to give our allies in NATO about a year's notice about our plans. The United States will be affected by our decision, but so too will be Britain and the Netherlands, among others, with whom the Canadian Forces is working in southern Afghanistan.

The idea that the Manley panel is part of some political plan to win favour with the Americans is absurd if only because the options the panel is considering are very different from the U.S. approach.

As the Washington Post recently reported, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to shift alliance strategy in Afghanistan from one of rebuilding to one of waging a "classic counterinsurgency." Of the approaches being considered by the Manley panel, Option 1 provides for the greatest future military role, but it centres on building and training the Afghan army and police. Option 2, on the other hand, focuses on development and governance in Kandahar, while option 3 talks about these same things in some other part of Afghanistan, with the military role being to protect the civilians carrying out these tasks. Option 4 is basically military withdrawal.

None of the Canadian options comes close to what the Americans envision in terms of "counterinsurgency." Canada very clearly is thinking for itself in crafting a policy for Afghanistan.

Mr. Byers was invited to discuss his own ideas with the Manley panel, but he declined. His arguments for doing so were misguided. What Canada needs is not ideological grandstanding, but constructive ideas and recommendations.

Elinor Sloan teaches international security studies at Carleton University, and is a fellow with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

We have to stand on our own feet

While Canada bears a disproportionate share of the burden, Ottawa is not calling the shots

ROLAND PARIS

Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies at the University of Ottawa

December 18, 2007 at 8:20 AM EST

Prime Minister Stephen Harper describes Canada's sacrifices in Afghanistan as a price of our new leadership in international affairs. In reality, however, Canada has been a follower in Afghanistan, not a leader, and Mr. Harper has not demonstrated effective leadership on this issue at home.

Yes, Canada has borne a disproportionate burden among its NATO allies, and our soldiers, development officials and diplomats have discharged their duties with professionalism and courage. But a willingness to commit blood and treasure does not, in itself, constitute leadership.

Last week, for example, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain would support deals with Taliban insurgents to give them a place in Afghanistan's government and military. The idea of reincorporating members of the insurgency into the political life of the country is something that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been calling for - against the wishes of the United States, which has a more sweeping and undifferentiated view of the Taliban as "enemy."

Unless NATO is willing to keep tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan indefinitely - which is both politically implausible, given public opinion in the troop-contributing countries, and strategically dangerous, given the history of Afghans eventually turning against foreign forces on their soil - any solution to the insurgency will probably require side deals with less hard-line Taliban elements.

Canada, with its history of support for peace efforts, should understand this. But we have quietly toed the U.S. line, refusing to "negotiate with terrorists." This is not to say Canada should stop fighting. On the contrary, if Taliban elements come to the negotiating table, it will be because they realize they have no hope of prevailing in the military struggle. But counterinsurgency without openness to negotiation is a recipe for endless Afghan conflict - as Britain, but not Canada, has apparently recognized.

Canada has also lagged behind other NATO countries in protecting the rights of Afghan detainees. The deal that Ottawa initially struck with Kabul included less oversight of prisoners' welfare in Afghan custody than similar arrangements negotiated by the Dutch and Americans. It took a big brouhaha in the House of Commons to get the Harper government to revise these arrangements and strengthen their monitoring provisions.

Political leadership is lacking in other ways. Instead of giving Canadians a detailed accounting of the operation, Mr. Harper continues to recite boilerplate talking points: We are in Afghanistan with United Nations authorization and at the request of the Afghan government; we are making progress; the mission shows our new global leadership.

Canadians may not know much about Afghanistan, but they know enough to suspect that the situation is far more complex and disquieting than Mr. Harper lets on. Opinion polls reveal deep public doubt about the prospects for success, even among many who support the Afghan mission.

Canadians are right to worry. Last week, the University of Ottawa played host to some of the world's leading experts on Afghanistan. Over two days, one speaker after another mapped out the mixed results of international stabilization and reconstruction efforts six years after the Taliban regime's fall.

The insurgency, based in the increasingly lawless borderlands of Pakistan, has adopted more effective guerrilla tactics over the past year, and it is unclear how Afghanistan will be able hold the election scheduled for 2009, since much of the country is too insecure even for UN aid workers. The opium economy continues to burgeon, efforts to reduce corruption in key government ministries are going nowhere and the police and courts remain desperately weak. (One speaker who visited recently reported that his convoy was attacked by a mixed group of Taliban and national police.)

There is also poor co-ordination among NATO countries, aid donors and international organizations - and some confusion on the precise purposes of the multilateral mission. Is it to defeat al-Qaeda and the Taliban? To isolate foreign jihadists and reintegrate the Taliban into the politics of the country? To build a democratic, liberal state? To consolidate a less-than-democratic state that can, at least, exercise control over territory? Or to construct pockets of effective governance at the local level? With the U.S. still distracted by Iraq, Canada should be a leader within NATO in clarifying these goals.

Mr. Harper should also provide Canadians with a full explanation of the purposes of the mission, how these purposes will be accomplished, and in what realistic time frame. The government report to Parliament last February purported to "measure progress" in Afghanistan but was utterly vacuous. We need detailed, timely and unfiltered data to evaluate our stabilization efforts, not cherry-picked lists of showpiece "accomplishments."

As Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington noted at last week's conference: "The entire history of governmental reporting on war since ancient Athens is a warning that democratic governments need constant public and legislative scrutiny, that they make more mistakes without it, and that governments do not deserve public trust, they must earn it."

Of course, such candour would be politically risky. The opposition parties (which have no serious Afghan policies themselves) are likely to use any less-than-positive information about the mission to attack the government. But if Mr. Harper wants to build public support for Canada's involvement, the only way to overcome the skepticism will be to provide an unvarnished accounting of the mission, its purposes and progress. Recognizing this need, and accepting the political risk, would be an act of true leadership.

The proceedings of the University of Ottawa's conference on Afghanistan will be broadcast by CPAC in January.

The man who heals Canada's healers
December 18, 2007 Mitch Potter TORONTO STAR

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan–Tourtière, pasta, panini and hilarious games of tombola are what Maj. Jocelyn Dodaro associates with Christmases past, each one a celebration of his French-Italian heritage.

This year, instead, he will concentrate on mending the bruised sensibilities of a Quebec-based medical staff of 87 who are spread out among many of the most vulnerable combat locations in Kandahar province.

Dodaro, 39, is the officer-in-command of Role 1 medical care at Kandahar, a position that "essentially makes me the family physician of the Canadian contingent here." That means primary care, and that means his people are in the thick of fighting. Which explains why two of his medics have been killed in the line of duty since the six-month deployment began in August.

Seldom does one hear soldiers speak voluntarily of the psychological toll of conflict. Dodaro is more than forthcoming, having spent untold hours in recent weeks counselling his crews through the grief of losing colleagues.

"I trained them from the beginning, I put them in the field. They are my guys. And we are close.

"I've had a lot of paramedics in my office crying and I don't treat them as if they are showing weakness because on several occasions I've had tears as well. Army culture is one thing. But ours is army medical culture. It is different – more open, less rigid – because of the job we are doing. It needs to be," he says.

Dodaro's roots are in Montreal's east end, where both parents worked blue-collar factory jobs. As he got older, he became aware of a financial gap between his childhood ambition to become a doctor and his family's inability to pay for medical school.

That's where the Canadian Forces came in. Dodaro enlisted at 19, training first as a physiotherapist and eventually winning the army's support to enter med school at 29. When he graduated in 2003 it was with one caveat – that he repay the army with five years of additional service, an obligation that expires next June, three months after Dodaro returns from Afghanistan.

Dodaro, who estimates he was the beneficiary of $500,000 in tuition and salary, is still contemplating whether to extend his career beyond the compulsory service.

"I'm such a lucky guy. I worked hard for it. I still work hard. But because the military has done so much for me, it makes it easy to give back the best I can in the way I practise medicine with the soldiers.

"It is a difficult decision, because at the rank of major I'm getting in to an area where you supervise and do paperwork more than you practise medicine. But I only just graduated a few years ago and I want to be actively practising medicine, not managing."

Conveniently, Dodaro's wife is also a medic and is deployed in Kandahar Airfield at the Role 3 hospital unit.

But it is his 11-year-old daughter Catherine from his first marriage, who lives with her mother in Montreal, who is uppermost on his mind these days. This will be his first Christmas away from her.

"Catherine was scared at first at the idea I was going to war. But now she realizes I am not here (as) a weapon, I am being a doctor, just like I was back home.

"She told me, `I know the soldiers need you, but I need you, too.' And I said, `Yes, but soon I will come home and then you will have me for the rest of my life.' ''

Working only steps away from his spouse, Dodaro admits he is more fortunate than most. "We'll get our one beer ration for Christmas and I'll be able to give a gift to somebody in person, right here on the base."

And perhaps a Christmas kiss? "Well, of course we're not allowed. But maybe I'll get a kiss on the cheek. Or a nice smile and a wink."

Taliban leader taunts NATO and calls for Afghan pullout

Tue Dec 18, 10:13 AM ET

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban leader Mullah Omar on Tuesday called on foreign forces to withdraw from Afghanistan and taunted NATO about its capture of the southern town of Musa Qala, saying celebrating such a small victory only showed its weakness.

This year has seen a steady escalation of violence in Afghanistan with attacks up around 25 percent since 2006, but neither the hardline Taliban nor Afghan government and international forces have gained any significant advantage.

"The aggression by the Americans and their allies against Afghanistan and Iraq brought with it economic and financial losses that affected not just occupied states, but the aggressors are also suffering," Omar said in a message to mark the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday beginning in Afghanistan on Wednesday.

"Therefore, international institutions and all countries, especially Muslim states, should find ways for the evacuation of aggressor forces, and along with occupied nations help form a permanent and independent government," the Pakistan-based Afghanistan International Press (AIP) quoted a statement as saying.

The one-eyed reclusive leader said no occupying power had ever conquered Afghanistan and the Taliban was getting stronger each day.

The Taliban, he said, "have troubled them so much that they are propagating and celebrating a partial occupation of the small district of Musa Qala, the way they did six years ago over occupation of Afghanistan."

Thousands of Afghan, British and U.S. troops recaptured the town of Musa Qala in the southern province of Helmand last week, the only town of any size held by the Taliban, but much of the countryside in the remote area, as in many parts of the mountainous country, are still loosely under Taliban control.

"Only the district headquarters and few shops of Musa Qala are under the enemy's occupation," Omar said.

"They have not achieved any success in the last six years and such a celebration (over the capture of Musa Qala) is the biggest proof of their weakness," he said.

Omar promised no let up in Taliban activities during the usual lull in fighting that accompanies the harsh Afghan winter and denied there was any rift in his organization.

(Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Alex Richardson)

German kidnapped in Afghanistan wanted for fraud: prosecutor

December 18, 2007

BERLIN (AFP) - A German former aid worker who was abducted in Afghanistan on Sunday is wanted in Germany for fraud, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

An arrest warrant has been issued for the man, identified by the German press as 42-year-old carpenter Harald Kleber, in connection with computer fraud, said Juergen Konrad, a prosecutor in the southern state of Bavaria.

Konrad said an international arrest warrant has not been issued for Kleber but he would be detained if he set foot in Germany.

According to the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, the Gruenhelme (Green Helmets) humanitarian organisation for whom Kleber worked in Afghanistan has also accused him of embezzling funds.

Gruenhelme could not be reached for comment.

The organisation had earlier confirmed that Kleber worked for them between 2003 and 2004 in Herat in western Afghanistan and said he remained in the country afterwards to "pursue his private life."

According to Afghan police, he was kidnapped in Herat by four armed men on Sunday. It was not immediately clear whether the Taliban was behind the abduction, as is the case with many kidnappings of foreigners in Afghanistan.

A Western police source has told reporters: "The circumstances around this kidnapping are troublesome."

A local police official in Herat said the victim had converted to Islam, married an Afghan widow and has two children.

Afghan Trade and Industry Minister Amin Farhang told a German newspaper that he knew Kleber and was saddened to hear that he had been kidnapped.

"(He) is a good Muslim, a great aid worker and a friend of the Afghan people," the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung quoted Farhang as saying.

Four other Germans have been kidnapped in Afghanistan this year.

Terror Across The Durand Line

Till now, the various Talibanised Pakistani tribal groups operating against the Pakistan Army had been operating autonomously of each other, but now they are attempting to unite them..

B. Raman outlookindia.com December 18, 2007

The number of acts of suicide terrorism in Afghanistan increased from 17 in 2005 to 123 in 2006 and has already touched 140 so far this year. During the same period, the number of acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistan increased from two in 2005 to six in 2006 and has already touched 50 till now this year. The dramatic increase in suicide terrorism was a sequel to the Pakistan Army's commando action in Islamabad's Lal Masjid from July 10 to 13,2007.

There has been an average of four acts of suicide terrorism per month in Pakistani territory as against 12 per month in Afghan territory. According to Afghan authorities, the majority of the acts of suicide terrorism in Afghanistan was co-ordinated from Pakistani territory. The suicide terrorists were recruited and trained in Pakistani territory. The tribal belt of Pakistan has thus become a major recruiting, motivating and training ground for suicide terrorists meant for operations in both countries.

Since December 14, 2007 alone, there have been three acts of suicide terrorism in Pakistani territory. In the latest of these incidents, which took place on December 17, 2007, nine members of a soccer team of the Pakistan Army were killed in the garrison town of Kohat in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

The dramatic increase in suicide terrorism in this region has been accompanied by a decrease in the number of conventional-style attacks mounted by the Neo Taliban against Afghan and NATO forces and in the number of cross-border infiltrations from Pakistan into Afghanistan by conventional fighting groups as distinguished from individual suicide terrorists.

A despatch of the Associated Press datelined December 17,2007, from Bagram in Afghanistan has quoted Brig Gen Joseph Votel of the US Army as saying that attacks along the Afghan-Pakistan border have dropped more than 40 percent since July,2007 He attributed this decrease to the onset of winter, the rise in terrorist attacks in Pakistan and an increase in communication and coordination among NATO, Afghan and Pakistani forces.

This decrease has been noticed since the killing of Mulla Dadullah, the Neo Taliban Commander, by the US forces in Afghan territory in May, 2007. It would not, therefore, be correct to attribute it even partly to winter, which is setting in only now. The suicide terrorists on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border have shown a capability for operating autonomously even in the absence of an iconic leader to motivate and guide them. But, the Neo Taliban's conventional fighting forces have not shown a similar capability. The killing of their commanders has an impact on their fighting prowess. While the killing of Dadullah has not had any impact on the wave of suicide terrorism, it has definitely affected the morale of the conventional fighting forces. Mansoor Dadullah, his successor, has not yet been able to build a similar image of himself among the conventional fighters.

The US is presently hunting for Jalaluddin Haqqani, his son Sirajuddin Haqqani and other Neo Taliban commanders in the hope that their elimination could further affect the morale of the conventional fighting formations of the Neo Taliban.

It is interesting to note the US Brig-Gen. comparing the decline in cross-border activity in Afghan territory to the increase in incidents in the Pakistani territory. Since July,2007, there has been an increase in conventional fighting between different jihadi groups and the Pakistan Army in South and North Waziristan and in the Swat Valley of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and in acts of suicide terrorism in the tribal belt as well as in the non-tribal areas of Pakistan.

Whereas the Neo Taliban's conventional operations in the Afghan territory have been both offensive and defensive, the Pakistani Taliban's conventional operations in Pakistani territory have been largely defensive. They have not so far come to notice for attacks in large formations on the Pakistani army positions in the tribal areas. Wherever there was an administrative and military vacuum, the jihadis moved into it and fiercely defended themselves when the Pakistani security forces tried to dislodge them. In the process, they managed to inflict heavy casualties--particularly on the para-military forces-- and captured a large number of security forces personnel. The Pakistan Army's operations to dislodge the Pakistani Taliban from South and North Waziristan in October,2007, ended in a stalemate after the Pakistani security forces suffered a large number of casualties. The operations in the Swat Valley, which are still continuing, have been a little more successful in the sense that the Army has dislodged the followers of Mulla Fazlullah of the Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) from many of the positions occupied by them, but the morale and resilience of Fazlullah's followers remain intact.

Till now, the various Talibanised Pakistani tribal groups operating against the Pakistan Army have been operating autonomously of each other though all of them are inspired by the ideology of the Neo Taliban and Al Qaeda. One has not seen instances of tribal groups from one area going to the assistance of groups in other areas, when they are attacked by the army. Now, an attempt is being made to unite the different Talibanised Pakistani tribal groups.

To promote joint action, 40 tribal leaders from South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Aurakzai, Kurram, Khyber, Mohmand and Bajaur tribal agencies and from the NWFP districts of Swat, Buner, Dir, Malakand, Bannu, Lakki Marwat, Tank, Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan and Kohat are reported to have met at an undisclosed place in South Waziristan on December 14,2007, and formed a joint resistance movement called the Tehrik Taliban-e-Pakistan with Baitullah Mehsud of South Waziristan as the Amir. Hafiz Gul Bahadur of North Waziristan and Maulana Faqir Muhammad of Bajaur will be the deputy Amirs. They decided to step up their offensive action against the NATO and Afghan forces in Afghanistan and strengthem their defensive actions against the Pakistani security forces. They gave a 10-day ultimatum to the Pakistani government to stop its military operations in the tribal areas and to release Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, who was captured by the security forces during the commando action in the Lal Masjid. They have threatened to launch a joint fight against the government if their demands are not met.

While the joint front, if it functions as intended, should be able to keep up the present level of suicide terrorism on both sides of the border and even step it up further, it is unlikely to be able to step up offensive conventional attacks on the security forces.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai.

The true enemy: human tribalism

Jonathan Kay, National Post (Canada) Published: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The clash of civilizations we're living through is widely seen as a battle between Islam and Christendom. I'm convinced it's more basic than that. The reason Iraq and Afghanistan remain unsettled battlefields isn't that our two civilizations can't agree on the nature of God. It's because we can't agree on the nature of man.

In the West, we take it for granted that human beings are autonomous individuals. We decide for ourselves how we dress, where we work, whom we marry. Our political system is an atomized democracy, in which everyone is expected to vote according to their own idiosyncratic values and interests. Our pop music and movies are about misunderstood loners. The ethos of individual empowerment fuels daytime talk shows.

Individualism has become so fundamental to the Western world view that most of us cannot imagine any other way of conceiving human existence. But in fact, there are billions of people on Earth -- including most of the world's Muslims -- that view our obsession with individualism as positively bizarre.

In most of South Asia and the Middle East, humans are viewed not primarily as individuals, but as agents of a family, tribe, clan or sect. As Rutgers scholar Robin Fox wrote in a brilliant essay -- excerpted in last month's issue of Harper's magazine -- this explains why so many Arabs marry their cousins. In tribal societies, your blood relations are the only people you can trust.

This fundamental difference in outlook explains much of what we find barbaric about traditional Muslim cultural practices. Honour killings -- to take a newsworthy example -- strike Westerners as a particularly horrific species of murder. But that's because we think of people as individuals. If you instead see a woman primarily as a low-status breeding agent of her patriarch's clan, everything changes. By taking up with an unapproved male, she is nullifying whatever value she once had as a human. In fact, her life has negative value in the sense that her shameful lifestyle is an ongoing humiliation to the men expected to enforce discipline within the clan's ranks.

An intractably tribal outlook also makes Western-style democracy impossible -- which explains why nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq has become such a thankless slog.

The reason many of us post-9/11 hawks had such high hopes for these campaigns is that we shared George W. Bush's sunny claim that "Freedom is universal. Freedom is etched in everybody's soul." It turns out that's not true. As Fox notes, freedom and individualism are relatively recent development in human history. Tribalism, on the other hand, is a deeply rooted instinct that has been "etched" on our evolutionary psychology since simian days. Even in Western societies, you can still see it rise to the surface when tensions flare (a point Paul Haggis made with exquisite artistry in his Oscar-award winning film Crash).

Democracy requires consensus-building and shared values. But in tribal societies, politics is viewed as a battle of all-against-all, in which the strongest tribe openly appropriates the state apparatus to enrich itself at everyone else's expense.

In this regard, Saddam Hussein was the ultimate tribal leader. Not only did he restrict his inner circle to Sunnis, but they were Sunnis from his own narrow Tikriti sub-clan. The idea of creating a "representative" government that includes Kurds and Shiites with their own independent power bases would have struck him as completely insane. So would the idea of handing over power to another tribe merely because its leaders chalked up more votes in an election. During most of human history, letting another tribe lord over yours meant yielding the power to pillage your granaries and rape your women. (In parts of Africa, it still does.)

This explains why the United States and NATO have gotten nowhere with grand national political projects in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are both intensely tribal societies. Instead, progress has come at the micro level -- with military commanders sitting down with individual tribal patriarchs and, essentially, bribing them with guns and money. In the West, we call that corruption. In tribal societies, it's politics.

Is there something about Islam that serves to lock in mankind's inherently tribal instincts? Perhaps. The word Islam translates to "submission." And empirically speaking, there seems to be something within the faith that discourages individualism and the democratic freedoms associated with it.

On the other hand, the non-Muslim nations of sub-Saharan Africa are every bit as tribalized as the Muslim nations of North Africa and Asia. And for all the media focus on Aqsa Parvez, several of Canada's first honour murders actually were performed by Sikhs. In any case, the successful integration of hundreds of thousands of Muslims into Canadian society shows that, after a generation or two, at least, the faith hardly prevents immigrants from coming around to our democratic, individualistic ways.

As for foreign entanglements, it's worth noting Fox's warning that our own Western march to individualism took centuries -- a grinding process in which we moved "from tribalism, through empire, feudalism, mercantile capitalism and the industrial revolution shrugging off communism and fascism along the way."

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we are essentially asking the locals to cram all of this into a few years. We shouldn't be surprised if it takes a little longer.

[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.]