In this bulletin:

• Italian PM in Christmas visit to Afghanistan
• Afghanistan condemns suicide attack in Pakistan mosque
• Taliban kill seven hostages in Afghanistan: police
• 13 killed in Afghanistan unrest: police, army
• Three Canadian soldiers injured in Afghanistan
• British hospital treats all sides in Afghanistan
• Canadian military donates old C7 rifles to Afghan National Army
• More armored vehicles on way to Afghanistan
• DM: No deadline for Spain's military presence in Afghanistan
• Poppies vs. Power in Afghanistan
• 5 Years After Sweep In NW Province, Backers Frustrated
• US recovers at least some faith in Musharraf
• Helping Afghanistan’s Widows

Italian PM in Christmas visit to Afghanistan

by Bronwen Roberts Sun Dec 23, 9:18 AM ET

KABUL (AFP) - Prime Minister Romano Prodi pledged Italy's long-term support for Afghanistan in talks with President Hamid Karzai Sunday during a visit to meet his troops in a NATO-led force fighting an insurgency.

Prodi, whose Christmastime visit follows trips Saturday by the leaders of France and Australia, also met US General Dan McNeill, commander of a NATO-led force of 39 nations helping the government battle the Taliban-led unrest.

He celebrated Mass with some of the more than 1,000 Italian troops in Kabul and later travelled west to a base of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Herat where there are 800 other Italian soldiers.

Prodi assured Karzai of "the continuation of his country's long-term support," a statement from the Afghan presidential palace said.

The two leaders had discussed "the regional situation, Afghanistan's achievements and developments, the repatriation of refugees, health services and the increased enrolment of children in schools," it said.

Karzai in turn called on Prodi to encourage Italian investment in his country, one of the poorest in the world.

Improvements in health and education are among the main achievements of the post-Taliban regime although rising insecurity is slowing down development in other sectors.

The past year has been the bloodiest in an insurgency launched by the extremist Taliban movement removed from power in a US-led invasion weeks after the September 11 attacks by the Al-Qaeda network.

The regime was ousted after five years of harsh rule for failing to heed warnings to hand over Al-Qaeda leaders it had sheltered for years.

Officials reported Sunday a string of new attacks linked to the Taliban that left around two dozen people dead.

In central Ghazni province, police said Taliban rebels had shot dead seven men held captive for under a week. Three bodies had been found and police were looking for others, provincial police chief Khan Mohammad Mujahed told AFP.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the seven -- three policemen, two soldiers and two civilian truck drivers for a Western firm -- had tried to escape a Taliban "jail" on Saturday.

Three civilians were meanwhile killed Sunday in a bomb blast in the east, near the border with Pakistan, police said.

The Afghan and international militaries reported at least 14 Taliban killed in other clashes.

With violence rising steadily over the past two years, public support for the costly mission in Afghanistan has been precarious in some of the ISAF nations.

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used their visits Saturday to stress commitment to Afghanistan.

Sarkozy told journalists the international community could not afford to lose the "war against terrorism" in the war-torn nation.

He said the world must be united and committed in efforts to build Afghanistan and help it withstand insurgents linked with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Rudd said Australia would be involved in Afghanistan for the "long haul." He announced extra economic aid but did not say if he would keep the country's nearly 1,000 troops here after their mandate expires next year.

There has been a push in recent months to find other ways to defeat the insurgency, including by putting more emphasis on reconciliation efforts and traditional gatherings and training up the Afghan forces.

A NATO summit in Bucharest in April is to review the international mission, which some commentators have said risks failure.

Afghanistan condemns suicide attack in Pakistan mosque

KABUL, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan foreign ministry on Saturday condemned the bloody suicide attack inside a mosque in neighboring Pakistan's northwestern region which had killed over 55 people and injured more on Dec. 21.

"The Foreign Ministry of Afghanistan describes the terrorist attack as against Islamic norms and against humanity and condemns it," said a statement issued here by the Afghan foreign ministry. "This is a crime."

Afghan people have been suffering from the terrorist attack since long and they feel the pain of Pakistani brothers, and they want both the nations to jointly fight against terrorists and their resources, it said.

The Afghan foreign ministry expressed condolences to the victims' families, the statement further said.

Taliban kill seven hostages in Afghanistan: police

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) — Afghanistan's Taliban shot dead seven men, two of them truck drivers for a Western security firm, who had been kidnapped in the past week, police and a rebel spokesman said Sunday.

The seven -- three policemen, two soldiers and the drivers -- were killed in the central province of Ghazni late Saturday, they said.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the men were shot dead after attempting to escape "from our jail."

Provincial police chief Khan Mohammad Mujahed told AFP that bodies had been recovered and police were looking for more. "We've learnt that they have been killed," he said.

The seven were kidnapped on December 17 and 18 along the main road between Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar, he said.

In their biggest hostage-taking, the Taliban captured 23 South Korean nationals in July along the same road in the same province.

They killed two of the group of Christian aid workers before releasing the rest, most of them after secret talks with the South Korean government.

The extremist Taliban were removed from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001 and are now waging an insurgency that has gained pace this year with a spike in suicide bombings, kidnappings and other rebel attacks.

13 killed in Afghanistan unrest: police, army

Sun Dec 23, 5:44 AM ET

KABUL (AFP) - Three Afghan civilians were killed when a bomb hit their vehicle in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, police said, while the army announced it had killed 10 Taliban in a clash in the volatile south.

One of the people killed in the remote-controlled bomb blast near the border with Pakistan was a woman, Khost province police spokesman Mohammad Yaqob said. Two other civilians were wounded, he said.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombing. Areas near the long frontier with Pakistan see regular violence often blamed on Taliban-linked insurgents who are said to be trained across the border.

The 10 Taliban fighters were killed on Friday in a military swoop in the volatile southern province of Kandahar, from where the hardline religious movement rose in the early 1990s, the defence ministry said.

Four soldiers were wounded in an exchange of fire between the soldiers and rebels, it said.

The US-led coalition said it had been supporting the Afghan soldiers when they were attacked. Two air strikes were called in on the attackers, it said.

Afghan soldiers also discovered and destroyed a drugs-processing lab in the town of Musa Qala in southern Helmand province, the main producer of Afghanistan's world-topping opium crop, the ministry said.

Musa Qala was controlled by the Taliban for 10 months until it was retaken by government and international forces two weeks ago.

The town had become an important power-base for the Taliban, who launched an insurgency soon after they were driven from government in late 2001 in a US-led offensive.

Military officials say the insurgency is funded in part by the drugs trade, although the militants also seem to have international backers, including from Arabic countries.

Afghanistan has been trying to destroy poppy crops and laboratories where the opium is processed into heroin, and to round up drug dealers in an internationally backed campaign that has failed to stop the illicit trade.

Two policemen and an army soldier were killed on Saturday in the east while on a mission to destroy poppy fields.

Three Canadian soldiers injured in Afghanistan

December 23, 2007

OTTAWA (AFP) - Three Canadian soldiers were injured in southern Afghanistan Sunday when their vehicle was hit by an explosive device, according to military officials cited on Canadian television.

None of the three was seriously injured, and two have already been discharged from the hospital at the Kandahar air base, Canadian army spokesman Pierre Babinsy said.

According to Radio Canada, the soldiers' armored vehicle was struck by the bomb in Arghanda district during an operation to detect such devices.

Speaking on CTV television, Babinsy characterized the incident as part of Afghan insurgents' "harassment tactics."

"We have the initiative. The insurgents have not been able to impose any significant resistance; therefore, they have to resort these harassment tactics," he said.

Canada has about 2,500 soldiers based in southern Afghanistan, and 73 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in the country since 2002.

British hospital treats all sides in Afghanistan

CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan (AFP) — A petite village woman with dark henna on her hands lies wrapped in a blue sheet at the best hospital around -- a British military facility in southern Afghanistan.

Raheena, who puts her age at about 30, was brought here by helicopter in late October with gunshot wounds to her abdomen and chest.

She is one of the lucky Afghan civilians to benefit from world-class health care, at a place where it is not always clear which side the patients are on in the battle for the soul of the war-torn country.

In Raheena's case, she said through an interpreter, her sons found some bullets in the desert and somehow some of them exploded.

"Our children are uneducated," she said. "They were playing."

Helmand province is Afghanistan's opium heartland, an area from which drugs barons extract huge profits -- some of which fund the Taliban -- while villagers live in poverty with little access to decent health care.

But at the British Army Field Hospital at Camp Bastion, a town-like base built out of the vast Afghan desert, Raheena has had the best medical treatment in Afghanistan, perhaps even better than some people could get in Britain.

In the hive of tents that make up the hospital, there are top-class surgeons and consultants instantly available for any speciality -- besides a normal rotation of anaesthetists and nurses.

There is a pharmacy and a pathology lab with virtually instant results for which one might wait an hour in Britain, said Colonel Ian Goulbourne, a leading consultant surgeon in Britain who commands the hospital.

There are digital X-rays that take five seconds, a CT scanner and special blood warmers. A brand-new operating table came in early November.

"We can do most operations here, life- and limb-saving," the colonel said.

The staple is, of course, "typical war surgery" from gun shots, mines and improvised bombs -- one of the biggest threats to the 60,000 international troops in Afghanistan.

Then there was a case when surgeons had to remove a piece of the cranium of one Afghan child embedded in another after a suicide bombing.

"We see more trauma here in a week than most hospitals in the UK would see in a year," Goulbourne said.

The priority of this medical team of about 100 people is the soldiers -- Afghan and international.

The staff also treat the many civilians caught up in Taliban suicide bombings or military air strikes.

And there are the locals who just arrive, even though they are not strictly eligible and it might not be clear where their allegiances lie in Afghanistan's complicated conflict.

"We are set up for wounds of war, no matter which poor person has them," Goulbourne said.

For the team, he said, it may just be a "21-year-old who has a hole in him that needs fixing." If he turns out to be aligned with anti-Western rebel groups, "Maybe he will realise we are not so bad after all."

The hospital is to move in the coming months to a new facility that includes new accommodation and an extension of the runway to allow larger transport planes to land.

Conditions at the forward operating bases that are holding patches of land from the Taliban are more basic, with less access to power and water and none of Bastion's top-line machines.

In extreme cases, these doctors are required to stabilise severely wounded soldiers so they can be airlifted to Bastion.

In his first weeks to early November, doctor Jason Biswas had only encountered a few coughs and colds, skin infections and sand allergies among the troops at his base in Helmand's volatile southern town Garsmer.

But he was under pressure from the few locals in the largely deserted town to open up to the public, with Garmser's modern clinic now ruined and the nearest health facility 50 kilometres (30 miles) away.

"I am not here to treat locals but if locals come in for life- and limb-saving, I will," Biswas said.

Still, he did meet with an intelligence chief recovering from a suicide bombing a few months earlier and took in a little boy sporting a bright, pus-filled lump on a dirt-encrusted hand.

Bastion has had a stream of children wounded in this conflict, which started soon after the Taliban were removed from government in late 2001 in a US-led invasion.

For the kids there is a playroom with bright toys and sparkly fairy wings that are as popular here as anywhere.

They are invited to take some home when they leave but most often don't, said Tim Wright, one of the welfare officers.

"If they are seen to have Westernised toys or items, the Taliban and locals who are against Western culture could harm the family," he said.

Canadian military donates old C7 rifles to Afghan National Army

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Canadian military has agreed to donate 2,500 surplus C7 rifles to the Afghan National Army along with ammunition and training.

The decision, made quietly last week, is expected to bring the fledgling Afghan force in line with other NATO countries.

Building capacity among the ANA is the key to Canada's exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Last month a senior Afghan commander told The Canadian Press that better weaponry was crucial to the buildup of the ANA.

Lt.-Col. Shirin Shah Kowbandi said the army's old Soviet-era AK-47s frequently misfire.

At the time he said Canadians had promised to provide the ANA with "good weapons" but that they had not yet delivered.

More armored vehicles on way to Afghanistan

Sat, 22/12/2007 - 15:52 — matt Source: Pajhwak Afghan News Agency

NEW YORK, Dec 20 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The US Defense Department said Wednesday that more MRAP (mine-resistant ambush-protected) vehicles are being sent to Afghanistan.

A large number of the 3,100 MRAPs to be procured by the Defense Department at an estimated cost of $2.7 billion are being sent to Afghanistan and Iraq, where its spokesperson Geoff Morrell, said have proven to be true lifesavers for its war fighters.

The additional number of MRAPs is being sent to Afghanistan at the request of the commanders on ground. The commanders in Afghanistan are of the mind that perhaps they would like more in Afghanistan than they have originally requested, but that's something that still needs to be evaluated a little further, he said.

I can tell you that their inclination at this point is that we may want to up the number in Afghanistan. So that's a scenario in which the needs would increase, he said. When asked if the commanders in Afghanistan have made any request, he said: I suppose it's formal. I don't know if there's actual documentation that's associated with it, but it's been articulated to the powers that be.

Morrell said: I think the original request is in the neighborhood of about 500. And I think the desire is to go up to over 600 or so. So it's not a dramatic increase, but there is a desire for more.

According to him, the commanders in Afghanistan clearly believe that there is use for these vehicles in numbers even above and beyond what they originally thought were necessary. So despite whatever limitations there might be in those vehicles, they are proving to be extraordinarily valuable, lifesaving, and the commanders in Afghanistan seem to want more of them, he said.

On the utility of such vehicles, Morrell said: Well, I mean, there are limitations, clearly, with regards to MRAPs, these very heavy vehicles, in terms of their usage in hilly terrain such as you have in Afghanistan.

DM: No deadline for Spain's military presence in Afghanistan

MADRID, Dec. 23 (Xinhua) -- Spanish defence minister said no deadline will be set for the country's military presence in war-torn Afghanistan, a local newspaper reported on Sunday.

"We need to remain the time necessary so the country can manage its own security and development," Jose Antonio Alonso said in an interview with Publico daily.

It is impossible now to set a deadline for western troops to leave Afghanistan as the mission there is complicated, he said.

Spain has more than 700 soldiers deployed in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led international force.

Alonso, however, called on participating countries to think about the mission, citing the worsening situation in Iraq after a U.S.-led force was stationed there.

"In Iraq, what has followed the intervention has destabilized the country and the region," he said, adding that they are trying their best now to stabilize Afghanistan.

Attacks by Taliban militants regained force this year and the country has seen a record number of suicide bomb attacks.

Poppies vs. Power in Afghanistan

By Jim Hoagland The Washington Post Sunday, December 23, 2007; B07

The power to destroy does not carry within it the power to control. A century of failed colonial rule and the American misadventure in Vietnam etched that lesson on global consciousness for a time. It has taken the huge problems that affluent, nuclear-armed nations are encountering in the miserable ruins of Afghanistan and Iraq to drive it home anew.

Call it the paradox of overwhelming but insufficient force. It is surfacing in a struggle in Afghanistan over the wisdom of chemically eradicating that nation's expanding poppy fields. They are the source of (1) the livelihoods of many Afghan peasants, (2) a record flood of heroin into Western markets and (3) funding for the Taliban and other terrorist forces.

William Wood, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul, has pushed so aggressively for aerial spraying to destroy the poppy fields that he has been nicknamed "Chemical Bill" by NATO officers serving there. President Bush posted Wood to Afghanistan after he oversaw a large eradication-by-air project in Colombia, with mixed results.

Wood's priorities have divided U.S. and Afghan policymakers. President Hamid Karzai's government fears both environmental damage and the radicalizing political effect that a spraying program might have on the peasants Karzai is trying to coax away from the Taliban. For the moment, Karzai has gained the upper hand over the State Department's narcotics bureau in this ongoing fight.

The argument over how abrupt and how harsh the anti-drug campaign in Afghanistan should be is in fact part of fundamental disagreements over strategy within NATO. Many alliance officials fear that an approach they term as "with us or against us" and which seems to emphasize firepower over reconciliation is proving to be unsustainable.

I first heard rumblings of this larger debate in London in October. It has now been settled, at least as far as the British are concerned. Speaking to Parliament on Dec. 12, Prime Minister Gordon Brown endorsed Karzai's campaign to get midlevel Taliban operatives to lay down their arms and seek reconciliation. Brown also outlined an expanded development program targeted on the poppy-growing countryside.

The State Department's spray-first, reconcile-later tactics have created divisions even within the Bush administration. Like the British, the Pentagon is wary of abruptly destroying crops in areas where there is little government control and no alternative livelihoods immediately available.

"Spraying is not a long-term strategy," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a group of foreign officials in a private meeting some weeks ago, according to notes taken at the meeting by a foreign diplomat. Gates emphasized that he was stating his view, not settled administration policy.

A long-term strategy involves convincing Afghan farmers that they can find alternatives to growing poppies, Gates continued. For him, the immediate focus has to be on preventing the corrosive effect of drug-financed corruption seeping deeper into the Afghan government -- to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a narco-state that would fund world terrorism in the way petro-states now do.

Spraying in Colombia did not diminish the flow of drugs from that South American country. Gates and other U.S. officials credit President Alvaro Uribe (and Wood's support for him) with "uprooting corruption in government" and keeping it from tipping into the narco-state category. Only in that sense could Colombia be a model for Afghanistan.

The West will begin to resolve the grim and massive problems that the international drug trade creates only when the United States and Europe make justice rather than vengeance the center of drug laws, create effective rehabilitation programs that fill hospitals rather than jails and curb the demand for life- and soul-destroying narcotics at home. Even a "successful" poppy eradication program in Afghanistan would be no more than a bandage on a gaping wound, while inflicting great damage on Karzai's government.

Afghanistan has been treated as a one-dimensional device in the current U.S. presidential political season. Democrats use it to establish that they are not pacifists, citing Afghanistan as a just war that they endorse in contrast to Bush's invasion of Iraq, which they deplore, and move on quickly. Republicans are little better on the stump.

But Afghanistan is an urgent, rapidly evolving crisis that demands the attention and commitment of all candidates for national office. So do America's overly harsh and counterproductive drug laws.

And so does the paucity of support for providing tax dollars for prevention and rehabilitation rather than incarceration of simple users. The American nation could give itself no better present in this season than a thorough rethinking of its war on drugs and of many aspects of its war on terror.

Pakistan's Islamic Parties Struggle for Support

5 Years After Sweep In NW Province, Backers Frustrated

By Griff Witte Washington Post Sunday, December 23, 2007; A24

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In 2002, Ibrar Hussein voted for an Islamic takeover.

Fed up both with Pakistan's military-led government and with the mainstream, secular opposition, Hussein decided that religious leaders should be given a chance to improve living conditions in this sprawling frontier city.

But five years after support from people like Hussein propelled the Islamic parties to power in the provincial government -- and to their strongest-ever showing nationally -- the 36-year-old shopkeeper is rethinking his choice.

"You can see the sanitation system here," Hussein said, pointing with disgust to a ditch in front of his shop where a stream of greenish-brown sludge trickled by. "People were asking for clean water, and they didn't get it. We were very hopeful. But the mullahs did nothing for us."

Hussein's disenchantment is just one reason why, with Pakistan on the eve of fresh parliamentary elections, the religious parties are struggling to appeal to voters.

On the surface, at least, they have many things going for them: Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is deeply unpopular. So, too, are his backers in Washington. The leading opposition politicians have had their opportunities before, and failed. Overall, frustration in Pakistan is running high.

And yet the Islamic parties seem poorly positioned to benefit from that frustration. Beset by bitter internal divisions, they have failed to come up with a unified campaign strategy. Their candidates, meanwhile, have to answer for a dubious record in governing North-West Frontier Province, their traditional base of support. And out on the stump, they are finding that anti-American sentiments are not quite as raw as they once were.

"Last time, it was easy," sighed Abdul Jalil Jan, a 50-year-old cleric who is running to represent Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, in the National Assembly. "This time, it is very hard."

Jan, an affable man with a long, dyed-black beard and rose-tinted glasses, has been on a dawn-till-midnight campaign schedule for weeks now, pausing only to pray five times a day. He walks the manic markets and back-alley slums of Peshawar with his hand outstretched, asking for votes.

A few respond with enthusiasm, proclaiming, "I'm already with you." Others offer a more measured "Inshallah" -- if God wills it.

"Some people," Jan conceded recently as he hit the streets, "are angry."

The anger is showing up in polls: Just 4 percent of Pakistanis said in a recent survey that they intended to support the religious parties in the Jan. 8 elections.

Jan was not even supposed to be running for election this year. His party, Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islami, or JUI, had ceded the seat to its coalition partner, Jamaat-e-Islami, or JI. But because of JI concerns that the vote will be rigged, the party's bespectacled and professorial leader, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, decided there was no point in contesting. Most JI candidates are sitting out the election.

Both parties preach the notion of turning Pakistan into a theocracy. But they have very different ideas about how to get there.

"JUI thinks now is the best time to get a share of power," said Ershad Mahmud, research coordinator at the Institute of Policy Studies, a JI-funded research institute. "But JI doesn't believe in sharing power. JI wants to change the system."

The schism between the two has opened up an opportunity for secular-minded parties that had been trounced by JI and JUI in the northwest in 2002 but are now looking to make a comeback.

Throughout its 60-year history, Pakistan has consistently favored secular parties, despite the nation's origins as a separate homeland for Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. The high-water mark for the Islamic parties, 2002, yielded just 12 percent of the national vote.

But that year they were able to sweep the northwest and seize control of the provincial government.

At the time, they railed against the United States, alcohol, gambling, cable television and coeducation. Their record in government turned out to be more moderate than their slogans suggested.

But rival parties hope to make an issue of the growing Taliban threat in the northwest, which they say has been worsened by indifference -- or even quiet support -- from the religious parties. In particular, rivals cite the Swat Valley, a former tourist hub that has lately become the scene of intense battles between insurgents and Pakistan's army.

Latif Afridi, a cleanshaven lawyer who helps lead a Pashtun-nationalist party, said the religious parties "are directly responsible for the destruction of Swat." He also said they are now vulnerable because they abandoned their promises.

While they ran in 2002 on a vow of clean government and improved citizen services, leaders of religious parties have fallen prey to the same allegations of corruption and lackluster governance that shadow the nation's secular parties.

"They've got a record now, and it's not a great one," said a Western diplomat, who would speak only on condition of anonymity. "When you're out of office, you can call for all sorts of things and be a paragon of virtue. But when you're in office, it's a different story. The glitter has worn off a little bit."

Qibla Ayaz, dean of the Islamic studies program at the University of Peshawar, agreed. "Frankly speaking, this was not a government that people liked very much," said Ayaz, who has ties to JUI.

But he said there are other reasons, too, why the religious parties may suffer setbacks in the upcoming elections. In 2002, he said, the United States had only recently invaded Afghanistan. The memory was fresh, and anxiety about a similar strike against Pakistan was near its peak. The religious parties used that to their advantage.

"Now time has passed, and the intensity of the anger has lowered," he said.

And yet, there is a more ominous explanation for the religious parties' struggles. It's also possible, Ayaz said, that some of those who believe in bringing Islamic law to Pakistan -- particularly the young -- are giving up on the democratic process and on the Islamic parties. They're going underground instead, choosing insurgency instead of politics.

In the slums of Peshawar, where veterans of the war in Afghanistan hobble on peg legs through trash-strewn streets, that theory has some credence.

"The Taliban system is the best system," said Sabiq Shah, a 42-year-old peanut salesman. "It will come to Pakistan. Either through election or revolution, it does not matter which."

Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali contributed to this report.

US recovers at least some faith in Musharraf

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A shaken US government has recovered at least some of its faith in President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, believing he still has a chance to promote democracy and defeat terrorism.

Conceding that Al-Qaeda has turned its focus from Afghanistan to Pakistan, US officials argue that pushing for democracy is the central Asian Muslim nation's best long-term hope of keeping extremists at bay.

To be sure, top officials say, Musharraf has reversed course since he imposed emergency rule November 3, which prompted both a review of US aid to Pakistan and a broader debate on his status as ally in the war on terror.

However, they insist, he must pass further tests on the way to and during parliamentary elections he has set for January 8.

"He has been a good ally in the war on terror... (but) it was not a good decision to impose a state of emergency," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told AFP in an exclusive interview last week on Pakistan and other topics.

"He's lifted the state of emergency. He's taken off the (army) uniform. And now I hope that he is going to oversee the return of Pakistan to a civilian-led democratic state," she said.

"They need to have free and fair elections," Rice said, adding that the test does not begin the day of elections but "when opposition can gather" and all media can air views freely. Rice did not give a direct reply when asked if it was premature to say whether Musharraf had Washington's full confidence.

"We have a good relationship with President Musharraf and our ambassador is in constant contact with him. The key here is that these elections move Pakistan forward on the democratic path. That's the key," Rice stressed.

In testimony to Congress on December 6, Richard Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs, talked of "this long, sometimes troubling and sometimes encouraging chain of events.

"We are encouraged that at the end of this chain will be parliamentary elections ... that we hope will lead to the formation of a civilian-led government under a civilian president for the first time since 1999," he said.

Musharraf was sworn in as a civilian president on November 29, after reluctantly shedding his army uniform. Washington hopes parliamentary elections will result in a prime minister with popular backing.

"This would be a significant step forward for Pakistani democracy," Boucher told a Senate foreign relations subcommittee reviewing US assistance to Pakistan that has amounted to about 10 billion dollars since 2001.

Musharraf, a general who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, became a key US ally after the September 11, 2001 attacks, siding with the United States against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

But Congress last week slapped restrictions on US military aid to Pakistan, creating a rift with George W. Bush's administration on how aggressively to pursue democratic reform there, congressional observers said.

And Freedom House, along with key human rights groups, on Friday published a letter to Rice saying Washington was not doing enough to ensure free and fair elections.

"We remained deeply concerned that you and President Bush have not yet called unequivocally for the restoration of the independent judiciary and the lifting of restrictions on the media," the letter said.

Musharraf has stacked the supreme court with his own choice of judges.

US officials are meanwhile worried about inroads the extremists are making in Pakistani territory.

"Al-Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Friday.

Two weeks ago, Boucher told the Senate subcommittee that "Pakistan is, of course, our indispensable ally in that struggle," which he says is to repel "a minority" of extremists threatening Pakistan, Afghanistan and the wider world.

Bush once called Musharraf an "indispensable" ally.

Harvard University's Hassan Abbas and other analysts have seized on increased references to Pakistan as an ally as a sign Washington was no longer as committed to Musharraf as before, but now say it is warming up to him again.

A US official who asked not to be named told AFP: "The US government sees Pakistan as an ally as well as current President Pervez Musharraf, because a relationship with the nation and the president are not exclusive."

Helping Afghanistan’s Widows

December 22, 2007 Letter
To the Editor: Re “The Mourning After” (Op-Ed, Dec. 18):

Cherie Blair sheds critical light on the wretched conditions faced by widows around the world. She draws particular attention to the 30 million widows living in India, a nation of more than one billion people.

It seems equally critical to highlight the staggering number of widows in Afghanistan, approximately 1.5 million in a population of 20 million.

After decades of conflict, the average age of an Afghan widow is just 35 years, and 94 percent of these women are unable to read and write.

About 90 percent of Afghan widows have children, and the average widow has more than four children.For many of these widows, begging and sending their young children to work in the streets are the only options for survival. Indeed, 65 percent of widows in Kabul see suicide as the only option to escape their despair.

Conditions faced by widows in Afghanistan and elsewhere are often startling to readers in Western industrialized nations. Awareness is the first step toward bringing about change.

Deborah Zalesne

[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.]