In this bulletin:

• Afghan leader in key Rome talks
• Afghan president vows to crush any Taliban offensive
• Pressing Allies, President Warns of Afghan Battle
• Taliban deploy 10,000 fighters for attack: commander
• Pakistan urges Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban
• Fazl wants change in Afghan policy if US does not pull out
• Gates supported Waziristan-style accords
• Repatriation of Afghan refugees awaits PM’s nod
• AFGHANISTAN: Maternal mortality in northeastern Afghanistan among worst in world
• Canada will win support in Afghanistan in face of insurgent warnings: Harper
• Afghan spring will be deadly, Harper warns
• Afghan general says Canadian who shot convoy driver should be punished
• Ignatieff backs legitimate-use proposal for Afghan poppies
• Prisoner abuse alleged in Afghanistan
• Russia’s soldiers hear eerie echo in news of U.S. and Afghanistan
• Bolster the Afghan National Army

Afghan leader in key Rome talks – BBC

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is due to meet Italian PM Romano Prodi to discuss the fight against militant groups and drug traffickers in his country.

Italy has 2,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). But Mr Prodi has resisted calls to increase the number of troops.

A BBC correspondent in Rome says Mr Prodi will reassure Mr Karzai that Italian troops will remain in Afghanistan until 2011.

But our correspondent says he is unlikely to agree at Friday's meeting in Rome to allow Italian soldiers to be moved south to Helmand province to support Nato troops in their fight against the resurgent Taleban.

The governor of southern Helmand province said this week up to 700 insurgents had crossed from Pakistan and were preparing to fight Nato.

The reluctance of Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Turkey to provide more troops in southern Afghanistan has frustrated those nations on the front lines.

Last week the Italian Foreign Minister Massimo d'Alema complained about an open letter that was signed by six Rome-based ambassadors, including the US and Britain, which urged Italy to stay in Afghanistan.

US President George W Bush has called on other Nato members to step up their battle against Afghanistan's Taleban.

There are currently around 33,000 troops from 37 nations in Afghanistan. Their objective is to strengthen the remit of the weak central government and provide the necessary levels of security for reconstruction to take place.

Separately, Afghan and US-led coalition forces arrested two suspected terrorists with ties to suicide attacks and heroin making during an operation late Wednesday near Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, a coalition statement said.

The statement said that at least one suspect is believed to have ties to reclusive Taleban leader Mullah Omar.

Afghan president vows to crush any Taliban offensive

'We will strike them with immense vigour and force'
Reuters -Friday, February 16, 2007

ROME -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai vowed on Friday to strike Taliban insurgents with "immense vigour and force" as a rebel commander said 10,000 fighters had deployed for a spring offensive against foreign troops in the country.

"As the weather becomes warm and leaves turn green, we will unleash bloody attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops," Mullah Abdul Rahim, the Taliban's operational commander for the southern Helmand province, said by satellite phone.

"Our war preparations, especially in southern Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered," he said, speaking to Reuters in Afghanistan from a secret location.

During a visit to Italy, which has sent 1,900 troops to Afghanistan, Karzai said no such offensive could take place without foreign support.

He did not mention any country, but Afghanistan's government says the Taliban fighters are still sponsored by Pakistan, their main backer until the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

"Afghanistan has suffered for the past 30 years because of interference from its neighbours," he told reporters in Rome.

"As for the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban, if there is no support for them from external sources, if they don't have the use of bases and sanctuaries outside Afghanistan, not only will an offensive not be possible, but the activities terrorising the population will not take place," Karzai said.

"I hope [foreign support] is not there. And if it's there, we will strike them with immense vigour and force."

More than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, were killed in fighting in 2006, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

NATO commanders expect Taliban insurgents to step up violence again in coming weeks, and on Thursday U.S. President George W. Bush said he would keep higher troop levels in the country in anticipation of fierce fighting.

Washington has contributed more than half of the roughly 45,000 foreign soldiers deployed in Afghanistan -- of which 33,000 are part of a NATO force.

Canadian military officials, who have long complained NATO did not have enough troops in the south of the country, said on Friday the force levels were now adequate.

"The United States is putting in more forces, Britain is putting in more forces. We have sufficient force structure on the ground in the south at this moment to do the job that we have to do," said General Rick Hillier, chief of Canada's defence staff.

Insurgents have already resumed attacks, mainly in the south, where they have captured a major town and threatened a key hydroelectric dam. An important tactic in any offensive is expected to be suicide bombings, which rose dramatically last year. The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready and another 3,000 in training.A senior Pakistani official said on Friday the insurgents were gaining popular support.

"It is developing into some sort of a nationalist movement, a resistance movement, a sort of liberation war against coalition forces," said Ali Mohammad Jan Orakzai, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan.

Pressing Allies, President Warns of Afghan Battle

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG - WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — President Bush warned on Thursday that he expected “fierce fighting” to flare in Afghanistan this spring, and he pressed NATO allies to provide a bigger and more aggressive force to guard against a resurgence by the Taliban and Al Qaeda that could threaten the fragile Afghan state.

With American and NATO commanders pressing for more troops and experts predicting that further gains by the Taliban could put the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai in danger, Mr. Bush used his presidential platform to lay out what he said was substantial progress in Afghanistan since 2001, but also a continuing threat.

The remarks, to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization here, amounted to an unusually high-profile acknowledgment from Mr. Bush of the precarious state of the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, a country the administration long held up as a foreign policy success story.

The speech renewed criticism from Democrats that had the United States not been tied down in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan would not have turned dire. At the same time, some Republican lawmakers said Mr. Bush’s new strategy would not do enough to tamp down the Afghan drug trade. Outside experts criticized the president for painting too rosy a picture.

The speech was also a striking effort by the White House to focus attention back on Afghanistan at a time when Congress is debating resolutions criticizing Mr. Bush’s strategy in Iraq and the administration is making a case that Iranian forces are supplying Shiite militants in Iraq with roadside bombs.

“Across Afghanistan last year, the number of roadside bomb attacks almost doubled, direct fire attacks on international forces almost tripled, and suicide bombings grew nearly fivefold,” Mr. Bush said. “These escalating attacks were part of a Taliban offensive that made 2006 the most violent year in Afghanistan since the liberation of the country.”

Mr. Bush said the question now was whether to “just kind of let this young democracy wither and fade away” or to step up the fight.

“The snow is going to melt in the Hindu Kush mountains, and when it does we can expect fierce fighting to continue,” Mr. Bush said. “The Taliban and Al Qaeda are preparing to launch new attacks. Our strategy is not to be on the defense, but to go on the offense.”

Mr. Bush noted that he has already extended the tour of a 3,200-soldier American brigade and called on Congress to provide $11.8 billion more to pay for operations in Afghanistan over the next two years.

The president said his administration had completed a review of its Afghan strategy, and would work to increase the size of the Afghan army from 32,000 troops to 70,000 by the end of next year, and to bring in additional allied troops to support the fledgling army.

“When there is a need, when the commanders on the ground say to our respective countries, ‘We need additional help,’ our NATO countries must provide it in order to be successful in the mission,” Mr. Bush said.

He promised to build new roads that would help spur economic development, to battle an increase in the opium trade and to try to forge better ties between Afghanistan and its neighbor, Pakistan.

At the same time, Mr. Bush pledged to work with President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who hide in that country’s remote mountainous regions — a situation he described as “wilder than the Wild West.” And, echoing his lament that 2006 was a difficult and disappointing year for Iraq, the president said the same had been true in Afghanistan.

Some critics of the administration’s handling of Afghanistan said Mr. Bush was still understating the difficulties there.

“We underfinanced, undermanned and under-resourced the war in Afghanistan for the last four years, and now we face a serious threat that the Taliban will succeed in destabilizing the country enough in 2007 to make the Karzai government collapse at some point,” said Bruce Riedel, a scholar at the Saban Center for Middle East Studies at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning research organization in Washington. He called the speech “a long overdue recognition that we need to do a lot more.”

Both Mr. Riedel and Rick Barton, an expert in Afghanistan reconstruction at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Mr. Bush’s new strategy did not do enough to promote security and economic development. Mr. Barton, who published a report in 2005 measuring progress in Afghanistan in that year, is about to publish another, and said the situation has turned measurably worse since his first study.

“We’ve gotten into a situation where things have really turned negative and the average Afghan has lost confidence in both the safety of his country and the ability of the leadership to turn things around,” Mr. Barton said. He said the president “is definitely acknowledging that, but his reality therapy is not as thorough or as complete as I think it needs to be.”

On Capitol Hill, the senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, released a statement criticizing the speech. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen and several other Republicans have been pressing the Bush administration to do more to crack down on Afghanistan’s opium trade; she said the new strategy lacked “practical initiatives to target major drug kingpins and warlords whose trade in opium finances the Taliban’s campaign.”

As Iraq has dominated the American psyche, some lawmakers, most recently the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, have called Afghanistan “the forgotten war.” The Democratic National Committee, responding to Mr. Bush’s speech on Thursday, issued a statement saying, “The Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan.”

But Mr. Bush pointed to what he called “remarkable progress” since the American invasion in 2001: A democratically elected government with a parliament that includes 91 women; more than five million children in school as opposed to 900,000 under the Taliban; and the return of more than 4.6 million refugees.

The president’s speech came after his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, attended his first conference of NATO defense ministers last week in Seville, Spain. At the meeting, Mr. Gates pressed his allied counterparts to fulfill their commitments of troops in time for a spring offensive against the Taliban.

Currently, NATO has about 35,000 troops in Afghanistan, about 13,000 of them American. The United States has 9,000 more troops in Afghanistan operating outside the NATO mission, handling tasks like specialized counterterrorism work and helping to train Afghan forces. Gen. David J. Richards of Britain, the outgoing NATO commander in Afghanistan, said last month that NATO was 4,000 to 5,000 troops short.

But NATO commanders have been constrained by so-called caveats — restrictions imposed by member nations on how their troops may be used and where they may be sent. The Bush administration has been pressing the allies to lift those restrictions, and the president renewed that call on Thursday, saying NATO commanders “must have the flexibility they need to defeat the enemy wherever the enemy may make a stand.”

Taliban deploy 10,000 fighters for attack: commander

By Saeed Ali Achakzai Fri Feb 16 - SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The Taliban have deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of "bloody attacks" against foreign troops in Afghanistan, a rebel commander said on Friday.

More than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, were killed in fighting last year, the most violent year since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. NATO commanders and analysts warn this year could be just as bad or worse.

As the harsh winter snows melt, the insurgents have resumed their attacks, mostly in the south, where they have captured a major town and have threatened a key hydroelectric dam.

Mullah Abdul Rahim, the Taliban's operational commander for southern Helmand province -- the opium center of the world's major producer -- said militants would step up attacks in spring.

"As the weather becomes warm and leaves turn green, we will unleash bloody attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops," Rahim told Reuters by satellite phone from a secret location.

"Our war preparations, especially in southern Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered."

Ater attempts at conventional pitched battles failed last year, the Taliban are expected to return to more conventional guerrilla tactics against government forces and the roughly 45,000 foreign soldiers in the country.

A key tactic is expected to be suicide bombings, which rose dramatically last year, killing more than 200 people, but which still remain much rarer than in Iraq. The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready and another 3,000 in training.

Rahim said the focus of attacks will be southern areas, where the Taliban was born. Afghanistan's government says the militants are still sponsored by Pakistan, their main backer until September 11 attacks on the United States.

Islamabad concedes there is some border infiltration by the militants along the porous and largely lawless frontier, but denies supporting the rebels, who have ethnic roots on both sides of the British-drawn border. Pakistan says the insurgency is Afghanistan's problem.

Pakistan urges Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban

Sat Feb 17, MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pakistan has renewed a call for neighbouring Afghanistan to open dialogue with Taliban insurgents to stem the rise in violence in the war-torn country.

Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, a former general who is now governor of the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, warned the Taliban-led insurgency was already turning into a "liberation war" in Afghanistan.

It is "developing into some kind of nationalist movement, a resistance movement, some sort of liberation war against the coalition forces," he told journalists in the provincial capital of Peshawar.

Aurakzai was speaking ahead of a rare media trip to North Waziristan, an area used by Taliban militants close to the Afghanistan border.

A group of journalists flew Saturday to Miranshah, the main city in North Waziristan where thousands of troops are deployed to stop Taliban cross-border movement, for a briefing by senior army officials.

In September Aurakzai engineered a peace deal with militants in North Waziristan, evoking suspicions from Kabul and the commanders of international forces battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Pakistan has strongly defended the agreement, saying it has helped curtail infiltration across the porous frontier into Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has openly accused Pakistan of fostering an insurgency by the Islamist Taliban, while Islamabad's western allies have shown increasing concern over its pacts with the militants. The conflict killed 4,000 people last year.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates visited Pakistan on Monday and sought the cooperation of President Pervez Musharraf for a planned spring offensive against the Taliban.

Two weeks ago Musharraf urged NATO and coalition forces to do more to tackle the Taliban, saying that Pakistan could not win the fight against militancy on its own.

Pakistani authorities say alienation is increasing among Afghanistan's majority Pashtun community straddling both sides of the border because of lack of representation in the ruling set up and development in the region.

Fazl wants change in Afghan policy if US does not pull out

ISLAMABAD: The United States agreed to support Pakistan’s move to sign North Waziristan-type deals by adopting a “carrot and stick” policy that envisages engaging tribal friends of the Taliban and al-Qaeda for bringing peace and the closing down of hostile activities.

“US Defence Secretary Robert Gates expressed his full agreement with the argument and perception put across by President General Pervez Musharraf on the North Waziristan deal,” said a senior official privy to the Musharraf-Gates meeting held on last Monday.

Surprisingly, Gates in his post-meeting press conference did not mention that he agreed with the president on the North Waziristan deal, which attracted scathing criticism from the western media and certain official levels time and again.

The Gates mission, which lasted less than six hours, was highly significant in the context that the US unfolded its plan of staying in Afghanistan for a longer period. “Mr president, the United States, Nato, all allies and front states like Pakistan should put a joint strategy of eliminating the terrorist threat and the spring offensive of Taliban in the offing,” Gates requested President Musharraf at the meeting.

The defence secretary also offered some funds for beefing up security in the tribal areas of Pakistan with supply of arms and weapons, though he was informed that the US has been delaying all this for more than a year.

President Musharraf is learnt to have taken a “sophisticated diplomatic line” by bringing Gates on board that the gravity of the Taliban activities rests in Afghanistan, particularly in and around Kandahar province.

“The Taliban have no base or operating place in Pakistan, though some friends of the Taliban are helping the fleeing ones in Fata and some Taliban have been identified as coming to refugee camps in Balochistan, though the entire Balochistan has no Taliban presence,” Gates was informed.

Gates was also told that some law-breakers, anti-state elements and terrorists wanted by Pakistan are living in specific buildings in Kabul, London and many other western destinations. “We cooperate in case of any wanted person to be handed over, but the authorities in these countries are turning deaf ears to our requests of handing over such elements to Pakistan,” the president told Gates, though the latter promised to take up this issue with the respective authorities in each country.

Another point Pakistan had forcefully raised at this meeting was that some US officials and western media were found involved in unnecessary “blame game”, adding it would hurt the common objective. “This blame game often demoralised those involved in the war on terror, as they are putting their best efforts yet they are blamed for one or other thing,” said President Musharraf.

Gates talked at length about the US future objectives in Afghanistan, as he admitted that it was Washington’s mistake to withdraw from Afghanistan. “Had that not happened, 9/11 could be avoided,” said Gates.

He also informed the president that an effective strategy on the basis of intelligence reports was evolved to counter spring offensive of the Taliban, as they are gathering on snow-clad mountains for another showdown for gaining ground. “They must be defeated and defeated once for all,” the US leader maintained as quoted by the source.

Gates was informed in clear words that the Taliban have no basis or support from Pakistan, though some friends of the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal belt are giving them help and a breathing space.

Gates is learnt to have given some tips on the presence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership in specific Afghan areas where they are on the run and shifting their hiding places. The issue of fencing Pak-Afghan border also came under discussion, as fleeing terrorists often enter the tribal areas as a spillover effect.

Interestingly, Gates did not talk much about India, Iran or Iraq in an apparent bid to avoid talking US future strategy, though he did mention Pak-India talks and its somewhat progress in a different context.

Gates supported Waziristan-style accords

ISLAMABAD: The United States agreed to support Pakistan’s move to sign North Waziristan-type deals by adopting a “carrot and stick” policy that envisages engaging tribal friends of the Taliban and al-Qaeda for bringing peace and the closing down of hostile activities.

“US Defence Secretary Robert Gates expressed his full agreement with the argument and perception put across by President General Pervez Musharraf on the North Waziristan deal,” said a senior official privy to the Musharraf-Gates meeting held on last Monday.

Surprisingly, Gates in his post-meeting press conference did not mention that he agreed with the president on the North Waziristan deal, which attracted scathing criticism from the western media and certain official levels time and again.

The Gates mission, which lasted less than six hours, was highly significant in the context that the US unfolded its plan of staying in Afghanistan for a longer period. “Mr president, the United States, Nato, all allies and front states like Pakistan should put a joint strategy of eliminating the terrorist threat and the spring offensive of Taliban in the offing,” Gates requested President Musharraf at the meeting.

The defence secretary also offered some funds for beefing up security in the tribal areas of Pakistan with supply of arms and weapons, though he was informed that the US has been delaying all this for more than a year.

President Musharraf is learnt to have taken a “sophisticated diplomatic line” by bringing Gates on board that the gravity of the Taliban activities rests in Afghanistan, particularly in and around Kandahar province.

“The Taliban have no base or operating place in Pakistan, though some friends of the Taliban are helping the fleeing ones in Fata and some Taliban have been identified as coming to refugee camps in Balochistan, though the entire Balochistan has no Taliban presence,” Gates was informed.

Gates was also told that some law-breakers, anti-state elements and terrorists wanted by Pakistan are living in specific buildings in Kabul, London and many other western destinations. “We cooperate in case of any wanted person to be handed over, but the authorities in these countries are turning deaf ears to our requests of handing over such elements to Pakistan,” the president told Gates, though the latter promised to take up this issue with the respective authorities in each country.

Another point Pakistan had forcefully raised at this meeting was that some US officials and western media were found involved in unnecessary “blame game”, adding it would hurt the common objective. “This blame game often demoralised those involved in the war on terror, as they are putting their best efforts yet they are blamed for one or other thing,” said President Musharraf.

Gates talked at length about the US future objectives in Afghanistan, as he admitted that it was Washington’s mistake to withdraw from Afghanistan. “Had that not happened, 9/11 could be avoided,” said Gates.

He also informed the president that an effective strategy on the basis of intelligence reports was evolved to counter spring offensive of the Taliban, as they are gathering on snow-clad mountains for another showdown for gaining ground. “They must be defeated and defeated once for all,” the US leader maintained as quoted by the source.

Gates was informed in clear words that the Taliban have no basis or support from Pakistan, though some friends of the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal belt are giving them help and a breathing space.

Gates is learnt to have given some tips on the presence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership in specific Afghan areas where they are on the run and shifting their hiding places. The issue of fencing Pak-Afghan border also came under discussion, as fleeing terrorists often enter the tribal areas as a spillover effect.

Interestingly, Gates did not talk much about India, Iran or Iraq in an apparent bid to avoid talking US future strategy, though he did mention Pak-India talks and its somewhat progress in a different context.

Repatriation of Afghan refugees awaits PM’s nod

ISLAMABAD: The repatriation of over two million Afghans from refugee camps of Balochistan and NWFP is likely to start next month.

"The repatriation of Afghan refugees from two camps each from Balochistan and NWFP is our top priority," Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said after chairing a meeting of Inter-ministerial Cabinet Committee here Thursday.

The meeting devised a strategy for the repatriation of Afghan refugees, which would be completed within three years by the end of 2009. "We want refugees to return voluntarily and in a dignified manner to take part in reconstruction of their country," Sherpao said.

The minister, however, said the strategy planned by the inter-ministerial meeting would be discussed with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz before implementing it. The meeting decided that in the first phase, the repatriation of refugees would start from one refugee camp each in Balochistan and NWFP.

AFGHANISTAN: Maternal mortality in northeastern Afghanistan among worst in world

KABUL, 16 February (IRIN) - Sangima watched her sister-in-law Mastbegeen die trying to give birth to her seventh child. The baby was born prematurely and there was excessive bleeding during labour. There were no doctors or trained midwives near her village in the northeastern Afghan province of Badakshan to help so her family had to watch her life ebb away; the child did not survive either.

Such is the reality in many remote villages of the Wakhan corridor in Badakshan, where there is little or no access to healthcare. In this rugged area in the Pamir Mountains it takes between four and six days on horse-back or by yak to reach the nearest medical facility, provided bad weather has not blocked the roads.

Abdul Haq, a resident of Big Pamir village, also endured his 29-year-old wife dying during delivery. "We don't have clinics, schools or [government] offices here. Who do we go to with our problems?" he asked.

"When women or children get sick there are two ways [here]. Either Allah makes them well or they die," he said. Haq expects to remain a widower. The area is sparsely populated and there are not enough women to marry.

Ilyas Bai is another widower in the Small Pamir village. His 20-year-old wife died six years ago giving birth to their first child. "We do not have doctors and medicines. We cannot take the patients to other places. When it snows no one can move around," he said.

With 6,500 maternal deaths per every 100,000 live births, Badakshan province has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

"Badakshan province has been identified as the worst anywhere in terms of maternal mortality," said Abdul Momin Jalali of the public health provincial department in Badakshan.

The reason, says Hajera Zia Baharestani, a gynaecologist with the Faizabad maternity hospital, is a combination of a "lack of awareness, lack of access to healthcare clinics and lack of doctors and midwives in the health centres".

According to a recent study by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), only 3.3 percent of the women in the area had given birth in a medical facility. Many of the locals interviewed by IRIN said the women gave birth by the river bank during the summer and in the animal sheds during the winter.

As in many parts of the country, women are expected to do all domestic chores right up to childbirth. Even where there is access to health services, these are often inadequate or overburdened. "Building clinics is not enough," said Baharestani. "What is needed [more] are trained doctors and midwives."

Women in the area are more likely to face problems arising from poor nutrition, lack of dietary supplements and a high fertility rate. The widespread practice of child marriage contributes to the high mortality. More than 40 percent of women in Badakshan are married before the age of 15, according to UNFPA.

While Badakshan fares the worst, the situation throughout Afghanistan remains dismal. UNICEF officials in Kabul say that Afghanistan has the second-highest maternal mortality rates in the world - 1,600 per 100,000 live births - after Sierra Leone.

Facts:

• Every 28 minutes a woman dies in Afghanistan during childbirth.
• 54 percent of Afghan children are born stunted.
• The fertility rate in Afghanistan is the world's second highest at 7.5 children per woman, according to UNDP's 2006 Human Development Report.

Canada will win support in Afghanistan in face of insurgent warnings: Harper

- Saturday, February 17, 2007

MISSISSAUGA, Ont. (CP) - Canada is committed to success in Afghanistan despite renewed threats of violence from the Taliban and al-Qaida, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday.

"Our plan for Afghanistan is to be successful," Harper said after attending the opening of a medical aid distribution centre that will be providing supplies to the troubled Asian country. "We know it will not be easy. We know it will involve casualties, but Canada has not shrunk from these kinds of responsibilities before."

Military brass are already anticipating a renewed spring and summer offensive from the Taliban in Kandahar province, Harper said. The fight won't be easy, but the government is committed to the mission, he added.

"Our soldiers, men and women ... know full well when they go over there that not all of them will return," Harper said. "That's one of the real risks in this country." Since 2002, 44 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in Afghanistan.

The medical aid offered by Health Partners International of Canada comes at "a critical time" and will complement the efforts of Canadian soldiers, diplomats and aid workers, Harper said earlier in his speech.

The charitable group, which receives some federal funding, is assembling a large shipment of medical supplies destined for Afghanistan. "Our soldiers made great progress last year in securing large sections of Kandahar province," Harper said.

"This year, to consolidate those gains, we'll need to move ahead with reconstruction, humanitarian assistance and development in those areas. Providing basic health services will be crucial to our success."

Canada is involved in more than 100 reconstruction and humanitarian projects in Kandahar province alone, Harper said, but those projects are still "at risk" from the Taliban.

"Our challenge is to secure these areas and keep them secure," he said. "Ultimately, this is the path to success in all of Afghanistan."

Harper's comments came in the wake of a purported al-Qaida video posted Friday on the Internet claiming the people of Afghanistan support the insurgents.

However, NATO authorities have questioned the authenticity of the video, which depicts what is supposed to be an attack on a U.S.-Afghan military position in southern Afghanistan.

Officers with NATO's International Security Assistance Force say they have checked their records and found no engagements that would match the time frame given in the video.

Harper also seemed to shrug off U.S. President George W. Bush's recent failure to mention Canada's role in the deadly southern part of Afghanistan, which has angered opposition parties.

"It reiterates, obviously, the call of Canada," Harper said. "The United States and our allies have expressed great appreciation of Canada's contribution."

On Thursday, Bush called for an all-out allied effort to defeat the Taliban, singling out for praise several countries that recently pledged extra forces or equipment.

But he failed to mention Canada or the Netherlands, which both have big commitments in Afghanistan and are fighting in the most dangerous areas.

Afghan spring will be deadly, Harper warns

PM resolute after Hillier decries military's 'decade of darkness' under Liberal government - GLORIA GALLOWAY and KAREN HOWLETT

OTTAWA, MISSISSAUGA -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper cautioned yesterday that a spring offensive threatened by the Taliban in Afghanistan will be both dangerous and deadly but Canadian forces will not shy away from the fight.

"We certainly are aware that those are the plans of the Taliban," Mr. Harper said of the offensive predicted by North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders and analysts. "Our soldiers, men and women who go over there, know full well when they go over there that not all of them will return."

Mr. Harper told reporters he has every expectation that the Taliban will launch a renewed attack during the spring and summer. "We know it will not be easy," he said. "We know it will involve casualties, but Canada has not shrunk from these kinds of responsibilities before."

Taliban commanders warned as recently as yesterday that they have deployed 10,000 fighters for a spring offensive of "bloody attacks" against foreign troops in Afghanistan. As the harsh winter snows melt, the insurgents have resumed their efforts, mostly in the south, where they have captured a major town and have threatened a key hydroelectric dam.

Mullah Abdul Rahim, the Taliban's operational commander for southern Helmand province -- the opium centre of the world's major producer -- said militants would step up attacks in spring.

"As the weather becomes warm and leaves turn green, we will unleash bloody attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops," Mr. Rahim told the Reuters news agency by satellite phone from a secret location.

"Our war preparations, especially in southern Afghanistan and in Helmand province, are complete and for this our 10,000 fighters are ready to take up arms the moment they are ordered."

The Taliban also say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready and another 3,000 in training. Some experts have suggested that the anticipated renewal of the Taliban onslaught is mere bluster. Paul Manson, who was chief of defence staff from 1986 to 1989, wrote in The Globe and Mail yesterday that the Afghan insurgents are in trouble on almost every front and their threats ring hollow.

Canadian troops, who are stationed in Kandahar, next door to Helmand, are in the middle of a twice-annual rotation. Those from Petawawa, north of Ottawa, are returning home and being replaced by those based at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.

Should casualties rise dramatically, the situation in Afghanistan could prove to be a political minefield for the Conservatives, who have steadfastly supported extending the mission until 2009 despite criticism from all three opposition parties that there is too much focus on combat and not enough on development.

On the other hand, active engagement between the Taliban and Canadian forces may highlight the need for the types of equipment that the Conservatives ordered last year when they agreed to pour more than $17-billion into refurbishing the military.

That kind of expenditure has been much appreciated by the head of Canada's armed forces, who was accused of playing partisan politics when he said yesterday that the military went through a "decade of darkness" as a result of funding cuts by the former Liberal government.

"Over the past one to two years, we have begun to fully realize the immense, the negative impact of the defence expenditure reductions on 1994 and the lasting, most negative legacy that they brought into effect that has to be put right," General Rick Hillier told the annual meeting of the Conference of Defence Associations.

The Liberal government of Jean Chrétien cut money to the forces as it wrestled with a multibillion-dollar deficit.

In the process, he said, Canada's military was deprived of the money it needed for training, postings, equipment, fleets, maintenance, sea days, ammunition use and a host of other things at the same time it was being asked to increase the number of missions it was performing around the world.

"Those actions, dollar deprived, have now led to some deep wounds in the department in the Canadian Forces over this past, what I would call, a decade of darkness."

Gen. Hillier, the popular and outspoken Chief of Defence Staff, has used those words on at least four occasions dating to May of 2003, when the Liberals were still in office. But, with whispers of a spring election running through the corridors of Ottawa, the Liberals were quick to take offence.

Denis Coderre, the Liberal defence critic, said he was disturbed by the thrust of the general's comments. He said the Liberal government of prime minister Paul Martin planned to reinvest $13-billion in the military.

"We also have to understand that, when we came to power in 1993, we inherited a deficit of $40-billion and we had also to take care of some of the priorities including the quality of life of the people," Mr. Coderre said.

"So talking today about 10 years of darkness, I don't think it's appropriate; I think it's highly political and I am very disappointed at it."

Afghan general says Canadian who shot convoy driver should be punished

Thursday, February 15, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) — A Canadian soldier who opened fire on an Afghan National Army convoy wounding a military driver should face some kind of discipline in his own country, a senior Afghan commander said Thursday.

Lt.-Gen. Rahmatullah Raoufi said he understood the mistakes that led up to the incident, which has increased strain between the allies since it happened east of Kandahar on Monday.

The 23-year-old Afghan officer driving the lead vehicle missed the warning sign demanding that he stop, the general said. The Afghan vehicle was peppered with a blast of 7.62-millimetre machine-gun fire from the turret of a Canadian RG-31 Nyala vehicle.

“The incident was a mistake,” Raoufi, the commander of all Afghan forces in the south, said in an interview with The Canadian Press through a translator. “(But) the Canadian who shot our man must be punished according to Canadian army law.” The Canadians have apologized three times, he said.

There was some confusion about the wounds the man received. The adjutant at the Afghan army hospital where the soldier was first treated said Monday the victim was hit in the arm and leg and suffered a series of cuts from flying glass. But the Canadian army, who gave him further treatment at the Kandahar Airfield hospital, described the injuries on Tuesday as less serious, saying doctors only operated on a leg wound.

The injured officer, Lt. Abdul Hadi, was reported in stable condition Thursday and seemed well enough to be taken outside for some late morning sun. Raoufi said he was pleased and grateful for the medical treatment Hadi was receiving at the NATO base.

A series of unintentional civilian shootings over the last year has increased tension between Canadian troops and the Afghan population, who have taken to complaining openly about the violence.

Just after sunrise Monday, a convoy of Afghan army pickup trucks — the primary means of transportation for this emerging military force — approached a security cordon around a disabled Canadian Nyala.

The line of vehicles was waved through an initial checkpoint by a Canadian light armoured vehicle crew but came under fire when it approached the inner defensive perimeter.

Raoufi said Hadi, who as an officer was not a regular driver, mistook some hand signals as he tried to pass around the cordon. A spokesman for the Canadian Forces would not comment on where the investigation stands.

“We’re in the middle of an ongoing investigation and hopefully that investigation will bring to light what happened,” said Lt. (Navy) John Nethercott. “At this point, I’m not allowed to talk about anything to do with the investigation. There is a process that has to be followed.”

Nethercott did confirm the Canadian soldier involved in the shooting remains on duty and was new to the theatre and convoy duty. At the moment, soldiers from the 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment are being replaced with fresh troops from Atlantic Canada.

Meanwhile, a village shura — or meeting — in neighbouring Helmand province, involving NATO and Afghan army forces and village elders in Haji Amin Kalay, was hit with extremist mortar fire. One woman was killed and her child suffered shrapnel wounds.

The village is located west of the town of Garmsir. NATO and Afghan troops immediately started to evacuate the village and returned fire, said an alliance statement.

The child and his father were evacuated to the nearest NATO medical facility for treatment. The child’s condition was not immediately known.

“Once again, this demonstrates the complete disregard the enemy has for lives of loca

Ignatieff backs legitimate-use proposal for Afghan poppies

CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen - Friday, February 16, 2007

OTTAWA - Canada should spearhead an international effort to license opium production in Afghanistan for peaceful pharmaceutical uses to combat the country's chronic economic dependence on the illegal narcotic, deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Thursday.

Ignatieff endorsed the proposal of the controversial London-based think-tank, the Senlis Council, which has called for a pilot project to study the licensing of the Afghan opium crop - the backbone of the world's illicit heroin trade and the cornerstone of Afghanistan's impoverished economy.

The council, which has issued a series of scathing reports on the world's failures in the war-torn country, has argued processing facilities should be set up in Afghanistan to convert the opium from Afghan poppies into codeine and morphine to meet a shortage of pain medicines in the developing world.

Essentially legalizing Afghanistan's No. 1 criminal activity would revitalize the country's economy, the council says. Ignatieff said he has spoken to Senlis representatives at length about this proposal, which they unveiled last summer, and he is convinced of its merits.

"I've stress tested their proposal. I don't buy anything until I knock it around. But I believe these guys. The Senlis Council has demonstrated there is a market for such medicine," Ignatieff said in a keynote speech at the annual gathering of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute.

Ignatieff made the pitch to a military audience of hundreds attending Canada's largest security and military symposium. Ignatieff's address was also a partisan attack on what he said are the Conservative government's failings in Afghanistan.

"Canada can lead by providing political leadership ... on a new strategy to provide technical assistance and infrastructure funding to help make the Senlis pilot project succeed," Ignatieff said. "Because of all we've sacrificed, we have the right to speak."

Ignatieff said the Liberals are immensely proud of Canada's military contribution to the mission in Kandahar, which they initiated almost two years ago, but accused the current Conservative government of botching the mission by shortchanging development.

Ignatieff also agreed with the Senlis Council's contention that a poppy eradication program in southern Afghanistan is bound to fail, and will turn the country's peasant farmers against the foreign soldiers on its soil.

Poppy eradication teams came under attack in the southern Afghan province of Helmand again this week. The Afghan government and the United Nations drug agency have dismissed the Senlis proposal as unworkable. Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of the defence staff, has also criticized the Senlis Council as lacking credibility.

Prisoner abuse alleged in Afghanistan

KABUL, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- Human Rights Watch said Friday the U.S. government has failed to investigate allegations of prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The rights group said it supports the conviction and sentencing of David Passaro, a CIA contractor who was sentenced Tuesday to 8 1/2 years in prison for the June 2003 beating death of Abdul Wali at a border post but the case marks a rare exception to the United States' reluctance to investigate and prosecute detainee abuse cases.

"No one should be above the law in Afghanistan," said Sam Zarifi, Human Rights Watch's Asia research director. "The United States and its allies have promised to reform the rule of law and the justice system in Afghanistan but until the U.S. is willing to provide accountability for its own forces, these pledges are not credible."

The group said there have been numerous cases of abuse and killings perpetrated by U.S. troops and CIA operatives, including beatings, shooting deaths and deaths resulting from mistreatment.

Russia’s soldiers hear eerie echo in news of U.S. and Afghanistan

The State - February 16, 2007 By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD - mcClatchy Newspapers

MOSCOW — Eighteen years after the Soviet army pulled out of Afghanistan in a humiliating defeat that hastened the collapse of an empire, many soldiers who fought there believe they’re seeing history repeat itself.

The United States — then the force behind the Afghan resistance — now appears trapped in a similar downward spiral in Iraq, besieged by a collection of forces not unlike those it trained and equipped to cripple the Soviets two decades ago.

For many, the similarities go beyond the symbolic. Retired Capt. Vladimir Vshivtsev was blinded by an improvised roadside bomb 20 years ago in Afghanistan. He shudders every time he hears about a U.S. soldier killed or wounded by a similar device in Iraq or Afghanistan, he said.

“They’re fighting the same war again,” he said. “Sure, the political stuff is different, but the military result is going to be the same: failure.”

The political reasons for the two invasions were as different as the governments that launched them. The United States went to war in Iraq ostensibly to disarm a dictator of suspected weapons of mass destruction, then set its goal as establishing democracy. Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union mounted its invasion in 1979 ostensibly to save communism in a place where it had never taken root.

But Russian soldiers, officers and experts point to many parallels. The Soviets also arrived to flowers and smiles, fought with a similar sized force (by the mid-1980s) of about 120,000 men and lost about 1,300 dead each year. They arrived a superpower, full of hubris, and departed humbled. Their political leaders never really understood the war.

The Soviet invasion also resonates today because of its unintended consequences. The United States and Saudi Arabia funded the Afghan resistance as means to curb Soviet expansionism, and volunteer fighters flocked to the scene from around the Islamic world. One volunteer, Osama bin Laden, stayed to found al Qaida and declare his own jihad, this time against the United States and Saudi Arabia.

For the Soviets, Afghanistan was a total disaster. It remained a dirty secret for over a decade and still isn’t mentioned in polite conversation. The first Russian feature movie dealing with the experience came out only last year.

Alexander Konovalov, head of the Institute of Strategic Assessments, a Moscow-based military research center, said the Soviets were trying to spread socialism, the United States, democracy. But both arrived in losing situations, facing popular uprisings that grew with support from the Muslim world. And both confronted people used to fighting foreign occupiers. Afghanistan had never been conquered, and Iraq was an unnatural state, a remnant of colonial England.

For former Soviet soldiers, the U.S. war in Afghanistan evokes memories of the geography and the battles, Konovalov said, but most agree that Iraq is to the United States what Afghanistan was to the Soviet Union.

Retired Gen. Victor Yermakov headed the Soviet 40th army’s efforts around Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in the mid-1980s. He can’t decide whether to shake his head or scream when he hears talk about how to improve the situation in Iraq and how to control Afghanistan, he said.

“All the future holds for American forces there are dead soldiers, and they will die for nothing,” he said. “There is nothing positive to be accomplished in Iraq. My advice is simple: Leave. Leave now.”

He cited the U.S. offensives in Tora Bora as an example. “I was very impressed by the Americans,” he said. “Gaining control of Tora Bora is a great accomplishment. I should know. I did it three times.”

He shook his head ruefully, then added: “Unfortunately, the second I turned my back on the place, I needed to conquer it again. It is the same now. It will never change.” Still, he said, “every nation believes it is more clever than those who came before.”

Alexander Golts, who covered the Soviet-Afghan war as a journalist, said the war was clearly a failure from early on, but Soviet leadership insisted on portraying it first as a minor operation and later as a struggle that ultimately would bring peace and prosperity.

In villages throughout the Soviet Union at the time, “mystery coffins” would arrive, containing soldiers who kept dying in a reportedly peaceful area. Soviet leaders tried to direct attention away from the coffins. Golts said Soviet leadership prohibited reporting on the war.

“A general stopped me one day to say, ‘I read that our soldiers are doing nothing here but building schools and planting trees, so please explain, how do my boys keep dying?’” Golts said.

Capt. Vshivtsev recalled a conference he attended in Prague a few years back, where he bumped into a Czech Republic soldier who’d recently returned from Afghanistan, where he’d fought as part of the NATO coalition force. As they swapped war stories, he said he soon forgot they were talking about different wars and different armies. They’d walked the same ground, fought the same enemy, faced the same threats.

Today, when Vshivtsev hears President Bush say progress is being made and success is possible, it reminds him of Soviet statements from that time.

“The longer the conflict goes on, the more established become the methods for recruiting new fighters, the routes for smuggling weapons,” Vshivtsev said. “The enemy will only get better and better over time, their weapons more and more advanced. By now, the chance for victory — which was never good — has certainly passed.”

Bolster the Afghan National Army

Haroun Mir - Friday, February 16, 2007 - IHT - KABUL - Media coverage of the fighting in Afghanistan fuels perceptions in the West that NATO forces are facing an eventual debacle, but in reality the situation on the ground is not quite so grim. Indeed, the war against the Taliban is winnable, provided NATO reconsiders its current military strategy and grooms the Afghan National Army to take over the fight.

Compared to the past three decades of continuous conflicts, Afghans are better off today. Most people here recognize that fact. They broadly support the presence of NATO and do not view the American and European troops as an occupying force.

Still, the country's future remains uncertain, partly because of the failure of the United States and its allies to set realistic priorities for Afghanistan's long-term stability following the ouster of its Taliban rulers in 2001.

One of the gravest mistakes made at that time was the decision to build only a small and relatively weak Afghan National Army. Because of their presumed loyalty to warlords rather than the new Karzai government, many veteran fighters with extensive experience in battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda were ousted from their units.

Now, more than five years after the Taliban's initial defeat, the Karzai government and NATO are feeling the effects of that mistake. The Afghan National Army, which should have been able to stand up to the Taliban, numbers only between 30,000 and 35,000 men. Many are young and inexperienced, compared to the Taliban veterans. Their units are not equipped with heavy arms; they are forced to rely on NATO for air and artillery support.

Moreover, the United States, Britain and their NATO allies have overlooked the main source for the long-lasting problems in Afghanistan — they have underestimated foreign support for the insurgents. The Taliban and their allies enjoy three advantages that help sustain their guerrilla operations: Their Pakistan bases can't be targeted by coalition forces, they have access to logistical and armament supplies, and they have nearly unlimited recruitment sources in the madrassas of Pakistan.

It is not difficult to turn a religious student into a religious fighter, capable of using light weapons. It takes only a few weeks and does not require special instructors. Handling improvised explosive devices and preparing for suicide attacks, however, does require extensive training. In Pakistan, Al Qaeda runs secret workshops to instruct more advanced recruits in how to use explosives with remote controls.

Since it is difficult to attack the Taliban leadership or their training camps and terrorist workshops inside Pakistan, NATO aims at targeting low- level guerrillas in Afghanistan, which has only a limited impact on the guerrillas' long-term fighting capacity.

The Taliban and their foreign allies understand that the West cannot commit its forces indefinitely because Western public support will only diminish. The Taliban know that once NATO forces leave the country, they can easily overwhelm the Afghan Army, if it remains in its current, weakened state. Because of this, many Afghans who support the Kabul government in principle are afraid to do so openly, knowing that they might have to switch allegiance at a moment's notice in order to survive.

The Soviet invasion showed that religiously motivated guerrillas will not succumb to military pressure alone. Many observers argue that, in order to win, NATO needs to increase pressure on the military government of Pakistan — one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid — to disrupt support for the Taliban. But along with this policy, the allies must empower the Afghan National Army to take up the burden of defending Afghanistan. Using only a fraction of NATO's multibillion dollar budget for its forces in Afghanistan, the alliance could staff the ANA with experienced fighters.

Taliban guerrillas would lose some of their motivation if they were to face an Afghan Army rather than NATO forces. Moreover, fighters sitting on the ideological fence might be convinced to join the Afghan Army if they thought it more likely to win — and if the pay were better. Afghan soldiers earn about $70 a month, less than of what Taliban fighters get. Compare that to the $4,000 it costs NATO daily to keep one soldier in Afghanistan.

[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.]