In this bulletin:

• Captured Taliban says leader in Pakistan: Afghan intelligence
• Pakistan rejects claim Mullah Omar in Quetta
• U.S. officials: Taliban attacks have surged as Pakistan turns blind eye
• Afghanistan, Pakistan, NATO to set up joint intelligence center
• Gates appears inclined to support more troops for Afghanistan
• Blair signals UK will send more troops to Afghanistan
• Hillary Clinton wants troops in Afghanistan
• Afghan governor escapes assassination attempt
• Afghan FM Rules Out Using Afghanistan as Base for US Attack on Iran
• Spanta to attend NATO ministerial meeting
• European Union asks Pakistan not to fence-mine border with Afghanistan
• Proposed Afghan "contact group" lacks support, says NATO chief
• US will not dictate Pak-Afghan border settlement
• Pakistan aids NATO forces in Afghanistan
• Thousands attend Taliban fighter's funeral in Pakistan village
• EDITORIAL: Seeking credibility
• Travel problems for Foreign Minister in Afghanistan
• A Surge in Afghanistan Too?
• Afghan, foreign firms invest 4.5 Bln USD in post-Taliban Afghanistan
• Turning Afghan poppies into plowshares

This screen grab taken off Afghan TV shows alleged Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif. Afghanistan's intelligence authority released a video in which the captured Taliban spokesman confesses to his role in the movement and says its fugitive leader is hiding in Pakistan under the protection of that country's spy agency.(AFP/HO

Captured Taliban says leader in Pakistan: Afghan intelligence

Kabul (AFP) - Afghanistan's intelligence authority released a video in which a captured Taliban spokesman confesses to his role in the movement and says its fugitive leader is hiding in Pakistan under the protection of that country's spy agency.

Intelligence agents arrested Abul Haq Haqiq, who was known to the media as Doctor Mohammad Hanif, in the eastern province of Nangarhar late Monday. The last Taliban spokesman to be arrested was captured in late 2005.

The 26-year-old confirmed that he was picked up as he entered Afghanistan from Pakistan and said in the video distributed to the media that he had come to the country on a "mission," which was not specified.

Asked by an unseen interrogator about the whereabouts of the Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the calm-looking and soft-spoken man says: "He is under the protection of the ISI in Quetta."

ISI is Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and Quetta is a city in southwestern Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan. Afghan officials have alleged some of the Taliban's leadership may be based there.

Haqiq, who says he was well treated after his arrest, also says the regular suicide bombings in Afghanistan are "carried out by Taliban, financed and equipped by the ISI of Pakistan."

Suicide attackers are being trained in madrassas, or religious schools, in the Bajaur district, a tribally administered district near the border, he says. "The former ISI chief general, Hamid Gul, is financing all madrassas in Bajaur.

"Suicide attackers come to Afghanistan from Bajaur, carry out suicide attacks and kill people," he says, describing such bombings -- of which the Taliban has been accused of carrying out about 140 last year -- as "evil" and forbidden in Islam.

The Afghan intelligence agency, called the National Directorate of Security (NDS), told reporters in Kabul that Hanif was being held in the eastern city of Jalalabad, near where he was arrested.

Hanif regularly contacted the international and Afghan media from secret locations about Taliban engagements in eastern Afghanistan.

He was one of the most high-profile Taliban spokesmen, along with Yousuf Ahmadi, who usually speaks about insurgency-related issues in southern Afghanistan. Ahmadi told AFP Wednesday that the capture of Hanif was insignificant.

"He is just one spokesman and not a very important member of the Taliban," he said, adding the capture meant nothing to Taliban activities. He said a man named Zabihullah Mujahed had already been appointed the new Taliban spokesman for eastern and northern Afghanistan.

The NDS did not comment on claims by the governor of Nangarhar province that he had been captured in a house where packets of the deadly bacteria anthrax were found. Governor Gul Agha Sherzai did not say how it had been proven the powder was anthrax.

Haqiq was arrested late Monday with two other men in a house in Nangarhar's Rodat district, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the border with Pakistan, Sherzai told reporters.

Sherzai said documents found in the house included leaflets calling for an uprising against the government and others alleging well-known Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah was linked to the killing last month of another key commander.

US-led forces killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, a key associate of Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar, in an airstrike in the southern province of Helmand on December 19.

Pakistan rejects claim Mullah Omar in Quetta

Islamabad (AFP) - Pakistan denied its intelligence service was sheltering Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the city of Quetta near the Afghan border. "It is an absurd and sheer lie," top military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP.

The claim was made Wednesday by a Taliban spokesman captured in Afghanistan where the fundamentalist movement has been waging a deadly insurgency after being ousted from power by US-led forces in 2001.

The claims by Abul Haq Haqiq were made in a video released Wednesday by Afghanistan's intelligence authority after his arrest in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border.

"The (Taliban) statement appears to have been given under pressure," said Sultan who is also Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's press secretary.

Sultan urged war-ravaged Afghanistan to stop blaming Pakistan for its troubles and sought evidence from Kabul to back up the Taliban spokesman's claims. "We would like to have the evidence so that we can go after these people," Sultan said.

"Unfortunately by pointing fingers at others the Afghan authorities are simply facing away from the reality. They should try to put their own house in order instead of blaming others," Sultan said.

"There is a mess in their country that they have to resolve, it cannot be solved by pointing accusing fingers at others."

The Taliban spokesman, who says he was well treated after his arrest, also said the regular suicide bombings in Afghanistan were "carried out by Taliban, financed and equipped by the ISI of Pakistan."

ISI is Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Afghan officials have also in the past claimed that some of the Taliban's leadership may be based in the southwestern city of Quetta.

A Taliban insurgency is raging in Afghanistan which frequently accuses Pakistan of turning a blind eye to militant training camps and support over the porous border. Islamabad, an ally in the US-war on terror, denies the charge, saying the roots of the problem lie inside Afghanistan.

U.S. officials: Taliban attacks have surged as Pakistan turns blind eye

Published: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 - Canadian Press: ROBERT BURNS

KABUL (AP) - Taliban fighters seeking to regain power in Afghanistan are taking advantage of a recent peace deal with the Pakistan government to dramatically increase attacks on U.S. and allied forces in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan, several American military officials said Tuesday.

Lt.-Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in an interview that Taliban attacks surged by 200 per cent in December, and a U.S. military intelligence officer said that since the peace deal went into effect Sept. 5, the number of attacks in the border area has grown by 300 per cent.

Eikenberry did not explicitly criticize the peace deal with tribal leaders in the border area, and he said he is confident that U.S. and NATO forces are going to dominate on the decisive battlefields.

But he predicted "it's going to be a violent spring," and other officials said it has become commonplace for the Pakistani military at border outposts to turn a blind eye to infiltration of Taliban fighters.

Col. Thomas Collins, chief spokesmen for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the Pakistan peace deal has backfired. "The enemy is taking advantage of that agreement to launch attacks into Afghanistan," Collins said.

In another development, Afghanistan's defence minister, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, was quoted as saying that visiting U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates told him the United States would not desert its Afghan mission.

"We will not leave you alone," Azimi quoted Gates as saying during a meeting with Gen. Abdul Raheem Wardak. "We will be with you . . . until you can stand on your feet," Gates was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials in Islamabad said Pakistan's army destroyed suspected al-Qaida hideouts in an air strike near the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing 10 people.

They said the raid was in South Waziristan, close to North Waziristan, where the government in September signed a controversial peace deal with tribal elders to halt military operations against militants.

Eikenberry spoke to a group of U.S. reporters travelling with Gates, who had closed-door briefings from military officials on the resurgence of the Taliban in recent months. Gates was accompanied by marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Gates has publicly expressed concern that a resurgent Taliban could put areas of Afghanistan in danger of reverting to a haven for terrorists. U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, and although gains have been made to stabilize the country, the Taliban has recently made inroads.

Other U.S. military officers who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity painted an even bleaker picture of the result of the September peace deal, which the Pakistan government portrayed as a vehicle for assisting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials recently gained first-hand evidence that Pakistani forces at a border control point opposite Afghanistan's Khowst province turned a blind eye to infiltration of a substantial number of Taliban fighters. U.S. troops at a base known as Forward Operating Base Tillman urged the Pakistanis to block the infiltrating fighters but nothing was done, one U.S. military intelligence officer said.

The officer disclosed for the first time full-year statistics on insurgent attacks in Afghanstian. Suicide attacks in 2006 totalled 139, up from 27 in 2005, and the number of attacks with roadside bombs more than doubled, from 783 in 2005 to 1,677 last year. The number of what the military calls "direct attacks," meaning attacks by insurgents using small arms, grenades and other weapons, surged from 1,558 in 2005 to 4,542 last year.

Eikenberry said it appears the Taliban will focus its spring offensive in areas of southern Afghanistan, where most of Canada's 2,500 troops are based, and that despite the Taliban's resurgence, "the enemy is not strong militarily."

There are nearly 24,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, NATO to set up joint intelligence center

KABUL: In a bid to share intelligence information and coordinate operations against insurgents, the armed forces of Afghanistan, Pakistan and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have agreed to set up a joint intelligence operation center, spokesman of the military alliance said Wednesday.

"The Joint Intelligence Operation Center will be set up in the next we hope 10 days," Richard Nugee told newsmen.

The center, which enable the trio to share intelligence report, would be established in ISAF`s Headquarters, he said. There would be six Pakistani officers, six Afghan officers and six ISAF officers at the center, he said.

Agreement in this regard had been reached at the recent tripartite talks held among high ranking officials of Afghan army, Pakistan and ISAF in Pakistan recently.

"By sharing intelligence information, we would bring the two militaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan much close together," the spokesman noted.

Gates appears inclined to support more troops for Afghanistan

The Associated Press - Thursday, January 18, 2007

MANAMA, Bahrain - Defense Secretary Robert Gates sees a rationale for sending more troops to Afghanistan, but the question is how much more can be contributed at a time when President George W. Bush is ramping up U.S. firepower in Iraq and the Gulf.

Gates said that he wants to ensure that gains made against extremism in Afghanistan since the U.S. invaded to topple the Taliban regime in October 2001 are not lost as the Taliban re-emerges.

"I think it is important that we not let this success here in Afghanistan slip away from us and that we keep the initiative," he told reporters at Bagram Air Base, the main U.S. military air hub in Afghanistan. "There's no reason to sit back and let the Taliban regroup."

Gates said that commanders in Afghanistan had recommended a troop increase, and he suggested he was inclined to urge Bush to go ahead with it. He mentioned no numbers during the talk with reporters on Wednesday, but a senior official traveling with Gates said it would not be anything close to the 21,500 extra troops Bush is sending to Iraq.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it likely it would be one or two battalions — no more than a couple of thousand troops.

On Wednesday evening, Gates flew to Saudi Arabia, where he was driven to a royal hunting lodge outside of Riyadh, the capital, and met for more than two hours with King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan, who is the kingdom's defense minister, and other top officials.

Gates reassured the Saudis that Bush intends to stick to his strategy of building a democracy in Iraq, where Iranian Shiite influence is a major concern for the Saudis, according to a senior official who attended the talks and briefed reporters later after the U.S. delegation finished its day by flying to Bahrain.

Gates also made a pitch for more Saudi help in Iraq, including economic assistance, but he made no specific requests, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They also discussed Iran; Gates noted the announced decision to send a second aircraft carrier battle group to the Gulf region and to deploy Patriot missiles in the area, but they did not discuss other military plans, the official said.

Gates has said several times publicly in recent weeks that he is concerned about backsliding in Afghanistan.

As described by U.S. military officers in Afghanistan, the Taliban has been regrouping, at least to the extent that it was able last year to launch vastly more attacks on U.S. and allied forces than in 2005. It has been particularly resurgent in the south and the east, along the Pakistan border.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said new troop commitments would further strain the U.S. military in the short run. But if done as part of a successful strategy against the Taliban, it might hasten the day when the U.S. military can withdraw its combat forces altogether, he said.

A U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan would come on top of Bush's decision to send another 21,500 soldiers and Marines to Iraq over the coming four months. The two wars, each now longer than U.S. involvement in World War II, have stretched American land forces so thin that the Army and Marines are requesting tens of billions more in funding and have persuaded Bush to ask Congress to increase their size.

Before Gates arrived in Afghanistan for talks Tuesday with U.S. and NATO commanders — as well as Afghan government officials — he said he wanted to hear their views on what should be done to arrest the resurgence of the Taliban and provide the security needed to reconstruct the country.

"If the people who are leading the struggle out here believe that there is a need for some additional help to sustain the success that we've had, I'm going to be very sympathetic to that kind of a request," he said.

Asked directly by a reporter whether such a request had been made, Gates said yes but offered no details. The number of extra troops, he said, "depends on different scenarios," which now will be examined.

He said the Joint Chiefs — the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force — will discuss this with Pace, and then Gates will decide what to recommend to Bush. It was not clear how long this might take.

"I think we have the forces" needed to expand the military commitments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates said. "What we have to look at is what the impact is if we were to add more forces here. Ultimately, obviously, it would be the president's decision."

There now are about 24,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The top commander here, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, said in an interview on Tuesday that that was the highest total since the war began.

Eikenberry said he has asked the Pentagon to order a battalion of the 10th Mountain Division to remain in Afghanistan until the end of the year rather than leave this spring. The unit already is scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year — an example of how thinly stretched the military has become.

Blair signals UK will send more troops to Afghanistan

LONDON: The prospect of more British troops being sent to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan was signalled by Tony Blair the other day.

The move followed an exclusive report in The Herald in which it was revealed that during a private meeting in No 10 on Sunday, Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, asked the Prime Minister for additional British forces to keep up the military momentum against the insurgents.

While Downing St had previously refused to comment on what it termed "private discussions", Mr Blair, in response to the reports about the request, said: "In respect of Afghanistan, it depends on what our military are saying to us. We take the decisions basically about the resource . . . but in terms of what is necessary to do the job in terms of force generation we very much take advice from the people on the ground, so it depends on what they come forward to us with."

He added at his monthly press conference: "It is very important that the Taliban are defeated. One of the reasons why these fights have been going on in past two days is precisely to degrade Taliban capability and are forces are doing a very good job."

Military sources have suggested that the US request could result in as many as 1000 extra British troops being sent to Afghanistan. If it happens, then it will put further pressure on a stretched - some say overstretched - army, which is already struggling to cope with a rolling deployment of 5800 soldiers to Afghanistan and 7100 to Iraq every six months.

The Americans have 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and are about to take command of all Nato forces, including the British, next month. The Pentagon is keen to reduce its commitment there to create reserves for Iraq.

UK generals expect a renewed Taliban spring offensive in Helmand province from the end of next month and would welcome more troops and helicopters.

Hillary Clinton wants troops in Afghanistan
CanWest News Service - Thursday, January 18, 2007

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, seeking to burnish her national security credentials ahead of an expected campaign for the White House in 2008, called Wednesday for a surge in American troops into Afghanistan to aid embattled Canadian and NATO forces.

The Bush administration has its priorities"upside down" in the war on terror, Clinton said, and the U.S. risks losing Afghanistan to the Taliban unless it boosts its military commitment.

In a letter to U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, the second-term Democratic senator urged the immediate deployment of two new infantry battalions -- roughly 2,000 soldiers -- to southern Afghanistan, where Canadian forces are preparing for a Taliban offensive in the spring.

"The president's team is pursuing a failed strategy in Iraq as it edges closer to collapse. Afghanistan needs more of our effort and attention," Clinton said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

"It would be a great irony if the administration's emphasis on escalating our presence in Iraq caused us to ignore the threats facing Afghanistan, where those responsible for planning the Sept. 11 attacks are still our enemies."

Clinton's appeal for a renewed military focus on Afghanistan came in tandem with a call for a legislated cap on the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, currently about 132,000. It followed a trip last week to Kabul and Baghdad, where she met with U.S. military commanders, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

U.S. President George W. Bush's plan to add 21,500 new American soldiers to Iraq "cannot be successful" unless Iraqi leaders first demonstrate the will to crack down on sectarian militias in the country, Clinton said.

Clinton said she was not reassured following her meetings with Maliki and will introduce legislation to cut off funding to the Iraqi government unless it moves quickly to assume responsibility for security.

"They're very resistant to being told that we don't have an open-ended commitment, and that's exactly what I want them to know," she said.

"The reality is that people respond to pressure and to threats. We have not made any credible threats."

The military proposals outlined by Clinton were her most detailed statements on U.S. war policy to date and appeared aimed at answering her critics on both the political left and right.

A spokesman for Bush denounced as dangerous Clinton's idea to limit the number of troops in Iraq.

"It binds the hands of the commander-in-chief and also the generals, and frankly, also, the troops on the ground in terms of responding to situations and contingencies that may occur there," said White House press secretary Tony Snow. "To tie one's hand in a time of war is a pretty extreme move."

Clinton is expected to announce within the month whether she will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

The former first lady's likely entrance into the race would set up a historic clash between herself and fellow Democratic Senator Barack Obama -- marking the first time a woman and an African-American competed as leading candidates for their party's nomination.

Obama's announcement that he had formed a presidential exploratory committee dominated the American media earlier this week, but Clinton answered Wednesday with a U.S. media blitz of her own.

After cancelling her Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday to avoid competing for attention with Obama, Clinton drew more than 200 reporters and photographers to a rescheduled press availability on Wednesday.

She also appeared earlier on every major TV network morning show to tout her views on Afghanistan and Iraq, coyly dodging questions about the timing of her own presidential campaign announcement.

Afghan governor escapes assassination attempt

Kabul (AFP) - An Afghan district governor survived an assassination attempt blamed on Taliban insurgents while a suicide attacker blew himself up near an army patrol, killing a soldier.

The suicide attacker detonated explosives strapped to his body as he walked up to Afghan soldiers on foot patrol in the capital of the southeastern province of Paktika, provincial governor Mohammad Akram Khepelwak told AFP.

"One soldier was martyred and three other soldiers and two civilians were wounded in the suicide blast," he said.

Afghan interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary blamed the blast on the "enemies of peace", a term often used by Afghan officials to refer to Taliban fighters.

In the eastern province of Nangarhar, meanwhile, a bomb ripped through a vehicle carrying a district chief, police said, then gunmen opened fire just after the blast.

Mohammad Ali, the chief of Kama district, and his driver were wounded, provincial police spokesman Ghafor Khan told AFP.

He blamed the attack on Taliban fighters, who last year attempted many other such attacks on government officials, and a man claiming to be a Taliban commander told police by telephone that the group was responsible.

In adjoining Kunar province, a man fixing a bomb near an Indian roadworks company was killed when the device exploded early, a governor said.

Police said flesh and limbs littered the site where the man had been trying to attach the bomb to a pipe that ran underneath a road near the Indian company's compound on a highway that the group is building.

"It seem that there might have been two bombers because of the pieces of flesh and parts of the body scattered in the area but it is difficult to confirm," Kunar police chief Abdul Jalal Jalal told AFP.

And in the southern province of Helmand, police reported that three Taliban fighters, including a local commander, were killed in a shootout with Afghan troops on Wednesday.

The Afghan force did not suffer any casualties, provincial police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullkhail said.

The Taliban were forced from power in a US-led invasion of Afghanistan weeks after the September 11 attacks, blamed on the then-regime's allies in the Al-Qaeda terror network.

They soon launched an insurgency that is backed by other Islamist groups including Al-Qaeda.

While the scale of the daily violence has eased over winter, attacks have continued unabated with some military commanders anxious about what the spring will bring. The violence claimed 4,000 lives last year, according to officials, with most of the dead militants.

Afghan FM Rules Out Using Afghanistan as Base for US Attack on Iran

18/01/2007 - By Omar Abdal-Razzaq

Cairo, Asharq Al-Awsat - Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar-Spanta has completely ruled out the possibility of the United States using Afghanistan as a base for launching a military operation against Iran.

Speaking in exclusive Asharq al-Awsat the Afghan Foreign Minister said "any reports on this issue are false; there are historic friendly relations between Afghanistan and Iran given that it is an Islamic state which is contributing to the reconstruction of Afghanistan." He denied any differences between his country and Iran.

Dadfar-Spanta directly blamed Pakistan of interfering in his country's internal affairs and supporting terrorists. He said "the sources of terrorism are inside Pakistan. There are many places called schools which are being used as centers for training terrorist elements. These should be destroyed and their use from the other side of the border should end."

"We are certain that the support which the terrorists are receiving from Pakistan comes from within the Pakistani state. There are circles within the Pakistani Government organizing the interference in Afghani affairs. We have documents to prove this." Dadfar-Spanta added.

The Foreign Minister expressed Kabul's hope that Pakistan would cooperate in confronting terrorist activities. "We hope that some circles will stop using terrorists and terrorist groups as a tool for their foreign policy."

The Afghan minister did not specify the number of Al-Qaeda members in the Afghan territories; however, he said that "they are an international network whose members come from several countries, such as Uzbekistan, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and some North African states." The minister accused terrorist groups of demolishing 159 schools in his country, mainly girls' schools. He pointed out that the policy to fight terrorism is not only military, but also educational and economic. He said: "If we succeed in accomplishing this within a year or two, we would have made an achievement in our fight against terrorism."

On the other hand, the Afghan foreign minister pointed out the international cooperation efforts to achieve stability in Afghanistan. He praised Saudi Arabia's positive role in reconstructing and bringing about stability in Afghanistan, and noted its contribution to the construction of the 600-kilometer Kandahar-Harat strategic road.

Spanta to attend NATO ministerial meeting

KABUL, Jan 18 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Foreign Minister Dr Rangin Dadfar Spanta will attend the meeting of NATO foreign ministers convened to deliberate on terrorism and drugs in Afghanistan.

Speaking at a news conference here on Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Sultan Ahmad Bahin said it was the first time an Afghan foreign minister was participating in such a high-level meeting of NATO at Brussels, headquarters of the 26-member alliance.

The ministerial summit is scheduled to deliberate on the international strategy on war against terrorism and drugs in Afghanistan as well as search ways and means to strengthen the basic institutions in this war-devastated country.

Bahin said the ministers would also take up NATO's military and civil assistance for Afghanistan. The summit will be held on January 26 and the Afghan FM will also call on NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on the sidelines of the meeting.

Before his arrival in Brussels, Belgium, Spanta will also visit Germany and meet his German counterpart to discuss bilateral ties between their respective countries.

Bahin said foreign ministers of India and Russia will be visiting Kabul next week to assure their cooperation in the reconstruction of the country.

European Union asks Pakistan not to fence-mine border with Afghanistan

Islamabad, Jan 18 (IANS) The European Union (EU) has joined the international concern at Pakistan's plans to mine and fence a part of its 2500 km volatile border with Pakistan to check illegal movement of arms, men and drugs.

Joining the UN and Canada, EU's envoy and German Ambassador Gunter Mulack urged that Pakistan explore 'other means' before mining its border with Afghanistan.

'We think that landmines are dangerous and Afghanistan is still suffering from those laid down by the Soviets,' Mulack told a press conference organised in connection with Germany having assumed the presidency of the European Union.

However, he said that Pakistan was a sovereign country and had the right to make its own decision.

The EU's stand comes even as President Pervez Musharraf announced last Monday that Canada had made a specific alternative proposal to the fencing-mining one and that he had already asked his officials to examine it.

Kabul has vehemently objected to Pakistan's move. A brief visit by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz only added to forcefulness and diplomatic drive that includes writing out letters to all UN members.

'We want to help Afghanistan stabilise and EU is one of the biggest donors to that country,' Mulack said, adding that peace in Afghanistan was in Pakistan's interest. 'We are not Pakistan's security partners, but will be looking into the problems,' he added.

Although a part of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, Germany, along with France, is reportedly keen to withdraw from the military operations. Mulack acknowledged Pakistan's efforts in fighting terrorism, but said that Taliban activity was continuing in Afghanistan and posed a problem.

Proposed Afghan "contact group" lacks support, says NATO chief

A proposed "contact group" to coordinate international operations in Afghanistan is unlikely to take shape for lack of support among allies, NATO Secretary- General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer indicated on Wednesday.

"My sense is that it is clear that the international community wants more contact, but not necessarily a new group," Scheffer told reporters at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The proposal, pushed by French President Jacques Chirac in the run-up to the NATO Riga Summit last November, is to create an international body consisting of Afghanistan's neighbors, troop contributing countries and other international organizations, similar to the six-country group on UN-administered Kosovo.

The French government insisted NATO's role in Afghanistan should be purely military, and wanted another framework for better international cooperation on Afghan reconstruction efforts. But the proposal was not welcome by the United States.

There are about 32,000 NATO troops, including 1,100 French military personnel, now deployed in Afghanistan, who took over responsibility for security from the United States last year.

Scheffer suggested that although he would like to continue the negotiation, some other existing forums like the Group of Eight ( G8) could be used as a substitute, at least on an ad hoc basis.

The Secretary-General also pressed Pakistan to do more in border control and prevent Taliban and al Qaida insurgents from using Pakistan as basis to make cross-border strikes. Source: Xinhua

US will not dictate Pak-Afghan border settlement

LAHORE: Nicholas Burns, the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, said Afghanistan and Pakistan should resolve their border issues mutually and his country would not dictate a settlement.

In an interview with Voice of America, Burns said the US wanted strong and healthy ties between Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and wanted trade among the countries to flourish.

Commenting on the US State Department’s fresh advisory asking US citizens not to travel to Pakistan, he said it was the US government’s duty to provide fresh information to its people before their travel to Pakistan. Burns rejected the impression that the US wanted to harm Pakistan’s tourism industry said his country would not discriminate against Pakistan. He said the US wanted democracy “in most parts of the world” but Pakistan was facing serious problems in restoring true democracy. “Pakistanis will have to make their own history,” he said. daily times monitor

Pakistan aids NATO forces in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Pakistani forces engaged insurgents firing from Pakistan on NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan, NATO officials said in a statement Wednesday.

NATO troops reportedly coordinated their retaliation with Pakistani forces, which subsequently cleared the area of insurgents, said an International Security Assistance Force spokesman.

"Today was an excellent example of ISAF maintaining ever closer cooperation with the Pakistan military at all levels," said Lt. Col. Angela Billings, ISAF spokeswoman. "This is a positive step forward in ensuring the safety of the Afghan-Pakistan border."

Thousands attend Taliban fighter's funeral in Pakistan village

The Associated Press - Thursday, January 18, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Thousands of mourners, including Islamic militants with assault rifles, attended a funeral Thursday in a Pakistan tribal village for a Taliban fighter allegedly killed in a NATO raid in neighboring Afghanistan, witnesses said.

About 4,000 people attended the funeral in the North Waziristan region's Eidak village, said a local tribesman who attended the service. He declined to give his name, citing concerns for his own safety.

Mourners included hundreds of militants with long hair and beards, who arrived in dozens of pickup trucks with dark, tinted windows. Militants used mosque loudspeakers early in the morning in Eidak and North Waziristan's main town, Miran Shah, to announce Abdul Salam's funeral.

They claimed he was killed in Afghanistan a week ago, when NATO said its forces killed scores of insurgents who had crossed from Pakistan.

Salam's body was among the remains of seven alleged militants that arrived from Afghanistan and were taken to their home villages for burial late Wednesday, an intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the secretive nature of his job.

A cleric leading the funeral prayers in Eidak declared Salam a "martyr." "May God accept the sacrifices we give for Islam," said the cleric, Maulvi Salimullah, according to the local tribesman who attended the gathering and described it.

Salimullah also condemned a Pakistan army raid on alleged militant compounds in neighboring South Waziristan that killed at least eight people Tuesday. The raid has angered tribesmen, who say the victims were not al-Qaida terrorists but locals or Afghan laborers.

Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S.-led war on terror, is under international pressure to deter cross-border attacks by Taliban and al-Qaida militants from its tribal areas into Afghanistan.

EDITORIAL: Seeking credibility (Daily Times Pakistan)

Just as the Washington bureaucracy was joining its voice with the NATO commanders in Afghanistan to protest Pakistan’s ‘double-faced’ approach to the problem of cross-border Taliban raids from Pakistani territory, the Pakistan army has attacked and killed some more ‘terrorists’ based in South Waziristan. The army spokesman says they were ‘militants’ training in some local compounds, which means they were Al Qaeda and Taliban elements along with their local Waziristani facilitators. Predictably, however, the tribal member of parliament from the region, Maulana Mirajuddin, says they were simply ‘locals’ working in the compounds with the help of Afghan ‘powindas’, or migratory labourers. Unfortunately, such is politics in Pakistan that everyone who is anyone in the opposition will say that the government is lying while those who support the government will feel unsure because the government mysteriously fights shy of supplying sufficient proof whenever the army goes on the offensive and ‘takes out’ foreign militants. It has happened twice in Bajaur, and one can safely declare that more people disbelieve the official story than believe it. In fact the opposition made such a big show of its anger that it made its MPA resign from Bajaur in protest. Thus, despite the fact that there is no earthly reason why the government should lie and deliberately kill its own people needlessly, most people will be inclined to believe that the eight ‘foreigners’ (read the Taliban) were all ‘innocent’ local people.

Why is Pakistan able to show the NATO commanders evidence that it has ‘taken out’ foreign miscreants and terrorists holed out in Pakistani territory but is unable to provide the same evidence to the people of Pakistan? When Ahmad Shah Massoud used to catch Pakistani-intelligence officers in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban, he used to put them on TV and then show close-ups of their documents. India, too, has been ready to show Pakistani ID cards carried by the ‘freedom-fighters’ it killed in Kashmir. But Pakistan, which is said to have killed a lot of foreign terrorists in Waziristan, has not been able to consistently give credible proof that they were indeed ‘foreigners’.

According to ‘intelligence reports’ put out by the army spokesman, there were “25-30 foreign terrorists and local facilitators occupying a complex of five compounds in the area and three out of the five compounds have been destroyed, killing most of the terrorists present in those compounds”. But the fact that Pakistani helicopters raided the distant thickly forested village on the border of North and South Waziristan when US Defence Secretary Robert Gates had arrived in Kabul for talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai is not lost on anyone. Although non-partisan sources in the area say the camps belonged to the local mercenary pro-Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and only eight people were killed, no one in Pakistan is going to swallow the story.

With good timing, President General Pervez Musharraf told a gathering of corps commanders in Rawalpindi that Pakistan would “destroy any hideout used by militants that it finds on its territory” and that “we shall not allow any illegal cross border activity or any terrorist to take refuge in our area, and if it happens it shall be dealt with by direct military action”. While he said this, however, thousands of people gathered in Tank in Waziristan and protested the killing of ‘innocent people’ by the Pakistan army.

The fact, however, is that there are many telltale signs pointing to the presence of Al Qaeda and its supporters in Waziristan. The entire world knows that after the 2001 invasion the Taliban fled across the Durand Line and took refuge in this tribal area. The locals denied it because they were either on the take or simply scared. Steadily all the elders opposed to giving shelter to Al Qaeda were shot dead by these dangerous elements. The most convincing proof came after Bajaur One and Bajaur Two. Since the first Bajaur raid was carried out by American drones, Al Qaeda took its revenge inside Afghanistan near Spin Boldak by killing many troops of the Afghan army. And since Bajaur Two was claimed by the Pakistan army, the revenge was taken in Dargai in Pakistan through a suicide-bomber. How is Pakistan’s credibility to be upheld at home and abroad? Why is the government not willing to make a public show of the evidence it has of foreigners killed in the raid?

The fact of the matter is that the US-Pakistan disagreement over what really goes on this side of the Durand Line has reached a dangerous level. The Americans are now increasingly inclined to accuse Pakistan of complicity in the trouble that Afghanistan is having with the Taliban. Indeed, from the latest statements in Islamabad one can infer that a ‘hot pursuit’ type of pre-emptive strike from NATO forces could actually take place. That would create more problems for Pakistan than it would solve for America.

On the American side, there is a need to be careful while relying on Afghan reports of foul play by Pakistan. There is a lot of easy twisting of facts going on in the region. This should be apparent to the NATO command. When it claims that 50 Taliban have been killed in a showdown, the Taliban retort that not a single man from their hordes has been killed. It all depends on how many people believe you.

Travel problems for Foreign Minister in Afghanistan

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere has encountered problems on his visit to Afghanistan. Wednesday evening his plane had to make an emergency landing at Kandahar.

The plane was on its way back to Kabul after a visit to a military base in the south of Afghanistan, when the plane lost cabin pressure, and the pilots decided to make an emergency landing at Kandahar.

The landing was made without problems, and a surprised Stoere, who had been sleeping, said he was sure he was in Kabul, when the plane landed.

The loss of pressure made it impossible for the plane to go high enough to cross a mountain range before reaching Kabul.

On Tuesday morning the Kandahar Air Port was closed due to a heavy snowfall, and it became evident that the Norwegian Foreign Minister would not reach a scheduled meeting with ISAF leaders in Kabul.

However, the plane was later able to take off for Kabul, where Stoere would meet with President Hamid Karzai, Foreign Minister Dr Rangeen Dadfar Spanta and other central ministers of the Afghan government.

A Surge in Afghanistan Too?

By Sally B. Donnelly- Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan has asked for "significant increases" in resources for what some critics call America's "invisible" war. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has recommended to Gates that the U.S. send more troops and more money to Afghanistan. He has proposed almost tripling the spending on assistance to the Afghan Security Forces and reconstruction projects to some $8 billion.

While the request needs the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before it can be presented to President Bush, Secretary of State Robert Gates — on his first trip to Afghanistan — appears receptive to the idea.

Eikenberry, who is coming to the end of his second tour in the country but will leave Afghanistan later this month, argues that 2007 is critical. The Taliban has returned with a vengeance, Pakistan has become a safe haven for insurgent attacks, NATO has failed to send as many troops as initially pledged, and indications are that the enemy is gearing up for a new offensive. "It is going to be a violent spring," Eikenberry told a small group of reporters in Kabul on Tuesday.

The violence in Afghanistan has reached the worst levels since the U.S. attack against the Taliban in 2001-2002. In a briefing for several reporters in Kabul earlier this week, a U.S. military intelligence officer disclosed grim statistics on insurgent attacks in Afghanistan: 139 suicide attacks in 2006, up from 27 in 2005, and 1677 roadside bombs last year, compared with 783 in 2005. So-called direct attacks (small arms, grenades and other weapons) tripled from 1,558 in 2005 to 4,542 last year. In one area on the Afghan-Pakistan border, the focus of a peace pact signed last September, attacks from safe havens inside Pakistan have jumped some 300%. "The enemy is taking advantage of that agreement to launch attacks into Afghanistan," said Army Colonel Tom Collins, Eikenberry's spokesman.

Many military officers have complained that Washington has failed to keep its focus on the fight in Afghanistan. But that attitude may be changing. "We cannot let the success in Afghanistan slip away," Gates told reporters on Wednesday, adding that he would be "very sympathetic" if more forces were recommended.

Pentagon officials would not discuss exactly how many troops Eikenberry wants to add to the 18,000 US troops already in Afghanistan, but estimates are that it could be several thousand. "There will be no decrease in U.S. forces and they could go higher," said Eikenberry. When asked by a reporter today if the U.S. military was too strained by Iraq and other commitments to send more troops to Afghanistan, Gen Peter Pace acknowledged that "any kind of deployment is going to add a short term strain." But he said that a short-term increase in troops could actually mean less strain on the force over the longer run.

The call for more troops is coming at a time when NATO appears unable or unwilling to take the fight to the enemy. It has failed to send some 3,000 troops it has pledged, and even some of those soldiers operate under rules that preclude the toughest combat. NATO commanders also appear to be minimizing the worsening situation in Afghanistan. A briefing by a British general in the NATO chain told reporters that a recent "spike" in violence had come and gone. Other military sources attribute the slackening to the cold of Afghan winter.

Dems struggle to shift focus to Afghanistan from Iraq
By Roxana Tiron- The Hill

In addition to addressing the White House’s Iraq “surge” plan, Democrats could be facing another quandary: redirecting attention to the war in Afghanistan and the search for al Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden.

Several top Democrats, including 2008 presidential hopefuls Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said a troop increase should occur in Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

Clinton, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Rep. John McHugh (R-N.Y.) returned from a congressional delegation to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and are expected to talk about the trip today.

But congressional plans have yet to emerge for keeping a firm grip on Afghanistan, which is dealing with rampant poppy production and is at risk of sliding back into the hands of Taliban insurgents.

Several lawmakers fear that the Iraq plan will overshadow any efforts related to Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is the biggest concern, but I see no concerted effort” to deal with the issues there, Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said. “Iraq is the dominant thing and we have to deal with that.”

Two years ago, Lautenberg sent a letter to Bush asking him why the United States had not captured bin Laden after then-CIA Director Porter Goss said he had an “excellent idea” where the 9/11 plotter was hiding.

“I would like to continue that pursuit,” Lautenberg recently said of the military’s efforts to track down al Qaeda’s leader. “But the picture is so clouded by the discussion on Iraq that you can’t really be sure that it is going to be successful.”

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan whose troops are fighting alongside NATO coalition forces have called for reinforcements against resurgent Taliban fighters. Military officials said the number of attacks against NATO forces tripled year-over-year in 2006, to 5,000.

It has been reported that at least one Army battalion fighting in Afghanistan could be deployed within weeks to fight in Iraq as part of the president’s “surge” plan.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, said the Pentagon could send more troops into Afghanistan despite the strain the military faces in Iraq.

Although he said the U.S. focus should shift to Afghanistan, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to refrain from calling for additional troops there because he wants to ensure any effort is multinational.

“Democrats feel very strongly that the war in Afghanistan is much more directly related to the war on terror,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “I am sad that they are taking another [battalion] out.”

Schumer last year passed an amendment to the 2007 defense appropriations bill, allocating $700 million for narcotics eradication in Afghanistan.

Schumer was not alone in his victory. Two other Democrats, Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) were successful in reactivating a CIA unit dedicated to finding bin Laden in an amendment to the same Senate bill that provided $200 million for the mission.

“We know from the 9/11 Commission Iraq was not involved in the attacks of 9/11. It was ... al Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden,” Conrad said at the time. “That is where we have to focus.” Conrad is now the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

“Everyone would agree that the effort in Iraq has diverted efforts from the operations in Afghanistan,” said Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Armed Services Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee. “We are engaged in two simultaneous wars and we do not have the resources that we would have had on Sept. 12, 2001.”

Taylor, however, commended the U.S. military’s efforts to find bin Laden under less-than-conducive circumstances. 

“Seeing how big the place is, steep valleys and extremes of hot and cold — I can empathize [with] how difficult and dangerous it is for our troops,” said Taylor, who has been to Afghanistan several times. “Osama bin Laden needs to be caught and brought to justice.”

He added that the committees with jurisdiction over the military need to allocate resources for the fight in Afghanistan, but also take into consideration how difficult the terrain is in Afghanistan, complicating the military’s mission.

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the armed services panel, is planning to hold hearings about the situation in Afghanistan this month. Skelton has been concerned that Afghanistan has been ignored and has called the conflict there “the forgotten war.”

The key to finding bin Laden may not lie with spending more money on technology. Rather, dedicating Army Special Forces (known as white special operations forces) to missions wherein soldiers spend time in Afghan villages, establishing long-term relationships and building trust, could lead to information on the al Qaeda leader, according to André Hollis, a former Pentagon official with knowledge of special operations.

Unfortunately, Pentagon deployment policy (12 to 18 months) limits soldiers’ ability to foster relationships with locals, added Hollis, who is now a vice president at Van Scoyoc Associates.

Afghanistan will be the topic of Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee hearings, according to Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), a senior member of the armed services panel. He said, however, that the military has not asked for additional resources to find Osama bin Laden.

“They have not made any requests; they thought they had sufficient funds,” he said.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said his panel will look at the problems in Afghanistan, including the Taliban resurgence and the growing poppy-seed production.

“Afghanistan is a little bit of a problem,” he said in a short interview. Murtha plans to meet with Marine Gen. Jim Jones, the retiring NATO supreme allied commander in Europe, to talk about the problems facing Afghanistan.

Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), who will chair the House Armed Services investigations and oversight subcommittee, said he has solicited ideas from all members of his panel on how to go forward in Afghanistan. “There has been a discussion but we have to agree on a plan to do that,” he said.

“It is clear that al Qaeda does not have its headquarters in Iraq; it’s in Afghanistan and at the border with Pakistan,” he added. “The war in Iraq has taken [focus] away from finding Osama.”

Afghan, foreign firms invest 4.5 Bln USD in post-Taliban Afghanistan

Afghan and foreign companies have invested 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in the post-Taliban Afghanistan over the past five years, an official of the government-backed Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) said Thursday.

"Some 6,500 Afghan and foreign companies have registered with AISA for investment over the past five years and so far they have invested 4.5 billion U.S. dollars with major parts of these in housing construction," Omar Zakhilwal, president of the AISA, told newsmen at a press conference.

He added that 3 billion U.S. dollars of the amount had been invested in housing construction and booming housing buildings is a proof to it. Considerable investment had also taken place in the field of communication as the field has so far attracted some 600 million U. S. dollars, he said.

In the past, Afghans had gone to Pakistan to make phone calls to their relatives and friends abroad, but since the fall of Taliban regime and induction of new administration five years ago, many Afghans, particularly in the cities, own cellular phones.

So far three companies, including Afghan Wireless Communication Company (AWCC), ROSHAN and Areeba, have been providing cellular phone services while the Dubai-based Etisalat would soon launch its service here.

The post-war Afghanistan, he added, had already reached the point of self-sufficient in producing soft drink and mineral water and would try to achieve the goal at all fields through establishing industrial parks and attracting investments.

In 2007, the AISA would try to attract 1.5 billion U.S. dollars through private sector to the country this year, said Zakhilwal.

However, he was concerned about militants' activities and corruption in the government department.

In 2006, in addition to Taliban-linked militancy which claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people, more some 20 traders have been kidnapped for ransom in the war-ravaged Afghanistan. Source: Xinhua

Turning Afghan poppies into plowshares

By ANNE APPLEBAUM – Slate.com- January 17, 2007

Once, the British Empire fought a war for the right to sell opium in China. In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against the colonized that in the end helped neither one.

Now, NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan. Allegedly, the goals this time around are different. According to the British government, Afghanistan’s illicit drug trade poses the “gravest threat to the long-term security, development and effective governance of Afghanistan,” particularly since the Taliban is believed to be the biggest beneficiary of drug sales. Convinced that this time they are doing the morally right thing, Western governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars bulldozing poppy fields, building up counternarcotics squads and financing alternative crops in Afghanistan. Chemical spraying may begin as early as this spring. But in retrospect, might history not judge this war to be every bit as destructive and wasteful as the original Opium Wars?

Of course it isn’t fashionable right now to argue for any legal form of opiate cultivation. But look at the evidence. At the moment, Afghanistan’s opium exports account for somewhere between one-third and two-thirds of the country’s gross domestic product, depending on whose statistics you believe. The biggest producers are in the southern provinces where the Taliban is at its strongest, and no wonder: Every time a poppy field is destroyed, a poor person becomes poorer — and more likely to support the Taliban against the Western forces who wrecked his crops. Yet little changes: The amount of land dedicated to poppy production grew last year by more than 60 percent.

So central is the problem that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has called opium a “cancer” worse than terrorism — and crop-spraying may make things worse. Not only will it cause environmental and health damage, it will feel to the local population like a military attack, as Western planes drop poisonous chemicals from the sky.

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is that it exists at all — because it doesn’t have to. To see what I mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug trade also threatened the country’s political and economic stability.

Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy cultivation. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy eradication could “bring down the government.” Just like Afghanistan, Turkey — this was the era of “Midnight Express” — was identified as the main source of the heroin sold in the West. Just like in Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.

As a result, in 1974 the Turks, with American and U.N. support, tried a different tactic. They began licensing poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing morphine, codeine and other legal opiates. Legal factories were built to replace the illegal ones. Farmers necessarily know this from the latest White House drug strategy report — which devotes several pages to Afghanistan but doesn’t mention Turkey — but the U.S. government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring U.S. drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal documents euphemistically refer to as “narcotic raw materials” from the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.

Why not add Afghanistan to this list? The only good arguments against doing so — as opposed to the silly, politically correct “just say no” arguments — are technical: that the same weak or nonexistent bureaucracy will be no better at licensing poppy fields than it has been at destroying them, or that some of the raw material will still fall into the hands of the drug cartels. Yet some of these issues can be resolved, by building processing factories at the local level and working within local power structures. And even if the program succeeds in stopping only half of the drug trade, a huge chunk of Afghanistan’s economy will still emerge from the gray market; the power of the drug barons will be reduced; and, most important, Western money will have been visibly spent helping Afghan farmers survive, instead of destroying their livelihoods. The director of the Senlis Council, a group that studies the drug problem in Afghanistan, told me he reckons that the best way to “ensure more Western soldiers get killed” is to expand poppy eradication.

Besides, things really could get worse. It isn’t so hard to imagine, two or three years down the line, yet another emergency presidential speech, calling for a “surge” of troops to southern Afghanistan — where impoverished villagers, having turned against the West, are joining the Taliban in droves. Before we get there, maybe it’s worth letting some legal poppies bloom.

(Applebaum is a Washington Post columnist.)

[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.]