In this bulletin:

• Afghans check reports of heavy civilian casualties
• Fighting rages across Afghanistan, scores killed
• Turkmenistan to supply Afghanistan free electricity
• Pakistani, Afghan officials to meet in Turkey for talks
• Taliban hang two alleged spies in Kandahar
• Four insurgents perish, three injured in cannon explosion
• Brown assures Afghanistan of support
• Canadians hurt in Afghan convoy bombing
• Killing of Canadian soldiers shocks Afghan envoy
• Afghan mission complex, but vital
• Afghan army far from prepared: German FM
• Opinion: Germany's Afghan dilemma
• France "shocked" by deaths of civilians, Canadian soldiers, in Afghanistan
• Musharraf tells mosque rebels to surrender or die
• U.N., U.S. Actions Sometimes at Odds On Afghan Policy
• Al-Qaeda's New Leader in Afghanistan: A Profile of Abu al-Yazid

Afghans check reports of heavy civilian casualties

Sat Jul 7, 1:31 AM ET - KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's government said on Saturday it was checking reports of heavy civilian casualties caused by NATO and U.S. air strikes in two areas of the country.

The U.S. military said more than 30 insurgents were killed in air strikes in the western province of Farah on Friday, while the NATO-led force said air raids killed "a number" of guerrillas in the eastern province of Kunar also on Friday.

Spokesmen for the Western forces said there were no reports of civilian casualties in either area.

But several residents and the head of a district council in Farah said the attack in the Bala Boluk area there killed 108 civilians. Residents of Kunar put the civilian death toll there at nearly two dozen.

The Interior Ministry in Kabul said it had heard of civilian deaths and was checking the reports.

A parliamentarian from Farah said there was heavy fighting and bombing in his province, but said he did not have any figure for casualties because of the inaccessibility of the district.

More than 300 civilians have been killed by Western air strikes in Afghanistan this year, according to provincial officials and aid groups.

An Afghan rights body this month urged foreign forces to cut air operations as it said civilians formed the bulk of casualties and instead proposed an increase in the number of ground troops, currently standing to nearly 50,000.

Fighting rages across Afghanistan, scores killed

July 7, 2007 - KABUL (AFP) - Scores of rebels and a dozen local police and soldiers were killed in an upsurge of fighting in Afghanistan in the past two days that also allegedly left civilians dead, officials said Saturday.

About 25 civilians were killed in air strikes that hit a home late Thursday and then a funeral on Friday in a remote area of mountainous northeastern Kunar province, a local deputy police chief said.

Some 20 "enemies" were also killed, Kunar province deputy police chief Abdul Sabur Alayar told AFP. A resident said up to 35 civilians were killed.

The International Security Assistance Force commanded by NATO confirmed the air strikes but cast doubt on civilian deaths.

Instead the force said the strikes were believed to have killed a "significant number" of insurgents.

The strikes were called in against "positively identified enemy firing positions, including a hostile compound," ISAF spokesman John Thomas said.

"We have no evidence of civilian casualties," Major Thomas said.

"We don't have any reason to think there was a funeral going on and that we struck a group of civilians," he said.

The Afghan interior ministry said it would send a team to investigate.

"It is not clear yet what happened," interior ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

ISAF and its partner, the US-led coalition, are sensitive to civilian casualties after being rebuked by President Hamid Karzai and Western officials for killing too many people in their operations against the Taliban.

About 600 civilians have been killed in insurgency-linked violence this year, according to figures used by the United Nations, around half by Afghan and foreign troops.

Foreign attack aircraft were also despatched Friday to battles in Farah province in the west, where estimates on Saturday of the rebel dead ranged from more than 30 to up to 60. Aircraft were also sent into a battle in southern Uruzgan, where the defence ministry said Friday 33 rebels were killed.

The fighting in Farah erupted when Taliban insurgents ambushed a police escort for a government delegation heading to one of the province's most volatile areas to discuss security with local tribal chiefs, an official said.

Eleven policemen were killed, making it one of the deadliest ambushes against the police force which is frequently targeted by the insurgents.

Afghan forces on the ground called for help, provincial police chief Abdul Rahman Sarjang told AFP.

"A compound from where the police was attacked was bombed. Up to 60 Taliban were killed," he said. "There were no civilian casualties."

The US-led coalition said more than 30 insurgents were killed.

New fighting raged Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, adjacent to Kandahar where four Canadian soldiers were lightly wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded on a patrol convoy early in the morning.

ISAF said it saw at least two Taliban rockets fall on a civilian compound in Helmand but it gave no details of casualties or damage, with the clashes still under way.

Fighting to end the Taliban's Al-Qaeda-backed insurgency has intensified this summer, with major battles across the country and an insurgent campaign of suicide and other bombings spreading into previously calm areas.

The unrelenting violence is wearing down a population that had high hopes after the Taliban were toppled in late 2001 and the world rushed to help lift Afghanistan out of the chaos that allowed Al-Qaeda to thrive.

Turkmenistan to supply Afghanistan free electricity

ASHGABAT, July 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Turkmenistan has promised to supply electricity worth $300,000 to energy-starved Afghanistan, with the neighbours agreeing to reinforce cooperation in different fields including trade, commerce, diplomacy and culture.

The electricity would be supplied free of cost to the war-battered country as a goodwill gesture, Turkmen and Afghan presidents told a joint news conference following a formal meeting here on Thursday.

Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, charactersing his talks with Karzai as very useful and productive, said the two countries enjoyed good trade and cultural ties. He hoped the bilateral relationship would grow further with time.

His government would lay a railway line linking two dry ports - Torghundi and Aqeena in Afghanistans Herat and Faryab provinces - with Turkmenistan, Berdymukhamedov announced.

The Turkmen leader said they also discussed a long-delayed 1700 kilometres gas pipeline - traversing Herat, Farah, Helmand and Kandahar provinces in Afghanistan before reaching Pakistan.

"We have long talked about an Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline. We are taking this project into account and are ready to study all proposals for its implementation. It has not been superseded by other projects," he added.

Under a MoU signed among the three countries on July 4, 2006, Turkmenistan agreed to supply Pakistan through Afghanistan with 3.2 billion cubic feet of gas on a daily basis for a period of 30 years.

The trilateral pipeline project, when executed, is expected to earn cash-strapped Afghanistan $300 million annually in transit fees and throw up employment opportunities.

Lauding Turkmenistans assistance, Karzai invited his counterpart to visit Afghanistan and said the exchange of high-level trips would go a long way in boosting links between the two Central Asian nations.

The two sides signed a protocol on bilateral consultations between Afghan and Turkmen foreign ministries and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on transit trade and transportation.

The visiting dignitary will place a floral wreath at the mausoleum of former Turkmen president Safar Murad Niazov, go to a historical museum in Ashgabat, receive a honourary professorial degree from the Turkmenistan University and address its students.

An 80-member delegation including cabinet ministers, legislators and entrepreneurs are accompanying Karzai on the tour largely focused on Afghan-Turkmen trade relations.

A joint statement signed by the two leaders said: "After discussing aspects of trade and economic contacts, the presidents pointed out the significance of interaction and expressed desire for stronger economic partnership based on principles of equality, mutual benefit, and comprehensive attention to the interests of the two countries."

They said their countries sought to strengthen global peace and stability and build an international climate of confidence and mutual understanding. They argued it was a matter of special significance to seek a stronger role for the United Nations in dealing with issues of global security and development.

According to the document, the heads of state expressed the shared opinion that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, transnational crime and drug trafficking are some of the main threats to peace and stability on the planet and pointed out the need for further development of cooperation in tackling these challenges and threats of modern times.

Pakistani, Afghan officials to meet in Turkey for talks

TodaysZaman 6 July 07

Officials from Afghanistan and Pakistan will meet in Ankara today to discuss the fight against the Taliban and boosting confidence between the two neighboring countries.

The meeting follows a summit between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Pervez Musharraf, in Turkey in April, when the two leaders pledged to step up joint efforts to curb the Sunni extremist Taliban militia. They also agreed to set up a three-way committee, including Turkey, to monitor progress on bilateral issues.

Friday's meeting will bring together Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Kabir Farahi, Pakistan's Foreign Secretary Riaz Mohammad Khan and the Turkish Foreign Ministry's Undersecretary Ertuğrul Apakan, according to a statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry released earlier this week. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, who are key allies in the US-led war on terror, have been tense. Islamabad has been accused of not doing enough to stop Taliban militants based in Pakistan from launching cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.

Taliban hang two alleged spies in Kandahar

KANDAHAR CITY, July 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Taliban militants Thursday hanged two Afghans on the charge of spying for the government and foreign soldiers in Kandahar province.

Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, Taliban spokesman, told Pajhwok Afghan News the two men had joined the movements fighters on the orders of Governor Asadullah Khalid.

Sooner rather than later, Ahmadi added, Taliban found the men were spying for the government and NATO troops stationed in the province.

The 'spies' were hanged to death after their confession to the 'crime' and in compliance with a verdict from the Taliban leadership. They were executed in Zherai district.

Resident Mohibullah confirmed Taliban hanged the two from trees. The fighters wrote on the victims' palms that anyone spying on them will face a similar fate.

Four insurgents perish, three injured in cannon explosion

KABUL, July 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Four insurgents were killed and three others wounded as their cannon exploded in the southern Helmand province, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

Taliban attacked Sangin district with heavy gunfire from Musa Qala yesterday, the ministry said, adding four militants perished in the cannon explosion. Another three were injured.

In a statement, the ministry said the shelling of Sangin caused no casualties either to security forces or civilians. In Kajaki district of the same province, according to the statement, soldiers of the 205 th Atal Army Corps seized a large quantity of ammunitions.

Similarly, it claimed an arms dump belonging to rebels was discovered in Balabluk district of the Farah province. A soldier of the 203 rd Thunder Corps was injured in a remote-controlled bomb blast in Paktia.

Meanwhile, Paktia police chief Ghulam Dastagir Rustamyar told Pajhwok Afghan News a security checkpoint came under attack from miscreants in Gardez. In the ensuing 30-minute clash, he said, police suffered no casualties.

Brown assures Afghanistan of support

Sat Jul 7, 3:14 AM ET - KABUL (AFP) - New prime minister, Gordon Brown, called President Hamid Karzai overnight to reiterate his country's commitment to the fight against "terror" in Afghanistan, a statement said Saturday.

"Mr Brown, assuring his country's continuous support to Afghanistan, said Afghanistan's security is the world's security," Karzai's office said in a statement.

"He said the struggle against terror will aggressively continue and more efforts will be made in reconstruction of Afghanistan," it said.

Brown also invited Karzai to visit Britain in the "near future."

Britain has around 7,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, to rise to 7,700 in the coming months, which is the second-highest contribution to a NATO-led deployment fighting rebels after that of the United States.

The British soldiers are based in Helmand, perhaps Afghanistan's most dangerous province, where Taliban insurgents are said to be teamed up with foreign fighters from Al-Qaeda and opium producers helping to finance the insurgency.

Brown said this week his takeover would not mean a change of policy on Afghanistan and Iraq, where Britain has 5,500 soldiers.

"This house has got to remember that Afghanistan is the front line against the Taliban," he told MPs.

"And if we allow Afghanistan to become a weaker country again, the Taliban will be back in a way that we saw before the events of September 11."

The US-led drive that toppled the Taliban government in 2001 was launched after the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda, then being sheltered in Afghanistan.

Canadians hurt in Afghan convoy bombing

NOOR KHAN - Associated Press July 7, 2007 at 11:10 AM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A roadside blast struck a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan and wounded four alliance soldiers Saturday, while fighting in three separate regions of the country left more than 100 militants dead, officials said.

Violence is rising rapidly in Afghanistan five years into the U.S.-led effort to defeat the Taliban.

The NATO convoy was attacked west of Kandahar city, and the four wounded soldiers were taken to a nearby military hospital, said Major John Thomas, a NATO spokesman.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said a suicide bomber had attacked the convoy.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said the wounded soldiers were Canadian, but that could not be immediately confirmed. The attack happened a day after officials said fierce fighting in three separate regions of Afghanistan killed more than 100 militants.

Shalizai Dedar, governor of northeastern Kunar province, said villagers accused foreign troops of killing dozens of civilians in air strikes Friday. He said about 60 militants died in the battle but he could not confirm the reports of civilian deaths.

U.S.-led coalition and NATO spokesmen on Friday emphasized that ground commanders had evaluated the terrain in Kunar province to prevent civilian casualties, but Mr. Dedar said villagers had reported that an initial air strike killed 10 civilians, and that a second killed about 30 people who were trying to bury the dead.

Abdul Sabur Allayar, the provincial deputy police chief, said Saturday that 25 civilians and 20 militants were killed in clashes over three days.

The fighting — in the south, west and northeast — follows a trend of sharply rising bloodshed over the past five weeks, among the deadliest periods since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Insurgency-related violence in June alone killed more than 1,000 people, including 200 civilians, according to an AP count based on information from Western and Afghan officials.

More than 3,100 people have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to the AP tally. About 4,000 people died in the violence in all of last year.

U.S. and NATO officials have said Taliban militants threaten villagers into claiming that attacks killed civilians.

“There were some number of insurgents that were killed. We have no reason to believe that any civilians were killed at this time,” NATO's Major Thomas said. He said soldiers called in air strikes on “positively identified enemy firing positions” in a remote area.

Civilian deaths have been a growing problem for international forces in Afghanistan, threatening to derail support for the Western mission. President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly implored forces to try preventing such deaths.

Both a U.N. and the AP count of civilian deaths this year show that U.S. and NATO forces have caused more civilian deaths this year than Taliban fighters have.

In the south, militants attacked two police vehicles with gunfire and rocket propelled grenades overnight Thursday, and U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces responded with artillery fire and air strikes in what the coalition described as a “sparsely populated area” in Uruzgan province.

General Zahir Azimi said 33 Taliban fighters were killed. The coalition reported “no indications” of civilian casualties, and said no coalition or Afghan forces were killed or wounded.

In Farah, a western province bordering Iran that has seen little violence until this year, insurgents attacked an Afghan security patrol from fortified positions and wounded five Afghan soldiers, the coalition said.

Afghan and coalition forces, using gunfire and air strikes, killed “over 30” insurgents, it said. The coalition also said a ground commander “carefully evaluated risk of collateral damage” before firing.

The latest NATO casualties have raised the number of foreign soldiers killed this year to at least 105.

Killing of Canadian soldiers shocks Afghan envoy

OTTAWA, July 5 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Afghan Ambassador to Canada Omar Samad has expressed condolences over the death of six Canadian soldiers with NATO in an explosion in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday.

I express my deep sorrow over the losses sustained by NATOs Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan today. On this very sad day for the families and friends of the Canadian victims of this act of terror, Afghans who oppose the fanatic killers share your grief, the envoy said.

Samad added the six brave Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter, who lost their lives as a result of a roadside bomb in Kandahar province, did not die in vain; nor did they die for the wrong mission.

Given the global security stakes involved, he said in a statement, the strategic mission was not only about Afghanistan. The threats we face have no boundaries. Furthermore, allowing the oppressive Taliban affiliated with international terrorism to rule over the Afghan people once again is not a viable option.

For the past five years, Samad observed, we have stood together to bring lasting peace, security and hope for the millions of Afghans who are going through a difficult, yet promising, period in their history. Despite the tragic losses and challenges, Afghans, overwhelmingly, remain optimistic.

mud/pr

Afghan mission complex, but vital

The Edmonton Journal , Friday, July 06, 2007

How do we honour the six Canadians who died on a gravel road in southern Afghanistan this week? First, by appreciating how terribly dangerous the Canadian mission is, and how much we're asking of our soldiers. Sixty-six dead in just a few years, all of them young people with their lives ahead of them and families who loved them.

Members of the 3rd Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry made up most of the 250 Edmonton troops that headed to Kandahar in February for their six-month rotation.

This battalion, just 570 people in all, has suffered heartbreaking losses. Four of the six killed this week were from this group, as were three soldiers killed June 20.

It's hard to imagine what the members of 3PPCLI are suffering. Second, let's think of the mission itself.

It's not enough to put a Support Our Troops bumper sticker on our car. Canadian soldiers aren't served well by citizens who unquestioningly accept what their government says about our need to have troops in this faraway nation.

There may be a point in which our soldiers are dying for no good reason, and when that happens, Canadians need to recognize it and demand a troop withdrawal. That point hasn't happened yet, but it could.

Similarly, it's not enough to say, "I'm against war, bring the troops home." We all need to do our homework, try to understand what's going on and what our duty as a nation is.

This is a complex, confusing mission because the modern world is complex. When terrorists in southern Afghanistan were able to plot and execute the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center, we all learned that this is a small planet in which one out-of-control country can cause global problems.

Today, thanks to the NATO mission, much of Afghanistan is gradually recovering from decades of warfare and brutal Taliban rule.

Thousands of kilometres of roads have been built, millions of children have gone back to school, 2,500 villages have received electricity, and a national government has been operating in Kabul.

None of those things could have happened if outside forces hadn't taken on the Taliban.

Canada, along with the Americans and British, is doing the mission's hardest task, battling Taliban fighters in the country's two southern provinces.

The British have lost nearly as many soldiers as we have, the Americans six times as many -- not counting its troops in Iraq. It's a brutal job, and it's a job where success has been hard to measure.

How important it is to have journalists like Canwest's Don Martin in Afghanistan to give us a sense of what's happening. The Journal's Graham Thomson provided similar vital reporting from the war zone earlier this year.

As things stand right now, Afghanistan is where Canadian troops need to be. We are doing our part to create a stable Afghanistan, to eliminate a global base for terrorism, to show solidarity with 36 other nations supporting the NATO mission, to demonstrate that a rich western nation is willing to fight for a better world for all.

Canada is committed to the Afghan mission until at least February 2009. Until then, the government should give our soldiers everything they need to do their job.

Let us not begrudge such expenses as the $29 million spent this spring on new vehicles designed to detect roadside bombs.

The rest of us can do our bit by paying attention to this difficult war, wrestling with its complexities, tracking its ragged progress. And, sadly, mourning its dead.

Afghan army far from prepared: German FM

BERLIN, July 5, 2007 (AFP) - The international community has failed to deliver on its promise to rehabilitate the Afghan army which is still far from able to secure the country, Germany's foreign minister said Thursday.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier told foreign reporters that a commitment made during an international conference in London last year to equip and train 85,000 Afghan soldiers remained unfulfilled.

"Today, we are at a training level of 30,000 men, meaning more than 50,000 short of the objective," he said.

He cited progress, however, in police training. The arrival of 160 European police trainers last month has greatly increased the program's capacity, he said.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force and a US-led coalition have sought to bring calm to the country.

"Our aim is to put Afghanistan back into the hands of the Afghan people," he said.

The Taliban extremist movement was in government from 1996 to 2001 before being toppled in a US-led invasion for sheltering the Al-Qaeda network, which is now supporting their insurgency against the Western-backed government.

On Thursday, a suicide attacker blew himself up at a police gathering in southern Afghanistan, killing nine people including a boy, while a NATO force soldier died in a separate blast.

The two attacks occurred as a German national and his driver abducted a week ago in the southwest of the country were released. The Taliban denied being responsible for their capture.

Opinion: Germany's Afghan dilemma

The News Internatinal 6 July 07 By Rahimullah Yusufzai

Most Western countries with troops in Afghanistan are under tremendous pressure from the majority of their population to bring their soldiers home. Governments there are forever trying to balance the demands of domestic politics with their commitment to Nato for deployment of their forces in the volatile and war-ravaged Central Asian country.

Presently it is Germany's turn to perform the balancing act as it prepares for some important decision-making in the coming months. The five major political parties with representation in the national parliament, or Bundestag as it is called in Germany, have to discuss and finalise their position on the continued deployment and mandate of the 3,200 German troops and six Tornado military aircraft in Afghanistan in the next three months. On October 13, the Bundestag would have to first decide about extension of the mandate for German troops that were deployed in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). After a month's gap, the German parliament will be voting whether to keep for some more time its Tornado jets that it has sent to assist US forces in Afghanistan

Subsequently, the Bundestag will be required to take a decision on retaining or withdrawing the 100 German Special Forces personnel involved in Operation Enduring Freedom, the original US military campaign launched on October 7, 2001 with the invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, destroy Al Qaeda and hunt down Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammad Omar and their lieutenants. As the top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are still at large and a new generation of fighters loyal to them has emerged, the military operations for hunting the wanted men would have to continue for an unforeseeable future and Germany like other Western countries would be under American pressure not to take away the special forces, or commandoes, from the pool of troops assigned to the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

Visiting Germany these days and meeting German politicians, military officers, scholars, journalists and commoners has provided one a glimpse of the divided opinion of this nation on deployment of its soldiers in a far away land like Afghanistan. Opinion polls show that 60 per cent of the population in Germany wants German troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan. Leaders of political parties in power or those in opposition in Germany's lively and highly competitive democratic system cannot ignore public opinion while taking important decisions. The recent deaths of three German soldiers in a suicide bombing attack in Kunduz province in the relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan and the growing Afghan civilian casualties resulting from the excessive use of force and air strikes by US and Nato warplanes has prompted many more Germans to question the purpose and utility of their country's military mission there. The sensitivity of the issue could be gauged from the fact that even the stable coalition government of the two biggest political parties including the SPD, or Social Democrats, and the CDU, or Christian Democrats, has to separately seek vote and mandate from the German parliament every six months on continued deployment of Tornado planes and troops for the Isaf and Operation Enduring Freedom missions.

Hans-Werner Wiermann, an army general who is deputy head of the division for military policy and arms control, made the thinking of the German Army, or Bundeswehr, clear during our meeting in Berlin when he pointed out that the problem of "collateral damage" or civilian casualties, in military operations in Afghanistan would continue even if the German Special Forces were to pull out from Operation Enduring Freedom in response to the wishes of public opinion in Germany. He even ventured to make the remark that German politicians must realize that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won through dialogue only. This was an indication of the apparent difference of opinion between the German military command and the politicians, who are loudly asking whether it is time to change the balance of military spending and the funds for reconstruction from the present lopsided ratio of 80:20. There is no doubt that the politicians would have the last say in the matter because they are the ones who would be casting the votes in the parliament. Germany has a strong and durable democratic system that is accountable to the people. However, Germany as one of the most important members of Nato is aware of the fact that the trans-Atlantic military alliance cannot afford to lose the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. A defeat or even inability to achieve victory in Afghanistan would damage the prestige of the mighty military machine of the US and its Western partners and herald the collapse of Nato, which for the first time has taken up a mission outside the borders of its member countries.

Walter Kolbow, member of German parliament and vice-president of the SDP in the Bundestag, highlighted the dilemma of politicians when he said the biggest challenge was to convince the German people to accept the deployment of their troops abroad in long-term military missions such as Kosovo and Afghanistan. In his view, the best option was to gradually increase the spending on civilian works and reconstruction to enable the Afghan people to benefit from foreign assistance and wean them away from militancy of the kind sponsored by Taliban and likeminded radical Islamic groups. Another priority for him was to train and equip the Afghan national army and Afghan national police to take responsibility for security duties so that Nato forces could pull out. He made it obvious that German politicians were worried about the turn of events in Afghanistan due to the spread of insurgency and the unusually high levels of violence. The absence of a 'master plan' for stabilising Afghanistan was another matter of concern for him and his colleagues.

German intellectuals too are grappling with the issue and doing their best to advise their government on how best to cope with the Afghan conflict. Afghanistan is a big story in the German media and is a constant source of controversy in the country's politics due to deployment of Germany forces even if the soldiers have been kept in the comparatively peaceful northern provinces by resisting US and Nato pressure to deploy them in the dangerous, Taliban-infested south. German scholars agonise over the fact that the US and the West chose the wrong allies in the post-9/11 period in Afghanistan by promoting the unpopular warlords in a bid to defeat the Taliban. They concede that almost six years have been wasted without achieving any significant disarmament or tackling the issue of illicit poppy cultivation and drug trafficking, which mostly affects Germany and other European countries.

Pakistan too arouses concern in Germany due to the rise in militancy spreading out from our tribal areas to the settled districts in NWFP and beyond and its fallout on neighbouring Afghanistan. The political instability in Pakistan has prompted the German establishment to consider the implications it would have for the region, particularly Afghanistan on account of its status as a country with high stakes for the West. However, the German urge for the ascendance of democratic forces in Pakistan is tempered by the realisation that the West would still be required to do business with the all-powerful Pakistani military.

The presence of their troops in distant and dangerous Afghanistan is impacting politics in a significant way in a host of countries ranging from Germany to the Netherlands and Italy to Canada. Death of soldiers in Afghanistan is making Western governments unpopular. Such is the impact of the Afghan conflict in some of these countries that Italian prime minister Romano Prodi's government was saved by securing the release of journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo from the Taliban after it became an emotional political issue in Italy. It is another matter that the hostage deal embarrassed the US and its allies and came at a heavy political price for President Hamid Karzai's embattled regime. In such difficult circumstances, Germany would have to make intelligent choices regarding its military mission in Afghanistan. It would have to take a stand that takes into account the wishes of the German people and at the same time appeases the US and its Nato partners.

The writer is an executive editor of The News International based in Peshawar. Email: bbc@pes.comsats.net.pk

France "shocked" by deaths of civilians, Canadian soldiers, in Afghanistan

Excerpt from report by French news agency AFP

Paris, 5 July 2007: France today, Thursday, expressed its "horror at the number of civilian casualties" caused by the bombing in Afghanistan and offered its condolences to Canada on the death of six of its soldiers, killed in the south of the country.

"We express our shock at the announcement of the death in Afghanistan yesterday of six Canadian soldiers and their Afghan interpreter," said French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani.

"The minister of foreign and European affairs, Bernard Kouchner, also expresses his horror at the number of Afghan civilian casualties suffered in the recent bombing," she added.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday that the civilian casualties suffered in the allied bombing in Afghanistan "bolster our enemies and undermine our efforts" to stabilize the countries.

"In the letters they sent to their counterparts, the president (Nicolas Sarkozy) and the minister paid a heartfelt tribute to the price paid by the Canadian contingent of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan and assured them of France's support and solidarity," Mrs Andreani continued.

Musharraf tells mosque rebels to surrender or die

Islamabad (AFP) - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf Saturday told Islamists besieged at a mosque in the capital to surrender or be killed, amid claims that a bid to shoot down his plane was in revenge for the standoff.

Military ruler Musharraf said that the hardline students holed up inside the fortified Red Mosque complex in Islamabad for the past five days must immediately free women and children allegedly being held as human shields.

"I request these people to come out and surrender and I say this here, that they will be killed if they do not surrender," Musharraf, wearing his army uniform, told reporters in his first public comment on the confrontation.

"There are women and children in the mosque and we have been careful only to avoid any loss."

Pakistani forces have held back from raiding the now bullet-pocked mosque but there were intense clashes again during the day, while troops blew up the complex's petrol tank before dawn, sending flames high into the air.

The firebrand cleric leading the resistance, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, said Pakistani forces had killed 30 female and 40 male students in the siege. The women were buried at the site, he said. The government says the toll is 19, including a soldier and several civilians.

The cleric said he and his followers had enough rations, arms and ammunition inside the compound to "fight for another 25 to 30 days and we will do that, God willing."

Ghazi, 43, also signalled his defiance by saying that he was telephoned by a man who claimed to have shot at Musharraf's aircraft on Friday in revenge for the siege.

"I received a telephone call yesterday from a man I did not know," who offered his "congratulations" before news of the attack on the president became public, Ghazi told AFP by telephone from the mosque.

"He said, 'I fired at Musharraf's plane just a while ago.' He said that Musharraf survived," said Ghazi, the deputy leader of the mosque.

Security officials said earlier they were probing possible links between the mosque operation and the failed bid to shoot down the president's plane as it took off from Chaklala military airbase at Rawalpindi, near Islamabad.Police have said they found two anti-aircraft guns and a machine gun on the roof of a house near the airbase after the attack.

Musharraf, a key US ally who grabbed power in a 1999 coup, has survived at least three other militant attempts to kill him. A group of Islamist lawmakers said troops stopped them from entering the mosque to negotiate with Ghazi, whose brother, mosque leader Abdul Aziz, was captured by police on Wednesday while trying to flee dressed in a woman's burqa.

"We have been prevented because the forces of Musharraf are hell-bent on spilling the blood of women and children," said hardline member of parliament Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz, the leader of the delegation.Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz blamed the militants for the standoff and accused them of holding hostages. Ghazi denies the hostage charge.

"All children and women who are being held hostage should be freed forthwith," he told state television. "Their parents are waiting for them outside and desperately want these children to be released."

In a blow to the mosque's defiance, police in a pre-dawn swoop seized control of a separate radical madrassa affiliated to it, the Jamia Faridia religious school, without a shot being fired, officials said. Police said the Jamia Faridia was the "powerhouse" for the Red Mosque and that several students were involved in the current violence. Dozens of students were arrested.

Students from the mosque and the madrassa had irked the government since January with a Taliban-style anti-vice campaign, which involved the abduction of several people they linked to prostitution, including seven Chinese.
Musharraf's tough stance has boosted his popularity after months of being embroiled in a crisis over his suspension of Pakistan's chief justice.

But Pakistani opposition politicians meeting in London want to draw up a "roadmap" to return the country to a constitutional path, a spokesman for ex-premier Nawaz Sharif said Saturday.

U.N., U.S. Actions Sometimes at Odds On Afghan Policy

The Washington Post - 07/05/2008 By Colum Lynch

UNITED NATIONS - Abdul Hakim Monib, the governor of Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, has drawn praise from U.S. military commanders as a partner in the battle against global terrorism, lending crucial political support for international relief and reconstruction projects in territory contested by Taliban insurgents.

But Monib, who served as deputy minister of frontier affairs in the prior Taliban government, is also on a U.N. list of suspected international terrorists, and Russia has repeatedly blocked U.S. and NATO efforts to take him off it. Monib's case underscores how U.S.-sponsored sanctions in the United Nations can backfire, placing American and NATO commanders in Afghanistan in the awkward position of potentially violating U.N. resolutions by funding programs that benefit Monib.

"We try to engage almost all the governors and elected officials, even if they have somewhat undesirable backgrounds," said Col. John Thomas, a U.S. spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. There are some "reformed Taliban in the government that are quite helpful."

The U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on the Taliban in October 1999 for providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden and for refusing to surrender him to face trial in New York for masterminding the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Monib and more than 100 other Taliban leaders were placed on a sanctions list in January 2001, a year before he broke ranks with the Islamic movement and joined forces with Hamid Karzai, the Washington-backed president of Afghanistan.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States ushered through resolutions that expanded the list of sanctioned people to suspected al-Qaeda members. The measures included a travel ban, an arms embargo and a prohibition on the direct or indirect provision of funds or economic resources to Monib and 489 other people and groups.

But the Security Council has been slow to adjust to the changing political realities in Afghanistan, where at least 19 former Taliban officials have reconciled with Karzai's government. It also cannot agree to remove other people from the list, even after they have died or have convinced the United States that they should not be considered enemies.

Russia has rebuffed requests by the United States and the Netherlands -- both have troops in Uruzgan -- to take Monib off the list. "He's been involved very closely with the Taliban and committed a number of very serious misdeeds," said Konstantin Dolgov, a senior U.N.-based Russian diplomat. "We don't have information that he has changed."

Despite Russian opposition, the United States has openly supported reconstruction projects on Monib's turf. A Pentagon Web site called Defend America profiled the Afghan politician last year as he distributed coalition-financed wheat, seeds, flour and school supplies to poor villagers, urging them to forgo violence. Maj. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakley, the commander of Combined Joint Task Force in Afghanistan last year, joined Monib in May 2006 at a ceremony to celebrate the construction of a new steel bridge across the Helmand River.

"We hope that you will take the words of the governor to heart and that you will all work together for peace and security in Uruzgan province," Freakley told the Afghan crowd assembled for the bridge ceremony. "We look forward to working more road projects and other necessities -- clinics and police stations . . . whatever the governor wants."

Richard Barrett, chairman of the U.N. Security Council's Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctions panel, which monitors compliance with the resolution, said that the ban on financial assets and economic resources raises troubling legal questions.

"Does giving him a ride in an armored car or an airplane or giving aid through him to some sort of program within Uruzgan province constitute a breach of the sanctions?" Barrett asked. "Some of the legal advice that states have been getting suggest that it may."

In March 2006, the United Nations instructed its staff in Afghanistan to steer clear of Monib over concerns that they might breach the sanctions. But the prohibition was partially lifted after U.S. and European officials objected.
U.N. staff members are now allowed to interact with Monib but not to engage in activities that could be construed as violating sanctions, such as flying him in a U.N. aircraft. However, one U.N. official in Afghanistan said the mission has been privately urging donor countries to increase aid to Uruzgan.

Monib is "seen as being a relatively capable governor," but his designation on the list "does present difficulties," said Adrian Edwards, a U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan. "We have to abide by" U.N. resolutions, he said. The Netherlands and Australia -- which also has troops in Uruzgan -- insist that they have not breached U.N. sanctions because they have channeled aid through the government, not through Monib's private accounts.

"We do talk to Monib, which is not prohibited," said a Dutch official who tracks the issue. But "we do business with the province of Uruzgan."

An Australian spokeswoman insisted that "Australia has strictly complied with the sanctions." She added that "Australian personnel in Afghanistan will ensure they do not engage in any dealings with Monib which would be contrary to Australian law" or Security Council resolutions.

Monib's dilemma underscores a broader failing of the U.N. role in the battle against terrorism, said Eric A. Rosand, who oversaw U.N. counterterrorism efforts for the United States until 2005. He said that the council has not responded to evolving terrorist threats and that many countries have stopped cooperating with it. For instance, the council has not added a new Taliban figure to the list since 2001. That included the movement's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed by allied forces in May.

"The whole thing is broken," said Rosand, who now tracks the council's terrorism efforts for the Center on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation. "Everyone knows that most countries are not even implementing the sanctions."

The council, meanwhile, is also facing a political backlash from European governments, courts and human rights advocates, who say it offers inadequate legal protection for people on the list. The council has introduced new measures to strengthen due process, including the establishment of a U.N. office to hear complaints. But the new office lacks the authority to recommend that the council remove a person from the list, and a single member of the council can still block the delisting process.

"This is a perfect case where time has passed, things have changed, but the committee hasn't and the list hasn't," Rosand said. "The list is so poorly managed that no one has confidence in it anymore, and nobody puts forward names."

Al-Qaeda's New Leader in Afghanistan: A Profile of Abu al-Yazid

By Michael Scheuer (from Terrorism Focus, July 3) - Al-Qaeda's late-May naming of Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid as the "general leader" of the group's activities in Afghanistan shows that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri believe that helping the Taliban win the Afghan war is a top priority. It also suggests that the al-Qaeda chieftains think that the path to victory in Afghanistan is set solidly enough that Abu al-Yazid can manage the organization's Afghan affairs while they turn to other aspects of the jihad outside Afghanistan. Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid was born in Egypt's al-Sharqiyah Governorate in the Nile Delta on December 17, 1955, and in his youth he became a member of the country's radical Islamist movement. Abu al-Yazid was somehow involved in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, he spent three years in prison after being convicted and at some point he became a member of al-Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ). He has been convicted in absentia in several trials in Egypt, and has been sentenced to both life imprisonment and the death penalty. According to Interpol, his pseudonyms include Sheikh Sa'id al-Misri, Mustafa Abu Yazid, Sa'ad Abu Shayama, Mustafa Muhammad Ahmad and Said Uthman. He appears to be best known in al-Qaeda circles as "Sheikh Said" (al-Hayah, November 13, 2003; Lahore Daily News, December 18, 2004).

Abu al-Yazid left Egypt for Afghanistan in 1988, and he is reported to have been a founding member of al-Qaeda in the same year. He accompanied bin Laden from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991 and while there he served as the accountant for bin Laden's Sudan-based businesses—including his flagship company Wadi al-Aqiq. He also may have arranged the funding for the failed June 1995 assassination attempt by Egypt's Islamic Group against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa. Abu al-Yazid apparently returned to Afghanistan with bin Laden in 1996. By that time, he was a confidant of bin Laden, a senior al-Qaeda leader, a member of its Shura Council and a continual key manager of the organization's finances. Abu al-Yazid is reported to have supplied the requisite funding for Muhammad Atta—the leader of the September 11 attackers—and to have received from Atta the return of surplus funds just before the attacks occurred. In 2002, the U.S. government placed Abu al-Yazid's name on the list of terrorists and organizations subject to having their financial accounts frozen (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 29; Agence France-Presse, May 29).

Despite having been involved in jihadi activity for nearly a quarter century, few personal facts about Abu al-Yazid are known; indeed, his first media appearance occurred in May in a 45-minute interview produced by al-Qaeda's as-Sahab media group after he was named the "official in general charge of the al-Qaeda organization in Afghanistan" (World News Network, May 26). Based on his financial duties for al-Qaeda, it is fair to speculate that he may have had schooling in economics or business management, and several reports claim that he received military training in Afghanistan but has never had responsibilities as an al-Qaeda military leader (al-Sharq al-Awsat, May 29). The Lahore Daily Times reported in December 2004 that Abu al-Yazid had some unspecified duties in maintaining the relationship between al-Qaeda and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Abu al-Yazid also appears to have some talent for clandestine international travel. He is reported to have arranged the financing for the September 11 attacks from the UAE and Qatar, and the veteran Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir recently said that Abu al-Yazid had just returned to Afghanistan from a two-year "jihadi mission" in Iraq. Given Abu al-Yazid's skill set, he probably assisted al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the nascent Islamic government of which it is a part, in strengthening their logistical, financial, media and administrative systems (Lahore Daily News, December 18, 2004).

Abu al-Yazid is reported to be a man of "noble character" who is trusted by al-Qaeda's different national and ethnic groups, as well as a person who is trustworthy, displays fine manners and is amiable at all times. He is said to have a large family consisting of "two wives, sons and daughters," and is one of the few senior al-Qaeda lieutenants who has lived along both the Pakistan-Afghanistan and Iran-Afghanistan borders. One of his daughters married the son of the incarcerated Egyptian Islamic Group spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman. The daughter and her husband, Muhammad Abd al-Rahman, were captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in early 2003 (al-Hayah, November 13, 2003).

The appointment of Abu al-Yazid underscores the importance to al-Qaeda of reestablishing a Taliban government in Afghanistan. As an al-Qaeda founder and a member of its Shura Council, Abu al-Yazid brings great prestige to the group's support for the Taliban, and—like bin Laden and al-Zawahiri before him—he pledged personal allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the "Commander of the Faithful" in his first as-Sahab interview. Abu al-Yazid's stature in al-Qaeda also will cause his appointment to be viewed among Islamists as a complement to the Taliban and Mullah Omar. This is a direct effort to ensure that the insurgency is seen by the traditionally insular Afghans as being led by Afghan mujahideen and not by "foreign Arabs." In essence, it is the same kind of keep-the-locals-in-the-lead effort that al-Qaeda undertook after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who had broken with al-Qaeda's locals-first doctrine by behaving as the foreign leader of Iraq's Sunni insurgents.

The installation of a financial and logistics manager like Abu al-Yazid clearly suggests that Mullah Omar, bin Laden and al-Zawahiri believe that the mujahideen are well on the way toward defeating the U.S.-led coalition. In his as-Sahab interview, Abu al-Yazid made clear that his job would be to help manage the overall war effort. He said that rank-and-file manpower was not a problem for the mujahideen—there being plenty of Afghan and Arab fighters—but that they needed more money for insurgent attacks and suicide bombings. "So funding is the mainstay of jihad," Abu al-Yazid said, and indicated that much of his time would be spent in fundraising, which, as noted above, has long been his forte [1]. He also said that he would seek to acquire Arab specialists to assist the Afghan insurgency "in all spheres: military, scientific, informational, and otherwise"—a goal that is reminiscent of bin Laden's successful effort to bring Arab economic, agricultural and managerial specialists to assist the Taliban in governing the country in the late 1990s.

From al-Qaeda's perspective, the assignment of Abu al-Yazid must be seen as a move that keeps a strong, talented and respected hand managing the organization's activities in Afghanistan and one which simultaneously allows bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and other senior leaders to devote more thought and time to projects elsewhere in the world. With their Afghan program in a steady-as-she-does mode, bin Laden and his associates will turn to the more direct management of al-Qaeda's already expanding reach from Iraq into the Levant, Turkey and the Arabian Peninsula as well as preparations for the group's next attack inside the United States.

Michael Scheuer served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is now a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation.

Notes

1. Public statements by al-Qaeda leaders that stress shortages of money should always be taken by Western analysts with a large grain of salt. Al-Qaeda's chiefs are completely familiar with the U.S. and Western fixation on "terrorist finances," and the Western assessment that Islamic militancy and violence can be suppressed by governmental actions that prevent the flow of money to the mujahideen. Indeed, Abu al-Yazid is intimately familiar with this Western strategy as he himself is on one of the U.S. government's list of terrorist financiers. In the current case, the immense oil profits currently accruing to the mujahideen's traditional donors and the accelerating pace of the Afghan and Iraqi insurgencies—in each of which al-Qaeda is a full participant—tend to make Abu al-Yazid's claim of a funding shortfall looks more than a bit like disinformation.

Posted By: Jamestown

[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.]