In this bulletin:

• Eight dead in attacks in eastern Afghanistan
• Two suicide attacks in Afghanistan, guard killed
• Afghanistan's Karzai criticises Pakistani madrassas
• Afghan war responsible for extremism: Akram
• Afghan failure may lead to regime change in Pakistan: UK generals
• Pakistan scrambles to save militant peace deal
• Tribal militants scrap peace accord with Pakistan government
• Iran voices outrage at grenade attack on consulate in Afghanistan
• Ben Laden's capture will be announced when his time is up, editorial
• Experts probe Afghan mass grave – BBC
• UNESCO to help preserve historical sites in Herat City
• AFGHANISTAN: War and lack of commitment hinder transitional justice
• Afghan secret service releases editor
• Successes of Afghan mission not getting through to public, MacKay says
• Legendary Vandoos ‘do the job right'
• Canadian aid having impact in Afghanistan: group
• Editorial: Sharia at gunpoint?
• Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle
• Eight dead in attacks in eastern Afghanistan
• $1m bad hair day in Kabul

Eight dead in attacks in eastern Afghanistan

Sun Jul 15, 9:04 AM ET - KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) - Eight people including five construction workers were killed in a series of weekend attacks in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday.

The five construction workers were killed when a bomb exploded underneath their vehicle in Paktika province, local police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazi said, adding that the device was detonated by remote control.

Two others were wounded in the attack, which the police chief blamed on fighters with links to the Taliban, which has waged a violent insurgency in Afghanistan since being toppled from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Also in Paktika, an Afghan man was killed and three people hurt when a rocket fired from Pakistani territory at a NATO base landed instead on a group of homes in Barmal district, said provincial governor Mohammad Akran Ikhpolwak.

To the north in neighbouring Paktia province, unknown assailants opened fire on the chief of Showak district late Saturday, gunning down two of his bodyguards, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Dastgir told AFP.

In volatile southern Helmand province, where insurgent attacks occur almost daily, three "very important" Taliban figures were killed on Saturday in clashes with security forces, the defence ministry said in a statement.

And a suspected suicide bomber died late Saturday in eastern Khost province when the explosives he was carrying apparently blew up prematurely, a local spokesman said.

More than 50,000 Western troops, the bulk of them under a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, are deployed in Afghanistan.

Two suicide attacks in Afghanistan, guard killed

Kandahar (AFP) - A suicide attack on an Afghan private security company vehicle killed one guard, while a second bomber targeting a US firm blew himself up prematurely, police said.

The Afghan security firm was escorting a logistics convoy for the US-led coalition when it came under attack in the Girishk district of troubled Helmand province, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal said on Monday.

"One security guard was killed and four others in the vehicle were wounded. The vehicle is destroyed," Andiwal told AFP. He could not immediately give the name of the company targeted in the blast.

The second suicide attacker detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at some distance from a convoy of a US security company, USPI, in western Farah province Monday, Farah police chief Abdul Rehman Sarjang said.

"The suicide attacker became the victim of his own ill-fated attempt. There was no harm to the USPI vehicle or personnel," Sarjabg said.

Meanwhile Taliban militants attacked a highway police post overnight in western Nimroz province, sparking a two-hour gunbattle which left seven militants killed and three wounded, said its governor.

"They left a body behind but managed to take the rest of the bodies and wounded with them," governor Ghulam Dastageer Azad said.

Southern Afghanistan has been hard hit by a wave of Talbian militancy, which has left thousands dead. Western Afghanistan has seen a surge in attacks this year after a period of relative peace.

Afghanistan's Karzai criticises Pakistani madrassas

Sun Jul 15, 7:40 AM ET - KABUL (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticised some madrassas in Pakistan for teaching violent extremism Sunday, as he forgave a teenager who said he was sent across the border to carry out a suicide attack.

"Today we're facing a very regretful, painful fact," Karzai told a media conference, joined by 14-year-old Rafiq-Ullah and his father Mati-Ullah, from Pakistan's troubled Taliban-dominated South Waziristan tribal region.

"A child of Islam that his father had sent to a madrassa for education was tempted by the enemies of Islam to carry out a suicide attack," he said.

"I forgive you," Karzai told the boy -- who was detained in May in eastern Khost province, where the boy said he was sent to carry out a suicide attack on the governor -- giving him 100,000 Afghani (2,000 dollars) to travel back home.

Asked whether he had a message for Pakistan, the Afghan president said Kabul wanted good ties with Islamabad, a key US ally in its 'war on terror.'

"The message of the Afghan people is one of kindness, the message of mercy," he said. "It's the message of having good relations, brotherly relations.

"It's the message for trade and exchange," he added, "not to deceive the children of people and encourage them to carry out suicide attacks, destroying themselves, their families and other Muslims."

Rebel attacks including Iraq-style suicide bombings -- once unheard in this Central Asian nation -- have over the past two years increased in Afghanistan, where US-led and NATO forces are fighting an Islamic insurgency.

Some Pakistani madrassas have been accused of sponsoring religious violence, a legacy of Afghanistan's 1979-89 Soviet occupation when some seminaries, with US and Saudi funding, became training camps for Islamic holy warriors.

New US intelligence reports say Pakistan has failed to contain Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents who are hiding out in rugged areas along the border with Afghanistan.

Afghan war responsible for extremism: Akram

Daily Times WASHINGTON: Munir Akram, Pakistan’s permanent representative at the United Nations, has said that Islamic extremism has not grown during President Musharraf’s term of office, arguing that its origins lie in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan 25 years ago.

The origin of the problem of extremism lies in the use of jihadis against the Soviets, he pointed out in a CNN interview over the weekend.

Asked about a CIA claim that Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan, Akram said, “I think that estimate has to be balanced with what you have also heard from Ambassador Boucher who deals with our region and he said, if Pakistan was not fighting terrorism there is no way that you could win in Afghanistan nor could you ensure the Security of the homeland, if Pakistan was not fighting terrorism. So we are fighting terrorism and if there is any evidence of presence of Al Qaeda, we shall go and eliminate it.”

When reminded that the Lal Masjid operation had shown that Islamist extremism has reached the big cities of Pakistan, Akram responded that Pakistan is a free country with people who have different views. Islamic extremists in Pakistan are a very small minority though they appear in various places. Pakistan has dealt with the problem in a “very effective way,” doing its best to save lives and avoid causing casualties. “But in the final analysis, I think it has demonstrated that we are against terrorism, that we are capable of effective action so that innocent lives are not lost, but at the same time we try to address issues in a humanitarian way, and I think that has been demonstrated in the operation we have conducted. We will be able to cope with all the backlash and we have an effective army and effective law enforcement agencies to be able to do so.”

Answering a question about the peace deal made by the government in Waziristan, Akram said in fighting terrorism, Pakistan has lost more lives than anybody else in this ‘war against terror’. “We have captured 500 Al Qaeda, we have captured 1,500 Taliban and we are determined to put down extremism and terrorism in all its forms. I think after the action against the Lal Masjid, there should be no doubt about the determination of President Musharraf and the government of Pakistan towards dealing with extremism and terrorism. There can be no doubt, despite all the doubts that have been cast by non-objective reporting, if I may say so. Wherever this challenge arises we deal with it. Of course we will try to deal with it in accordance with the rule of law but when the rule of law is challenged by extremists and terrorists we shall use all the force necessary to impose it,” he added. khalid hasan

Afghan failure may lead to regime change in Pakistan: UK generals

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Britain’s most senior generals have warned that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist government seizing power in Pakistan, reports The Observer.

Amid fears that London and Washington are taking their eye off Afghanistan as they grapple with Iraq, the generals have told Number 10 Downing Street that the collapse of the government in Afghanistan, headed by Hamid Karzai, would also present a grave threat to the security of Britain.

Lord Inge, the former chief of defence staff, highlighted their fears in public last week when he warned of a “strategic failure” in Afghanistan. According to The Observer, Inge was speaking with the direct authority of the general staff when he made an intervention in a House of Lords debate.

“The situation in Afghanistan is much worse than many people recognise,” Inge told peers. “We need to face up to that issue, the consequence of strategic failure in Afghanistan and what that would mean for NATO ... We need to recognise that the situation - in my view, and I have recently been in Afghanistan - is much, much more serious than people want to recognise.”

One source familiar with the fears of senior British officers told The Observer: “If you talk privately to the generals they are very very worried. You heard it in Inge’s speech. Inge said we are failing and remember Inge speaks for the generals.” Inge made a point in the Lords of endorsing a speech by Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who painted a bleak picture during the debate. Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq. “The consequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,” Ashdown said. “If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. The security problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I think you could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off in warlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end between Sunni and Shia right across the Middle East.”

Pakistan scrambles to save militant peace deal

Islamabad (AFP) - Pakistan held crisis talks with tribal elders to save a peace deal with pro-Taliban militants, amid fears of fresh violence after three weekend suicide attacks left more than 70 dead.

Thousands of people fled the tense tribal region of North Waziristan, a day after rebels there tore up the controversial peace accord they had struck 10 months ago with the government of President Pervez Musharraf.

Security forces remain on high alert in the wake of the bomb attacks targeting troops and police near the Afghan border in apparent retaliation for last week's assault on the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

Al-Qaeda and local Islamic hardliners have called for holy war against Musharraf following the two-day raid on the pro-Taliban mosque, in which at least 11 troops and 75 people, mostly militants, were killed.

"The government of Pakistan has not scuttled the deal and negotiations with tribal elders continue," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam told a media briefing in Islamabad on Monday.

The chief minister of North West Frontier Province, Akram Durrani, said the authorities "will try to save the peace deal with tribal militants and hope they will revise their decision to scrap it."

"The deal is vital for peace in the area and, God forbid, if it is cancelled the consequences will be dangerous," Durrani told reporters after a four-hour meeting with tribal elders, religious scholars and lawmakers.

Under the September deal -- heavily criticised by Washington and Kabul -- the militants had vowed to stop cross-border attacks in war-torn Afghanistan and hunt down foreign insurgents hiding in the lawless mountain areas.

Hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents took shelter in the region after US-led forces overthrew the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

But the Taliban Shura (Council) said it had scrapped the deal Sunday, protesting a troop build-up and new checkpoints and calling on local tribal militias to stop all cooperation with the central government in Islamabad.

Bazaars were deserted as hundreds of families fled Miranshah for safer areas, and state-run Radio Pakistan went off the air when broadcasters joined other government officials in leaving the area, local residents said.

Troops also stepped up security around the town's fort. The collapse of the accord on Sunday came just hours after a bomb strike in the province on a military convoy in the town of Matta, which is near the tribal areas, claimed 18 lives along with those of the attackers.

Later the same day a suicide bombing at a police recruiting centre in another northwestern town, Dera Ismail Khan, killed 26.

On Saturday, a suicide attack on troops in North Waziristan left a further 26 dead, as local militant commander Abdullah Farhad threatened a "guerrilla war."

Musharraf has deployed thousands of additional troops to remote areas after vowing to root out extremists "from every corner of the country." He has not yet outlined his intentions following the deadly weekend attacks.

Tensions have escalated since Musharraf last week ordered a commando raid on the Red Mosque in Islamabad, ending a months-long standoff with armed militants who had demanded the imposition of Islamic law.

Troops have moved into the Swat Valley, the scene of the Matta attack and several others since the mosque assault, sparking speculation that Musharraf may move against a hardline cleric there who has close links to the mosque.

Washington has thrown its "full support" behind key anti-terror ally Musharraf, saying that the peace accord had not worked and that it would back the Pakistani military ruler whatever he decides to do.

"He's doing more," said National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. "We are urging him to do more, and we're providing our full support to what he's contemplating."

Tribal militants scrap peace accord with Pakistan government

Sun Jul 15, 7:50 AM ET - MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Pro-Taliban militants in a Pakistan tribal border region with Afghanistan said Sunday they had scrapped a controversial peace accord reached with the government last year.

"We are ending the agreement today," the Taliban Shoora (Taliban Council) said in pamphlets distributed in Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan, where a suicide attack on a military convoy killed 24 troops the previous day.

The government in September signed a peace agreement with tribal leaders in the region -- a deal heavily criticised by Western allies and Afghanistan -- following assurances that the tribesmen would hunt down foreign militants.

Council leaders released the statement Sunday to protest new troop movements, amid sharply heightened tensions after last week's army attack on Islamabad's pro-Taliban Red Mosque, which killed 86 people, mostly militants.

After the raid, Musharraf vowed to crack down on extremists and deployed extra troops to areas including the Swat district of North West Frontier Province and North Waziristan's Dera Ismail Khan area.

Suicide attacks using explosives-packed cars against military convoys in both regions killed more than 40 people and wounded scores more at the weekend.

North Waziristan militant commander Abdullah Farhad had on Saturday threatened "guerrilla war" if government troops did not abandon checkpoints by Sunday in a dispute that has being brewing for weeks.

Sunday's pamphlets said tribal elders would refuse dialogue with authorities who had failed to pull back troops from up to 25 checkpoints.

"We had signed the agreement for the safety and protection of the life and property of our people," the statement said. "But the government forces continued to launch attacks on the Taliban and have killed a number of people.

"The decision we are taking today is in the interest of the people." The statement also warned local members of the tribal police and militia against taking part in any official duty with army and paramilitary forces, saying they would be held "responsible for the consequences."

Miransha residents said about 100 local families had left the town, fearing clashes, and that its main bazaar was deserted, while families of government employees had left their homes in the rugged mountain area.

Pakistan has come under increased US pressure to uproot Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents from its rugged border areas with Afghanistan.

White House national security adviser Stephen Hadley, speaking on US television, said Musharraf had failed to contain al-Qaeda and said his plan to give tribal leaders more autonomy "has not worked the way it should have."

Iran voices outrage at grenade attack on consulate in Afghanistan

Tehran, July 15, IRNA - Iran on Sunday expressed outrage at throwing grenade at its consulate in Qandahar, Afghanistan.

Iran's Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned the grenade attack on Iranian consulate general in Qandahar, Afghanistan holding Taliban responsible for it.

"After car bombing of the consulate general, it is the second terrorist attack of the group on Iranian representative offices in Afghanistan," said a ministry official.

The Taliban criminal action is another example of its animosity with the Islamic Republic of Iran negating anti-Iran claims of British and US media.

Taliban martyred eight Iranian diplomats and IRNA journalist Mahmoud Saremi in cold-blood on August 8, 1988.

Taliban gunmen had raided Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif spraying bullets on the diplomats and IRNA reporter with automatic rifle.

Ben Laden's capture will be announced when his time is up, editorial

Tehran, July 15, IRNA - As soon as the time is up for Osama Ben Laden, US President George W. Bush will announce capture of the al-Qaeda leader, a Persian daily, Iran, said on Sunday.

The daily said in an editorial that the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001 was made under suspicious circumstances for which Ben Laden was held responsible, but, political observers were aware of the fact that Ben Laden had connections with the US where he had undergone training arranged by the Central Intelligence Agency.

"The CIA had helped Ben Laden organize Taliban in Afghanistan and it was clear that Ben Laden's possible involvement in twin towers terrorist attack could not be successful in the absence of coordination with the neo-conservative war mongers in the White House."

The events which took place in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the United States helped raise the theory of complicity of the White House in the twin towers explosion, the editorial said.

"Declaration of crusade against Islam and subsequent propaganda campaign against Muslims led to a war against the Muslim Ummah as the great nation standing up to the US hegemony.

"Invasion of Afghanistan put the US on the forefront of clash of civilizations which was the strategic depth of the United States in advancing its hegemony," part of the editorial written by IRNA Managing Director Jalal Fayyazi said.

Citing the occasions when the US media broadcast videotapes of Osama Ben Laden for their own political gains, the editorial said that they released Ben Laden's videotape just three days ahead of presidential election claiming that he will launch another terrorist attack similar to that of September 11.

"The videotape served to divert the US public opinion on the eve of the presidential election, thus ensuring the second term in office for President Bush."

International observers believe that in light of the US intelligence and military superiority, it is very unlikely for the US to be unable to destroy the terrorist networks, it said, adding that the US does not want to arrest Ben Laden.

Experts probe Afghan mass grave – BBC

Scientific tests are to be carried out on bodies found in a mass grave in Afghanistan to try to determine the age of the human remains. Afghan officials announced that the grave had been discovered earlier this month.

A special commission has been to visit the site, in the desert near the capital, Kabul. The commission says it will complete its investigation and report back to President Hamid Karzai.

In a flat, barren plateau outside Kabul is Chamtala, the desert area where a huge mass grave was unearthed earlier this month. Police were led to it by an elderly man who worked as a driver for the Soviet Army when it was in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

A high-level commission headed by a former chief justice has now visited the site and seen some of the bodies it contains - reportedly several hundred in a series of underground rooms.

A forensic doctor says many of the bodies are in a seated position and there are still fragments of clothes and even of flesh.

The commission head said an atrocity had been committed and that his team would make an open investigation and report to the president within a week.

The head of the police's criminal department, Gen Ali Shah Paktiwal, said documents and clothing found at the site would help with the investigation and that scientific tests would be used to establish the age of the bodies.

The site of the grave is a former defence base used jointly by the Afghan and Soviet governments during the occupation. General Paktiwal quotes the former driver as saying the Russians tortured and shot people there.

Some government sources, however, believe the mass grave may date from the more recent civil war of the early 1990s. Even if the identity of the killers is discovered, it is not clear whether there will be trials, because parliament recently voted to grant a broad amnesty to war criminals.

Human rights workers say more than twenty mass graves have so far been unearthed around Afghanistan, covering all periods of the country's conflict.

UNESCO to help preserve historical sites in Herat City

KABUL, July 14 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Historical sites in the western Herat province would be registered soon with UNESCO, the Ministry of Information and Culture announced here on Saturday.

The ministry rejected as baseless media reports Herat Citys opulent cultural heritage could not be catalogued by the UN agency, whose Kabul-based representative also dispelled that impression.

In a press release issued here, the ministry recalled the Afghan government had requested the organisation some years back to put the ancient city with rich historical relics on the world heritage list.

Since 2004, UNESCO has been working with the Information and Cultural Ministry on the project of preserving the sites, which would be hopefully registered within a month.

The cultural heritage of Afghanistan suffered irreversible losses during more than 25 years of strife. For many years, UNESCO says, it has been helping to protect it.

In January 2002, it will be pertinent to point out here, UNESCO was mandated by the Afghan interim administration to coordinate international activities aimed at safeguarding that heritage.

With that in mind, the UN agency has set up the International Coordination Committee for the Safeguarding of Afghanistan's Cultural Heritage.

AFGHANISTAN: War and lack of commitment hinder transitional justice

KABUL, 15 July 2007 (IRIN) - More than 18 months after its adoption in The Hague, the Netherlands, and seven months after its formal launch, the Action Plan for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (APTJR) in war-torn Afghanistan has been hindered by lack of political commitment and armed conflict, UN and Afghan officials told IRIN.

"Thus far, the action plan has been almost a complete failure," Ahmad Nader Nadery, a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), said this week in the capital, Kabul.

The action plan, also referred to as 'transitional justice', was devised in 2005 – three years after the fall of the Taliban - as a means to address crimes committed by various warring parties over the past three decades in Afghanistan.

The UN and several other international organisations supported AIHRC and the Afghan government in inking a blueprint to deal with rights abuses in the past and reconcile Afghans for a shared future.

Of the five key points of the plan, only one - acknowledgement of past crimes - has been partly executed by the government, Nadery said.

He added that here had been little tangible progress on the other four: a call for truth-seeking and the documentation of past injustices; the promotion of reconciliation and unity; the establishment of an effective accountability mechanism to end impunity; and the establishment of credible and accountable state institutions to ensure the sound and fair distribution of justice for all.

Centred around these five points, the action plan sets out recommended actions for the implementation of each point with given deadlines, most of which have already passed with very little or no achievement, officials say.

For example, the first point calls on the Afghan government to assign a national victims' remembrance day, albeit through a formalised event; to establish national memorial sites in the country to honour victims of wars; and to identify a location for a national war museum. A year after the deadline for these tasks passed, none have happened.

The third action point assigns primarily to the AIHRC and to the UN the task of documenting, processing and evaluating all the abuses inflicted on civilians during decades of armed conflict in Afghanistan. The deadline is July 2007, but AIHRC says it will not be able to complete even half of the given task until July 2008.

"Due to a lack of political commitment in the government, the action plan has been sidelined," Nadery said. He added that the UN's Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) - an entity that has played a crucial role in the post-Taliban period – should also share some of the blame for the action plan's lack of progress for making "unnecessary political compromises".

"UNAMA has not been outspoken and has not followed it [APTJR] seriously," Nadery said.

Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for UNAMA in Kabul, rejected these allegations, saying the organisation had been a strong advocate for the implementation of transitional justice in the country. "We are making efforts to encourage all parties to identify the bottlenecks and remove them so that we can see a faster implementation of the action plan," Siddique said.

About 1.5 million Afghans died in the Soviet war from 1979 to 1989, according to numerous accounts. Tens of thousands more died in factional fighting following the overthrow of the Moscow-backed government in April 1992. The Taliban and their opponents have also been widely accused of systematic crimes against humanity from 1996 to late 2001.

Years after their overthrow by a US-led Western coalition in October 2001, the Taliban has resurged in Afghanistan and plunged large swathes of the country into violent insurgency. Thousands of people have died in recurrent armed clashes between Taliban insurgents and Afghan forces, backed by international forces.

Javier Leon-Diaz, a UN expert on transitional justice, said insecurity in the south and east of the country has impeded the implementation of the action plan.

"Transitional justice is a transition from a situation of war to a situation of peace. The problem in Afghanistan is that time [deadlines] is true for parts of the country but not for all the country. I do not think we can begin talking about transitional justice in the south and east while there is war going on there," Leon-Diaz told IRIN in Kabul. "Those who prepared the action plan were very ambitious."

Afghan secret service releases editor

Sat Jul 14, 4:39 AM ET - KABUL (AFP) - The editor-in-chief of a government publication, detained two weeks ago by the Afghan secret service, has been released on the orders of President Hamid Karzai, Afghan press associations said on Saturday.

A secret service official, who wished to remain anonymous, confirmed to AFP that Asif Nang had been released on the orders of the president. The secret service did not give an official reason for his arrest.

Arrested on June 30 in Kabul, Nang was "released at the request of President Karzai, because there was no proof of guilt against him," Abdul Mujeeb Khalwatgar, director of Nai, an organisation which supports the Afghan media and journalists, told AFP.

"He was arrested for having published an article in the governmental review Jirga of Peace.

"We asked the government to act, in the future, through the legal framework of justice if it has something against the media or a journalist," he added, pointing to the brief detention by the secret service, also without official explanation, of another Afghan journalist at the beginning of the month.

Nang, who is also a spokesman for Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farouq Wardak, had published an extract, critical of Karzai, of the essay "Wars and globalism: who benefits from September 11?" by Canadian academic Michel Chossudovsky.

Karzai is introduced in the book, published in 2002, as a "puppet" in the pay of the Americans. Afghan media however, quoting anonymous secret service sources, said Nang was suspected of spying for Pakistan.

Successes of Afghan mission not getting through to public, MacKay says

Calgary Herald , Sunday, July 15, 2007

CALGARY - Donning a cowboy hat and blue jeans, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visited the Calgary Stampede to make the case that Canadians would be more supportive of the mission in Afghanistan if all the facts would get out about its accomplishments.

MacKay made his appeal at the Canada Pavilion on the Stampede grounds, where visitors can view an information display on Canadian efforts in Afghanistan.

"More direct information to Canadians will allow them to be better informed," said MacKay. "And I think it's also a responsibility on the part of the government to show the type of work that's being done, to lend credence to the mission itself, and to continue to keep Canadians informed about the sacrifices that have been made by Canadians throughout this mission."

The Canada Pavilion is touring summer exhibitions across the country with information displays about several governmental departments.

The Afghanistan display outlines the involvement of Foreign Affairs, the RCMP, Correction Services and the Canadian International Development Agency in the reconstruction of the country.

"There is a tremendous amount that is being done that doesn't appear to be getting through," said MacKay. "It doesn't appear to be translating to Canadians in some ways about how we've been able to accomplish not only the infrastructure and the visible contributions, but the vocational training, the education, the vaccinations, the hope and the sense that there is a purpose."

The current mission in Afghanistan is scheduled to end in February 2009. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he has no plans to extend the mission beyond that deadline unless it involves greater NATO support and passes a parliamentary vote.

Legendary Vandoos ‘do the job right'

MATT HARTLEY AND JOANNA SMITH - Globe and Mail Update - July 16, 2007 at 1:06 AM EDT

For many Quebeckers, the Royal 22nd Regiment, known as the Vandoos, are to the military what Maurice Richard was to hockey – a valiant symbol of francophone identity and an integral part of Québécois culture.

About 200 troops from the Royal 22nd Regiment left CFB Valcartier for Kandahar Sunday. More than 2,000 Vandoos, from a total of 2,500 troops, will take over Canada's mission over the next seven weeks.

As the Vandoos ship out, they fight not just for Canada, but for the reputation of all francophones, according to Roch Legault, a professor of Canadian military history and strategy at Kingston's Royal Military College.

“They're like our team,” he said. “They know they carry the burden of representing French Canadians at war.” For many in Quebec, the Vandoos are more than just a regiment in the army; they are the army, Mr. Legault said. “They're bigger than life.”

The deployment of the Vandoos and other Quebec-based soldiers from CFB Valcartier has been met with opposition in the province. Anti-war demonstrators took to the streets of Quebec City on June 22 to protest the deployment, in an attempt to interrupt a planned march to show support for the departing soldiers.

Canada has 2,500 soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. Since the war began in 2002, approximately 14,900 troops have been sent to the region. Troops are rotated every six to nine months. Altogether, 66 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002.

A Strategic Counsel poll conducted for The Globe and Mail in May showed that only 24 per cent of Quebeckers support sending troops to Afghanistan, while 73 per cent said they were opposed. The largest group of respondents, 40 per cent, were those who said they were “strongly opposed” to the deployment of troops.

Some have speculated that those numbers could prompt the military to alter tactics in Afghanistan to minimize Vandoos casualties in an effort to avoid further backlash in a province with the lowest war-approval ratings.

Such special treatment is unlikely, Mr. Legault said.

“You can see the polls and I think the brass read the polls as well, but the Vandoos will not want to do less than the other regiments,” he said. “They will not be asked to do less. That's not something that will be envisioned. It would destroy the esprit de corps. You don't do that.”

The Royal 22nd Regiment was founded shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and has become emblematic of Quebec's contribution to the Canadian Forces.

The nickname “Vandoos” derives from a corrupted version of vingt-deuxième, French for 22nd. “French Canada identifies with the military, then the infantry and then the Vandoos,” Mr. Legault said.

During the First and Second World Wars, the Vandoos fought like they had something to prove to the rest of the mostly English-speaking military, and that attitude has been passed down to the troops who serve today, Mr. Legault said.

The Vandoos are one of the most disciplined and professional regiments in the Canadian military, but they have a certain reputation among military ranks for bringing a unique swagger and bravado to their work, he said. “They like to brag about things more than the others … and have a reputation to whine a little bit more than the others, but they do the job right.”

Mr. Legault said the brass in charge of the Vandoos are very conscious of the regiment's place in Quebec's public consciousness, and strive to make their soldiers mindful of that responsibility.

About 1,200 Quebeckers signed up to fight overseas in the First World War, but they were scattered across different English-speaking groups, and the alienation they felt did little to boost their numbers or support for the war back home.

Believing national unity was at stake, dozens of influential French-Canadians, including Liberal opposition leader Sir Wilfrid Laurier, lobbied the federal government to create a permanent French-speaking regiment. Quebec businessman Arthur Mignault donated $50,000 of his own money to fund the cause.

“French Canada decided they were not represented well enough, and they wanted to be together, to have their own contribution,” Mr. Legault said.

Conservative prime minister Robert Borden gave his consent to create the regiment in October, 1914, and the Vandoos were born.

On the crest of the Vandoos, which depicts a beaver atop a piece of wood, is emblazoned their motto: Je me souviens (I remember). Those same words appear on the provincial licence plates of Quebec.

For the Vandoos, the words are a constant reminder of their francophone heritage and the special status the regiment holds with the people of Quebec.

“It is to remember who you are,” Mr. Legault said. “You're kind of special. You may be different from the others.”

Canadian aid having impact in Afghanistan: group

Updated Sun. Jul. 15 2007 5:47 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff

Widespread corruption in Afghanistan is slowing efforts to improve the quality of life for average citizens, but Canadian aid is still making a difference, according to a group monitoring the country's human rights situation.

"This is a country that has seen 30 years of destruction, in all infrastructures in the country, whether it's roads, schools or buildings. So rebuilding takes time," Mirwais Nahzat, spokesperson for Afghanistan Peace Ambassadors, told CTV's Question Period Sunday.

"But at the same time, Afghans have a sense of pessimism about the government's performance in accountability -- specifically about the rampant corruption across the ministries and the legal system."

Afghans have alleged that some Afghan civil servants are pocketing aid money, and are blatantly living beyond what their $200-per-month salaries would otherwise suggest.

According to the BBC, there are further allegations police officers are taking bribes from drug smugglers, to help offset their monthly pay of $70 -- a third less than what an army recruit makes.

But Nahzat said more aid -- not less -- should be funded directly through the Afghanistan government. Otherwise, NGOs would give much of the money to foreign consultants.

"Not only in Kabul, but across Afghanistan there is a big gap between 'haves' and 'have-nots'," he said.

"Specifically, it comes about because a lot of the aid money is going towards funding private companies, and giving big pay cheques to consultants who are coming there for an odd basis, on a two-week time frame."

He added that Canadians must keep faith that their tax dollars are going towards effective humanitarian projects to help average Afghans.

A specific example is the World University Service of Canada. The group has an Afghanistan project, in partnership with CARE Canada and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, that teaches crucial skills to widows.

"These are widows who, for years, depended on food rations," Nahzat told CTV.ca.

"Many were beggars, who had lost their husbands in times of conflict and war. And now here is a chance for them to become self-sufficient, to become self-reliant and support their families, to become active in the reconstruction of Afghanistan."

The project has helped about 2,000 widows. Although there are about 50,000 widows in Kabul alone, Nahzat said the impact of the project is still significant.

"Two-thousand may not sound like a big number. But multiply that by how many members that one widow will be able to support in her family, and you get a number of 8,000 to 9,000."

Editorial: Sharia at gunpoint?

Dawn 15 July 07 - THE government now has no choice but to relentlessly pursue the religious fanatics who have become a threat to the state and society. Besides the soldiers killed in the line of duty, the Lal Masjid crackdown resulted in the death of many innocent men, women and children. But the Aziz-Ghazi duo had left the government with no other option. The only regret is that an operation that should have been carried out in January, when the Hafsa girls occupied the children’s library, took place in July. This six-month gap was utilised by the militants holed up in the mosque to strengthen their position and convey their perverted philosophy to the people through the media. Let not the same mistake be repeated, for what is going on in Fata and the NWFP calls for an immediate and firm response. Incidents such as Saturday’s suicide attack in North Waziristan that killed at least 18 soldiers cannot be tolerated. The reaction among sections of tribesmen in Bajaur, Battagram and Swat does not reflect the consensus in Pakistan on the Lal Masjid stand-off. Many people have criticised the mistakes made by the intelligence agencies and security forces before and during the operation and regretted the loss of innocent lives. But by and large there is unanimity on the despicable methods adopted by the two brothers to blackmail the nation and the government.

In the NWFP, too, the reaction to the entire episode has by and large been positive, but sections of tribesmen under the Taliban influence have vowed revenge. Their fanaticism is evident from the fact that they do not really care who gets killed or injured or maimed. Their quarrel is with the government, but they would not mind killing innocent people when their suicide bombers blow themselves up in public places. Those who want to enforce Sharia at gunpoint deserve to be tackled with the full force of the state. Their violence and the coverage they get in the media may give an impression that they are about to take over Pakistan; actually, they are in a small minority. As the Lal Masjid affair shows, no religious scholar or madressah management has approved of the criminality perpetrated by the two brothers. Barring the MMA, which is a political alliance that misses no opportunity to flay the government, most ulema have either criticised the Lal Masjid leadership or stayed aloof. No one of any consequence has supported the Lal Masjid clerics.

What we are witnessing in parts of the Frontier is merely a continuation of the anti-government movement launched by pro-Taliban tribesmen since the American attack on Afghanistan and Islamabad’s decision to join the war on terror. The Lal Masjid affair has come in handy for them. While talks and tact must be part of the strategy to pacify the area, the fanatics led by clerics should be told that force will be met with force, and they will be responsible for the loss of innocent lives. They must be told bluntly that Sharia cannot be imposed through force, and the people of Pakistan will resist any such attempt. Unfortunately, the acute differences between the government and the opposition have emboldened the militants. While the government, in a show of unilateralism, tried to go it alone, the opposition parties seemed more interested in the London conference than in making sincere efforts to end the Lal Masjid stand-off and save lives.

Egyptian Extremist Rewriting Rationale For Armed Struggle

Jailhouse Dissent Seen as Challenge to Al-Qaeda

By Ellen Knickmeyer - Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 15, 2007

CAIRO -- The guerrilla leader who crafted what became al-Qaeda's guide to jihad is preparing to renounce its extremes, including the killing of innocent civilians, according to his onetime colleagues and his own writings.

Abdul-Aziz el-Sherif, an emir, or top leader, of the armed Egyptian movement Islamic Jihad and a longtime associate of al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, is writing his dissent behind prison walls on Egypt's Nile River.

Such jailhouse "revisions," as they are known here, have helped to widen rifts between al-Qaeda and some of its former admirers and have led to the release of thousands of erstwhile Islamic extremists from Egypt's prisons.

"It will be a challenge to al-Qaeda, from someone from inside, who speaks the same language," said Kamal Habib, a former Islamic Jihad leader imprisoned for 10 years after Islamic extremists assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Habib, who bears scars from cigarettes that he said Egyptian security officials stubbed out in his palms during interrogations, said that based on his own experience, Sherif probably was tortured after he was imprisoned in Egypt in 2004 but not as he has been writing his revision.

"Torture is not the thing to break Sayed Imam," Habib said, using an honorific for Sherif. "He is very strong."

Fawaz A. Gerges, a Middle East scholar at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, said the revisions "pour fuel on a raging struggle within the jihadist community and . . . challenge the narrative offered by Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden."

Without such dissents, armed attacks "would be much greater, much broader and much more devastating," Gerges said.

The main body of Sherif's revision is a tract of no more than 100 pages that Egypt's state security forces and state-allied religious scholars are vetting. Publication is expected to lead to Egypt's release of up to 5,000 former Islamic Jihad members and other activists.

Among other well known Islamic Jihad figures behind bars in Egypt, Abbud al-Zumar, another former leader, is believed to support Sherif's revision; Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the younger brother of the al-Qaeda deputy leader, publicly "neither supports nor condemns it," according to an associate of the radicals familiar with the revision. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

The associate said he was not convinced of the sincerity of Sherif's revision, in part because Sherif had argued at length against revisions issued by Egypt's other leading militant movement, the Islamic Group.

Sherif and the Zawahiri brothers were the sons of families from the privileged suburbs of north Cairo who helped build the cells that grew into Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group.

Sherif lived underground with Ayman al-Zawahiri as Islamic Jihad fought to topple the Egyptian state under the vague goal of turning the country over to the rule of Islamic scholars, Habib said.

Zawahiri at the time was "a very quiet person, very polite, very shy," said retired Gen. Fouad Allam, a former Egyptian state security director who interrogated Zawahiri three times.

Fellow activists regarded Sherif as a more charismatic figure who outshone and out-thought Zawahiri, Gerges said.

Sherif's 1980s book, "Basic Principles in Making Preparations for Jihad," became the theological guide to combat for al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. In it, he labeled as apostates judges, lawyers, soldiers, police and much of the rest of Egyptian society, casting them as legitimate targets for killing.

The concept of jihad itself is much debated among Muslims. Meaning "struggle," jihad is regarded as a duty that most see as a personal and peaceful commitment to carry out the word of God. For Sherif and others, the struggle remains an armed one.

Egypt, with the world's largest Arab population, grew ever more into a police state as it battled the Islamic Group and Islamic Jihad. More than 1,000 militants, members of security forces, Egyptian civilians and foreign tourists died in the conflict.

"The state was dealing with Islamists as if it were defending itself to the last breath," Habib recalled. "More than 100 were executed. All the doors of the prisons were thrown open" to admit Islamic radicals. "There was the heaviest torture with no limits, no rules."

Outbattled in Egypt, Zawahiri slipped away to Afghanistan, and the fight against Soviet occupation troops, where Sherif followed him.

As Egypt's security forces jailed thousands of members of Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Group and other organizations, Egyptian state security officials struggled to discredit their religious rationale for armed attacks, said Allam, the former Egyptian state security director.

In the late 1990s, imprisoned leaders of the Islamic Group issued written revisions that Gerges said amounted to unconditional surrender.

Allam and others promoted the revisions by jailed Islamic leaders, arranging theological debates carried in television programs and newspapers and held in public squares and sports arenas.

The revisions led to the release of thousands of Islamic Group members, to a life of continuing close surveillance by Egyptian security forces. Egypt forbids freed Islamic Group members from entering politics or speaking to reporters. The aging radicals largely obey.

The effectiveness of the revisions is suggested by a nonevent, Gerges said. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, "Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden made the argument that if the United States did invade Afghanistan . . . a 'river' of recruits would flow into Afghanistan" to defend al-Qaeda, Gerges said. "It turned into a trickle of recruits." The Islamic Group alone, Gerges said, could have opened its pool of 100,000 members to al-Qaeda.

The only major attacks in Egypt over the past 10 years have been bombings at Sinai resorts. Who directed the attacks remains in dispute.

Former fighters and observers of the radical movements stress that ideological change such as Sherif's comes only after military defeat.

"Their dream was completely destroyed," said Amr Elshobaki, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. "This might have been possible for them to endure if they thought their project had a chance to succeed, but these groups became history."

The path of Sherif's own journey to revision is difficult to trace. Family members have told human rights groups that he twice broke with Zawahiri over his friend's embrace of violence. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, however, Sherif wrote, "As long as America is an infidel enemy, terrorizing it is a duty."

Authorities in Yemen arrested Sherif in 2001 and extradited him to Egypt in 2004. Sherif now spends most of his time in isolation in the Toura prison south of Cairo, according to former colleagues and analysts.

In a letter faxed from Toura to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper this year, Sherif pointed to what he called the prohibitions in Islamic law against excesses in jihad and offered what analysts saw as a preview of his revision.

He cited Koranic verse: "Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits, for God loveth not transgressors."

His letter said Islam forbids killing people solely on the grounds of their nationality, skin color or sect, and it forbids killing innocents.

Sherif is expected to insist that former militants be incorporated into Egypt's political life, Gerges said.

Impossible, said Makram Mohammed Ahmed, an official with Egypt's Press Syndicate who has taken part in the prison dialogues leading to the revisions.

"Part of the deal with them is that there would not be a political party," Ahmed said this month in a Cairo meeting on the revisions that brought state security officials together with the militants and other activists they had battled.

Others scoff at any change of heart. "We're looking at a bargain between the Islamic Group, Islamic Jihad and the state in return for reevaluating criminal files and stopping some due executions," said Nabil Abdel-Fattah, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center.

Islamic Jihad's revision comes as the group itself grows into something of an anachronism.

Western governments today are fighting a new era of decentralized, often freelance Islamic fighters -- members of what Gerges called "the Iraq generation" -- who are angered by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and support of Israel.

"Jihad today is no longer a religious idea. It's a political idea, a protest against U.S. activities," said Allam, the retired state security director, sitting on his flower-lined patio next to the Mediterranean, his words accompanied by the crash of waves notorious for their undertow. "The whole world has to do revisions."

$1m bad hair day in Kabul

The Sunday Times 15 July 07 - Debbie Rodriguez tells how her Afghan beauty salon turned from Hollywood dream to a nightmare

Debbie Rodriquez is tucking into muffins and sipping coffee in one of Delhi’s smart hotel patisseries. She’s laughing loudly, turning heads and drawing stares from onlookers who can’t quite place the tanned brassy woman in her plunging smock top, scarlet toenails and jangling silver bling.

She may be a 46-year-old hairdresser from Michigan but she’s also the author of The Kabul Beauty School, the publishing sensation that made the New York Times top 10 bestseller list in April. Her true story has now been sold to Hollywood for $1m (£490,000).

The Kabul Beauty School charts Rodriguez’s flight from an abusive marriage to a violent preacher in Michigan to Kabul, where she volunteered to help rebuild the country after American and British forces toppled the Taliban.

As a hairdresser, she wasn’t top of the list of what war-ravaged Afghanistan needed most – the only things she could repair were split ends, bad home haircuts, spiny fingernails and overgrown undergrowth – but they turned out to be highly sought after skills in Kabul where the Taliban had banned beauty treatments as “unIslamic”. So with two other westerners she set up the Kabul Beauty School, taught students to transform the city’s women from ghosts in black burqas to Brazilian-waxed goddesses and married an Afghan warlord after a three-week romance. “I guess I have a problem with impulsivity,” she explains.

Her Midwest warmth and ditzy charm created a unique male-free zone where Afghan women, foreign diplomats and aid workers talked freely, and the newly trained salon girls felt able to lift the veil over the violent relationships, sexual abuse and domestic slavery endured by women throughout Afghanistan. Rodriguez tells how one of the girls had been married off by her father at 10 years old to settle a debt, while another girl revealed her father had sold her as a job lot with her mother and sisters to an older uncle. They disclosed rapes and strategies for avoiding sex with their husbands – Islamic custom dictates that men must shower after intercourse, so they often “forgot” to bring home water.

As they learnt the unIslamic arts of bikini waxing, perming and colouring they grew in confidence and began to believe they could become independent providers and buy a bigger stake in their own lives.

Today just under 200 women have passed out as qualified stylists and beauticians, but it’s unlikely Rodriguez will ever see any of them again. At the moment of her greatest triumph, as she returned to Kabul with a million-dollar Hollywood deal in her bag, she was confronted with the corruption, greed and terror Afghans have lived with for decades, but from which she had thus far been shielded.

She had just come back from Los Angeles where she had met Miss Congeniality star Sandra Bullock and Mrs Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, as rivals to play her in the film – she says she prefers Bullock because she was “so funny” – and was buzzing with excitement when the life she had built in Afghanistan was suddenly reduced to rubble. She learnt her husband was a violent cheat and the country she believed was emerging from the dark days of Taliban repression was in fact riddled with corruption and ruled by gangsters.

Until then Rodriguez had felt protected by her husband. Haji Sher Mohammad, 16 years her junior, was a veteran of the Northern Alliance army that opposed the Taliban and was close to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the notorious Uzbek warlord accused of massacring Taliban prisoners who suffocated after being locked in sealed truck containers. He later became Dostum’s official adviser, but when they met, Sher was the only boss of a small construction firm – and he made her laugh.

Neither spoke the other’s language and they courted using friends as translators. She agreed to marry him on a whim, despite the fact that he was already married with seven children, after he told her western-style dating was unacceptable in Afghanistan.

Over time he learnt English, she picked up Dari and he became more comfortable with her public displays of affection. “Americans are touchy and affectionate, but he freaked out over it at first,” she said.

Despite her husband’s connections, she always felt safe with him and affectionately called him “Fred Flintstone with a rocket launcher”.

The first sign things were not well came shortly before she left for her book tour in April. She had given her husband her $30,000 “emergency fund” to invest in the salon building, but later discovered he’d used it to buy his own carpet factory. “I didn’t have time to fight then,” she said.

But as she was returning from her triumphant US tour with her son Noah she was given a sharp reminder she was coming home to trouble. Her husband called her during her stop-over in Dubai and told her government figures were saying her book had insulted Islam and were preparing a legal case against her.

“He said: ‘You have one month to get out or they will arrest you. We should take some of your money and buy a house in Dubai. If it’s in both our names I can work there.’ I was so scared to go back in [to Kabul],” she said.

When Rodriguez did arrive back in May her salon girls and other friends told her that her husband was involved in a plot to seize her Hollywood windfall and her son would be kidnapped to extort the money. “I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t,” she said.

Her girls told her that while she was away, a group of well-dressed Afghan women had arrived in a black SUV with armed guards. They had pushed their way into the salon, accusing them of bringing shame on the country.

The women, who the girls believed to be government officials, were waving proof copies of the British edition of her book (published by Hodder & Stoughton), and pointing at photographs showing some of the girls with their heads uncovered. They told the girls they knew who they were and that they would pay for bringing shame on Afghan women.

Rodriguez’s husband deepened her sense of panic when he said he’d been given a copy of the book by someone in Afghan intelligence and hinted that powerful figures would have to be appeased for the problem to go away. “He was saying this can all go away Debbie if we just bribe this person.”

At the end of her first day back at work a friend told her Sher had sexually harassed one of the girls in the salon and another said he had been blackmailing them with a video of them dancing at an all-girl party. He had found it on her computer and said he would show it to their families and tell them they had been giving massages to American soldiers if they revealed his plotting to Rodriguez, she said.

When she confronted him he stormed into the salon with his gun bulging in his pocket. “He denied it all and was shouting at the girls. He wanted to kill Zara because he knew she had told me about it. I realised I didn’t know who he was,” she said.

A customer called in a private security firm that warned Rodriguez to leave the country immediately. In 10 minutes she had packed five years of her life into two suitcases and made her escape, leaving behind her salon girls and what she’d once believed was a happy life. She moved to San Francisco where she is planning to study Arabic at college, but today is in Delhi working on her new project: rescuing the five salon girls she believes are still in grave danger.

Two are still working in the salon, which is now controlled by her estranged husband, another is in a safe house and two have managed to leave the country. Rodriguez is staying in Delhi with Zara, the girl who exposed her husband’s plotting, and who recently arrived from Kabul after a security firm helped to organise her escape.

Rodriguez feels “completely lost” in her new life, she says, and frets that her success has been at her salon girls’ expense. She fears she has inadvertently made their troubled lives worse, and says she won’t rest until they are safe and settled outside of Afghanistan.

“I thought Afghanistan was moving forward – I saw hope for the women and the country – I thought I could make a life there,” she said.

“Now I see they still don’t want women to have a voice and the women are still vulnerable. Strange women scream at them for not covering their heads, they’re scared to death of their husbands, fathers and brothers. It’s the same as it was under the Taliban. I can’t believe that after five years of so-called freedom that these girls are still running.”

It’s not the feelgood story Columbia has paid the big bucks for, but it is the real story of Afghanistan. Rodriguez is hoping her epilogue will make it to the big screen.

[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.]