In this bulletin:

• Taliban grab 23 Koreans from bus, officials say
• Taliban kill 6 police in ambush in southern Afghanistan, 5 civilians die in bombing
• India rejects "baseless" reports on RAW-trained Afghan bombers
• Islamabad to take up issue of ‘171 RAW-trained terrorists’
• Afghans eagerly awaiting Musharraf’s visit to Kabul
• Coup for Canada if UAE joins Afghan mission
• Power, politics and poppies
• No emergency, elections on time, media must not sympathise with religious extremists: Only politico-military moderates can thwart radicals: Musharraf
• Pakistan struggles with damage control
• Provincial officials threaten to resign en mass - Afghan agency
• Canadians cool to extending mission
• Debating a distant, divisive war
• How to squeeze jihadi culture out of Pakistan
• We are failing in Afghanistan
• Police arrest two after chemical find

Taliban grab 23 Koreans from bus, officials say
HAMID SHALIZI – Reuters July 20, 2007 at 5:41 AM EDT

KABUL — Taliban insurgents have kidnapped 23 Korean Christians from a bus in Afghanistan, officials said on Friday, the biggest group of foreigners seized so far in the militant campaign to oust the government and its Western backers.

Taliban fighters have increasingly turned away from classic guerrilla warfare and instead have taken up what Afghan officials call “terror tactics” — kidnapping, suicide attacks and roadside bombs.

“Twenty-three Korean citizens, 15 women and five men, were very carelessly travelling in a chartered bus from Kabul to Kandahar yesterday, on the way to Kandahar their bus was stopped by armed men ... and they took them away,” said Interior Minister spokesman Zemari Bashari.

He said the incident happened in the Qarabagh district of Ghazni province, some 175 km south of Kabul. “We are still investigating which organisation they were with, and why they were travelling to Kandahar,” he said.

The Taliban said they had seized 18 Koreans, 15 men and three women. “They are safe with us, we are investigating them and our demands and reaction will be announced later.” said Taliban spokesman Said Yousuf Ahmadi by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Earlier, local police said the bus was travelling from the southern city of Kandahar to the capital Kabul. A South Korean Foreign Ministry official said in Seoul about 20 South Korean Christian volunteers were feared to have been kidnapped by Taliban insurgents.

Last year, the South Korean government tried to stop a group of 2,000 Korean Christians travelling to Afghanistan for a peace conference, fearing for their safety.

But 900 of them still came to Afghanistan, causing an uproar in the staunchly Muslim country, where many accused them of being evangelical missionaries, before they were all deported.

Afghanistan's ambassador to South Korea was later sacked for issuing the group with visas, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. South Korea has no combat troops in Afghanistan, but has a contingent of 2,200 engineers, doctors and medical staff. Two Germans and six Afghans were abducted southwest of Kabul on Wednesday and are still missing.

“The German citizens are safe with us. Our demand is the withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan and also the release of our prisoners,” said Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi. Germany said it was aware of the Taliban claim.

“We have taken note of the comments from a so-called spokesman for the Taliban. There is also a statement to the contrary from a Taliban spokesman from yesterday. He has indicated that the abducted Germans are not in Taliban hands. There is a contradiction here,” a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement.

“We will carefully and calmly pursue developments. All necessary steps have been taken. The emergency task force is working very intensively on a quick release of both men.”

One German national was kidnapped in western Afghanistan this month, but was released unharmed after a few days. The Taliban kidnapped two French aid workers and three of their Afghan colleagues in southwestern Afghanistan in April, but later released them unharmed.

Taliban kill 6 police in ambush in southern Afghanistan, 5 civilians die in bombing

The Associated Press - Friday, July 20, 2007 - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan: Two separate bombings in southern Afghanistan left five civilians dead Friday, while a Taliban ambush left six police officers dead, officials said.

A car bomb targeting a U.S.-led coalition convoy in Helmand province's Sangin district left two civilians dead and two coalition troops wounded, said Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, a coalition spokesman. One coalition vehicle caught fire after the blast, he said.

In Helmand's Marja district, Taliban militants ambushed police on Thursday, leaving six officers dead and two others wounded, said Muhammad Hussein, the provincial police chief.

Two police vehicles were also damaged in the attack, Hussein said. There were no reports of Taliban casualties.

Violence has soared in Afghanistan in the last several weeks. More than 3,300 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on numbers from Afghan and Western officials.

In other violence, a freshly planted mine exploded under a civilian car in Kandahar province's Zhari district on Friday, killing three civilians in it, said Sayed Afghan Saqib, Kandahar's police chief. A similar device exploded next to an Afghan Army convoy in Helmand's Sangin district, wounding three Afghan soldiers.

Militants regularly use such devices to target foreign and Afghan government troops.

India rejects "baseless" reports on RAW-trained Afghan bombers - Press Trust Of India

Islamabad, July 20, 2007 - Amid a spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan following the Lal Masjid operation, officials and an opposition leader have reportedly alleged that most of these attacks were carried out by "Afghan" bombers trained by Indian intelligence agencies, a charge rejected as "baseless" and "mischievous" by the Indian mission here.

Pakistani intelligence agencies during a meeting chaired by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao on Wednesday claimed that 25 "Afghan terrorists" had links with RAW agents in Indian consulates at Jalalabad and Kandahar, 'Daily Times' reported quoting officials.

Also, Gen Nasarullah Babar, former Interior Minister and a senior leader of ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), alleged during a meeting of lawyers in Nowshera in NWFP that agents of RAW working through the Indian consulates in Afghanistan were responsible for the current bomb blasts in Pakistan, 'The News' reported.

Reacting to the reports, an Indian diplomat in Islamabad told PTI that "these are baseless and mischievous allegations and we reject them entirely. As we have said before when such reports surfaced, a stable peaceful and prosperous Pakistan is in India's own interest.

"The sources for such reports seek to vitiate the current friendly atmosphere and dialogue process between the two countries. India is determined not to fall into their trap. We are sure the government of Pakistan shares this determination."

Islamabad to take up issue of ‘171 RAW-trained terrorists’

with Kabul - Daily Times, Friday, July 20, 2007

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad is set to take up with Kabul the issue of “171 RAW-trained

Afghan terrorists” who intelligence agencies say sneaked into Pakistan two months ago and are yet to be traced.

Intelligence agencies suspect that these Afghans were involved in the recent spate of suicide bombings in Pakistan. Sources told Daily Times that intelligence agencies informed a meeting chaired by Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao on Wednesday that 25 of the 171 Afghans had links with RAW agents in Indian consulates at Jalalabad and Kandahar.

The sources said that the Afghans had crossed the border via Torkham and Chaman two months ago and had spread in the settled areas of the NWFP, Sindh and Punjab for suicide bombings.

The sources said that the intelligence agencies ruled out Al Qaeda’s role in the recent terrorist incidents and held the RAW network responsible for the suicide bombings in Islamabad, NWFP and other parts of the country.

The sources said that the government had decided to take up this issue with the Afghan government through diplomatic channels. They added that the Foreign Office representative present at the meeting had been asked to prepare a draft of all evidence of RAW activities for taking up the matter with the Afghan government.

The sources said that the meeting had also decided to deploy Punjab Rangers for the security of the Diplomatic Enclave, foreign missions, sensitive installations, important personalities and maintaining law and order in the federal capital. They said that 60 platoons of the Frontier Constabulary were being sent back to the NWFP to tighten security in the restive province.

The sources said that the Interior Ministry had sanctioned the recruitment of 7,500 personnel for the Islamabad Capital Territory Police, and asked the Punjab police to recruit more personnel as well.

The Interior Ministry has ordered the Islamabad district administration and the police to submit a report on the criminal record of militant suspects in the federal capital as well as information about the staff and security situation of all private organisations.

The meeting also decided to issue orders to the provincial home departments and the Islamabad administration to tighten security for the Pakistan People’s Party leadership after the blast at the party’s camp set up to welcome Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on Tuesday night.

The meeting issued directions to the district coordination officers and district police officers to ensure that no Islamic organisation arranged big gatherings so that anti-state elements could not exploit the situation.

Afghans eagerly awaiting Musharraf’s visit to Kabul

By Behroz Khan The News, Friday, July 20, 2007

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his government and the people of Afghanistan will accord a warm welcome to President General Pervez Musharraf and members of the Peace Jirga from Pakistan with the hope of winning peace and countering terrorism.

“We are very much hopeful of the outcome of the Peace Jirga. This will be the sign of brotherhood and friendship for the people of Pakistan from Afghanistan,” the Afghan president told a select group of Pakistani journalists at the Presidential Palace here on Thursday.

The journalists were especially invited to Kabul by the Afghan government to brief them about the arrangements and formation of the Jirga to be held in the second week of August in Kabul.

During his meeting with President Musharraf in the presence of the US President George W Bush in Washington on September 27 last year, President Karzai had proposed the joint Peace Jirga.

About the composition of the Afghan part of the Jirga, Karzai said that 350 members had been selected from all over Afghanistan representing all the ethnic groups including parliamentarians, tribal elders and Ulema. He said he would also like to see that the Pakistani politicians including Maulana Fazlur Rehman as well as Awami National Party, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and all other parties are represented in the Pakistani half of the Jirga.

Pakistan will also send a 350-member Jirga to discuss and find solution to the problem of terrorism, which is affecting both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Afghan president hoped that results of the Peace Jirga would be positive and both the governments would ensure implementation of the joint declaration of the Jirga. The Jirga would be in session for three-and-a-half days wherein President Musharraf and President Karzai would also address the elders.

“There is a positive change on the part of Pakistan. Trust has been restored. This is a big change that Pakistan has agreed to convening of the peace Jirga,” the Afghan president said. “Extremism and terrorism are a common threat, which need to be handled jointly. Pakhtuns are dying and suffering on the one side of the Durand Line and the Afghans on the other,” he said.

The Afghan president said that what was happening in Swat and Bajaur was replicated in Helmand and other provinces of Afghanistan where these extremists stop girls from getting education or their schools were destroyed. “Who are the people who push the nation backward? They are blasting our roads, schools and hospitals,” he said.

Karzai said he did not indulge in blame game but the reality was that what was happening in the tribal areas and other parts of Pakistan was the result of what Afghanistan had been warning of. He said that Pakistan and Afghanistan were fighting a common enemy and any help Islamabad needed from Kabul would be extended. “We are of the belief that helping Pakistan in the fight against

terrorism is in fact helping Afghanistan,” he said.

President Karzai said that he was not in favour of fencing the Pak-Afghan border or infesting it with mines because it would not separate the terrorists from the peaceful people but would divide the people and families.

Coup for Canada if UAE joins Afghan mission

July 20, 2007 - Bruce Campion-SmithOTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA–The United Arab Emirates may send troops to work alongside Canadians in southern Afghanistan, sources say.

The move, which could come this fall, would mark a military and diplomatic coup for Canada, which had been urging the tiny Arab nation to contribute soldiers and equipment to the mission to put a "Muslim face" on the international coalition.

It comes at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been pressing nations to contribute more to help stabilize Afghanistan.

Canadian diplomats and defence officials made overtures to the UAE in January to get involved in the mission. Now a tentative plan is being discussed for the deployment of a small – but highly symbolic – UAE force to serve under the leadership of Canadian officials.

Officials at the UAE embassy in Ottawa declined to comment. However, a source confirmed the federal government is aware that a possible deployment is in the works by the small Arab nation, located along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf.

According to a defence department briefing note released in the spring, UAE signalled it was interested in contributing a "small tactical unit." The contribution could include four LeClerc main battle tanks, two platoons of armoured reconnaissance vehicles, two self-propelled 155-mm guns and a detachment of unmanned aerial vehicles, according to the note, released under access to information.

"The UAE is capable of bringing considerable financial support to development projects and would provide a Muslim face to International Security Assistance Force operations, providing a counterpoint to insurgent rhetoric," it said.

Power, politics and poppies

The Guardian, UK, 07/18/2007 By Robert Fox

The Commons report on Afghanistan reaches some straightforward conclusions, but there are bigger questions that need to be addressed.

The problem with parliament's latest critique of British operations in Afghanistan is that so much of what's wrong, and needs to be done, lies beyond the control of Britain, its parliament and forces, and Afghanistan. The House of Commons defence committee has just handed down a thoughtful, detailed, sobering and, in the end, constructive report on what Britain is now trying to do there.

I would say that wouldn't I? I was one of two-dozen witnesses who reported to the committee. No off-record, hiding behind the political or diplomatic sofa, and all the omertà in which officialdom now indulges itself. After my testimony to the committee I was congratulated and vilified equally for naming names, attributing sources for ideas and statements. Quelle surprise! I told one elderly statesman I was a journalist, and that the problem with unattributed remarks on such occasions from journos, politicians or generals is that they all seem to come from the imagination and pen of that well-known sage, AJ Makeitup.

The straightforward conclusions that the Brits have problems with resources in manpower, equipment and finance, cannot be contested. That they are defeating the Taliban at virtually every turn is also true. More difficult are the bigger questions: how long can the Helmand operation be sustained at present cost to manpower and equipment, how can drug production be mitigated, and how can the government be sustained in Kabul?

The more the fighting goes on, there is a danger that the British public will lose heart and be more reluctant to see their sons and daughters committed to this particular fray. As the Commons committee says, too few of the Nato allies are prepared to put money and soldiers into the operation - they just don't see it as in their interest.

But when the likes of Lord Ashdown of Peacekeeping says that "this is the test of Nato as Bosnia was of the UN", we are all entitled to give a collective "Eh?"

To paraphrase JF Kennedy's inaugural, it is not a question of what Afghanistan can do for Nato (coherence, identity, future purpose, etc) but what Nato, its parts, its nations and peoples, can do for Afghanistan.

The central issue for the British in Afghanistan is whether their current mission, and the concept of operations for pursuing it, makes sense. The stated purposes of the Blair-Brown administration for Afghanistan is fourfold: to sustain an independent pluriform government in Kabul, to whack the Taliban insurgents, to beat the drugs business and to stop a resurgence of al-Qaida.

The problem with the first job, to sustain a new pluriform government in Kabul, is that too much is riding on Hamid Karzai. He won't be there forever, for three years more at maximum, and the outside world musty prepare for what comes next.

The fight against opium production is not going well - with production up 60% last year - admittedly that was before the Brits got to Helmand, the biggest growing area. But bashing the Taliban in Helmand and threatening eradication is not the answer - the collateral damage is too great. Farmers I spoke to earlier this year equated completely the threatened and actual violence of the Taliban and the drugs Mafiosi and the bombs and ordnance from the RAF and USAF: "They all do the same thing," one desperate farmer in Panjwei told me, "they kill our families." This will worsen if the Americans go ahead with plans for the aerial spraying of poppy fields - because they'll kill almost anything else that can grow there, too.

The poppies may grow along the Helmand valley, but that is not the centre of gravity, the nerve centre, of the opium and heroin industry - that lies in the cities, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kabul, and uncomfortably close to what purports to be the elected government. Trashing the peasants and their meagre fields and farms is likely to drive thousands more recruits to the Taliban.

Similarly very few of the real sources of power, command and recruitment of the Taliban lie in the areas where the British, Americans, Dutch, Danes and Canadians are now fighting. So much of their succour and deep support, supplies in recruits and ordnance comes from over the border, in Pakistan and to a lesser degree Iran.

This is what makes Pervez Musharraf such a tricky ally. In a way he is South Asia's Ethelred the Unready, always paying Danegeld to foes real and imaginary, religious fundamentalists, the Baluch, Benazir Bhutto and the followers of Nawaz Sharif. The path to stabilising Afghanistan lies through Islamabad, Lahore and Quetta, and to an extent Tehran and Qom. It cannot be solved by Keystone Cops search-and-destroy operations against the enemy du jour in southern Afghanistan, alone.

The campaign against the terrorists of al-Qaida and its disciples raises the most awkward questions. Why has the rooting out of the cell of the historic founder, Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, whether by Pakistan, USD, UK, Canadian, French and Australian special forces been so unsuccessful? They haven't got near the man with soft brown eyes, long beard, and psychopathic political philosophy.

Here, the UK and the US missions diverge, and this needs to be recongised. What goes on among the preachers, promoters and practitioners of Salafist nihilistic revolution in Pakistan, and by extension Afghanistan, is of direct concern for the domestic security of the UK in a way that it isn't for the US. This needs to be recognised more candidly and publicly.

The real need of any report on the UK and its role and activity in Afghanistan is to state quite plainly what the strategic and tactical aims are - for the British people before we start babbling about notions of solidarity with Nato and other allies. This must be a priority for any future such reports. But before that we must hear the why, where, how and what Britain is about in Afghanistan now, from our new prime minister Gordon Brown - and before he goes off on holiday next week.

No emergency, elections on time, media must not sympathise with religious extremists: Only politico-military moderates can thwart radicals: Musharraf

* Says NWFP CM endorsed federal govt’s anti-Taliban strategy
* Govt has earned some ‘space’ for action against extremists

By Najam Sethi - Daily Times 19 July 2007

ISLAMABAD: President General Pervez Musharraf hoped the general elections would return moderate forces to parliament with whom he would work to develop a greater national consensus to restore credibility to the political system and take on the forces of religious extremism. That is why, he said, the next general elections were critical for Pakistan and had to be free and fair in order for their results to be accepted as legitimate and representative of the popular will.

President Musharraf was talking to a select group of owners and editors of the print and electronic media at his Camp Office in Rawalpindi on Wednesday morning.

Asked whether he thought he was personally indispensable in the scheme of things, he suggested that no purely civilian government without the support of the military which he led as army chief could hope to effectively counter the challenge and threat of extremism in Pakistan. He insisted he had no personal ambitions to fulfill or ego to satisfy.
He also laid to rest rumours that a state of emergency might be imposed in the country so that elections could be postponed. There will be no state of emergency in the country and presidential and general elections will be held on time “as per the Constitution”, he reiterated.

President Musharraf dwelt at length on the extremist challenge facing Pakistan as a nation and asked the media to put the national interest above personal or business compulsions. Specifically, he asked media owners and editors not to allow their organs to be used for the projection of the extremists. But he also acknowledged that his own political supporters in government and the ruling alliance needed to do more to stand up and be counted on the side of the forces of moderation.

He explained how the government had exercised caution and patience in the Lal Masjid affair but then been compelled to take action. He warned that the government would not allow any more Lal Masjids and said the government had earned some “space” for action against wannabe extremists by its military operation in Islamabad.

President Musharraf made three major points regarding Talibanisation and Al Qaeda in the region. He said that Al Qaeda was on the run in the tribal areas, that the flow of Taliban from Pakistani territory to Afghanistan had been reduced and that NATO and the CIA were agreed that this was the case. However, when it was pointed out to him that on all three counts the recently released National Security Intelligence report jointly authored by over a dozen American agencies had taken exactly the opposite view on each issue, he seemed surprised. He attributed it to domestic US concerns and explained how American officials never disagreed with his prognosis in their meetings with him. At any rate, he insisted, he was duty bound to look after Pakistan’s national interest and never took dictation from any foreign power.

Nonetheless, he pointed out that the Pakistan Army was dispatching two full divisions of troops to the troubled areas and also raising new paramilitary forces to aid civil power. He explained that in National Security Council meetings the chief minister of the NWFP had fully supported the federal government’s strategic plan to put down the Taliban in the frontier regions and win hearts and minds. He implied he would continue to woo the moderate mainstream mullahs everywhere because they too were against religious extremism and violence, and thereby isolate and crush the extremists by a combination of military, political and religious moves.

Pakistan struggles with damage control

Asia Times, 07/17/2007 By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Pakistan is getting the backlash it expected after the military action to root out militants from the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, but further violent reaction could come from a new kind of enemy.

The country's intelligence agencies have warned President General Pervez Musharraf to expect an explosion of violence, some of it from a loosely interlaced network of underground militants across the country. Militants claim that more than 1,500 people, mostly madrassa students, died in the attack on the Lal Masjid last week, which lasted several days. The government places the deaths at 75.

According to the intelligence warnings, the reaction will include kidnappings and killings of Pakistan Army officers and family members. The president has also been informed that the Inter-Services Intelligence's (ISI's) proxy network in the tribal areas is collapsing. A manifestation of this is the Taliban's removal of Haji Nazir as commander of South Waziristan. Nazir this year led a massacre of Uzbek militants in the tribal area, in cooperation with the Pakistani armed forces.

Top military and civilian leaders are trying their hardest to talk to the Pakistani Taliban in an effort to defuse the situation, but it is little-known militant groups that pose the biggest threat, and the ISI has little or no access to them.

Dozens of security personnel have already been killed in the tribal areas since the raid on the Red Mosque, and more attacks are expected.

As a general rule, Islamic militants have a strong knowledge of Islamic tenants and they have a roadmap of Islamic revolution imprinted on their minds, including a full understanding of what constitutes a model Islamic state.

From recently spending time with militants in the "red" zones of the Swat Valley in NWFP and Bajaur Agency, a different picture emerges. Previous interaction over the years with militants suggested that they at least were obsessed with defeating the Western coalition in Afghanistan and reviving the Taliban government. However, the present breed of jihadis rapidly emerging in the Swat Valley, Bajaur, North Waziristan and South Waziristan is different.

The militants this correspondent encountered could hardly be called "revolutionary", and they were not fully trained combatants. At best they could be described as disgruntled youths who have been manipulated by clerics, or simply fired up by incidents such as Lal Masjid.

They are up in arms and want to take on the government. They say they want to kill Musharraf, but they don't know how, or what they would do next. This scenario promises to generate serious violence, but not revolution. The militants are divided into small groups, united only in a desire to fight their common enemy, the Pakistani military establishment.

Of dozens of such militants this correspondent met, Rauf (not his real name) is a good example. He is a student at a madrassa in a village in the Malakand area of Swat.

Rauf's journey to jihad began when a few years ago he heard one of the famous speeches of Maulana Masood Azhar, called "Babri Masjid", on an audio cassette. Azhar's Jaish-e-Mohammed was involved in the struggle over disputed Kashmir with India, and the tape dealt with the topic of a temple site disputed between Muslims and Hindus in India.

An inspired Rauf went to Afghanistan for several months. He interacted with several charismatic people and chose the life of a Talib (student) and made jihad the motto of his life.

"I did not read much. I only started my Islamic learning recently. Actually, my inspiration was the people around me in Afghanistan's jihadi camps. One person was Shiekh Omar [Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh - involved in the killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002]. I was one of his students. He used to teach us sophisticated techniques of guerrilla warfare, including hijacking aircraft. We were all thrilled by his charismatic personality."

Rauf claims that he is ready to take on the military, like his fellow villagers, once they are deployed in the Swat Valley. Maulana Fazlullah, the leader of the banned pro-Taliban Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws) has announced that people should remain peaceful as long as troops are in the towns in the area, but once they are stationed in the mountains they are fair targets.

The military establishment has hurriedly contacted a number of religious leaders to get them to use their influence in calming militants, but their authority does not extend to many of these new militants, including even Fazlullah.

Last Thursday's attack on a military convoy in Swat illustrates this. The man who rammed his car into the trucks - killing himself and several policemen - was initially suspected to be one of Fazlullah's people. In fact it was Noor Mohammed, once the chief of the banned Harkat ul-Mujahideen in Malakand Agency. He had been underground for the past few years and had developed his own network of youths scattered in remote villages.

Noor was a planner of asymmetric warfare, which he learned in training camps in Afghanistan. Contacts close to his network believe that he never planned to carry out the attack but was transporting explosives in his car, as well as suicide jackets. They say that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time and, when he realized he was in the middle of a convoy, he detonated some explosives, as he knew he would be caught.

But whether he set out on that day as a suicide bomber or became one on the spur of the moment is not the point. What has alarmed the authorities is that he had fallen off their radar screens. They now suspect there are many more such networks as Noor's, and they could stretch across the country.

This adds yet another facet to Musharraf's struggle against extremism and militancy.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.

Provincial officials threaten to resign en mass - Afghan agency

Text of report in English by Afghan independent Pajhwok news agency website

Charikar, 18 July: Accusing some government bodies of involvement in corruption, members of the Parwan Provincial Council have warned that they will resign en masse if the situation persists.

The people's representatives issued the warning during their meeting with Governor Abdol Jabbar Taqwa on Wednesday. Farid Shafaq, the head of the provincial council, told Pajhwok Afghan News that some government departments were looting the resources as well as paying no heed to the people's problems.

It was the unanimous decision of all members to quit the council if the government failed to pay heed to their demands, said Shafaq. Abdol Zaher Salangi, the deputy head of the provincial council, alleged that the authorities behaved inappropriately towards the legislators when the legislators approached them to discuss the problems faced by the people.

He said the provincial council's rules authorize the members to monitor all reconstruction projects in their respective province. Abdol Jabar Taqwa, the governor of the province, said the legislators' complaint was not unusual. He was of the view that such complaints were rampant in other provinces as well.

Taqwa said he was trying to remove the differences and address the complaints expressed by the legislators. Parwan council has 12 members. Four of them are women.

Canadians cool to extending mission

BRIAN LAGHI AND ALAN FREEMAN - From Thursday's Globe and Mail, July 19, 2007 at 1:05 AM EDT

OTTAWA, SANTIAGO — Canadians would be more likely to support extending the military mission in Afghanistan if they were convinced it would protect the rights of women and children, according to a new poll.

The results of the wide-ranging poll also suggest that Canadians are ill at ease with the fact that their country's traditional role as an international peacekeeper is being transformed. Almost two-thirds say Canada's military role should be to act under the United Nations in a pacification role rather than as a combatant.

With the Afghan mission set to end in February, 2009, the Prime Minister must decide relatively quickly whether Canada should extend its troop commitment in the southern province of Kandahar. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his government would only do so if a parliamentary consensus develops.

The poll, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail/CTV News, suggests that the best way for Mr. Harper to obtain that consensus would be to argue that Canada has a duty to safeguard the humanitarian gains of Afghan women and children.

When asked to list the most important factors in considering an extension, 81 per cent of those surveyed listed the rights of women and children. Sixty-eight per cent mentioned the likelihood of a terrorist attack on the West, including Canada, as being an important factor.

The poll of 1,000 Canadians was conducted July 12 to 15 and is accurate to within 3.1 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

Peter Donolo, a partner with the Strategic Counsel, said the Prime Minister can probably best sell the mission on humanitarian grounds, but Canadians are also sympathetic to the notion that Canada could be attacked if Afghanistan isn't stabilized.

“There's resonance with our own vulnerability – the kind of arguments that were used with the original deployment,” he said. “But what's interesting is that what doesn't [have resonance] is the reputational stuff – that it will hurt our international legitimacy or reputation.”

That means that Mr. Harper's argument of a year ago – that Canadians don't “cut and run” – probably won't sell. The poll finds that 59 per cent of Canadians oppose sending troops to Afghanistan, up four percentage points from May.

Mr. Donolo also said that a lack of progress in Afghanistan may be behind another finding that shows 65 per cent of Canadians believe their role on the world stage is more suited to peacekeeping than as enforcers of peace. That sentiment was most popular in Ontario, where 69 per cent supported the idea. He said Canadians may be pining for the days before 9/11 and are “nostalgic for the blue helmets” of the UN missions of the past. But Canadian casualties and a perceived lack of success may also be persuading Canadians that they should refrain from the combat role.

Asked in Chile how he might persuade a skeptical public to back the mission, Mr. Harper insisted that he does not see any significant “moral opposition” to the deployment of Canadian troops.

“What I see is a growing concern of Canadians on the burden that we are carrying and the level of Canadian casualties,” he said. “I understand the pain. I understand the difficulty this causes the Canadian population.”

But he added that he hopes the mission can be extended. “We went to Afghanistan because a failed state there caused a significant security problem [that] resulted in 9/11 and the deaths of a couple of dozen Canadians” and thousands of Americans, Mr. Harper said.

The poll also finds that Canadians are not particularly enthusiastic about the notion that it may take a decade to make significant headway in Afghanistan. When asked whether they support remaining in Afghanistan for 10 years or more, 70 per cent opposed the idea, while only 28 per cent backed it.

“One of the problems with the Afghanistan issue is a sense among Canadians that it's a morass,” Mr. Donolo said. Perhaps most distressing for the Tories, Quebeckers continue to oppose the war in greater numbers than in the rest of the country.

“They are inclined to believe the worst on this,” Mr. Donolo said. Winning seats in Quebec is seen as a linchpin to Mr. Harper's goal of achieving a majority government.

Debating a distant, divisive war

Pro: Opponents of the Afghan military mission who say they `support our troops' are simply spewing platitudes

Jul 20, 2007 04:30 AM - Rondi Adamson

If truth is the first casualty of war, then the tendency to spew platitudes must be war's first-born child. A current Canadian bromide is, "I don't support the war in Afghanistan, but I support our troops."

On the surface, that would seem an acceptable sentiment. But if you scratch the surface, many who object to Canadian participation in the war will begin spewing further platitudes, each more nonsensical than the previous. Platitudes about imperialism, about the wanton killing of civilians, about the war on terror being "all about oil."

If one honestly believes that foolishness, how can one "support" our troops? If you believe Canadian troops are taking part in the slaughter of civilians for no reason other than to line Dick Cheney's pockets, then how can you "support" said troops?

If you believe that Canada's forces should only be donning their renowned "peacekeeper" hats, then how can you support them when they are at war?

Not to mention that most of those who don't believe Canadian troops should be fighting but who "support our troops" are also those who argue in favour of gutting our military. In other words, they "support" our troops by robbing them of proper equipment. Some support.

The recent debate about keeping "Support our troops" stickers on Toronto's emergency vehicles put me in the odd position – for about three seconds – of having a small bit of regard for Mayor David Miller. Initially, he opposed keeping the stickers, which struck me as consistent with the rest of his politics – his stated doubts about the war and his apparent anti-American world view. He changed his mind, however, claiming that the deaths of Canadian soldiers the week of the sticker debate "brought it home." I believe the "it" to which he was referring was the fact that popular opinion wanted the stickers to stay. So I am back to lacking regard for him.

Jack Layton is always good for a platitude or two (or three). And the one that appears on his party's website concerning Canadian troops in Afghanistan is exceptionally plebeian. "Support our troops. Bring 'em home," it pleads. How perfectly banal. I love the "'em" – lest we forget that Layton is a man of the people (and not just of the people who would take Afghanistan back to the eighth century), he reminds us by dropping that snooty "th."

In a statement on the website, Layton refers to the war in Afghanistan as a "George Bush style counter-insurgency war." (In case we've forgotten who we should be blaming!) But Canada's soldiers are volunteers. They have signed up for a profession that is not, by definition, safe (unlike Layton and Miller). And they do their job well (unlike Layton and Miller) – so why "bring 'em home" as though they were hapless children or disillusioned draftees?

The need to offer surface "support" for troops stems, of course, from the Vietnam era. So I would suggest that rather than declaring, "I support the troops," people with misgivings about Afghanistan wear stickers that say, "I promise not to spit on troops or call them baby killers."

I support our troops because I support the war in Afghanistan. That includes supporting the deliberate killing of bad people. It also includes accepting that civilian deaths and military casualties will occur and that both are grim inevitabilities of war.

Still, I would prefer that, rather than spout clichés, all Canadians understand why our troops should be encouraged to do their job with the best possible weaponry on this most important battlefield.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto writer. rondi.adamson@gmail.com

How to squeeze jihadi culture out of Pakistan

By Vali Nasr, Fri Jul 20, 4:00 AM ET – The Christian Science Monitor - The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released this week paints a bleak picture of Al Qaeda's renewed strength and determination to attack America. And a major part of the blame, US officials charge, lies with someone President Bush has described as a critical ally in the war on terror: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.

Since 9/11, Washington has looked to President Musharraf to uproot Islamic extremism in South Asia. Nearly six years later, however, Pakistan is still a nuclear-armed crucible of jihadi culture, exporting terrorists and destabilizing its neighbors.

For too long, Washington has coddled the Pakistani general, turned a blind eye to his crushing of democracy, and read too much into his pro-West rhetoric. The US must change course. And there are signs it's about to. "There's no doubt that more aggressive steps need to be taken," White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

After almost a decade under Mush-arraf's rule, Pakistan hasn't changed much. He has initiated reforms and revamped the economy. But where he was expected to do most, fighting Islamic extremism, Pakistan's record is most disappointing.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban use Pakistani soil as a haven and training ground. Recent deals between the government and Pashtun tribes have in effect ceded the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies. A big reason Al Qaeda's influence is growing, according to the NIE, is the operational capability it enjoys in Pakistan.

Musharraf speaks of "enlightened moderation," but he has done more to pulverize secular democratic parties than contain Islamist ones. It was his electoral rules that helped Islamist parties win their largest parliamentary representation ever in 2002, marginalizing the larger secular parties that threatened him.

Islamabad is happy to nab foreign jihadis when pressured by the West or ban extremist groups that get out of hand, but it has been reluctant to uproot the infrastructure of extremism.

Extremist groups proliferate and operate in the open. Musharraf finds them useful in convincing Washington and Pakistan's middle classes that the military is all that protects the country from a Taliban-like Islamic state.

It is not a coincidence that the government's recent battle against extremists associated with the Red Mosque came on the heels of nationwide antigovernment protests following Musharraf's summary dismissal of the country's chief justice. Musharraf hopes that the crisis will persuade secular-minded Pakistanis to abandon the barricades and align behind him.

The government was fully aware of what went on in the Red Mosque, just a mile from the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence headquarters. Yet Musharraf chose to ignore the extremists between January and June, even as they sought to impose Islamic law on the capital city. It was not until he sensed public anger at his dithering, and confronted a diplomatic crisis when the extremists abducted Chinese nationals, that he stormed the mosque.

Frustrated with developments in Pakistan, many in Washington look to elections and a civilian government for solutions. Democracy should be wel-comed, but it will change little. The last time there was a transfer of power to a civilian government, in 1988, the military still chose the foreign minister and informed the prime minister that it would control the nuclear program, intelligence, security, and policies toward Afghanistan and India. This time, too, the military will continue to call the shots – especially when it comes to Afghanistan.

Without Pakistani cooperation, NATO and the US will have to substantially increase their commitments to contain the Taliban. That cooperation will not be forthcoming until the US addresses Pakistani interests. Afghanistan has always been a strategic concern for Islamabad. Pashtuns make up 40 percent of Afghanistan, but there are more Pashtuns in Pakistan, where they constitute 15 percent of the population. Afghanistan has never recognized the border (Durand line) between the two countries, and for most of Pakistan's existence, Pashtuns in control of an independent Afghan state have been allied with India and laid irredentist claims to Pakistan's Pashtun Northwest Province.

It was only when Pakistani-backed Afghan mujahideen or the Taliban ruled Kabul that Pakistan felt secure in its relations with Afghanistan. Pakistani generals counted on the "strategic depth" that their neighbor to the northwest would provide in a war against India.

These days, they see Afghanistan as an adversary. They are irked by Afghan President Hamid Karzai's strong ties to Delhi and the mushrooming of Indian consulates across Afghanistan. The territory that they "owned" until 9/11, thanks to the Taliban, is now at best neutral and at worst the playground of their arch rival, India. Pakistan does not view Afghanistan through the prism of the war on terror, but in the context of its own vulnerabilities in the competition for power and influence with India. That's why Islamabad has everything to gain by playing the Taliban card, giving its fighters and their Al Qaeda allies a lair in Pakistan's border region, to keep Kabul weak and southern Afghanistan free of Indian influence.

In dealing with Pakistan, Washington has preferred to see the logic of the war on terror as self-evident, not recognizing that even close allies will not cooperate if it does not serve their interests. It is only by addressing Pakistan's interests that Washington can secure greater cooperation from Islamabad.

Washington cannot give Pakistan the sphere of influence in southern Afghanistan that it desires to make sure it will not be encircled by India. However, Washington can give Pakistan greater interest in Afghanistan's stability than it has now by encouraging Kabul to include Pakistan's allies and clients in government; and more important, to finally recognize its international border with Pakistan.

• Vali Nasr is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future."

We are failing in Afghanistan

The costs of losing this war far outweigh those of Iraq. We must urgently change the approach

Paddy Ashdown, Thursday July 19, 2007 The Guardian

In July 2006, Britain's highly respected commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General David Richards, issued a stark warning: "Afghanistan is a good and winnable war but, at the pace we are proceeding, we need to realise that we could actually fail here." A year on, as yesterday's defence committee report indicates, we are indeed beginning to fail in Afghanistan.

Failure is not yet inevitable. But it is now likely, and will remain likely until we increase resources and redress the disastrous failure of the international community to get its act together. The tragedy is that this is happening despite a high level of professionalism and a lot of raw courage among our soldiers. And it is happening despite some outstanding reconstruction successes outside the hot conflict areas of Helmand province.

I recently had a rather heated conversation with a government minister who assured me that we were winning in Afghanistan because "we were killing more Taliban". But success is not measured in dead Taliban. It's measured in how many more water supplies are being reconnected; how many more people now have the benefit of the rule of law and good governance; how many have the prospect of a job; and, above all, whether we are winning or losing the battle for public opinion, which is central to successful reconstruction.

The polls measuring domestic opinion show falling support for the international presence. The decline has been relatively small, but once this slide begins it can move fast and be difficult to turn around. Modern war is fought among the people, and so is post-conflict reconstruction. The battle for public opinion is the crucial battle: if you lose it, you lose full stop. We have to turn this around very rapidly if we are not to have another, and more painful, failure on our hands after Iraq.

A number of factors have placed us in this perilous situation. We have been left with too few resources - above all, as yesterday's report underlines, too few soldiers' boots on the ground. A balkanisation of strategy has muddled our focus - the British are obsessed with Helmand, but arguably Kandahar and Kabul are the crucial areas. Sharply deteriorating relations between President Karzai's government and that of President Musharaff have hardly helped. But the paramount reason for our failing grip lies with ourselves.

In the task of post-conflict reconstruction, the international community's tendency to repeat what fails is quite bewildering. The fundamental principles are a coherent strategy, unity of voice, and coordinated international action. All three are almost totally lacking in Afghanistan.

One can normally at least rely on the military to understand the importance of unity of command. But in Afghanistan, even this is absent. The US military are not exclusively under the command of Nato's mission in Afghanistan, and frequently conduct operations that run counter to the Nato force's basic doctrine of minimising civilian deaths. Worse, US special forces and CIA operations are run not from the theatre but from Washington. This is exactly the fractured command structure that led to the US disaster in Somalia.

On civilian reconstruction, the situation is worse still. There is no effective coordination. Individual nations' obsession with their own bilateral plans produce duplication, waste and confusion. Our partners in the Afghan government are baffled by the stream of contradictory instructions and the absence of an international partner with a clear view of what must be done. The hapless UN special representative in Kabul, Tom Koenigs, who might have the task of coordinating international effort, has neither the power nor the support from major capitals to do so.

The poppy eradication programme provides a graphic illustration. There are 15 international and local organisations working on it. Britain has the nominal duty of coordinating their actions but has failed to do so. The result? Some £200m spent on the programme - and the last two poppy harvests have been the biggest in Afghanistan's history. I am not at all sure that our strategy on eradication is right. But if we have one, we ought to be able to do better than this. We are putting 1/25th the amount of soldiers and 1/50th the amount of aid per head of population into Afghanistan than we put into Bosnia and Kosovo. That is less in terms of resources than has ever been put into a successful post-conflict stabilisation and reconstruction effort. Does this mean we are bound to fail? Probably not. But "probably not" becomes "definitely yes" if, on top of a starvation of resources, we also fail to organise what we have to best effect.

The costs of failure in Afghanistan are much more dangerous than Iraq. Failure would mean a hugely increased risk of instability in Pakistan, with dangerous implications for the security of the region - and for the internal security of Britain. One result could be the beginning of a wider conflict that would start with war-lordism but end with a Sunni-Shia civil war on a regional scale. And then there is the effect on Nato. One highly respected UK general has told me that he believes failure in Afghanistan could do the same damage to the Atlantic alliance as the UN's failures in Bosnia did to that organisation. What we could be looking at is not just damage to the Atlantic relationship but perhaps eventually even to the US security guarantee for Europe.

Britain has identified Afghanistan as one of its major foreign affairs priorities. We have one of our brightest ambassadors and one of our biggest embassies there. This is right. Perhaps no western country has a greater stake in succeeding in Afghanistan than we do. Perhaps therefore no person has a greater interest in seeing that we turn things around in time to avert failure than our new foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Police arrest two after chemical find

Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:10AM BST

By Peter Griffiths - LONDON (Reuters) - Police said on Friday they had arrested two men under anti-terrorism laws after finding two containers marked "hydrogen peroxide", the chemical used in 2005 suicide bombings in London.

Police found the two 25 litre vessels in a flat they were searching as part of a drugs inquiry in Bristol.

"There is a heightened vigilance with the general terrorist threat and that has sparked our inquiry as to why someone would ostensibly be in possession of up to 50 litres of hydrogen peroxide," Steve Mortimore, Assistant Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Constabulary, said.

"If it turns out to be 50 litres of industrial strength hydrogen peroxide, then clearly there are some questions to answer," he told the BBC. "We've got one man from Afghanistan and one man from Somalia."

The arrests took place in the course of this week, but the exact timing was not immediately clear. The chemical had been taken away for forensic tests.

The four suicide bombers who killed 52 commuters in London on July 7, 2005, used bombs made with hydrogen peroxide, a bleach used to dye hair. The men who tried to detonate bombs two weeks later also used bombs containing hydrogen peroxide.

Britain has seen a marked increase in terrorism-related plots since the September 11 strikes on the United States and its decision to join U.S. forces invading Iraq in 2003.

The security minister said this week the country faced a threat from more than 200 militant cells and were monitoring about 4,000 individuals. Minister Alan West said the British security services were looking at 30 groupings "very closely".

[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.]