In this bulletin:

• Afghan leaders: Free female hostages
• Pope calls for release of hostages in Afghanistan
• Taliban make new threat to kill SKorean hostages
• Karzai 'doing best' for hostages
• Afghan clashes kill three NATO soldiers
• Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands
• Militants flourish new al-Qaida haven
• Afghan authorities accused of prisoner torture
• Afghan Government Sacks Two Provincial Police Chiefs
• Hillier says Afghan handover won't be easy
• Face of war has given the Tories a fright
• NATO helps save 40,000 Afghan children, Cdn commander says
• Risk still high for NATO soldiers
• Reducing troop deaths will be tough: general
• Afghan army seen as key to limiting Canadian risks
• Political timetable on Canadian involvement would jeopardize Afghan success
• Mission supported
• Sectarian bias is a blight on a rare Afghan good news story
• Last Jew in Afghanistan has no plans to leave

Afghan leaders: Free female hostages

By JASON STRAZIUSO - Associated Press / Sunday, July 29, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's top political and religious leaders invoked Afghan and Islamic traditions of chivalry and hospitality Sunday in attempts to shame the Taliban into releasing 18 female South Korean captives.

A purported Taliban spokesman shrugged off the demands and instead set a new deadline for the hostages' lives, saying the hardline militants could kill one or all of the 22 captives if the government didn't release 23 militant prisoners by 3:30 a.m. EDT Monday. Several other deadlines have passed without killings.

Afghan officials, meanwhile, reported no progress in talks with tribal elders to secure hostages' freedom. In his first comments since 23 Koreans were abducted on July 19, Karzai criticized the Taliban's kidnapping of "foreign guests," especially women, as contrary to the tenets of Islam and national traditions.

"The perpetration of this heinous act on our soil is in total contempt of our Islamic and Afghan values," Karzai told a South Korean envoy during a meeting at the presidential palace, according to a statement from his office.

Echoing Karzai's words, Afghanistan's national council of clerics said the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, taught that no one has the right to kill women.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. "The killing of women is against Islam, against the Afghan culture, and they shouldn't do it."

And a former Taliban commander and current lawmaker who has joined the negotiations, Abdul Salaam Rocketi, said the government policy was that the "women should be released first."

But the Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, instead invoked the religious tenet of "an eye for an eye," alleging that Western militaries are holding Afghan females at bases in Bagram and Kandahar, and saying that the Taliban can do the same. He said the Taliban could detain and kill "women, men or children."

"It might be a man or a woman. ... We may kill one, we may kill two, we may kill one of each (gender), two of each, four of each," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by satellite phone from an unknown location. "Or we may kill all of them at once."

Ahmadi said the militant group had given a list of 23 insurgent prisoners it wants released to government officials, and that if they weren't freed by midday Monday hostages would be killed.

The Taliban has set several deadlines that passed without consequence and it wasn't clear how seriously the militants would treat their latest ultimatum. A leader of the South Korean group was shot and killed Wednesday but it was unclear why.

Two days of meetings between elders of Qarabagh district in Ghazni province, where the South Korean hostages were kidnapped on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, and a delegation of senior officials from Kabul yielded no results so far, said Shirin Mangal, spokesman for the Ghazni provincial governor. The meeting is being held behind closed doors, and Mangal did not divulge any details.

In his meeting with Karzai, Korean presidential envoy Baek Jong-chun thanked the president for the Afghan government's help with the hostage situation and said South Korea will respect the Afghan government's way of ending the crisis, according to Karzai's office.

Pope Benedict XVI also called for the hostages' release, saying the perpetrators "desist from the evil they have carried out and give back their victims unharmed."

Pope calls for release of hostages in Afghanistan

Sunday, July 29, 2007 - CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (Reuters) - Pope Benedict appealed for the release of South Korean hostages held in Afghanistan on Sunday, condemning the exploitation of innocent people as a "grave violation of human dignity".

Taliban rebels abducted the Christian volunteers from a bus south of Kabul 10 days ago. They killed the leader of the group on Wednesday, and say the remaining 22 hostages will meet a similar fate unless militant prisoners are freed.

"Unfortunately the usual practice of exploiting innocent people for their own ends is spreading among armed groups," the Pope told a crowd gathered at his summer residence outside Rome.

"It is a grave violation of human dignity that clashes with every elementary norm of civility and rights and gravely offends divine law."

The Pope, who began the passage with a reference to Afghanistan, said he appealed to the "authors of such criminal acts" to stop their activities and return their victims unharmed.

Taliban make new threat to kill SKorean hostages

by Mohammad Yaqob - Sunday, July 29, 2007

GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban militants threatened Sunday to start killing their 22 South Korean hostages if the government did not accept by noon Monday their demand for the release of jailed rebels.

A government negotiator repeated however that there would be no prisoner exchange and said the Islamic extremists must free the 16 women in the group of Christian aid workers before other demands would be considered.

"We give a last deadline of tomorrow 12 o'clock (0730 GMT) to the Afghan government to give us their last word if they can release our eight suggested prisoners," Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP. "Otherwise we will start killing the hostages," he said.

Four other deadlines set by the militants have lapsed without incident but the Taliban on Saturday expressed impatience, saying 17 of the South Koreans captured 11 days ago were ill and talks must be "speeded up."

The militants however shot dead the leader of the group, 42-year-old Presbyterian pastor Bae Hyung-Kyu, on Wednesday saying he was killed because talks on the crisis had stalled.

The South Koreans had been divided into small groups and were being held in three different provinces, Ahmadi said.

"Some of the hostages have some health problems due to the weather or psychological pressure they feel," he said. Temperatures are in the high 30s Celsius (90s Fahrenheit) in the southern province of Ghazni, where the group was kidnapped July 19.

A leading member of a government-appointed negotiating team, Mahmood Gailani, again ruled out releasing Taliban militants.

"It's not government policy to exchange prisoners. No prisoners will be released," said Gailani, a parliamentarian from Ghazni.

The government was widely criticised when it released five Taliban prisoners in March to free an Italian hostage and President Hamid Karzai vowed afterwards such a deal would not be repeated.

The women must be released before the government would consider other Taliban demands, Gailani said, adding that in "Islamic law and Afghan culture we cannot harm women and should not take women as hostages and prisoners."

Asked if the payment of ransom was a possibility, he said: "We are still exploring our options. We should hear from their side and what their demands are."

Ghazni governor Mirajuddin Pattan added: "After they free the women, we are ready to negotiate with them about the male hostages."

An envoy dispatched from Seoul after the pastor was killed met Karzai over the crisis and said his government would accept "any position" taken by Kabul, according to the president's office said.

"We are well aware of the Afghan culture and the difficulties the Afghan government and people are faced with in their fight against terrorism, and will respect their decision to end the hostage crisis," it cited envoy Baek Jong-Chun as saying.

In Rome meanwhile Pope Benedict XVI urged the Taliban to release the South Koreans, saying holding them contradicted "the most basic rules of civilisation."

Several foreigners have been held this year by militants waging a deadly insurgency against the Western-backed government that replaced the Taliban regime driven from power in late 2001.

Most of have been freed, some apparently after hefty ransom payments, although in the case of the Italian journalist two Afghans were beheaded.

The militants are also holding a German engineer, kidnapped in Wardak province near Kabul a day before the South Koreans, and have demanded the release of 10 prisoners to save his life.

"The German hostage is not doing very well," Ahmadi told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location. "He is sick and forgotten and there are no negotiations ongoing about him at all."

The Afghan and German governments have however said that efforts are under way to help the engineer.

Karzai 'doing best' for hostages

BBC News / Sunday, 29 July 2007 - The Afghan government is doing all it can to secure the release of 22 South Koreans held hostage by the Taleban, President Hamid Karzai has said.

He assured a South Korean envoy that no effort was being spared on behalf of the Christian aid workers - mainly women - who were seized 10 days ago.

Mr Karzai said kidnapping foreign guests was "shameful", un-Islamic and against Afghan culture. A Taleban spokesman said a new deadline had been set to kill the hostages.

Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP news agency that if the Afghan government did not meet its demands for the release of imprisoned militants by noon on Monday (0730 GMT), "the Taleban will kill some Korean hostages".

The group's leader, Bae Hyung-Kyu, was killed by the hostage-takers several days ago, but since then several deadlines have passed, apparently without further bloodshed.

The Afghan government has ruled out a prisoner swap. Afghan officials reported no progress in efforts to secure the hostages by negotiation.

Mr Karzai told South Korean presidential envoy Baek Jong-chun that "he was personally involved in the process and that we are doing everything we can to secure the release of all the hostages," the visitor's spokesman said.

Mr Karzai said the kidnapping of women, particularly, "will have a shameful effect on the dignity of the Afghan people", according to a presidential statement quoted by the Associated Press.

The sentiment was echoed by Afghanistan's national council of clerics, which said it was against the Prophet Muhammad's teachings.

"Even in the history of Afghanistan, in all its combat and fighting, Afghans respected women, children and elders," the council said. Pope Benedict XVI also used his Sunday message to condemn the kidnapping, which he said contradicted "the most basic rules of civilisation".

Afghan clashes kill three NATO soldiers

Reuters - 07/27/2007 - KABUL - Three NATO troops and an Afghan soldier died in two separate clashes with insurgents in Afghanistan, the alliance said.

The identities of the NATO soldiers were not given.

Two of the NATO soldiers and the Afghan were killed on Friday in an area of eastern Nuristan province in a clash with Taliban rebels. Thirteen NATO soldiers were wounded in that incident.

The alliance said 24 insurgents were also killed in the Nuristan clashes. Fighting was still going on, the provincial governor said. The governor, Tameem Nuristani, did not give further details.

A Taliban spokesman said only three insurgents were killed in the clashes and said the casualties of NATO and Afghan troops were higher than reported.

The third NATO soldier was killed in another encounter in the south of the country on Friday. Violence has surged in Afghanistan in the past 18 months, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001.

Separately, four Afghan police were killed in an ambush on Saturday on a road in Logar province, which lies to the south of the capital Kabul, provincial police said. Friday's deaths bring the number of foreign forces toll killed in action to over 90 this year in Afghanistan.

Musharraf risks civil war as he invades the Al-Qaeda badlands

Pakistan’s president takes on the Islamic militants who have set up a rogue state on his country’s wild north

Ghulam Hasnain - The Sunday Times (UK) Sunday, July 29, 2007

IN North Waziristan, the wild border land that America hopes will be Osama Bin Laden’s graveyard, the normally busy roads are almost deserted and the fear is pervasive. Army helicopters sweep the valleys at night hunting for Al-Qaeda militants as troops and gunmen exchange artillery and rocket fire.

America and Britain regard this usually autonomous tribal area - where Bin Laden is long believed to have been hiding - as the logistics centre of Islamic terrorist attacks around the world.

President Pervez Musharraf sees it as the centre of a campaign to “Talibanise” Pakistan. Spurred on by Washington, he has abandoned a truce with Waziristan’s Islamist guerrillas and ordered his army to root them out.

There are believed to be about 8,000 gunmen – a mix of foreign Al-Qaeda volunteers, Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Islamists and local Waziris whose families have for centuries fought off any attempt to impose outside rule on this area. In modern times, even map-makers have been shot to hide the region’s mysteries from the outside world.

Last week soldiers sealed all the roads into Miran Shah, the provincial capital, occupied the hills around it and fired the first artillery salvo in what Musharraf’s many critics have called a war on his own people.

On Friday morning the army moved into parts of Miran Shah itself after militants blew up government buildings overnight. Most of the 60,000 townspeople are feared trapped, but hundreds of families have fled their mud homes in villages nearby and headed east for the sanctuary of Bannu, a town in the neighbouring North West Frontier province.

I watched last week as some of the 80,000 troops deployed in Waziristan dug in alongside the highway outside Mirali, a small town 10 miles east of Miran Shah. Almost all the checkpoints on this stretch of narrow road were empty. Three lay in rubble because the militants had blown them up. No troops drove along the road. They shuttled to the nearby Afghan border by helicopter.

Occasionally a civilian vehicle appeared, laden with men, women and children and all they could bring with them as they fled – a few cots, a goat or two, a cow and some cooking utensils.

Raza Khan, 45, a farmer, lived with his family in Hakim Khel, a group of five villages with a population of more than 2,500 on the outskirts of Miran Shah. On Thursday afternoon he gathered his nine children and left. All the villages in his area had been all but abandoned, he told me when I found them on the road.

“Anyone who has a little cash is leaving. People can’t sleep in the night. The fighters work during the night. They are always on the move. When they attack the army from any area, the army shell that area. And it kills and injures innocent people,” he said.

“I left my wife and brothers at the house. Left everything over there and brought my children here. I just saved their lives. A woman and her two children were wounded next to our house.”

Noor Abdullah, a businessman in Mirali, said: “People are afraid. We expect war. People are leaving. But the army can’t fight these fighters. They are very well trained.

“People are with them. And they are in thousands. They move from one place to another. They live in the mountains and caves. It’s a difficult area.”

He added: “The situation has became very complicated. It has affected every business. Everyone is suffering. Local officials have disappeared. They are afraid to come onto the streets or even walk. The Taliban don’t spare them.”

This area was formerly policed – at least nominally – by a tribal militia, but they fled after Taliban death threats. The militia’s highway checkpoint in Mirali is now monitored by dozens of soldiers from bunkers they have dug on both sides of the roads to guard against suicide bombers.

I saw two nervous soldiers standing on the road – 500 yards from each other – checking on incoming and outgoing vehicles. This did not appear to deter the militants, however.

A mile or so from the Mirali checkpoint, four Uzbeks – regarded around here as a byword for Al-Qaeda – wielded powerful walkie-talkies inside a parked white Toyota saloon. One of them kept his face hidden when my driver approached them. Further up the road we saw two more Uzbeks using walkie-talkies.

As the refugees arrived in Bannu, Qari Muhammad Abdullah, a senior religious leader in the town, said that Musharraf should be afraid of the wrath of Allah. “People at the top have no idea about people’s suffering because they never experienced it. Force is not the solution. The fighting in Waziristan will kick off civil war in the entire country,” he said.

“Waziristan could have become Baghdad much earlier. We, the clerics, stopped it. It will now become Baghdad if the army carries out operations against its own people.”

Sources in the Pakistani army said: “There has to be a fight. There is no other option. It’s bad, but we have to fight.”

The dangers are only too apparent. Taliban forces in South Waziristan have occupied hilltops and set up their own checkpoints to cut off army supply lines and to prevent government troops taking control.

As the clashes around Miran Shah grew more frequent on Friday night, there were Taliban rocket attacks on new army checkpoints on the main exit routes from the town and looters seized 30 computers from offices and a girls’ school.

Despite the crisis, Waziristan’s most lucrative activity – smuggling – is thriving. The only lorries I saw on the roads were laden with cattle, apparently destined illicitly for Afghanistan. I was told that a local tribal official collects £75 per truck for facilitating the movement of cattle across the border.

Militants flourish new al-Qaida haven

By MATTHEW PENNINGTON - Associated Press / Sunday, July 29, 2007

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The jagged mountains of Pakistan's tribal belt conceal the passage of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan. Its mud fortresses are perfect for training suicide bombers. And al-Qaida kingpins likely find refuge among its Pashtun inhabitants.

With U.S. intelligence agencies warning that al-Qaida is regrouping at Pakistan's frontier, and Taliban militants launching suicide attacks almost daily, this key ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism is under growing pressure to crack down on militancy.

More than 300 people died nationwide after Pakistan's army stormed a pro-Taliban mosque in its capital on July 10, triggering reprisal attacks by extremists. The latest suicide bombing killed 13 people near the Red Mosque in Islamabad on Friday.

But it is the situation in the wild border region, particularly Waziristan, that is most worrying to the United States. It fears al-Qaida, whose capabilities have been eroded at the Afghan frontier during five years of the war on terror, could now mount another attack on America.

While still supporting embattled President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and stressing the need to cooperate with Pakistan, U.S. officials are now suggesting its military could strike inside Pakistan — although analysts say it risks destabilizing Pakistan and breeding more militancy.

"No question that we will use any instrument at our disposal" to deal with al-Qaida and its leader, Osama bin Laden, Frances Fragos Townsend, U.S. homeland security adviser, said last weekend.

Adding to the pressure on Pakistan, legislation that Congress passed Friday would tie aid from the United States to Islamabad's efforts to stop al-Qaida and the Taliban from operating in its territory. It cannot take effect without the signature of President Bush.

Many here view the airing of the possibility of a U.S. unilateral strike also as a tactic to pressure Pakistan to take tougher action. But the threat has drawn a stinging response from a Pakistani government fiercely protective of its national sovereignty.

The Pakistani Foreign Office has warned that a U.S. military strike would violate international law and be deeply resented. "Such action ... will be irresponsible and dangerous," said spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam. Musharraf denies al-Qaida is regrouping.

A U.S. National Intelligence Assessment this month said a September 2006 peace deal with Taliban militants in North Waziristan that saw the Pakistan army lift checkpoints and left tribesmen to police the lawless area had failed — allowing al-Qaida more freedom to operate.

A Pakistani security official identified key al-Qaida leaders in the tribal regions as Khalid Habib, believed to be the group's chief of military operations at the Pakistan-Afghan border, and Abu Laith al-Libi, whom the U.S. military has named as the likely mastermind of a suicide bombing that killed 23 people outside the main U.S. base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney in February.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to comment to journalists, said al-Libi is believed to move between North Waziristan and Afghanistan, and is in close contact with a prominent Taliban leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani — underlining al-Qaida ties with the Taliban, which can draw on thousands of local supporters.

Terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna said al-Qaida's top leadership is using Pakistan's tribal regions as the hub of their global operations, led by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. While al-Qaida, with ties to about 30 groups worldwide, has decentralized its training, Gunaratna said operatives from North Africa, the Middle East and Europe have traveled to the tribal regions for consultation with al-Qaida leaders and specialist preparation for major attacks.

Gunaratna said Shezhad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, two of the perpetrators of suicide bombings that killed 52 people in London in July 2005, were schooled by al-Qaida in the use of two explosives during a visit to the tribal region of Malakand.

But analysts say U.S. airstrikes or raids from Afghanistan into Pakistan to counter the perceived threat to America would seriously undermine Musharraf. The general is already under acute political pressure at home from pro-democracy forces and opponents of his alliance with Washington.

And given the vast, hostile terrain and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen against uninvited outsiders, American forces would have no guarantee of military success.

"If the Americans are able to take out al-Zawahri or Osama bin Laden, I don't think any tears would be shed in the government or among enlightened elements of Pakistani society," said Rasul Baksh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

"But if they keep missing the target as they have in Afghanistan and in Pakistan a couple of times, it will cause collateral damage and further enrage Pakistani people against the United States," he said. "The entire country would be destabilized and there would be a greater flow of arms and militants into Afghanistan to fight against the U.S. forces there."

U.S. military intervention could also strengthen the hand of Islamist parties ahead of general elections due by early 2008. And sustained bombing — such as the offensive that drove al-Qaida from Afghanistan in late 2001 — would almost certainly topple Musharraf's government.

Pakistan's Senate Foreign Relations Committee — led by the president of the ruling party — issued a statement Saturday that in case "of any unilateral, unprovoked US/NATO military action across the border" Pakistan should end its cooperation in the campaign against terrorism.

The U.S. will more likely continue to pressure Pakistan to intervene. But Pakistan complains that the U.S. has given it no firm intelligence to back up assertions that, for instance, bin Laden is sheltering in the tribal belt. And it's virtually impossible to prove whether terror leaders could do much more than give a "blessing" for attacks further afield.

Experts say Pakistan's best option for bringing Waziristan under some semblance of control is to curry favor among tribesmen to marginalize militants, then strike hard when needed using its own troops. But that too risks a violent backlash.

Thousands of Taliban fighters are based in the region, and residents say that for the first time, fractious groups of militants in both North and South Waziristan appear prepared to fight together if Pakistan's army launches a major operation.

Mahmood Shah, former security chief for Pakistan's tribal regions, also estimates that about 2,000 foreign militants -- mostly hardened Uzbek, Chechen and Tajik fighters, along with a sprinkling of Arab financiers and organizers -- shelter in North Waziristan, particularly in four villages south of the town of Mir Ali, and in territory west of Datta Khel. Others stay in South Waziristan.

In 2004, the army deployed thousands of troops to destroy al-Qaida camps and put militants to flight in South Waziristan. But civilian casualties provoked bitter resistance from heavily armed local tribes, culminating in clashes with pro-Taliban fighters in North Waziristan that killed more than 500 people during the first half of 2006.

The September peace deal was designed to cap the bloodshed. But after an initial calm, it spawned a wave of militancy in neighboring areas of northwestern Pakistan once under firm state control, with attacks on police, schools and 'un-Islamic' music and movie stores.

Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the opposition Awami National Party, said a new "jihadi gentry" had become dominant in Waziristan. Even before the deal, targeted killings of more than 120 pro-government tribal leaders had shaken traditional power structures and put power in the hands of religious extremists.

Some locals welcome that transition. "The Taliban have more credibility among local people than corrupt maliks (tribal elders)," Mufti Mehmood Hassan, who runs a madrassa or religious school in Mir Ali, said. "They virtually eliminated robberies and other criminal activities."

The Pakistani government is still hoping to resurrect the peace accord, believing it is the best long-term option. "If the government consults with genuine religious leaders and ensures the honor, life and property of tribesmen, they'll be no objection to (military) operations. But if the government wants bloodshed and puts the lives of tribesmen in danger there will be the worst kind of reaction from the people," Hassan warned.

Associated Press writer Riaz Khan in Peshawar and Munir Ahmad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Afghan authorities accused of prisoner torture

Middle East Times - 07/27/2007 - OSLO - Norwegian diplomats have accused Afghan authorities of torturing prisoners handed over to them by international forces in the war-torn country, local media reports said Friday.

"What is of particular concern is the degree of bad treatment and torture that takes place on the Afghan side, especially on the part of the NDS [the Afghan intelligence service], after prisoners have been delivered to them by international military forces," a classified note from the Norwegian embassy in Kabul published by communist newspaper Klassekampen said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Independent Afghan Commission for Human Rights have not been able to visit prisoners, the note said.

Several countries taking part in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force have passed agreements with local authorities to hand over prisoners they capture. Those countries include Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark.

"States that have made a [handover] deal with Afghan authorities should ensure that the latter respect principles of international law," the note added.

Liv Monica Stubholt, the Norwegian state secretary for foreign affairs, told Norwegian news agency NTB Friday that the accusations were "very worrying."

"We will therefore work closely with the other countries that have a prisoner handover deal to investigate whether the agreements still hold," she added.
Opposition members in Denmark Friday called on the government to investigate the allegations.

Afghan Government Sacks Two Provincial Police Chiefs

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty

July 28, 2007 -- Afghanistan's Interior Ministry says it has sacked two provincial police chiefs for negligence.

Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said today that the provincial police chiefs of central Daykundi and Wardak provinces, southwest of the capital, Kabul, were "not able to provide proper services" to the people in their regions.

The police chief in Wardak is also under investigation for allegedly stealing officers' salaries, which prompted some in his force to leave their posts. (Reuters)

Hillier says Afghan handover won't be easy

Canadian Press - July 29, 2007 at 1:41 PM EDT

OTTAWA — Canada's chief of defence staff isn't so sure Canadian troops will be able to hand over front-line fighting to Afghan soldiers by February.

Speaking on CTV's Question Period, Rick Hillier said it will be a significant challenge for the Afghan National Army to be ready by next winter.

That's not what General Hillier's boss, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor, told the same program last week.

Mr. O'Connor made headlines when he said newly trained Afghan battalions will likely put Canadian troops into “reserve” in Afghanistan by February.

Gen. Hillier says Afghan soldiers are playing a bigger role with help from Canadian mentors and trainers. But it's too early to put a date on when Canadians may be able to leave the most dangerous front lines.

Gen. Hillier says widespread corruption within the Afghan government is another challenge facing Canada as it tries to rebuild that country.

Face of war has given the Tories a fright

'I sense cutting and running,' historian says, despite PM's earlier declaration
The Ottawa Citizen , Saturday, July 28, 2007

On March 13, 2006, against a backdrop of armoured vehicles at Kandahar Air Field, Stephen Harper told an assembly of hundreds of Canadian and international soldiers -- and a country that had just elected him listening back home -- that Canada would not "cut and run" from Afghanistan as long as he was prime minister.

On June 22, Mr. Harper told a press conference on Parliament Hill that, unless the House of Commons reaches a "consensus" on the future of the mission, it will end as scheduled in February 2009.

So, what happened in those intervening 15 months to soften the prime minister's resolve? Only Mr. Harper himself knows for sure, but one fact is clear: 50 Canadian soldiers lost their lives on Afghan soil in that interval.

The signals Mr. Harper is sending about Canada's future military involvement in Afghanistan are as clear as a Kandahar sandstorm. Still, this much is apparent: Canada's "new government" now envisions a less robust military commitment to Afghanistan, less fighting, more training of Afghan security forces, and greater emphasis on the diplomatic front. In other words: less dying.

"I sense cutting and running," says Canadian military historian and author Jack Granatstein. "We are clearly preparing to end or greatly minimize our combat role. It's obviously too politically damaging.

"I don't think Canadian public opinion can withstand massive coverage of every death." Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said last weekend that Canadian troops are all but done as warriors when he remarked that he expects newly trained Afghan troops may be able to take over leading security duties from Canada as early as next year. The suggestion was immediately shot down by military analysts at home, and called into question by Canadian Forces commanders in Kandahar.

The suggestion that Canadian soldiers now seem to face less fighting -- and, by extension, less death -- comes as support for the mission wanes in public opinion polls. Moreover, the Conservative's political opposition, especially the Liberals and NDP, have made it clear they aren't interested in reaching any "consensus" on extending the mission beyond February 2009.

That has left Mr. Harper with only one path: try to sell a softer version of the mission to Parliament, so he can keep some sort of Canadian military footprint on Afghan soil, while priming the public and Canada's NATO allies for the inevitable end of combat operations.

"I don't have any doubt that he's been damaged by the casualty returns. I think a change in role before an election will probably help," says Mr. Granatstein.

When Mr. Harper touched down in Afghanistan in March 2006, just five weeks after being sworn in as Canada's 22nd prime minister, he had already dealt with the deaths of two Canadian military personnel on his watch less than two weeks earlier. By then, the Canadian death toll stood at 10 soldiers and one diplomat.

Though history offers a sense of proportion (more than 40,000 Canadians were killed in the Second World War), that is cold comfort, politically, for the Conservatives.

"It doesn't appear to matter. The coverage wasn't the same in the Second World War or Korea or the First World War. The immediacy of coverage on the national news every night is impossible to overcome," Mr. Granatstein says.

If the media focus on combat deaths is bad for the government's political fortunes, the scarcity of information the government is offering to the Canadian public about the mission is also eroding support. This criticism comes not only from the political opposition, but also from military pundits who have traditionally been supportive of Canada's intervention in Afghanistan.

"What is needed is regular briefings like we had during Kosovo," says Alain Pellerin, head of the Conference of Defence Associations.

Mr. Pellerin says the government tends to restrict communications to news releases issued at the time of a Canadian casualty, typically reaffirming the importance of the mission and the soldier's part in it.

"Between these dates when people get killed there's no flow of information," he says. "Because there is a vacuum, there is a lot of speculation." That's what happened after the Tory defence minister predicted in a television interview last week that, by years' end, Canada would have trained an extra 3,000 Afghan soldiers in the south and could take a step back and become more of a reserve force. Military analysts and the Liberal opposition criticized that as a rosy assessment that bore little resemblance to the realities on the ground.

Mr. O'Connor's prediction seemed to fly in the face of the official numbers that NATO and the Afghan government have set for the desirable size of an indigenous security force -- 70,000 soldiers and 62,000 policemen. The alliance is roughly half way toward meeting those predictions.

Canada's Commons defence committee commented in its latest Afghanistan report last month that a lack of information about the mission can fuel public intolerance.

"In the end, the committee came to think that uninformed impatience at home might have some adverse impact on our national will and, therefore, have a negative influence on our determination to what is required to achieve strategic objectives set by government," the committee noted.

Chris Alexander, the former Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan who is now a senior United Nations representative in Kabul, told the committee it could take upwards of a decade to rebuild Afghanistan.

But it appears that a majority of Canadian parliamentarians would not buy an argument from Mr. Harper that Canada must stay the course, and not cut and run.

"He will try to get a new mandate but it will be a different mandate. Our combat role will end as of February '09. It sounds like we're staying there, but we're staying in a different way," predicts Mr. Granatstein.

But, the historian noted, such a response would not be good for Canada.

"It reinforces the 'all we do is peacekeeping' mythology. To have a government forced out of a combat role by a sort of know-nothing, 'anything the Americans do must be bad' attitude is really damaging to our sense of self."

NATO helps save 40,000 Afghan children, Cdn commander says

By CP - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canada’s outgoing military commander in Afghanistan says Canadian and NATO efforts there have helped save the lives of 40,000 children. And Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant says that’s a “conservative estimate.”

In an interview with The Canadian Press at the multinational base in Kandahar, Grant said he’s handing his successor, Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, a country more “confident” than it was a year ago.

“There’s 40,000 babies in Afghanistan more this year than... last year,” said Grant, whose return to Canada is days away. “That’s a big number.”

He attributes the success to improvements in health care, which has led to a drop in the region’s infant mortality rate.

Grant says the international community helped put a vaccination program in place and increased access to doctors, particularly for women.

Meanwhile, even as Taliban activity remains prevalent in Kandahar province, the level of confidence has surged among the city’s inhabitants, he said.

“The town was empty,” Grant said of Kandahar 12 months ago. “Now you go there, (it’s) like Kandahar City is a successful little town.

“The shops are open, kids going to school, people have gone back to a normal life. We see farmers have returned in large numbers, thousands of people have gone back to live in their homes.”

He also said villagers in the Panjwaii district, west of Kandahar City, who fled last year after fierce fighting broke out between insurgents and NATO forces, have returned.

“The streets are full, people are going about their daily lives,” Grant said. “Yes there are risks, but people have a sense that the situation is manageable, much better than last year, and its getting better.”

Risk still high for NATO soldiers

Still, Grant’s optimism is relative, as Afghanistan remains poverty-stricken and the prey of an insurgency.

At regular intervals, convoys of Canadian soldiers are the target of suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices.

Earlier this week, Grant himself narrowly escaped an attack.

“We do absolutely everything we can to reduce the risks for our soldiers,” he said. “There will always be a risk here.

“Soldiers understand that though. Every soldier who is over here realizes that there is a risk with the lifestyle they have chosen.”

For Grant, the real break for soldiers will come when Afghans can count on a competent and effective police force of their own.

“The police have to improve to the point where the people have an increased level of confidence in their ability to protect them and not take advantage of them,” he said.

“How long it will take? We’re talking years in my mind — two years or 10 years, it’s hard to tell. A lot will depend on how much attention we’ll turn to the problem.

“In this province (Kandahar), as Canadians, we are shifting our effort to turn resources toward making the police better. We understand clearly they are the last piece of the security puzzle.”

Reducing troop deaths will be tough: general

Updated Fri. Jul. 27 2007 8:09 PM ET

Canadian Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- The increased number of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan will make it difficult to prevent the number of Canadian deaths in the conflict from rising, says Canada's new military commander in the war-torn country.

Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche made the comment in Kandahar on Friday as he arrived to replace Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, who is leaving after a nine-month stay.

"Reducing losses is always difficult,'' Laroche told reporters after he climbed off a transport plane that brought him to his new command.

He said the situation on the ground does little to suggest there will be a lessening of fatalities with the arrival of a new contingent of soldiers who will take on the mission for the next six months.

Combat missions will take a toll but an increased threat is being posed by the more frequent use of improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers, Laroche suggested.

Eighteen of the 23 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan in the last six months were felled by roadside bombs and there is nothing to suggest the insurgents will let up, Laroche said.

"We had very few losses following the engagements but we must deal with the IEDs,'' Laroche said. "Even if we are very well prepared, the risk is always there.''

The need to reduce Canadian losses has put greater emphasis on training the Afghan National Army.

"It is necessary to do that so that the Afghan security forces can take on a larger role,'' Laroche said. "In this case, we are in a supporting role.''

However, Canadian troops will remain on the ground "and the risks will always be there.''

Laroche's concerns about future casualties echoes comments made by politicians in recent weeks.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said his government doesn't treat military deaths lightly but that it won't alter its plan to maintain the current operation until 2009.

Sixty-six Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2002.

Laroche was met at the plane by Grant, who will leave Afghanistan soon. Laroche officially takes over command of the mission next week.

Laroche holds degrees in business administration and has served abroad on peacekeeping missions in Cyprus in 1981 and 1992 and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1997 and 1999.

Afghan army seen as key to limiting Canadian risks
General wants ANA to take on larger role, but acknowledges Canadian soldiers will always face danger

PAUL KORING - July 28, 2007 - KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- Putting Afghan soldiers out front is the best way to reduce Canadian casualties, Brigadier-General Guy Laroche, Canada's next commander in Afghanistan, said yesterday as he arrived at Kandahar air base.

"The way to essentially reduce the risk is to have again more Afghans doing the work," Gen. Laroche said minutes after stepping from a Canadian Hercules transport plane.

The general will command a battle group based on the famed Royal 22nd Regiment, known as the Vandoos, drawn primarily from Quebec, where public support for the Canadian mission in Afghanistan is at its lowest. "It's always difficult to reduce casualties," Gen. Laroche conceded.

Shifting more of the combat load to the Afghan National Army has been an objective of NATO and U.S. forces for years, but the ill-equipped, poorly paid and inadequately led Afghan forces have only slowly achieved a limited ability to carry the fight to the Taliban.

Fewer than 500 Afghan soldiers are currently fighting alongside Canada's heavily equipped battle group in Kandahar, although that number is expected to more that triple in the next year. Even the best Afghan units have no armoured vehicles.

Their soldiers fight with worn-out Kalashnikovs, no body armour and some are without helmets. Although Canadians suffer few casualties in gun battles with the Taliban, the same is not true of Afghan National Army soldiers.

As additional Afghan soldiers are better trained and equipped and capable of "doing most of the work ... we will be there to support them as we have in the past," Gen. Laroche said.

However, even if Afghan soldiers replaced Canadians in combat roles, the gravest threats are still posed by roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

Of the 22 Canadians killed in the past six-month rotation, currently ending, all but four were killed by improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers.

Gen. Laroche acknowledged that preventing those types of casualties was impossible.

"Very few casualties are based on face-to-face engagements," he said, after being greeted on the Kandahar tarmac by the current Canadian contingent commander Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, who will formally hand over command next week.

"What we've been dealing with since the beginning essentially are IEDs," Gen. Laroche said.

"And you know it's difficult in that sense that IEDs are something that, even though you are well prepared, the risk is always there."

Only a day earlier, a suicide bomber attacked a Canadian armoured convoy on the main highway running between Kandahar air field and the city.

Although Gen. Grant's armoured vehicle wasn't hit and only the suicide bomber was killed in the attack, it underscored the omnipresence of the threat.

Even if the arriving Vandoos devote more of their effort to training and support of the Afghan army and less to carrying the fight to the Taliban, they will still be exposed to roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

"We'll always have Canadians on the road and the risk will always be there," Gen. Laroche acknowledged.

Political timetable on Canadian involvement would jeopardize Afghan success
CanWest News Service , Sunday, July 29, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - They're ghosts from a lost war, a 20-year-old reminder that a foreign-led military victory in Afghanistan may be impossible.

Hundreds of Soviet tanks, troop carriers, trucks and artillery guns, perfectly preserved by Kandahar's desert-dry environment right down to goggles and binoculars, lie abandoned in a gated compound within sight of Canadian base headquarters.

For nine bloody years in the 1980s, the Soviet Union tried to prop up a Communist government in Kabul and annihilate the mujahedeen insurgency before the fading superpower ditched its military hardware here in the rush to flee a fight they couldn't win.

To the skeptics viewing Canada's counter insurgency mission today, this military graveyard could preview our future if we botch the battle to rid Kandahar of the Taliban.

Seven weeks in southern Afghanistan is but an observational blink in a country that's been at war within itself for most of the last 30 years, but as I leave Kandahar today, trends and patterns are possible to detect and decipher. Some are hopeful. Others border on hopeless.

Right off the bat, let me argue that Canada cannot impose a political timetable on successfully ending this military mission.

It's like picking a date before the Normandy invasion for Canada to withdraw from the Second World War, yet we're just 18 months from a House of Commons vote to retreat with no obvious heir to our United Nations responsibility for the dangerously volatile Kandahar province. Canadian-assisted progress on redevelopment, political reform, army training, police education and humanitarian relief will be terminated for political expediency, not measurable accomplishment. Canadian soldiers will be demoralized by any tail-between-legs departure and billions of dollars worth of upgraded military equipment purchased specifically for the Afghanistan climate and terrain will be left without an active purpose. Perhaps they could be parked alongside the Soviet equipment here as our contribution to Afghan military history.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper should not revisit Kandahar any time soon.

His sudden wimpiness on the file, replacing unconditional support for the mission with a shrugged surrender to a fix-is-in consensus of Parliament, is seen as inexplicable here. Soldiers who believed they had a Churchillian prime minister now know he's just another political weather vane, twisting in response to the winds of public opinion. A return visit would not receive a warm welcome, even in the scorching summer.  

Canada is transferring leadership of military operations to the Afghan army.

While local soldiers only receive a rudimentary three-week training and $100 a month for a pay cheque, they are nevertheless improving as a military force. Canadian commanders are giving them considerable say in setting military priorities and targets. During the only combat reporters witnessed recently, Afghans were leading the charge against the Taliban while Canada provided backup firepower.  Brig-Gen. Tim Grant also told me the reason for stranding a huge convoy (and this columnist) atop a mountain pass near Ghorak for almost two weeks was the result of a direct request to refortify the district offices from high in the Afghan government.

The humanitarian and redevelopment pillars of this mission have become a higher priority, in words if not deeds.

The new base commander, Brig-Gen. Guy Laroche, signalled as much when he landed here Saturday morning, but the drift was evident long before his arrival. Reconstruction and mentoring teams are being beefed up and their efforts praised in every second breath from military brass.  The Canadian International Development Agency, often under attack for dragging its heels on feel-good projects, appears to have found a firmer footing in health, education and women's projects.

The war against the poppy is lost.

Even with eradication activity picking up under British supervision, the opium-producing plant is setting record high harvests. Detection is not a problem - soldiers often remark how beautiful the poppy fields look when they're in full red bloom. But British military officials tell me it's an uphill struggle to convince farmers to switch their illegal crop for less lucrative melons, grapes or even marijuana.

The Taliban are not beaten. 

The combined air and ground firepower of the joint forces here is a sight to behold. How so much destructive technology can be neutralized by a few thousand religious extremists armed with ancient rocket launchers, last-generation rifles and old anti-tank mines boggles the mind. Yet the Taliban, while no longer surfacing in large military formations, are having considerable success in planting bigger and better roadside bombs to put security forces on edge, slow reconstruction efforts and, most importantly, prevent Afghans from any sense their lives are returning to normal.  And pity the poor villager in the faraway hills of southern Kandahar. Every month or so, Canadian soldiers show  up to declare themselves their protector while Taliban watch from the sidelines. But without reliable, well-armed detachments of Afghan military or police based near villages, the Taliban will return the minute Canadians leave. 

Okay, so I left the brightest development for last, but Kandahar City is on an economic roll, booming in population and bursting with building activity.

The lineup of truck traffic outside the city's customs terminal is a sight vaguely reminiscent of a Windsor border crossing, albeit with colourful jingle trucks in lieu of 18-wheelers. There are billboards extolling the virtues of a university education over becoming a suicide bomber. It is, veteran observers say, an echo of what happened in Kabul several years ago when the capital prospered and security concerns abated. If the south's largest city can thrive in spite of chronic security problems, hope springs anew the entire region will stabilize and revitalize.

But know this for sure: If Canada pulls out in early 2009 as expected, hope for Kandahar will fade. As Lt.-Gen Michel Gauthier, commander of Canadian expeditionary forces, told reporters Sunday: "I don't think anybody believes the job is going to be done by Feb 09 from an international community perspective. Nobody's under any illusion that Aghanistan will be self sustaining and self sufficient by Feb 09."

He won't say it, but that reality makes it imperative that Canadian forces stay here until the job is done, even if the surrender monkeys in Ottawa think it's politically convenient to leave.  

Mission supported

2007-07-26, Mississauga news

Dear Editor:
It is time that as Canadians, we "out" those who intentionally act as a 5th column in undermining citizen support of our troops and mission in Afghanistan.
Firstly, a very small group successfully put on the defensive the many that wish to openly support our troops by first confusing the issue of the mission and then getting support for the mission separated from the support of our troops. Yet our troops support the mission on the ground and would like our support and why not!

Secondly, by manipulating picture images of family sorrow over the loss of their soldier and distorting the context of the discussion, they are able to overwhelm and confuse the public opinion. It is reflected in the polls that are deliberately timed to get the desired result. Far more people die on our highways each year with no mission than in the years in Afghanistan, yet we are not shutting down our highways. Sadly Canadians, unaware of their history, do not know that more Canadians died each day in the years of freeing Europe in World War II than the entire Afghan mission to date! The mission is the same.

Thirdly, the noisy spectacle orchestrated this spring over the human rights of Taliban prisoners handed over to the Afghans is a deliberate step in undermining Canadian confidence at home. It started when three weeks before a British Columbia civil rights group raised hell about potential torture of Taliban prisoners. Like puppets, federal politicians followed with six weeks of hell in the Commons. The Taliban counted on the soft pawns within to do at home what they can't do to our troops in Afghanistan! I witnessed open betrayal!

In the end, it was completely fictitious. No Taliban was tortured. The Canadian soldiers followed a protocol established by the same party members who now screamed. Now in response to the betrayal within Canada, the Taliban allege four prisoners were tortured, but none have any physical signs.

The purpose of the Afghan mission is to reduce this reality so well described by Dr. Khaled Hosseini's books The Kite Runner and the latest A Thousand Splendid Suns.

As a Canadian knowledgeable about our history and our fight for freedom, I am solidly in support of our troops and the Afghan mission. I call out our quislings whose purpose is clear.

Sectarian bias is a blight on a rare Afghan good news story

The Guardian - 07/27/2007 By Jonathan Steele in Kabul - A blossoming garden in this impoverished city illustrates the Aga Khan's impact. But its benefits should be shared fairly

In Asia's poorest capital city, which has no sewage system, no piped water, only a handful of hospitals, and a population of 60,000 street children, it might seem frivolous to spend more than a million pounds on creating a garden. Do a series of terraces and several rows of trees fulfil an urgent need? Isn't this another example of foreign aid being wasted? Not a bit of it, insists Jolyon Leslie, a Dari-speaking architect who has dedicated two decades of his life to this hauntingly magnetic country, first with the UN and now with the Aga Khan Development Network, which is funding the garden's restoration and playing host to my visit to the Afghan capital. "On a Friday we get up to 2,000 people in here, picnicking on the lawns, or enjoying the shade," he says.

A Wimbledon-style downpour was turning the garden's central watercourse into a raging torrent the afternoon I visited. The lawns were sodden and empty. But as we sheltered under the arches of the almost completed visitors' centre and bookshop, and hurried up the terraces during a break in the rain, I saw no reason to doubt him.

A quarter of a century ago, when I first saw this ancient sloping garden, it was in a miserable state. The main attractions were an open-air swimming pool at the top and a commanding view of the craggy hills that ring Kabul, their khaki colour contrasting with the intense blue of the sky. Trees had been cut down for firewood and the grass was patchy. Even in that condition, the garden provided weekend relief for families to lay carpets on the ground, turn on the radio and get out their raisins and pomegranates. It was the largest park in Kabul.

When the western-supported Islamists captured the city from its communist modernisers in 1992 and started the internecine artillery battles that flattened several districts, the garden suffered badly. Irrigation pumps were destroyed and the remaining trees died.

The place has been transformed over the last three years. Work started with consulting the community that lives in mud-brick homes on the steep hillside above the garden. Many had fled to Pakistan but came home when they thought the war was over. Others are peasants who moved to Kabul in the hope of work, bringing the city's population from 700,000 in the 1980s to almost 4 million today.

With co-funding from the German government, the Aga Khan paid for water pumps, storm drains and steps up the hillside. Thousands of local men were employed to build a wall round the garden, as well as its terraces. They are still completing restoration of the Haremserai, or Queen's Palace, which dates from the 1890s and will be used for exhibitions and conferences as a money earner.

This place is not just a garden. "People are proud of it. It is part of their national identity," says Leslie. After all, its founder was the emperor Babur, who launched the Mughal dynasty. Even as he swept through northern India funding the designers who devised the stately arches that have become the subcontinent's best-known building style, Babur dreamed of this hillside in Kabul. He wanted a garden to relax and eventually be buried in. Nowhere in India could match it.

Working from Babur's original notes, the restorers have planted walnuts and plane trees on the outer edges of the site and denser groups of mulberries, apricots, figs and almonds near the central axis. The headstone on Babur's grave is scarred with mujahideen bullets, but the walls which once enclosed it have been rebuilt according to 19th-century travellers' sketches, creating a tranquil precinct. The garden's treasure is the white marble mosque built by Shah Jahan during a visit to his ancestor's grave. It is tiny but just as beautifully formed as the Mughal ruler's Taj Mahal.

On a dry day this resurrected garden gives Afghans an escape from the present, as well as a reminder of their once proud past. There is little else, after their national museum was ransacked by the mujahideen, and the Bamiyan buddhas were blown up by the Taliban.

The Aga Khan, the spiritual head of the world's Ismaili Shia community, has poured money into other Afghan cultural projects, including the restoration of houses in Kabul's old city and the mausoleum of Timur Shah, one of the founders of modern Afghanistan. His network funds health facilities across the country, including hospitals, schools and teacher training colleges.

Like other international philanthropists, he is a sharp businessman. He is the major shareholder in the Serena, Kabul's only luxury hotel, and Roshan, the country's biggest mobile phone network. It is a sign of Afghanistan's lack of development that Roshan, with a staff of fewer than 1,000, is the largest employer and largest taxpayer, supplying 6% of the Afghan budget.

When Roshan started, the country had only 20,000 landlines, most of them in government offices. It may never get many more. The mobile's advance makes them redundant. Roshan already has 1.3 million subscribers and gains another 60,000 a month. Putting up phone masts in some of the world's most rugged countryside is not just a physical challenge. Local mullahs have to be convinced that the masts will not bring evil - a concern they tend to reject when they get a free handset.

But there is a problem with the Aga Khan's Afghan businesses. Staff say there is heavy favouritism towards Ismaili Shias. "Almost all of my colleagues are Ismaili Shias. It's pretty much the same with the receptionists," an Ismaili Shia waiter at the Serena hotel told me. Asked for statistics, Christopher Newbery, the hotel's general manager, said: "We do not seek ethnic or sectarian information from our staff on principle."

At Roshan, Shamsia Mitha, the public relations manager who is an Ismaili Shia of French origin, was embarrassed by a question about the company's sectarian makeup in Kabul. Altaf Ladak, the chief operating officer and another Ismaili Shia expat, rejected a request for figures to support his statement that "we have seven regional offices and make sure we hire people from each of the ethnic groups and try to be consistent with the ethnic mix of that region".

Less than 5% of Afghans are Ismaili Shias. A network that does so much to help the country to progress should surely be spreading its benefits impartially. After decades of religious tension and conflict, Afghanistan needs a few models of fairness at last.

Last Jew in Afghanistan has no plans to leave

CTV.ca News / July 28, 2007

In the war-torn country of 30 million Muslims, Zebulon Simentov stands alone.

Thirteen centuries after the first Jews arrived in Afghanistan, Simentov is the last Jew left in the nation.

"It makes no difference," says the 47-year-old, who wears a yarmulke along with his shalwar kameez. "I'm like a lion -- strong and courageous."

While there were more than 40,000 Jews in Afghanistan at the turn of the 19th century, the community emptied -- first in 1948, when the state of Israel was established, and then in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

For some time, Simentov was one of two Jews in Kabul. He was finally left alone when his neighbour and archrival Ishaq Levin died in January 2005.

There was no love lost between the two men, who lived together at the synagogue through the Soviet invasion, the civil war, and the Taliban regime.

Simentov and Levin vied for control of the synagogue, and famously grew to despise each other, holding loud yelling matches that neighbours could hear down the street.

When Levin died of natural causes at 80, Simentov did not seem to grieve the loss.

"He was a very bad man who tried to get me killed," he told the Associated Press news agency at the time, "and now I am the Jew here, I am the boss."

Before he died, Levin said Simentov had accused him of converting to Islam, so that Simentov could take over the synagogue.Meanwhile Simentov blamed Levin when a valuable copy of the Jewish holy book, the Torah, went missing. Simentov, who said it was confiscated under the Taliban regime, was acquitted in court.

Now Simentov is the only one left and in control of the dusty rundown synagogue they shared and fought over. Described as coarse and demanding, he still fights with his neighbours. But they seem to live side by side in mutual tolerance and respect.

"I have no problems," he says, "Except for the Taliban years when a few crazy people came around."

There's not much left in Kabul of Jewish history. Yet there's a place in the suburbs where Simentov often comes to pray.

It used to be a Jewish cemetery, and his grandparents are buried here. Now it's looked after by an Afghan Muslim family.

"Many Muslims tried to convert me," he says. "But I never listened."

His ex-wife and children moved to Israel long ago. But Simentov refuses to follow.Too many problems, he says, and too many responsibilities in Afghanistan. With a report from CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief Paul Workman

[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.]