In this bulletin:
- Police die in Afghanistan blasts
- Suspected Taliban pounded in Afghanistan
- G8 urges Afghanistan, Pakistan to step up counter-terror operations
- Large Weapons cache discovered in Kabul City
- Top Afghan law officer assaulted
- Soldiers Home After 16 Months in Afghanistan
- Boeing Australia Limited to Provide ScanEagle UAV to Troops in Afghanistan
- Stolen Keys Delay Polish Mission
- Afghanistan 20 years on: endless suffering, startling resilience
- Afghanistan: The Winnable War
- In pivotal Afghan town, an uneasy peace follows battle
- Take This City, This Shell, This Cadaver
- In for the long haul; U.S. withdrawal from Iraq won't get us out of Afghanistan
- Jonesboro man remembers son who was killed in Afghanistan
- Expelled from Iran - refugee misery
- Iran forces the issue in Afghanistan
Police die in Afghanistan blasts
Story from BBC NEWS:Published: 2007/06/08 10:40:08 GMT
At least two policemen have been killed in Afghanistan by a bomb which blew up their patrol vehicle in the province of Kandahar, police say.
They say that two others were injured in the roadside blast near the Pakistani border.
Another policeman was killed on Thursday in neighbouring Zabul province, police say.
Kandahar has seen an increasing number of attacks by the Taleban. No group has so far said it carried out the blasts.
Kandahar military spokesman Gen Abdul Raziq told the BBC that the roadside bomb went off on Thursday in the Shoar district of Kandahar, 100km east of Kandahar city.
He said that nine Taleban members were killed in subsequent fighting, including two commanders.
However the Taleban says that 13 policemen were killed in the encounter.
Correspondents say that it is impossible to verify the claims and counter-claims made by both sides.
Violence in Afghanistan has returned to levels not seen since the Taleban were ousted in 2001.
More than 4,000 people were killed last year in fighting between militants and international-led forces
Suspected Taliban pounded in Afghanistan
June 8, 2007 - 1:04PM
A battle and airstrikes in southern Afghanistan left 30 suspected Taliban dead or wounded, and six people were arrested in the killing of a woman who owned a radio station, officials said.
The battle took place in the Garmser district of Helmand province, the world's largest poppy-growing region and site of fierce battles in recent months, the Ministry of Defence said.
General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said officials could not say how many of the 30 reported casualties were killed or how many wounded during the violence. He said multiple sources were used to come up with the figure.
Backed by NATO and coalition forces, Afghanistan is struggling to build an effective central government while fending off insurgents supported by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic movement driven out in 2001.
Meanwhile, police arrested six men for the killing of Zakia Zaki, the owner and manager of Peace Radio gunned down in the northern province of Parwan, said General Abdul Manan Farahi, counterterrorism chief for the Interior Ministry.
Farahi said the six backed the militant group Hezb-e-Islami, a supporter of the Taliban-led insurgency.
Zaki had been critical of local warlords, who had warned her to change the station's programming, said Rahimullah Samandar, head of the Afghan Independent Journalists Association. Zaki told other journalists that she had received death threats, Samandar added.
Her death came less than a week after a female reporter, Shokiba Sanga Amaaj, was shot in the back in her Kabul home.
Also, four kidnapped Afghan medical workers were released after the body of a slain top Taliban commander was retrieved by his family, although a purported spokesman for the militants said a fifth abducted medical worker was beheaded.
Shuhabuddin Athul, who claims to speak for Taliban militants, said the beheaded body of a kidnapped medical worker was left in the southern province of Helmand for family to retrieve. He made the statement in a telephone call from an unknown location to The Associated Press.
Elsewhere, suspected militants attacked a government compound in the Daychopan district of Zabul province, killing a policeman and wounding three others, said district police chief Hakim Khan.
An Afghan soldier was also killed in a mine explosion in Zabul province, a Defence Ministry statement said.
In eastern Afghanistan, coalition and Afghan troops killed a militant during a firefight in Nangarhar province's Khogyani district, a coalition statement said.
Coalition and Afghan forces also detained three militants at another suspected safehouse for al-Qaeda foreign fighters in Zabul province, the coalition said.
G8 urges Afghanistan, Pakistan to step up counter-terror operations
South Asia News Jun 8, 2007, 12:15 GMT
Heiligendamm, Germany - Group of Eight (G8) leaders on Friday urged Afghanistan and Pakistan to step up counter-terror operations on their joint border and said both countries should also make efforts to fight poverty in the volatile region.
A G8 statement on counter-terrorism said Afghanistan and Pakistan should work to fully engage the private sector in the border region in order to promote development.
'Strong private sector growth and economic development are essential to combating terrorism, creating legitimate employment opportunities and fostering democracy,' G8 leaders said.
G8 members include the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Russia.
Large Weapons cache discovered in Kabul City
ISAF/NATO: KABUL, Afghanistan (08 June) – A large weapons' cache was found last night during a coordinated operation between ISAF troops and Afghan National Security forces (ANSF).
The cache, discovered in the western region of Kabul City, contained a variety of armaments to include rockets, mines and mortar shells.
“These weapons could have potentially been used to harm local Afghan citizens or ANSF and ISAF troops,” said ISAF spokeswoman Lt. Col. Maria Carl. “This operation demonstrates effective cooperation between ISAF and ANSF troops as they work together to eradicate violence and develop a secure environment where Afghans can live and prosper.”
Top Afghan law officer assaulted
Last Updated: Friday, 8 June 2007, 14:22 GMT 15:22 UK
The attorney-general says he is waging war against corruption
Afghanistan's most senior law officer says bodyguards of a top army general physically attacked him while travelling north of the capital, Kabul.
Attorney-General Abdul Jabar Sabet - one of President Hamid Karzai's closest aides - told the BBC that he needed hospital treatment after the attack.
The general, Deen Mohammad Jurat, says he and his men were only acting in self-defence.
Mr Sabet has a reputation for sacking officials suspected of corruption.
The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says that the attorney-general's campaign against corruption has earned him many enemies.
Bodyguards are found all over Afghanistan
Mr Sabet said the attack was carried out as he was investigating the cause of a road block. He blamed it on bodyguards of a top army general.
Mr Sabet said that the assault on him - in which rifle butts were used - was pre-planned and was carried out because the general was angered that some of his officials had been arrested on suspicion of corruption.
But Gen Deen Mohamad Jurat says that his driver and body guards who were attacked first by the attorney-general's men, and it was they who opened fire first.
"This morning I was leaving for Parwan province for a picnic along with the mayor of Kabul, the deputy governor of Parwan, and Members of Parliament," Mr Sabet told a press conference after the attack.
"The road was blocked so I got out to check what it was.
"As I got out (the general) came and asked me what I was doing: I told him that I am trying to clear the road.
"I didn't have any bodyguards on me, so he started attacking me along with his bodyguards of around 40 armed men.
"It was a pre-planned plot. He sent his man to the place where (he knew) I was going.
"My vehicle had four bullets in it afterwards, while the vehicle belonging to the head of criminal police, Gen Ali Shah Paktiwals, had nine bullets in it.
"I have arrested people who (the general) wanted to be freed. He too was on my target list, this is why he attacked me."
General Jurat is now serving as a top interior ministry general providing security for some American companies.
Soldiers Home After 16 Months in Afghanistan
Last Update: Jun 8, 2007 8:26 AM Associated Press
(Fort Drum, N.Y.) AP -- The longest tour ever endured by Fort Drum troops ended Thursday, as 170 soldiers returned home after 16 months in Afghanistan.
The soldiers are from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team's 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment.
The 3rd Brigade deployed to Afghanistan last February to bring stability to the volatile eastern region of Afghanistan.
On the eve of the brigade's redeployment to the United States in February, the Pentagon announced the 3,000 soldiers would stay an additional four months.
According public affairs officials, about one-third of the brigade's soldiers have returned to Fort Drum, with the rest set to redeploy by mid-June.
The brigade lost 30 soldiers during its deployment, many to improvised explosive devices and suicide bombers - tactics that have emerged in Afghanistan within the last year.
©2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boeing Australia Limited to Provide ScanEagle UAV to Troops in Afghanistan
(WebWire) 6/8/2007 9:28:14 AM
Boeing Australia Limited has been awarded a AUD$20 million contract to provide ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based services to the Australian Army in Afghanistan.
Throughout the six-month agreement, Boeing Australia Limited will work closely with the Australian Army to provide vital surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for Australian and coalition forces in Afghanistan. The level of ScanEagle services to be provided will be at a significantly higher operational tempo those currently being provided for the Army’s Overwatch Battle Group in Iraq.
The Afghanistan ScanEagle services contract builds on recent successes in Iraq, where Boeing Australia Limited has been under contract to the Australian Army since late November 2006, said Boeing Australia Limited President David Withers.
"Boeing Australia Limited has worked closely with the Commonwealth of Australia and our partner Insitu, Inc. to stand up this UAV capability in such a short timeframe. We are exceptionally proud of this achievement and of our team who have worked hard to instill customer confidence in the ScanEagle system," said Withers. "We look forward to continuing support of the Australian Army during the Afghanistan deployment and delivering even higher standards of excellence for the ScanEagle UAV capability in this new theatre."
Insitu, Inc. manufactures the fully autonomous ScanEagle UAV in Bingen, Wash. Under the new contract, Boeing Australia Limited and Insitu also will provide contractor personnel to support the Afghanistan deployment.
Insitu, Inc. develops miniature robotic aircraft for commercial and military applications. Insitu introduced the first UAV to cross the Atlantic Ocean and is developing vehicles for civilian applications. For more information about the company, see www.insitu.com.
Stolen Keys Delay Polish Mission
WARSAW, Poland, June 8--The military mission of Poland's NATO forces in Afghanistan has been delayed by several weeks due to stolen vehicle keys.
Polish Hummer vehicles have reached their Afghan destinations without steering wheels, first-aid kits and ignition keys.
On Wednesday, Poland's defense minister traveled to Kabul to see how the keys were lost while being flown to Afghanistan via Pakistan.
Aleksander Szczyglo visited the southern town of Kandahar to meet Polish troops stationed in Afghanistan as part of the NATO forces.
Poland's Defense Ministry said the country's 1,200 troops assigned to NATO forces in Afghanistan will not achieve full combat readiness for up to several weeks due to the stolen vehicle keys.
"We had been told a 10 percent theft rate was likely in convoys brought in from Pakistan, but we had not expected the spare car keys to go missing," Jaroslaw Rybak, the ministry spokesman, said.
"We shall have to send away for spares, so it may take from several days to several weeks for our contingent to become combat ready."
According to media reports, Polish troops taking part in NATO's ISAF force have been assigned to patrol the mountainous border area with Pakistan to search for Taliban guerrilla activity.
The military vehicles used by Polish forces include Poland's Land Rover-like Honkers and US-built Humvees.
Polish soldiers march before boarding a plane to Afghanistan in Wroclaw, Poland.
Afghanistan 20 years on: endless suffering, startling resilience
08 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT Source: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – Switzerland International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) - Switzerland
The ICRC began its work helping victims of the successive conflicts in Afghanistan in 1980, during the Soviet invasion, helping Afghan war victims from bases in neighbouring Pakistan. The organization did not get permission to establish a permanent presence in the war-torn country until 1987. It has carried out a broad range of humanitarian activities uninterrupted ever since. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the ICRC's permanent presence in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan: The Winnable War
By Michael Fumento Published 6/8/2007 12:09:21 AM
"This war is winnable." I can't say how often during my recent embed in the southern Afghanistan Province of Zabul, just north and east of Kandahar, I heard officers and noncoms say that. Implicit is that it's also losable; but what they really mean is winnable in comparison to Iraq.
Strange but true that Afghanistan -- with four major ethnic groups, two official languages, and almost countless lesser languages -- is far more of a proud, united nation than Iraq. They have Sunni and Shia, but their differences are just an excuse for a chat over chai tea. Further, while it's way too early to say if the Iraqi "surge" is working, the much-anticipated massive Taliban spring offensive in Afghanistan has thus far proved more a trickle than a deluge.
Still, as I note in my article "The Other War" in the June 11 Weekly Standard, it would be a mistake to assume time is on our side. Afghans seem to be losing patience with the war effort, and while that may not help the Taliban (over 90 percent of Afghans dislike them), it can certainly hinder President Hamid Karzai in his efforts to keep the warlords at bay. It's warlords, not sectarianism, that pose the internal threat.
The most threatening is General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a major Northern Alliance leader against the Taliban. But before that, he fought on the side of the Soviets and the Communist government. Probably to undercut the government, which has essentially excluded him, he (announced in May that he can raise an army and drive out the Taliban in six months.
Further, despite major setbacks this year, including the May 13 killing of Mullah Dadullah, a butcher frequently called "the military mastermind of the Taliban insurgency" whose headquarters were in Zabul, there have been increasing calls for negotiating with "moderate Taliban." This includes the Afghan senate itself , which has grown weary of the Taliban tactic of hiding their forces among civilians to cause the deaths of innocents from U.S. and NATO fire. Yet the enemy itself insists "moderate Taliban" is oxymoronic.
I've only visited parts of Iraq on three occasions and part of Afghanistan, but I've seen enough to know that while the Iraq effort is awash with money but lacking in men, the war in Afghanistan is being fought on a shoestring in terms of both. There will be about 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when the buildup is complete, but there are only about 27,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, a country larger in both geography and population.
A massive concrete blast wall in Iraq is a mere mud wall in Afghanistan. "It takes four weeks here just to get cement," 1st. Lt. Keith Wei, executive officer of the American unit with which I was embedded, told me. "We need to help build and to provide security, but we just don't have the funds. Everybody here understands what needs to be done but their hands are tied by a lack of resources in both funds and people. We could pacify Zabul in probably a year if they pumped money into here like they do Iraq."
Yet together, both wars plus all other defense spending consume about 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, or just over a third of the GDP percentage spent at the height of the Vietnam War. Total U.S. forces currently in both Iraq and Afghanistan amount to just a third of the 540,000 employed for the limited purpose of driving Saddam's forces out of Kuwait in 1991.
Still, that might not be a problem in Afghanistan if NATO nations didn't refuse to pull their weight -- in total personnel contributed, combat soldiers, or defense expenditures. Only six of 37 NATO countries with troops in Afghanistan will even allow them to fight, namely the U.S.; the U.K.; Canada; the Netherlands; Romania; and tiny Estonia. Only six spend as much as 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Even as they refer to America as a bellicose "cowboy" nation, they sit back and let us and a handful of other countries expend the money and blood.
"You can see victory on the horizon," says Wei. "We just don't have the means to get there."
Michael Fumento has been embedded three times in Iraq's al Anbar Province and once with U.S. and Romanian forces in Afghanistan.
In pivotal Afghan town, an uneasy peace follows battle
08 Jun 2007 13:19:32 GMT Source: Reuters By Peter Graff
SANGIN, Afghanistan, June 8 (Reuters) - More than an hour into an Afghan-British patrol through the battle-scarred town of Sangin, the British captain is sucking on a sweet.
He offers a candy to one of the Afghan policemen and, with gestures and a few words of Pashto, tells him to keep the bag. The Afghan smiles widely, and pulls a small gift out of his own pocket to offer in return: a tiny plastic bag of hashish.
The British officer, Captain Alex Firmin of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Forester Regiment, politely declined the policeman's illegal narcotics.
But the exchange, witnessed by Reuters, highlighted the sometimes strange friendship evolving between local forces and NATO troops, which the international force's commanders hope might at last bring peace to one of southern Afghanistan's most violent valleys.
For the past year, Sangin was the scene of nearly constant combat, some of the heaviest battles in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.
British paratroops entered the town a year ago and fought here to nearly the last round of ammunition. The district beyond their base remained largely in the hands of Taliban guerrillas.
Today, the town is eerily quiet. A series of joint American-British offensives over the past several weeks has driven Taliban militants out of the area.
Afghan government troops with British mentors have set up three outposts and three checkpoints guarding the main highway. A new district chief, loyal to the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai, has moved into a compound beside a British base.
The area around the base for a few hundred metres is still a devastated ruin. But turn a corner onto the main street and there is life in the bazaar.
Market traders who fled the fighting are returning. Some said they had arrived in the past week. Mounds of fruit, heaps of spices and bright cloth are now for sale. Cheerful little boys in skullcaps scurry in the street.
If the calm should last, it would be a major victory for NATO forces: the first time such a major Taliban stronghold in the province was brought under peaceful government control since NATO arrived here last year.
"This is probably one of the first places where it has gone from being a complete war zone, where there seemed to be no chance of it dying down, into a bit of a success story," says the British commander in the town, Major Jamie Nowell.
"Sangin's been cleared, the government has come in, the police have come."
But NATO will have a hard time winning over a population that survives mainly on the production of illegal drugs.
Sangin is the centre of Afghanistan's opium heartland, a bazaar town where the Helmand and Musa Qala Rivers meet at the foot of two large mountain valleys.
It is brutal desert country, but a centuries-old system of irrigation canals has turned a crescent along the river into fertile territory that allows bone-dry Helmand Province to produce the opium for as much as a third of the world's heroin.
As the main road leaves the town, the fertile area is visible along the river. Scattered throughout neatly tended wheat fields are small opium plantations, the plants already harvested a week or so ago and now shrivelled to grey husks.
The British are trying to reassure the locals that they are not here to destroy their livelihoods. Before the recent offensives, they distributed leaflets saying they were here to fight the Taliban, not eradicate drugs crops.
The Afghan troops are reaching the point where they will be able to guarantee security, said Sergeant John Summerscales, leader of a group of six mentors that live with an Afghan army unit on the north edge of the town.
"You go out on patrol with them, they're great. They're keen as mustard," he said. "They know the people. They are the people. We're getting some really good (intelligence). We're finding things."
Inside the town, trader Ali Mohammed returned last week to the market stall he had abandoned when he fled a few months ago. He has a fridge filled with cold Pepsis for sale, and mounds of ripe tomatoes, potatoes and onions.
"As long as we are safe, that is enough," he says.
So will the Taliban come back?
He shrugs uneasily. "God knows," he says.
But next to him a teenaged boy smiles.
"Of course they will," the boy says.
Take This City, This Shell, This Cadaver
8 June 2007 Shuddhabrata Sengupta returns from Kabul haunted by its desolation and its grace
Suddenly, for the last two months, sometimes in the middle of a conversation, sometimes in the course of a perfectly ordinary day, I find myself haunted by Kabul. I walk down a road and think about what a road is not meant to be, because tanks might have scored its surface, and I think of Kabul. I look at a house but I see its shell, and imagine what it would look like if it were scarred and pockmarked by bullets, and I think of Kabul. I come across people, and I am reminded of what it means to be a fragment of a person, ravaged as much by peace as by war, and I think of conversations in Kabul.
My reasons for going to Kabul included talking to young photographers at a workshop at Kabul’s Goethe Institute (Max Mueller Bhavan in India). I was accompanying Gauri Gill, a Delhi-based photographer. She and I were to have conversations with a small group of people, over three or four days, looking at work (ours and theirs) and venturing out each afternoon to travel in different parts of Kabul, shooting pictures and thinking together about how to represent a city with images. We looked at pictures of people and places, at ordinary moments — a blacksmith’s workshop, the interiors of homes, children playing on rusting tanks — and the slow, sure signs of change — girls learning Taekwondo and, of course, the occasional stock picture of young people and computers. Our attempt was to think about how one can imagine ordinary life with pictures in a city devastated by war, without necessarily falling into the trap of replicating the portraits of abjection and extremity that had burnt Afghanistan into the global consciousness in recent years.
But I had other reasons for going to Kabul. I wanted to connect in some tangential, insubstantial way with a city (Kabul) and a country (Afghanistan) that the Bengali writer Syed Mujtoba Ali had described in vivid and affectionate detail in his extended non-fiction writing Deshe Bideshe, which had fascinated me for many years. Mujtoba Ali’s Afghanistan was a space of liberality and generosity, a combination of a certain robustness and hardiness that went together with extraordinary delicacy. As a teenager, growing up in Delhi through the 1980s, I would read Mujtoba Ali and sometimes wonder about Afghanistan. About how an ongoing conflict, the sharp hot edge of the Cold War, was changing and transforming the people that Mujtoba Ali so clearly loved and cared for. I would recite Afghan place names to myself, hoping that their accidental invocation in Delhi’s summer would somehow help transport me to the Bagh-e-Babur in Kabul.
These were the years when Afghan refugee families would spread large picnics in Lodhi Gardens on Sundays; when Nizamuddin Basti still had an Afghan restaurant where one could eat dumplings and sip green tea while sitting on thick Afghan carpets, listening to Persian songs on an old cassette recorder; when the occasional sardarji auto rickshaw driver in Delhi would turn out, in the course of a conversation, to be an Afghan refugee longing for Karte Parwan, his neighbourhood in Kabul.
Later, as the combined savagery of the Soviet occupation, and the US-backed mujahideen devastated Afghanistan, and left it at the mercy of the Stone Age Salafism of the Taliban, we witnessed the fading away of Afghanistan from our consciousness. The refugees retreated into invisibility. Afghanistan rapidly became a kind of ‘nowhere’, opaque and inaudible barring an occasional hijacking, an obsession with how high heels were visible under all-encompassing burqas, and the sudden Zen-like absence of the Buddha’s image at Bamiyan. Afghans changed roles from the exotic good guys of Hindi cinema (remember Khuda Gawah) to become strange, shadowy and sadistic characters who inhabited the darker corners of Bollywood’s passion plays about terrorism in Kashmir. Remember the ‘once-nearly-decapitated’ zombie terrorist modelled after ‘Mast Gul’, essayed guttarally by Jackie Shroff. For our navel-gazing media, Afghanistan had a new job to do: it had to remind us that the realities we inhabited in Delhi and Mumbai had a healthy, concrete normality. Kabul, once an intimate partner to Delhi in a South Asian network of urbanity, was now, for all intents and purposes, its alter ego, a non-place, a nowhere city.
We, in Delhi, are lucky to have been where Kabul is not. We get harsher summers, milder winters and haven’t had to deal with the collateral damage of superpower intrigue or the harsh memory of many years of war. Travelling to Afghan-istan teaches us to respect geography. It is the geo-strategic accident of latitudes that ensured that Afghanistan was coveted by the great powers of the late 20th century, and left us with the legacy of their accidentally benign neglect. Afghanistan was ‘in the way’ of highways and pipelines, a corridor that had to be secured as an incidental detail in the quest for domination on the high ground of global politics.
It was not always so, walking through the devastated grounds and corridors of the Dar-ul-Aman (Abode of Peace) palace in Kabul, I could not but recall images of its fairy tale grandeur, of tales heard and read of how Kabul in the 1950s and 60s had been a graceful, elegant city, with beautiful vistas, broad boulevards and charming citizens. That reality, in one Ozymandian sweep, seemed to have vanished, leaving behind a city that was a walking cadaver, an urban Frankenstein created by the circumstances of the 20th century.
Kabul in 2007 was a collage of destroyed architecture, of mud houses climbing up hillsides in the city’s ceaseless effort to improvise an urban infrastructure out of nothingness, an increasing density of second-hand automobiles, an air of savage opportunism in the carpet-bagging entrepreneurs selling everything from wireless conductivity to salvation, Islam and democracy. And the discreet signs that marked the differences between mined and de-mined neighbourhoods and streets. Bored expatriates got drunk in villas that had morphed into clubs and restaurants. They retreated from the chaos outside behind high walls and barbed wire. Indians were everywhere, in wireless companies, as consultants, as it experts, as civilian contractors for American military bases, as cooks and drivers and hoteliers — sharp, on the make, nervous about Chinese and Turkish competition, supremely contemptuous of the local population, and confident of making a lot of money very quickly. Then, there were the quieter, more reticent Indians, who sat for long hours in hotel dining rooms looking at the television, not meeting anyone’s gaze. I think most of them were melancholic spies, waiting for their assignments to end.
The Afghan journalists, photographers, artists, writers and filmmakers I met were mainly young, energetic, gregarious, welcoming and disarmingly friendly. We would talk about the films they liked, the books they read and the music they listened to. I witnessed an extraordinary gentleness, graciousness and solidarity between the young men and women whom we encountered during our brief sojourn. There was flirtation, laughter, banter, friendship and the shared sense that by being together, working together, looking at each other’s pictures and discovering their city together, they were participating in a modest attempt at claiming their future for themselves. Most of them had grown up in refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan (and some among the ‘Iran returned’ had a degree of cultural sophistication they were quite pleased to display — occasionally to the discomfort of their peers who had been through harder times in refugee camps in Pakistan or had stayed behind through the dark years when the Taliban held power in Kabul.
The poor were hospitable and generous, exactly as I had remembered Mujtoba Ali write. A beggar girl at a Shia shrine offered to take me around, to point out little details that she thought I would find significant, and when I said I had no local currency to give her, thoughtfully offered me some food. She thought I might be hungry as it seemed I had no money to feed myself.
In other neighbourhoods, like in Sheerpoor, where former warlords had ensconced themselves behind grotesque palaces, I came across a healthy overdose of meanness and paranoia. Security guards with lethal automatic weapons bristled to protect their master, pointing the business ends of their Kalashnikovs at pedestrians who strayed too close to the walls of their masters’ homes.
When war scripts the life of a city, as it has in Kabul, anything becomes possible. Unexpected gifts accompany disturbing memories. And you are left with a strange sense of how fragile the things we take for granted are. Anytime, anywhere, history can take you down a strange turn, and a city of gardens can become a ghost that haunts your travels anywhere in the world.
The exigencies of a full calendar have made me travel elsewhere in the recent past with barely any respite. I have woken up in different hotel rooms, in different cities, on different continents on different days in the past weeks, jetlagged, and mildly home sick, often in the middle of a recurring dream that takes place in a hotel room in Kabul with a television incessantly broadcasting news of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan’s wedding in enthusiastic Persian. Outside, in the bleary light of mis-timed awakening, I know there is a man with an automatic weapon thumbing his rosary, half asleep. And I think I can always see the distant outcrops of the hills that surround what must be the Kabul I carry in my mind’s suitcase. Kabul doesn’t let me sleep, Kabul doesn’t let me go. Kabul waits and I must find ways to return.
Sengupta is with the Sarai Project at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
In for the long haul; U.S. withdrawal from Iraq won't get us out of Afghanistan
Den Tandt, Michael Friday, June 08, 2007 - 08:00
Editorial - Historically, U.S. presidents who lose wars have been dragged out behind the barn and shot. We see that again now as George W. Bush and his allies are pounded daily on websites, on TV, in newspapers and in Congress. No one is too shy to bash the Bushies, not even serving members of the U.S. military. Tuesday night Republican contenders for the most important job in the world spent more time trashing Bush than they did their Democratic rivals. Where does it lead? And what does it mean for Canada?
For Bush and everyone connected to him, it's all over but the crying. This isn't to suggest that the President himself will suffer directly. He, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Colin Powell and other architects of the Iraq debacle will retire to write books (or have them ghost-written, in Bush's case), sit on corporate boards, join conservative think-tanks and the like. They'll always be in demand at cocktail parties and as special guests on FOX News. For the United States and Iraq, however, the coming pullout will be an almost unparalleled disaster.
That there will be a pullout is now a foregone conclusion. All the leading Democratic candidates are campaigning to end the war. And no Republican, not even John McCain, can win the White House on a platform that includes keeping troops in Iraq. McCain's long-standing view - that only a massive buildup of U.S. troops has any chance of bringing stability - is probably right. But that doesn't make it politically feasible. It's too late for that.
This means that, as the Bush presidency winds down, the Iraqi insurgency will become bolder and more powerful, for precisely the reason that political opposition becomes bolder during the lame-duck period of any administration. Iraqi power-brokers will look to the post-U.S. era, building alliances to ensure their own survival once the invaders have gone.
Here's the heart of the mess: Absent the Marines, there's nothing to prevent a full-blown Iraqi civil war. Iraq's population is two-thirds Shiite. Shiites still seethe with resentment and hatred because of how they were brutally oppressed by the Sunni minority during Saddam Hussein's reign. The radical clerics who control Iraq's Shiite masses defer to the mullas of Iran. This means that, following a very nasty war, Iraq could well break into three parts - Sunnis in the centre, Shiites in the south and Kurds in the north. The Shiite majority, with Iranian support, will likely be in the ascendant, as it is now - only more so.
That means a greater Iran, just as the country's radical regime is poised to achieve nuclear status. Tuesday night, the Republican contenders blithely concluded that the United States should attack Iran with nuclear weapons, if that's what's necessary to prevent it becoming a nuclear power. Unvoiced was this horrible irony: George W. Bush and his comic-book foreign policy created the Iranian threat in the first place. The current radical Iranian regime was elected following the invasion of Iraq and Bush's declaration that Iran formed part of an "axis of evil." And Shiite radicalism in Iraq was enabled by the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The result is that America may well flee Iraq only to almost immediately face a much greater conflict with Iran. It's difficult to see how even broadly pacifist sentiment in the United States, born of disgust with the loss in Iraq, could prevent this. Because, if the United States doesn't move to prevent a nuclear Iran, Israel will.
For Canada, the main short-term consequence of the U.S. failure in Iraq will be renewed pressure to pull our troops out of Afghanistan. The political dynamic in Ottawa is already clear: Liberals and NDP alike figure they can hurt Prime Minister Stephen Harper by linking him to Bush warmongery. That's why they repeatedly say that the Conservatives have warped the Afghan mission away from its original intent and made it more "warlike".
In fact, that's not true. Since the outset the Canadian strategy in Afghanistan has been to create an envelope of security, inside which Afghan civil institutions can grow. The opposition knows this. But they're in politics and taking potshots where they can. Harper's ideological kinship with Bush is a main point of vulnerability for him. So, this line of opposition attack will intensify as the Bush White House winds down.
Here's my guess, though: Regardless of who wins the Presidency in 2008, and regardless of who next wins power in Ottawa, Canada's Afghan mission will continue, and it will have a military component. Faced with a crushing U.S. defeat in Iraq, and possible future conflict with Iran, the NATO alliance cannot afford to lose Afghanistan as well. Whether we like it or not - and the vast majority of us don't like it and will like it even less as time goes by - the West is engaged in a global struggle with fascist radical Islamists who are bent on driving all Western influences out of the Middle East and eradicating the State of Israel. It seems to me that this conflict is in its early stages.
Is it all about oil? To a large degree, yes it is. Oil is energy and energy is power. Ceding control of the world's greatest known energy source to a fascist, totalitarian, murderous mob would be economic and political suicide. Western governments, whatever their ideological hue, won't do it.
The logic is grim and inescapable. NATO must remain in Afghanistan. Canada must remain in NATO. Therefore, Canada must remain in Afghanistan, and will - probably for many years to come. Bush's historic failures will impede the Afghan mission, but they won't bring it to an end.
Michael Den Tandt is Editor of the Sun Times and a former political correspondent based in Ottawa. Contact mdentandt@thesuntimes.ca.
Jonesboro man remembers son who was killed in Afghanistan
Associated Press - June 8, 2007 10:04 AM ET
JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) - A Jonesboro man remembers his son killed in a helicopter attack while serving in Afghanistan as having "100% faith in our government."
Dan Rodgers' 29-year-old son Joshua died May 30th along with four other paratroopers from the Army's 82nd Airborne in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan's Upper Sangin Valley. Military officials say Joshua Rodgers was piloting the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter when it was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade.
His father remembered the chief warrant officer as calling him a lot while serving in Afghanistan. His father says the two had planned to take a trip to the Smoky Mountains.
Joshua Rodgers lived in Carson City, Nevada and spent summers with his father in Jonesboro. The soldier is survived by his wife and three daughters.
A memorial service will be held at 10 am tomorrow at Douglas High School in Gardnerville, Nevada. Rodgers will be buried Sunday with full military honors in Nevada.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Expelled from Iran - refugee misery
By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Afghanistan Friday, 8 June 2007, 08:42 GMT
The queues of refugees start to pour over the border shortly from first thing in the morning - as they have been doing for the last month.
Ninety thousand people have so far been forcibly returned to Afghanistan from Iran since 21 April, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Every hour or so another bus arrives on the Iranian side, the people are unloaded, carrying the few possessions they had when they were arrested.
A policeman meets them on the Afghanistan side, and they join a long line of people waiting to pick up the few pieces of charity an aid agency has gathered for them.
They get water, biscuits and a bundle of clothes. They can also make a free phone call to relatives to let them know where they are.
Then they get a free 120 km bus trip from the border post to the city of Herat where they are left to start all over again in a country where they used to live.
In the gathered crowd waiting to tell their stories I see a young man, a tear rolling down his cheek.
Iran has never deported so many people in such a short space of time
"My wife and children are left there, even though I asked the authorities to let us go together," he said, a reference number scrawled on his hand in thick black ink.
"I didn't even have time to get my wages from my employer. Now that they deported me who will look after my children? If someone throws them on the street who will give them shelter? This is cruelty."
Among the lines of men was a 12-year-old boy who said he had been deported on his own.
And passions are high. An older man, emphasising his point by striking his fist into his hand, says he has lived in Iran for 28 years and now he is back in Afghanistan, he cannot even afford the bus fare to Kabul, and doubts there is any work there anyway.
"We are Muslims and they are Muslims as well, so why have they done this to us? We don't have any one to look after us."
Iran received millions of refugees during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the later civil war. It has been deporting refugees for some time, but never on this scale - never so many in such a short space of time.
Josep Zapater is from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which under its remit can do little to help most of the returnees - only the vulnerable such as the old, the young and families.
While many of the single men were living in Iran illegally, almost 22,000 of those deported have been families.
"This wasn't happening last year," Mr Zapater explained. "Also there are the human rights concerns that we have seen at the border like separated families, some cases of maltreatment.
"The process definitely needs to be sorted out in a more humane manner."
An Afghan delegation visited Iran earlier this month and they returned saying the Iranian government had promised to suspend forced expulsions, but as they delivered their report hundreds more refugees continued to be deported.
And the Iranian director general of the Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrant Affairs, Ahmad Hosseini, defended their decision.
Iran is doing a great deal to help development in Herat
"We are determined once and for all to resolve the problem of illegal immigrants in Iran and this doesn't mean only Afghans but any other nationalities who have illegal immigrants here," he said.
"The money we were supposed to spend on reconstruction for our own country has been spent on refugees. Today when we count the cost, it is $7bn a year, or $6 per Afghan every day."
In Herat the arrival of tens of thousands of unemployed men is starting to have a real impact on the city and the whole region.
Each morning they queue up for daily work, but there is little around.
"I had my passport but they just tore it up" one man said. "What kind of law is that?"
Iran is doing a great deal to help development in Afghanistan, particularly in Herat, but there are complaints so many desperate people arriving in a short time maybe undoing efforts to stabilise and assist the people.
Iran forces the issue in Afghanistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Asia Times Online / June 8, 2007
ISLAM QALA, Iran-Afghanistan border - When Iran announced in February that it was undertaking a thorough regularization of aliens on its soil, ears in the West pricked up, but not much was read into it.
However, the subsequent expulsion of thousands of Afghan refugees indicates the twofold motive behind the move. First, Iran wanted to weaken Sunni-led insurgents in its bordering areas, and second, it believed that the return of the refugees would fuel the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.
The second calculation, compounded by a political miscalculation on the part of the Afghan government, has already borne fruit, in the process providing the United States with another area on which it needs to consult Tehran.
On April 23, Iran sent back 4,000 undocumented Afghans to Zaranj, Nimroz province, followed the next day by the same number. All of them had been living in the Iranian Sunni-dominated Zabol-Zahedan region of Sistan-Balochistan province and had originally hailed from Nimroz and Farah provinces. An estimated 1 million Afghan refugees live in Iran.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, up to the beginning of this month, 98,712 persons had been deported since April 23 - the largest number ever send back from Iran in such a short period. Almost all of them were sent from the Zaranj border crossing. They were said to have refused to comply with a decision by the Iranian government to declare the Zabol-Zahedan area a "no-go" zone for "foreigners".
In fact, observers claim that Tehran wants to clear all people, local or foreign, from the Sunni-dominated area to minimize the chances of insurgents securing safe sanctuaries in the remote regions of Zahedan and Zabol.
Zahedan has traditionally been the base of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK - People's Mujahideen), which has conducted terror acts in Iran. And recently an organization called Jundallah emerged from the area to carry out terrorist activities against Iranian security forces.
Jundallah is a hardline Sunni Islamist group drawn from the Baloch population of Iran, as well as Balochs from Pakistan (Balochistan province) and Afghanistan (Farah and Nimroz provinces).
Zabol's vastness has served as a safe haven for the Taliban, as the local population is sympathetic to them. One of Osama bin Laden's sons, Saad, was arrested from Zabol by Iranian authorities. This was never officially announced, and some reports say he was released last July.
According to field officers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, although they made every effort to stem the flood of refugees, they have had little success and they are struggling to cope with the numbers. About 1,300 a day are still streaming across the border, most of them headed for their home provinces of Farah and Nimroz.
The situation is a serious concern for Kabul as well as its international supporters. The province of Farah, in western Afghanistan near Herat province, was virtually in the hands of the Taliban until last November, but constant operations by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Afghan forces forced the Taliban back. Nevertheless, in the ongoing spring offensive, the Taliban are re-establishing their influence.
After a surge in attacks since last month, the Herat-Farah highway has been declared insecure and officials of international agencies are banned from traveling on it - they have to use NATO or UN air services.
"The most alarming thing is the gradual increase in the activities of the Taliban in Farah and Nimroz and the return of the Afghan refugees. They are poor and needy and naturally will fuel the Taliban insurgency," a senior official of an international agency told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity.
However, other factors will help make western Afghanistan a new hub of Taliban activities this year. Sayed Hussain Anwari, a Shi'ite ethnic Hazara, was installed as governor of Herat this year in the predominantly Tajik-Sunni province.
Anwari is a bitter rival of a legendary Afghan commander of the resistance against the Soviets in the 1980s, Ismail Khan, and Anwari's appointment by Kabul was an open declaration of war against Khan and his formidable support. Khan was sacked as governor in September 2004. As a conciliatory gesture, President Hamid Karzai appointed him minister of energy.
The consequences of sidelining the powerful Khan are being manifested in the re-emergence of the Taliban in the northwestern provinces of Herat (Shindand), Farah, Nimroz and Ghor through the facilitation of local warlords, many of them Khan supporters.
To date, Iranian diplomacy has been effective in keeping the US war machine at bay in the Persian Gulf and even compelled the Americans to open dialogue with Iran over its role in Iraq and the region. Northwestern Afghanistan is the latest front on which the Americans need to make a bargain with Tehran.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.
AFGHANISTAN: Pressure mounts for aerial poppy-spraying
KABUL, 7 June 2007 (IRIN) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai is under pressure from the USA to implement a controversial counter narcotics plan that should eradicate Afghanistan's poppy fields by spraying chemicals, officials confirmed on Thursday.
"We are under pressure to use chemicals for the eradication of poppy fields," Habibullah Qadiri, Afghanistan's minister of counter narcotics, told IRIN in the capital, Kabul.
In 2006, a US government plan to aerial spray poppy fields to stop opium production in Afghanistan was rejected by President Karzai, following health concerns raised by the country's Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) over the possible side effects on farmers and local residents.
"In rural areas people use stream water for drinking, washing and other purposes. The use of chemicals against poppy fields will contaminate water and that can cause grave consequences for many rural residents," the ministry warned.
"There are also risks of other useful plants being poisoned by the chemicals or farm animals being affected by them," MoPH reported to a government committee on counter narcotics.
However, according to one western diplomat, a US delegation is expected, in the very near future, to present to the Afghan authorities fresh proposals, including a safe spray that will not have side effects.
- Opposition to spray weakening?
The UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) estimates that Afghanistan's opium production will increase in 2007 from the record level of 6,100 metric tonnes it produced in 2006.
"The government has virtually failed to counter narcotics and the boom in opium production every year is confirmation of that," a senior official at the Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) who preferred anonymity, conceded.
With increasing poppy cultivation and continued pressure from the USA, some Afghan officials have now changed their "no to chemical spray" thinking.
"If we realise that Taliban insurgents and terrorists continue to profit from narcotics and we find that our strategy cannot tackle the problem then, as an ultimate option, we will use chemical spray," Minister Qadiri confirm to IRIN.
Meanwhile, a British diplomat in Kabul dealing with counter narcotics doubted the usefulness of aerial or land chemical spray on poppy fields.
"It will not be an Afghan solution to their problem and, meanwhile, it will not be a sustainable solution either. Britain does not support it," added the diplomat who did not want to be named.
The US embassy in Kabul preferred not to comment on the issue until an American delegation visits Afghan officials in the coming two weeks.
Almost half of Afghanistan's national economy is based on illicit money earned from opium.
According to the UNODC, the country produced US$3.1 billion worth opium in 2006 alone. Although a small fraction of opium money actually remains in Afghanistan, many Afghan farmers say they need tangible assistance in terms of alternative livelihoods in order to stop cultivating poppy.
In an effort to address such demands, the Afghan government, supported by the UN and other donors, established a counter narcotics trust fund in late 2005 which, however, managed to spend less than $800,000 on alternative livelihoods in 2006.
"We admit low capacity in the government [thus] impeding our efforts to spend more funds on alternative livelihoods," acknowledged Wahidullah Shahrani, a deputy finance minister.
Unique marathon ran in Afghanistan
By Daniel Fritz, Staff Writer
The prospect of running 13.1 miles probably isn't appealing to most people.
Add the arid heat, dust and sun-scorched terrain of Afghanistan and you've got yourself a deal-breaker for the masses.
For Sgt. Jacqueline Barrios, a West Covina native, this was no sweat.
At 6 a.m. on April 29 at the Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, just north of Kabul, Barrios and 27 other soldiers took part in "Operation Endurance," an extensive test of physical prowess.
Twelve hours later, about 4,000 runners across the globe did the same. This year the annual Lehigh Valley Half Marathon and 5K, which took place in Allentown, Pa., was coordinated with athletes overseas.
"The dedication these soldiers show to their country and to their sport is complete and undeniable," said Neal Novak, Lehigh Valley Half Marathon race director.
"We had over 4,000 registrants for our race, but none as special as the ones running in Afghanistan."
In a display of solidarity to the soldiers, marathon officials provided runners with personalized camouflage bib numbers.
A consummate athlete, Barrios, 22, was the first female to finish, and placed 12th among the pack of 28 who ran the perimeter road of Bagram Airfield.
Barrios, even in her two years as the leader of the South Hills High School girls' varsity cross-country team, displayed character that would allow her to positively sustain herself in the unfriendly conditions of the Middle East.
"When you think about Jackie, she's always got a big smile on her face," said David McKissick, Barrios' former track coach at South Hills. "She has the kind of fireball-type personality, and that's only going to help her squad. She also has a very strong, positive approach to cheering on other people."
Barrios has harnessed these attributes, allowing her to thrive in her training and advancement in the United States Army.
Officially reporting for duty on Aug. 25, Barrios rapidly proved her value to America. Roughly six months later, she found herself in Louisiana in support of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Two and a half years after that she was promoted to sergeant, and given several soldiers to mentor, lead and motivate.
Now in Afghanistan, Barrios supports the Combined Joint Task Force 82 on most personnel actions such as casualty info and reports, overall task force accountability, leaves and passes, finance, Red Cross messages, redeploying soldiers and mail.
"Afghanistan has been a very humbling experience so far," Barrios said. "I have had the chance to experience several stressful situations that have made me grow and mature and become very aware of my surroundings."
Although the choice to participate in "Operation Endurance" came in the form of a challenge from her command sergeant, those who know her best say it was probably mostly derived from her driven, team-oriented spirit.
"She's very eager to learn, so anything that involves a team effort she is more than exceptional at," said Sandy Asad, Barrios' close friend. "She always kept spirits up when moral is down, and in doing that she lifts a lot of people up without even knowing."
While Barrios maintains the race was a good experience, she admits disappointment in herself on a few accounts.
"I wish I had the time to fully train and prepare myself for the actual race, but because we work seven days a week and often 12 hours a day, it's difficult to train to standard," Barrios said. "Therefore, I really didn't concentrate as much as I should have for this half marathon."
Additionally, the unfavorable conditions of Afghanistan played a part in her struggle.
"The biggest difficulty faced during the race was breathing (due to altitude and dust), and the distraction of the engineers that were mining around our perimeter road," Barrios said.
Maintaining her competitive spirit, Barrios said that this race was only a "warm-up" for a full marathon in June.
Barrios has recently re-enlisted for four more years, and will remain in Afghanistan indefinitely.
[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.] |
