In this bulletin:

• Attacks kill five Afghans, one foreign soldier
• NATO agrees steps to reduce Afghan civilian casualties
• Nato troops kill Afghan civilian
• Karzai condoles with families of girl students
• Italian aid group worker freed in Afghanistan
• French and Afghan Ambassadors Open Photo Exhibit in Toronto
• Human rights weren't on Tory radar: MacKay Reports on detainees were not sent to PMO
• Japan pledges $1.2m for welfare projects in Bamyan
• AFGHANISTAN: UN urges ceasefire for polio immunisation drive
• Disabled stage protest demo, warn of self-immolation
• Some Afghan refugees said under pressure to leave Dushanbe
• Fears that Afghan boys at risk of terror grooming
• Musharraf refuses to crack down on Taliban, says HRW
• To die under the wings of B-52s
• Found: the lost Rolls of Kabul
• Pakistan faces a less-friendly US Congress

Attacks kill five Afghans, one foreign soldier

Kabul (AFP) - Suicide bombers targeting foreign forces struck two Afghan cities Saturday, killing four civilians, and a US soldier at one of the attacks "accidentally" shot dead a bystander, security officials said.

A foreign soldier was meanwhile killed in the south of the country when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into a military vehicle, the US-led coalition said without releasing the nationality of the trooper.

The most powerful suicide blast was in a busy residential area of the capital Kabul and appeared targeted at a private security convoy, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Three men were killed and five wounded, the interior ministry said. The dead were two labourers and a man who sold goods from a cart, Kabul deputy police chief Zalmai Oriakhil told AFP. "The wounded are all civilians working in a market in the area," he said.

The bomber, whose body littered the scene of the blast, had packed explosives into a taxi, the interior ministry said. The vehicle was reduced to charred pieces of metal and several other cars were damaged or destroyed.

"The car just behind me exploded. It was a terrible explosion," said one witness, Radi Gul. "An ISAF vehicle was on fire but drove away," he said.

But ISAF said the targeted convoy was not one of its own even though one of its soldiers was wounded.

"That was the only ISAF member in the entire convoy that we are aware of," spokesman Major John Thomas told AFP. "Our initial reports are that this was a private entity's convoy."

US soldiers responding to the attack and "mistakenly" opened fire, killing a bystander and wounding three others, police said.

"It appears to have been an accidental discharge. The US soldiers did not intend to fire on anyone," US military spokesman Colonel David Accetta said.

ISAF said it would investigate. "We have no reason to believe that the gunfire was intentional," Thomas said.

Hundreds of people mobbed the soldiers, thinking the shooting was deliberate, Oriakhil said. "With the help of elders, we calmed the situation, and the good people did not cause any violence," he said.

The foreign vehicles, including a Humvee struck by the suicide blast, left under police escort. Later about 100 men chanted "Death to America" for television cameras at the scene.

The killing of civilians by foreign soldiers in Afghanistan is highly sensitive after a series of such incidents and even though most deaths are caused by insurgent attacks.

The second suicide blast on Saturday tore through the centre of the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and appeared aimed at a US convoy, said the Balkh provincial head of police, Abdul Rauf Taj. "One person was killed and six injured," he said.

There have been four suicide blasts in Afghanistan in the past two days, all against foreign convoys. Together they killed 13 people. Suicide bombings are a hallmark of an insurgency waged by the Taliban and its Islamist allies who are trying to topple the Afghan government, which is backed by several Western nations.

The coalition did not give the nationality of the foreign soldier killed Saturday in the province of Uruzgan. A Dutch soldier died in the same province on Friday after a suicide bombing that killed nine Afghans, five of them children.

In other incidents reported Saturday and linked to the raging Taliban insurgency, two Afghan soldiers were killed bomb blast in the southern province of Helmand on Friday, the ministry of defence said.

Three foreign fighters were killed in the eastern province of Paktika, it said, identifying the men as Chechen, Arab and Pakistani.

NATO agrees steps to reduce Afghan civilian casualties

by Lorne Cook Sat Jun 16, BRUSSELS (AFP) - NATO has agreed to measures for reducing civilian casualties in Afghanistan that have been undermining its fight against Taliban-led insurgents, as offers of fresh troops and equipment trickled in.

In talks in Brussels, allied defence ministers pledged better coordination between Western forces and with the Afghan army, tougher probes of incidents involving civilians and to provide aid to victims' families.

Scores of civilians have been killed this year in battles between military forces and militants, some due to misunderstandings among troops.

"We discussed measures to help us do better, and that is constantly and permanently looking at our procedures," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters after the meeting Friday.

He expressed regret about civilian deaths in operations by the International Security Assitance Force (ISAF), but he insisted the NATO-led contingent and the Taliban "are simply not in the same moral category."

"They are waging this indirect war against us by exploiting civilians, by using them as human shields, by terrorising them, by burning schools, by beheading people," he said.

"We have procedures, very careful procedures, but (civilian casualties) happen and our opponents are using this," he said, after the meeting, attended by Afghan Defence Minister Abdul Rahmin Wardak.

Earlier, NATO spokesman James Appathurai explained that ISAF's procedures had been toughened to avoid such incidents.

"The key is full and appropriate application of them," he said, adding that it was also important to "improve the training and judgement of the troops."

Another NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "We have to be careful with the use of airpower."

On Tuesday, the international Red Cross warned that Afghan civilians were paying the price as increasingly bitter fighting between international forces and the insurgents spreads from the south and east, where it has been worst.

Wardak, meanwhile, said the Taliban -- ousted by a US-led coalition in late 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden -- was now on the back foot.

"The tides are turning in our favour. Taliban have suffered casualties in ranks and file and also in different levels of their leadership," he said. "They have failed to materialize the so-called spring offensive."

However Scheffer noted that "there are still shortfalls" as far as ISAF troops and equipment are concerned, despite the fact that some 40,000 personnel from 37 nations are deployed.

"In the air, we rely too much on our American allies," he said. "We would profit as well from more manouevre forces."

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States would be forced to keep heavy lift helicopters in Afghanistan, as no allies have come forward with aircraft that could operate in the country's high mountains.

"I announced that in the absence of any available apparent substitute, that I would extend the assignment of our helicopters in Kandahar to ISAF for an additional six months," he told reporters.

"But I expect the allies to come up with a solution at that time in terms of helicopters that have the capability to operate in Afghanistan," he said.

He said several countries also announced they would remove restrictions on the use of their forces, which would allow commanders to deploy them more easily to hostile areas.

Appathurai said seven countries had agreed to provide additional mentoring and liaison teams which would embed with Afghan forces to help improve standards, but that ISAF was still well short of the 46 teams needed.

He said four countries had also offered unmanned reconnaisance aircraft.

Nato troops kill Afghan civilian

BBC News / Saturday, 16 June 2007 - Nato troops have killed a civilian at the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghan and Nato officials say. Several others were injured when the US soldiers opened fire. The US military said the shooting had been accidental.

At least three people died in the suicide bombing, officials say. Another civilian died in a suicide bombing later on Saturday in Mazar-e-Sharif. Saturday's attacks bring to four the number of suicide bombings in Afghanistan in the past two days.

Suicide attacks have become a regular feature of the Taleban's campaign against the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai in recent years.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Kabul says there is considerable confusion surrounding the shooting incident at the scene of the early morning bombing in the city.

Nato's Isaf force said two Afghans had accidentally been shot by its soldiers. One of the Afghans later died, it announced with regret. "Initial indications are that an Isaf soldier's weapon accidentally fired," said Isaf spokesman Maj John Thomas.

The US military says it is investigating how the firing occurred. Spokesman Col David Accetta said US soldiers had "responded" to the suicide attack but had not intended to fire on anyone.

"It appears to have been an accidental discharge," he told the AFP news agency. "There might have been a weapons malfunction or some other cause. We don't know."

Anger over civilian casualties has been growing among Afghans and crowds gathered at the scene to protest afterwards.

In the suicide attack on Kabul's western outskirts, a man drove a taxi packed with explosives at a foreign convoy, killing himself and several others. The blast was powerful enough to shatter shop windows.

The government says an Isaf convoy was the target of the attacker, but Isaf and the US-led coalition said it appeared that private security vehicles had been targeted.

Suicide attacks have claimed hundreds of lives in Afghanistan and are on the rise. One in southern Afghanistan on Friday killed some 10 people, including six children and a Dutch soldier.

Saturday's blast in Mazar-e-Sharif injured another 12 people, security officials in the northern city told the BBC. They said the attacker rammed his motorbike into a passing Nato convoy. There were no reports of Nato casualties.

Karzai condoles with families of girl students

KABUL, June 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): President Hamid Karzai on Saturday visited the central Logar province to meet families of the two schoolgirls shot dead by unidentified armed men last week.

Armed motorcyclists opened fire at students of Bibi Fatima High School in Pul-i-Alam, capital of Logar, as they were on way home after school hours.

Two girls were killed and four others, including a teacher, sustained injuries in the heinous act of violence.

A statement released here said President Hamid Karzai ordered construction of two more schools in the province to be named after the two martyred students.

The statement said the residents assured the president that such brazen acts of terrorism would not deter them from sending their children to schools.

The president appreciated the courage demonstrated by the locals and directed the authorities to ensure security of schools and people of the area. Karzai met parents and other relatives of the deceased students and offered 200,000 afghanis to families of the dead and 50,000 to those suffered injuries in the attack.

Italian aid group worker freed in Afghanistan

Rome (AFP) - An employee of an Italian aid group, arrested three months ago in Afghanistan and accused of involvement in the kidnapping of an Italian journalist, has been released, a spokesman for the group said Saturday.

Rahmatullah Hanefi, the Afghan head of a hospital run by the group, Emergency, in southern Afghanistan, "was freed Saturday morning and is currently at our hospital in Kabul", spokesman Vauro Senesi said.

He said Hanefi had been cleared of accusations brought by the Afghan secret services against him.

Afghan authorities arrested Hanefi on March 20, the day after his negotiations with the Taliban as an intermediary resulted in the liberation of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, an Italian journalist who had been held hostage for two weeks.

The Afghan rebel group freed Mastrogiacomo in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners by the Afghan government. Two Afghans working with the journalist as a translator and as a driver were decapitated by the Taliban.

Afghan officials accused Hanefi of being implicated in the kidnapping of Mastrogiacomo.

In April, Emergency announced it had closed all its medical centres in Afghanistan after the country's secret service accused it of "supporting terrorists" by brokering the release of the journalist.

The group ran three hospitals and 26 clinics in Afghanistan. Hanefi's release opens up the prospect of the group returning to Afghanistan, the spokesman added.

French and Afghan Ambassadors Open Photo Exhibit in Toronto

Ottawa - The photo exhibit “Voices on the Rise: Afghan Women Making the News” was opened at the Alliance Française in Toronto on Thursday by the Ambassadors of France and Afghanistan to Canada.

At the opening ceremony, Amb. Danielle Jouanneau dedicated the exhibit to the memory of Afghan women journalists who have been killed by extremists and terrorists over the past five years.

Recalling a century of French-Afghan relations, he also reiterated France’s commitment to continue to assist in the security and reconstruction sectors in Afghanistan. President Nicolas Sarkozy has recently announced the expansion of France’s training efforts with the Afghan national army, with plans to deploy an additional 150 instructors to the country.

Afghan envoy Omar Samad thanked the Ambassador and the Alliance Française for hosting and co-sponsoring the event, and also talked about the importance of international efforts to stabilize his country and give hope to millions of Afghans, who seek a better life. He thanked France and other nations, including Canada, for the significant contributions made since 2001.

Khorshied Samad, wife of the Afghan envoy, and Ms. Jane McElhone, the co-curators of the exhibit, talked about the growing role of women in today’s Afghanistan. They pointed to the achievements in various fields, highlighted by the exhibit’s focus on Afghan women journalists.

They also expressed sorrow and concern about the recent attacks on Afghan activists and students, calling for protection and continued world support. The exhibit is dedicated to the memory of journalists Zakia Zaki and Shekeba Sanga Amaj.

The event was attended by a large number of Canadian, representatives of the Afghan-Canadian community, journalists and members of the diplomatic corps. Present were H.E. Adrienne Clarkson, former Governor General of Canada and H.E. Bill Graham, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Defence.

The exhibit will be open to the public at the Alliance Française till July 5 and will then move to the Toronto Public Library form July 9 to August 31.

Embassy of Afghanistan - June 15, 2007

Human rights weren't on Tory radar: MacKay Reports on detainees were not sent to PMO

ALAN FREEMAN From Friday's Globe and Mail June 15, 2007

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his leading ministers showed no apparent interest in the human-rights situation in Afghanistan until The Globe and Mail disclosed cases of possible detainee abuse in the country earlier this year.

According to written responses tabled in the House of Commons yesterday by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, his department has been producing reports on human rights, good governance and democratic development in the country since at least 2002.

But Mr. MacKay said that neither he nor his predecessor in the Foreign Affairs portfolio were made aware of the Afghanistan reports nor was Mr. Harper. In fact, "the human rights reports are not normally copied to the Prime Minister's Office," the response said. Mr. MacKay said that until recently, he knew nothing of the reports either.

"The human rights reports are not normally copied to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, nor is the Minister briefed on their content," Mr. MacKay wrote in response to NDP defence critic Dawn Black. In a separate response, National Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor wrote that he and his predecessors had also not been made aware of the human rights reports.

The 2006 report, disclosed by The Globe in April, revealed that prisoners held by Afghan security officials faced possible torture, abuse and even extra-judicial killing.

This ministerial lack of interest appears to have changed dramatically after The Globe and Mail's stories detailing allegations of abuse of Afghan detainees after they were handed over to Afghan authorities by Canadian soldiers.

The scandal led the government to negotiate an enhanced agreement with the government of Afghanistan, giving Canadian officials the right to independently monitor the transferred detainees.

By that time, the issue got the attention of these senior cabinet members. The written responses noted that both Mr. Harper and Mr. MacKay were "fully engaged with developments" that led to the signing of the supplementary arrangement on May 3.

Ms. Black said she was not really surprised by the government's delayed interest in the human-rights concerns in the country.

"I think Afghanistan has been one of the main issues of this government, but they have never shown a real commitment to human rights in Afghanistan," she said in an interview. "Clearly, all the way through this whole mess, they've never taken human rights seriously."

Foreign Affairs last year requested human-rights reports on 111 countries, of which Afghanistan was just one.

In the Commons yesterday, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan said that "everybody knows that the Department of Foreign Affairs reports annually on human rights."

In fact, the Foreign Affairs Department initially denied the existence of the Afghan human-rights report, saying in response to an access-to-information request earlier this year that "no such report on human rights performance in other countries exists." Only after complaints to the Information Commissioner was a heavily edited version of the report released in April.

Japan pledges $1.2m for welfare projects in Bamyan

KABUL, June 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The government of Japan has pledged $1.2 million for welfare projects in central Bamyan province.

Hussain Ali Yaqoobi, an official of the rural rehabilitation department, told Pajhwok Afghan News the amount would be spent through regional councils in the province.

In the northern Faryab province, the Norwegian provincial reconstruction team (PRT) has constructed a dining hall, rooms for attendants of patients, separate toilets for male and female patients, treatment centre for addicts and a medical store at the Maimana Civil Hospital.

Completed at the cost of $700,000, the projects were handed over to officials on Saturday. Public health director Dr Abdul Ali Halim appreciated the assistance and said it would go a long way in addressing the problems faced by patients and their attendants at the hospital.

In the southeastern Paktia province, work was started on reconstruction of a school destroyed during exchange of fire with Pakistani troops last month.

The school is being constructed by the US-led PRT. The construction work will be completed at the cost of $66,000.

In the northern Samagan province, a bridge linking the provincial capital of Aibak with Dara-i-Souf district, was inaugurated on Saturday.

The construction cost amounting $147,000 was provided by the World Bank. Construction of the bridge was completed in nine months, said engineer Nooruallah Hakimi, official of United Nation Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Samangan.

AFGHANISTAN: UN urges ceasefire for polio immunisation drive

KANDAHAR, 17 June 2007 (IRIN) - The UN has called upon all sides of the conflict between insurgents and government and international forces in the south, east and southeast of Afghanistan to cease fighting for a three-day polio immunisation drive beginning on 17 June.

Supported by the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO), the immunisation campaign involves about 18,000 health workers going door-to-door in 13 provinces in a bid to immunise 1.3 million children under five years old with two drops of oral polio vaccine, Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health told IRIN.

"We have called for a period of tranquility – no military operation – in order to be able to immunise every under-five child," said Tahir Pervaiz Mir, a WHO official in Kabul.

Insecurity has been a major challenge in the four immunisation drives undertaken already in 2007, restricting access to tens of thousands of children in the volatile south and southeast of the country.

"In the last several rounds, we could not reach at least 100,000 of the targeted children because of insecurity," Mir added.

Polio, in all its three main forms, has been eliminated all over the world except in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nigeria, according to the UN.

In 1999, more than 60 polio cases were confirmed in Afghanistan, according to the UN Children's Agency (UNICEF). The number of cases fell to just four in 2004, when the Afghan government vowed it would eliminate the viral infectious disease by 2007.

However, 2006 saw an unexpected surge in the number of polio cases with 31 confirmed cases, predominantly in the south and east of the country, the Afghan healthy ministry has said.

"So far in 2007 we have three confirmed cases of polio - two in the south and one in the east of the country," said Gul Aga Ayub, a health ministry official.

Officials said the current polio immunisation drive will concentrate mostly on insurgency-plagued provinces, in order to free the country of the disease by 2008.

"We will help the health ministry conduct three more campaigns - two of which will be nationwide - until the end of this year," said Ghulam Haider Rafiqi, a UNICEF officer responsible for vaccinations.

In addition to insecurity, one of the major obstacles to immunising all children is a lack of awareness of the benefits of doing so and, for some, a Taliban-driven scepticism of the motives behind all vaccinations, Afghan officials say.

"It is a useless exercise," said Abdul Khaliq, a father of four children from Arghandab district in the volatile southern province of Kandahar. "Why don't they [the government and the UN] give us insecticides instead, which can stop scorpions, snakes and other insects stinging our kids?" asked Khaliq.

Another man, from Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand province in the south, told IRIN that Taliban fighters had threatened people against vaccinating their children and women.

"They [the Taliban] say vaccines will sterilise children and that will reduce the Muslim population of the world," said a resident of conflict-ridden Helmand.

Afghan officials say a public awareness campaign is underway, aimed at countering propaganda and encouraging men to let their children and women be immunised against polio, tetanus, measles and other preventable diseases.

Abdullah Fahim, a spokesman for the health ministry, said Islamic religious leaders and scholars who entertain wide influence among rural communities would be asked to preach and enlighten people on the conformity of polio, tetanus and measles' vaccinations with Islamic principles.

Disabled stage protest demo, warn of self-immolation

KUNDUZ CITY, June 16 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Scores of disabled persons staged a peaceful protest demonstration in the northern Kunduz province on Saturday.

Demanding shelter for themselves and their families, the protestors blocked the Kunduz-Sherkhan Bandar road for general traffic. Some of them warned of self-immolation if the government failed to pay heed to their demand.

They said the protest would go on till the resolution of their problems. They also chanted slogans against the provincial governor dubbing him as an inefficient administrator.

Ebadullah, one of the protestors who had lost one of his legs during the war, told Pajhwok that he had a seven-member family. He said he had returned from Pakistan three years back and had not found shelter here since then.

"I have been paying 2,000 afghanis per month as house rent. But now, as I'm unable to pay the amount, the owner asked me to vacate the house," said Ebadullah.

He warned of committing suicide by self-immolation if the government failed to provide him an immediate relief in term of shelter.

Muhammad Barat, head of the disabled union in the province, said five years back the government had promised provision of houses to disabled, but it had yet to be materialised.

He said those who were now struggling to find roof for their families were the same people who had fought the foreign troops under the command of those who were now enjoying luxurious lives.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, provincial Governor engineer Muhammad Omar said the process of allotment of plots to disabled had been halted under a presidential decree since last year.

Two years back, plots were distributed to almost 300 disabled persons in a township named Sar Dawra in the province, said the governor, adding those who had not received plots so far should approach the Ministry of Martyrs and Disabled.

The governor said a high-level delegation from Kabul was expected to visit the province to identify the deserving persons and recommend allotment of residential plots in their names.

According to official figures, there are around 12,000 disabled and heirs of martyrs in Kunduz. Of them, 1,500 are living in rented houses or having not shelter.

Some Afghan refugees said under pressure to leave Dushanbe

DUSHANBE, 16 June 2007 (IRIN) - Afghan refugees living in Tajikistan are calling on the Tajik government and international organisations to protect them after reported pressure on Afghans in Dushanbe to move to their places of registration outside the capital.

"My son was detained last night at 11pm by a policeman and then put under arrest," Guloba, a woman about 45 sitting with a group of some 50 Afghan refugees in front of the local Human Rights and Protection non-governmental organisation (NGO) office in Dushanbe, told IRIN on 15 June.

According to the group of Afghan refugees, Tajik policemen are chasing them out of Dushanbe and sending them back to the districts and villages where they are registered.

The group said refugees who came to Tajikistan during the civil war in Afghanistan were registered in Dushanbe. But those who had arrived in the past two years had all been registered in districts outside the capital.

"We cannot live in the districts; we simply cannot survive there. Even local Tajiks themselves are leaving rural areas and migrating to Russia and the capital to earn money," said Khayri, a middle-aged Afghan refugee woman.

"We cannot afford to travel to the capital every day. My son makes eight somoni [US$2.32] per day. That is not enough to travel daily to Dushanbe and back and support the entire family with food," Khayri added.

According to Human Rights and Protection, there are about 1, 300 Afghan refugees in Tajikistan. Tajik foreign ministry officials told IRIN there was no change in the lives of the refugees.

"There has been a simple passport-checking operation in the city for a month now - run by the security services. Anyone registered as resident in other parts of the country but working in the city is facing these check-ups, including Tajik citizens," Davlatali Nazriev, head of the ministry's press centre, said.

"There isn't any [new] government policy or law regarding refugees," Nazriev said.

"Our children cannot read Russian or Tajik. The only school for Afghans is in Dushanbe," said Nuriya, a 35-years-old female refugee. "Most of us are female-headed families. We cannot go back to Afghanistan. Our lives are in danger there. And now, we are facing problems here as well," Nuriya added.

Some Afghan refugees who make their living in Dushanbe running small shops said their shops had been closed.

Payomi Furug, human dimension officer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Tajikistan, said there had been no official statements regarding refugees. "So we don't know the real reasons behind this."

"The government should assist and be friendly to refugees. The OSCE has not taken any specific action up till now. If necessary we could embark upon a dialogue and see what happens," Furug said.

Zarrina Halikova, director of the local NGO Training and Support Centre, said the registration period of most Afghans had expired. "So it is those without refugee status, citizenship or registration that are facing these problems," Halikova said.

The office of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is reportedly negotiating with the authorities on the issue.

Fears that Afghan boys at risk of terror grooming

· Secret papers reveal link to West Midlands suburb
· Carer for trafficked youths claims Taliban connection
Paul Lewis Saturday June 16, 2007 The Guardian

Afghan boys trafficked into Britain are at risk of being groomed for terrorism by extremists, secret immigration briefing papers seen by the Guardian reveal.
More than 270 Afghan teenagers have been brought to Britain as stowaways in the space of 12 months, the UK immigration service report says.

The restricted intelligence assessment warns that most of them end up in the West Midlands, where refugees from Afghanistan are suspected of radicalising them. Police are monitoring men in the Alum Rock suburb of Birmingham who they believe may be involved in a child trafficking gang.

The report states: "The security implications of large numbers of vulnerable persons living without proper supervision, in a potentially volatile area, should be addressed as a matter of urgency."

It also raises concern over Afghan boys, some as young as 11, housed with older men in the deprived terraced streets, an area known for extremist activity. "The housing of minors that are in a vulnerable state and of an impressionable age in the same establishment is open to those of certain nationalities being mentored into possible extreme activity."

The nine-month inquiry found that smuggled Afghan children who had gone missing from foster placements were later discovered at addresses in the area.

Birmingham social services identified at least 10 minors who have been or continue to be "cared for" by Afghan men in Alum Rock. The internal document names nine Afghan men who have been acting as guardians, including one 38-year-old who is said to have told authorities he was a Taliban commander.

The chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on trafficking, Anthony Steen MP, said: "This discloses an outrageous situation. The government is culpably negligent if it allows dangerously inappropriate carers to act in loco parentis for children. We have been concerned for a very long time that trafficking and terrorism are part of the same networks."

In a separate case, six Afghan minors found in the back of a lorry in Peterborough said they were going to Alum Rock.

The man who has told of his Taliban connections - an asylum seeker who entered Britain in 2002 - still had guardianship of three children this year. In May last year officials found between 10 and 12 "unknown Afghan males" at his two-bedroom flat. A further 15 Afghans were listed by police as "connected" with the first-floor apartment, above a shop on a busy street.

Three were Afghan children who had been placed in the care of the 38-year-old by different social services. At least one, a 14-year-old Afghan boy, was removed from his care last month after police inquiries about the man's Taliban connections.

Police intelligence suggests the man is "high up in the Muslim hierarchy" and regularly holds meetings at the flat. He is believed to have links with solicitors involved in processing Afghan asylum applications. Staff shortages led to the immigration service abandoning an investigation into one legal firm known to represent several Alum Rock men who are guardians to newly arrived boys, including the 38-year-old, the report reveals.

A local authority source told the Guardian his department had placed Afghan teenagers in the care of men in Alum Rock after the boys produced telephone numbers belonging to guardians they described as "family friends" from Afghanistan.

Police sources involved in the monitoring the suspects confirmed that grooming for "terrorism" - as well as sexual and labour exploitation - may be a motivation for smuggling teenagers into the area.

There has been a threefold increase in unaccompanied Afghan asylum seekers entering the country since 2003.

Musharraf refuses to crack down on Taliban, says HRW

WASHINGTON: President George W Bush’s alliance with President Gen Pervez

Musharraf came under fire on Thursday at a hearing in the House of

Representatives on human rights as a Republican lawmaker said: “The US should

not be supporting a military dictatorship” in the South Asian country.

Shortcomings in Saudi Arabia, Iran and Uzbekistan were the designated subjects

of the House subcommittee hearing, and a panel of witnesses did not spare the

three countries severe criticism.

But an official of Human Rights Watch (HRW) added Pakistan to the mix, with a

scorching description of the Musharraf government as “the most egregious, and

harmful, example of a human rights double standard in American foreign policy

today.”

Tom Malinowski, of the HRW’s Washington office and a former State Department

official, excoriated Bush for supporting Musharraf “against anyone who criticizes his continued dictatorial rule over Pakistan.”

“This appears to align the US behind one man against virtually every decent

segment of Pakistani society – against the very people in the country who are

most likely to be America’s friends and to support a moderate, modern course for Pakistan,” Malinowski said.

Musharraf is estranged from moderates, is relying politically more on Islamic

militants and refuses “to crack down on the Taliban elements who are killing

American and NATO troops in Afghanistan,” Malinowski said. “It is a classic case of muting human rights concerns to protect a security relationship,” the human rights advocate said. “But it is in fact as contrary to US security interests as it is to America’s commitment to democracy.”

The senior Republican on the subcommittee, Rep Dana Rohrabacher, endorsed

Malinowski’s criticism. “The army is allied with radical Islam and always has

been.” “Let’s not support a military dictatorship in Pakistan,” Rohrabacher said. Ap

To die under the wings of B-52s

By Philip Smucker - Asia Times Online / June 16, 2007

CHAKDARRA FORT, Malakand District, North West Frontier Province, Pakistan - This week I returned to a corner of the globe that represents for me one of the starting points for George W Bush's "war on terror".

It was here in November, 2001, when I had a casual chat with a Pakistani frontier cop that I realized that it was not going to be an easy war for my country, the United States, to win. Of course, the kingpin who planned and boasted about the success of the attack on the World Trade Center was somewhere out there in the snowy Afghan highlands, but he represented just the tip of the iceberg.

I had just paid a jihadi recruiter for a music cassette tape of a mother singing to her son, admonishing him to prepare for his own death for the sake of the holy war. It was a kind of a duet sung back and forth by the son and mother in the anticipation of an ensuing mission that, beneath the wings of the B-52 bombers overhead, was already looking suicidal.

On that balmy day I asked a senior prosecutor in the Malakand district, Mohammad Zaman, what he intended to do about the thousands of jihadis rallying to run into Afghanistan and meet the US ground troops. His answer did not reassure me. "They have been blocking our roads and threatening us at every turn, so our attitude is let them go and die in Afghanistan beneath the wings of the B-52s, if that is what they really want."

But that view wasn't really representative, and I felt - at the time - that he was hedging a bit. A great number of Pashtun locals in Pakistan's remote tribal regions saw the war in Afghanistan as yet another opportunity to take on Western infidels, as they had done the Soviets with such success - and so they openly or secretly supported Sufi Mohammed, the leader of TNSM (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws), who was about to send a few thousand locals to their death or imprisonment in Afghanistan.

I also spoke to a regular cop, a bearded and cordial chap named Farman Ullah. He spoke to me beneath a sturdy British fort, where a young Winston Churchill, one of President George W Bush's personal heroes, reported on the efforts of British troops to subdue a local uprising and reign in Islamic radicals during the Raj's semi-glorious Victorian era.

Ullah smiled up at the crusty little embattlement and said: "Some people say he was a good man, but as far as I'm concerned he was just another infidel."

And so over five years on, I had now returned to the same wretched valley - none the wiser, but considerably more jaded - with the intent of gaining some insight into the current attitudes of the locals about the war and Westerners. There had not been much good news, particularly in the last year.

In October, 2006, there was an air strike on a madrassa in adjacent Bajaur district that left some 80 militants and students dead - as well as one Liaqatullah, a leading follower of Sufi Mohammed. Elders and local supporters said that under the rubble they discovered religious students, some of them not even in their teens.

Though President General Pervez Musharraf claimed Pakistani responsibility for the attack, calling the school a militant camp, tribal leaders and locals still insisted to me that US bombs caused most of the damage. They said the bombing actually began some 20 minutes before the Pakistani helicopter gun ships even arrived overhead.

Out here on the perimeter of the civilized universe, perceptions are everything. Retaliation came a week later, and it was massive, greater than any suicide attack ever witnessed in neighboring Afghanistan. On a Pakistani Army sports field shaded by eucalyptus trees, a lone suicide bomber blew himself up, killing 42 and injuring 39 recruits of the Punjab Regiment Center.

I asked the same group of frontier cops about all this. "People here were clearly upset at what happened at the madrassa," said Ghulam Khaliq, a police official. "There is a general feeling that the Taliban is under attack and oppressed both here in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. We have been unable to determine if more young men are going for the jihad in Afghanistan, but, on the other hand, we can't check every car."

No one really knows how many young jihadis are bolting into the highlands of Afghanistan this summer. But from US military and Afghan intelligence reporting, it is a fair number and many of them are equipped with a lot more than a Kalashnikov.

Contrast that with the demoralization that took place when most of Sufi Mohammed's minions were virtually annihilated in 2001 and 2002, and you've got a much bigger jihad on your hands. And the attitude towards Americans, I found, is pretty much "catch and kill as you can".

A grizzled Fazul Haq, a sit-in for the now imprisoned Sufi Mohammed, who is due to be released this year, told me further north in Mingora city in the tranquil Swat Valley that "American spies" will be beheaded as soon as they are apprehended by his group.

"We have informed the government in writing that if we see American spies in Swat, whatever happens to them, we are not responsible," he said. "They want us to rescind our order, but we refuse." Several of Fazul Haq's local madrassa students listened attentively as he spoke.

I asked one of them if he had seen any of the myriad jihadi DVDs available in the local market, some of which showed "live" beheadings of American soldiers in Iraq. He nodded with a smile. "I am happy to see non-Muslims beheaded," he said and then shut up to listen more.

There has been an awful lot of talk in the Western press about the frightful and new "Talibanization" of Pakistan. But the radicalization of Pakistan has been a long time coming and the West, particularly the United States, is probably as culpable as Pakistan's generals in the matter. The "Talibanization" is, in truth, a lot of what Yogi Berra would call, "deja vu all over again".

"The glorification of jihad was never a part of the Islamic mainstream here until it was introduced in the 60s and then given a major lift in the 80s from the US assistance money that was funneled toward extremists," said Afrasiab Khattak, a leading

Pakistani Pashtun human-rights activist based in Peshawar. Indeed, he insisted, "Talibanization" has been the official policy in Pakistan for decades - and still is.

It isn't going away any time soon from the looks of the hundreds of radical madrassas that line the highway from Peshawar to Chitral and back down to Quetta.

To some it might sound like a presumptuous conspiracy theory, but Khattak is not a lone voice in the wilderness when he insists that "Pakistan's generals think they can force the West to quit Afghanistan by sending body bags to back to these countries". Khattak said that the Pashtun tribesmen are being used as "canon fodder" in this Machiavellian effort that is already showing signs of backfiring on its masters.

Indeed, I hadn't believed the Malakand district prosecutor when he told me in 2001 that the jihadis could - as far as he was concerned - go die under the wings of B-52s. All those people streaming across the border of a sovereign state didn't make much sense unless there was some national interest at work.

What was really going on when those thousands of jihadis from Pakistan slipped unscathed into Afghanistan was a great deal of serious "male bonding" between angry combatants. It was something that rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence services wanted all along, said Khattak. It set the stage for the rebirth of the jihad they had nurtured against the Soviets.

After the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban came running or straggling out into the tribal areas in 2001 and 2002, they regrouped and - to their eventual salvation - found a great deal of their Arab brethren, including the godfather of jihad himself, Osama bin Laden, right in their midst.

I wandered across the highway after talking to the cops in Chakdarra and had a word with Mullah Allam, the another TNSM leader, who fought in Afghanistan for several months right after September 11, 2001.

I asked him about Osama bin Laden and what kind of local backing he still had. "Osama is a great spiritual leader," he said. "We are not even prepared to hand over even the least important of his followers."

Several other Taliban sympathizers promised me that if anything like the capture of bin Laden took place Musharraf and his American associates would have hell to pay. Of course, they had used that same line in 2001.

But what is so astounding, Khattak told me back in Peshawar, is that George W Bush and the US government can't understand that they are - in the language of the American ghetto - getting "played" by a clique of Pakistani generals and intelligence operatives.

After a half decade of covering a war that looks more confounding by the day, I traveled to Islamabad for more answers.

I paid a visit to the now infamous Red Mosque, near to which Abdul Rashid Ghazi sits in his Internet cafe on the grounds of a militant madrassa surrounded by young men holding Kalashnikovs. Along with his brother, Ghazi, he oversees, along with several thousand angry young men, a few thousand female militants covered from head to toe in black and purportedly armed to the teeth. They are threatening to send suicide brigades into the fray if Musharraf's forces lay a hand on them. (A couple of them hissed at me for just trying to take their photograph.)

A lot of residents in Islamabad think that Ghazi and the Red Mosque radicals are just a front for the same rogue elements in the Inter Services Intelligence who aid and abet the jihad on the frontier. How can you explain the Pakistani military's willingness to kill hundreds of rebellious tribals in the NWFP if they can not lay a finger on the Red Mosque radicals, they ask. (It did seem suspicious.)

As far as Ghazi is concerned, it is not any of Pakistan's 13.000 madrassas that are responsible for turning out the anti-American jihadis who traipse across the border into Afghanistan or turn on authorities in Pakistan. They only goad them on a little.

"We tell them that to stop the aggression is jihad," he said. "And if they go to fight, we can't stop them. We cannot say, well, you have done the wrong thing. We will say, well, you have gone in the right direction."

It sounded to me like the way an intelligence agency would recruit and train operatives and then inculcate them with a "deniability" quotient.

In any case, Ghazi insisted that both the Taliban and al-Qaeda are a direct creation of Bush's "war on terror".

"It is Musharraf and Bush who have created these suicide bombers," said Ghazi, a polite and surprisingly erudite man of about 50 years told me. "People talk about the 'local Taliban' but why have they appeared? I mean, the more you try to suppress them, the more they appear. If you kill one Taliban, a hundred people will stand up and take the role of the Taliban." He was expressing, of course, former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's worst nightmare.

Ghazi, like several other leading radicals in modern Pakistan, is an old associate of bin Laden. Even the godfather of global jihad is an American production, he insisted.

"Before 9/11, he was just an ordinary mujahid," he said as his armed guards kept ducking my camera lens. "But it was America that made him al-Qaeda - or this or that. America made him a hero and now whatever he says is taken as holy scripture."

Philip Smucker is a commentator and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail (2004).

Found: the lost Rolls of Kabul

Posted On: Jun 16, 2007

A ROLLS-ROYCE from the collection of the Afghan royal family that was thought to have been lost during years of war and Taliban rule has been found and renovated by a British businessman.

 The 1932 Drophead Coupé will go on display next weekend at the annual Rolls-Royce show in Northamptonshire.

Its recovery is the culmination of 20 years’ detective work by Richard Raynsford, a barrister turned political risk consultant, who has spent £500,000 and admits that the car and its history “became a complete obsession”.  

Like many of the maharajas of nearby India, the Afghan monarchy regarded the Rolls-Royce as its vehicle of choice. Between 1910 and 1938, five Afghan kings ordered 13 Rolls-Royces.

In 1929, when King Amanullah was forced to abdicate amid protests against his ecognizedon programme, he fled to Kandahar in his Rolls.  

The cars were believed by the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts’ Club to have been lost in the fighting of the past three decades or destroyed by the Taliban.

But a derelict Rolls tracked down by Raynsford in Seattle turned out to have belonged to Prince Shah Wali Khan, brother of King Nadir Shah.  

Known as the Liberator of Kabul for his military exploits, the prince had been stationed in Europe from 1929 to 1945 as minister-plenipotentiary and apparently enjoyed driving around Fascist Rome in his gas-guzzling “enemy” car.  

Part of the car’s rarity stems from the fact that it was given a new body in 1937 by Hermann Graber, a master coachbuilder from Switzerland, making it one of only two examples of a prewar Graber.

The other is in the Swiss National Transport Museum in Lucerne.  But what makes it particularly special is its history.

When Raynsford first started looking for GRW 59, he was simply looking for his father-in-law’s old car and had no idea of its Afghan owner.  

His search began in 1987 after his mother-in-law began reminiscing about the Rolls her late husband, Major Tom Evill, had bought after the war.

She said she believed it had been owned by a Yugoslav prince, and Raynsford’s imagination was fired. “I always had a yen for this Boy’s Own adventure kind of thing,” he said. “Little did I know I was setting off on a 20-year odyssey.” Rolls-Royce keeps a register of all its cars and at first he thought the task would be easy.

The Rolls-Royce Association’s president, a former army officer, said he remembered seeing it in Austria after the war.  

Then the trail went cold. After 10 years of writing letters, Raynsford had almost given up when he spotted an American advertisement for a sports Rolls in Rolls-Royce Magazine.

Although the photograph was of a wreck, he ecognized the car. He flew to Seattle, where it had languished for more than 30 years, and handed over £17,000 in cash.  

In February 1998, he shipped it back to England and commissioned its restoration by Fiennes of Oxfordshire. He then began researching its history.  

Raynsford discovered it had been acquired in Rome in 1945 for £550 (around £30,000 today) by the Reverend George Irving for the Church of Scot-land.

Irving was serving in Italy and Klagenfurt, southern Austria, and was director of British Troops Welfare in Austria.  

Although Irving was dead, his wife Maybell was still alive and had fond memories of using the car to take tea and buns to the troops and to tour Italy and Austria on her honeymoon in 1946. She told Raynsford her husband had acquired the car from a “Prince Ali Walli of Abyssinia”.  

“That set me off on a completely false trail for years,” he said.

“Eventually I went to see the crown prince of Abyssinia, who now lives in Frankfurt, and he said, ‘You’re crazy.

All my family were locked up by Mussolini so whoever was driving a black Drophead Rolls in Rome in 1945 was not one of us’.”  

One of those Raynsford recruited to the search was his old friend John Shipman, who headed the Horn of Africa section in the Foreign Office.

It was he who suggested that the owner could be Afghan because there had been a Prince Wali Khan and Afghanistan had maintained a legation in Rome in the war.  

However, no information was forthcoming.

Even though it was her old family car, Raynsford’s wife Rosemary began suggesting that he was flogging a dead horse.

“We’d spent £200,000 with nothing to show except a pile of tin,” he said, “and we needed to commit another £200,000 to complete, knowing that even when finished GRW 59 would most likely be worth only £40,000 on a good day.”  

Then, just before last Christmas, a brown envelope arrived from the private Swiss Car Register. Inside was a newspaper photograph of the car being pulled from Lake Leman in Switzerland in July 1939.

The caption described the driver as the prince of Afghanistan, brother of the late king, who had overshot the bend and plunged 20 metres into the lake, “taking an unwelcome bath”.  

The mystery was solved. “I was delighted,” said Raynsford. “I even had my own Afghan royal connection, as I used to serve with the mounted Life Guards and was commanding the first division when King Zahir Shah visited England in 1971 and had to escort his carriage from Victoria station to Buckingham Palace.”  

Prince Wali Khan was the uncle of Zahir Shah, Afghanistan’s last king, and in 1929 led the battle that brought his elder brother, Nadir Khan, to the throne, only for him to be assassinated four years later.  “Presumably the prince had gone for a good lunch the day he drove the car into the lake,” said Raynsford.  

“Ironically, now we’ve done all this work and uncovered her history, we can’t really drive the car because it’s too valuable. But my son is dying to get his hands on her.”

Pakistan faces a less-friendly US Congress

A new bill underscores lawmakers' displeasure with a country that is a key Bush ally in the war on terrorism. By David Montero Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor - ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN

Two deadly attacks and a high-profile visit from a US congresswoman over the weekend have drawn further attention to Pakistan's precarious position as both a steward of the US-led war on terrorism and host to a restive population of Islamic extremists.

Pakistan's delicate balancing act has also added to the widening gulf between a skeptical Democratic Congress and a White House that has relied on Pakistani government cooperation since 9/11.

On Friday, in a rare attack in the capital, a suicide bomber killed himself and one other person at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. A day later, another suicide bomber killed 13 and wounded 60 in a suspected attack against Shiites in Peshawar, the provincial capital of the North West Frontier Province.

In response to Pakistan's mounting instability, the White House announced Saturday that it would seek an additional $10.6 billion in aid for Afghanistan over the next two years – a dramatic increase from the $14.2 billion given since 2001.

Meanwhile, new US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Islamabad Saturday. She signaled in her meetings that a change in tone toward Pakistan – from quiet disagreement to blunt accusation – is sweeping the Democratic-led Congress, analysts say. That is suggestive of an emerging rift over how the US should deal with one of its most trusted allies in the war on terror.

Washington's policy has become increasingly clouded even as violence in Islamabad's backyard has reached unprecedented levels. US officials say nearly 140 suicide attacks occurred Afghanistan in 2006, as compared with 27 in 2005, and blame the uptick in part on a controversial deal Islamabad signed with Taliban militants inside Pakistan.

Ms. Pelosi's trip – her first abroad as speaker of the House, with stops in Iraq and Afghanistan – comes just weeks after Congress passed one of its first and most controversial pieces of legislation: a bill stipulating sanctions on military aid if Pakistan cannot control militants in its borders.

Attacks like this past weekend's confirm those concerns expressed in Congress's new bill. In language unusual in its specificity and bluntness – and echoing the international community's – the legislation calls for President Bush to certify that "the Government of Pakistan is making all possible efforts to prevent the Taliban from operating in areas under its sovereign control, including in the cities of Quetta and Chaman and in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas."

The Bush administration said Friday it would oppose the bill before it becomes law, and reiterated its satisfaction with Islamabad's efforts. "The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to and we should redouble our efforts," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters while flying to Brussels for NATO sessions.

January's bill, officially called "Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007" still has to pass the Senate. And Mr. Bush has ultimate authority to waive the provision on sanctions. But the bill's critique is one of the strongest in a growing cacophony linking Pakistan to Afghanistan's growing violence.

"The signal is a very strong one being sent by Congress, and the [US] president has to act," says Samina Ahmed, South Asia Project Director of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank.

If enacted, the bill threatens to alter a relationship, which, although flagging on its rhetorical surface, has been well fortified by cash. Since 9/11, Pakistan has received $1.5 billion in direct security-related assistance, in addition to billions for counterterrorism efforts – about $66 million per month. All told, Pakistan received the lion's share of $6.65 billion appropriated to the Defense Department for coalition support payments to "Pakistan, Jordan, and other key cooperating nations" between 2002 and 2007, according to Congressional reports.

That funding is not likely to be cut, most observers agree. The stakes are too high, and the Bush administration, they add, is unwaveringly wedded to Pervez Musharraf's regime as the most effective ally in stopping terrorism in the region.

"The ultimate loser would be the United States if that money is withdrawn," says Ayesha Siddiqa, an expert on Pakistan's military in Islamabad.

[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.]