In this bulletin:

• Taliban chop drivers' noses, ears in Afghanistan
• Two Police Killed In Afghan Violence
• Suicide attack on US embassy convoy in Kabul
• Afghan president expects Italian journalist to be freed
• Kabul's Relations With Its Other Neighbor, Iran
• Afghanistan faces challenges from within, says Shaukat Aziz
• Benazir sees Taliban threat
• Afghans rejecting Canadian troops for Taliban, survey finds
• Afghan field commander wants Canada to supply better weapons for his troops
• Well-trained Afghan army key to Canadian war withdrawal
• Beginning of the end starts here
• Afghan treasures back home after years in 'exile'
• Afghanistan's silent plague of AIDS

The first of more than 1,400 Afghan artefacts, the most significant being a ceremonial glass phallus believed to have been used by Alexander the Great, were unpacked Saturday in the biggest return of such items in nearly 70 years.(AFP/Massoud Hossaini)

Taliban chop drivers' noses, ears in Afghanistan

Sun Mar 18, ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas chopped noses and ears of at least five truck drivers in eastern Afghanistan as punishment for transporting supplies to U.S.-led troops, officials and residents said on Sunday.

The drivers were part of a convoy headed for a coalition military base when they were attacked in the province of Nuristan on Saturday.

"The number of drivers who had their noses and ears cut varies, it is between five and eight," Ghulamullah, the police chief of Nuristan who uses only one name, said citing locals and officials in the area.

Several trucks were destroyed in the attack. Ousted from power in 2001 in a U.S.-led invasion, the Taliban have launched what they call a holy war against Western troops and the government in Kabul.

The militants have in the past killed a number of drivers for supplying goods and fuel to the troops.

Two Police Killed In Afghan Violence

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty- March 18, 2007 -- A two-hour gun battle between suspected Taliban militants and police has left two policemen dead in Afghanistan's western Farah Province.

Police say the fighting in Bakwa district late on March 17 started when a group of fighters attacked a highway police checkpoint.

Separately, a UN mine-clearing worker was wounded when suspected Taliban militants ambushed coalition forces in Tag Ab district of Kapisa Province, north of Kabul.

Militants cut off noses and ears of at least three truck drivers in eastern Afghanistan. The drivers were attacked in Nuristan Province on March 17 after unloading their supplies at a coalition base.

Several trucks were destroyed in the attack. Militants have in the past killed drivers for supplying coalition troops. (compiled from agency reports)

Suicide attack on US embassy convoy in Kabul

Kabul (AFP) - A suicide attacker drove an explosives-filled car into a US embassy convoy in the Afghan capital Kabul Monday, wounding some embassy staff and at least one child, officials said.

The attack on the road to the eastern city of Jalalabad was the first suicide bombing inside Kabul this year, after several deadly blasts last year blamed on Taliban insurgents.

"There was a vehicle-borne IED (improvised explosive device) that struck a US embassy convoy on Jalalabad Road," embassy spokesman Joe Mellot told AFP.

"There were some injuries, including one seriously injured who has been evacuated for treatment." Ambassador Ronald Neumann was not in the convoy, he said.

An investigator at the scene and an eyewitness told AFP they had seen one child being taken to hospital by ambulance.

Foreign troops sealed off the road, often used by US troops travelling to the main US coalition base at Bagram outside the capital and also the route to various military bases on the outskirts of Kabul.

An AFP correspondent could see a vehicle in flames and a damaged bullet-proof, four-by-four vehicle of they type used by diplomatic missions and foreign forces in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed there had been an explosion on the busy road but had no details. The US-led coalition had no information.

There have been nine suicide bombings in Afghanistan in the past week. The Taliban has vowed a wave of such blasts this year after nearly 140 last year killed about 200 civilians and scores of Afghan and foreign security officials.

Afghan president expects Italian journalist to be freed

Kandahar (AFP) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he expected an Italian journalist held by the Taliban for two weeks to be freed Monday, while negotiators haggled hours ahead of a deadline for his life.

A commander from the extremist movement threatened last week to kill Daniele Mastrogiacomo, 52, if a series of demands were not met by Monday evening, notably the release of three Taliban figures in Afghan government custody.

"I hope the matter is resolved today," Karzai said during a visit to Germany. "He should either be freed by now or in the process of being freed," Karzai said after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"We did what we could to help in the release of the Italian journalist," he added.

A top security official told AFP the government had agreed to free two Taliban in exchange for the correspondent and his Afghan translator, captured on March 4 in the province of Helmand, a Taliban stronghold.

But a "mechanism" for the exchange could not be agreed on Sunday, he said. "Talks were resumed again today," the senior intelligence official said Monday, asking to remain anonymous.

The two Taliban -- a former spokesman and an information official -- had already been moved to Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, for any exchange, he said.

"Right now we're waiting for the Taliban response," he added. The Italian embassy in Kabul said there had been no developments since Sunday.

A Taliban spokesman told AFP Sunday that Mastrogiacomo and the translator had been handed to tribal elders pending a final deal for their release.

The spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said the Taliban wanted a third man back -- another former spokesman, Mohammad Hanif, arrested in October in Afghanistan.

"If Hanif is not released, we'll take back the journalists ... Once Hanif is released, the elders can take the Italian anywhere he wishes to go -- we'll let him go," he said.

A top Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, threatened in an interview with AFP on March 10 to kill the Italian unless demands were met, including the withdrawal of Italian troops from Afghanistan and the release of certain Taliban in custody.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has already said the country's 2,000 soldiers would remain with the NATO-led force helping Afghanistan to battle the Taliban insurgency despite the threat.

The extremist movement, which was in government between 1996 and 2001, has killed scores of Afghan and foreign captives, sometimes recording their execution for propaganda videos.

Mastrogiacomo, employed by the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper, begged for efforts for his release in a recorded message obtained by the independent Pajhwok Afghan News on Thursday.

"Please do something as they have only two days, from now. After that they will kill us, please, please, only two days," Mastrogiacomo is heard saying.

Kabul's Relations With Its Other Neighbor, Iran

RFE/RL - 03/18/2007 By Amin Tarzi

The Afghan government and ordinary Afghans are quick to say that most of the destabilizing factors in their country have a foreign origin -- and Pakistan is most likely to be blamed.

But recently, more attention is being paid to the possibility that Afghanistan's neighbor to the west -- Iran -- may also be pursuing its own agenda in Afghanistan to the detriment of Kabul.

Iran and Pakistan became actively involved in the internal affairs of Afghanistan during the mujahedin's resistance against Soviet forces and the subsequent communist regimes from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.

Pakistani Involvement - Both countries also became host to millions of Afghan refugees. During the jihad period -- as the anticommunist resistance is referred to by Afghans -- Pakistan hosted and manipulated the mostly Sunni Muslim and Pashtun mujahedin groups, while Iran managed the mostly Shi'ite Muslim groups.

With the collapse of the communist government of President Najibullah in 1992, the Pakistani-backed groups initially took control of most levers of power.

Gradually, however, Iran, and -- even less obviously, India and the Russian Federation -- cultivated their own relations with new clients to oppose the domination of Pakistan over the future of Afghanistan.

With the advent of the Taliban phenomenon in 1994, Tehran began not only to actively support the loose grouping of former mujahedin parties and communist strongmen -- the United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan (popularly known as the Northern Alliance) -- but also gave refuge to Pakistan's one-time favorite Afghan client, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as a potential card to be played.

Tehran Opposed Taliban - Whereas during the jihad period Pakistan and Iran chose their clients based somewhat on ideological, cultural, and religious considerations, in the post-Taliban arrangements Tehran's adamant opposition to the new arrangements in Afghanistan meant that anyone standing against the Taliban was a potential asset.

Then, as now, Tehran believed that the Taliban phenomenon was a Western -- mainly U.S. -- undertaking being used not only to oppose Iran but also to defame Islam.

After the ouster of the Taliban regime by the U.S.-led coalition in late 2001, Iran played a constructive role by convincing its clients to cooperate with the new arrangements and to take an active part in reconstruction. They focused especially on areas close to its border with Afghanistan -- most notably Herat Province.

From the beginning Kabul tried to balance its ties with Iran despite the presence of U.S. and later NATO forces on its soil, something that Tehran has continuously opposed.

As the pendulum of relations between Kabul and Islamabad began to swing, mostly towards antagonistic levels, the Afghan government began to view India -- but also Iran -- as potential balancing factors in Kabul's threat-perception scenarios.

Worried By Iranian Influence - Despite the official stance of the Afghan government, popular views of Iran's attempts to influence Afghanistan -- both strategically and culturally -- have begun to surface recently.

Among many Afghans, mainly Pashto speakers, there is a feeling that Iranian culture and the Persian dialect spoken in Tehran is seeping into their country and is having an irreversible effect on the Afghan cultural identity.

Beyond the linguistic influences, Afghans quietly though in ever-greater numbers talk of a long-term Iranian program to bring their country into the sphere of Iranian influence, especially once the foreign forces leave Afghanistan.

Afghan officials in western provinces that border Iran have discussed incursions by Iranians, violations by Iranian aircraft of Afghan airspace, and support of terrorists in camps operated by Iranians. But there have been no formal or public protests against Iran, even though the Afghan government has made many public complaints of reported interference by Pakistan.

Training Camp In Iran? - Abdul Samad Stanakzai, a former governor of the western Farah Province, expressed concern in January over alleged Iranian interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs.

In an interview with Herat-based Radio Sahar on January 30, Stanakzai claimed that Iran is training "a large number of political opponents of the [Afghan] government" in a refugee camp in Iran called Shamsabad.

"Iran's interference is aimed at influencing our national identity and destroying it in the long term," Stanakzai added. Broadcasting the story, Radio Sahar commented that whereas "key [Afghan] government officials previously complained about interference in Afghanistan's internal affairs by neighboring countries, particularly Pakistan, they have avoided blaming Iran."

In mid-February, General Daud Ahadi, the commander of Border Brigade No. 5 in Nimroz Province, pointed to at least three separate violations of Afghan airspace by Iranian helicopters.

State-run Radio Afghanistan reported two such violations on February 18, adding in a commentary that "the Iranian side on occasion has caused border problems between Iran and Afghanistan that has resulted in violence."

Border Clashes Reported - Nimroz Governor Gholam Dastagir Azad told the Peshawar-based Afghan Islamic Press on March 9 that "Afghan and Iranian border police clashed" along the border between the two countries and one border policeman from both sides was killed and one Afghan policeman was injured.

According to Azad the clash was caused by a "misunderstanding." In another development, since February Afghan officials have mentioned that Iran is erecting a wall along the border with the Kang district in Nimroz Province, ostensibly to prevent drug smugglers from entering Iran.

Nur Mohammad Haidar, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Border and Tribal Affairs, told Kabul-based Tolo Television on February 14 that if the "Iranian officials want to prevent drug smugglers and illegal immigrants from entering" their country, they can find more effective preventive measures "in coordination and cooperation with Afghan security officials...than erecting a wall."

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Satar Ahmad Bahin told Tolo that since the "wall is erected inside Iranian territory, it is not Afghanistan's business." He added: "We have nothing to do with it."

Kabul's total rejection of Pakistan's plans to erect barb-wired fences in selected areas of its border with Afghanistan -- and also inside Pakistani territory -- and its reported acceptance of barriers by Iran, could present diplomatic and legal obstacles to Afghanistan's policy of opposing the Pakistani plan.

Siding With Iran - Kabul's choice of putting its lot with Tehran and New Delhi while seeing only evil intent in Islamabad is -- at best -- a short-sighted policy which not only ignores geographical realties on the ground but also discounts the long-term strategic goals of Iran and, to a much-lesser degree, that of India vis-a-vis Afghanistan.

Another factor which makes Iran a liability to Afghanistan's medium-term stability is Tehran's opposition to the presence of NATO and other foreign forces in Afghanistan.

In a recent commentary titled "People of Afghanistan: Hostages of Occupiers and Terrorists," the hard-line Tehran daily "Jomhuri-ye Islami" restated Iran's claim that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are creations of the United States and that Washington's strategy is based on a "long stay in Afghanistan. But in order to justify this usurpatory presence," it needs an "explanation and pretext."

The commentary concluded that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda "have acted as a fifth column" for the United States not only to enter Afghanistan, but also to legitimize its presence there.

Unlike its reported involvement in Iraq, Tehran has not created much noticeable trouble to foreign forces stationed in Afghanistan. Instead it has concentrated most of its efforts on cultivating political allies among diverse Afghan political groupings and injecting Iranian culture into Afghanistan.

However, not causing trouble does not mean that Iran lacks the ability to do so, if such a policy would suit Tehran's dealings with the West. Perhaps the "misunderstandings" in Nimroz are just that -- or they could be a message to NATO states of Iran's ability to interfere in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan faces challenges from within, says Shaukat Aziz

Pakistani media is free, no restrictions on political activity

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Friday that the challenges Afghanistan faced were indigenous and required a holistic approach to win the hearts and minds of Afghans.

He told a NATO parliamentary delegation at PM’s House that the causes and solutions of the Afghan problem lay in Afghanistan and that Pakistan would continue helping the Afghan government for peace and stability.

He said a stable and peaceful Afghanistan was in Pakistan’s strategic, economic and political interest and that Pakistan would lose if Afghanistan got destabilised. The PM said a stable Afghanistan could help Pakistan open avenues of cooperation and forge energy, trade and transportation links with Central Asia.

He said all stakeholders in Afghanistan needed to be recognised and involved in finding a settlement of the Afghan problem. Aziz said Pakistan was of the view that a Marshall Plan type approach needed to be adopted in Afghanistan to speed up the process of reconstruction and to bring about meaningful improvement in the lives of the Afghan people.

The prime minister said Pakistan was not an aid giving country, but it had provided $350 million in assistance to Afghanistan to hep with its economic activity. He said Pakistan’s trade with Afghanistan had reached $1.5 billion from a mere $50 million four years ago.

He said Pakistan and Afghanistan had agreed on the return of more than three million Afghan refugees who were still in Pakistan and that their repatriation would be carried out in a systematic and gradual manner.

The prime minister said Pakistan was fighting terrorism out of conviction as it was in Pakistan’s interest and in the interest of international peace.

He said, “We have started selective fencing of our side of border to prevent illegal movement on the borders from both sides.” He also expressed Pakistan’s concern over the growing drug production in Afghanistan and the nexus between drug money and terrorism. He said the international community needed to tackle the drug menace and take necessary measures to deal with it.

About Pakistan’s relations with India, the prime minister said the peace process with India was moving in the right direction. He said sustainable peace in South Asia could be achieved with a just and equitable settlement of the Kashmir issue. He said Pakistan was a peaceful country and was not engaged in an arms race with any country. “Our defence strategy is based on minimum credible deterrence to ensure peace in the region,” he added.

Commenting on the Iran nuclear issue, Aziz said Pakistan was opposed to nuclear proliferation. However, he said, Pakistan recognised Iran’s right to use nuclear power for peaceful purposes under IAEA safeguards. He said Pakistan was against the use of force to settle Iran’s nuclear issue.

About the situation in the country, the prime minister said all elements of a functioning democracy were in place in Pakistan. He said the media was free and there were no restrictions on political activity and that the opposition was active. App

Benazir sees Taliban threat

via Dawn (Pakistan) - March 18, 2007 issue

NEW YORK, March 17: Taliban must be defeated in Pakistan this year or the country risks falling under the sway of extremists much as Afghanistan did before Sept 11, 2001, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto said on Friday.

Ms Bhutto, who hopes to return from exile and run for prime minister again in elections this year, also warned that the judicial crisis gripping Pakistan could spin out of control and underscores the importance of restoring civilian rule.

“They (the Taliban) have actually established a mini-state in the tribal areas of Pakistan. My fear is that if these forces are not stopped in 2007, they are going to try to take on the state of Pakistan itself,” Ms Bhutto told Reuters in an interview. “In my view it is a genuine threat,” she said.

Other commentators have warned of the dangers to Pakistan of a resurgent Taliban, which was routed from power in Afghanistan by the US invasion following the Sept 11 attacks.

Ms Bhutto said the Taliban comeback was particularly dire because President Gen Pervez Musharraf was unable to suppress elements of the Pakistani security forces that remain sympathetic to Taliban.

President Musharraf also has been exploiting the presence of the extreme Islamist movement as a rationale for maintaining his military rule beyond general elections due before the end of 2007, she said and added: “Gen Musharraf does say that he wants to go after terrorists, that he wants to go after the forces that support the Taliban, but he’s unable to do it.”

She said: “The people in the areas must see that it is in their benefit to kick out the extremist forces.”To that end she proposes a renewed commitment to health, education and infrastructure in tribal areas. In the absence of government welfare, Islamist religious schools have stepped in, winning over the poor population, she said.

On crisis created by ouster of Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary, she said: “The judicial crisis highlights that if you don’t bring about a peaceful political transfer that events could get out of control because there is a lot of frustration.”—Reuters

Afghans rejecting Canadian troops for Taliban, survey finds

LONDON (Globe and Mail) -- Afghan civilians are increasingly turning against Canadian troops and their country's government and toward support of the Taliban, according to a large-scale survey conducted in southern Afghanistan this month.

In a survey to be released in London today by the Senlis Council think tank, Afghan men in the Canadian-controlled areas of Kandahar province and in the neighbouring British- and U.S.-controlled regions say they are being driven to support the Taliban because of disillusionment with the NATO military effort and poverty created by the continuing conflict.

A team of 50 researchers polled 17,000 Afghan men in randomly selected districts in the Kandahar, Helmand and Nangarhar provinces of southeastern Afghanistan between March 3 and March 12.

"Across the south, the majority of survey respondents both worry about being able to feed their families, and do not believe that the Afghan government and the international troops are helping them," the Senlis report concludes. "Afghanis in southern Afghanistan are increasingly prepared to admit their support for the Taliban, and the belief that the government and the international community will not be able to defeat the Taliban is widespread in the southern provinces."

Canada's troops are responsible for Kandahar province as part of the UN-ordered NATO operation, and British soldiers are responsible for neighbouring Helmand province. These are considered the most volatile and dangerous regions in the Afghan campaign. The U.S. military is largely involved in Nangarhar.

The Senlis Council is a Brussels-based think tank that began as a European drug-policy organization, but has become heavily involved in Afghanistan, where it argues in favour of allowing Afghans to continue growing opium poppies, but for medicinal purposes.

The survey's conclusions are similar to those made earlier this month by Gordon Smith of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, a Calgary-based think tank with a broadly hawkish stand. Like the Senlis Council, it concluded that the military operation is vital, but that it is failing because it is inadequately supported by humanitarian efforts.

The survey shows that 27 per cent of Afghans in the south now openly support the Taliban, a number that the surveyors said is likely higher because some respondents are wary of admitting support to a Westerner.

More specifically, when asked, "Are the international troops helping you personally," only 19 per cent answered yes (in regions with U.S. soldiers in control, only 6.5 per cent said yes). And 80.3 per cent say they worry about feeding their families.

"The widespread perception of locals is that the international community is not helping to improve their lives," the survey concludes. "The Taliban has been able to easily and effectively capitalize on this by providing protection from forced eradication [of poppy crops] and employment to many."

The study found that 72 per cent of men in the region know how to fire a weapon, making them potential Taliban recruits. The average annual income in the region of $747 (U.S.) is equivalent to two months pay for a Taliban fighter.

"We would support the Canadian military if we could. We would also support the Taliban if we could," an unemployed man in Helmand told the researchers.

Only 48 per cent of southern Afghans now believe that their government and NATO are capable of defeating the Taliban. Similar surveys taken at the end of 2001 showed overwhelming faith in the success of the war against the Taliban.

"It is clear that the Taliban are winning the propaganda war," the survey concludes. "This victory is now having a direct effect on the war itself, through people's perceptions of who is going to win."

The report notes that the military effort to defeat the Taliban has eclipsed, and often undermined, the simultaneous effort to improve living conditions for Afghans and rebuild their government and civil society.

Afghan field commander wants Canada to supply better weapons for his troops

Sunday, March 18, 2007 - MA'SUM GHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - One of Afghanistan's top field commanders wants Canada to provide his troops with better weapons to fight the Taliban.

For the past year, Lt.-Col. Shereen Shah Kohbandi's 2nd Kandak (battalion) has been roaring into battle in Ford Ranger pickup trucks while their Canadian brothers-in-arms ride in heavily armoured LAV-3s and RG-31s.

While some of the Rangers are mounted with Soviet-era heavy machine-guns, the "Built Ford Tough" slogan used by the automaker provides little protection against Taliban rocket-propelled grenades or roadside bombs.

"We have nothing. We have no strong weapons," Kohbandi told The Canadian Press inside his mud-brick compound through an interpreter.

"I have good officers and soldiers - brave. For four years they have fought in Uruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand. The best thing that we need are weapons."

Earlier this month, one of Kohbandi's officers died when his Ranger was destroyed by a landmine. Eight other Afghan soldiers - most of them piled together in the back of the truck - were wounded.

Kohbandi has been a military officer for 23 years, helping to defeat the Soviets in the 1980's and the Taliban in 2001.

Tall, solidly built and with a scar on his chin, Kohbandi crackles with energy as he rocks back and forth on his chair while rubbing a set of beads between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

In his right hand he brandishes a fly swatter, smashing bugs on the table in mid sentence with a loud thwack. "Just like killing Taliban," he jokes.

A small team of veteran Canadian soldiers are helping to train the 2nd Kandak so it can plan and conduct long-term military operations on its own.

Kohbandi said he is grateful for the help provided by Canada's Observer Mentor Liason Team and can sense that his multi-ethnic battalion recruited from across Afghanistan is becoming more effective.

His troops, veterans and greenhorns alike, are starting to receive new helmets, camouflage uniforms and even body armour.

But what his warriors really want are new assault rifles, machine-guns, armoured vehicles, artillery - even helicopters, something even Canadian troops don't have in the war-ravaged country, said Kohbandi, who turned down a brigade command out of loyalty to his troops.

A Canadian officer said the Afghan government has some better weapons, including aircraft and tanks, but that they are kept close to Kabul, the capital.

Kohbandi said he brought up the issue of gear with Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor earlier this month during his visit to Kandahar province and hopes Ottawa will help supply the Afghan National Army with new equipment before Canadian soldiers leave.

"Still we have old weapons from the Russian times," he said, staring at his own weathered AK-47 rifle hanging by its sling from a nail driven into the mud wall of the room.

Maj. James Price, Kohbandi's mentor from the liaison team, said he can understand his counterpart's desire for better gear - especially when Afghan troops are working so closely with the well equipped Canadians.

Only a decade ago it was Canadian troops who were looking at their NATO counterparts with envy, said Price, a member of the Gagetown, N.B.,-based 2 Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment.

But it's a soldier's job to do the best he can with the gear he's got, he said. "I wish, at the end of the day, that we could have armour for all of them," Price said Sunday.

"You feel a bit for them, because you share in their risks. They are getting it (equipment), slowly but surely."

Well-trained Afghan army key to Canadian war withdrawal

Sunday, March 18, 2007 - CanWest News Service

CAMP SHIRZAI, Afghanistan -To see Canada's exit strategy in Afghanistan you need to come here to the entrance. It is here in Camp Shirzai that Canada is helping train a new Afghan National Army in the hope it will eventually take over from Canadian troops and allow them to go home.

Almost every day Lt.-Col. Wayne Eyre of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry passes through the entranceway into the camp that is home to 3,000 Afghan troops - many of whom who live in neat but depressingly Spartan barracks that are positively middle-class compared to the living conditions of many Afghans.

Eyre is commander of Canada's 64-person training squad with the cumbersome title of Operational Mentor and Liaison Team - better known here by its unmilitary-sounding acronym, OMLT, which is pronounced "omelette," a flippant nickname that makes professional soldiers cringe.

And Eyre is every inch a professional soldier - tall and lanky with a moustache and shaved head who has read every book on Afghanistan history he can get his hands on to help him understand what he is up against.

Afghanistan is such a dysfunctional land it hasn't had a national army in living memory. Its armies over the years have been largely regional and tribal based. What's being built soldier-by-soldier at Camp Shirzai and other camps like it across Afghanistan isn't just a military force, it's a new way of thinking.

"This is the first truly federal institution in Afghanistan in 100 years," says Eyre.

Americans help train the recruits, the British train the non-commissioned officers, the French the officers and in the province of Kandahar it's the Canadians' job to put all the parts together into a professional army. Other nations have their own OMLT soldiers in various provinces.

The army has become something of an experiment in nation building. Troops from the south who speak Pashto are deliberately mixed in with soldiers from the north who speak Dari. Members of tribes who have squabbled in the past are joined together in battalions to learn to work together. Like everything else in Afghanistan it is a slow, cumbersome process. After centuries of war, Afghans might be traditional warriors, but they are not professional soldiers.

"We have to take them to a level where they can conduct autonomous operations," says Eyre. "What I mean by autonomous as opposed to independent is they'll still liaison with coalition elements but they can go out, they can plan, they can organize the operations, the logistics on their own. ... It's all small simple victories."

This week one simple victory came when Afghan soldiers ran their first logistics convoy to resupply their forward bases. Last month, their artillery soldiers supported coalition troops in the field.

The army is widely respected by Afghans who hold a contrary opinion of the Afghan National Police force that is often accused of corruption. Soldiers are better trained and better paid than police, although the starting pay for a private is the equivalent of just $100 US a month.

It's all baby steps and sometimes the steps are backwards. Soldiers routinely desert for a variety of reasons including homesickness, spotty pay and the ever-present danger of riding in unarmoured pick up trucks or manning exposed positions.

More than 10 per cent of the soldiers in the battalion working with Canadians, for example, go absent without leave - a disturbing number at first glance but not so bad when you consider that before the Canadians came, 40 per cent would routinely be AWOL.

"Canadians are a pleasure to work with," says Afghan General Khair Mohammad through an interpreter. "Canadians are sacrificing for our future, fighting for our future. Canadians are now part of our history, we have one history. ... They are good people."

Like most Afghans, Mohammad is quick with a smile and a handshake and has a background that is a complex patchwork of contradictions and pragmatism. Trained as a soldier by the Russians during their invasion three decades ago, he initially fought against fellow Afghans before joining the mujahideen to battle the Russians.

Now, he is fighting alongside Canadians and other coalition forces. One day, he hopes to do the fighting on his own, allowing Canadians and others to leave.

When does he think that will be? "When NATO and the international provide good training, good equipment, modern weapons and also a good salary," he replies without specifying any date or length of time. In the vernacular of military speak in Afghanistan this is what's called a "conditions -based" answer as opposed to one that is "time based."

The implication is that the more resources, energy and money the international community spends here, the faster the international community can pull its soldiers out.

No matter how much we invest, it will take time. "It's not going to happen overnight," says Eyre. "You're not going to have the typical Canadian fast solution where it's done by the end of the year."

Beginning of the end starts here

Canada is helping build the army -- Afghanistan's first -- that could allow our troops to come home

Sunday, March 18, 2007 The Edmonton Journal - CAMP SHIRZAI, Afghanistan - To see Canada's exit strategy in Afghanistan you need to come here to the entrance.

Here in Camp Shirzai, Canada is helping to train a new Afghan National Army in the hope it will eventually take over from Canadian troops and allow them to go home.

Almost every day Lt.-Col. Wayne Eyre of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Edmonton enters the camp that is home to 3,000 Afghan troops -- many of whom who live in neat but depressingly Spartan barracks that are positively middle-class compared to the living conditions of many Afghans.

Eyre is commander of Canada's 64-person training squad with the cumbersome title of Operational Mentor and Liaison Team -- better known here as OMLT, which is pronounced "omelette." The nickname makes professional soldiers cringe.

And Eyre is every inch a professional soldier -- tall and lanky with a moustache and shaved head who has read every book on Afghanistan history he can get his hands on.

Afghanistan is such a dysfunctional land it hasn't had a national army in living memory. Its armies over the years have been largely regional and tribal-based. What is being built soldier by soldier at Camp Shirzai and other camps like it across Afghanistan isn't just a military force, it's a new way of thinking.

"This is the first truly federal institution in Afghanistan in 100 years," Eyre says.

Americans help train the recruits, the British train the non-commissioned officers, the French the officers and in the province of Kandahar it's the Canadians' job to put all the parts together into a professional army. Other nations have their own OMLT soldiers in various provinces.

The army has become something of an experiment in nation building. Troops from the south who speak Pashto are deliberately mixed in with soldiers from the north who speak Dari. Members of tribes who have squabbled in the past are joined together in battalions to learn to work together. Like everything else in Afghanistan it is a slow, cumbersome process. After centuries of war, Afghans might be traditional warriors, but they are not professional soldiers.

"We have to take them to a level where they can conduct autonomous operations," Eyre says. "What I mean by autonomous as opposed to independent is they'll still liaison with coalition elements but they can go out, they can plan, they can organize the operations, the logistics on their own. ... It's all small, simple victories."

This week one simple victory came when Afghan soldiers ran their first logistics convoy to resupply their forward bases. Last month, their artillery soldiers supported coalition troops in the field.

The army is widely respected by Afghans, who hold a contrary opinion of the Afghan National Police force that is often accused of corruption. Soldiers are better trained and better paid than police, although the starting pay for a private is the equivalent of just $100 US a month.

It's all baby steps and sometimes the steps are backwards. Soldiers routinely desert for a variety of reasons including homesickness, spotty pay and the ever-present danger of riding in unarmoured pickup trucks or manning exposed positions.

More than 10 per cent of the soldiers in the battalion working with Canadians, for example, go absent without leave -- a disturbing number at first glance, but not so bad when you consider that before the Canadians came, 40 per cent would routinely be AWOL.

"Canadians are a pleasure to work with," says Afghan Gen. Khair Mohammad through an interpreter. "Canadians are sacrificing for our future, fighting for our future. Canadians are now part of our history, we have one history. ... They are good people."

Like most Afghans, Mohammad is quick with a smile and a handshake and has a background that is a complex patchwork of contradictions and pragmatism. Trained as a soldier by the

Soviets during their invasion three decades ago, he initially fought against fellow Afghans before joining the mujahadeen to battle the Soviets.

Now, he's fighting alongside Canadians and other coalition forces. One day, he hopes to do the fighting on his own, allowing Canadians and others to leave.

Afghan treasures back home after years in 'exile'

Kabul (AFP) - The first of more than 1,400 Afghan artefacts, the most significant being a ceremonial glass phallus believed to have been used by Alexander the Great, were unpacked Saturday in the biggest return of such items in nearly 70 years.

The artefacts -- ranging from ancient treasures more than 2,300 years old to more mundane items such as traditional cloth caps -- were unpacked from a shipping container that brought them home Friday from years in Switzerland.

Collected after a worldwide appeal in the late 1990s to try to salvage some of Afghanistan's rich cultural heritage looted in war, the items were returned because the country is considered stable enough to keep them safe.

With their repatriation, "a very big part of Afghanistan's lost treasures comes back to Afghanistan," Minister of Information and Culture Abdul Karim Khurram told reporters.

"From the symbolic point of view it shows the time is gone when it was possible to loot, to steal -- the instability is finished in Afghanistan and now Afghanistan's treasures can come back," he said.

The items had been stored at the Afghan Museum in Exile in Bubendorf, near the Swiss city of Basel.

They included treasures such as the 2,300-year-old phallus which Alexander was believed to have used in traditional ceremonies marking the foundation of the city of Ai Khanum in northern Afghanistan where he once lived.

This was the most significant item because it shows the links between Afghanistan and Europe, said Paul Bucherer-Dietschi, from the Swiss Foundation Bibliotheca Afghanica which ran the "museum-in-exile."

"It is only item in the whole world which we may think that most probably Alexander the Great touched it with its own hands," he said.

There are also the "Bagram ivories," intricate ivory carvings about 2,000 years old that were stolen from the National Museum.

The museum is now under restoration after being gutted in the 1992-1996 civil war when 70 percent of its items were looted or destroyed.

The collection was gathered in a worldwide appeal after items set aside for the Swiss museum were prevented from leaving the country and then destroyed by the 1996-2001 Taliban government, which famously blew up the giant Buddhas at Bamiyan.

Some had been stolen from the Afghan museum, "some are coming from illegal excavations all over Afghanistan, but the most part were donated by people who lived here in Afghanistan a long time ago," Bucherer-Dietschi said.

He said the return of the artefacts was the largest repatriation of items since thousands from Madrid's Prado museum were returned in 1939 from Geneva, where they were kept during the Spanish Civil War.

He hope their return would help the war-ravaged country rediscover its identity. "After 30 years of war in Afghanistan, most of the Afghan cultural heritage is lost -- it was sold, destroyed, trashed. So the memory of the Afghan past is no long alive in the young generation of Afghans."

The country wants its other relics around the world to also be returned, said the deputy minister of culture, Omar Sultan.

These included about 4,500 tonnes of Afghan antiquities had been recovered by police in London, he told reporters on the sidelines of the event.

The government was also considering enlisting the help of the UN culture organisation UNESCO to have items in museums around the world sent back, he said.

Afghanistan's silent plague of AIDS

By Carlotta Gall - The International Herald Tribune Sunday, March 18, 2007

KABUL: Sitting and eating quietly on his father's lap, the 18-month-old boy was oblivious to the infection running through his veins.

But his father, a burly farmer, now a widower and father of four, knew only too well. It was the same one that killed his wife, the boy's mother, four months ago. The man started to cry.

"When my wife died, I thought, well, it is from God, but at least I have him," he said. "Then I learned he is sick too. I asked if there is medicine and the doctors said no. They said, 'Just trust in God.'"

Long cloistered by two decades of war and then the strict Islamic rule of the Taliban, Afghanistan was for many years shielded from the worst ravages of the AIDS pandemic. Not anymore.

HIV and AIDS have quietly arrived in this land of a thousand calamities. Still, little is known of the disease in Afghanistan. It remains almost completely underground, shrouded in ignorance and stigma as the government struggles with the help of U.S. and NATO forces to rebuild the country amid a new offensive by Taliban insurgents.

The father of the boy, Afghanistan's youngest known HIV sufferer, agreed to speak to a reporter only on condition their names and other details be omitted. He has not even told his family what disease his son has.

He believes that his wife contracted it through a blood transfusion she received during surgery in Pakistan years ago. The few surveys that exist suggest that Afghanistan has a low prevalence of HIV — there are only 69 recorded cases of people contracting the virus, three of whom have died. Yet health officials are warning that the true incidence of HIV and AIDS is much higher.

"That figure is absolutely unreliable, even dangerous," said Nilufar Egamberdi, a World Bank consultant on HIV/AIDS. The World Health Organization has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 Afghans are infected, but Egamberdi said that even those numbers were "not even close to reality."

Saifur Rehman, director of the national AIDS control program in the Ministry of Health, agreed. Afghanistan, a deeply religious and conservative country with strict social mores — sex outside marriage is against the law — may still be less at risk to the spread of the disease than other places, some argue.

But international and Afghan health experts warn that the country has a unique set of vulnerabilities — poor education and government services, the mass movement of people, and the sudden influx of aid, commerce and outsiders since the U.S. invasion in October 2001.

Afghanistan borders countries with the fastest-growing incidence of AIDS in the world — Russia, China and India. Its other neighbors, Pakistan and Iran, have high levels of drug addiction and growing HIV populations, as does Central Asia to the north, experts said.

Experience in other countries has shown that AIDS can easily cross borders, carried by migrants or returning refugees who picked up drug habits or had sex with infected people in those countries. And rates of drug addiction are rising in Afghanistan itself, along with its booming opium crop and the growing availability of heroin.

But even though the Afghan government and senior religious leaders have won praise for making the problem of HIV a national priority, they are struggling to manage many problems.

"In Afghanistan, all the traditional risk factors for rapid spread of HIV exist concurrently," said Fred Hartman of Management Sciences for Health, a nongovernmental organization in Boston that is working in Afghanistan. He has worked as technical director of Reach, an American-financed program to expand health care to Afghanistan's rural communities, and advises the government on HIV/AIDS.

The return home of more than two million refugees has played a part in the spread of the disease, said Renu Chahil- Graf, regional coordinator for Unaids, the United Nations program, who was visiting Pul-I-Charkhi prison in Kabul, where a testing clinic has opened.

Some of those returning to Afghanistan from working abroad have drug habits, and they spread AIDS by contact with spouses, prostitutes and street children, Rehman said.

Afghanistan, the biggest opium- and heroin-producing country in the world, has nearly one million drug users, according to UN estimates. Most users still smoke the drug rather than inject it.

But five years ago, injectable heroin hit the streets of Kabul, and intravenous drug use is increasing, with an estimated 19,000 intravenous drug users here, according to the World Bank. Addicts are not difficult to find, living in bombed-out buildings in the old part of the city and in Kota-e-Sangi, a neighborhood on the south side.

They are homeless or returned refugees fallen on hard times, mostly young men, said Miodrag Atanasijevic, a coordinator for Doctors of the World, a French aid group that runs a clean needles program in Kabul.

"It will become a huge thing," he said. "In this country you have a lot of drugs." Even after five years of international assistance to the health sector, only 30 percent of blood used in transfusions in Afghanistan's hospitals is screened for HIV, says a World Bank report.

Eighty percent of government hospitals now screen blood, Rehman said, but he acknowledged that many institutions do not. Health workers remain ill informed about HIV and careless, often reusing needles even when they know the practice can spread the disease, he said.

While several organizations are working to provide needle exchanges and to increase awareness of HIV, a far wider program is needed, said the World Bank, which is providing $10 million to fight HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan.

A recent study of 461 intravenous drug users in Kabul showed that 3 percent were HIV-positive, Rehman said. He, like many officials, cited the situation in neighboring Pakistan as a warning.

There, drug users identified as HIV- positive in Larkana, near the port city of Karachi, were stoned and chased from the area when the local people learned of their infections. They then drifted into the vast city of 16 million, and went underground. Within just two years the HIV rate among drug users skyrocketed from 2 percent to 26 percent, Rehman said, citing a survey on the episode.

The stigma of HIV/AIDS is perhaps the largest obstacle Afghanistan faces. The Taliban government, with its stoning and execution of adulterers and homosexuals, may be gone, but sex outside marriage and homosexual sex are still socially unacceptable.

Doctors and health workers here warn that AIDS sufferers will face ostracism, even death, if their communities learn they have the disease. The Ministry of Health is closely guarding the identity of the few people who have tested HIV-positive.

Muhammad Farid Bazger, HIV/AIDS coordinator of the German nongovernmental organization ORA International, has seen firsthand the cruelty communities are capable of in neighboring Pakistan and his native Afghanistan.

During his work in villages and refugee camps in Pakistan, he came across an unmarried man who had returned from the Arabian peninsula infected with HIV. The man told his father, who, not understanding the consequences, told others, and soon the whole village knew.

The villagers told the father he should kill his son. He was swiftly ostracized and then locked up in a brick cell in the family yard, with only a small opening where food was thrown in.

Bazger and his colleagues eventually rescued him and made a film of his story, which has been shown on an Afghan television channel.

Scores of foreign prostitutes have arrived in Kabul in recent years, capitalizing on the influx of foreigners. Afghans are using their services as well, particularly the well-paid young men employed by foreign organizations, health officials warn. Sex between men is a serious crime here, but health officials say this has not eradicated homosexuality. Gay men, many unaware of the risks, often have unprotected sex, putting them at high risk of contracting HIV.

Afghanistan's efforts to combat AIDS have been stymied by a lack of money and a lack of urgency among donors who regard Afghanistan as a country with low prevalence of HIV, Hartman and others said. Afghanistan's application to the Global Fund for AIDS programs failed last year. Even United Nations agencies have been slow to develop HIV/AIDS education, saying that they need to see figures documenting more AIDS cases, Egamberdi said.

Until this year, the members of the government AIDS team worked out of a shipping container on the grounds of the Health Ministry. Now they have graduated to a drafty, unheated hall inside the main building. While the World Bank has granted Afghanistan money to gather data and work with high-risk groups, Rehman hopes for an AIDS treatment ward in Kabul, testing around the country and antiretroviral drugs for AIDS patients remain unfulfilled.

His ministry has even enlisted the Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs to educate mullahs, often the most influential people in Afghan villages, about HIV and AIDS to help promote basic health education and mitigate the stigma.

The man interviewed for this article has not shown positive for HIV in nearly a year of tests, despite the death of his wife from an AIDS-related illness.

[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.]