In this bulletin:

• Suicide attack in Afghan capital kills four
• Afghanistan: 2nd Suicide Bombing In Kabul
• No evidence of foreign fighters flooding into Afghanistan: ISAF
• Italy: Prodi Wins Afghanistan Vote, But Questions Remain
• Pakistani Militants Overwhelm Village Near Volatile Afghan Border
• Pakistan town under curfew after Taliban clashes
• Pakistan crosses a dangerous boundary
• Afghan drug post created
• AP Interview: US counter-narcotics chief in Afghanistan hopeful of doubling number of opium free provinces
• Afghan police at work in flip-flops and high on opium
• NATO troops earn resentment of frustrated Afghans
• Afghan fight part of battle on global terrorism
• Tightening grip on press puts Afghanistan's fledgling democracy at risk
• AG orders arrest of provincial council member
• Over 100 dissidents join govt

Suicide attack in Afghan capital kills four

Kabul (AFP) - A suicide bomber targeted an intelligence director's vehicle in the Afghan capital Kabul Wednesday, killing four civilians and wounding another 12, the intelligence service said.

The Taliban-style bombing, the second suicide attack this year in the heavily guarded city, took place in central Kabul near many government and business buildings.

Police immediately cordoned off the area and firefighters were called in to hose blood and pieces of flesh from the road.

"In the attack, four innocent civilians were martyred and another 12 civilians were wounded. The intelligence director survived the attack," said an intelligence service press statement read over the phone to AFP.

The bomber targeted Kamaludin Khan Achikzay, a senior intelligence director who was driving to work. Achikzay and his guards escaped the attack unhurt, the statement said.

Kabul criminal investigation police chief General Ali Shah Paktiawal, speaking from the scene of the attack, blamed the bombing on "enemies of the people."

Afghan officials often use the phrase to refer to Taliban militants who were ousted from power in late 2001 by the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and have since waged a bloody insurgency.

Achikzay, a director with the National Directorate of Security -- the Afghan secret service -- was until a few months ago the intelligence chief of insurgency-hit southern Kandahar province, where the Taliban were spawned.

He is an influential tribal leader in Kandahar and was a former anti-Soviet fighter during the 1980s. The intelligence service statement said he had recently been following "enemy activities" in Quetta, a southwestern Pakistani city near the Afghan border.

Afghan authorities accuse Pakistan of turning a blind eye to Taliban training and recruitment facilities on its soil. Pakistan has strongly rejected the claims.

The Kabul blast comes just over a week after a suicide attacker rammed an explosives-filled car into a US embassy convoy in the capital, wounding five embassy staff and guards and at least three passers-by.

An Afghan civilian was killed late Tuesday when unknown gunmen, who accused him of working with the foreign military, dragged him out of his house in the southeastern province of Ghazni and shot him dead, police said.

In the southern province of Kandahar meanwhile, gunmen kidnapped Tuesday an Afghan medical team of a doctor, three nurses and a driver, provincial health director Abdul Qayoom Pakhoa told AFP.

The Taliban are known to have kidnapped Afghan officials, journalists and members of governmental organisations. They are still holding an Afghan journalist who was kidnapped earlier this month along with an Italian journalist. The Italian was released last Monday, reportedly in exchange for five Taliban prisoners.

The defence ministry announced meanwhile it wrapped up Tuesday a six-day operation in the southern province of Helmand with a final toll of at least 122 militants and 12 police dead.

The operation cut an important Taliban supply route and destroyed militant strongholds near the provincial capital Lashkar Gah, spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.

"The importance for the operation is that it was the first independent operation by Afghan forces," he said, adding that ISAF provided close air support and medical evacuation assistance, but did not supply ground troops.

Afghanistan: 2nd Suicide Bombing In Kabul

stratfor.com / March 28, 2007 - A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle targeted Kamaludin Khan Achikzay, a director of Afghanistan's secret service agency, the National Directorate of Security, on March 28 in Kabul. Achikzay and his guards were unhurt, though some four people were killed in the blast. Achikzay is the former intelligence chief of counter-insurgency in the southern province of Kandahar. This is the second suicide bombing in the Afghan capital in 2007.

No evidence of foreign fighters flooding into Afghanistan: ISAF

Xinhua / March 28, 2007 - There is no evidence to substantiate the trend of foreign fighters flooding into southern Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan, a spokesman of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Wednesday.

Over the past few days, Pakistani tribal militias have fought fiercely with foreign fighters in some Pakistani tribal regions which border Afghanistan, cutting the space and room for the foreign militants.

British media recently reported the Taliban was inviting some 10,000 foreign fighters in the regions, most of whom are Uzbeks, to come to southern provinces of Afghanistan.

ISAF spokesman Tom Collins said the invitation is "primarily Taliban propaganda," through which the Taliban intends to show it has more forces and to scare people. "The Pakistani army is trying to prevent infiltration from Pakistan (into Afghanistan) and doing a pretty effective job," he said.

"We do know there are some foreign fighters in this country, but it is a very small percentage," Collins said, adding the vast majority of the enemies are Taliban extremists and narcotics traffickers.

Italy: Prodi Wins Afghanistan Vote, But Questions Remain

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty - March 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- The government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has narrowly won a Senate vote to continue Rome's military mission in Afghanistan. But questions remain over the mission's future, as NATO allies criticize Italy's handling of a recent hostage crisis.

Prodi's center-left cabinet needed support from an opposition party and faced criticism from its own communist allies, but in the end the former European Commission president hailed the vote as a major step forward.

"This vote is a turning point -- remember that," Prodi said. "This vote is a turning point. The opposition is divided. The majority is united. That seems to be quite a difference to what was being said previously."

Last month, Prodi was forced to resign after a defeat on foreign policy in parliament. He stayed on at the president's request, and the March 27 vote has given his government -- and Italy's Afghan mission -- a new lease of life.

"Yes, [the Italian mission] is secure until the end of the year," said Giovanni Gasparini, a defense analyst at Rome's Institute of Foreign Affairs. "We have both the money and the political will [to keep it going]."

The Senate vote was complicated by controversy over a prisoner swap that Rome engineered last week to secure the release of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a well-known Italian journalist whom the Taliban had held hostage for 15 days.

The United States, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands denounced the deal, under which five jailed Taliban -- three of them high-level -- were freed in exchange for Mastrogiacomo. They said it put NATO troops in danger and rewarded kidnappers.

The deal also failed to secure the release of Mastrogiacomo's Afghan interpreter, while his driver was beheaded by the Taliban. The incident last week sparked antigovernment protests in Helmand Province, where the kidnapping occurred.

"In exchange for Afghans, they have released the foreigner," one demonstrator told RFE/RL's Afghan Service. "What kind of government is this? This is not a government. It is merely a symbolic one."

Ronald Spogli, the U.S. ambassador to Rome, said on March 27 before the Italian Senate vote that the U.S. State Department had urged Italy to maintain its Afghan presence and to lift restrictions on its troops to allow them to engage more freely in combat.

But Amin Tarzi, an Afghan affairs analyst for RFE/RL, says there is an emerging debate over Italy's usefulness to NATO's Afghan mission. He says the debate is over whether Rome's handling of the hostage crisis has done damage to the NATO coalition in the country and the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai: "The Italians demonstrated two things," Tarzi said. "One, that they are willing to negotiate with terrorists.

And, two, that they are not discussing this matter with NATO; they did it on their own. And also there's a third point, which I think is crucial outside of NATO but in the long run for NATO, and that is that this act is undermining Karzai's legitimacy in establishing his prestige, in my view, in an irreparable way."

Gasparini, however, takes issue with that view. He points out that Italy's 1,900 troops are engaged in a key stabilization and reconstruction mission in Kabul and in the area around Herat, near Afghanistan's western border with Iran. Moreover, he says Karzai himself signed off on the hostage exchange.

"The Karzai government decided to go through this way, and he [Karazi] could have rejected our positions," Gasparini said. "Yes, [Karzai's] position has been damaging [to him], but it has not been as damaging as the fact that the government does not have control of the [Helmand Province] area as such."

NATO allies raised concern on March 27 that Italy's handling of the hostage crisis could spark similar abductions of NATO troops. Some officials called for an alliance-wide pact to ban deals with kidnappers.

"There was a clear sense in the room that none of us should agree to negotiate the release of hostages in return for terrorists," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said after a NATO meeting in Brussels.

Pakistani Militants Overwhelm Village Near Volatile Afghan Border

By Benjamin Sand Voice of America - Islamabad 28 March 2007

A large force of well-armed militants has overwhelmed a Pakistani village near the country's volatile border with Afghanistan. The militants killed at least one security official and kidnapped a local school principal. From Islamabad, VOA Correspondent Benjamin Sand reports officials are concerned that local and foreign militants are gaining control over parts of Pakistan's remote tribal areas.

Local residents say as many as 500 militants launched the pre-dawn raid in the town of Tank, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province. The attackers launched mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at a local police station and kidnapped a school principal before leaving the town.

Major General Wahid Arshad, a military spokesman, says the overnight battle lasted several hours, and both sides suffered casualties. "There was fighting between the police and these people," he said. "They attacked the police station, they also burned a couple of banks and the national savings center."

He says the attack was apparently a response to clashes outside a local boy's school earlier this week, which left at least two suspected militants dead.

Arshad and other Pakistani officials say the militants, who are apparently Pakistanis themselves, were trying to recruit children as suicide bombers when the police intervened.

Officials say security forces have regained control of the town, and are actively pursuing the militants in the surrounding countryside.

There is no word on the principal's condition. The Associated Press quotes an unnamed militant as saying the educator is being questioned to see if he alerted police about the militants' recruiting efforts.

The violence is fueling growing concerns Islamist militants have taken the upper hand in the fight to gain control over Pakistan's rugged tribal areas.

Hundreds of Taleban and al-Qaida militants are also believed to be hiding out in the isolated region, which runs along the Afghan border.

Both U.S. and Afghan officials say Taleban insurgents have been massing inside Pakistan, and could be about to launch a major new offensive into Afghanistan.

Pakistan has deployed about 80,000 troops in the area in an effort to contain militant activity there, but the activity shows little sign of abating.

Pakistan town under curfew after Taliban clashes

Wana (AFP) - thorities slapped an indefinite curfew on a northwestern district after five people died in escalating clashes between Taliban rebels and troops, officials said.

Military helicopters circled over the remote town of Tank after the latest clashes early Wednesday, in which a paramilitary soldier and two other people were killed.

"The administration has imposed a curfew in district Tank for an unspecified period in the wake of deteriorating law and order," local police chief Zulfikar Cheema told AFP.

The recent spate of bloodshed began on Monday when police clashed with Taliban recruiters outside a high school in Tank, leaving a local extremist leader and a policeman dead.

Gunmen late Tuesday took revenge by abducting the school principal, Farid Mehsud, and his brother, their family said. They have not been heard of since.

The principal had asked for police protection after local Taliban visited his school and others in a bid to recruit youth to fight "jihad" or holy war against NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.

Then overnight Taliban militants fired rockets and mortars at government installations and private property in Tank, which adjoins the lawless South Waziristan tribal region, the officials said.

Security forces retaliated and a soldier of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary was killed in the clash, local police official Noor Aslam told AFP. Two unidentified bodies were found in the town's bazaar, he said.

Two guards at local banks were also injured, he added. Six banks were also hit, along with a paramilitary fort, a college and some government installations.

"We could not sleep, there were so many rockets exploding. They lit up the night sky," said local resident Alam Gul.

Officials and rights groups have expressed concerns that extremists demanding the imposition of Islamic Sharia law are gaining increasing influence in northwest Pakistan.

A bomb in a weapons bazaar near the northwestern city of Peshawar on Tuesday night damaged a call centre belonging to a man who had previously received threatening letters from militants calling him a "government spy."

The militants had recently shot the owner in the legs. They had also warned barbers not to shave off beards and asked people to shut snooker clubs and video shops.

Clashes last week between pro-government tribesmen and Uzbek and Chechen Al-Qaeda militants in parts of South Waziristan left 160 people dead, 130 of them foreign insurgents, officials have said.

Pakistan crosses a dangerous boundary

By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Asia Times Online / March 28, 2007

KARACHI - Even as the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf faces one of its biggest political challenges in seven years, the Pakistan Army has made the potentially explosive decision to intervene in the internecine strife in the volatile South Waziristan tribal area.

Last week, more than 100 people were killed when fighting broke out between al-Qaeda-backed Uzbek militants and the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan.

Although a spokesperson for the Pakistani armed forces and the governor of North West Frontier Province have denied that the government is involved in the conflict, independent sources confirmed to Asia Times Online that special security forces of the Pakistan Army conducted raids in an attempt to arrest Uzbek commander Tahir Yaldeshiv. There are unconfirmed reports that some Pakistani soldiers died in clashes with Uzbek militants.

Further, it has emerged that a faction of the Taliban led by Maulvi Nazir allied with the Pakistani military to take on the foreign militants. This is a controversial move. Last September, Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire with pro-Taliban, Pashtun tribal leaders under which it withdrew thousands of troops from the North Waziristan tribal area and released several hundred Taliban and al-Qaeda militants from jail.

This agreement is now in jeopardy and, more significant, it pits the "coalition" of Nazir's Taliban and the Pakistani military against the leaders of the "Islamic State of Waziristans" . These leaders control the shuras (councils) of the mujahideen in the two Waziristans and support the foreign militants.

Last year, the Taliban declared the establishment of an "Islamic state" in North Waziristan, and they in effect rule in the rugged territory, including parts of South Waziristan.

"Do not become a party to the conflict, otherwise we will sign out from the peace agreement we reached with the government," top Pakistani Taliban commander Haji Omar warned Islamabad. Omar, one of the driving forces behind the Islamic state, was speaking in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp's Pashtu service on the weekend.

Asia Times Online has learned that key leaders of the Islamic state, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Baitullah Mehsud, as well as other leaders are in South Waziristan to talk the Taliban faction out of siding with the army. Delegations of the Taliban from Afghanistan are also in the the two Waziristans to mediate in talks between Uzbek militants and Taliban warlords.

After last week's fighting ended in a temporary ceasefire, a jirga (tribal council) was convened at which Nazir was insistent that all foreigners should be disarmed and their status reduced to "refugees" in a restricted area. The demand was immediately rejected by the foreign militants.

The leaders of the Islamic state will also have nothing to do with such a proposal as they will never ask any mujahid to lay down his arms or ask any Muslim to live in the Islamic state as a "non-entity". They, like the Uzbeks, are also vehemently opposed to the Pakistani military.

For its part, the military will be keen to build on the foothold it has regained by associating with Nazir's Taliban as Islamabad is under constant pressure from the US to do something about foreign fighters in the country.

The situation is fast returning to where it was before the ceasefire last year, with the Pakistan Army, with some local support, lined up against the Pakistani Taliban in the Waziristans.

The army's previous intervention in the tribal areas was unpopular among vast sections in Pakistan, and Musharraf an ill afford further reason for political dissent.

More than 200 opposition supporters have been arrested over the past few days during protests over the recent suspension of the chief justice for alleged misuse of his office.

Critics claim that Iftikhar Chaudhry was removed because Musharraf wants a tame judiciary in general elections this year so that he can legitimize his re-election without being forced to give up his post as head of the army.

The row has set off protests across the country, with political parties and other organizations jumping on to the bandwagon of dissent.

Benazir Bhutto, former premier and now leader of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), clearly realizes that in the present climate of dissent against Musharraf, the situation in the Waziristans could play into the hands of religious hardliners and militants.

She has instructed the ARD leadership to separate its opposition campaign from that of the six-party religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, during protest rallies. On the ground, this could be difficult to do as the groups have already protested together.

Apart from the political ramifications for Musharraf, the Taliban in Afghanistan, as they gear up for their spring offensive, could benefit. Much of their support comes from within Pakistan. An inflamed situation in the Waziristans over the Pakistan Army and growing political unrest elsewhere will push more supporters their way.

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

Afghan drug post created

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL - By Shaun Waterman / March 28, 2007

The Bush administration has created a post to coordinate efforts against drug smuggling and corruption in Afghanistan, and named a State Department official to the job. The White House named Thomas Schweich to be coordinator for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan.

The announcement noted that Mr. Schweich, who currently oversees part of that portfolio as the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the State Department, would be granted the personal rank of ambassador in the post.

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore told United Press International that the ambassador rank was a technical appointment "necessary for him to hold negotiations with foreign countries" in the new post and was not Senate confirmable.

For additional information, she referred a reporter to the State Department, which did not return phone calls or respond to e-mail.

Last month, senior Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by the ranking member, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, wrote to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking for the appointment of "a high-level coordinator of overall Afghan narco-terrorism policy."

The bluntly worded letter said interagency rivalry and U.S. policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos. A second-consecutive record opium harvest is expected this year.

"The open and public dispute with our British allies on opium-eradication methods, along with the many different and often conflicting views of NATO, our Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement [Administration], and other U.S. agencies on how best to handle the narcotics challenge does not bode well for success," the letter said.

Disputes have run the gamut of policy issues, from how to deal with local drug kingpins who might be allies of the U.S. or Afghan military to what priority to give to efforts at eradicating the opium poppy or taking down the smuggling networks which distribute the drugs.

The letter said U.S. efforts against narcoterrorism in Afghanistan should be modeled on those in Colombia, which utilizes "all U.S. agencies, assets and assistance."

The appointment of Mr. Schweich, who began his State Department career under his mentor, former Missouri Republican Sen. John C. Danforth, when the latter was ambassador to the United Nations, appeared to be an effort to respond to concerns in Congress and elsewhere. via Washington Times

AP Interview: US counter-narcotics chief in Afghanistan hopeful of doubling number of opium free provinces

The Associated Press - Wednesday, March 28, 2007

BRUSSELS, Belgium: Afghanistan could double the number of provinces free from opium production this year thanks to improved security and a more determined approach by local authorities, the top U.S. official dealing with the country's drugs problems said Wednesday.

"We have six poppy-free provinces now, I'm hoping that we can get to 10 or 12 this year, and maybe up to 20 in a couple of years, which is more that half the provinces in Afghanistan," said Thomas A. Schweich, the U.S. coordinator for counter narcotics in Afghanistan. "Geographically I think we'll see great strides."

However he said those gains, mostly in the more stable north of the country, could be "more than offset" by increased opium production in the volatile south, despite stepped up anti-drugs efforts by local authorities, backed by NATO's drive against the Taliban in the region.

"In the south, the combination of political will and security issues present a much bigger challenge," Schweich said in an interview at NATO headquarters. "That's a longer term proposition, maybe five or 10 years instead, but I do think that we can turn the corner there too."

Schweich briefed the NATO alliance on counter-narcotics operations in Afghanistan. The country is believed to produce about 90 percent of the world's supply of opium, the raw material for heroin. Despite successes in the north, the U.N. estimates last year's nationwide crop was up by 59 percent.

Schweich said Afghan heroine production exceeds total global demand by 30 percent — a development that threatens to drive down prices and create more addicts.

"It's really threatening the overall stability of Afghanistan," he told The Associated Press. "It impacts every aspect of society.

"It's such a high percentage of the relative legal economy that it threatens the development work that we are doing. There is so much narco-corruption that it threatens the political institutions that are there and it's also impacting security because the Taliban are now developing a more close relationship with the narco-traffickers than they previously had."

Schweich said the traffickers had diversified their routes out of Afghanistan and were increasingly turning to Iran.

"Iran now has, we understand, the biggest drug addiction problem in the world because there are huge volumes of cheap heroin transiting through Iran," he said.

Although the United States has major cooperation programs helping Pakistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia fight the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders, there is no such collaboration with Iran.

However, Schweich highlighted Iran's efforts to tackle the illicit trade. "Every bit of information that I get is that they are committed to reducing the problem."

Schweich said Afghan security forces had made "dramatic improvements" over the past year in their efforts in tackling the drugs problem, but complained the police counter-narcotics unit was still about 50 percent understaffed while corruption among the judiciary remained a major problem.

"We've had instances where they walk in the police station pay their US$10,000 (€7,500) bribe and walk out the back door, sometimes the bribes are as high as US$100,000 (€75,000). That's a lot of money in Afghanistan."

He held open the possibility that major traffickers could be extradited to Western nations for trial as has happened with leading figures in Colombia's cocaine industry who have been sent to the United States.

"We don't think they have the level of sophistication to try a very big narco trafficker in terms of evidence and political pressure put on them," Schweich said. "If we have the chance to get the No. 1 kingpin in Afghanistan and a decision is reached with the Afghan government that we can't try that guy here, we would then want to extradite that person to wherever his drugs are going."

To tackle the problem at grass roots level, Schweich defended the practice of eradicating opium poppies from criticism that it could alienated poor farmers and sent them into the arms of the Taliban insurgents. However, he said eradication should be used in combination with offers to provide farmers with alternative crops such as cotton, fruit or vegetables.

"If they persist in this and don't take alternatives that are offered, they'll be eradicated," he said, acknowledging that legal crops were unlikely to be as profitable as opium. "None of them equal the income that they are going to get from poppies, so that's why there has to be a coercive element."

Afghan police at work in flip-flops and high on opium

by Sylvie Briand - Wed Mar 28 - MAIWAND, Afghanistan (AFP) - Colourful ribbons tied to their Kalashnikovs and opium flowers decorating a van, police in flip-flops meet with Canadian soldiers about a new anti-Taliban operation in southern Afghanistan.

The Canadians, part of a NATO-led force, had been on time for the rendezvous with the district police chief at a highway checkpost in Kanadahar province's Maiwand, known as a through route for Taliban and drugs traffickers.

Three scruffy policemen were on duty, lounging on wooden beds and watching the cars pass. "The boss is not here. He is in Kandahar. Didn't you know?" said one, Abdul Wassi, with a smile.

He was wearing a long traditional shirt because his uniform "is being washed." Wassi put in a call to the deputy of the district, named Gulali.

The "commander" arrived in a whirl a few minutes later at the wheel of a van with opium flowers attached to the bumpers at the front and three teenagers on the back, green, blue and yellow ribbons attached to their guns.

"They have just come back from an operation to pull up opium poppy," Wassi explained.

Canadian officer Alex Ruff, nearly twice the size of Gulali, told the deputy the evening's operation was to disturb Taliban expected to move through the area to flee offensives in neighbouring Helmand province, further west.

"We are going to reinforce this post and I need all your men," he said to Gulali, whose eyes were lowered. "We do not have enough vehicles," the Afghan replied, still not looking at the Canadian. "Do what you can," was the reply.

There are about 250 policemen in Maiwand, a Taliban stronghold. Among them are "auxiliary policemen" who are recruited by tribal chiefs and receive a gun and a uniform after two weeks' training.

The Canadians do not really expect this small post to do much to stop the Taliban. "Two or three guys in a hut, armed with rifles, could not do much if they were attacked. They could not even stop a vehicle," said one soldier.

Wassi said he searches two or three vehicles a night and about 10 in the day. "I am not afraid even though the Taliban captured and decapitated four policemen from this post a few months back," he said.

Night fell and Canadian armoured vehicles discreetly took positions around the post, ready to intervene should anything happen. "There will be no clashes. The Taliban know you are here," one Afghan policeman said.

In the meantime, about 20 policemen had blocked the road for a few hours, "high after smoking opium and searching everything that moves," a Canadian soldier said. There was no incident apart from some trucks turning back after seeing the roadblock.

Ruff, the Canadian officer, said he does not have much confidence in the police in a district where the governor himself is suspected of being involved in the trafficking of opium, of which Afghanistan is the world's top producer.

"With the army, there is no problem but the police are something else," he said, adding: "Far too many policemen smoke opium." "It is possible that some police are collaborating with the Taliban. Some of the guys have not been paid for a year."

NATO troops earn resentment of frustrated Afghans

By David Morgan - Tue Mar 27 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Foreign troops deployed in Afghanistan are beginning to draw the resentment of Afghans fed up with growing civilian casualties and the lack of material progress in their lives, experts say.

Resentment has posed special problems in the south, where villagers who have suffered from Western military firepower have responded to the Taliban's call to arms against foreign troops and the government of President Hamid Karzai, the experts said.

"There is growing resentment because of the kinds of military operations that have been carried out, not because of the international troop presence," Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for International Crisis Group think tank, said this week in an interview.

Ahmed, who is based in Pakistan and travels frequently to Afghanistan, cited bombing raids based on faulty intelligence that have killed innocent villagers and shootings of innocent civilians by panicky troops as especially damaging to Afghan support for Western forces.

"What has also led to greater resentment is the fact that Kabul is not delivering," she added, referring to the Afghan government's difficulty in providing services to the people.

The United States provides about 27,000 of the 45,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, some in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the rest under a separate U.S.-led coalition.

Pentagon and NATO officials cited opinion polls, however, that show a large majority of Afghans favoring foreign troops and only a small fraction of support for the Taliban.

"There is no doubt that the population supports the presence of international troops," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said.

Added Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Lt. Col. Todd Vician: "Support for the Taliban has not increased. I think the majority see the Taliban for what they are or what they bring to Afghanistan, which is brutality."

But polling data has also shown Afghan support for international troops slipping in 2006 as the populace has grown less optimistic about the country's direction.

Violence in Afghanistan last year was the worst since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001. About one-quarter of the 4,000 people killed in 2006 were civilians.

NATO, U.S. commanders and Afghan leaders have said the Taliban insurgency cannot be defeated unless reconstruction brings the new jobs and economic progress that were widely anticipated after the former Taliban rulers were ousted.

But David Edwards, a U.S. anthropologist regarded as an expert on the origins of the Taliban, said reconstruction has been overshadowed by rampant corruption, meager international donations and poverty in a country where the unemployment rate is about 40 percent.

"It's important to understand that Americans have come to be seen as an occupying power," Edwards, an author who has traveled widely in Afghanistan, said at a Monday forum sponsored by the Pakistani Embassy in Washington.

"It's a way in which the Taliban has come to gain supporters," added Edwards, who said there is evidence that the Taliban pays its members better than Afghanistan's national army pays its soldiers.

The warnings about eroding support came as NATO commanders conducted a spring offensive code-named Operation Achilles against Taliban strongholds in a bid to pre-empt an expected warmer weather seasonal campaign by Islamist militants.

With fighting expected to be heavy again in 2007, Afghans have complained more loudly about the effects of combat as NATO has poured more troops into the effort to thwart the Taliban.

Scores of civilians have died during NATO operations this year. About 60 people, including women and children, were killed by NATO planes during fighting in the southern province of Kandahar in January during an important Muslim holiday.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray in Washington, Mark John in Brussels and Terry Friel in Kabul)

Afghan fight part of battle on global terrorism

By RONALD ZAJAC - Staff Writer Tuesday, March 27, 2007 edition of the Brockville Recorder & Times

Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan are part of a broader global battle against Islamic extremism and terrorism, the Afghan ambassador to Canada told a Rotary Club luncheon here Monday.

"It does matter," Omar Samad said when asked whether Canada is right to be involved in the Afghan mission. "It's because of a much larger threat that ... we could all face and continue to face down the road."

The world can allow the extremism represented by the Taliban insurgency to prosper or "checkmate it," added Samad, who spoke to a joint lunch meeting of the Brockville and 1000 Islands Rotary Clubs at the Quality Hotel Royal Brock.

Samad also said the international community did not show up when the current Afghan troubles began and added that, when it was ready to help, the Iraq war prevented it from dealing decisively with the Taliban when it had the chance.

Samad was one of two guest speakers the Rotarians are bringing in to discuss Afghanistan. Brigadier General Mark Skidmore, commander of western Canada's land forces, who has troops serving in Afghanistan, will talk to the group next Monday.

A former journalist, Samad gave a brief but informative history lesson on his country dating back to the 19th century, when Afghanistan was a "buffer state" between the British and Russian empires.

In the 1950s, after the United States refused to help Afghanistan modernize its military, the Afghan government made the pivotal decision to ask the Soviet Union for help, said Samad.

As a result, a core of Soviet-trained officers returned to the country filled with Marxist doctrine, and this group was part of a coup that, in 1973, ended a "decade of democratic experimentation," he added.

These pro-Soviet officers took over completely in a violent coup in 1978, and, at the end of 1979, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan when this Soviet-aligned regime was nearly toppled in a rebellion, said the ambassador.

The 1980s, when an Afghan resistance fought the Soviet invaders and ultimately repelled them, shaped the current history of Afghanistan, said Samad. During that time, he said, factions emerged within the rebellion and the Taliban found its roots in the more extremist elements backed by neighbouring Pakistan. Meanwhile, "extremist combatants" from around the world came to the country to join in the fight.

"At the end of the day, these guys all became terrorists," said Samad, adding Osama bin Laden was among these foreign combatants. After the Soviets fled in 1989, said Samad, "Afghanistan fell into the wrong hands because the wrong hands had been promoted."

After the communist government collapsed in 1992, a civil war ensued, leading to the seizure of power by the repressive Taliban regime. The Taliban, said Samad, represent a narrow interpretation of Islam that runs counter to the more mainstream practices of that religion in Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan became a concentration camp ... a prison for its people and the world was absent," said Samad. The "alarm bell" that woke the world up to Afghanistan was the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, perpetrated by bin Laden and al-Qaida, which led to the overthrow of the Taliban regime by coalition forces including Canadians, he said.

Those thousands of Taliban supporters who ended up in Pakistan are now causing the problems that have left Canadian soldiers dead, said the ambassador. "Not only are they aiming at your troops, but they are aiming at ordinary people," said Samad, adding insurgents target such people as teachers and religious scholars.

And while the past five years have seen a young democracy take root in Afghanistan, the insurgency is delaying further development, he said. "How can you have development when they come and burn down schools?"

Samad steered clear of expressing an opinion on the conduct of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, but he said that war "took some attention away from Afghanistan, took some resources away from Afghanistan" and prevented the world from focusing on neutralizing the Taliban.

The ambassador drew laughs when asked by city Councilllor and Rotarian Larry Journal where he thinks bin Laden is now. "You and I will be sharing $25 million," said Samad, referring to a reward posted by the United States for the terrorist leader's capture. "Almost certainly, he is not in Afghanistan," added Samad. He would not say where he believes bin Laden is hiding, but strongly hinted it is Pakistan.

And while he did not wish to get involved in domestic Canadian politics, Samad referred to "certain parties" that support women's rights but advocate a pullout of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Women, who lost many rights under the Taliban and are now making gains, would be the first victims of a pullout, he said. In a subsequent interview, Samad said it does not matter which Afghan leaders have the support of the people. What does matter is that the people now support the democratic process.

There are "strong indications," he said, that Afghanistan is emerging as "a moderate Islamic state that reflects the will of its people."

Tightening grip on press puts Afghanistan's fledgling democracy at risk

The Associated Press - Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - KABUL, Afghanistan: Political talk show host Razaq Mamoon never held back with the cameras rolling. He railed at former warlords now in government and accused Afghanistan's Parliament of being a den of war criminals and drug smugglers.

Not surprisingly, he caught the attention of government leaders. "I started receiving messages from them: 'We don't know who you're with or who you're against. You attack everybody,'" Mamoon said.

His employer, Tolo TV, came under intense pressure from government ministers, and soon Mamoon was fired, he said. His popular round-table news program "Gaftmon" — or "Hardtalk" — was yanked from the air.

Hailed as a major success of five years of democracy-building, media freedom in Afghanistan is under increasing pressures, including a proposed law that would cripple media rights, and threats and physical abuse of journalists by government and military officials.

"Effectively we've moved from an open media environment to a state-controlled media environment, which is a considerable turnaround from the direction media was heading in Afghanistan up until 2005-06," said Adrian Edwards, spokesman of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The Afghan media has changed radically since Taliban times, when there were no television stations and only a handful of newspapers that were completely state-controlled. There was just one Taliban radio station — broadcasting news and religious poetry but no music.

Now there are more than 40 private radio stations, seven TV networks, and more than 350 newspapers and magazines registered with the information ministry. Afghan TV broadcasts everything from breaking news to cooking shows and the local version of "American Idol."

But critics say the new legislation, expected to be debated in Parliament within weeks, is an ominous sign that Afghanistan's experiment with open media is on borrowed time.

Fazil Sangcharaki, chief of the Afghan Journalists' Association and former deputy information minister, said the proposed law is being pushed by former warlords-turned-politicians who would rather have past deeds be forgotten, and by Islamists worried the media is corrupting the Afghan people.

If passed, it would give the Ministry of Information and Culture direct control of state-owned Radio and Television Afghanistan (RTA) and increased power over private media. It would even make it possible to jail journalists like Mamoon for reporting news deemed "humiliating and offensive."

Many journalists see it as a reaction to reporting on corruption and war crimes, and an attempt by President Hamid Karzai's elected government — that succeeded the fundamentalist Taliban regime that fell in late 2001 — to reel in the free press.

"The government was not happy with my investigative work," Mamoon said at the office of Emroz, the new media company where he now works. "The government is facing criticism, which is new for them. It is embarrassed."

The proposed law would turn RTA into a "state propaganda tool," Edwards said. The information minister would be granted the power to appoint and pay commissioners who regulate the media.

"You don't want to have a minister of information who can literally haul in journalists or influence private media through salaries of commissioners ... That would be worrying in any country," Edwards said.

Several vaguely worded prohibitions in the law could be used to black out almost any news story. It would prohibit the "propagation of religions other than the holy religion of Islam"; stories that "affect the stability, national security and territorial integrity of the country," and "articles and topics that harm the physical, spiritual and moral well-being of people, especially children and adolescents."

UNAMA officials and others lobbying for press freedom have met with President Karzai and Information Minister Abdul Karim Khurram, but the outcome for the media is not clear. Halim Tanweer, Khurram's media advisor, said the information ministry believes "100 percent" in free speech and a free press.

"We broadcast any news in the national interest of the Afghan people," Tanweer said. "We are trying to be impartial. (State TV) does not work for the government." However, evidence of efforts to muffle the media is rapidly piling up.

_ On Feb. 22 in the western city of Herat, Afghan police beat and confiscated the camera of an Ariana Television cameraman Eshaq Quraishi, who was filming a victim wounded by police gunfire at a protest, according to Afghan press rights organization Nai. A report by Nai quoted Herat police chief Ahmad Shafiq Fazli as saying that Quraishi "was not beaten up by the police ... and their camera was stolen by protesters."

_ And in a sign it's not just Afghan authorities constraining the press, U.S. troops deleted the photos and video of Afghan journalists — including a freelance photographer and a cameraman of The Associated Press — covering the aftermath of a suicide bomb attack March 4 in eastern Afghanistan.

_ In Kabul, RTA television reporter Besoodi Forgh was dealt two black eyes by a team of seven men from the information ministry, he said. The men showed up in his newsroom late last month and accused him of spying for Iran. Two men held his hands behind his back, and one man punched him four times in the face and three times on back of the head. "I'm not a spy. I've never even been to Iran," he said. He was fired.

But in a sign that Afghan journalists won't bow down quietly, he's gone public about his ordeal. Mamoon also said he would stand up for his professional rights, "even if it costs me my life," although he remains pessimistic about the future.

"The government has lost the trust of the Afghan media. The media is wondering who will defend us now? We have nobody," Mamoon said. "This is very dangerous for Afghanistan's democracy. There is no difference between Taliban times and now."

AG orders arrest of provincial council member

KABUL, Mar 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Attorney General Abdul Jabbar Sabit has said member of the Kabul provincial council Maulvi Habibullah will be arrested soon after his arrival in the country.

Speaking at a news conference here, Sabit alleged Habibullah had violated the law and would be detained at the Kabul airport after arrival from his official visit to Philippine.

The AG presented three people before the journalists allegedly beaten by Maulvi Habibullah and his men in the Bagh-i-Bala area of this capital city. The three men introduced themselves as Major Mohammad Nasir, Mirza Jan and Gul Mohammad.

The AG said no one would be allowed to consider himself above the law. He said the only reason behind the delay in arrest of Maulvi Habibullah was his being outside the country.

Sabit said he was summoned to the Wolesi Jirga but would not go because a member wanted to settle personal grudge with him. He said Wolesi Jirga member from Kapisa Haji Zainul Aabidin Farid had visited his office for his personal work. When he (AG) refused to entertain his request, he was summoned to the parliament.

He said he had lodged complaint with the concerned commission of the Wolesi Jirga and would clarify his position before the same commission. Sabit said another member Gul Pacha Majidi had asked for the release of six prisoners, but he refused. Majidi had also joined hands with Farid against him (AG), said the Attorney General.

Over 100 dissidents join govt

KABUL, Mar 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Over 100 former dissidents joined the government through the Peace Strengthening Commission on Monday. Addressing the ceremony, head of the commission Sibghatullah Mujaddedi said they included 67 men from Nangarhar, 30 from Khost, 22 from Paktia and 13 from Kunar province.

"We are trying to organise vocational training courses and provide them with pieces of land to construct their houses if they have no house at the moment," said Mujaddedi.

Speaking on behalf of his other colleagues, Wakil Sarwar, one of the newly-joined men from Paktia, said Afghanistan was home to all Afghans and they should joinhands to reconstruct the country. He added: "We will not fight anymore because we want to see peace in our country."

Officials of the commission say another batch of 44 dissidents is likely to join the government in the western province of Kunduz on Tuesday. According to official figures, 3,817 anti-government elements have joined the reconciliation process since its beginning two years back. The commission had also freed 549 Afghan captives from Bagram (Afghanistan) and Guantanamo Bay (US) prisons during that period.

[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.]