In this bulletin:

• Harper in Afghanistan on visit meant to stress mission's humanitarian side
• German Foreign Minister Meet With Karzai In Kabul
• German foreign minister visits troops in Afghanistan
• Dr. Spanta met deputy Prime Minister and FM of Italy
• Clashes kill 29 Taliban, two police in Afghanistan
• Karzai tells world not to abandon Afghanistan
• UN worries over Afghan FM row
• Canadian PM stresses commitment to Afghanistan
• Afghan future depends on infrastructure: Harper
• As Canadian PM visits, Afghanistan's Karzai asks world to 'complete the job'
• Tankers carrying oil to Afghanistan blasted
• U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb
• Canadians support talks with Taliban: poll
• U.S. blames Taliban for Afghan civilian casualties
• Desperate Taliban Changes Strategy
• Pakistan faces the Taleban's tentacles
• U.S., NATO officials push anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan
• NATO's Afghanistan role defended
• NATO troops are deployed on Pakistan`s Western border
• Italy urges Pakistan, Afghanistan to unite against common enemy
• Iran crackdown on Afghan migrants
• Dubai ruler announces 10 bln dollar education fund for Middle East
• New Novel By 'Kite Runner' Author Focuses On Women
• Khaled Hosseini: Doctor of suspense
• Jolie shocked by death threats for supporting Afghan refugees

Harper in Afghanistan on visit meant to stress mission's humanitarian side

By Alexander Panetta - KABUL, Afghanistan (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has responded to criticism of his government's handling of the mission in Afghanistan by making an unannounced visit to the war-ravaged country.

The surprise two-day trip comes after weeks of opposition attacks on his government's allegedly incompetent handling of the Afghan detainee controversy.

Harper arrived on a military flight Tuesday in the Afghan capital, where he visited a school for underprivileged children and met with President Hamid Karzai.

This is Harper's second visit to the war-torn country. Barely one month after taking office last year, Harper made Afghanistan his destination for his first foreign trip as prime minister.

Unlike that last trip, this one is designed to emphasize Canada's non-military contribution to rebuilding of the country.

The prime minister handed out pencil cases to students at a local school for underprivileged children. He dropped in on painting, acting, woodworking, and music classes at the Aschiana School in a tightly guarded compound in the capital's downtown core.

The school received $39,500 in annual funding from the Canadian government and provides education to more than 10,000 Afghan children. He also visited diplomats at the Canadian Embassy for a briefing on progress made in that country since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

In 2006, Harper spent almost the entirety of his three days in Afghanistan visiting military installations and camping out with soldiers. His current trip comes with public opinion polls suggesting support for his government has fallen amid opposition attacks of the last few weeks.

The Conservatives lost a commanding lead in public opinion polls as their opponents clobbered them over inconsistencies and flip flops regarding the Afghan detainee abuse controversy. There have been concerns that suspected militants arrested by Canadians and handed over to local authorities are not being treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and have suffered torture at the hands of Afghan police.

Harper's office spared no effort to keep the trip under wraps. A call went out Friday afternoon telling journalists to pack for a warm climate and to show up at a military hangar on Sunday if they wanted to join Harper on a trip to an unspecified foreign location.

They were told not to breathe a word about the trip. Journalists were later warned that they could be arrested if they divulged details of the prime minister's travel plans.

German Foreign Minister Meet With Karzai In Kabul

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty - KABUL, May 22, 2007 -- German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier met Afghan President Hamid Karzai today in Kabul. Steinmeier had earlier visited the town of Kunduz, where a suicide bomber killed three German soldiers on Saturday (May 19). Karzai has condemned the bombing. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made a surprise visit to Afghanistan. Reports say Harper arrived in Kabul on Sunday (May 20), visited a school for underprivileged children, and met with Karzai.

German foreign minister visits troops in Afghanistan

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Kunduz, Afghanistan (dpa) - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday visited Berlin's contingent of troops in northern Afghanistan, three days after a suicide bombing killed three German soldiers there.
 

"Terror threatens us everywhere, and there is no absolute protection against terrorist attacks," Steinmeier told soldiers at their base at the city of Kunduz. "This we had to learn in a very painful way."

Three German troops died and five were wounded in a powerful blast while patrolling a Kunduz market. Five Afghan civilians were also killed.

The minister's visit was also part of a German initiative through the Group of Eight, or G8, a bloc of leading industrial countries, that is aimed at improving relations between the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

The neighbours are both allies in the war against terrorism but are experiencing their worst relations since the Taliban were ousted from power in Afghanistan in 2001. Afghan and Pakistani ministers were expected to attend a G8 foreign ministers meeting in the German city of Potsdam next week.

After talks later with Steinmeier in Kabul, Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed condolences over the deaths of the German soldiers.

The loss was "a testimony of the commitment of Germany to the fight against terror in the world and to enable the Afghan people to have a better life," he said, calling Germany a "very old friend" of Afghanistan.

Karzai praised the contributions of Germany and other countries in Afghanistan's reconstruction, citing the example of a significant reduction in child mortality.

"Now Afghanistan can say in the past three years we saved 40,000 infants," the leader said at a press conference with Steinmeier.

The foreign minister's visit follows a string of deadly Taliban attacks outside the main conflict area in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

While the Kunduz province near the border with Tajikistan is considered relatively stable, the minister said there were no safe zones in the fight against the resurgent Taliban.

The German armed forces have suffered 21 deaths since deploying for peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan in January 2002 as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

The minister noted the extensive reconstruction in Kunduz, where German engineering teams have worked since late 2003, and said the Taliban aimed to undo the progress in Afghanistan with their attacks.

"We cannot allow this to happen," said Steinmeier, who was also due to consult with the ISAF leadership in Kabul and meet in the evening with his Afghan counterpart, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta.

He was scheduled to fly from Afghanistan to Pakistan on Wednesday for talks with President Pervez Musharraf and other government officials.

Dr. Spanta met deputy Prime Minister and FM of Italy

MoFA: Posted On: May 22, 2007

H.E. Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta received the visiting Italian deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H.E. Mr. Massimo D’Alema yesterday.

At the meeting two sides exchanges views on issues of mutual interest and concern. Dr Spanta reiterated Afghanistan’s appreciation for contribution of Italian government in stabilizing and rebuilding of Afghanistan, in particular Italian’s active involvement in the Afghan judicial system. Currently around 1,800 Italian soldiers are serving under the NATO and PRT team in Herat province.

H.E. Mr. Massimo D’Alema thanked the Afghan Foreign Minister for the warm welcome he has received and he reiterated Italian’s resolve to remain fully engaged with Afghanistan, by saying: “Italy is going to stay in Afghanistan until peace and democracy is established in this nation and will accompany Afghanistan until the last moments in reconstruction and fight against terrorism.”

Clashes kill 29 Taliban, two police in Afghanistan

May 22, 2007, South Asia News

Kabul - Separate clashes and roadside bomb blasts left 29 suspected Taliban and two policemen dead while several others were wounded, officials said on Tuesday.

A roadside bomb hit a vehicle transporting border police in Kandahar city, the capital of Kandahar province, on Tuesday, killing one policeman and wounding three police and three civilians, said Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief.

'A newly-planted mine hit a police vehicle in Kandahar city that wounded four policemen and three civilians,' Alizai said, adding that one of the wounded policemen later died in hospital.

Hours before the first incident, another roadside bomb exploded in Kandahar city, wounding two policemen, the interior ministry said in a press release.

Also in Kandahar, police shot dead a known terrorist as he was trying to flee from a police checkpoint in the western part of the city, the interior ministry said.

In southern Ghazni province, three Afghan engineers working for an American private security firm were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a mine, said Major Saleh Mohammad Massoud, highway police commander.

Tuesday's incidents coincided with the visit of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who visited the German contingent of troops in northern Afghanistan, three days after a suicide bombing killed three German soldiers there.

'Terror threatens us everywhere and there is no absolute protection against terrorist attacks, this we had to learn in a very painful way,' Steinmeier told soldiers at the German base in the city of Kunduz.

Three German troops died and five were wounded in a powerful blast while patrolling in a market in the city last Saturday. Five Afghan civilians were also killed.

While Kunduz province, by the border with Tajikistan, is considered relatively stable compared to southern and eastern provinces, Steinmeier said there were no safe zones in the conflict against the resurgent Taliban.

The German armed forces have suffered 21 deaths since deploying for peacekeeping duties in Afghanistan in January 2002 as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Steinmeier later on Tuesday flew to Kabul where he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his fortified presidential palace.

'Germany is a country that is a very old and pleasant friend of Afghanistan,' Karzai told reporters.

'Unfortunately there has been a loss of three German soldiers because of a terrorist attack. This is a testimony of the commitment of Germany to the fight against terror in the world and to enable Afghan people to have a better life,' he said.

Meanwhile, clashes with Taliban on Monday left 28 Taliban and one policeman dead.

Afghan border police killed some 20 suspected Taliban militants after the rebels attacked an outpost in the eastern province of Khost, Mohammad Ayoub Khan, the provincial police chief, said.

The clash in Khost, in which coalition air support was deployed, happened in the Babrak Tana area of Alisher district in the early hours of Monday, Khan said.

He said that the provincial governor and police delegates visited Babrak Tana, which is around 50 kilometres from provincial capital, on Monday afternoon and confirmed the death toll.

He said they had information that the dead bodies had been taken to the other side of border and buried there on Pakistani soil.

The Taliban said in a statement on their website that the militants had inflicted casualties on the Afghan police side. However, Khan said there were no police casualties.

Meanwhile, Taliban militants attacked a police vehicle which was carrying logistic supplies in Zharai district of southern Kandahar province on Monday afternoon, killing a policeman and wounding another, while a police car was also burned, provincial police chief Alizai said.

He said police reinforcements fought back, killing eight Taliban fighters.

Violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, particularly in the south, after a reduction in violence during the winter. The violence so far this year has left over 1,600 people dead, most of them insurgents.

Karzai tells world not to abandon Afghanistan

05/22/2007 By Sayed Salahuddin - KABUL (Reuters) - The world must remain engaged in Afghanistan until the country manages to stand on its own feet or "terrorists" will strike again, President Hamid Karzai warned on Tuesday.

The Taliban and allies such as the al Qaeda network have stepped up raids in the past 18 months in Afghanistan despite the presence of nearly 50,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military as well as some 100,000 Afghan forces.

In that period, thousands of people, including more than 200 Western troops, have died in the violence, the bloodiest since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001 in retaliation for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

In some NATO countries, public opinion is against the presence of their soldiers in Afghanistan.

Talking to reporters after holding talks with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Karzai said the world, and in particular, the West needed to stay in Afghanistan to help Afghans, but also for its own security.

"Let us complete the job as hard as it may look at times," Karzai commented when a Canadian journalist asked the two leaders about rising opposition among Canadians to having their troops in Afghanistan.

"It is a necessary price that we have to pay; the Afghans are paying that price, the rest of the world is paying that price together with us ... and let us complete it and not abandon it half way," Karzai said.

Karzai said the world should bring much-needed help for the Afghan people and enable government forces to stand on their own feet to prevent the return of the militants.

"...There are still the remnants of terrorism that if we leave half the way, will re-emerge and will haunt you back home whenever they want," Karzai warned, citing the September 11 attacks.

Harper said Canada's engagement in Afghanistan, its biggest foreign deployment in the world, was the right thing to do.

He said bringing security to Afghanistan could not be achieved through military means alone and added there was need for developing Afghanistan's economy, social and government infrastructure.

UN worries over Afghan FM row

RFE/RL - 05/21/2007 - The UN today called on Afghanistan's government to resolve a constitutional dispute that has spawned questions about Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta's status.

Afghanistan's parliament voted earlier this month to dismiss Spanta for failing to convince Iran to rethink a forced repatriation of illegal Afghan refugees.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai countered that he would keep Spanta in office until he received clarification from the Supreme Court about the legislature's right to vote to dismiss Spanta.

UN spokesman Adrian Edwards said the UN's view is that under Afghanistan's constitution, only Karzai can dismiss ministers.

Canadian PM stresses commitment to Afghanistan

May 22, 2007 - KABUL (AFP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Tuesday defended Canada's mission in Afghanistan amid faltering support back home, as President Hamid Karzai urged the world not to abandon his country.

Harper spoke at the start of his surprise two-day visit to Afghanistan, during which he is expected to meet some of the 2,500 Canadian soldiers here, most of them fighting the Taliban in insurgency-hit Kandahar province.

Asked at a media briefing with Karzai about growing concern in Canada over the mission, Harper said that the international community and Afghanistan "want us here."

The "Canadian men and women in uniform and who work for the various government agencies believe in their mission," he said. Harper added that his visit to Afghanistan was not because of polls suggesting flagging support for the mission. "I'm here because it's the right thing to do," he said.

Afghanistan is struggling to put down an insurgency by the extremist Taliban movement that was removed from power in 2001. Karzai said it would be dangerous for international troops to leave Afghanistan before the militants were defeated properly.

"There are still remnants of the terrorism that if we leave half-the-way will re-emerge and will haunt you back home whenever they want to," Karzai told reporters. "Let us complete that job, hard as it may look at times. It's a necessary price that we've to pay," he said.

Canada is one of 37 foreign countries in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force that is working alongside the Afghan security forces and a US-led coalition to bring the lawless country under government control.

Despite their efforts, the insurgency has grown steadily over the past six years, with the violence more intense than ever this year, especially in the south where Canadians work with soldiers from a handful of other nations.

The violence has already claimed more than 1,500 lives in 2007, with most of the dead militants, according to an AFP tally.

Fifty-four Canadian soldiers and one of the country's diplomats have been killed in Afghanistan since Canada joined the international mission in 2002. Six were killed in a roadside bomb early April.

Afghan future depends on infrastructure: Harper

Updated Tue. May. 22 2007 - CTV.ca News Staff

Canadians know that Afghanistan's future will not be secured through military means alone, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in Kabul on Tuesday, after arriving in the war-ravaged country.

The surprise two-day trip follows on the heels of weeks of opposition attacks on the Harper government's handling of the Afghan detainee controversy.

"The two leaders discussed the situation in terms of the military situation in Afghanistan, but also a lot of the aid work that Canada has been doing," said CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife, who is travelling with the prime minister in Afghanistan.

Harper arrived in the Afghan capital on a military flight.

His visit to Afghanistan, his second so far, appears designed to stress Canada's non-military role in rebuilding the country.

Canadians know that Afghanistan's future "depends on creating the economic, social and governmental infrastructure that ensures lasting peace and prosperity," Harper said.

"Canada and Afghanistan have together made significant progress in the last 14 months -- progress that was unthinkable only a few years ago,'' the prime minister added.

"Yes, there remain challenges, but our determination is strong. We are not daunted by shadows because we carry the light that defines them -- the light of freedom of human rights and the rule of law.''

Harper met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the start of his visit.

Karzai said the Afghan mission's objectives are to make sure the country no longer poses a threat, and to stabilize it so that terror-support regimes don't seize control.

The Afghan leader said the first mandate has been reached and urged Canada to follow through on supporting the second objective.

"Has the job been completely done? Have we accomplished all we are seeking? No -- if we leave half the way (Islamic militants) will re-emerge and haunt you back home whenever they want to. Let us complete it and not abandon it half the way.''

Karzai outlined the benefits that his country has seen as a result of Canada's efforts: 10,000 jobs have been created in Kandahar; 30,000 people, mostly women, have had access to microcredit loans; and 40,000 more infants have survived childbirth

In one of his stops in Kabul, Harper met with students at a local school for underprivileged children and dropped in on their painting, acting, woodworking and music classes.

The Aschiana School, located in a tightly guarded compound in the capital's downtown core, received $39,500 in annual funding from the Canadian government. More than 10,000 Afghan children attend the school.

"The prime minister is making the point and certainly president Karzai made the point today -- that they need Canadian and NATO troops in here to stabilize this country," Fife told CTV Newsnet.

"They all point out that although some of the military situation has not been good there has been a lot of significant progress made throughout Afghanistan in terms of trying to make the lives of the people better."

Harper also visited diplomats at the Canadian Embassy for a briefing on progress since the Taliban was ousted in 2001.

This is Harper's second trip to Afghanistan. He made the war-torn country his destination for his first foreign trip as prime minister, barely one month after taking office last year.

On that three-day trip, most of Harper's time was dedicated to visiting military installations and soldiers.

This one, however, comes after weeks of opposition attacks targeting the Harper government's handling of the Afghan detainee controversy.

There have been concerns that suspected militants arrested by Canadians and handed over to local authorities have suffered torture at the hands of Afghan police.

A recent poll conducted by The Strategic Counsel found about one-third of Canadians are outraged by the Afghan detainee controversy and feel that Canada's reputation has been hurt.

The pollster also found that 56 per cent said Canada shouldn't be held responsible for what happens to prisoners held in Afghan-controlled detention centres.

At the news conference, Karzai said he has personally spoken with the director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar and has been assured the torture charges have no basis.

Karzai vowed the days of human rights abuses are over in his country.

"My objective in life is to bring to the Afghan people the certainty of safety and security and life within the rule of law and bring a guarantee that no Afghan regardless of his status _ innocent or criminal _ will be tortured,'' Karzai said.

"It's a personal concern that I have. And it's a commitment the Afghan people would want me to make to the rest of the world. I will assure the Canadian people that if there is any such incident Afghans will be the first to take me to task on it ... Take my guarantee to the Canadian people on that.''

Harper lightened the mood by presenting Karzai with a tiny Ottawa Senators jersey for his infant son to wear.

"These are not members of our upper house. These are admired hockey players,'' Harper said. Karzai responded that he'd like his son to "play hockey as soon as he can walk on his feet.''

Harper's trip to Afghanistan was kept a tightly guarded secret.

His office made a call to journalists on Friday afternoon, telling them to pack for a warm climate, and to show up at a military hangar on Sunday if they wanted to accompany the prime minister to an unspecified foreign location.

Media were also warned they could be arrested if they leaked details of Harper's travel plans.

CTV's South Asia Bureau Chief Steve Chao, who is in Kandahar, reported that only the military's upper chain of command were informed of the prime minister's visit.

"Most troops on the ground right now still don't even know their prime minister is in the country," Chao told Newsnet. "So it is another example once again of how closely guarded his visit is. The main reason, of course, is security."

With files from The Canadian Press

As Canadian PM visits, Afghanistan's Karzai asks world to 'complete the job'

The Associated Press: May 22, 2007

KABUL, Afghanistan: President Hamid Karzai said during a visit by Candada's prime minister on Tuesday that Afghanistan needs the international community to "complete the job" — defeat the country's insurgency and stabilize the government.

Karzai's message was likely intended for constituents of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Polls show that a majority of Canadians want their 2,500 troops pulled out of Afghanistan once their current commitment is up in 2009.

Canadians have become increasingly concerned about the mounting numbers of Canadian troops dying alongside Afghan, U.S. and British forces in the most violent areas in the south.

Fifty-four Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed so far in Afghanistan.

"Let us complete the job, as hard as it may look at times," Karzai said alongside Harper at a news conference at the presidential palace.

"It is a necessary price that we have to pay," he said. "The Afghans are paying that price, the rest of the world is paying that price together with us, for which the Afghan people are extremely grateful. But the objective for all of us is to complete it, and not abandon it half the way."

Harper's conservative government opposes a firm exit date for its troops.

"This is Canada's most important foreign policy endeavor, both in terms of our military engagement and in terms of our humanitarian aid," he said. "Afghanistan is the biggest recipient of both."

Harper, on his second trip to Afghanistan, also visited a school for children who work in the streets.

Karzai thanked Harper for Canada's assistance to Afghanistan, saying the Canadian mission helps a country in need and fights terrorism for the safety and security of Canada and the rest of the world.

"The Canadian mission in Afghanistan is part of an international effort to fight terrorism after the tragic incidents of Sept. 11," said Karzai, referring to the 2001 attacks in the United States.

Tankers carrying oil to Afghanistan blasted

From correspondents in Islamabad, Pakistan - May 22, 2007

Ten tankers carrying oil for US-led troops in Afghanistan were blown up near Pakistan's border town of Torkham when two rockets were fired into the parking lot.

With no fire brigades or civil defence services available in the area to put out fires or assist during emergencies, the fire was still burning several hours after the rockets were fired Monday evening, The News reported from Landikotal in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Eight people, all Afghan refugees living in a locality near the parking lot, have been taken into custody. Each oil tanker contained 40,000 litres of oil.

Authorities later claimed to have found and defused three more rockets from a nearby mound. The rockets, which had timers attached to them, were Russian-made MRB-12 type.

NATO, that mans the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and is engaged in a major military operation against the Taliban and foreign mercenaries in south and southeastern parts of Afghanistan, depends heavily on supplies of petrol and fuel from Pakistan.

The tankers were owned by Pakistani tribals, one of whom said each oil tanker cost between Rs.3 million to Rs.4 million.

'It is a big loss to us. We are demanding compensation from the Attock Oil Company,' said Shakir Afridi, president of the Truckers' Association.

He said the company and the customs authorities were responsible for keeping them waiting for clearance for two weeks or even more at a stretch.

'It takes 20 to 25 days to get an email from Kabul clearing the crossing of an oil tanker into Afghanistan. We, the transporters, wait helplessly all this time,' Afridi added, threatening to stop oil supply to Afghanistan.

In the last month-and-a-half, 22 oil tankers and containers had been destroyed or damaged in different parts of NWFP but no steps had been taken by the government to provide security to transporters, he said.

U.S. Pays Pakistan to Fight Terror, but Patrols Ebb

By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE - New York Times May 20, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 19 — The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country's military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan's president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan's military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan's performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them. There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.

The White House would not directly answer the question of why Pakistan is being paid the same very large amount after publicly declaring that it is significantly cutting back on its patrols in the most important border area. But Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser, emphasized Pakistan's strategic importance in the region.

"Pakistan's cooperation is very important in the global war on terror and for our operations in Afghanistan," Mr. Johndroe said. "Our investments in that partnership have paid off over time, from increased information sharing to kills and captures of key terrorist operatives. There is more work to be done, the Pakistanis know that, and we are engaged with the Musharraf government to ramp up the fight."

The Pentagon, in response to inquiries, said Friday that the payments to Pakistan since October 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, had averaged $80 million a month. The Congressional Research Service estimated last year that they accounted for about a fifth of Pakistan's total military expenditures.

The administration told Congress in January that the Pakistanis performed operations that "would be difficult for U.S. Armed Forces to attain," and the Pentagon said those included carrying out joint operations, commanding observation posts and conducting land and maritime interdictions.

But General Musharraf announced in September that under a peace agreement with local militants his regular army troops in North Waziristan, the center of Al Qaeda's operations, would no longer operate checkpoints and that they would stay in garrisons, a decision that came after Pakistani forces suffered heavy casualties in the lawless tribal areas.

Soon after, appearing with President Bush, General Musharraf promised that tribal leaders and local militia would handle Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the tribal areas. Outside powers have long struggled to gain firm control of the remote and impoverished region, where fiercely independent tribes have largely ruled themselves for centuries. American officials say they think Osama bin Laden and other senior Al Qaeda members fled there in 2001.

Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Mahmud Ali Durrani, said in an interview that the agreements were working and that his country's military activities on the border itself were increasing. He said that Pakistan was being properly reimbursed for fuel, munitions and wear and tear on military equipment. "There are multiple small and big operations going on, we have deployed troops along the border," he said. "There is a lot of coordination."

American officials tell a different story, saying that Pakistani cooperation was mixed at best in 2005 and 2006, though they acknowledge that the Pakistanis have been more responsive to NATO and American requests in recent months. Still, they complain that the Pakistanis are paid whether they go on operations or sit in their barracks.

"They send us a bill, and we just pay it," said a senior military official who has dealt extensively with General Musharraf. "Nobody can really explain what we are getting for this money or even where it's going."

After visiting Pakistan last year, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, wrote in a report that the Defense Department's military office in Islamabad, the capital, recommended changing the aid program so that it was "paying for specific objectives that are planned and executed, rather than simply paying what the country bills." A senior military official engaged in battling the Taliban said many commanders and diplomats in the region agreed with that recommendation.

Mr. Johndroe, the national security spokesman, said the White House was unaware of any such debate and was not currently considering changing the program.

"I'm not aware of any serious discussion to cut off the funding," Mr. Johndroe said. The payments are critical to bolstering the military, General Musharraf's greatest source of support, particularly as he faces growing street protests over his removal of an independent-minded Supreme Court chief justice as the court was about to consider the legality of the president's decision to hold the nation's top military and political posts at the same time.

"In funding the Pakistani military, we are making it easier for Musharraf to fulfill his objectives, and we are keeping the military off his back," said Xenia Dormandy, a former director for South Asia for the National Security Council who is now a scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

"It is a very good question to raise," he added. "If we are giving a billion dollars to the military each year, would that money not be better spent building schools, roads and health services in that region?"

A study of the roughly $10 billion sent to Pakistan by the United States since 2002, conducted by Craig Cohen and Derek Chollet of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, found that $5.6 billion in reimbursements was in addition to $1.8 billion for security assistance, which mostly finances large weapons systems.

But those weapons are more useful, the authors concluded, in countering India than in fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The United States has also provided about $1.6 billion for "budget support," which Pakistan can use broadly, including for reducing debt.

In contrast, only about $900 million has been dedicated to health, food aid, democracy promotion and education, in a country where illiteracy rates are about 50 percent, and American policy makers say the education gap has opened the way for religious schools that can become hotbeds of extremism.

The Pentagon says the Pakistani expenses are reviewed by the Central Command and the American Embassy in Islamabad, and reported to Congress. But current and former commanders and diplomats say that the review is cursory and that there is no real way to audit the Pakistani operations.

Meanwhile, American and NATO military frustration with Pakistan's performance in the border area is growing, say current and former senior American military officials. They said that Taliban fighters had been seen regularly crossing the border within sight of Pakistani observation posts, but that the Pakistanis often made little effort to stop them.

Pakistani and American military commanders established direct radio communications between Pakistani and American border posts about two years ago, after a series of meetings on border issues. Since then, the system has worked well on some parts of the border and poorly in others, they said.

Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO supreme commander, said that when American or NATO forces saw Taliban fighters crossing the border and radioed nearby Pakistani posts, there sometimes was no answer. "Calls to apprehend or detain or restrict these ongoing movements, as agreed, were sometimes not answered," General Jones said. "Sometimes radios were turned off."

General Jones said he raised the problem with Gen. Ehsan ul Haq, the chairman of Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff, during General Haq's visit to NATO headquarters last fall.

Mr. Durrani, the ambassador, denied that Pakistani troops were failing to stop Taliban fighters at the border. He said the troops were carrying out joint operations with American forces based inside Afghanistan.

Two American analysts and one American soldier said Pakistani security forces had fired mortars shells and rocket-propelled grenades in direct support of Taliban ground attacks on Afghan Army posts. A copy of an American military report obtained by The New York Times described one of the attacks.

"Enemy supporting fires consisting of heavy machine guns and R.P.G.'s were provided by two Pakistani observation posts," said the report, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. The grenades killed one Afghan soldier and ignited an ammunition fire that destroyed the observation post, according to the report. It concluded that "the Pakistani military actively supported the enemy assault" on the Afghan post.

James Dobbins, an analyst at the RAND Corporation and a former senior American envoy to Afghanistan, said soldiers had relayed similar complaints to him. "I've heard reports of Pakistani units providing fire support from positions inside Pakistan for Taliban units operating against Afghan Army units inside Afghanistan," he said.

A second American analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said American soldiers had told him that Pakistani forces supported Taliban ground attacks with mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades at least two dozen times in 2005 and 2006. Senior American military officials said that they had not heard of the incidents, but added that Pakistani tribal militia, not Pakistani soldiers, could be supporting the Taliban attacks.

Mr. Durrani, the Pakistani ambassador, called the reports of direct Pakistani military support for the Taliban "preposterous." He said the Pakistani military, which has lost 700 soldiers fighting militants in the tribal areas, would never tolerate such activity from its soldiers. "If even once this happens," he said, "the whole system will come down like a ton of bricks on this person."

David E. Sanger reported from Washington and Brussels, and David Rohde from Washington and New York. Carlotta Gall contributed from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Canadians support talks with Taliban: poll

Updated Sun. May. 20 2007 - CTV.ca News Staff

Canadians still think it's a good idea to negotiate with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents as a way to end the violence there, a poll finds.

In The Strategic Counsel poll conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail, there was almost two-to-one support for the notion:

• Net good idea: 63 per cent
• Net bad idea: 32 per cent

The proportion of respondents saying it was a bad idea dropped by four percentage points when the same question was asked in October.

"In a way, it's a very Canadian thing to believe that nothing can't be solved by sitting across a table and talking," Peter Donolo of The Strategic Counsel told CTV.ca on Sunday.

However, Canadians might also think the mission is a morass, with no real end point in sight, he said.

Donolo said 57 per cent of Conservative Party members supported the idea of negotiations.

When NDP Leader Jack Layton called for peace talks with the Taliban last fall, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay later called the approach "naive." Some wags started calling Layton "Taliban Jack."

Afghanistan's Senate has recently called on the government of President Hamid Karzai to open talks with homegrown Taliban militants, in part as a response to civilian casualties caused by combat between the militants and NATO and U.S.-led troops.

An explosive political issue in Canada in recent weeks has been the fate of captured Taliban suspects who faced abuse or even torture at the hands of Afghan officials.

When asked how they feel about the treatment of detainees, only 31 per cent say they were outraged and that Canada's reputation has been hurt, while 56 per cent said Canada shouldn't be held responsible for what happens to prisoners held in Afghan-controlled detention centres.

"Basically, Canadians are pretty sanguine about this issue," Donolo said.

The level of outrage was highest in Quebec, at 37 per cent. However, more than half of Bloc Quebecois supporters pronounced themselves outraged, he said.

The public's feelings on the issue stands in contrast with the amount of time spent on it by opposition politicians in Parliament's question period.

Donolo said if the issue was damaging for the minority Conservative government, the damage came more from their perceived handling of it more so than the issue itself.

In the "horse race" portion of the poll released Friday, the Conservatives lost two percentage points in popular support compared to a late April poll (percentage point change from the April 21-24 poll):

• Conservatives - 34 per cent (-2)
• Liberals - 31 per cent (+1)
• NDP - 16 per cent (+3)
• Bloc Quebecois - 10 per cent (+1)
• Greens - 9 per cent (-12)

Donolo noted that Canadians hold the military in high regard.

The poll asked about support for public institutions. Eighty-six per cent of respondents say they trust the military, with a net trust rating of +76. Here is how some other institutions compared:

• Canada Post - 90 per cent, +81
• RCMP - 80 per cent, +65
• Canada Border Services Agency - 69 per cent, +53
• CSIS - 60 per cent, +39
• House of Commons - 58 per cent, +24

While they may trust the military far more than they do politicians, Canadians are still lukewarm about the Afghan mission.

The poll shows a slight rise in support for the mission compared to a late April poll (percentage point change in brackets):

• Total support - 40 per cent (+4)
• Total oppose - 55 per cent (-2)

However, only six per cent say they strongly support the mission, compared to 24 per cent who say they strongly oppose it, Donolo said.

Even with the national rise, those opposed hold at least a bare majority in Quebec, Ontario and the West, he said.

Technical notes

• This poll was prepared by The Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail.
• Sampling was carried out between May 14 and 17.
• One thousand Canadians over the age of 18 were interviewed in a proportionate national sample.
• The national margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
• Quebec: 247 sample size, 6.3 percentage-point margin of error
• Ontario: 379 sample size, 5.0 percentage-point margin of error
• West: 279 sample size, 5.7 percentage-point margin of error

U.S. blames Taliban for Afghan civilian casualties

STEVE HOLLAND – Reuters May 20, 2007

Crawford, Tex. — The White House expressed concern about rising civilian casualties in Afghanistan on Sunday but blamed Taliban fighters. "You have to keep in mind that this enemy we're fighting -- part of their strategy is to put civilians in harm's way," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

U.S. and NATO troops are trying to defeat a spring offensive by the Taliban, but dozens of civilians have been killed in recent weeks in operations, according to Afghan officials.

"It's tragic that in the effort to provide peace and security in the country, that noncombatants and children become killed or injured in these activities," Mr. Fratto told reporters. "We don't want to see any erosion of support from the civilian population in Afghanistan."

The rising civilian deaths in Afghanistan were on the agenda for talks between President George W. Bush and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who was arriving at Mr. Bush's Texas ranch for a working dinner with Mr. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

More talks are planned for Monday followed by a joint news conference. Besides Afghanistan, the leaders were likely to discuss Russian President Vladimir Putin's concerns about U.S. plans to build a missile shield in eastern Europe.

Russia said this month it would no longer inform NATO states about movements of troops on its territory, freezing its commitments under the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty because of the dispute over the missile shield.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has urged foreign troops to avoid civilian casualties while hunting militants, to stop searching people's houses, and to co-ordinate attacks with his government.

But the growing death toll has triggered protests by Afghans demanding Mr. Karzai's resignation and the expulsion of American troops from Afghanistan. Germany has called for a review of the way Western forces operate in Afghanistan.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force has some 37,000 troops in Afghanistan, around 15,000 of them from the United States, according to the Pentagon.

Desperate Taliban Changes Strategy

Strategy Page - 05/21/2007 –

Another Taliban ambush backfired, resulting in at least 25 dead Taliban. NATO and U.S. aerial surveillance, and a growing network of informants, puts the Taliban at an enormous information disadvantage. When the shooting starts, the Taliban have only vague idea of who is where, while their opponents are getting live overhead video of the action. That, plus smart bombs and better trained troops, usually results in a very lopsided outcome. As a result of this, the Taliban now says it is getting out of the countryside and moving the war to the urban areas. This would appear suicidal, because the Taliban has far more support in the countryside than they do in the towns and cities. But with Pakistan and Iran forcing the remaining four million Afghan refugees to return home, it is believed that many of these people will settle in the cities. These refugees were the original source of Taliban recruits, and continued to be very pro-Taliban. Moreover, the Taliban believe they will be safer in the cities, carrying out a terrorist campaign. The Taliban appear to be ignoring what's going on in Iraq. There, the terrorist bombers are hated by the population, and most of the Iraqi Sunni Arab population that supports the terrorists, have been driven out of the country. Trying to move the war to the cities is a desperate measure, and one that will only make the Taliban weaker. It's bad news for the many future victims of Taliban suicide bombers, but good news in that it is a sign that the Taliban is losing and desperate for something that will save them.

May 20, 2007: Someone fired rockets at fuel trucks preparing to cross the Pakistani border. Several trucks were destroyed. Moving this fuel is big business, and involves big payoffs to warlords and tribal chiefs to insure safe passage. It's believed that recent attacks on trucks are not Taliban related, but the result of disputes over who can haul fuel, and at what cost.

May 19, 2007: Three German soldiers, and six Afghan civilians, were killed by a suicide bomber in the northern town of Kunduz. The Taliban have been trying to kill German soldiers, knowing that many German politicians want to withdraw German soldiers from Afghanistan, and have so far blocked German soldiers from participating in combat. So far this year, sixty foreign soldiers have been killed. That's about four times the murder rate of Washington, DC.

May 18, 2007: In another example of how disadvantaged the Taliban is on the battlefield, a large Taliban ambush force had the tables turned on them near the Pakistan border. Nearly 70 were killed in the subsequent fighting.

May 17, 2007: There continues to be gunfire between Afghan and Pakistani border guards, who are feuding over where the border should be. Afghans assert that the Pakistanis moved their border posts during the 1980s, while everyone was distracted fighting the Russian invaders. Pakistan refuses to call in surveyors to check the location of border posts. U.S. officials have quietly urged the Pakistanis to do the survey, because American satellite survey photos make it clear that the Pakistani border posts are often many kilometers inside what should be Afghan controlled territory. Pakistan does not want to move the border posts because it would anger some of the Pushtun tribes on their side of the border, who would lose control of some territory.

May 16, 2007: Three of the Taliban freed two months, in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, were killed alongside Taliban Mullah Dadullah last weekend. One of them was also Dadullahs brother. The government also thanks unnamed Afghans who had passed on information about Dadullahs movements. The Taliban have been arresting "traitors" on both sides of the border, and killing some of them. It appears that some innocents have died as a result.

May 15, 2007: At least ten percent (36 Afghans) freed from Guantanamo have turned out to be Taliban, and rejoined the fight. Two have been killed and another captured. So far, 340 detainees have been freed from Guantanamo, nearly all of them were captured in Afghanistan.

Pakistan faces the Taleban's tentacles

By Barbara Plett BBC News, Bannu, northern Pakistan

In a remote Pakistani town, a singer lives in fear.

Zaher Uddin used to perform at weddings, now he sings only in the privacy of his home. The white walls are draped with festive garlands, tools of his newly defunct trade. Music has been banned by local religious militants, or Taleban.

Mr Uddin talks about the hardship of his job, but he won't talk about the Taleban, he's too afraid.

Vigilante vice squads have recently begun to patrol the streets of Surai Norang, located near the city of Bannu in north-western Pakistan.

Armed Pakistani tribesmen had been imposing their own hardline version of Islam in the lawless border region near Afghanistan. But their influence is spreading, and the state seems powerless to stop it.

One music shop owner in Surai Norang has learned that the hard way. He switched to selling Islamic cassettes after his store was bombed. In the two months since he's made less than $4.

"The police are not helping or protecting us," he says. "In fact they called us and told us not to sell these music cassettes, otherwise we'd be in trouble."

The members of this radical religious movement are Pakistani, but they're inspired by the Afghan Taleban. They support its leader Mullah Omar, rather than Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf.

A Taleban commander, Qari Sarfraz, agrees to meet us. He and his men drive across a riverbed in their pick-up trucks for a rendezvous in a wheat field. They have Kalashnikov rifles thrown over their shoulders, and pistols stuck into holsters slung across their chests.

The commander tells us he's the head of a mobile unit sent from the tribal region of North Waziristan to the Bannu area. He says the Taleban have a duty to enforce Islamic law wherever they can because the government has failed to do so.

He supports those who've tried to assassinate the president in the past - they were "doing the right thing", he says.

"We don't have the power or capacity to remove this government. We cannot bring down the Musharraf regime, so we don't intend to do that. What we are trying to do is that in our area, if we see something un-Islamic happening, we try to stop it, because we are responsible for our own area."

The Pakistani Taleban are also blamed for a recent wave of suicide bombings. Qari Sarfraz says his men haven't been involved.

"We believe that you are justified in carrying out suicide bombings against the enemies of Islam," he says. "But if you do it the way they are doing it in Pakistan, killing their own people and civilians... I don't know. Those who are doing it, sponsoring it, they have to answer Allah and justify it."

After extending an invitation to lunch the men clamber into their trucks and speed away.

All this seems a world away from the capital city, Islamabad. It's a liberal, secular place by Pakistani standards: men and women mingle freely, they're able to buy the latest Western music, DVDs and fashion.

But in the centre of town the radical Red Mosque, or Lal Masjid, has also been challenging the government to enforce Islamic law.

Its religious students have occupied a public building to put pressure on the authorities. And they've launched their own self-styled anti vice campaign: the women abducting alleged prostitutes, the men torching a pile of videos and DVDs in the middle of town.

Among their targets was the tourism minister, denounced by the mosque for an innocent hug while paragliding in France. It was reacting to newspaper pictures of Nilofar Bakhtiar embracing her elderly instructor.

But Mrs Bakhtiar says the government can't fight fire with fire. "Now [the Taleban] are showing up in the capital and they're trying to show their strength," she says. "So we want to negotiate and convince them they're wrong; if we just start shooting tomorrow, then we will also be Taleban, and we don't want to do that."

The government's failure to enforce its authority in the heart of the capital has infuriated Pakistan's Westernised elite. Some accuse it of cultivating the Lal Masjid crisis to distract attention from growing domestic problems.

But others say the Lal Masjid shows just how far Talebanisation has reached. They say the government's refusal to act is a sign of weakness, and in the vacuum, Talebanisation grows stronger.

U.S., NATO officials push anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan

Thriving heroin trade funneling funds to Taliban

By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press May 22, 2007

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Profits from Afghanistan's thriving poppy fields are increasingly flowing to Taliban fighters, leading U.S. and NATO officials to conclude that the counterinsurgency mission must now include stepped-up anti-drug efforts. This year's heroin-producing poppy crop will at least match last year's record haul and could exceed it by up to 20 percent, officials say, meaning more money to fuel the Taliban's violent insurgency.

"It's wrong to say that you can do one thing and not the other," Ronald Neumann, who recently stepped down as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said of the link between anti-drug and anti-terrorism efforts. "You have to deal with both at the same time."

Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, and a significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

Drug control has not been part of the official mandate of international forces in Afghanistan. But there is a growing push for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, to play a more active role in sharing intelligence and detecting drug convoys and heroin labs, said Daan Everts, NATO's senior civilian official in Afghanistan.

There is "increasing international interest in seeing a more assertive supportive role in ISAF in the counternarcotics strategy implementation," he said.

International forces also might provide support for operations targeting senior drug traffickers, Neumann said.

Military commanders who viewed drugs as a minor irritant in 2002, when poppy production was much lower, have reassessed the importance of the vast fields of red and white poppies their soldiers drive past in security convoys, said a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn't want to be seen as criticizing the military.

It's too early to say what this year's crop will be. But another Western official with knowledge of the drug trade said it could exceed last year's record 407,000 acres by as much as 20 percent. The official declined to give his name because of the nature of his work.

NATO's Afghanistan role defended

By James Gerstenzang, Times Staff Writer May 22, 2007

CRAWFORD, TEXAS — President Bush and the secretary-general of NATO defended the alliance Monday in the face of growing concern over civilian deaths in Afghanistan, arguing that its troops held the moral high ground against the Taliban.

NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that though alliance forces tried to avert civilian casualties, they were sometimes unavoidable.

"But let me tell you one thing: We are not in the same moral category as our opponents, the Taliban, in Afghanistan," he said with Bush at his side during a news conference in a rough-hewn patch of mowed lawn and weeds outside the president's office here. "We don't behead people. We don't burn schools. We don't kill teachers. We don't plant roadside bombs. We don't send in suicide bombers."

The alliance forces in Afghanistan include U.S. units and troops from 25 other countries.

Complaints by Afghans have grown in recent months along with a resurgence of Taliban activity and an increase in civilian casualties. Many of the complaints have centered on recent U.S. and NATO operations, including airstrikes in western Afghanistan that reportedly killed 50 villagers and a U.S. Marine unit's attack on a group of Afghans in March that left 19 civilians dead and 50 wounded.

Bush said the Taliban had surrounded itself with civilians as human shields.

De Hoop Scheffer and his wife, Jeannine de Hoop Scheffer-van Oorschot, spent the night at the guesthouse at Bush's 1,583-acre Prairie Chapel Ranch, accepting an invitation the president has offered to only a few foreign dignitaries. The visit signaled the importance that the White House has attached to the U.S. relationship with NATO.

The leaders rode mountain bikes in the morning between their meetings, crossing terrain dotted with wildflowers and yellow blooms on low-lying cactus.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is playing a key role in two central elements of Bush's foreign policy: Afghanistan and the establishment of a missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland, a project opposed by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

The Bush administration says the antimissile weapons are intended to protect the United States and its European allies from long-range missiles from countries such as Iran. The Kremlin says they threaten Russia's strategic deterrent.

Afghanistan is the most troubling issue NATO faces. Roughly 37,000 troops, including 15,000 Americans, are fighting the insurgency led by the Taliban, a radical Islamic movement driven from power by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

The sleepover summit was one of several international meetings on Bush's schedule during a period of intense diplomatic efforts. He held a farewell meeting last week with departing British Prime Minister Tony Blair and leaves early next month on a weeklong visit to Europe built around the annual Group of 8 meeting of leading industrial nations, in Germany.

That trip includes stops in Poland, Bulgaria and, for the first time on a U.S. president's schedule, Albania. Throughout his presidency, Bush has received warmer receptions in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe, where there is greater dissent over his foreign policies.

NATO troops are deployed on Pakistan`s Western border

Tuesday May 22, 2007

NATO troops are deployed on Pakistan`s Western border for the stability of peace in Afghanistan. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the alliance`s troops would stay in Afghanistan without any exit time-frame. The main trouble to peace is the re-surfacing of Taliban. Mr Karzai has squarely blamed that the Taliban move freely across the Durand Line while Pakistan has rejected this as false.

It was the force of Taliban against which the US and its coalition forces initiated the war on terror in 2001. Memories are still fresh that instead of giving a pitched fight the Taliban faded into the countryside while the US occupied the main cities. As the NATO forces had no control outside the urban limits of the cities, Taliban had time to reorganize themselves. And since Mr Karzai, in the last five years, never bothered to worry about the Taliban, they resurfaced.

A strong and stable Afghanistan is in the interest of Pakistan but for this India must be kept out of the trio of Afghanistan, Pakistan and US. It is encouraging to learn that Pakistan is increasing its troops at the Afghan Border. The number of troops should be enough to allow Pakistan to meet the dual threat: 1) to defend the Western border against any attack, 2) to meet India`s challenge from the east.

Brig (r) A Q Anjum - Rawalpindi

Italy urges Pakistan, Afghanistan to unite against common enemy

May 22, 2007, South Asia News

Islamabad - Amid foreign diplomatic efforts to mend strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema on Tuesday urged the neighbours to enhance their cooperation in the war against terrorism.

'The two countries should increase cooperation and understanding. The two have a common enemy, fundamentalists and fanatics,' D'Alema said at a joint press conference in Islamabad with his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri.

'Stability in Afghanistan cannot be achieved without regional cooperation,' he stressed, while calling for 'strong national reconciliation within Afghanistan to isolate the terrorists'.

At the same time D'Alema deplored civilian deaths at the hands of NATO forces as unacceptable and said these could harm efforts to win the hearts of ordinary Afghans.

The minister arrived in Islamabad from Afghanistan where he visited some of his country's 1,800 troops and held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul.

D'Alema said he hoped progress would be made next week when both countries are due to attend a meeting in Germany of foreign ministers of the G8 group of leading industrial countries.

Pakistan was also invited to an international conference on 'rule of law in Afghanistan' in Rome in July, he said.

Tensions between the neighbours - both allies in the US-led war on terrorism - have been running high over Taliban and al-Qaeda raids across the 2,500-kilometer border into Afghanistan.

The Afghan government accuses Pakistan of slacking in efforts to seal the border while Pakistan says it has done more than anyone to help ensure security along the frontier.

Under diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions, Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer arranged a meeting between Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in Turkey last month.

Meanwhile, the situation deteriorated further when Pakistani and Afghan troops exchanged fire at the border several times this month resulting in several deaths on both sides.

Kasuri reiterated Pakistan's commitment to the war against terrorism and said stability in Afghanistan was also a priority for Islamabad.

'We have not joined the coalition to please anyone but because it is in our national interest,' he said.

Iran crackdown on Afghan migrants

By Frances Harrison BBC News, Tehran

Afghans and other foreigners are no longer allowed to live in any cities on Iran's eastern border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials say.

The Iranian state-run news agency, Irna, quoted a senior security official saying all cities in Sistan Baluchistan province would be off limits.

Many refugees and illegal migrants live and work in the border provinces, but have now been told to move elsewhere.

Iran has already begun a huge operation to send home illegal Afghan migrants. The UN says 70,00 have been expelled in the past month.

The operation saw the eastern border city of Zabul virtually emptied of its sizeable Afghan population.

Now the acting commander of the police has told Irna that all cities in Sistan Baluchistan will be off limits for both legal Afghan refugees and illegal migrants - as well as other foreigners.

He said even those legally in the province should move elsewhere and no excuse such as being involved in trade partnerships with Iranians would be accepted.

Those who failed to move, he said, would be rounded up and expelled.

There have already been concerns about the way Iran is sending home so many illegal Afghan workers - the sheer numbers have been difficult for the Afghan authorities to deal with.

And there have been reports of inhumane treatment, such as families being separated in the deportation process.

Now the director-general for the employment of foreign nationals has told Irna that Iranians who employ illegal Afghans will have court cases filed against them.

He says more than 100,000 illegal Afghans have been sent home in the past month and he predicted that half a million would be returned by September and a million by next March.

Dubai ruler announces 10 bln dollar education fund for Middle East

SHUNEH, Jordan (AFP) - A World Economic Forum on the Middle East wraps up on Sunday after highlighting the need for education to strengthen competitiveness and amid calls to support an Arab plan for peace with Israel.

United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum announced a 10-billion-dollar education fund to bridge what he called a wide knowledge gap between the region and the developed world in the West and Asia.

"Our only choice is to bridge this gap as quickly as possible, because our age is defined by knowledge," he said.

Sheikh Mohammed, who also rules the booming emirate of Dubai, said the foundation will establish research centres in the region and in 2008 will begin providing scholarships for students to top world universities and institutes.

Jordan's King Abdullah II also urged delegates to think of the future.

"These young men and women deserve to be part of a prospering region that is playing its rightful role on the world stage," he told the forum on Friday.

Of 325 million people living in the Arab world, more than 200 million are under 24, the king said.

Appeals to invest in people were also echoed by other participants, with one panelist pointing out that only 298 patents have been issued in the Middle East and North Africa.

"The United States issues nearly 500 patents per day," said Arif Naqvi, a leading UAE businessman. "The region can only close this tremendous innovation gap through education."

On the political front, an Arab plan for peace with Israel received further backing, with King Abdullah calling it an "historic opportunity to achieve a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement."

"It is in the interest of this entire region -- and indeed, the world -- that we succeed," he said, referring to the Saudi initiative revived at an Arab summit in March.

The plan offers Israel normal relations in exchange for its withdrawal from all land seized in 1967, the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel rejected the plan when it was first mooted in 2002 but has said recently that the proposal could provide a basis for talks, provided there are amendments to the refugee issue.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Muslim nations should support the plan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz called the Palestinian issue "core to stability in the world."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was sceptical, however, saying that all previous peace plans had failed "because of the approach of the other side" -- meaning Israel.

"We do not see any chance for the success of the Arab peace initiative because it fails to address fateful issues, like the capital of a Palestinian state and the right of return for some five million refugees," he added.

Jordan's Prime Minister and Defence Minister Marouf Bakhit said that "for the first time the Arabs have taken control of the peace agenda."

Some 1,000 participants from around 50 countries attended the annual forum which will be held in Egypt next year.

Leaders of the G11 developing countries also met on the sidelines and agreed on a framework of cooperation with G8 industrialised nations in a bid to ease debt and build more prosperous economies.

New Novel By 'Kite Runner' Author Focuses On Women

May 22, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Millions of readers around the world were passionately moved by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini's first novel, "The Kite Runner."

Hosseini's follow-up -- a novel called "A Thousand Splendid Suns" whose two protagonists are women -- is being released today.

Hosseini gained international acclaim after "The Kite Runner" was published in 2003.But the 42-year-old Afghan emigre says that story about the troubled friendship of two boys left a large part of the Afghan story untold: the women's perspective.

Hosseini says he was "on a mission" to portray the plight of Afghan women when he wrote his second novel. In it, Hosseini asks what the world really knows about Afghan women who live behind the veil of the burqa -- what their inner lives are like, their thoughts, their hopes, and their dreams.

Hosseini says he wants his readers to lose themselves in the novel's story and characters. But he also hopes they can gain some understanding of the struggles of Afghan women, who live in a male-dominated society where they are routinely denied freedom or dignity.

"There's been so much said and written about Afghanistan, [but] precious little about the inner lives of the people there living in that environment in those conditions," Hosseini says in a video to promote the book. "And maybe after reading this novel, people will have a little bit more empathy for what happened to Afghans. Particularly the Afghan women, who really, really, I think, suffered the most out of everybody in Afghanistan -- especially in the last 15 years."

As the son of an Afghan diplomat, Hosseini did not experience most of the history that pervades his latest novel.

Hosseini's family left Afghanistan to live in Paris in 1976 when he was 11. In 1980, after the Soviet invasion, the family moved to California, where he attended high school and later studied medicine.

He says the main characters of his new book are not based on any women he knows. But he says they are partly inspired by the stories he heard in Kabul in 2003, when he returned to Afghanistan for the first time.

Khaled Hosseini: Doctor of suspense

The author of The Kite Runner releases his second novel Tuesday and A Thousand Splendid Suns is just as full of gut-wrenching twists. No wonder the movie rights are already sold

JAMES ADAMS May 22, 2007 at 2:28 AM EDT

Khaled Hosseini isn't going to do a J.K. Rowling, at least not any time soon, and the world of English-language book publishing has to be happy about that.

As everyone knows by now, the seventh instalment in Rowling's Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is to be published worldwide in mid-July. Of course, it's going to sell a gazillion copies but it's also the final Potter (and possibly Rowling's last book ever), and that has left booksellers and Rowling's publishers fretting about whence, in a post-Potter universe, their next bonanza is coming. If it comes at all.

Cue fanfare for Khaled Hosseini, the Kabul-born son of an Afghan diplomat who fled with his family to California in 1980 in the wake of the Soviet invasion of their homeland. Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, published in 2003, was an international success, particularly in its paperback incarnation, and to date it's sold more than four-million copies. Indeed, sales-tracker BookNet Canada reported last week that, in 2005, it was the top-selling fiction trade paperback here and only dropped to No. 4 last year.

Not bad for a book that "kinda began as a lark, much as I hate to kinda say that," Hosseini, a physician by training, admitted recently.

Now there's a new novel, and anticipation is running high for A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is set to arrive in bookstores in Canada (Penguin's the publisher), the United States and Britain this week.

"Creative writing had always been my private desire," Hosseini, 42, claimed on the phone from his home in San Jose, Calif., where he lives with his wife, an Afghan-American lawyer, and their two children. "But I didn't allow myself much of a chance to daydream about it because (a) it seemed highly, highly unlikely and (b) I never believed I had the wherewithal, the writing chops to make a living from it."

Now "it's feeling more and more like a craft to me, like a profession." In fact, he's been on "an open-ended sabbatical from medicine for the last 2½ years," a sabbatical that's likely to "extend for the next year or two." It is, he acknowledged, "hard to fathom going back."

All of which is especially good news for Hosseini's British publisher, Bloomsbury, which also publishes the Potter series. Last year the company's sales slipped by almost 42 per cent from the year previous when, according to the Economic and Social Research Council, Bloomsbury had both the top-selling and third best-selling books in Britain for 2005 in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Kite Runner.

An epic narrative sprawling from Afghanistan and Pakistan to California and back again, The Kite Runner is the story of Amir, the son of an affluent Pashtun businessman from Kabul, and the troubled relationship Amir has through the pre- and post-Taliban eras with Hassan, his servant.

While The Kite Runner earned appreciative reviews at the outset - it was hyped as "the first Afghanistan novel in English" - its sales were "a slow, simmering thing" that only started to boil after April, 2004 when the paperback was issued and began to be taken up by reading groups and independent bookstores.

Whatever pressure Hosseini felt in crafting his second novel came more from himself than from his publishers or agent, he confessed. "Deadlines were extended when I needed it, and they didn't call me up to say how are things were going, when can we see the manuscript."

Admittedly, before he began A Thousand Splendid Suns, Hosseini felt a determination "to prove [The Kite Runner] wasn't just a one-time deal. But all of it's kind of nonsense, really, because once I began writing the second novel and was drawn into that world ... all of that talk became moot, the volume knob on that really went down, and all the background noise was gone."

"Fortunately," he added with a chuckle, "I've always been able to just completely detach myself from expectations once I'm in the throes of it."

In fact, A Thousand Splendid Suns "seems like more of an accomplishment for me than the first because it was created in this environment that might have had a negative impact on me."

Whereas The Kite Runner is a decidedly male book, A Thousand Splendid Suns is written, convincingly, from the female perspective. Stretching from the early 1970s through to 2003, it's the story of Mariam and Laila, Afghan women of widely different backgrounds and ages whose lives become fatefully intertwined when each ends up married to a sadistic Kabul shopkeeper and cobbler named Rasheed.

Initially, the women despise each other but eventually they form a fierce friendship against a backdrop of rising desperation, violence and what Hosseini calls "Afghanistan's feudal, tribal system of life."

As with Hosseini's first novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns is rich with incident and gut-wrenching twists, so it comes as no surprise to learn that film producer Scott Rudin (The Hours, The Manchurian Candidate, Notes on a Scandal) has already optioned it as a movie. "It's my instinct to write that way," Hosseini says, explaining how he "grew up around amazing storytellers [and the] long tradition of oral storytelling in Afghanistan. It was a completely different culture - there was no television, no Internet, of course, some newspapers, very few magazines. So people sat around and told stories and people had amazing attention spans as a result."

He laughed. "I feel in my writing that there should be something critically at stake in every page and that it's my job to keep the reader worried about the fate of some character. If I feel the reader relaxing, it's like I'm not doing my job."

Hosseini is the first to admit that a great part of the appeal of The Kite Runner and now A Thousand Splendid Suns is their ostensible behind-the-scenes depictions of a country that's "front-page stuff, controversial, volatile." At the same time, he said he tries "not to overstep my boundaries, to not say things I'm not qualified to say or, if I do say them, I preface the remarks by saying I'm truly under-qualified to say them." After all, he left Kabul when he was only 11 and has returned to Afghanistan only once for a two-week visit in 2003.

Even though Hosseini never sought out the role of spokesperson -"I'm a reluctant recipient of it; that's a mantle people have passed down to me" - he acknowledged it's understandable that non-Afghans often look to him to interpret events in his homeland. History, in effect, is not allowing him the luxury to be another Alice Munro or John Updike and "it's something I feel ambivalent about," he said, even at times "hypocritical."

Certainly there are "bigger points I want to make through my writing. When I wrote The Kite Runner, my entire primary focus was on this very intimate story of these two boys," he observed. "But with [A Thousand Splendid Suns], the idea that got me to sit down ... was the plight and the struggle of Afghan women. In some sense, I felt a kind of responsibility to write about it. I'd reached some notoriety with my first novel and I figured there'd be some readership for my second; I wanted to throw my two cents in so that people would understand a little bit better, to the extent that I understand it, the situation of women in Afghanistan."

Of course, this "sets up expectations, probably unreasonable expectations of education among some readers, beyond just literary enjoyment and entertainment." And it's been reported that some Afghanistan-bound U.S. soldiers have used The Kite Runner as a sort of field guide for the experiences ahead.

Occasionally, Hosseini has talked to his friend, fellow author Amy Tan, about this dilemma, if it is a dilemma. After the phenomenal success, in the late 1980s, of The Joy Luck Club, Tan was anointed "the expert on all things Chinese or Chinese-American, and that's not a title she either wanted or sought or accepted. To some extent, that's happened with me," Hosseini remarked.

"What can I tell you?" he said with a shrug. "You write the book and then other people decide what it's about and what its place is. What it is, finally, is not up to you."

Khaled Hosseini tours Canada July 9-12, including appearances at the Chateau Laurier Ballroom in Ottawa July 9 and Toronto's Winter Garden Theatre July 11.

Jolie shocked by death threats for supporting Afghan refugees

Malaysia Sun - 05/22/2007 - Washington - Actress Angelina Jolie has revealed that she was afraid to return to New York after she was threatened dire consequences for raising voice for Afghan refugees following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The actress says when she met the natives of Afghanistan during her visit to the country shortly after the tragedy, she realised that they themselves were victims of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

She said that her appeals to the US government not to begin war with Afghanistan were of no use, as not only did the fighting begin between the two countries, but some people also launched an attack on her.

"I went on a show a few days after 9/11... to say that we needed to be focused on the Afghan people, the refugee families. We were focused on the Taliban as an enemy, and these people were their victims too," Contactmusic quoted her as saying.

"I got a phone call and two letters that said, very aggressively, how dare I say that we should help anyone else after September 11: 'We should be helping everybody in New York and that's it. F**k you! I hope your family dies, you're anti-American.' I was so shocked that I was actually nervous the first time I went back to New York a few months later," she added.

[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.]