In this bulletin:

• US, Afghan Forces Target Taleban Militants in Eastern Afghanistan
• 6 Taliban militants killed in E. Afghanistan
• MoD names soldier killed in Afghanistan
• More civilians killed by US/NATO forces as fighting intensifies in Afghanistan
• G8 foreign ministers meet with counterparts from Pakistan, Afghanistan
• UN refugee agency briefs German foreign minister on Afghans in Pakistan
• Taliban joins forces with al-Qaida
• Al-Qaida escapee from U.S. detention in Afghanistan lashes out at U.S. Saudi allies
• Special forces deploy in Afghanistan
• AFGHANISTAN: Food aid trucks come under increasing attacks
• Two Finnish peacekeepers to go on trial for taking bribes in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan: war crimes amnesty prepares further atrocities
• 60 ship out for war in Afghanistan
• Bad blood spreads to Afghanistan's north
• EU to Begin Police Training Mission in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan independent Kabul Weekly re-launched
• Prince Harry could go to Afghanistan
• Afghanistan Agri-Education To Be Developed

US, Afghan Forces Target Taleban Militants in Eastern Afghanistan

By Benjamin Sand Voice of America Islamabad 30 May 2007

U.S. and Afghan forces in Eastern Afghanistan have killed at least six suspected insurgents. Violent attacks are on the rise throughout much of Afghanistan, including areas previously considered relatively secure. From Islamabad, VOA correspondent Benjamin Sand reports.

Fighting erupted early Wednesday in the mountains outside the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province. U.S. military spokesman Major Chris Belcher says allied forces returned fire from local insurgents.

"Credible intelligence led the forces to the compound suspected of housing local Taleban fighters," he said. "As the combined force approached the compound, they took fire and quickly responded, returning fire."

He says six men were killed, with four militants detained for questioning.

In a separate operation Afghan and coalition forces in the neighboring Khost province arrested three suspected al-Qaida militants during a raid Tuesday morning. Both provinces share a border with Pakistan's remote tribal region, where U.S. and Afghan officials say pro-Taleban and al-Qaida militants have established strategic bases.

U.S.-led coalition forces have carried out a series of raids on suspected Taleban targets on the Afghan side of the border in recent weeks, trying to pre-empt a much-anticipated Taleban offensive.

The operations appear to be working and so far there has been a limited increase in militant activity in the region.

Elsewhere however, there is growing evidence that anti-government militants are on the move.

Afghan officials say there has already been a rise in the number of indirect attacks on foreign and Afghan forces this year.

A bomb in the southern province of Uruzgan killed at least four policemen Wednesday morning. A similar bomb killed another two private security guards a day earlier in nearby Helmand province, deep inside the Taleban's traditional stronghold.

Violence is also increasing in the previously stable northern provinces where the Taleban has historically been relatively weak. There have been at least three suicide bomb attacks in the north in the past two weeks. The Taleban has claimed responsibility for all of them.

Speaking to reporters in Kabul Wednesday, NATO spokeswoman Lt. Col. Angela Billings said more than 500 forces are taking part in a major counter-insurgency operation in the southern province of Kandahar.

"ISAF and Afghan national security forces continue to prosecute our mission, continue to provide for security despite whatever the Taleban extremists may have planned themselves," she said.

Afghan soldiers, along with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), launched the fresh actions earlier this week.

6 Taliban militants killed in E. Afghanistan

UPDATED: 16:33, May 30, 2007 The U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces killed six Taliban insurgents early Wednesday in Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan, a coalition statement said.

The forces carried out an operation against a compound in mountains west of Jalalabad city, the provincial capital, which was suspected of housing local Taliban fighters, the statement said.

As the forces were approaching the compound, militants inside opened fire and a conflict broke out, it added. Six militants were killed in the clash, and four others were arrested, according to the statement.

There were no casualties of civilians and coalition soldiers, it said.

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgency, over 1,700 persons, most of whom were Taliban militants, have been killed in Afghanistan this year.

Source: Xinhua

MoD names soldier killed in Afghanistan

Wed May 30, 2007 8:52AM BST

LONDON (Reuters) - A British soldier killed in Afghanistan had survived service in Iraq and was engaged to be married, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said on Wednesday.

It paid tribute to the dead soldier, 31-year-old Corporal Darren Bonner of the 1st battalion of the Royal Anglian Regiment.

The soldier, affectionately known as "Big Daz", died when an explosion hit a convoy in which he was travelling in the Gereshk region of Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, on Monday.

Cpl Bonner -- the lead signaller with A (Norfolk) Company -- was engaged and looking forward to the prospect of marriage and buying a home in Great Yarmouth after his tour of duty in Afghanistan, the MoD said in a statement.

Britain sent thousands of troops to Helmand province in southern Afghanistan a year ago with an expanding NATO peacekeeping force. Almost 600 foreign military personnel -- 10 percent of them Britons -- have died in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001.

More civilians killed by US/NATO forces as fighting intensifies in Afghanistan

By James Cogan 30 May 2007

American and NATO coalition forces in Afghanistan are killing and maiming dozens of civilians as they attempt to suppress a growing anti-occupation insurgency by loyalists of the former Taliban fundamentalist regime. In case after case, the deaths are the result of indiscriminate bombing by US/NATO aircraft in retaliation for attacks on coalition troops.

In the latest incident, residents of a village in the Garmser district of the southern province of Helmand say they were attacked by an air strike on Sunday. A villager, Abdul Qudus, told Associated Press: “They came and bombarded the houses of innocent people. Three houses were completely destroyed. Seven people—including women and children—were killed, and 10 to 15 wounded. We are still searching for five missing people.”

The air strike was called in by coalition troops escorting a convoy of 24 supply trucks that had been ambushed by the Taliban. While NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has not released details, British forces have primary responsible for the occupation of Helmand province. The day before, a British soldier had been killed and four others wounded in a series of clashes with the Taliban in Garmser. On Monday, another British soldier was killed in Helmand province.

According to Associated Press accounts, Sunday’s fighting began after a roadside bomb killed one truck driver and wounded three coalition troops. Over the following 10 hours, Taliban fighters exchanged small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades with the convoy escort. Air strikes were eventually called in to destroy an alleged concentration of Taliban preparing to launch an assault. ISAF reported that at least 24 insurgents were killed.

Rejecting the claim that all those killed were combatants, Abdul Wahid, another resident from the bombed village, told Associated Press that the fighting along the highway was at least 16 kilometres away. The news agency noted that there “was no way to verify the claims of the coalition or the villagers at the remote battle site”.

The deaths in Helmand coincided with confirmation by Afghan officials in the western province of Herat that at least 51 of the 136 “Taliban” that the US military claimed to have killed during operations in late April were civilians, including women and children. Of the others gunned down, some were local villagers with no ties to the Taliban. They had attacked US forces in revenge for the killing of two elderly men during a house raid. According to the Red Cross, US bombing in Herat destroyed or damaged 170 houses and made 2,000 people homeless.

The provincial governor of Helmand has also reported that 21 alleged “militants” who were killed by a US air strike on May 8 in the Sangin district were in fact non-combatants.

US/NATO forces routinely deny such accusations. US Air Force commander Lieutenant General Gary North declared on Sunday that he had “not seen anything” that contradicted the coalition claims to have slaughtered Taliban fighters. The other standard defence is to blame the Taliban for “hiding” among civilians and declare casualties to be unavoidable “collateral damage”. A US military spokesman declared on May 24: “We take every precaution to avoid civilian casualties, but understand this is a complex environment, facing an enemy with no regard for civilian life. Unfortunately, civilian losses are sustained.”

The UN human rights officer in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, joined in the apologetics for the occupation forces on Monday, telling the press that whether the people killed were Taliban or not was “difficult to disentangle”. “In some cases, people are said to be Taliban by one side and claimed to be civilians by the other. Many Afghans have weapons in their homes and they may protect their homes. On the other hand, they might be Taliban or other insurgents,” he said.

Among some of Washington’s NATO allies, however, who have deployed troops to Afghanistan despite widespread popular opposition, the indiscriminate manner in which civilians are being killed is raising concern. It undermines their ability to present the conflict as a humanitarian war to help the Afghan people. Anti-occupation hostility is also rising in Afghanistan, causing the insurgency to spread to previously relatively stable areas.

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, who this month had to justify the deaths of three German soldiers in a suicide bombing in Kabul, told German television: “We have to do everything to avoid affecting civilians. We are in talks with our American friends about this.” The senior NATO civilian official in Afghanistan, Daan Everts, told Associated Press: “The collateral damage and particularly the civilian casualties are seen as unduly high, certainly by the Afghan people. This is of concern to us.”

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 230 Afghan civilians were killed in US/NATO operations during 2006. Since March 2007, another 135 or more have been slaughtered. This does not include dozens of adult males killed during major NATO operations in southern Afghanistan. All of these were simply passed off as “Taliban”. As many as 1,600 alleged “militants” have been killed since the beginning of the year.

Civilian killings as well as the catastrophic living conditions facing the majority of the population are significant factors fuelling the anti-occupation insurgency, especially in southern Afghanistan where US/NATO military operations have been the most intense since the October 2001 invasion.

According to a survey of 17,000 men in southern Afghanistan by the Senlis Council think tank, 80 percent live in extreme poverty and are not able to adequately feed their families. There has been no adequate food aid in the province of Kandahar—a former Taliban stronghold—since March 2006. Entire villages have been left to starve. The desperation of population has reached the point where 50 percent of those surveyed believe the poorly armed insurgents will defeat the foreign troops and return to power.

On Sunday, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, announced a new counter-offensive to drive out the US/NATO occupation. “In this operation,” Ahmadi declared, “we will target our enemies and use our tactics—suicide bombs, remote-controlled roadside bombs and ambushes—against occupying forces and the government. We start this operation today in all of Afghanistan.” Despite all the killings, the Taliban claims to be able to deploy thousands of fighters.

In US political circles, where there is already considerable alarm over the quagmire in Iraq, concerns about the state of affairs in Afghanistan are increasingly being expressed. Karl Inderfurth, the former Clinton administration assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, warned yesterday in an opinion piece for the International Herald Tribune: “As the death toll of civilians mounts, Afghan hearts and minds are being lost and, with that, the spectre of losing the war looms.”

G8 foreign ministers meet with counterparts from Pakistan, Afghanistan

David Rising Canadian Press Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay (L) is greeted by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier prior to talks during the G8 Meeting of Foreign Ministers in Potsdam May 30, 2007.

POTSDAM, Germany- The foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan are to meet with their Group of Eight counterparts Wednesday amid concern the acrimony between the two Asian neighbours is helping the Taliban inflict mounting losses on NATO troops and Afghan civilians.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose country holds the G8 presidency, helped broker the meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta and his Pakistani counterpart, Khurshid Kasuri, during a trip to both countries this month.

Other officials on hand included U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Before their afternoon meeting with the Afghan and Pakistani officials, the G8 foreign ministers travelled from Berlin to the venue in nearby Potsdam aboard a high-speed train.

Rice had no comment on arrival at the station, where snipers wearing black balaclavas guarded the entrances and helicopters hovered overhead.

Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay said, "inevitably there will be discussion about Afghanistan and about burden sharing," and about "how we continue with the whole-of-government approach that has to focus on reconstruction and development," particularly in the country's south.

Some 2,500 Canadian troops are serving in the south, the country's most violent area. Some other contributors to NATO forces, such as Germany and France, restrict use of their forces to the relatively peaceful north.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf have repeatedly accused each other of responsibility for the Taliban's resurgence.

Musharraf insists Pakistan is doing all it can to counter Islamic militants sheltering among sympathetic tribes in its remote border region and that Afghanistan is not matching its effort to seal the frontier with thousands of troops.

However, Karzai has accused Pakistan of using the militants to undermine his government and said putting soldiers on the border does nothing to shut down militant bases inside Pakistan.

In recent weeks, Pakistani and Afghan troops have also fought several skirmishes along a contested portion of the border.

In a statement before the meeting, the German G8 presidency said Pakistan and Afghanistan had been invited to the talks because "the G8 wants to support co-operation between these two countries, particularly with regard to improving border security, resolving the refugee problem and developing the border region."

The G8 members - Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, Canada, Germany and the United States - have held several ministerial-level meetings before the group's main summit June 6-8 in the northern resort town of Heiligendamm.

At a meeting of security and justice ministers last week, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said the group resolved to work more closely with Afghanistan's neighbours - including Iran - to combat the Afghan drug trade.

Beyond the talks with the Pakistani and Afghan officials, the G8 foreign ministers are to discuss the situations in Iran, Kosovo, Sudan's Darfur region and the Middle East.

Later in the day, Steinmeier, Lavrov, Rice and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plan to meet in Berlin under the auspices of the so-called Middle East "Quartet" to discuss the recent escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and parts of Lebanon.

UN refugee agency briefs German foreign minister on Afghans in Pakistan

UNAMA 30 May 2007 – Ahead of next week's 'Group of Eight' Summit, the Foreign Minister of Germany has received a briefing on the situation of Afghan refugees in Pakistan from officials of the United Nations agency dealing with their plight.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled to the region to witness the Afghan repatriation from north-western Pakistan.

Last Wednesday, the delegation travelled to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) voluntary repatriation centre in Peshawar, Pakistan, where the agency's assistant representative, Kilian Kleinschmidt, briefed the German foreign minister about the overall situation.

“Pakistan is home to the world's largest refugee situation, the largest assisted repatriation in modern history and the largest registration of refugees ever conducted,” said Mr. Kleinschmidt. "More than 1 million Afghans have been processed by UNHCR through this voluntary repatriation centre in the last six years, which makes it the largest repatriation centre in the world,” he noted.

During his visit, the Foreign Minister focused on how the international community and Germany could contribute efficiently to the management of population flows between Pakistan and Afghanistan, UNHCR said.

He took back with him a sample Proof of Registration card issued after the Afghan registration exercise and a biometric border crossing card issued by Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority “to show my colleagues what could be do-able in Pakistan and Afghanistan if we bring them together.”

The repatriation of card holders started from April 19 this year and will continue till the end of the year. Some 20,000 registered Afghans have so far chosen to repatriate with UNHCR assistance averaging $100 per person.

The Pakistan Government reiterated that unregistered Afghans would be considered illegal immigrants and would be dealt with under national laws. However, undocumented Afghans were given a six-week window from March to mid-April to repatriate “in safety and dignity” with UNHCR assistance, the agency said. More than 200,000 Afghans repatriated over those six weeks.

Mr. Steinmeier conducted the visit in preparation for the June 6-8 meeting of the G8 leading industrialized nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russian Federation, United Kingdom and the United States – and upcoming European Union foreign minister meetings in Germany.

Taliban joins forces with al-Qaida

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 30 (UPI) -- The Taliban is working with al-Qaida in Afghanistan and learning attack and media techniques from the terror network, Afghan and former Taliban officials said.

"The Taliban have changed immensely in the last year due to the mentoring they are getting from leading Arab jihadists in Pakistan with al-Qaida, both in the realm of battlefield tactics and media operations," Lutfullah Mashal of the Afghan National Security Council told The Washington Times.

A former Taliban official said the group has learned how to use media, such as videotape, in its battle against U.S.-led and NATO forces.

"When the Taliban were in power, they were not focused on this important thing but they have learned from al-Qaida the importance of media in their operations," Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan now under house arrest in Kabul, told the Times.

The Taliban, which once banned television in Afghanistan, now takes a cameraman on its major operations. The group has also improved its media relations and is quoted regularly in Afghan newspapers, the Times reported.

Al-Qaida escapee from U.S. detention in Afghanistan lashes out at U.S. Saudi allies

By Associated Press Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - Updated: 07:01 AM EST

CAIRO, Egypt - An al-Qaida militant who escaped from a U.S. prison in Afghanistan turned up in an online video posted Wednesday, assailing the Saudi royal family for its alliance with the United States.

The 45-minute video of Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the Bagram Air Base prison north of Kabul in 2005, was monitored by the IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor that watches for al-Qaida messaging.

According to its transcript, al-Libi, whose nom de guerre means "the Libyan" in Arabic, gives a lengthy diatribe, accusing Saudi royals of seeking the White House’s "praise" and "gratitude."

The authenticity of the video, which showed a black turbaned, bearded al-Libi, in a camouflage uniform, and also a map of the Saudi Arabian peninsula, could not be verified.

It appeared on a Web site commonly used by Islamic militants and carried the logo of al-Qaida’s media production wing, as-Sahab. The video - the sixth this year by al-Libi - had an Arabic and English transcript.

Saudi Arabia backs the U.S. "infidels" against Muslims, because from American bases in the kingdom, U.S. planes "take off, planes which carry tons of explosives to demolish the houses of the Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan," al-Libi said.

Saudi Arabia had in 2003 launched a wide offensive against extremists, after attacks on foreigners and others involved in the country’s oil industry by those seeking to topple the monarchy because of its ties to the U.S.

In April, Saudi police announced the arrests of 172 Islamic militants from seven terror cells in a monthslong roundup that was one of the biggest terror sweeps in the kingdom. According to Riyadh, those arrested had planned elaborate attacks - including with planes flown by militants trained as pilots in Sept. 11-type of attacks - on Saudi military and oil installations.

"The tyrants of Al Saud ... wanted to offer a token which would show the earnestness of their attitude in combating what they call ’terror,’ and show that they are still unwaveringly loyal ... So they waged their violent attack on the mujahideen in the Arabian Peninsula," al-Libi said of the Saud family.

Saudi Arabia "also handed over a number of mujahedeen to the Americans, and at the handover, they saw them off with insults, curses, and slander and strutted and boasted about that in front of their American masters," al-Libi claimed further.

Neither Saudi nor U.S. governments have confirmed such a transfer.

"The captive Muslim was sad, humiliated, worn-out and naked as he was pulled from the vehicles of the Interior Ministry to the planes of the cross-worshipers, his heart breaking with grief and sorrow because he doesn’t know which prison will swallow him just as he doesn’t know which prison spit him out," al-Libi said.

He also criticized Saudi Arabia’s alleged "media campaign led by well-known clerics issuing fatwas," al-Libi said. Fatwas are religious edicts that instruct Muslims on a wide range of matters.

Ben Venzke of the IntelCenter said that al-Libi has in 2007 become al-Qaida’s most visible faces on the Internet, surpassing even Osama bin Laden’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, in actual video appearances.

© Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Special forces deploy in Afghanistan

May 30, 2007 Australia's special forces task group is now fully deployed inside Afghanistan and intent on making life uncomfortable for Taliban insurgents, defence head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston says.

But Air Chief Marshal Houston declined to give a Senate estimates committee hearing many details of their planned activities.

He said the insurgents had proved adept at use of the internet.

"We have announced the deployment of the special operations task group but I won't be saying too much about the way they conduct their operations because as we have seen, the Taliban have a great capacity for gaining information," he said.

"If we say something over here in Australia, they exploit the electronic media, particularly the internet to find out what we are saying.

"For reasons of operational security I don't want to say any more than our special operations people will be doing operations that will make the Taliban extremely uncomfortable."

Australia currently has some 500 troops engaged in reconstruction work in Oruzgan province of south-central Afghanistan.

With the special forces deployment, plus the deployment of a RAAF air traffic control unit and two extra army Chinook helicopters next year, Australian force numbers in Afghanistan will exceed 1,000 by early 2008.

Air Chief Marshal Houston said the special forces troops now in Afghanistan had been involved in multiple missions since September 11, 2001.

Most recently members of the Special Air Service Regiment and Commando Battalion operated in Afghanistan for a year to last September.

Under current plans, the special force task group will stay in Afghanistan for two years with personnel rotating every four months or so.

Air Chief Marshal Houston said Australian troops had been performing vital community reconstruction work around the Oruzgan province capital Tarin Khowt.

"It really wins the hearts and minds of the people we support," he said.

As well, Australian soldiers have conducted five construction tradesmen courses training 42 people, five general maintenance courses graduating another 42 and trained 100 Afghan National Army engineers.

AFGHANISTAN: Food aid trucks come under increasing attacks

Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone

KABUL, 30 May 2007 (IRIN) - Dozens of commercial trucks carrying World Food Programme (WFP) food aid to vulnerable communities in different locations in Afghanistan have been attacked by armed men over the past few months, the UN agency said on Wednesday.

Over 500 tonnes of food aid worth about US$350,000 has been lost in some 20 attacks to date, according to WFP.

"The increasing frequency of these attacks has become a huge concern for us," Rick Corsino, WFP's representative for Afghanistan, told IRIN in Kabul.

The most recent incident took place on 24 May when four commercial trucks loaded with 52 tonnes of wheat were looted in the Bala Murgab District of southwestern Badghis Province, WFP said.

The looted aid was intended for the department of education in Bala Murgab to be distributed to local students through an incentive programme called Come to School and Take Home Rations.

Unharmed truck drivers delivered a letter ostensibly issued and stamped by Taliban insurgents and showing a satellite telephone number for the Taliban in which they claimed responsibility for the relief looting.

Delivery costs go up

"Transport costs are now 25 percent higher than last year and it's becoming very expensive to deliver assistance," Corsino said.

Mainly unmarked private trucks ferry WFP supplies to communities across Afghanistan.

UN officials in Kabul have not confirmed whether the organisation is a direct target for insurgents, though trucks carrying WFP relief supplies typically do not display a UN marking.

As insecurity plagues swathes of southern Afghanistan and attacks on relief trucks increase, many drivers find it less attractive to be involved in the risky transportation.

Taliban

In another incident armed men attacked trucks in Farah Province which were transporting 150 tonnes of wheat to the western province of Herat in mid-May. The trucks were diverted to a remote location and their cargo offloaded. No one has taken responsibility for the robbery, said officials.

Most of the attacks have occurred in the volatile south, southeast and southwestern parts of Afghanistan where Taliban rebels have intensified their insurgency.

US forces operating in Afghanistan have accused the Taliban of deliberately targeting relief convoys and denying vulnerable Afghan civilians access to humanitarian assistance.

According to a US army press release on 25 May, "Taliban members stole a stockpile of WFP goods intended for beneficiaries in the Khas Oruzgan District of Oruzgan Province."

Juma Khan, a police officer in Farah Province - where most of the attacks have happened - blamed gunmen associated with the Taliban for continued attacks on UN humanitarian operations.

WFP

"Insecurity restricts our access to first hand and reliable information needed to be sure of the motives for, and perpetrators of, these attacks," Corsino said.

WFP has called on the government of Afghanistan and local communities to hold attackers, whoever they are, accountable for their actions.

"Whatever their motives, they are contributing to the already considerable hardship of the poorest Afghans who need assistance more than ever," WFP said in a statement.

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Two Finnish peacekeepers to go on trial for taking bribes in Afghanistan

Two Finnish peacekeepers in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are to be charged with taking bribes while serving in Afghanistan. The two men are suspected of collecting tens of thousands of dollars from local building contractors.

One of the men served as an interpreter in the crisis management forces. The two were involved in awarding reconstruction contracts to local builders.

Finnish police say that the men had taken bribes in many building projects.

The investigation into the matter was sparked by a report from the forces themselves, and the suspected bribery came out last autumn.

The interpreter was sent back to Finland when the evidence emerged. The other man had concluded his service in Afghanistan and was back at home before the matter came to light.

The suspected crimes reportedly occurred at least in 2004 and 2005. The middle-aged men were reservists.

According to Helsinki District Prosecutor Jouni Peräinen, both men have partly confessed to the allegations.

The prosecution sees the crime as a serious one. If found guilty, the two could face prison terms ranging from four months to four years.

Previously, the National Bureau of Investigation also suspected that the man who served as an interpreter had committed aggravated fraud, but no charges were brought.

The matter goes before a court next week.

Afghanistan: war crimes amnesty prepares further atrocities

by wsws (reposted) Wednesday May 30th, 2007 6:14 AM

The US-backed political elite in Kabul have recently made a series of judicial rulings with grave implications for democratic rights that has received little comment in the international media.

In February, both houses of the Afghan parliament in February approved an amnesty law granting immunity from prosecution for all those accused of war crimes committed during the past 30 years. Described as a measure to aid national “reconciliation,” the United Nations’ top representative in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said the “initiative was welcome,” so long as “the right of individuals to seek justice with respect to individual crimes was not affected.”

In truth, the bill is a further assault on the democratic rights and aspirations of the Afghan people and a precursor to even greater atrocities against the population.

The implications of the measure can be seen in the composition of political forces on which the US puppet government relies.

When US-led forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and backed the militia of the Northern Alliance (United Islamic Front), it brought back into political prominence many figures from the country’s brutal civil war of the 1990s—some with even a bloodier past than the Taliban leaders they replaced.

60 ship out for war in Afghanistan

May 30, 2007 Bennett J. Loudon

CHILI — Brandon Warr's parents have been telling the 3-year-old for months that Daddy would be going away for a long time.

"But this morning was rough because I don't think he understood," Brandon's mother, Erin Warr, said Tuesday.

Brandon's father, Chris Warr, is one of about 30 soldiers in a Chili-based reserve unit leaving Rochester this week, ultimately bound for combat in Afghanistan.

"Chris woke him up this morning and said, 'Today's the day Daddy's going to leave,' and he just started crying," Erin Warr recounted as she stood in the parking lot of the New York Army National Guard's 126th Aviation Regiment headquarters after saying goodbye to her husband.

"It's going to be rough. He helped out a lot with the kids, so that's going to be hard for me," said Warr, 25, who also has a 1-year-old son, Kyle.

The regiment has never been deployed overseas. About half the soldiers left Tuesday morning on six Chinook helicopters for Fort Carson, Colo.

The others will fly to Colorado today on commercial flights and join their colleagues for about three months of training at Fort Carson before heading for Afghanistan.

"It's pretty rough on the families," said Spc. Dion Toal, of Holley, Orleans County, who watched with relatives of the soldiers as the helicopters took off.

Toal, a member of the 249th Air Ambulance Medivacs, also based in Chili, is not among the soldiers being deployed, but he has served a tour in Iraq.

"We're here just to give everybody moral support and let everybody know that we're behind them," Toal said, standing with about a dozen members of the 249th.

Master Sgt. Mark Wilson, 44, of Cuylerville, Livingston County, a full-time reservist, said a deployment can be more stressful on relatives left behind than for the soldiers themselves.

Wilson, who has three children ages 11, 14 and 19, served in Bosnia in 1997 and in Iraq in 2004.

"It's not as much of a shock because I've done it before, but there still are tears shed — that never stops," he said.

About eight of the soldiers being deployed recently transferred to the regiment from another unit based in Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, because they wanted to go to war.

Private Vinny Patino, 28, of New York City transferred from the Ronkonkoma unit.

"I feel like I owe it to my country," said Patino, an avionics mechanic who has been in the National Guard for two years.

"I really want to be there. I really want to get there," said Patino.

William Perez, 36, of Brooklyn also transferred to the local unit so he could go to Afghanistan.

"We've got a lot of soldiers over there and I wanted to take their spot to bring them back home," he said.

Bad blood spreads to Afghanistan's north

By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times Online / May 30, 2007

The warriors of northern Afghanistan, whom former US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad thought he had astutely mothballed and consigned to the dustbin of history, are reappearing in the Amu Darya region that borders Uzbekistan.

Of course, it was naive to have fancied that fighters like Rashid Dostum would simply walk into the sunset. Afghans are notorious for hunkering down. They may have begun to sense that they can soon hope to reclaim their native dwellings.

Their unfailing instincts honed through hardy life must have told them it would only be a matter of time before the edifice that the US created in post-Taliban Afghanistan would begin to crack. They knew it was an edifice built on quicksand, and that its facade apart, it was inherently fragile. They cannot be missing the point that in the meantime, competitive great-power politics has reappeared in the Hindu Kush.

Dostum was one of the founding members of the United Front set up in February in opposition to President Hamid Karzai's US-backed government. Last month, he volunteered to go and fight the Taliban, openly mocking the ineptitude of the Kabul setup and its foreign backers.

On Monday, 13 followers of Dostum were killed, with more than 30 reportedly injured, in the northern ethnically Uzbek town of Shibirghan at the hands of forces under the command of Juma Khan Hamdard, the governor of Jowzjan province on the Amu Darya River bordering Uzbekistan.

A Pandora's box of northern Afghanistan's ancient ethnic and tribal rivalries may have opened. Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek, while Hamdard is a Pashtun, and Jowzjan is in the ethnic-Uzbek heartland. Dostum's followers, numbering 1,000, were protesting against Hamdard, seeking his dismissal. They accused him of involvement in drug trafficking and of his clandestine links with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami (HIA) and the Taliban. Hamdard says it is all a plot by Dostum.

Dostum versus Hamdard

Not too long ago Hamdard was a rising star in the HIA under Hekmatyar's leadership - and a field commander obeying instructions from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence. But Hamdard says that was a time when all patriotic Afghans joined up with one mujahideen group or the other. The parting of ways, if ever there indeed was one, is shrouded in mystery.

Hamdard is immensely popular among the Pashtuns of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan, where he originally belonged. In the late 1990s, most certainly, Hamdard traded with the Taliban, who had taken power in 1996. His betrayal, while notionally an ally of Dostum, significantly helped the capture of the Amu Darya region by the Taliban after a chaotic, treacherous, extremely bloody campaign in 1997-98. It forced Dostum into a three-year exile in Ankara, Turkey.

Then, with the US intervention in 2001 leading to the ouster of the Taliban regime, Hamdard resumed links with Dostum, but only to desert him once again and pledge support to Karzai in late 2004. That was part of the celebrated deal worked out by Khalilzad involving the defection of 150 mujahideen commanders, mostly Pashtun, to Karzai's side on the eve of the presidential election in October 2004.

Hamdard was handsomely rewarded. He was made governor of the northern province of Baghlan. From there he moved on as governor to Jowzjan, Dostum's power base. Karzai was riding high at that time, and Khalilzad, a Pashtun himself, was determined to "pacify" the Mazar-i-Sharif region (where he originally belonged). Hamdard's induction into Jowzjan was the ultimate insult to Dostum - an ethnic Pashtun reigning as the provincial governor in Shibirghan, where Dostum used to receive foreign dignitaries posing as the emir of northern Afghanistan.

Branded as a warlord, ridiculed in the Western media as a political dinosaur, and constantly under the US threat of a war-crimes tribunal, Dostum hunkered down. Given Karzai's US support, he couldn't do much about his humiliation.

Meanwhile, Hamdard seized the opportunity and rubbed Dostum's nose in the dust. In March last year, he "recovered" in Shibirghan the largest cache of arms ever found in Afghanistan. The cache belonging to Dostum's forces included one bunker of detonators, two bunkers containing a total of 80 tonnes of Russian TNT, and one bunker with 15,000 anti-personnel and 10,000 anti-tank mines. Hamdard promptly claimed credit for the seizure as the validation of his commitment to bringing sustainable security to northern Afghanistan and to creating the conditions for good governance and the rule of law.

Uzbek fear of Taliban resurgence

Uzbek-Pashtun tensions in the Amu Darya region go back a century when King Amanullah Khan created pockets of Pashtun settlements in the northern region as a way of keeping a check on the notoriously fierce fighters of the Uzbek-Turkmen nationalities inhabiting the region and contiguous Central Asian regions.

The Taliban resurgence in the south and eastern provinces in recent months has sent alarming signals to the Uzbek tribes in the north. They see the Pashtun communities in the northern region as once again becoming a potential "fifth column" for the Taliban in the Amu Darya region. The fear is legitimate, as that was what happened in the 1996-98 period. The blood feud remains unsettled. The violence in the Amu Darya region was the most horrendous, even by the tragic standards of those times, as the Taliban nonchalantly swung northward after capturing Kabul in 1996.

The first ever attack on German troops by a suicide bomber in Kunduz town on the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border on May 19 would also have alerted leaders such as Dostum. Kunduz is an extremely sensitive area, with a sizable (possibly, majority) presence of Pashtun settlements. Besides the Pashtuns, Uzbek and Tajik communities live in the area. Former Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud (assassinated in 2001) tried in vain to reclaim the strategic town from the Taliban. As a stronghold of the Taliban, Kunduz posed a major challenge during the US invasion in 2001.

The Taliban are evidently adopting a new strategy. After registering their presence in a vast swath of land in the south almost up to the approaches to Kabul city, they are beginning to commit attacks in the north. From all accounts, the suicide bomber who attacked the German troops was a Taliban activist. The attack took place in the busy market center of Kunduz. Three German troops were killed; five were wounded seriously and were airlifted to Cologne for medical treatment, apart from seven Afghan civilians who were killed and 13 wounded.

Germany reassessing

Veterans like Dostum will be apprehensive how long the few hundred young German male and female conscripts (Germany doesn't have professional soldiers) scattered on a difficult terrain from Kunduz in the east almost up to the sand dunes of Faryab in the west, stretched along the Afghanistan-Uzbekistan border, will be able to hold if the Taliban make a determined comeback.

The Germans have been shell-shocked by the Kunduz attack. A furious debate has begun in Germany about the Afghan mission, which has never been popular in public opinion. Will Germany stay the course? The Bundestag (parliament) will debate whether to extend the separate military mandates in Afghanistan: Germany's participation in the International Security Assistance Force, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led forces mandated by the United Nations Security Council, the deployment of six German Tornado reconnaissance aircraft, and the involvement of up to 100 German special forces in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

Der Spiegel assessed that Berlin is mulling its role, and might well decide to withdraw from Operation Enduring Freedom. The point is, there is no possibility in sight for increasing Germany's troop levels if the situation were to deteriorate on the ground in northern Afghanistan.

The tensions in the northern region are building at a time when relations between Uzbekistan and Western powers remain frozen. The Amu Darya region has traditionally been within the sphere of influence of Uzbekistan. Tashkent has a major role to play if the security of northern Afghanistan reaches a flashpoint.

Beyond this factor lies the geopolitics of the "new cold war". Certainly, Russian policies in the Central Asian region have shifted gear in recent months in response to the US decision regarding missile-defense deployments in Russia's neighboring regions. (Chinese criticism of the US missile-defense deployments has also become frequent and focused.)

There are renewed calls in Kyrgyzstan for the vacation of the US airbase in Manas. Kyrgyzstan is hosting the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in August. An SCO counter-terrorism exercise is under way in Kyrgyzstan.

Growing Russian involvement

More important, the summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is scheduled for next month. Russia visualizes the CSTO as the primary vehicle of its strategy toward Central Asia's security. The deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan is certain to figure on the agenda of the CSTO summit.

NATO activities in Afghanistan are under close Russian scrutiny. Moscow has openly begun voicing criticism of the US-led NATO policies toward Central Asia. CSTO secretary general Nikolai Bordyuzha said while on a visit to Bishkek last week that NATO has been pursuing a "policy of projecting and consolidating its military-political presence in the Caucasus and in Central Asia". He spoke of "external challenges and risks that undermine stability in the post-Soviet space", which are emanating out of the "growing activities of extra-regional structures, primarily NATO, the European Union and third countries".

Bordyuzha singled out Washington's "Greater Central Asia" policy, which envisages Afghanistan as the hub of the US strategy toward Central Asia. He criticized this as an attempt to drive a geopolitical wedge between regional states on the one hand and Russia and the CSTO on the other. Bordyuzha said, "This is an attempt to reorient the Central Asian states towards cooperation with the United States in a new format, encompassing, besides the Central Asian states, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and in the future, India."

Russian Foreign Minister Segei Lavrov has voiced similar apprehensions. "NATO is continuing to follow its expansionist policy and is moving its military infrastructure closer to our territory," Lavrov said in an interview recently with German television.

Without doubt, Moscow had the worrisome security situation in northern Afghanistan in mind when a delegation of the CSTO visited Kabul in March. The visit caused great annoyance in Washington. The US doesn't want Russia to come anywhere near Kabul. Washington continues to ignore Russia's three-year-old proposal to have formal CSTO-NATO coordination on Afghanistan. But Moscow is lately asserting its regional role.

The Russian Foreign Ministry's major foreign-policy document approved recently by President Vladimir Putin made a pointed reference to the imperative of "de-monopolization of the political settlement" in Afghanistan. It underlined the importance of the "enlistment of all of Afghanistan's neighbors without exception" in the Afghan settlement. Clearly, the reference was to the exclusive Washington-London axis that determines the contours of the Afghan "settlement".

In the run-up to the CSTO delegation's visit to Kabul, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman stated in Moscow on March 5, "In the light of increasing Taliban and al-Qaeda activities, President Karzai and the Afghan government have asked Russia to resume supplies of military equipment."

Russia and the Central Asian states traditionally depended on northern Afghanistan's experienced leaders such as Dostum and Massoud to ensure peace in the Amu Darya region. Moscow's understanding with Massoud dated to the early 1980s. That was also the time when Dostum underwent training in a Soviet military academy.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years, with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

EU to Begin Police Training Mission in Afghanistan

DW staff (kjb) 2007 AAP

Experts say Afghanistan needs over 30 percent more law enforcement officers

Under German leadership, the European Union will take over and expand the police training mission in Afghanistan starting in mid-June, EU officials said Tuesday.

Over 100 European police trainers and law experts from 16 EU countries and a handful of non-EU states will begin a three-year mission in Afghanistan on June 17, officials said. The number of officers, which include the some 40 German representatives already there, is to be expanded to around 160 over the course of the mission.

A burgeoning drug trade, widespread corruption and insurgent violence are among the challenges the local police are preparing for.

Currently over 40 German police officers are working with 3,500 Afghan traineesThe mission's main objective is "to improve cohesion and coordination (of Afghan police) through mentoring, monitoring, advising and training," said Brigadier General Friedrich Eichele, the German mission commander who will head the EU task force.

Police trainers would be armed for purposes of self-defence, but would have to rely on the NATO-led ISAF peacekeeping force for protection, said Eichele, who added that the running costs for the first year would amount to 43.6 million euros ($58.8 million).

Dubbed EUPOL, the German-run mission will be headquartered in the capital city of Kabul but will encompass regions throughout Afghanistan including southern provinces where insurgent fighting has been most intense, said EU Special Representative for Afghanistan Francesc Vendrell Tuesday from Brussels.

Recent civilian deaths in the region have sparked concerns that the local population has lost faith in the international peacekeeping force.

"I think that the EU has decided to play as big a role as possible, unfortunately not as big as I would have liked," added Vendrell, who said he would have like to have seen it at the same size as the mission in Kosovo. The EU is planning to send 1,500 police trainers if the breakaway Serb province wins independence.

The UN estimated that poppy cultivation in 2006 increased by 59 percent over 2005Late last year, NATO requested that the EU take charge of building up the police training project. Analysts have said that rampant drug trade and corruption are fuelling the insurgency. According to UN estimates, some 300 illegal armed groups exist in the country.

The US has also put pressure on the EU to speed up progress. Until now, Germany has been the main European country involved in police training in Afghanistan and has trained some 17,000 local law enforcement officers since 2002.

An existing US police mission in Afghanistan involves 500 trainers, including members of private security companies. EUPOL is meant to complement the American force.

The war-torn country currently has a police force of 60,000, which is ill-equipped and riddled by corruption. According to international estimates, some 82,000 officers are needed. The number of Afghan officers trained by the European team would depend on the security situation, said officials.

Afghanistan independent Kabul Weekly re-launched

UNESCO Office in Kabul 30-05-2007 13:00

Suspended during last five months because of a financial problem, the independent Afghanistan newspaper Kabul Weekly has been re-launched and is now available for its readers on the streets of Kabul.

Kabul Weekly has an attractive colour lay-out and ten pages containing articles in Dari, Pashtu and English. At present, it is the country’s best-known independent publication with the circulations of 7,000 copies, each of which costs 5 Afghani in Kabul city.

Once again, Kabul Weekly and its dedicated staff are determined to take over this responsibility, despite all the ups and downs, and to stay committed to their readers. Fahim Dashty says in the publication editorial: "Some politicians tried to gain us to their cause and propaganda by offering financial and political support; we rejected all of them".

From the first day of suspension, the paper appealed to UNESCO, Reporters Without Borders and the Open Society Institute (OSI), which promised to fund part of the Kabul Weekly budget. In February 1993, UNESCO already granted $12,000 to keep the paper running.

Kabul Weekly began as 12-page newspaper with the circulation of 2,000 copies. It closed down three times in 1993 and 1996 for criticizing the authorities' sparked protests by young people in Afghanistan’s main cities. Its circulation increased each time it was re-launched to grow up to 16 pages and 6,000 copies before being closed by the Taliban. It employed up to 35 journalists and technical staff, equipped with computers, printers and a photo laboratory, all of which was destroyed after the Taliban seized Kabul in September 1996.

Prince Harry could go to Afghanistan

LONDON, May 29 (UPI) -- British military officials are quietly working on plans to send Prince Harry to Afghanistan, a British newspaper reported Tuesday.

Harry would join England's 6,500 troops battling the Taliban under the plan being considered by British army Gen. Richard Dannatt, The Daily Mail reported.

Word of a possible deployment in Afghanistan came three weeks after Dannatt canceled the prince's mission in Iraq, saying it was too risky for him and the soldiers serving with him.

"I'm sure Harry will jump at the chance. It may not be the same as going to Iraq with his own guys, but it's better than sitting at home 'on his arse,' as he put it," an army source told the Daily Mail.

Officials said they hope Harry would travel to Afghanistan unannounced and attract no publicity while he's there, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper said that British military officials had no comment on any upcoming deployment for the prince.

Afghanistan Agri-Education To Be Developed

By Staff May 29, 2007

The U.S. Agency for International Development has awarded a $7 million grant to Purdue University for developing agricultural education in Afghanistan.

The program will help develop agriculture and veterinary science programs at Afghan universities and create partnerships among the country's Ministry of Agriculture, local economic development organizations and universities.

"We want to revitalize the university environment and link education to local needs and opportunities," said Kevin McNamara, a Purdue professor of agricultural economics who leads the project.

"Most of the skill-requiring jobs in the country are held by foreigners," McNamara said. "So it is essential for Afghanistan's development that people from there are trained to participate. The program will prepare students for meaningful job opportunities, while empowering them to contribute to the country's development."

Several U.S. land-grant universities and development organizations will partner with Purdue to develop the program, including the University of California-Davis, Cornell University, Kansas State University, Catholic Relief Services, Joint Development Associates and the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas. (c) UPI

[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.]