In this bulletin:

• Soldier from Gagetown killed in Afghanistan helicopter crash
• Taliban ambush kills 16 police officers in S. Afghanistan
• 3 Taliban militants detained in E. Afghanistan
• AFGHANISTAN: Dozens of girl students hospitalised in northeast
• Afghans protest again in north, demand governor's trial
• Pentagon sees Taliban on defensive in Afghanistan By David Morgan
• 'The US military is very unhappy with the situation in Afghanistan'
• Afghans' anger over US bombings
• G8 FMs pledge support for Pakistan, Afghanistan cooperation
• Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the G8 and the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan on the “G8 Afghanistan-Pakistan Initiative ”
• Afghan FM met his Pakistani counterpart
• EU to launch police mission in Afghanistan
• Canadian support for feeding the hungry in Afghanistan
• Notes for a Statement by the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of International Cooperation, on Canada's Development Role in Afghanistan and In Particular, Kandahar
• 'Kandahar for Dummies' will help troops understand cultural, political niceties
• Canadian aid workers dispute Afghan report
• This is not the way to fight terrorism
• Voters need coherent story line
• Creating a field day for militias, large and small
• A grieving family's ray of hope
• Defeating Afghanistan's drug fix By Nick Grono and Joanna Nathan
• Militants kill 13 at Pakistan cleric's home
• Primping and preening become an Afghan passion
• Five-year Natural Resource Plan Earns USGS Scientists Afghanistan Medal
• Land in Afghanistan donated to mine victims, UN reports

Soldier from Gagetown killed in Afghanistan helicopter crash

Seven die in Taliban attack By The Canadian Press

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) — A soldier based at CFB Gagetown, N.B., was identified Thursday at the Canadian killed when a U.S. military helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.

Master Cpl. Darrell Jason Priede died along with five Americans and a Briton when the CH-47 Chinook went down in southern Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province.

Master Cpl. Darrell Jason Priede died along with five Americans and a Briton when the CH-47 Chinook went down in southern Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Initial reports suggested the chopper was hit with a rocket propelled grenade. NATO military spokesman said there were no survivors.

The latest death brings to 56 the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2002.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said other troops rushing to the scene were ambushed and had to call in air support to drive off their attackers.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, claimed in a phone call to The Associated Press that insurgents were responsible for bringing down the helicopter.

Ahmadi did not offer any proof for his claim, but he specified the helicopter crashed in the Kajaki district hours before NATO reported that information. Kajaki is the site of a hydroelectric dam and the scene of recent fighting.

NATO said the CH-47 Chinook was carrying a crew of five and two military passengers when it crashed. The cause was ``being determined by military officials,'' it said.

According to a U.S. military official, the British and Canadian soldiers were passengers on the helicopter.

The CH-47 Chinook, a heavy transport helicopter with two rotors, can carry around 40 soldiers plus a small crew. The fact it was flying at night suggested the aircraft might have been carrying troops on a nighttime air assault.

Helicopter crashes in Afghanistan have been relatively rare. A Chinook crashed in February in the southern province of Zabul, killing eight U.S. personnel. Officials ruled out enemy fire as the cause.

In May 2006, another Chinook crashed attempting a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop in eastern Kunar province, killing 10 U.S. soldiers.

In 2005, a U.S. helicopter crashed in Kunar, after apparently being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing 16 Americans.

Taliban ambush kills 16 police officers in S. Afghanistan

May 31, 2007

(Kyodo) _ Sixteen police officers were killed Thursday when their convoy was ambushed by a group of Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The attack, the deadliest on Afghan police this year, occurred in the Shajoi district of Zabul Province, Zamaria Bashari said.

Afghan forces sent reinforcement to the scene but the militants fled, he said, adding 10 other police officers were wounded.

Meanwhile, dozens of militants were killed and wounded in a joint Afghan-NATO operation which started Thursday morning in the Shali area of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

The operation in Helmand started hours after seven soldiers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization were killed late Wednesday when their helicopter crashed.

The CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down near the Kajaki area of Helmand, killing the entire crew of five and two military passengers, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

3 Taliban militants detained in E. Afghanistan

UPDATED: 20:41, May 31, 2007 The U.S-led coalition and Afghan forces captured three Taliban insurgents early Thursday in Khost province of eastern Afghanistan, a coalition statement said.

The forces raided a compound in Khost district in the province after receiving credible intelligence, which said the compound was housing known Taliban operatives, the statement said.

"Residents of the compound were discovered trying to hide Taliban identification cards as the forces approached," it added.

The detainees will be questioned as to their involvement in militant activities, the statement said.

No shots were fired and no one was injured in the operation.

About 13,000 coalition soldiers are being deployed in Afghanistan, mostly in the eastern region, to hunt down militants.

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

AFGHANISTAN: Dozens of girl students hospitalised in northeast

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, 31 May 2007 (IRIN) - Forty students of a girls' high school in Takhar Province, northeastern Afghanistan, have been admitted to hospital after drinking water from a contaminated well, local authorities said.

"Twenty-five students have been hospitalised at Farkhar hospital and 15 have been sent to Taloqan [provincial capital] hospital where more facilities are available," Abdul Hakim Aziz, head of Takhar's health department, said on Wednesday.

In total 61 students reported sick on 28 May after the incident in Farkhar District. Some of the sick have been advised to rest at home, the governor of Takhar, Ghawsuddin Abubakar, told IRIN.

All the hospitalised students are in a stable condition.

Unknown cause

It was unclear what caused the contamination. "We are looking into all possibilities," Abubakar said.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Education (MoE), Zuhoor Afghan said one of the water-wells might have been poisoned by chemicals leaking from a nearby antiseptic tank.

An MoE official, who declined to be identified, doubted the suggestion by some that Taliban insurgents were involved. The Taliban have torched and attacked many schools in the south and east of Afghanistan and oppose girls' education saying it is against Islamic principles, but it is not clear whether they can be linked to this incident.

"Local warlords and militias have a similar mentality to the Taliban and oppose women's education and work," the official said.

Investigation under way

Local police and the security department have launched an investigation into the incident, the governor of Takhar said.

Provincial officials say samples of contaminated water have been taken by a German-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), based in neighboring Kunduz Province, for examination.

More than 400 schools were attacked and 27 people killed from early 2004 to the end of 2006 in Afghanistan, UNICEF said.

According to UNICEF, in the past two months 10 school incidents in the country, which include torching, attacks and explosions, have been reported.

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Afghans protest again in north, demand governor's trial

By Tahir Qadiry

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, May 31 (Reuters) - Under tight security by NATO and Afghan forces, hundreds of people protested on Thursday in Afghanistan's northern town of Shiberghan, scene of a bloody protest this week against a provincial governor.

The protesters demanded the removal and trial of Governor Juma Khan Hamdard, who they accuse of being incompetent and a bigoted ethnic Pashtun.

Protesters said Hamdard should be tried for the deaths of those killed in Monday's demonstration. Witnesses said 13 died when police fired shots into the crowd, while the government said six were killed.

A spokesman for the governor, Rohullah Samun, said the protests were part of an armed uprising provoked by General Abdul Rashid Dostum against provincial and central authorities.

"Dostum has actually started distributing arms to people and bracing for violence," Samun said.

Kanjena Kargar, an official for Dostum's faction, dismissed Samun's comments.

Business had come to a halt in the town and the situation was tense, Samun said.

NATO-led peacekeepers and Afghan forces were deployed to prevent the protest from turning violent, said Khalil Aminzada, police chief of Jowzjan, of which Shiberghan is the capital.

Dostum is an ethnic Uzbek and has been involved in a series of coups and regime changes during the nearly three decades of conflict in Afghanistan.

He is also a member of a newly established party that seeks to shrink Karzai's power. The party, the National Front, consists of key members of Karzai's government.

A pro-federalist and a former communist, the burly Dostum for years considered northern areas his fiefdom. He was among the factions that helped U.S.-led forces to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001 and was a strong commander in the north until recent years.

Dostum's powers have been reduced, though he officially has a symbolic role as a military aide for Karzai.

The interior ministry has accused Dostum of provoking the protesters who were largely ethnic Uzbeks.

(With additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin)

Pentagon sees Taliban on defensive in Afghanistan By David Morgan

Wed May 30, 6:08 PM ET Western forces in Afghanistan have the Taliban on the defensive after a series of spring battles that have also been blamed for a rising civilian death toll, a senior U.S. military officer said on Wednesday.

"We think that we have got the Taliban on their heels," said Brig. Gen. Perry Wiggins, deputy director for regional operations in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a group which brings together the chiefs of all the branches of the U.S. military.

Wiggins told a news briefing at the Pentagon that several senior Taliban leaders had been killed in clashes which had forced the militant group to further pursue smaller scale "asymmetric" attacks such as suicide bombings.

"Although it has not crippled them, it'll set them back for a period of time," Wiggins said.

"We feel as though we've seized the initiative from the Taliban. But this summer will tell," he added.

The Taliban could try to regain the offensive as fighters join its ranks after working to harvest this year's crop of heroin-producing poppies. "The poppy harvest is over, so we expect at some point in time that those who were involved with that will now fight," Wiggins said.

Fighting in Afghanistan has picked up since the winter, with Taliban suicide bombers striking several times a week and NATO and the U.S.-led coalition reporting clashes nearly every day.

Among militant leaders killed in this month's fighting was Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, the main architect of suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings and other violence in southern Afghanistan.

Up to 380 civilians have also been killed in the first four months of 2007, according to U.N. officials who have called on Western military forces and the Taliban to respect laws protecting civilians.

Mounting civilian casualties have put NATO and U.S.-led forces under pressure in the nearly 6-year-old war against the Taliban, who were ousted from government in the wake of the September 11 attacks for harboring al Qaeda.

Western officials have expressed concern that civilian casualties could damage relations with ordinary Afghans.

But Wiggins said the fighting may be turning Afghan public opinion against the militants.

"They have averted to asymmetric type, small-scale, high profile attacks," he said.

"We've actually had initial indications that some Afghan leaders, as well as some Afghan citizens, have actually turned against the Taliban with regard to this type of attacks."

'The US military is very unhappy with the situation in Afghanistan'

May 31, 2007 Stephen P Cohen, director of the South Asia programme at The Brookings Institution, one of the top-think tanks in Washington, DC, is considered the doyen of American experts on the subcontinent. He has written extensively on the region and published several books, including on the Indian and Pakistani armies.

Before he joined Brookings, Dr Cohen was professor of political science and history and founder-director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, He also served in the Reagan administration as a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff from 1985 to 1987.

In an exclusive interview with Rediff India Abroad Managing Editor Aziz Haniffa, he debunks US fears that Pakistan could implode or unravel, saying these are arguments that military dictators like Mohammed Zia-ul Haq and now President Pervez Musharraf have used repeatedly to garner American support.

While admitting that he is impressed with the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan, he warns that any major terrorist strike against India by a Pakistan-based militant group could bring things back to square one. It is imperative that Pakistan "rebuild the political structure," because the military is no substitute for "organised political parties."

Several senior US military leaders, including General Peter Pace, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, have recently said that the US military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises -- among them, an internal collapse of Pakistan -- because of the high and growing demand for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Is there an impending internal collapse in Pakistan?

No. I believe what they are doing -- people like Pace and others, who are also in a sense administration officials -- sort of reflects the Pakistani argument that only Pakistan's stability stands between us and chaos in Afghanistan. That's an argument that the Pakistanis have used for a long time -- for decades in fact. They have said, 'We are your only real allies, and you've got to support us. We may not be perfect but...'

You mean the (former president and military dictator Mohammed) Zia-ul Haq card that Musharraf seems to be playing over and over again?

Exactly. The American military is very unhappy with the situation in Afghanistan, and they are absolutely correct that there's not enough American forces there, and also that the Taliban is obviously being supported from Pakistan. But none of them that I know of -- except maybe (former General Anthony) Zinni, or maybe not even Zinni -- have really come out openly and criticiSed Musharraf. Privately, I am not sure what their views are. But there Is a difference between, certainly, the civilian observers of Pakistan and the US military.

Image: US President George W Bush greets Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf after a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House, September 22, 2006. Bush said he was 'taken aback' by a news report that the US had threatened to bomb Pakistan in late 2001, but stopped short of flatly denying the charge. 'I guess I was taken aback by the harshness of the words,' he said as he met at the White House with Musharraf, who made the allegation in an interview with CBS television earlier.

Photograph: Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

Afghans' anger over US bombings

By Alastair Leithead BBC News, Afghanistan Thursday, 31 May 2007

Each time the old woman breathed out you could hear a small groan of pain as she sat, her head in one hand, her other shoulder shattered by shrapnel and fixed in a coarse plaster.

Her son Mohammad and his wife Khwara sat next to her - they were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son and her brother.

Both were among 57 killed - almost half of them women and children - when American forces bombed their village in Shindand, western Afghanistan, and destroyed 100 homes.

"The bombardments were going on day and night," said Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who had to flee their mud house in the Zerkoh Valley.

"Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They didn't care if it was women, children or old men."

Khwara explained how it started: "Americans came to the village without consulting any elders," she said.

"They just came into to the women's part of the house, so we women went to the elders, and we told them if you don't stop this, we women will stand against them."

Remembering what happened she began to get angry: "Death to America," she shouted. "Death to the America that killed my son."

Bombardments

The US special forces were in the valley looking for an arms cache. Shindand is not under Taleban control, but intelligence reports suggest some locals may have been gun-running for them.

Baryaly Noorzai was knocked out by a bomb, while he and his wife and child were fleeing their home.

He described how it was only after the villagers were angered by culturally insensitive house searches that they picked up guns and took on the American military machine.

"When the Americans came the people started fighting them back, and then the planes came and started bombing us.

"Even under the Russians we haven't witnessed bombardments like it before."

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) investigated the accounts and identified that at least 25 of those killed in Shindand were women and children.

But the commander of US operations for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Brig Gen Joseph Votel, denied these reports.

"We have no reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were injured or killed out in Shindand," he said, justifying the use of 2,000lb bombs against mud houses.

"If there are insurgents that are effectively engaging our forces and they happen to be coming from a building we would make every use we can of technology we have, and precision weapons, to eliminate the threat and minimise the effects of collateral damage."

Cultural taboo

And there have been a large number of civilians killed recently - more than 70 in three months according to the AIHRC commissioner, Nader Naderi.

"In all of these incidents it was the coalition forces or their special forces that were involved rather than NATO," he said.

He explained how much of a cultural taboo it is entering homes, or women's rooms, uninvited.

"If something like that happens then the honour of the family and of that man would be under question.

"It makes those men - who are very, very conservative - very upset and very angry, and they would be ready to do whatever they can do to stop it or to prevent it or to regain their honour that was lost."

There are two missions in Afghanistan: Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which has 37,000 troops from 37 countries, including America, which is helping the Afghan government bring security, development and better governance.

But there is also the US-led coalition under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom - a counter-terrorism mission outside Nato's mandate which involves mainly special forces.

They have been blamed for shootings and bombings and tension between the two missions is increasing.

'Side effects'

One of the buildings damaged by the bombs in the Zerkoh Valley was a school, built just a few months earlier by Italian Nato troops.

President Karzai held a shura, or traditional gathering, in Shindand district to try and calm angry emotions after the bombing which had led to rioting in the streets.

"We know that the presence of foreign troops some times makes problems, but imagine if these troops were not in Afghanistan?" he asked in response to accusatory heckling from the crowd.

"Don't you think there will be a government in every street? Won't we go back to years of hunger, devastation and miseries? Foreign troops are like powerful drugs that cure a disease but have side effects as well."

For now Afghanistan needs, and largely welcomes, the presence of the international forces, but with every civilian killed, the divide widens.

G8 FMs pledge support for Pakistan, Afghanistan cooperation

31/5/2007 15:59 Foreign ministers of the Group of Eight (G8) nations wrapped up

their meeting in Potsdam , Germany yesterday by issuing a joint statement together with their counterparts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, pledging support for cooperation between the two Asian neighbors.

In the statement on "G8 Afghanistan-Pakistan Initiative," all the concerned parties reiterated their strong commitment to security, stability and lasting peace in Afghanistan and the region.

They underline their "common interest in working together to promote peace, security and development in the region," reinforcing their commitment in the fight against all dimensions of terrorism.

The foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan renewed their governments' commitment to strengthen cooperation and dialogue between their countries and governments of all levels, especially in the field of security, refugee issues, economic development and increased contacts between civil societies.

The members of the G8, which include Japan, Russia, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada, promised to " work closely with" the governments of the two countries in support of their effort through concrete projects and targeted assistance in various areas.

Recently, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been tense because of border and refugee issues.

In another statement, the G8 ministers urged Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to halt nuclear activities.

They called on Iran to oblige by UN Security Council resolutions and halt uranium enrichment, demanding DPRK fully implement obligations under the non-proliferation treaty by closing nuclear sites.

Joint Statement by the Foreign Ministers of the G8 and the Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan on the “G8 Afghanistan-Pakistan Initiative ”

May 30, 2007, Potsdam

1. The Foreign Ministers of the G8, Afghanistan and Pakistan came together today to reiterate their strong commitment to security, stability and lasting peace in Afghanistan and the region. They recalled the commitments made in the Afghanistan Compact in January 2006. Continued support of the international community to the region is a vital element in the global fight against terrorism and for the promotion of freedom, democracy, rule of law, human rights, and economic growth and opportunity.

2. They underlined their common interest in working together to promote peace,security and development in the region and stressed the need for the international community to support this objective.

3. In this context, the Foreign Ministers of the G8 recalled the Kabul Declaration of Good Neighbourly Relations of 22 December 2002 and their statement of 23 June2005. They commended the joint Peace and Security Jirgas (gatherings) between Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the commitments Afghanistan and Pakistan have taken on in the “Ankara Declaration” on 30 April 2007 to enhance their cooperation and combine their efforts to enhance the security and prosperity oftheir peoples. They also appreciated the Government of Pakistan’s offer to host the next meeting of the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan (RECCA).

4. The Foreign Ministers of the G8, Afghanistan and Pakistan reinforced their commitment in the fight against all dimensions of terrorism and stressed the vital importance of security for long-term reconstruction and development in the region and in Afghanistan in particular. They further committed to continue supporting moderation, fighting all forms of extremism and terrorism, including its financial,training and ideological centres through mutually agreed and coordinated action.

5. They highlighted the connection in the region between terrorism, drug-trafficking,and organized crime, and emphasized their determination for concerted efforts by all concerned parties to combat these menaces.

6. The Foreign Ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan renewed their Governments’commitment to strengthen cooperation and dialogue between their countries and governments at all levels, in particular in the field of security, refugee issues,economic development and increased contacts between civil societies.

7. The members of the G8 commit themselves to work closely with the Governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan in support of their endeavour through concrete projects and targeted assistance in various fields.

8. The Foreign Ministers of the G8 highlighted the importance of practical cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan in matters of security concerns they share as neighbours.

9. They reiterated the importance of long-term and sustainable development and towards that end of joint initiatives in the economic field, reconstruction,agriculture, enhanced regional trade with appropriate import and export controls and transport links between Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as to other neighbouring countries, in particular those in Central and South Asia. They underlined the importance of engaging and developing the private sector,including through financial and technological assistance, to help build a vibrant local economy and the necessary infrastructure.

10. They commended the UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistanfor their important work towards a repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan.They stressed the commitment of the G8 to helping with arrangements towards enhancing the sustainability of return and pledged to further assist and complement already ongoing efforts in particular by helping to improve conditions for returnees in Afghanistan and in refugee-impacted areas in Pakistan.

11. Likewise they highlighted the importance of promoting increased contacts between civil societies as a further confidence building measure between Afghanistan and Pakistan and offered to support stronger interaction between political representatives, parliamentarians, the media, universities, as well as contacts in the field of sports and civil society at large.

12. They underlined that the G8 will build on and work with existing UN, regional and bilateral mechanisms to support Afghanistan and Pakistan and that as a follow-up to the initiative concrete projects will be identified and further pursued by the G8 in close consultation and in agreement with Afghanistan and Pakistan. To this effect, an expert meeting is to be convened at an early date with the task of specifying the projects in detail. A final list of projects is to be evaluated and endorsed at a meeting in Berlin in autumn.

Afghan FM met his Pakistani counterpart

Posted On: May 31, 2007 Afghan Foreign Minister. H.E. Rangin Dadfar Spanta met his Pakistani counterpart, H.E. Khursid M. Kasuri on the sidelines of the G8 conference yesterday in Germany.

Both sides discussed and agreed to renew their government's commitment to strengthen cooperation and dialogue between their governments at all levels.The H.E. Khursid M. Kasuri extended invitation to his Afghan counterpart to visit Pakistan soon, which was accepted.

The G-8 members - Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, Canada, Germany and the United States - joined Afghanistan and Pakistan in expressing reinforced commitment to the fight against "all dimensions of terrorism" and "stressed the vital importance of security for long-term reconstruction and development in Afghanistan and the region".

EU to launch police mission in Afghanistan

Thursday May 31, 2007 (0015 PST)

BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) will send around 160 police officers to Afghanistan in mid-June, the EU Council announced.

The EU police will take charge of monitoring and training local security for Ministry of Interior, regions and provinces in Afghanistan, said Francesc Vendrell, EU Special Representative for Afghanistan.

Brigadier General Fiedrich Eichele from Germany has been appointed head of the mission, Vendrell said.

The mission, which will last for at least 3 years, aims to help Afghanistan to establish a sustainable and effective civilian police force that meets international standards, added Vendrell.

Canadian support for feeding the hungry in Afghanistan

Source: United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)

Kabul, 30 May 2007 - With reference to recent questions regarding food assistance to Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, WFP states the following:

Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, is also among the most challenging for WFP operations anywhere across the globe. The effects of two decades of war and civil unrest have been compounded by recurring natural disasters, including severe droughts, floods and harsh winters.

Access and movement has been fiercely restricted by growing insecurity, particularly in the south and east of the country. Despite the obstacles, WFP remains operational in almost all parts of the country, through its five area offices and four sub-offices.

Its current operation aims to provide 520,000 metric tons of food to 6.6 million Afghans between January 2006 and December 2008 at an overall cost of nearly US$385 million.

Resourcing is a constant concern; under the current funding situation, WFP will run out of food in September and requires an additional US$27 million to keep operations going until the end of the year. Canada has been one of WFP's most reliable, consistent and generous donors. With respect to operations in the south of the country:

- Reports that there has been no substantial food assistance to Kandahar Province since March 2006 are inaccurate.

- Food assistance provided through WFP to the province was in excess of 10,000 metric tons in 2006 against needs assessed at 14,700 tons to feed 350,000 people.

- In July, in collaboration with the Government of Afghanistan, WFP will begin the next Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, a nationwide effort carried out every two years. The assessment seeks to identify the most food insecure parts of the country and is the basis for WFP food assistance interventions.

- In 2007, WFP plans to provide more than 20,000 tons of food to Kandahar Province for about 600,000 beneficiaries.

- So far, 8,000 metric tons have been distributed since the start of the year to a range of beneficiaries including temporarily displaced persons, primary school children, tuberculosis patients and their families, food for work participants engaged in asset creation and vulnerable families affected by last year's serious drought.

- The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has provided funds for 9,700 tons of food for Kandahar this year – almost half of WFP's planned distributions in the province for the whole year.

- WFP's increased assistance in Kandahar has been possible in large part thanks to CIDA, which since November 2006 has been the largest donor to WFP operations in the province.

- CIDA has, moreover, consistently stated its continuing commitment to maintaining WFP's ability to supply food aid to the needy population of Kandahar. CIDA has provided a guarantee of additional funding to mitigate any possible food crisis.

- Since January 2006, when WFP's current two-year Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) in Afghanistan began, donations from CIDA have so far amounted to CDN$11.9 million (US$10.4 million), making Canada the third-largest country-donor to WFP in Afghanistan.

- WFP has seen no evidence of starvation in Kandahar city, although there are many people who have inadequate diets both in terms of the amount of food available to them and in diet diversity.

- There are no camps for displaced people in Kandahar city. There are, however, temporary informal settlements mainly inhabited by seasonal migrants – Kuchis – who also may avail themselves of WFP food assistance.

- There are also informal settlements in other districts of the Province which had served as camps for displaced persons prior to March 2006. While general food distributions ceased more than one year ago, WFP still undertakes food for work activities in the these areas.

Notes for a Statement by the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of International Cooperation, on Canada's Development Role in Afghanistan and In Particular, Kandahar

2007-05-30 Ottawa, Ontario

Good afternoon,

I am pleased that you are joining me today so that I can address some of the inaccuracies around the coverage of yesterday's Senlis Council news conference.

Let me first underline that CIDA's aid to Afghanistan in general – and Kandahar in particular – is delivering concrete results in critical areas like health, education and community development.

Canada's approach is to help Afghans help themselves, and the progress is tangible. For example, our support for health programming is resulting in more than 40,000 children's lives saved every year.

CIDA disbursed $139 million in aid to Afghanistan last year, including $39 million to Kandahar – an 8-fold increase over the past year.

Furthermore, Canada will invest an additional $200 million to Afghanistan for governance and reconstruction. Canada is among the top five donors to Afghanistan.

In Kandahar, our assistance has largely focused on basic needs. We work closely with experienced partners such as the UN High Commission for Refugees, the World Food Programme and UNICEF.

The Senlis Council claims that 'there has been no substantial food aid into Kandahar since March 2006'. The country director of the World Food Program, Richard Corsino, has stated that 'it is untrue'. He also said that, and I quote 'food aid in 2006 was in excess of 10,000 metric tonnes, and is planned to double in 2007…in large part this increase is possible owing to the contributions of CIDA'.

'Kandahar for Dummies' will help troops understand cultural, political niceties

Tom Blackwell National Post Thursday, May 31, 2007

KANDAHAR - Ayub Rafiqi calls them "monsters": the once minor criminals used by U.S. forces in Kandahar to keep order after the 2001 invasion.

Emboldened by their special status, they became drug lords, then warlords, then politicians in the new government of Afghanistan.

Then about 18 months ago, Canada took over reconstruction and military duties in Kandahar province from the Americans, and inherited the same shadowy figures, he says.

Today, they are district leaders or other government officials --and by continuing to deal with them, the Canadians have unwittingly soured their relationship with the local people, argues Mr. Rafiqi, the head of LOOK Afghanistan, a landowners' group.

"The biggest reason the communities have turned against the international or government officials is they authorized dirty hands," he said.

"The Canadians came in and took over from the Americans, and those drug lords, those warlords are still in those positions. They cannot bring anything but misery to this area."

It is just one example of how Canadians have stumbled about Kandahar province with little knowledge of the complex society, he maintains.

But his organization, a newly formed network of the traditional large landowners of the province, is bringing help.

Under a unique contract with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), LOOK is conducting "social mapping," providing profiles of the local communities' political, geographical and cultural makeup in a country where even basic demographic information is hard to come by.

The information should prove useful, creating a sort of Kandahar for Dummies guide for government and military staff, said Adrian Walraven, a CIDA officer at the Kandahar provincial reconstruction team, which is run by Canada.

"Especially in the first year of our operations here, we were working without full preparation for all the intricacies of what this society is about," Mr. Walraven said.

He rejected the suggestion that Canadians are still generally ignorant of the cultural and political niceties of southern Afghanistan. Officials and soldiers have made "great strides" in understanding this multi-layered country, he said.

About half the material so far supplied by LOOK was known to him, he said. Its primary use should be to get officials up to speed when they first arrive in Afghanistan.

Mr. Walraven suggests Mr. Rafiqi has good reason to depict Canadians as inept at navigating Kandahar culture -- it would mean more business for his organization.

As for those "monsters" who hold positions of authority, Canada knows the bad from the good, but must deal with the leaders Afghans have chosen, while avoiding "intimate contact" with the worst of them, he said.

"We have been dealt a deck of cards. If you asked me and I had the power to shuffle the deck and move things around, sure, we would do that."

Mr. Rafiqi says he would like his organization to act as a kind of bridge between the foreign forces and the people of Kandahar province.

In some ways, he is well placed to fill the role. He immigrated to the United States after the Communists took over and seized his family's land, returning in the mid-1990s when the Taliban came to power and returned the land to its owners.

He argues that Canada is not winning the hearts and minds of Afghans, and needs to change its tactics.

For instance, foreign officials have taken too long to compensate landowners for property damaged in fighting and road construction last year. They also tend to view tribes as little more than sources of conflict and violence, not strong, nurturing institutions.

"The foreign forces have a problem right now with the community because they cannot communicate with those people," Mr. Rafiqi said.

Rather than relying solely on translators who might not convey the right sentiments, he suggests Canada use local radio stations to disseminate its messages, or even co-opt mullahs and other religious leaders to spread the word from the mosques.

The social mapping his group is preparing outlines the key players in a district, the economic conditions, the conflicts, the tribal issues, the Taliban presence and the activities of police and army detachments.

The reports even pinpoint the location of ziaregs, the sacred areas in many villages where women and children, especially, go to pray and meditate on their problems. If Canadian troops were to barge into one such site, he said, it would be "a disaster."

Tblackwell@nationalpost.com

Canadian aid workers dispute Afghan report

Canadian Press May 30, 2007 at 10:29 AM EDT

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Aid officials in Afghanistan say they've seen with their own eyes the difference Canadians are making in their bid to win the hearts and minds of citizens in this impoverished country.

Adrian Walraven, a development officer with the Canadian International Aid Agency in Kandahar, said he cannot comment directly on a recent report suggesting that CIDA's contribution to the country is virtually non-existent.

But he said progress on the ground in Afghanistan cannot be measured the same way it would be at home.

A photo gallery of CIDA efforts on the ground lines the walls outside the agency's office.

Mr. Walraven said he has seen the difference even a small mud wall can make to an entire village, even if the project does not seem exciting to Canadians.

He said that the agency's goal is not to swoop in and take control of rebuilding Afghanistan but to give Afghans the skills and support to do it themselves.

This is not the way to fight terrorism

TheStar.com May 31, 2007 Thomas Walkom

In this country, the debate over Afghanistan has focused narrowly on the role of Canadian troops. Should they stay or come home? If they do stay, should they continue offensive counterinsurgency combat operations against the Taliban or play a more traditional "peacekeeping" role providing protection for aid-givers?

In fact, the real questions posed by Afghanistan are far more fundamental. They have to do with the war on terror itself and the way it is prosecuted. Specifically, they have to do with whether terror can be defeated by war. There is growing evidence it cannot.

Iraq provides the most obvious example. An invasion ostensibly designed to fight terrorists ended up creating terrorists. Most notably, it motivated a few British Muslims to bomb the London subway system. As the New York Times reported this week, jihadists who learned their trade in the Iraq insurgency are exporting their skills to neighbouring states. The entire Iraq affair has been a disaster.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. Yet there are chilling similarities. The first is that the invasion of that country in 2001 has strengthened extremists there. The second – raised by the arrest last summer of 18 Toronto-area Muslims on suspicion of terrorism – is that the repercussions of Western military operations in Afghanistan are being felt here.

Evidence for the first proposition comes from all quarters. Thanks in part to the Afghan war, extreme elements of the Taliban now dominate tribal areas in neighbouring Pakistan, forming part of the volatile mixture that threatens the stability of that regime.

In Afghanistan itself, anger is steadily mounting against foreign troops. In March a survey by the non-profit, London-based Senlis Institute found that roughly half of those polled in the area of Afghanistan where Canada is operating, now believe the Taliban will win. More than a quarter openly admit to supporting the Taliban.

That doesn't mean a quarter of the Afghan population wants to bomb the CN Tower. The Taliban is a complicated mix of tribal traditionalists, Islamic zealots and Afghan nationalists. Yet, perversely, the Western fixation with Al Qaeda seems to have raised that organization's prestige within the Taliban.

What is to be done? One answer is to wage counterinsurgency warfare in a smarter way. That's the message delivered to a parliamentary committee this week by Senlis board member Noreen MacDonald. She says Canada should spend more on aid, to win the allegiance of Afghans. Only if there is popular support, she says, can the military battle be won.

While this approach is not foolish, it continues to cast the problem of Afghanistan – like the problem of terror generally – in largely military terms. In fact, both problems are fundamentally political. Canadians may not like the obscurantist, misogynist ways of the Taliban. But plenty of Afghans do.

In the '70s, traditionalist Afghans fought their own Communist government when it tried to reform the backward social system. After the Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support that government, they fought it, too. They are still fighting. The only difference is that they are fighting us.

So, forget the war on terror. Terror feeds on war. Paradoxically, the precondition for success in Afghanistan is peace. This is not a bromide but a fact.

However, peace is not easy. It requires political accommodation – not only with those of whom we approve but with those whose views we detest. This will be the hard part. The alternative is worse.

Voters need coherent story line

TheStar.com May 31, 2007 James Travers

OTTAWA-At his most gung-ho, Peter MacKay makes Afghanistan sound like a future Club Med. Along with the Prime Minister, the foreign affairs minister measures progress there in numbers of schools opened, kilometres of roads paved and refugees returning home.

When they aren't lying, statistics are compelling.

Precise and persistently repeated, MacKay's are persuasive. Or at least they would be if academics, ginger groups and critics didn't from time to time offer their own finely parsed anecdotal evidence.

This week it's the Senlis Council. In a report and parliamentary testimony, the research group warned that Afghanistan development is so slow it jeopardizes the hearts-and-minds military mission and recommended that the Canadian International Development Agency be stripped of its mandate.

So whom should Canadians believe? Should they trust insiders with everything to lose, or outsiders who have something to gain?

The answer is both a little and neither entirely. MacKay is looking through one end of the telescope and seeing sunny promise while Senlis is peering through the other at a landscape bathed in gloomy shadow. But more significant than their different perspectives and divergent strategies is their shared conclusions and steady patience. Neither believes withdrawal is a viable option or, with the exception of extremists, in anyone's short- or long-term interest.

That unanimity is unusual. It's also surprisingly unhelpful.

In using selected facts to support poles-apart tactics, the federal government and its most credible critics are exacerbating the uncertainty that plagues the mission and is the common denominator in consistently ambivalent opinion polls.

What's been missing from the beginning, and what could now connect MacKay optimism to Senlis pessimism, is a narrative. A mission bouncing between 9/11 retribution and failed-state reconstruction is in urgent need of a single, coherent story line that voters and taxpayers can both believe and follow to a final chapter.

That wasn't possible as long as the dominant Canadian characters were in uniform and the political language scripted in Washington. But change is in the breeze.

After letting the military have its way and suffering the political consequences, Conservatives are shifting to a whole-of-government response to a task too overwhelming for an atrophying defence minister. And after much focus group testing, the Prime Minister is adjusting his rhetoric to resonate better in ears more attuned to reconstruction than combat.

Still, the Afghanistan story isn't easily told. It must contort around the often-competing interests of domestic departments and foreign governments. It requires a national audience with the patience and nuanced understanding to accept that putting a new foundation under a fragile state is back-breaking work with unpredictable results.

Among other difficult things, it requires judicious acceptance of what constitutes military success, a functioning democracy in a state emerging from feudalism and the tolerably clean administration of an economy greased by narcotics and corruption.

These aren't comfortable topics in a Canada operating within a cultural context that couldn't be much different.

But the alternative of trying to understand Afghanistan and its challenges through the fragments of carefully chosen, often conflicting facts leads first to confusion and then to the suspension of public trust.

Creating a field day for militias, large and small

TheStar. May 31, 2007 Haroon Siddiqui

The crises in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and Afghanistan are the inevitable outcome of treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

Gaza: Israeli bombing won't bring peace any more than previous military crackdowns. American-Israeli help to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces won't stop Hamas from acquiring more rockets to hurl at Israel. The Saudi-sponsored unity government between Fatah and Hamas won't end their internecine warfare.

"The problem is Gaza itself," writes Fawaz Turki, author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile, who lives in Washington.

"Israel may have evacuated its miserable colonists and soldiers from Gaza but it continues to control its airspace, offshore maritime access and its borders, determining the flow of goods, produce and people ...

"The cumulative impact of sustained economic hardship, coupled with living under the thumb of a foreign occupier can be devastating to an individual's psychological, even cognitive and social functioning ...

"Communities made inert by repression, social immobility or economic deprivation, will build up an inescapable drive towards war, towards an assertion of identity at the cost of mutual destruction."

The World Bank, too, recently criticized the Israeli stranglehold on Gaza and the West Bank, the latter cut up into "ever smaller and disconnected cantons."

Neither the Palestinian civil war nor the breakdown of the months-long ceasefire with Israel should have come as a surprise.

Lebanon: About 400,000 Palestinian refugees there remain marginalized – denied citizenship and restricted to menial jobs. It is in one of their 12 camps that Beirut is battling Fatah al-Islam, which vows to "fight the Jews and take the holy war to the frontiers of Palestine."

Rushing U.S. military supplies to Prime Minister Fouad Siniora may help him crush this militia, but it won't guarantee that others won't emerge.

Fatah al-Islam may or may not be the creation of Syria. The more relevant point is that it is easy for anyone to start a militia in the midst of misery.

The other point is that Lebanon is politically paralyzed between pro- and anti-Hezbollah elements. Attacking Fatah al-Islam is easy, disarming the Hezbollah is not, so strong it emerged from last year's Israeli invasion.

Iraq and Afghanistan: The U.S. presence in both has been a boon to terrorists.

The U.S. State Department says terrorism shot up 25 per cent last year –14,338 attacks that killed 20,498 people, most in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The leader of Fatah al-Islam was an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the notorious Al Qaeda terrorist who was killed in Iraq last summer. Other jihadis from Iraq may be operating well beyond Lebanon, as indicated by terrorist incidents in Morocco and Algeria. Jihadi tactics from Iraq are being copied in Afghanistan.

Propping up prime ministers Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad and Hamid Karzai in Kabul won't guarantee any more success than propping up Abbas and Siniora.

They have been rendered ineffective by the Israeli and American policies of occupations and endless war, with criminal disregard for civilian casualties and human suffering.

Enter the radicals – and Iran.

Bilateral U.S.-Iran talks, long overdue and at last underway, won't end the carnage in Iraq. Tehran has little incentive to help there while the U.S. – backed by some Sunni Arab dictators – continues its sabre-rattling over the Iranian nuclear program.

"The failure to find political and institutional solutions in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, along with the American rivalry with Iran for regional influence, has stirred up all kinds of conflicts and created a field day for militias, large and small," says Prof. Jim Reilly, a University of Toronto expert on the Middle East.

"They have let loose a host of furies" – none easily contained.

A grieving family's ray of hope

CAPTAIN FRASER CLARK May 31, 2007 at 12:09 AM EDT

I had never seen so many Canadian flags along Highway 401. From Trenton to Toronto, each and every overpass along the 170-kilometre route was adorned with Canadian flags, large and small. Some people attached a Maple Leaf to a wooden stick and waved it vigorously from side to side; others lowered the flag in a sombre salute for a solemn occasion.

This was the eight-vehicle repatriation cortège of Corporal Matthew McCully, the young Canadian soldier killed on patrol in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb last week. We had just observed the return of Corp. McCully's remains on the tarmac at the airbase in Trenton and were now on our way to the coroner's office in Toronto.

Riding in a sleek black limousine with Corp. McCully's family, I was an escort officer assigned to the team assisting his family through this week's arduous journey. As we left the airbase and drove onto the busy highway, family members were still reeling from the gut-wrenching experience of seeing the flag-draped casket carried away from the airbus by his young comrades.

Many of them were in tears as they marched toward the hearse. The air inside our limousine was thick with emotion as we sat in silence contemplating the ceremony that had unfolded before our eyes. After the Ontario Provincial Police led us away from the terminal, our attention was quickly drawn to several dozen people lining the streets of Trenton, many holding bouquets of flowers amid the dozens of flags fluttering in the wind. Several oncoming cars pulled over to the side of the road, their occupants getting out to stand with their hands covering their hearts in quiet respect.

It wasn't until we were driving under the first few highway overpasses that we took notice of every bridge: Each was lined with more and more people, and as we drew closer to them, the people waved their flags more briskly so we could appreciate the scale of their salute. As we reached Toronto, the crowds were still lined up on each overpass and our drivers, by this time well practised in their response, slowed the limousines to acknowledge the demonstrations.

Accompanying those special flag-bearers were hundreds of police officers, firefighters and ambulance service workers. With their vehicles parked in single file atop each overpass, sirens ringing and lights flashing, those proud men and women snapped such an impressive salute that it brought tears to the eyes for all who sat inside the limousine. The police officers who couldn't fit on the overpasses moved their cruisers into an extended line along each exit ramp, blocking oncoming traffic as they formed up on the roadside to salute.

Mesmerized by this tremendous demonstration of support, the family sat in quiet disbelief, seeing a ray of hope as they witnessed their fellow citizens sharing their pain.

I didn't know Corp. McCully. And little did I know this duty would absorb so much more of me and my colleague, Capt. James Lindsay, when we were assigned this detail last Friday. Yet, in the few short days that we have been with Corp. McCully's family, we have grown as close to them as though they were our own kith and kin. We have come to know him through their memories and their emotional highs and lows.

The overwhelming intensity of their loss has shown us how frail the human condition can be but, it has also shown how much strength Corp. McCully's family has drawn from the hundreds of Canadians on the highway last Tuesday. The family wishes to publicly thank all of you who stood waving to their son.

Corp. McCully will be laid to rest with full military honours this morning in his hometown of Orangeville, Ont. Please bring your flag to Tweedsmuir Memorial Church at 11:00 a.m.

Defeating Afghanistan's drug fix By Nick Grono and Joanna Nathan ,

Thu May 31, 4:00 AM ET It's spring in Afghanistan, and poppy farmers are smiling. Heavy rains this winter portend a bumper opium harvest. Afghanistan already produces nine times the total opium output of the rest of the world combined, and while last year's crop was the largest the country has ever produced, this year's crop is likely to be even bigger.

The exploding drug trade is both a symptom and a source of instability and corruption. It is not just a case of evil drug traffickers taking advantage of a good but ineffective government to facilitate terrorism and insurgency – as frequently portrayed. The traffickers and their agents are all too often corrupt government officials themselves, who forge alliances of convenience with insurgent groups, including the Taliban, to protect their businesses and distribution routes.

There are no quick solutions to tackling this growing plague. But that doesn't mean policymakers can't make progress in undercutting the drug trade. The challenge will be to keep them focused on smart courses of action that yield long-term results – and away from superficially "easy" policies that end up backfiring.

In fact, when it comes to controlling drug production in Afghanistan, it is much easier to say what won't work than what will. For example, large-scale forced eradication (for example, by aerial spraying of crops, as advocated by some US policymakers), will not work. It might cause a temporary dip in production – but it will also force prices higher, thereby increasing incentives to produce more the following year. Indeed, it will probably benefit the drug traffickers who have a stockpile to sell at inflated prices, while farmers whose livelihoods are destroyed could be driven into the arms of insurgent groups.

Another superficially attractive solution that has been getting increasing attention is that of legalizing, or "licensing," the production of opium for medicinal purposes.

But this option would solve a problem that does not exist and fail to address several that do.

The International Narcotics Control Board categorically asserts there is already an oversupply of opiates for medical purposes. But even if there was an unmet demand, Afghanistan is perhaps the world's least suitable place to meet it. Countries such as Turkey, India, and Australia are already licensed to supply opiate raw materials. These countries, with their effective law enforcement and an absence of widespread armed conflict, are much better placed to meet any such demand than conflict-ridden Afghanistan.

Simple economics would also make the scheme unappealing to Afghan farmers. The sole reason that opium fetches high prices is that it is illegal. Licensed opiates fetch a fraction of the price. Farmers would have no incentive to produce opium legally as long as there is a black market offering much higher profits for the illegal output. And the logistical challenges are immense. Licensed poppy crops would need to be carefully regulated. But who could realistically expect the fledgling Afghan government to implement this complex and bureaucratic process – particularly in the violent and lawless south, where opium production has exploded despite an absolute ban for the past six years?

Given the involvement of corrupt officials, efforts to tackle this scourge must start at the top. There are about 25 to 30 key traffickers running the trade in Afghanistan, according to a recent UN/World Bank report. These figures should be targeted with asset seizures, and put on trial or extradited to the US or Europe. NATO should support efforts by Afghan counternarcotics forces to destroy labs and warehouses and interdict drug shipments. Regional linkages between Afghan, Pakistani, and Iranian trafficking networks also need to be addressed, and the international community should pressure Pakistan to arrest its traffickers and corrupt border security officials.

For the small farmers there must be comprehensive rural development to tackle some of the world's worst poverty. This should particularly target the areas that are not yet producing on a large scale, to help inoculate communities from the lure of traffickers. This means infrastructure such as roads, irrigation, and cold storage; providing seeds and fertilizer; training in marketing and distribution for other crops; and wider community development that offers schools, healthcare, and security. Once there are sustainable alternatives to poppy, manual eradication becomes easier.

Of course, it is always going to be difficult to make major inroads into drug production in Afghanistan without addressing the international demand for illicit drugs. The most realistic medium-term aim is to clean up the government so that officials linked to drugs do not undermine the spread of the rule of law and turn the country into a narco-state.

It will take many years of effective, coordinated, government action, backed up with sustained international support, to undercut the drug trade. Ostensibly quick and superficially easy solutions are merely a distraction from the real work needed to defeat Afghanistan's drug fix.

• Nick Grono is the vice president for advocacy and operations at the International Crisis Group in Brussels. Joanna Nathan is a Crisis Group senior analyst based in Kabul.

Militants kill 13 at Pakistan cleric's home

May 31 2007 at 11:16AM

At least 13 people were killed on Thursday when around 100 pro-Taliban militants launched rockets and lobbed hand grenades at the home of a top Pakistani cleric, police and witnesses said.

The attackers targeted the house of Pir Attique Gilani, an influential tribal elder known for being anti-Taliban, in northwestern Tank district near the border with Afghanistan, district police officer Mumtaz Zareen said.

The house also belonged to Gilani's brother, the government's representative in the lawless Khyber tribal region, but witnesses said the attackers specifically asked for the cleric's whereabouts after storming in.

When they did not find him, they launched the assault, they said.

Zareen said it would be "premature to name elements behind the attack" in the village of Jatta Kallan, but other police officials blamed pro-Taliban rebels and said Gilani's rivalry with them was a likely possible motive.

The cleric publishes a monthly newsletter from the southern city of Karachi, in which he has sharply criticised fighters from the extremist movement.

Six members of Gilani's family were among the dead, but Gilani himself was not believed to have been killed, the officer said. Two others were wounded in the pre-dawn attack.

Residents said they recognised some of the 100 or so assailants from a group of militants who took up positions on a road leading out of nearby Tank earlier this week.

A suicide car bomber killed two soldiers and gunmen shot dead a paramilitary commander on the same road on Monday.

Tank, a town of about 100 000 people, has been wracked by bloody clashes between security forces and Taliban insurgents since the start of the year.

It was placed under curfew last month amid violence triggered by the killing of a militant leader following attempts to recruit school students to fight in Afghanistan.

The unrest has increased concerns about the spread of a Taliban-led insurgency across the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan's lawless tribal belt and North West Frontier Province.

Officials said Gilani had survived an assassination bid last year. He later moved to Karachi but had recently moved back to the area, splitting his time between the two places. - AFP

Primping and preening become an Afghan passion

TheStar.com May 31, 2007 Rosie DiManno CITY COLUMNIST

Beauty parlours are suddenly all the rage in Kabul but few are permitted to behold feminine beauty

KABUL–Underneath the veil is the painted face.

Exotically and dramatically bedaubed: Slashes of liner that curl out to the temple, a palette of shadow colours on the eyelid, kohl smudged inside upper and lower lid, lips glossed to a high sheen and vividly outlined.

Afghan women love their makeup, and arguably none more so than those who never expose their faces to the world beyond their homes and female compounds.

Even those who continue to wear the burqa decorate hands and feet – appendages unhidden by the sacklike covering – with ornate henna stencils that creep provocatively up the ankle, up the wrist.

Old crones who beg for money on the streets, extending upturned palms through car windows, reveal dirty nails laminated with colour, red and pink and orange.

It is life affirming, female affirming, in a society where women have been mercilessly marginalized as human beings, all hint of vanity circumscribed by a patriarchal and deeply misogynistic culture.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but, in Afghanistan, few are permitted to behold feminine beauty. When a Miss Afghanistan entered the Miss Earth beauty pageant in 2004 – wearing a two-piece bathing suit – she was roundly vilified. And yet the capital is crammed with beauty salons, refuges where no man may enter, where primping and preening is both a serious and frivolous pursuit.

"Please, come in," says Rana, beckoning a Star reporter from the doorway of a salon. The male interpreter, however, is stopped cold on the threshold, all translations to be conducted through a beaded curtain. Rana rattles off the services on offer: Pedicures, manicures, waxing and eyebrow threading (a painful procedure that is the local version of plucking), body art and henna, curling and makeup application.

"You have circles under your eyes," Rana observes. "It is not so attractive."

There are titters from the female clients, including several preparing for one young woman's marriage, an occasion of absurd expense for Afghan families and ritualized tricking out, with brides – highly influenced by Bollywood movies – demanding ever more extravagant hairdos, the pouffier the better.

Brides are also expected to come to their marital beds shorn of all other body hair, right down to the pubes and, without waxing – which is not commonly available – it's an agonizing exercise, hair pulled out by hand or ripped out using chewing gum.

Women suffer for beauty the world over.

Such establishments may not entirely mimic salons of the West. It's near impossible to get a simple shampoo and blow-dry – there aren't sinks for the purpose and dryers are a rare luxury in a city where electricity comes and goes.

But the atmosphere of indulgence and pampering is much the same, the business of beguiling no less exacting. It all puts the lie to notions of severe, stark modesty imposed in the Muslim world, most especially this part of it where, only a few years ago, the Taliban would beat women who wore nail polish.

In those oppressive days, the salons that had previously existed – surviving even through the civil war era – were shuttered, beauticians burying their brushes and paint pots to keep them safe from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Yet salons flourished underground.

The Taliban, many reared in Pakistani madrassas, came of age with almost no exposure to women, including mothers. They feared what they never knew and ignorance spawned unspeakable cruelty; a repression of the feminine far beyond what was the historical norm.

After the Taliban was toppled, western donors joined Vogue magazine in establishing a Kabul Beauty School. There were scores of applicants and many had to be turned away. When funding ran out, an intrepid American hairdresser moved the school from the Women's Ministry and it remains a thriving, privately run academy.

The salon the Star attended, like several others in Kabul, is run by women who learned their trade elsewhere, usually Pakistan or Iran. Many more "hairdressers" work out of their homes. It is one profession that appears to be tolerated even by strict male family members. More relevantly, it augments what is so often a poor household income and many men seem to have made peace with that.

"I was taught hairdressing in Peshawar," says Shogufa, a 24-year-old who returned to her native Kabul in 2002. "But the salons are so different there. Here it's more about the makeup than the hair."

Though she works as a security guard at the Serena Hotel –gently patting down females at the main gate – Shogufa does styling from her home and is employed part-time at a photo studio. "Under the Taliban, I would never have been allowed to work at any of these jobs. But, you know, even during the Taliban time, women found ways to make themselves beautiful.

"It's much better now, at least in Kabul. I don't think you would find any beauty salons in Kandahar."

She's right. But scarlet nails, yes.

Five-year Natural Resource Plan Earns USGS Scientists Afghanistan Medal

Thursday, May 31, 2007 Reston, VA - infoZine

USGS Scientists Receive the Ghazi Mir Bach Khan Superior State Medal from President Hamid Karzai of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

The U.S. Geological Survey announced that President Hamid Karzai of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan awarded Dr. P. Patrick Leahy, former acting director and associate director for geology at the USGS, and Dr. Jack Medlin, regional specialist for the Asia and Pacific region, the Ghazi Mir Bach Khan Superior State Medal for their leadership in helping to develop and implement a five-year plan to revitalize the natural resources sector in Afghanistan. Dr. Leahy retired on April 30 after a 33-year career with the USGS and is now executive director of the American Geological Institute.

"This medal is one of the highest awards the Afghanistan government can bestow upon a non-Afghanistan individual, and we are honored that President Karzai has awarded it to two premier U.S. Geological Survey scientists," said USGS Director Mark Myers. "This demonstrates the value that the USGS has in the international community for its ability to provide credible, objective science that key policymakers can use to help revitalize and redevelop a once war-torn nation such as Afghanistan."

The USGS has been working with the government of Afghanistan since 2003 to provide an oil and gas resources assessment of the nation, which was issued in March 2006; an earthquake hazards assessment, which is scheduled to be released on May 30; and a mineral resources assessment and a coal resources assessment, both scheduled to be released by the end of 2007. USGS scientists have also been training scientists in Afghanistan on the latest scientific methods and technology so that they will be able to sustain and further develop the new natural resources assessments that the USGS has provided.

According to the five-year plan, "Wise decision-making and management of natural resources depend upon credible and reliable scientific data and knowledge about the occurrence, distribution, quantity and quality of a country's resources or resources base. Economic development decisions require such information by governments and are a prerequisite by private international investors and companies prior to entry into and investment in a country. Economic risks must also consider the natural hazards associated with development of resources as well as security concerns."

Land in Afghanistan donated to mine victims, UN reports

UNAMA: 31 May 2007 – Land in Afghanistan that is now free of mines has been donated to the brave workers who were injured while clearing those deadly weapons from the area, the United Nations said today.

Giving the land to 87 individuals, Mohammad Housain Anwary, the Governor of the province of Herat, said he wanted to honor their important work of the deminers in Afghanistan, the UN Mine Action Centre there (UNMACA), reported today.

ôDemining is really a continuation of Jihad,╜ he said. ôJihad doesn╝t only mean fighting and having weapons. It means supporting human beings, stability and development.╜

The 87 deminers, who were all wounded in the Herat region during mine clearance activities, have since returned to their homes, but most are unemployed and face challenging living conditions, according to UNMACA, which oversees mine action on behalf of the Government of Afghanistan.

ôThese deminers are really worthy of appreciation. Demining is the best support to the country,╜ said Mohammad Sediq, the UNMACA Chief of Operations. ôIt is our duty to look after them, especially ones who have become the victims of mines. We thank Governor Anwary, and we hope this action will be followed by other government authorities as a positive example throughout the country.╜

Two weeks ago, Rahmatullah Rahmat, the Governor of the province of Paktia, donated land to 26 deminers who were the victims of mine accidents in Paktia.

The Mine Action Programme for Afghanistan (MAPA), an umbrella organization comprised of partners that are coordinated by UNMACA, has cleared more than 1 billion square meters throughout Afghanistan since 1989 û destroying more than 323,000 anti-personnel mines, more than 18,500 anti-tank mines and almost seven million pieces of unexploded ordnance.

[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.]