In this bulletin:

• Taliban Execute 5 Policemen In S Afghanistan
• Afghan operation kills, wounds 100 Taliban: police
• Afghanistan trailing badly on development: study
• AFGHANISTAN: Fifth least developed country in the world
• 266 HIV cases detected in Afghanistan
• Big success or sad story?
• U.S. buys teaching gadgets instead of medical supplies
• Afghan police destroy 4 heroin labs
• Afghan War Losing Support in NATO Countries
• The Talibanization of Pakistan
• NATO falls behind in training Afghan police
• Losing Afghanistan, One Civilian at a Time
• Shakira broadcast sparks row in Afghanistan
• American University of Afghanistan Selects SunGard Higher Education to Help Prepare for Academic Growth
• For us ze war is over by tea time, ja

Taliban Execute 5 Policemen In S Afghanistan

November 18, 2007 - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP)--Taliban militants tortured five abducted policemen in southern Afghanistan and then hung their mutilated bodies from trees in a warning to villagers against working with the government, officials said Sunday.

The discovery of the bodies came as officials said that recent violence and clashes had left at least 68 people dead across Afghanistan.

The officers had been abducted two months ago from their checkpoint in southern Uruzgan province, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief. The Taliban slashed their hands and legs and hung the bodies on trees Saturday in Gazak village of Derawud district, he said.

"The Taliban told the people that whoever works with the government will suffer the same fate as these policemen," Himat said. "This village is under Taliban control. There are more than 100 Taliban in this village." Two tribal elders received the bodies of the policemen on Sunday, he said.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan, meanwhile, said it believes that an Associated Press story released Saturday was based on "premature and incomplete information, and that aspects of it may therefore be misleading."

The AP reported that a preliminary U.N. report had found that up to two-thirds of the 77 people killed and 100 wounded in a Nov. 6 suicide bomb attack in Baghlan province may have been hit by bullets fired by the bodyguards of visiting lawmakers. The story relied on information from two Western officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The U.N. statement said "there is no U.N. investigation as such," but that its role is to observe Afghan investigative efforts and to follow the case because of civilian casualties. It said causes of death were a matter for Afghan investigators to determine.

"We are aware of conflicting accounts of numbers killed or wounded by gunfire, " the U.N. statement said. "It is very hard at this time for anyone to be certain on figures, not least because many of the victims were buried soon after the bombing."

Insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan has soared this year, killing more than 6,000 people, a record number, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

The executions followed several days of violence in the country's south which left at least 63 people dead, including 58 militants and two Canadian soldiers.

Also in Uruzgan, police shot and killed two suspected Taliban militants on Sunday as they approached a police checkpoint on a motorbike, Himat said.

In Zabul province, the Taliban ambushed and clashed with an army patrol Saturday night, leaving 11 suspected insurgents dead and four soldiers wounded, said Qasem Khan, a provincial police official.

Authorities recovered the bodies of the 11 militants killed alongside their weapons, Khan said.

In southern Helmand province, a suicide bomber attacked a North Atlantic Treaty Organization patrol Sunday in Gereshk district, damaging a vehicle but causing no casualties, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

Afghan operation kills, wounds 100 Taliban: police

Sun Nov 18, KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Combined Afghan, Canadian and other troops backed by gunship helicopters killed or wounded about 100 Taliban in raids on a stronghold in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday.

The operation, launched Saturday in Kandahar province, also cost the lives of two Canadian troops and their interpreter, as well as an Afghan soldier, in deaths that have already been announced.

"Our information from the area says that 100 Taliban have been killed and wounded," Kandahar police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb told AFP. "Twenty-five Taliban have been buried in one location."

The NATO-led soldiers used gunship helicopters in the fighting in the Zahri district, 30 kilometres (20 miles) west of Kandahar city, Saqeb said. The battle pushed into the night and on Sunday troops were searching the area, he added.

The police chief had no breakdown for his toll, which could not be checked independently. Figures are hard to pin down in Afghanistan with officials and rebels sometimes exaggerating the casualties of their adversaries.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said its forces were involved but could not confirm the police toll.

However, a Canadian military spokeswoman, Captain Catherine Larose, said two Canadian men killed in a bomb blast Saturday with their interpreter were among the troops involved.

Dozens of Afghan and international troops moved into action in Zhari after Taliban attacks in the same area Friday killed two newly married women and a child and, separately, four policemen.

Yousuf Ahmadi, the chief spokesman for the insurgent Taliban movement, said only four Taliban had been killed but dozens of soldiers and civilians had died in the fighting.

Ahmadi also reported heavy civilian casualties in fighting Thursday in neighbouring Helmand province, which the US military said killed 23 rebels.

Helmand province commander Mohammad Hussain Andiwal acknowledged there had been some civilian casualties, including women and children, but it was not clear how many.

A delegation from the area was due to meet provincial authorities Sunday to update them on the situation, he said.

Taliban, meanwhile, attacked Afghan security forces on the main road between Kandahar city and Kabul overnight, sparking fighting that killed 11 rebels and wounded four Afghan soldiers, Zabul province police commander Mohammad Qasem said.

Militants separately attacked police on the same road closer to Kabul, in which two policemen and three rebels were killed, Ghazni police said.

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were toppled by an international coalition for harbouring Al-Qaeda. Their insurgency, now gaining pace, is stretching into a sixth year.

Critics say the war in Iraq has diverted world attention from Afghanistan, allowing the rebels to regroup.

In another in a stream of attacks, a suicide bomber blew himself up near an ISAF vehicle in Helmand's Gereshk area, Andiwal said.

There were no other casualties, and ISAF could not immediately confirm the attack. Separately, a bomb near Gereshk bazaar Saturday killed a civilian, Andiwal said.

Afghanistan trailing badly on development: study

Sun Nov 18, 7:17 AM ET - KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan is fifth last on a global index of human development, according to a report released Sunday, despite billions of dollars in aid and help since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

The country's ranking on the Human Development Index -- a composite survey of education, longevity and economic performance -- is the lowest outside Africa, according to the Afghanistan Human Development Report 2007.

The score was fractionally lower than that in the last such report, which was in 2004, but officials said this was more due to changes in data than a reflection of a real decline.

Accurate statistics are difficult to find in Afghanistan, where even the size of the population is not clear.

The report urged donors to fulfil aid commitments, adding that since 2006 they have contributed or pledged 10 billion dollars, "only half of what the government believes is needed to implement its development strategy."

Afghanistan's position of 174th out of 178 placed it above only Niger (the lowest), Sierra Leone, Mali and Burkina Faso, and it was second to last on a separate ranking reflecting inequalities between men and women.

The study had limited distribution in the United States in September but it was officially released Sunday in Kabul.

There had, however, been some progress, said the document drawn up by the Centre for Policy and Human Development at Kabul University, supported by the United Nations Development Programme.

Gross domestic product per person increased from 683 dollars in 2002 to 964 dollars in 2005, it said.

Another 132,000 square kilometres (52,800 square miles) of land was cleared of landmines in 2006 and the number of telephone users shot up to 2.5 million, or 10 percent of the population.

School enrolment has grown over the past five years from 900,000 to nearly 5.4 million, it said.

However, the report cautioned that about one-third of Afghans still do not have enough food to eat or access to safe drinking water, and only 12 percent of women are literate compared with 32 percent of men.

Infant mortality has dropped from 165 babies per 1,000 births to 135 but is still among the highest in the world, as is maternal mortality. Life expectancy in 2005 was 43 years, down from 44.5 in 2003, it noted.

The report said development is being hit by the weak rule of law, including insurgent attacks that killed twice as many people in 2006 as in the previous year.

Other major concerns were "the abuse of political and military power, the misuse of public funds, the non-transparent privatisation of state-owned enterprises, kickbacks from the sale of narcotics, and other criminal activities."

The justice system was meanwhile struggling to cope, with underqualified judges, allegations of corruption and a backlog of some 6,000 cases awaiting adjudication.

The report proposed a "hybrid" system of justice to strengthen the rule of law with trusted traditional methods of dispute settlement, including through community meetings and tribal structures, complementing the judiciary.

AFGHANISTAN: Fifth least developed country in the world

KABUL, 18 November 2007 (IRIN) - Afghanistan has dropped a place in a UN global human development index, which ranks countries based on their citizens' economic income, life expectancy and literacy rate, according to the country's National Human Development Report (NHDR) for 2007.

Afghanistan was ranked 174th out of 178 countries - ahead of only Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. In Afghanistan's first-ever human development report, which was released in 2004, the country was ranked 173rd and was widely expected to improve its human development indicators.

Afghans live almost nine years less than people in other Least Developed Countries, the report's findings show.

"Life expectancy [in Afghanistan] has dropped from 44.5 years in 2003 to 43.1 years in 2005," states the report, which was released on 18 November in Kabul.

The report acknowledges Afghanistan's steady progress in improving its health services and reducing child and maternal mortality figures (1,600 deaths per 100,000 births), but warns that over 30 Afghans still die from tuberculosis every day.

Although Afghanistan has maintained double-digit economic growth over the past several years, it has failed to reduce extreme and prevalent poverty and hunger significantly, the report says.

The NHDR ranks Afghanistan as the poorest country in Asia, with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of US$964.

"Some 6.6 million Afghans do not meet their minimum food requirements, with 24 percent of households characterised by poor food consumption," the report says. Consequently, almost half all Afghan children under five are underweight, it adds.

The report also found that less than 30 percent of Afghanistan's 31 million citizens have regular access to clean water.

Education - Widely devastated by over 25 years of armed conflict, Afghanistan has one of the lowest adult literacy rates among developing countries, with the literacy rate for adults over the age of 15 falling from 28.7 percent in 2003 to 23.5 percent in 2005, the report states.

Afghan women, in particular, suffer lack of access to education. "Enrolment rates for women at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels are almost half that of men - 41.8 percent for females and 73.7 percent for males," the report said.

Women are also deemed far behind men in other human development indicators, such as access to health services, employment opportunities and longevity.

Rule of law -The 176-page NHDR 2007, produced by about 40 Afghan and international experts, primarily recommends a bridging of traditional rules with a formal judicial system in the country.

The report highlights some of the major shortcomings in both formal and informal legal mechanisms currently in place in the country and advocates for a hybrid system, which should expand women's participation in judicial decision-making and ensure reliable, transparent and easy access to justice for all Afghans.

The report warned of Afghanistan's limited progress towards its nine millennium development goals (MDGs). It said in spite of remarkable advances in human development since 2002, the country is not progressing fast enough in many sectors to achieve its MDGs by 2020, which will have "dire consequences for the poor and most vulnerable".

266 HIV cases detected in Afghanistan

KABUL, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Over 260 cases of HIV have been registered in the war-torn Afghanistan over the past three years, an official at Public Health Ministry said Sunday.

"Around 266 cases of HIV have been detected over the past three years in the country," Abdullah Fahim, spokesman of Afghan Public Health Ministry, told Xinhua.

However, he could not give the exact figure of those who have developed the full fledged epidemic of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

The official said that the AIDS epidemic has claimed the lives of five people in Afghanistan over the past three years.

Some 2,000 to 3,000 people, according to unofficial sources, are estimated to have contracted HIV/AIDS in the post-Taliban country where the facilities to detect and provide medical treatment are poor.

Nearly 100 local students on Sunday voluntarily visited some 150 beauty parlors and barbershops in the Afghan capital Kabul to promote awareness of the contagious epidemic among the citizens.

Big success or sad story?

By ALISON YOUNG- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 11/18/07

For four years, federal officials have touted a U.S. medical training program in Afghanistan as a model of success that brought "top-notch" care to a major Kabul maternity hospital.

Yet privately, the Rabia Balkhi Hospital project has repeatedly alarmed scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who were responsible for tracking care there, records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show.

The rate of normal-sized babies dying in labor and delivery at Rabia Balkhi jumped 67 percent last year, CDC scientists in Atlanta found. Worse, the newspaper's analysis shows these babies were nearly four times more likely to die when delivered by Caesarean section, a potentially lifesaving operation encouraged by U.S. trainers.

Afghan mothers were in danger, too. Eighteen died in childbirth there last year; two-thirds of the deaths involved c-sections, including issues with surgical skill, anesthesia, transfusions and misdiagnoses, records show.

Among them: an Afghan Air Corps pilot who bled to death in July 2006 following a c-section.

So when Afghan President Hamid Karzai's wife chose to give birth at Rabia Balkhi in January, the U.S. military sent an 11-member medical team and critical equipment to "backstop" the delivery, said Col. Donald Thompson, who was then the U.S. command surgeon in Afghanistan. The baby was born safely without a c-section.

CDC scientists have warned Washington for years that the project might be risking lives. Officials at the CDC and the Afghan Ministry of Public Health now question whether the training pushed Afghan doctors to perform more c-sections before they were ready and before the hospital had the necessary anesthesia, sanitation and blood supply.

Until recently, officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the project, have deflected criticism. Where others saw a project hobbled by poor design and management, they saw success in a dangerous environment.

Rabia Balkhi has been "an unqualified success," said William Steiger, director of HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs, in an interview. "Hundreds if not thousands of lives have been saved."

Former HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, who had touted the project during his brief presidential campaign this year, said he was unaware of serious issues raised by the CDC and others. "I'm very surprised and concerned about it," he said in response to the newspaper's findings.

U.S. doctors who worked at Rabia Balkhi have also warned the project lacked the authority and resources to turn the hospital around. They restated their concerns in interviews with the Journal-Constitution.

"Short of saying it was half-baked, I'd say it was not as energetic as it could have been," said Dr. Douglas Laube, who consulted on the project from 2003 to 2005. Laube is past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

The hospital is cleaner and provides better care since the project began, experts agree.

Even so, Afghan doctors there still lacked basic knowledge of anatomy and physiology, a contractor's assessment found last fall. Most doctors, though improved as critical thinkers, still lacked basic skills to resuscitate mothers and newborns. Doctors consistently failed to make sure newborns were breathing after c-sections.

Training at the hospital, provided by a revolving door of doctors, midwives and others often serving three-month stints, has been piecemeal and at times poorly attended, records show. The project lacked a set curriculum for three and a half years. No U.S. obstetrics trainer has been on site for 12 months.

U.S. officials don't know about 2007 death rates at the hospital because the CDC wasn't there to collect data. Last fall, HHS cut off the Atlanta-based agency's funding to monitor care, saying others could do it.

CDC and other experts have long questioned whether the training could succeed given the severity of Rabia Balkhi's problems and the U.S. refusal to tackle much beyond training.

The hospital initially lacked soap and hot water. It routinely ran out of surgical gloves, antibiotics and other basic medical supplies. Its doctors' medical training was outdated and cursory — the equivalent in some cases of a second-year U.S. medical student's, some experts said.

But in response to inquiries by the Journal-Constitution, HHS has revisited the concerns and formed a technical advisory group to address the rising death rate. Advisers will travel to Kabul in December. Last month, the agency hired RTI International, a North Carolina-based research institute, to evaluate the project at a cost of $1 million.

"I'm very pleased they're taking this seriously," said Dr. Faizullah Kakar, Afghanistan's deputy minister of public health.

The project began in 2002, a few months after the overthrow of the repressive Taliban regime. It started with Thompson's desire to do something about Afghanistan's maternal and infant death rates — among the world's worst.

"I thought the deaths of the babies were so deplorable, I had to do something about it," Thompson said.

Thompson chose Rabia Balkhi for a U.S. project to train newly graduated Afghan doctors in obstetrics and gynecology. Donald Rumsfeld, then defense secretary, agreed his department would renovate the building.

Named after a famed poet, Rabia Balkhi had grown over the decades from a clinic to a 250-bed, two-story hospital in a congested bazaar. When the Taliban barred women from general hospitals in 1997, it became Kabul's only women's hospital. Last year Rabia Balkhi's largely female staff delivered 13,906 babies, down from 15,509 in 2004. No statistics were kept in earlier years..

Thompson boasted at the hospital's gala reopening in April 2003 that "we now have a new hospital for women to receive top-notch health care and a new training program that will provide the best of medical instruction."

Many visiting U.S. doctors and health experts saw it much differently. "Things are horrible there. Worse than imaginable," wrote Michael Gerber, visiting in May 2003 from CDC's refugee health branch, in an e-mail a month later to CDC headquarters.

Gerber's e-mail described "feces all over the halls, blood everywhere ... no drugs, no record keeping, no signs of the refurbishment save new paint in a few spots."

International relief experts in Kabul believed the U.S. presence at the hospital was attracting more expectant mothers and resulting in more deaths, he warned.

The U.S. program was "just totally unrealistic," said Dr. Pamela Hyde, an Oklahoma obstetrician who was there in 2003. She said the United States needed to bring in a whole team of doctors, midwives and administrators to run the hospital and teach the Afghan staff by example.

The Afghan health ministry had wanted HHS to take over Rabia Balkhi and stock it with scarce supplies, according to U.S. embassy cables.

HHS refused, saying the Afghans wouldn't become self-sufficient that way. Internal documents note that a top priority of the project was to support the newly installed Karzai government.

As a result, nobody had full authority to reform hospital practices, U.S. trainers and contractors said. The Afghan staff lacked critical management and care skills, yet many resisted change. U.S. trainers couldn't even require attendance at classes.

"I knew what should be done but for one reason or another it wasn't done. That is extremely frustrating," said Rick DeFoore, a management consultant assigned to Rabia Balkhi throughout 2006. "Putting a consultant in there to give advice is ... a Band-Aid and Neosporin on a major wound infection."

The project also struggled with structural problems for two years until, Thompson said, he "raised hell" and the Defense Department did more renovation. Sewage flowed in hallways. Often there was no heat or hot water.

"We would have been better off building a new facility," said Dr. Walter "Jerry" Saunders, who taught at Rabia Balkhi in 2004.

Today, the Afghan government wants to build a major hospital in Kabul for about $14 million — far less than the $23 million spent so far on the training project.

At times, HHS' narrow focus on training and what it would not pay for was ridiculous, said Dr. Qudrat Mojadidi, an Afghan-American who advised Thompson on the project in 2002 and 2003. HHS refused, for example, to buy fuel for the hospital's medical waste incinerator, he said.

"They were having 60 babies every 24 hours and all those placentas were rotting out there in the hot sun of Kabul," said Mojadidi, who paid $200 from his own pocket to buy fuel in 2003.

"Every week I'd send two or three e-mails with pictures attached" to HHS officials, Mojadidi said. "Finally [Thompson] sent me a letter saying what a wonderful job I was doing and how many lives I was saving. I wrote back and said: We're not doing anything."

In emails and meetings, CDC officials urged HHS to either suspend the training or make the hospital functional so training could be effective.

"We are extremely concerned about the grim situation," wrote Dr. Stephen Blount, CDC's global health director, in a May 2003 email to Steiger, the HHS official in charge in Washington.

But Steiger was not swayed, writing back that "serious miscommunication" threatened the project.

Nearly a year later, even Rumsfeld was exasperated. "I am terribly disappointed that apparently the midwife hospital in Kabul has not been followed up well. It is not doing a good job," Rumsfeld wrote Thompson in 2004. "We have to do better than that."

Thompson responded by citing successes — training, a new emergency room, fewer deaths. He wrote that "conditions at RBH are improving, and the care being provided to mothers and their infants there is better now than it has been in many years." Rumsfeld declined to be interviewed.

Thompson said Wednesday he believes the hospital "is a hell of a lot better than it was when we started." He said he doesn't remember hearing concerns from officials at CDC or others.

"I thought the program was well-received by everybody," he said. "All I wanted to do was make sure women were taken care of."

International Medical Corps, a California-based nonprofit hired by HHS in 2004 to run the training, rarely met its contract goals, records show.

Ideally, six U.S. or Western-trained health professionals were supposed to teach year-round. IMC met that goal in only six months.

At least two ob/gyns were supposed to be at Rabia Balkhi throughout the year. But the nonprofit met that goal in only 11 months since 2005. IMC in 2005 even brought in an ob/gyn who gave up his Florida medical license in 1998 after a series of disciplinary actions.

IMC officials, who blamed the incident on a lapse in procedures, said the man was dismissed after three weeks and did not treat patients.

IMC officials told HHS that difficulties in recruiting forced them to largely rely on Afghan trainers who might offer "lower-quality courses."

The years of disjointed training was evident in the care observed by Dr. Catrina Funk, an ob/gyn, and Dr. Jeff Whittall, a pediatrician, who worked there in 2006.

"Twice myself or Jeff walked into the OR and realized the patient didn't have a heartbeat on the table, but nobody else realized it because the patient didn't have a monitor," Funk said. Anesthesia doctors had new equipment kits, she said, "but they didn't necessarily know how to use them."

IMC Vice President Rabih Torbay said his group's work was hampered because HHS failed to make sure hospital staff, consultants and contractors — each working for a different employer — worked toward the same goals.

"What was lacking was someone who would bring all those pieces together," Torbay said. Last year HHS hired another contractor — CURE International — to help the hospital run its staff and order supplies better.

But CURE officials told HHS last month they want out of the project. In a letter to the Afghan health ministry, CURE cited problems with hospital leadership: "Under the existing circumstances, CURE ... does not expect any further long-term or sustainable outcomes from this project."

When the Journal-Constitution first asked about c-section deaths at Rabia Balkhi, HHS officials said they were unaware of CDC's concerns. "I don't know what they're referring to," Jeannine Greenfield, an HHS nurse assigned to run the project, said in April. "There hasn't been that dramatic a rise in c-sections."

IMC also initially disputed a c-section problem, saying collection methods skewed CDC's data. CDC disagreed.

Earlier this year, the HHS Web site claimed the project had reduced maternal and infant mortality at Rabia Balkhi by 80 percent to 90 percent. But after the Journal-Constitution questioned the statistics, HHS officials admitted they could not substantiate the claim and removed it.

"We had intended that statement merely to be an indication of the extent of improvements at the hospital, and not a precise measure," agency officials said in a written statement.

The hospital's labor and delivery death rate for normal-sized babies actually rose 67 percent in 2006, CDC data show, while the c-section rate for them climbed 45 percent. The hospital's post-operative infection rate increased 66 percent.

"The mortality rate is going up, the Caesarean rate is going up," said Dr. Brian McCarthy, CDC's point person on the project. "That raises a flag."

Another serious concern: Even successful c-sections put the women at risk of uterine ruptures in future pregnancies. In Afghanistan, the average woman bears seven children, rarely with a doctor present.

Project officials found many c-section deliveries were unnecessary.

"It was a big concern. From the very beginning we were talking about it," said Dr. Anna Thurairatnam, an obstetrician who served as IMC's program manager at Rabia Balkhi in 2006.

IMC alerted HHS to the emerging issue. A March 2006 report devoted a page with charts to a rise in maternal and neonatal deaths at Rabia Balkhi. IMC also reported an uptick in deaths and concerns about c-sections in September 2005.

Since last spring, HHS has recognized a need to investigate c-section deaths at Rabia Balkhi. The agency is sending teams to Kabul to help create a quality assurance program to improve care, and it plans to restore funds for CDC's help.

"Sometimes we think the wrong women are getting c-sections," said Dr. Peter van Dyck, the HHS official leading the advisory team. "Sometimes women who need a c-section aren't getting it. And some who are getting it aren't getting appropriate [post-operative] care."

Dr. Margaret Kitt of the CDC, who visited the hospital on the team's behalf in September, said it has improved significantly since 2003 and even since last year. Still, she said, "a lot more progress ... needs to be made."

"Things are very difficult and very fragile in Afghanistan," Kitt said. "I think this is a really important opportunity for everything to continue to move forward. We don't want to lose this opportunity."

U .S. buys teaching gadgets instead of medical supplies

By ALISON YOUNG - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Published on: 11/18/07

Instead of helping Rabia Balkhi Hospital buy medical supplies needed to deliver 14,000 babies a year, the United States spent $1.3 million on computerized LeapFrog talking books.

The idea was to teach illiterate Afghan women about hygiene, prenatal care, immunizations and nutrition from talking picture books popular with U.S. children.

Never mind that rural Afghan people have never seen touch-screen technology. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services gave LeapFrog a no-bid contract after an offhand comment by the daughter of a supporter of then-HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, according to interviews and records obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

It was more than a quarter of the money Congress gave HHS in 2004 to tackle maternal and child health issues in Afghanistan.

At the same time Rabia Balkhi in Kabul routinely lacked soap, hot water, proper operating room equipment and working incubators. HHS made a policy decision to focus only on training at Rabia Balkhi and refused to buy medical supplies.

In the past, the Afghan health ministry could only afford to supply its hospitals for about one week each month.

"After one week, we cannot buy gloves" or other supplies, Dr. Faizullah Kakar, the deputy health minister, said in February. Patients were being asked to bring their own.

In December 2004 Thompson announced the delivery of 20,000 LeapFrog books to Kabul. Then they sat in a warehouse for nearly two years until the Afghan government started distributing them. HHS officials said it took that long to field-test the books.

Meanwhile the devices' AAA batteries died; HHS spent another $9,800 to replace them last fall.

Thompson, in an interview last week, said he didn't think the books were purchased with funds from the congressional appropriation for Rabia Balkhi. "I still think it's a tremendous tool," he said.

HHS officials and Thompson defend the LeapFrog purchase and call the project innovative. But a $95,000 study commissioned by HHS found the books had dubious value.

Afghans who used the book learned from it, but fewer than 10 percent were willing to use it during a 2005 pilot project. Most found the device too complicated and preferred being taught by people.

"From a cultural perspective, it is not surprising," the report by the nonprofit group International Medical Corps concluded. "They have little or no experience with learning from books or electronic forms of media."

The study suggested the book might be most effective if used in conjunction with a live health educator. How did HHS decide to buy LeapFrog books?

Kimberly Weiner Greene said she made an "off-the-cuff" comment to her dad, Jerry Weiner, a friend and supporter of Thompson's.

Weiner was attending an Afghanistan brainstorming meeting with Thompson. During a break, Greene said, her dad called to chat.

"Without thinking about what I was saying, I said: 'What a no-brainer. We should make LeapFrog books,' " said Greene, noting HHS was looking for a way to get information to women in rural areas without doctors.

Users could just tap a pen on pictures in the book, she noted, and hear an Afghan speaking in their language.

Greene said she never expected HHS would actually do it. Thompson called a few days later to say he loved the idea, she said.

Thompson's former HHS spokesman, Tony Jewell, said: "If there's a good idea, it doesn't matter where it came from. It was certainly vetted."

William Steiger, director of HHS' Office of Global Health Affairs, called the books' educational potential "extraordinary." He said they'll now be used alongside a live health educator.

Dr. Najiba Zamani, an Afghan-American consultant for LeapFrog, said she was shocked that the field study questioned the books' effectiveness. "In my opinion, those women, they need this book," she said.

Zamani said she's seen Afghan women cry when they learn what depression is from the book and that help is available.

And she said the book's ability to raise awareness about "birth spacing," by talking about how carrots planted too closely together become scrawny and weak, provides a culturally appropriate way of addressing a sensitive sexual issue.

Was the book the best use of limited U.S. funds Kakar said the books will be useful.

"But when it comes to priorities, we have donors. They do things according to what they think is right," he said. "Our priorities might be a little different."

Afghan police destroy 4 heroin labs

KABUL, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's Special Counter-Narcotic police have destroyed four heroin labs and more than five tones of contraband in eastern Nangarhar province, a statement of Afghan Interior Ministry said.

"Personnel of Counter-Narcotics Force in their efforts against illicit drug raided Achin district late Thursday and destroyed four heroin labs besides confiscating more than five tones of contraband including 44 kg heroin and 3,550 kg ammonium chloride used in manufacturing the drug," said the statement released on late Saturday.

In the statement, the ministry stressed that the government is determined to eradicate opium poppy in the war-torn country.

The post-Taliban Afghanistan with an output of 8,200 tones of opium poppy in 2007 once again topped poppy growing nations in the world.

Afghan War Losing Support in NATO Countries

VOA 11/18/2007 By Andre de Nesnera in Washington

Forces from the 26-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization - or NATO - are encountering stiff resistance from Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan. In this background report from Washington, VOA Senior Correspondent André de Nesnera looks at some of the restrictions NATO countries have placed on their troops fighting the Taliban.

NATO has been operating in Afghanistan since 2003, leading a 41,000 strong United Nations-mandated contingent known as the "International Security Assistance Force."

Experts say NATO has three missions in Afghanistan. The first is to assist the government of president Hamid Karzai in its efforts to rebuild and stabilize the country. The second is to train the Afghan army and police. And the third mission is to hunt down and eliminate insurgents.

The fiercest combat has been centered in southern Afghanistan, the home of the Taliban, ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.

Experts say NATO is hindered in its fight against the Taliban by so-called "caveats," restrictions placed by various NATO- member countries on what their forces can do and where they can be located in Afghanistan.

Robert Hunter was U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Clinton administration.

"There are only about four or five countries that say we will go anywhere and do whatever fighting we have to do: the Americans, the British, the Canadians - who have suffered more casualties than anytime since the Korean War - the Dutch and the Estonians. The rest all have some limitations," said Hunter.

"The Belgians won't leave the area around Kabul airport. The Germans operate in the north, which is an important area, but it's a stable area - and onward and onward. So that very few allies are sharing most of the risks and the others won't do so. And that's caused huge strains within the alliance," he added.

The strains were evident in late October during a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Netherlands.

At that gathering, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates sharply criticized some alliance members, saying the "caveats" - or restrictions - have done real harm to the NATO effort in Afghanistan. And he called on European nations to commit more troops and resources to NATO's mission in Afghanistan. But no European nation agreed to substantially increase its presence in that country.

Charles Kupchan with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York says Gates was right to call on European nations to commit more troops to Afghanistan.

"Could the Europeans squeeze out a few more warm bodies and some more assets? The answer is 'yes', but not in huge numbers. And there the big obstacle is that in many countries: in Germany, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Canada, there is a lot of domestic skepticism growing about the mission in Afghanistan. And I think governments are fearful of rocking the boat by saying not only are we going to continue this mission, but we are going to send more troops," said Kupchan.

Sean Kay, a NATO expert at Ohio Wesleyan University agrees that support for the war in Afghanistan is waning.

"Public opinion in both Canada and the Netherlands, and in fact throughout the NATO countries, has turned sour on the war in Afghanistan," he said. "Even in the United States, there was a poll out this summer that showed that 42 percent of the American public wanted to get out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. So public support for this engagement, especially the combat side of it, is dropping."

Kay says the Bush administration must do a much better job to explain NATO's role in Afghanistan.

"At the end of the day, we lead NATO," he said. "And so that requires the administration to come forward and really explain to the country what's going on in Afghanistan and why we really need to either redouble our efforts or reassess the mission to something that is possible."

Kay and others say NATO's Afghan mission is crucial to the future of the alliance as it continues to redefine its role following the end of the Cold War.

The Talibanization of Pakistan

As the Musharraf-Bhutto showdown continues, Islamic militants are expanding their grip on territory on both sides of the Afghan border

November 17, 2007 - Mitch Potter, Toronto Star

KABUL–If it is true that misery loves company, one can understand the dark bemusement coursing through the politically fragile Afghan capital these days, where the latest jokes come at the expense of the even more fragile neighbour to the southeast.

Not in recent memory has perennially miserable Afghanistan had a neighbour it could point to for comic relief. That the neighbour making grave news today just happens to be Pakistan makes it all the sweeter, if only because so many Afghans regard Pakistan as the meddling monkey on their back, whence all problems come.

One glib assessment offered to the Toronto Star this week at a gathering of Pashtun tribal leaders in Kabul described Pakistan as "an entity made entirely of Saudi religion, Indian culture and Afghan land. Take any one of those things away and you don't even have a country. It ceases to be."

But if the laughter that followed was hearty, it came with nervous undercurrents – acknowledgement that the joke may yet blow back across the porous border in the form of increased Taliban militancy that continues to bedevil NATO-led efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.

"All that we are seeing beneath the border is frightening for Afghanistan, and by extension, it should frighten the world," said Abdul Ghafoor Liwal, senior analyst with the Regional Studies Centre of Afghanistan, a government-funded think-tank in Kabul.

"For so many years we suffered from a jihadist ideology scripted by Pakistan's army and intelligence services, going all the way back to the Soviet era. They nurtured and trained militant groups built on religious extremism with ample support of the CIA. This is established in fact," said Liwal.

"Now that the genie is out of the bottle it is not so easy to control. And as Pakistan weakens, it gains strength. For Afghans, there is perhaps a kind of satisfaction in this because the very policy we resented so much is backfiring on its source. But in the long run, there is no pleasure in the equation of weak governments on both sides of the border, because the monster in the middle can cut both ways."

Reports from the Pakistani side suggest that even after two weeks of emergency rule imposed ostensibly to push back pro-Taliban militants, forces loyal to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf continue to lose ground in the tribal region of Swat, the scene of heavy aerial attacks this week.

But from an Afghan point of view, the most disturbing news came in a two-part series this week by Asia Times correspondent Syed Saleem Shahzad datelined from the Nawa Pass overlooking the border.

Shahzad quoted a senior Taliban figure as saying a wide range of like-minded militant groups, including the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda, have agreed on a declaration of independence, with the goal of establishing an "Islamic emirate" that will eat into territory on both sides of the border.

Afghan political watchers are divided on the impact of such political propaganda, should militants follow through with the threat of declaring independence. Liwal, for one, regards it as a potentially grave development.

"I regard it as dangerous because when you look just below the border you see a vast tribal population that has lost its traditional leadership," said Liwal. "Before the Talibanization of this region the local jirgas of tribal elders held sway and the mullahs were second rank, with no say in policy. Now the mullahs and the madrassas make the policy, especially in Waziristan and the eastern tribal areas.

"In a way, I think the danger is worse for Pakistan. Because the Afghans are not so easily fooled. When the Taliban says, `We will make a nice caliphate. No more cutting off people's heads. You can even play music if you want,' the Afghan people can see through this miserable lie because we already suffered through it once before.

"But beyond the Pakistani border, it could be worse. The millions of people without traditional leadership can be very easily used."

The border itself is, of course, a geopolitical nightmare in its own right, insofar as it stands as little more than a grease-pencil mark dreamed up by the British empire – a make-believe dividing line between an unbroken sea of ethnic Pashtuns stretching from Kandahar province to just a few hours drive from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

On the Afghan side, Pashtuns comprise a majority, though few are certain of the precise numbers, but they live in even greater numbers – as many as 25 million – on the Pakistan side. None have ever accepted the establishment of the 1893 Durand Line that supposedly sets them apart.

But Afghan analysts suggest Pashtun nationalism ultimately may prove the most effective bulwark against the threat of a separatism based on religion.

"As much as some Pashtuns are becoming more extreme, they are nationalists first, not Islamists. The strongest belief is in pan-Pashtunism, which is a dream that would mean this population effective joining Afghanistan," said Muntqud Rahman Roadwal, general secretary of the Afghan Writers' Union.

"This has always been one of Pakistan's worst fears, and one of the reasons Pakistan is so politically motivated to prevent the rise of a strong Afghanistan. Because if Afghanistan is strong, it becomes a centre of gravity to pull the Pashtun back into its historic fold by erasing the Durand Line."

University of Kabul political scientist Mohammed Ismael Yoon characterizes the Pakistan crisis as "one of the worst in a 60-year series of crises between our countries.

"The world's worry should be keeping Pakistan's nuclear weapons out of the hands of extremists. Our immediate worry, meanwhile, is our fragile economy because absolutely everything comes and goes through the border with Pakistan," said Yoon, who is also a member of the Afghanistan National Security Council.

NATO falls behind in training Afghan police

By Jim Michaels, USA TODAY

NATO's shortage of police and military trainers in Afghanistan is slowing efforts to build security forces capable of combating the nation's resurgent Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

The shortage is particularly acute in the police, who are not as well-trained as Afghanistan's army, said Army Col. Mike McMahon, a staff officer with the Combined Security Transition Command in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces are moving about 900 trainers that are working with the Afghan army to the police, McMahon said.

"The police are way behind," McMahon said. "We have to take extraordinary measures to catch them up. We essentially had to strip a lot of our teams from the army to be able to build police teams."

NATO said it still needs about 46 training teams, called operational mentoring and liaison teams, NATO spokesman James Appathurai said. That requirement is expected to climb, he said.

The teams vary in size. U.S. army advising teams in Afghanistan are generally about 16 troops. Some countries, such as France, have much larger teams with more soldiers to provide security for team members.

The training shortage is critical because much of NATO's strategy rests on rebuilding Afghan's army and police to play a lead role in defeating insurgents and establishing security.

There is "a growing consensus that the successful training of the Afghan security forces would be central to any progress," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month. He and NATO leaders have urged member countries to follow through on pledges to send training teams to Afghanistan.

NATO and the separate U.S. command have about 48,000 troops in Afghanistan. Some of those troops are restricted from operating in violent parts of the country, such as the south and east, further restricting how commanders can deploy forces.

By contrast, the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is fielding more than 170,000 troops, which allows the force to provide a larger measure of security while it rebuilds local forces. Most are American forces without restrictions.

NATO doesn't have the manpower to flood parts of Afghanistan with more troops. "We have cast ourselves in a fantasy — thinking that with limited resources we can win this thing in three to five years," Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said of Afghanistan. A five- to 15-year struggle is more likely, he said.

Appathurai said NATO forces are now fending off insurgents at the same time they are rebuilding Afghan security forces. "We are now in a most difficult state," Appathurai said. "We have to fight and we have to train."

Police are considered essential to defeating an insurgency, according to the U.S. military's counterinsurgency doctrine. They help restore order and provide legitimacy for the local government.

Building Afghanistan's police force has lagged. The U.S. military began taking a larger role in police training in 2005.

"We're working now to get minimally trained policemen into professionally trained policemen," McMahon said. "That's going to take some time."

The Afghan government has fielded about 75,000 police out of 82,000 authorized. Some 65,000 of those are trained at a minimal level, but only 2,000 meet the new standard of 16 weeks of training, McMahon said.

Meanwhile, corruption in villages and towns is taking its toll on public support for Afghanistan's government.

"The problem is not that most Afghans inherently support the Taliban," said Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank. "It is that patience with the Afghan government is wearing thin. … Afghans have become increasingly frustrated with national and local government officials who are viewed as corrupt and self-serving."

The army is further along in its training. The army has about 47,600 trained soldiers now and are adding about 2,000 troops a month, McMahon said.

Losing Afghanistan, One Civilian at a Time

By Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann

The Washington Post, Sunday, November 18, 2007; B04

The road between the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad and the Pakistani border is one of the busiest in the country, congested with gaily painted trucks, battered taxis, buses packed to the rafters and Afghans riding bikes. One morning in early March, a suicide bomber plowed a Toyota packed with explosives into the middle of a U.S. convoy patrolling that road, killing himself and injuring a Marine. That was bad enough, but what may be the key to Afghanistan's future was what happened next.

As pedestrians scattered in the resulting confusion and chaos, other Marines opened fire as their convoy sped away, shooting at vehicles and pedestrians over the course of some 10 miles, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. They left at least 12 civilians dead in their wake and injured dozens more. "They opened fire on everybody," one wounded bystander told a reporter, "the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot." A court of inquiry is scheduled to convene next month at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to determine whether the Marines acted improperly. Investigations by the U.S. military and the Afghan human rights commission have already concluded that the American convoy was not fired upon after the suicide attack.

The incident near Jalalabad is part of a disturbing larger pattern in Afghanistan. Last year was the worst year for civilian casualties since the fall of the country's cruel Taliban regime, and 2007 is shaping up to be even worse. The most alarming point: As of July, more civilians had died as a result of NATO, U.S. and Afghan government firepower than had died due to the Taliban. According to U.N. figures, 314 civilians were killed by international and Afghan government forces in the first six months of this year, while 279 civilians were killed by the insurgents.

So why on Earth are the NATO and U.S. forces and their Afghan allies killing more civilians than the Taliban? One explanation can be found in the relatively low number of Western boots on the ground. Afghanistan, which is 1 1/2 times the size of Iraq and has a somewhat larger population, has only about 50,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers stationed on its soil. By contrast, more than 170,000 U.S. troops are now in Iraq. So the West has to rely far more heavily on airstrikes in Afghanistan, which inevitably exact a higher toll in civilian casualties. Indeed, the Associated Press found that U.S. and NATO forces launched more than 1,000 airstrikes in Afghanistan in the first six months of 2007 alone -- four times as many airstrikes as U.S. forces carried out in Iraq during that period.

The collateral damage here goes beyond even the tragic loss of life. A September report by the United Nations concluded that Western airstrikes are among the principal motivations for suicide attackers in Afghanistan. Sure enough, suicide attacks in the country rose sevenfold from 2005 to 2006, to an alarming 123 attacks, and are already up by around 70 percent this year -- at the same time that pro-government forces are killing more Afghan civilians than are their Taliban foes.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has been blunt here, warning that the mounting loss of civilian life in Afghanistan is eroding the support of the very people whom Western forces are supposed to be protecting. According to a countrywide poll by the BBC, the number of Afghans who believe that their country is headed in the right direction dropped a precipitous 22 percentage points between 2005 and 2006, from 77 percent to 55 percent, while the number of Afghans who approve of the U.S. presence in their country eroded from 68 percent to 57 percent. Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly urged NATO and the U.S. military to act with greater restraint. Lately, he has become more impassioned. "Our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces," he said at a news conference in June. That could put the entire Afghan mission in peril.

Of course, the fact that international forces in Afghanistan are causing an unacceptable number of civilian casualties does not exonerate the Taliban insurgents. The fanatics' tactic of using civilians as human shields in combat is well documented and deplorable. But research by Brian Williams, a historian at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, shows that Taliban suicide bombers -- unlike their Iraqi counterparts -- have been generally loath to target civilians, preferring instead to focus on Western and Afghan military personnel and bases.

This tragic trifecta -- a high number of allied airstrikes in Afghanistan, a growing gap between Taliban-caused civilian casualties and those caused by pro-government forces, and declining Afghan support for the international presence in Afghanistan -- means that the rules of engagement for NATO and the United States need to change. In July, de Hoop Scheffer proposed a good first step, announcing that NATO is planning to start using smaller bombs to reduce collateral damage and spare innocent Afghans. NATO is willing to wait for targeting opportunities that don't put civilians at risk, he said: "If that means going after the Taliban not on Wednesday but on Thursday, we will get him then." Moreover, last month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates urged NATO countries to put more of their soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. Should that call be heeded -- by no means a certainty -- the influx of troops would also help lessen Western reliance on crude airstrikes.

All this makes good military sense. Indeed, Western commanders should literally take a page from the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus. The new Army counterinsurgency manual that he helped write contains sound advice for Afghanistan. An airstrike, the manual notes, "can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation (HN) government and provides the insurgents with a major propaganda victory." Petraeus also points out that sometimes, the best response to an insurgent attack is "doing nothing." After all, "often insurgents carry out a terrorist act or guerrilla raid with the primary purpose of enticing counterinsurgents to overreact."

Let's hope that de Hoop Scheffer's patience and Petraeus's calm are woven into Western rules of engagement in Afghanistan. We should fight at the times of our choosing, not the Taliban's. And we should not fall into the old insurgent trap of provoking the occupiers into callous, disproportionate responses. Making these changes could mean far fewer dead innocents and a far more stable country.

The stakes are high. So far this year, more than 100 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan, the highest number since the fall of the Taliban six years ago. One obvious way to lower the U.S. death toll there in 2008 would be to convince Afghans that they have more to fear from their Taliban would-be oppressors than from the militaries of the United States, NATO and the Afghan government. Tragically, today, that is simply not the case.

Peter Bergen, the author of "The Osama bin Laden I Know" and "Holy War, Inc.," is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Katherine Tiedemann is a research associate at the New America Foundation.

Shakira broadcast sparks row in Afghanistan

By Tom Coghlan in Kabul, The Telegraph (UK) / November 18, 2007

A hip-shaking performance by the pop star Shakira has provoked a showdown between the Afghan government and the country’s independent media.

The culture ministry has been joined by senior Muslim clerics in warning the country’s largest private television station of serious consequences following the broadcast of a concert by the Colombian singer, famous among her young fans for her onstage gyrations.

The performance by Shakira, whose hits include Hips Don’t Lie, left Tolo TV facing possible legal action by the authorities, who are poised to take dramatic steps against the more liberal-minded newspapers and broadcast media.

The incident is the latest sign of a growing fight back by the country’s powerful conservative establishment against the tide of Western-backed liberal reforms since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.

Draconian new media legislation is soon to be signed into law by President Hamid Karzai after it was recently approved by the Kabul parliament.

The measures will give the government greater powers to limit broadcasts that are deemed damaging to Afghanistan and its culture, primarily by forcing television stations to carry more religious programmes or face going off air.

The Shakira broadcast caused consternation even though she appeared with computer pixellation covering her chest.

State television broadcast interviews with clerics and MPs criticising the concert while one pro-government newspaper attacked the "notorious" broadcast of a "naked US pop singer and dancer" claiming it provided inspiration to suicide bombers.

"We believe Shakira’s song will be shown with Tolo TV’s exclusive logo at the training camps for suicide attackers to urge our immature young people to leave a number of our mothers bereaved," said the Weesa newspaper.

But the owner of Tolo TV, Saad Mohseni, who grew up in Australia, said: "This was not that provocative and Shakira was pixellated. The government are looking for an excuse to have a go at us.

"When we give airtime to the Taliban we are 'talking to terrorists', when we air people criticising the government we are told we are 'opposing peace and reconciliation'."

Afghanistan’s media has enjoyed a startling renaissance since 2001.

Television was banned under the Taliban, but today eight independent television stations are broadcasting as well as more than 60 FM radio stations, while hundreds of newspapers and magazines are in circulation.

However, instances of press intimidation and harassment have risen sharply in the past year. Two female journalists are among several to have been murdered.

The annual survey of media freedom worldwide by the organisation Reporters Without Borders ranked Afghanistan as 142nd out of 196 countries, and commented: "The Afghan media is in its worst state in six years."

Mr Karzai’s government has become increasingly alarmed by both press criticism and the danger that the liberalism apparent within the media could fuel the Taliban insurgency.

Afghanistan’s constitution guarantees the provisions of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which include freedom of speech and expression.

But it also includes a prominent article which states that "no law can be contrary to the provisions and practices of Islam".

This has proved a battleground between liberals and conservatives particularly in relation to restrictions within Islam’s Sharia laws, most notably those on blasphemy.

Tolo TV has been frequently criticised for broadcasting Western-style programmes including versions of MTV, Oprah and Pop Idol.

MPs were furious when the station recently broadcast footage of them nodding off and picking their noses during parliamentary debates.

Meanwhile, opinion on the streets of Kabul is divided over the Shakira broadcast. "Her clothes were very tight," said Sharif, a 41-year-old doorman who watched the concert. "Religious people say it is the West trying to impose their values but I had no problem with it."

American University of Afghanistan Selects SunGard Higher Education to Help Prepare for Academic Growth

Al Bawaba (Jordan) November 18, 2007

SunGard Higher Education (http://www.sungardhe.com), a global leader in IT solutions for the higher education sector, announced today an agreement with the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) to deploy the PowerCAMPUS Unified Digital Campus (UDC).

The PowerCAMPUS UDC is a Microsoft-based, comprehensive administrative system that helps institutions of higher education with admissions, academic records, advancement, billing and cash receipts, financial aid, finance, human resources, and portal needs.

The American University of Afghanistan, a non-profit Higher Education institution in Kabul, Afghanistan, was founded in 2005 through the sponsorship of USAID and other regional philanthropists, to provide high quality educational opportunities to the local community. SunGard Higher Education will assist AUAF in the implementation of PowerCAMPUS, helping the institution meet its goal of doubling its enrollment growth each year over the next five years. The PowerCAMPUS UDC will automate many tasks which will help give faculty and staff at AUAF more time to concentrate on teaching and providing students with a well-rounded learning environment.

Dr. Thomas Stauffer, president of the American University of Afghanistan commented, “The American University of Afghanistan is bringing world-class education to Afghanistan’s future leaders. SunGard Higher Education will provide the University with the necessary solutions to support our administration process, helping us to reach more students and helping us to meet our goals for growth and future success.”

Recruiting and admitting new students is a priority for AUAF. PowerCAMPUS will help the small and well-qualified team at AUAF to manage growing administration needs without having to hire additional staff. Eventually students will be able to use the system to apply online, as the country’s technological infrastructure matures. In subsequent phases of the project, AUAF will use PowerCAMPUS to help track the progress of students and manage the delivery of academic programs.

“We are proud to be playing a key role in the AUAF project since it delivers very tangible benefits to the local community. PowerCAMPUS is recognized by the AUAF as a solution that can be deployed and managed by a small staff, in a short period of time, and without complex IT support needs. The solution will help AUAF use development resources where they count— in supporting the needs of its students,” said Mathew Boice, General Manager, EMEA, SunGard Higher Education.

“Working closely with the American University of Afghanistan is rewarding for us on many levels - such as helping to support the University’s mission in the region, which is at the forefront of the reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The team at AUAF is a very special group of people doing important work,” added Mr. Boice.

About American University of Afghanistan

Established in 2005, The American University of Afghanistan is quickly becoming the preferred institution of higher education in Afghanistan and the region. It is the nation’s first private, independent university. Further, it is non-political, non-sectarian, co-educational, student-centered, internationally-supported, and ethically-driven. It emphasizes higher education for the professions, offering world-quality education at the levels of university preparation, undergraduate degree programs, and professional development. Open, transparent, and committed to equality of opportunity, the future leaders of Afghanistan find their home at the American University of Afghanistan.

www.auaf.edu.af

About SunGard Higher Education

SunGard Higher Education provides software and support, systems implementation and integration, strategic consulting, and technology management services to help colleges and universities build, unify, and manage their digital campuses. Bringing together people, processes, and technology, SunGard Higher Education assists more than 1,600 customers worldwide to strengthen institutional performance through improved constituent services, increased accountability, and better educational experiences. www.sungardhe.com

About SunGard

With annual revenue exceeding $4 billion, SunGard is a global leader in software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also helps information-dependent enterprises of all types to ensure the continuity of their business. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 50 countries, including the world’s 50 largest financial services companies. Visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

Trademark Information: SunGard, the SunGard logo and PowerCAMPUS are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

For us ze war is over by tea time, ja

Jerome Starkey The Sunday Times (UK) November 18, 2007

THEY are on the front line of the war on terror, but German pilots facing the Taliban are insisting they stop at tea time every day to comply with health and safety regulations.

The helicopter pilots, who provide medical back-up to Nato ground troops, set off for their base by mid-afternoon so they can be grounded by sundown.

Their refusal to fly in the dark is hampering Operation Desert Eagle, an allied offensive, which involves 500 Nato-led troops plus 1,000 Afghan troops and police.

Although Germany has sent 3,200 troops to Afghanistan, they operate under restrictive rules of engagement.

They spend much of their time in an enormous base, complete with beer halls and nightclubs, in Mazar-e-Sharif, a 90-minute flight from the fighting. They also have a base at Kunduz.

Germany, which has lost 25 soldiers in Afghanistan to suicide attacks and roadside bombs, commands the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the north. But its men are not allowed to travel more than two hours from a “role two medical facility” - a hospital equipped for emergency surgery.

The restrictions have fuelled tensions among allied troops. Norwegian soldiers, who were fighting to stem a growing Taliban insurgency in this remote stretch of Afghanistan’s northwest frontier, were forced to desert their Afghan comrades midway through a firefight when German medical evacuation helicopters withdrew.

The Germans contribute unmanned surveillance planes, an electronic warfare team and a hospital to the operation.

One Norwegian cavalry officer, who was engaged in a day-long fight with more than 40 Taliban near Jari Siya in Badghis, said: “It’s hopeless. We were attacking the bad guys, then [at] three or four o’clock, the helicopters are leaving.

“We had to go back to base. We should have had Norwegian helicopters. At least they can fly at night.”

Abandoned by their western allies, the 600 men from the Afghan army’s 209 Corps were forced to retreat until a convoy of American Humvees arrived the next day to reinforce them.

[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.]