In this bulletin:

• Air strike kills 14 Afghan workers: company
• Afghan gov't rejects Amnesty International's report
• Afghanistan Cannabis Crop Up 40 Percent
• The Canadian Press - November 28, 2007 at 6:32 AM EST
• John Manley's panel heads home after holding hearings in Afghanistan
• Norway complains against release of Afghan bombers
• Houston wants better Afghan strategy
• Caution: Taliban Crossing
• Musa Qala: The Shape of Things to Come?
• Taleban Ghost Town
• Several projects on the drawing board for Helmand: PRT
• Afghan counterinsurgency by the book
• Afghan Recovery Report: From Pomegranates to Poppies
• Three months with US military chaplains in Iraq and Afghanistan
• 10 police officers detained on embezzlement charges
• Italy pledges 2.9m for construction of Musahi roads
• Pakistani militants issue moral code in tribal area: witnesses

Air strike kills 14 Afghan workers: company

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) — International war planes going after insurgents in northeastern Afghanistan struck a roadworkers' camp and killed 14 men, leaving many unrecognisable, officials said Wednesday.

Choppers and fighter jets attacked the camp of tents in a remote area of rugged Nuristan province late on Monday evening, the head of the Amerifa Construction Company, Sayed Nurrullah Jalili, told AFP.

"Helicopters and jet fighters bombed our camp in western Nuristan province, killing 14 of our roadworkers," he said. Officials had said previously the attack, about 180 kilometres (112 miles) northeast of Kabul, was late Tuesday.

Amerifa, a joint-venture company between Afghans and South Koreans, has been building a 60-kilometre road in the difficult terrain for a year, Jalili said.

Provincial governor Tamim Nuristani said the strike was launched after a tip-off about Taliban activities in the area and had killed 12 workers.

"We had reports that rebels were there," he told AFP. "There was an air strike by coalition forces but later we found out that 12 people, all local road workers, were killed."

But Jalili said the company had not been aware of insurgent movements in the area. Nuristan is an isolated mountain province on the border with Pakistan that has seen occasional fighting between security forces and the Taliban.

"Taliban activity is an everyday issue but recently there was no particular Taliban movement that we are aware of," Jalili said. The US-led coalition media office said it was trying to find out what happened.

The separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said it was also investigating. It had used air strikes against Taliban in the province this week, Brigadier General Carlos Branco told reporters.

The governor, Nuristani, said another air raid in the same province had killed 12 militants.

The bodies of many of the roadworkers were in pieces after the attack, said the head of the Nuristan provincial council, Taj Mohammad, who initially put the toll at 25.

"We collected their flesh and put it in bags. We handed the remains of the ones we could recognise to their families," he said.

Ten bodies arrived in coffins in the eastern province of Nangarhar late Tuesday where they were collected by their relatives.

"Most of them were not recognisable. Their relatives were already waiting outside the hospital took the bodies home," Baz Mohammad Shirzad, the deputy head of the Nangarhar hospital, told AFP.

Families had to identify the men by their clothes, watches or other features as most could not be recognised by their faces, he said.

Civilian casualties in the international operation against the Taliban and other militants is a deeply sensitive issue and President Hamid Karzai has regularly urged military forces to take more care.

Several hundred civilians are believed to have been killed by international soldiers fighting the insurgents this year, but no official figure has been released.

Critics blame the military's reliance on air power in remote areas and also accuse soldiers of a disproportionate use of force.

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said after talks with Karzai last week that civilian casualties were unavoidable in the fight but the alliance's deployment here had adapted its tactics to try to reduce them.

Afghan gov't rejects Amnesty International's report

KABUL, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan's intelligence service department termed the report of Amnesty International on Afghan detention facilities as groundless and rejected it Wednesday.

"The report of Amnesty International on detention centers of National Security Directorate (NSD) is based on information provided by biased elements," spokesman of NSD Syed Ansari told journalists at a press conference.

In its newly-released report, the London-based watch dog called on the international troops stationed in Afghanistan not to hand over detainees to Afghan NSD's authorities because they would be maltreated.

Citing the report as baseless, Ansari said that both Afghan Human Rights Commission and International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC) have visited the detention centers of NSD and expressed satisfaction.

He also added those countries serving with international troops in Afghanistan can visit the detainees at detention centers after handing them over to Afghan security bodies.

"National Security Directorate as a national institution is apolitical body and does not violate the rights of any one and does not resort to violence," the spokesman said.

Afghanistan Cannabis Crop Up 40 Percent

By RAHIM FAIEZ – KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The fields of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan were free of opium poppies this year, a success touted often by Afghan and international officials. But one look at Mohammad Alam's fields uncovers an emerging drug problem.

Ten-foot-tall cannabis plants flourish in Alam's fields. The crop — the source of both marijuana and hashish — can be just as profitable as opium but draws none of the scrutiny from Afghan officials bent on eradicating poppies.

Cannabis cultivation rose 40 percent in Afghanistan this year, to 173,000 acres from 123,550 in 2006, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its 2007 opium survey. The crop is being grown in at least 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the survey released last month.

The U.N. report singles out Balkh as a "leading example" of an opium-free province, saying other areas should follow "the model of this northern region where leadership, incentives and security have led farmers to turn their backs on opium."

However, a section of the report says the increase in marijuana cultivation "gives cause for concern."

"Cannabis has also spread to the north of Afghanistan and is observed to have increased particularly in Balkh province," the survey said.

One of those farmers, Alam, said he knows it's illegal to grow cannabis but he must do so to feed his children. He said the government cannot provide jobs or find markets for legal crops.

"The government cannot provide a good market for other crops like cotton, watermelon and vegetables, so I have to grow marijuana instead of poppy," he said.

Drug dealers from the southern poppy-growing provinces of Kandahar and Helmand travel north to buy marijuana and take it to Pakistan, Alam said.

Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting counter-narcotics minister, said the government doesn't yet have a good handle on marijuana.

"This is also a big problem for Afghanistan," said Khodaidad, who like many Afghans uses one name. "It is very cheap. Hashish is more harmful (than poppies) to the people of Afghanistan."

The U.N. said cannabis yields around twice the quantity of drug per acre as opium poppies and requires less investment. The U.N. drug report estimated farmers growing cannabis could earn the same amount per acre as opium farmers.

"As a consequence, farmers who do not cultivate opium poppy may turn to cannabis cultivation," the report said. Afghanistan already grows some 93 percent of the world's opium.

Akbar Khan, a 35-year-old farmer from Balkh province, said that if legal crops could command higher prices, farmers would grow those.

"We know marijuana is an illegal crop, but we are very poor and we have to grow it to help our families survive," he said. "I don't like growing poppy or marijuana. I don't want people to become addicted to these things, but I have to feed my children and I have no other way."

3 Canadian soldiers hospitalized after blast

The Canadian Press - November 28, 2007 at 6:32 AM EST

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Three Canadian soldiers were sent to hospital Tuesday after their vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device on a dangerous stretch of road west of Kandahar.

Lieut. Commander Pierre Babinsky says the light armoured vehicle drove over the IED around 10 a.m. local time. The three soldiers, who were on patrol, were airlifted to hospital at Kandahar Air Field with non-life threatening injuries.

The narrow road, about 40 kilometres west of Kandahar city, near Sperwan Ghar is a favourite spot of the Taliban and has been nicknamed IED alley because of the high number of explosives found there.

Two Canadians and an Afghan interpreter were killed early this month in the nearby Zhari district when their vehicle was also hit by an IED.

Cpl. Nicolas Beauchamp and Pte. Michel Levesque became the 72 and 73rd Canadian soldiers to die in Afghanistan since the mission began five years ago.

John Manley's panel heads home after holding hearings in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The reality of war was front and centre this week as John Manley wrapped up a visit to Afghanistan as part of his panel's report on the future of Canada's mission in this war-torn country.

Three Canadian soldiers were sent to hospital Tuesday morning after their light armoured vehicle drove over an improvised explosive device.

"They were evacuated to the multi-national medical unit at Kandahar Air Field where they were treated for non-life threatening injuries," said Lt.-Cmdr. Pierre Babinsky.

The blast occurred on a narrow stretch of road near Sperwan Ghar, a route often referred to by members of the military as "IED alley."

Less than two weeks ago, Cpl. Nicolas Beauchamp and Pte. Michel Levesque were killed and three other Canadian soldiers wounded in a similar incident in the same region, which is a favourite haunt of the Taliban.

Manley and his panel have been holding meetings in Afghanistan against a backdrop of growing violence that has left 73 Canadian soldiers dead and hundreds wounded since the mission began in 2002.

While in Kabul, the capital, the panel met with President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

They later visited the northern province of Balkh and, for the last few days, have been in Kandahar.

"There are positive signs and there are negative signs and it's a matter of trying to understand what exactly is happening that we are really struggling with," Manley told reporters at Kandahar Air field in a rare interview since agreeding to chair the panel seven weeks ago.

Manley's group will make a recommendation by the end of January on what Canada should do when its current commitment to the NATO mission expires in 2009.

The options include continuing to train the Afghan army and police so Canada can begin withdrawing its forces in February 2009 or possibly focusing on reconstruction and having forces from another country take over security.

Also being considered is shifting the Canadian security and reconstruction effort to another, safer region in Afghanistan or withdrawing all Canadian military except a minimal force to protect aid workers and diplomats.

"I think we've still got quite a bit of work to do before we're at the point of making a recommendation," said Manley.

"I think all of us have seen things that have helped us a great deal in understanding both the complexity of this country as well as the complexity of some of the issues."

Also on the panel are Pamela Wallin, a veteran broadcaster and former consul general in New York; Derek Burney, former ambassador to Washington and one-time chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney; Paul Tellier, former clerk of the privy council, and Jake Epp, a former Mulroney cabinet minister.

Manley did not discuss the contents of any of his meetings while in Afghanistan. But Karzai has made it clear he wants Canada to remain part of the effort to build his country into a strong, stand-alone democracy.

De Hoop Scheffer told reporters last week he was going to take a positive message to the Manley commission and stress that progress was being made.

"Usually you see these discussions in an atmosphere of gloom and doom but here I'll push back a bit," he said last week. "A lot is happening in Afghanistan and I do see progress on the basis of my regular visits here."

Manley said the complexity of the mission in Afghanistan will make it difficult to come up with a recommendation.

He said one week gives only a snapshot of what is happening in the country but the information will help form the overall report.

"I don't know what we're going to recommend but what I do know is this has already been Canada's most significant international commitment since the Korean War and we're going to make sure we take the time that is necessary to give the best advice that we can," Manley said.

The appointment of Manley's panel was not without criticism. With an election possibly looming and the political dispute over Afghanistan intensifying, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's opponents suggested the move might be more about political strategy than a sincere desire for a non-partisan opinion.

Manley, like Harper, has said Canada should not abandon its mission in Afghanistan. But he said that when the final report is complete he wants it to generate genuine and informed debate and not partisan bickering.

"I think Canadians will probably expect their parliamentarians to look at this issue, not from a partisan point of view but from a national interest point of view," he said.

"If we can frame the discussion so it's a little less partisan then we will have contributed something worthwhile," he added.

Norway complains against release of Afghan bombers

STOCKHOLM, Nov 27 (Xinhua) -- Norway has raised strong complaints against the decision by Afghan authorities to release the five Afghan bombers who attacked the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Northern Afghanistan in May this year.

"It just gives a wrong signal that people who have been sentenced for such acts are allowed to walk free," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said in a statement.

Stoere added that an explanation is needed of how it is possible for someone who was first sentenced to death to have the sentence reversed to 20 years in jail, only to be released because of a religious festival.

The five Afghan bombers were sentenced to 20 years in jail, but Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed a decree to release them after they spent just three months in prison, Norwegian broadcaster NRK reported.

The bomb attack killed one Finnish and one Afghan soldier, and injured three Norwegian soldiers.

Houston wants better Afghan strategy

The Age (11.28.07) - The fight against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan is being hurt by the inability of allied governments to use every tool at their disposal, the chief of the defence force says.

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston delivered a broad ranging speech to civilians where he raised concerns about the fight in Afghanistan, the Air Force's ability to retain pilots and the continued threat of terrorism.

"One of the deficiencies in Afghanistan at the moment is that we don't have a comprehensive whole of country approach to the resolution of the problems there," Air Chief Marshal Houston told the lecture at Canberra's Australian National University.

"We need to have all of the agencies, both military, civilian, government and non-government there working together cohesively to one common strategy with common goals and objectives."

Despite the problems, Air Chief Marshal Houston said the fight against the Islamist Taliban must continue into its seventh year.

"We will have other outrages that are perpetrated against us in the fullness of time (if we do not win in Afghanistan)."

He said he hoped public support for the Afghan deployment would remain strong even after three Australian fatalities in the last two months.

"I would like to think that casualties would not affect public support for what is a very important mission (but) ... casualty rates do affect public support."

On the latest round of Middle East peace negotiations underway in the United States, Air Chief Marshal Houston was hopeful. "I, obviously, welcome the conference that's underway at Annapolis."

The conference is the first of its kind in almost two decades and was initiated by US President George W Bush.

It has brought together Arab, Palestinian and Israeli leaders to try and look for a so-called "two-state" solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

From the Mid-East, Air Chief Marshal Houston moved on to East Timor and the May 2006 riots which Australian troops were called in to quell. "They (Australian troops) were provoked time and time and time again but they did not resort to lethal force," he said.

He went on to praise the restraint of diggers during the fragile days after their arrival. "It does not matter what you ask them (troops) to do, they always come up with the goods."

On domestic concerns, Air Chief Marshal Houston said the Air Force was now struggling to retain pilots given the growing worldwide shortage.

"We are starting to see a very high separation rate for our pilots," the former head of the RAAF said. "We are taking steps to address that particular problem", he said without giving details of those steps.

Caution: Taliban Crossing

The New York Times, 11.27.2007 By Arthur Keller

Albuquerque – In the early 1900s, a crusty British general, Andrew Skeen, wrote a guide to military operations in the Pashtun tribal belt, in what is now Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. His first piece of advice: “When planning a military expedition into Pashtun tribal areas, the first thing you must plan is your retreat. All expeditions into this area sooner or later end in retreat under fire.” This was written decades before the advent of suicide bombers, when the Pashtuns had little but rifles yet nevertheless managed to give their British overlords fits.

These same tribal areas are now focus of Pakistan’s struggle with the Pakistani Taliban, particularly the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas on the Afghan border and the Swat region further north. The government trumpets it has more than 80,000 troops in the tribal areas, fighting bravely to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Unfortunately, these troops — supported with tens of millions of dollars in American aid — appear even less able to police this wild frontier than were the canny British.

Despite the government’s claims of a successful offensive over last weekend, for the most part the Pakistani Army is totally on the defensive and doing almost nothing to bring the fight to the militants. Yes, there have been heavy casualties in recent months, but this is very misleading: they are largely coming from roadside-bomb attacks against convoys and Taliban assaults against Pakistani military bases and checkpoints. There are relatively few reports of casualties during foot patrols, raids or any offensive assaults.

The only consistent reports of offensive action by the Pakistani Army involve the use of helicopter gunships and artillery to attack militant compounds. Aerial assaults, when carried out without support from “boots on the ground,” serve but one purpose: they help sustain the illusion that the Pakistani government is taking effective action.

The truth is that the soldiers have lost the will to fight. Reports in the Indian press, based on information from the very competent Indian intelligence agencies, describe a Pakistani Army in disarray in the tribal areas. Troops are deserting and often refusing to fight their “Muslim brothers.”

Nothing illustrated this apathy more clearly than the capture of hundreds of troops in August by the Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud with nary a shot fired in resistance.

While the Pakistani Army has been giving up, the Taliban has been on the offensive, and not just in combat operations. The Pakistani Taliban churns out a stream of propaganda videos and radio broadcasts from “black” stations, aimed at undermining morale within the army while cutting away support for the military within wider Pakistani society. If the Pakistani Army is too weak to act effectively, what about cooperation on the intelligence front? After all, most major Qaeda members now in United States custody were captured with Pakistani cooperation. Unfortunately, that relationship, too, now appears to be losing steam.

This year has seen a notable lack of Qaeda members killed or captured in Pakistan. The Afghan government has turned over detailed lists of names and addresses for Taliban members residing in Pakistan, particularly in the city of Quetta. Not only has this information not led to arrests, Pakistan has routinely continued to deny that the Taliban’s leadership is in Quetta. A Pakistani military officer told me last year (in an uncharacteristic fit of honesty): “If we are not catching the Taliban, it is not because the Taliban is so clever, or so good at hiding. We just aren’t trying.”

So what is America’s retreat strategy? We should not divert our attention from the frontier, which is home to so much Qaeda and Taliban activity. We should, however, stop blindly supporting President Pervez Musharraf, his army and intelligence services.

As in Iraq, we should make financial support contingent on benchmarks. If the Pakistani Army claims it is effectively battling militants in Waziristan and elsewhere, great — but such claims need to be verified by military observers accompanying the Pakistani troops on offensive raids.

Likewise, the Bush administration and Congress could demand concrete measures of Qaeda or Taliban members killed and captured, proof that actionable intelligence passed to the Pakistanis by American or Afghan sources is being acted on rather than ignored.

Yes, this may well weaken President Musharraf, whom we have given a great deal of support over the years. But our expensive investment in him has yielded little in the way of tangible results. We need policy based on what is actually happening along the Afghan frontier, not on wishful thinking that someday Pakistan will become an effective partner in the war against terrorism.

Arthur Keller is a former C.I.A. case officer in Pakistan.

Musa Qala: The Shape of Things to Come?

IWPR, 11/27/2007 By Aziz Ahmad Tassal in Musa Qala - The Taleban who control this northern district are confident that they will extend their reach to the rest of Helmand over the coming winter.

Late afternoon was sliding into evening in a corner of Musa Qala, and I was still watching dozens of military vehicles parade past me.

Green, grey and white, they looked exactly like the Afghan government’s police and security vehicles. The major difference was that here it was the Taleban’s footsoldiers with fierce, frightening demeanours who sat behind the wheel.

They wore dishevelled turbans, mostly black, and their feet dangled over the sides of the truck beds. In their hands they held Kalashnikovs, machine guns, even rocket launchers.

One of the Taleban told me that they had captured most of the vehicles from the government.

I saw their commander walking through town, unarmed, as if he did not want to attract attention. In this he was quite unlike the British soldiers in Helmand, whom you never see without weapons.

He answered my questions readily, and even told me his name, Enqiadi. He allowed me to take his photograph, although he covered his face with his dark red scarf when he was in front of the camera.

“Five districts of Helmand are totally under the Taleban,” he said. “The rest of them, except for Lashkar Gah, are also Taleban territory, except for the district centres, where the British and Afghan forces have small islands of control.”

Helmand has 13 districts, and even the government acknowledges that at least four are held by the insurgents. Movement into and out of these districts has to be coordinated with the Taleban.

This has restricted the flow of assistance into these areas, since the Taleban do not allow foreign organisations on “their” territory. In September, when the government wanted to start a polio vaccination programme, it had to get permission from the Taleban to work in their areas.

“We want to help the people ourselves,” said Enqiadi. “We only let the vaccination programme operate because it was for the children. Other than that, NGOs are not welcome here.”

The Taleban’s concern for children does not extend to the opening of schools. Except for some private classes, no schools are operating in Musa Qala.

“It’s because the curriculum has changed,” said Enqiadi. “If they would use the old curriculum, we would not try to stop them.”

The Taleban had their own ideas about education when they were in control. Even children’s reading books had to be in line with their philosophy - “A” is for Allah, for example, and “J” for jihad.

Taleban control also means that the Kajaki dam project, southeast of Musa Qala, been delayed. The United States has been trying to reconstruct the dam to improve hydroelectricity provision for the province.

Enqiadi pointed to the road leading to Kajaki. “This road is being built by the Americans,” he said. “But we will never let them do it.” The commander seemed confident that the Taleban could do what they want.

“Last year we used guerrilla attacks,” he said. “This year we will organise frontal assaults. Our lines are so strong that the foreigners will never break them. The foreigners say they are going to launch a major operation in Musa Qala. We are ready for that. In Musa Qala alone, we have 2,050 fully armed fighters. It will be very easy for us to resist the attack. We want to take the whole province this winter,”

The government does not seem to know what to do about the Taleban and their growing strength. Helmand’s chief of police Hossein Andiwal confirmed that a large part of Helmand has been under the Taleban for a long time.

“We pulled out of those areas in order to ensure people’s safety. When we were there, the Taleban were going into people’s houses and killing them - beheading them for working with the government. But we hope to recapture those areas as soon as possible,” he said.

“What the Taleban is doing is inhuman. They are terrorising the population.”

Andiwal hinted at a foreign presence among the Taleban, but would not go into specifics.

“The Taleban are acting for other people,” he said. “Everything they do is for the benefit of outsiders. I wish they were really working for their own people, and for Islam, the way they say they are.”

But Enqiadi rejected any suggestion that the Taleban were acting on behalf of other countries.

“We are not helped by anybody,” he said. “We are independent. Pakistan does not work with us, and there are no foreign al-Qaeda here. That’s just anti-Taleban propaganda.”

Enqiadi also dismissed as propaganda the body counts released by the government and the international forces. Every time there is a major battle, officials say their forces killed numerous Taleban fighters, while the insurgents claim the dead were all civilians.

“The government is always shouting that it kills lots of Taleban in its operations, but all of them are civilians,” he said.

Enqiadi said he and the rest of the Taleban are fully committed to the armed struggle. “We have fought these invaders many, many times. It is our job,” he said. “Our jihad continues.”

Taleban Ghost Town

IWPR, 11/27/2007, By Aziz Ahmad Shafe in Musa Qala - The atmosphere is subdued as many residents have left town and local business has declined.

The hospital in central Musa Qala is padlocked, and the district government office has been completely demolished by Taleban militants. The bazaar is quiet, with none of its former bustle.

Foreign air strikes have also done a lot of damage – many houses lie in ruins, and there are big holes in surrounding fields. Hajji Nazar Mohammad, an elder in the Musa Qala district, said many people had fled the district in fear.

“More than 75 per cent of the residents have gone,” he said. “The only people left are those who couldn’t afford to go. We are in a very bad economic situation.”

One shopkeeper, who did not want to be named, said that his business had fallen by 80 per cent. “I am lucky, though,” he said. “Most of the other shops have closed completely.”

The shopkeeper seemed nervous, and kept saying he did not want the Taleban to see him talking to me. He was not the only one. A lot of people refused to talk out of fear of the insurgents.

I was accompanied by an armed Taleban guard, who I think was recording my interviews. So no one was saying anything against the insurgents.

Some people complained about a lack of water, and said their gardens and crops had dried up. I saw many gardens in which all the flowers were dead, but I suspected that the owners had left town.

There are no schools open in the district, although some young boys are receiving a religious education in mosques.

The Taleban control the district the same way they did when they were in power in Afghanistan. The only difference is now there are no men from the committee for “the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice” patrolling the streets.

“We do not punish people for their hair and beards right now,” explained the Taleban district governor. “But once we take over the country, we will treat people according to the orders of our supreme leader Mullah Omar.”

The governor does not have his own office, and I met him at someone’s house.

The insurgents have their own FM radio station covering Musa Qala district. Like other Taleban institutions, the station does not operate out of a particular office. The mobile radio station is on the air from seven in the morning until midday and then from three to seven in the evening.

The station, which has just two members of staff, even takes commercial advertisements.

One thing the Taleban have done is establish security in Musa Qala. When it is time to go and pray, shopkeepers can leave their doors open. No one would dare steal anything.

People are pleased that the Taleban have brought security, but at night they fear air strikes by the international forces.

That is one of the reasons why the militants do not maintain permanent offices and meet in secret locations.

The Afghan authorities claim that there are foreign Taleban in Musa Qala, but in the 24 hours that I was there I could not find any, although I made great efforts.

Local residents and Taleban members deny that there are foreigners among them. There are men from other areas of Afghanistan, though – southern areas like Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul, and even from as far afield as Ghor and Faryab in the north.

The town’s residents seemed unconcerned about the presence of these Afghan outsiders. All they want is for the schools to open, for the Taleban to allow health workers into the area, and reconstruction work to get under way.

But Taleban officials say they will not allow international projects in areas under their control. The international community is not implementing real projects, they say.

I left the district with the help of the Taleban militants. But I was really afraid on the way back. Family members told me the Afghan police had come round asking for me. Then I learned that two other reporters had been arrested for travelling to Musa Qala. (See Police Target Journalists After Taleban Trip, ARR No. 272, 8-Nov-07.)

So I did not go home. Coming back had turned out to be more dangerous than going into Taleban country.

Aziz Ahmad Shafe is a journalist based in Helmand.

Several projects on the drawing board for Helmand: PRT

LASHKARGAH, Nov 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The British-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Helmand plans to launch a series of uplift projects in the lawless province in the near future.

The reconstruction schemes on the drawing board would cost around $2.5 million, a PRT official told a conference held on Monday. However, he did not go into details about the timelines of the proposed projects and the places where they would be executed.

Richard added they had completed three projects in the capital city and some other districts and a fourth one was in the process of completion. A school for 1200 students, costing $266077, would be completed in Lashkargah within a fortnight.

"A one-kilometer road will be built in the city at the cost of about $500,000 and a mosque is under construction in the Greshk district, where some 10,000 worshippers can pray at a time."

A school and a police training center were also being built in Sangin district, which would cost about $203663 and, he concluded.

Afghan counterinsurgency by the book
By Fawzia Sheikh – Asia Times 11.27.07

KABUL - The Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy is a work in progress - the clamor of construction, the bulldozing of garbage and the sparse staff are all clear signs.

Built on a former Canadian military base near the bullet-ridden palace of Afghanistan's former royal family, the COIN Academy, as it is known, is on the verge of acquiring a dining facility, a lecture hall and other services.

"The academy is still in survival mode," US Army Major Luke Meyers, the academy's operations chief, told Inter Press Service (IPS). "We're trying to build this as fast as we can but it's taking time. We're six years behind really, to be honest. We're glad we've made this step at least."

Following pressure from top American military officials, the COIN Academy opened in April nearly six years after the invasion of Afghanistan while a counterpart school in Iraq was established in 2005. Afghanistan's facility recently shifted to its new location on the outskirts of Kabul.

The nature of the fight in Afghanistan is described as a counterinsurgency, the kind of conflict American soldiers have not faced since the war in Vietnam. This brand of warfare is defined as the combined "military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency", according to a manual on the subject issued by the US military last year.

Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies; each side wants civilians to accept its governance or authority as legitimate, the manual states. The document goes on to say that counterinsurgency is a complex form of warfare that seeks the population's support by offering protection and services like water and medical care, among other things.

The school aims to teach counterinsurgency practices to newly arrived Western trainers sent to embed with the Afghan security forces, as well as to coalition forces and to senior members of the Afghan military, police and intelligence services.

But is it a useful effort at this stage in the war? Policy makers interviewed in Washington seem to think so.

"I guess it would fall under the heading of better later than never," said US Congressman Adam Smith, a Washington state Democrat and member and chairman of a congressional subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats and capabilities.

Smith rejects the notion that the academy's creation suggests that the Bush administration is paying more attention to the war in Afghanistan. "We're not increasing troop levels there. We are still behind the game in terms of providing the money, operating infrastructure, support. So however much they want to pay attention to Afghanistan ... 80% of our military assets are still committed to Iraq," he told IPS.

Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington-based think-tank, said the COIN Academy must succeed. Dismissing the idea Iraq is the central front in the war against terrorism, he said, "This is where the attacks came from. This is where al-Qaeda central has reconstituted itself. I've rarely ever seen such a botched opportunity. Now, hopefully, it's not too late."

He said operating the school, however, should be part of a multi-faceted counterinsurgency approach that calls for the addition of 20,000 extra troops redirected from Iraq, a re-evaluated counter-narcotics strategy, better-funded and managed reconstruction goals and increased US pressure on Pakistan to be a more reliable partner in fighting insurgents.

In one indication Washington recognizes the significance of the international fight in Afghanistan, President George W Bush intends to redirect some funding earmarked for Afghan army training to police training. The police force has long been a second priority as the army's role in securing the country's borders and fighting insurgents took front and center.

Despite some positive signs, back at the COIN Academy, Meyers, the operations chief, laments his team's requisite "sales job of fighting for money and resourcing" while the US government is so focused on fueling the Iraq war machine.

The academy received US$1 million this year but is lobbying for an annual budget of $7-9 million to spend on paying instructors and for building infrastructure. "It's taking a while for the word to get out," Meyers said about the school. He added that he and his colleagues are still trying to gain the support of key players in the US government.

The COIN Academy shares lessons garnered on the battlefield with its Iraq counterpart and with military learning centers in the US. In another year, Meyers told IPS, his team hopes Afghan officers will join the staff.

The cornerstone of the academy is a five-day leaders' course that so far has taught 400 students. The curriculum includes information about the conflict's key participants (including countries and coalitions), advice on operating in Afghanistan, details about ethnic and tribal concerns in various regions and the history of attacks, violence and threats across the country, he said.

He said students are given a handbook in English, Dari and Pashtu to help carry out missions, and which can be taken onto the battlefield instead of a laptop computer.

During each course, academy staff bring in between 80 to 100 students and divide them into groups focusing on each of the country's five regions, explained Meyers. He said embedded Western trainers arrive in the country and spend time with Afghan army and police from the area to which they will be assigned.

"There's a benefit [to] them of living, eating and studying together," a practice not followed at the Iraq COIN Academy, he continued. "Most of the learning actually takes place outside of the classroom, whether its language, cultural, just general questions about Afghanistan."

Meyers related a story illustrating the advantages of Westerners and Afghans working together. In one of the earlier courses, he said, instructors presented the group with a particular scenario about one of the country's regions.

An American officer confidently replied: "Here's the answer. Problem solved. Class is over. But an Afghan officer disputed the response, telling his American counterpart he had not considered certain issues like the fact the mountains are in the east, the language is Dari, not Pashtu, and the region has electricity for only three hours a day.

"Everyone doesn't know everything. It's not just US-led. It takes time to understand what everyone can bring to the table," concluded Meyers, adding that most senior Afghan officers have operated in a counterinsurgency environment longer than any US soldier.

Fawzia Sheikh was recently embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. Interviews for this story were carried out in Afghanistan and the US.

Afghan Recovery Report: From Pomegranates to Poppies

By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, November 27, 2007 (ENS) - Helmand's farmers are chopping down their pomegranate trees for the more lucrative opium plants, while blaming the government for failing to help them.

The beautiful red flowers of the pomegranate tree used to cover Helmand, a province which was famous for the luscious red fruit. But these days a different sort of flower blooms, as more and more of Helmand's sandy soil is given over to the opium poppy.

"I had 1,500 pomegranate trees five years ago," said Abdul Jabbar, a resident of Nawzad district. "They gave a very good yield. We loved the orchard, and I would never have destroyed it, but what else could I do? There was no market to sell the fruit. Birds would destroy the pomegranates on the branch, or else we'd pick them and they would rot at home."

He finally decided to cut his losses and grow poppy.

The government says it's against poppy, but drug traffickers go from house to house and buy our crop and give us a lot of money," he said. "Find me a market for my pomegranates. Everyone hates poppy cultivation."

Pomegranates cannot hope to compete economically with opium, which provided Helmand's farmers with an estimated 530 million US dollars in 2007.

Last year, this one remote province in southern Afghanistan furnished nearly half the world's opium and its major derivative, heroin.

An average farmer can earn over US$4,000 dollars per hectare for poppy, while the yield for pomegranate is barely one-tenth of that. Added to that are the problems of markets and storage.

But farmers like Abdul Jabbar say that they would prefer fruit to opium, if only the government would provide storage facilities and help them develop markets. The government, in turn, insists that farmers are not asking for help but are rushing to cut down their trees to make way for poppy.

While exact figures are difficult to come by, Helmand farmers say that the majority of the province's pomegranate orchards have been destroyed in the past few years.

This corresponds inversely to the astronomical rise in opium production over the same period.

The amount of land given over to poppy in Helmand has nearly quadrupled in the past two years, rising from some 27,000 hectares in 2005 to 103,000 in 2007, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Runaway poppy production has been fuelled by the growth of the Taleban presence, which has made control all but impossible. Widespread corruption among government officials has contributed to the failure of a loudly-trumpeted crop eradication effort, and leads to a disdain for the law among citizens of the province.

Expensive alternative livelihood projects have mostly failed, in part because of the same factors, the insurgency and corruption. Opium is easier to store and sell than almost any other commodity, insist Helmand's farmers.

"I used to have 300 pomegranate trees, now I have just 20. The rest of my land is being used for poppy," said Jahan Gir Aka, a farmer in Babaji district.

There was simply no market for the fruit, he said. "I believe that if the government could find us markets at a national and international level, all of Helmand's farmers would go back to growing pomegranates," he added.

Another problem is the absence of adequate storage facilities for pomegranates, which are perishable. Naseem Kharotai has a shop in Bolan, near Lashkar Gah, and has 500 kilograms of pomegranates to sell.

"If I don't sell them soon, they will rot," he said. "If we had cold storage, we could earn a good income on pomegranates. They aren't very expensive right now, but if we had storage facilities we could sell them at a higher price in winter." Pomegranates keep well when stored properly, he said.

In neighboring Kandahar, where the United States Agency for International Development has helped provide cold storage and quality control, earnings on pomegranates have nearly doubled.

But security problems have held back development in Helmand, and farmers complain that the government has been slow to provide assistance. For their part, officials say the farmers are not asking for help.

"Not a single farmer has come to us to ask for help in finding markets of building storage facilities," said Engineer Ghulam Nabi, the head of the department of agriculture in Helmand. Even if they did, the government has limited resources, he admitted.

"If the farmers come to us to demand markets and storage facilities, we might be able to do something for them," he said. "We don't have the capacity to do it on our own, but we could seek assistance from donor organizations. The important thing is that the farmers should come to us."

The internationally funded counter-narcotics program, which in the past few years has pumped well over US$100 million into alternative livelihood programs in Helmand, might be able to help.

But Engineer Abdul Manan, head of Helmand's counter-narcotics department, said that it was not the job of his office to help farmers with other crops.

"No one has come to us to ask for such services," he said. "If they do, we can send them to the department of rural development. But we do hope that farmers will turn to other crops than poppy for their livelihood."

It will take more than hope, however. Nano Aka, a farmer in the Nawzad district, is against growing opium poppy. But he too cultivates the crop because, even with the risk of eradication, harvesting wages, tithes to local mullahs and bribes for the government, it brings him more income.

"I really don't like poppy," he said. "No one would grow it apart from the fact that it brings in money. Me, I like cultivating pomegranates."

{This article originally appeared in the Afghan Recovery Report, produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, www.iwpr.net. Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.}

Three months with US military chaplains in Iraq and Afghanistan

Reporter on the job: Rockets in the shower, gravel in the rollers, and a mouse in the guard tower. By Lee Lawrence | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor,

Bagram air base, Afghanistan - It was 4 a.m. when my partner, Terry Nickelson, and I landed at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan last March to begin a three-month embed with the military. We'd spent three nearly sleepless days traveling to Afghanistan from Atlanta via Frankfurt and Kuwait. The Kuwait transit camp had eaten up most of our energy. That was where we first encountered gravel – not the small, friendly kind that crunches delightfully underfoot, but a big, fat species of gravel that the military has imported by the ton to keep down dust and drain away rain. The downside is that even a short walk feels like a workout on a low-budget beach. (First mental note to self: at any future embed, no suitcases with wheels.)

At Bagram outside our quarters – two windowless cells in a one-story building – Terry and I met to plan for the next day. Our proposal to make a documentary on military chaplains had received approval and our access also extended to a series of chaplain profiles I would spin off for The Christian Science Monitor. It was hard to believe, after many months of planning, that we were actually here, staring at the shadowy presence of mountains in the distance.

Suddenly, light bloomed over that dark outline – and we thought we were seeing the war ... until thunder rumbled. Truth is, it was often hard to remember we were in a war zone, especially on big bases like Bagram. The cafeterias served just about everything from chili to surf and turf and hand-dipped ice cream – not to mention a never-ending supply of chunky peanut butter cookies (and my family worried that I would lose weight). Given the plethora of contractors, there seemed to be almost as many people in civilian clothes walking up and down the main drag as there were military. And the buffer zone separating us from the outside was so large that my husband and brother back home knew far more about what was going on in the rest of Afghanistan than we did. (Note to self: Thank them for their news-filled e-mails.) We had not yet found the supply of "Stars & Stripes" newspapers, and though TV screens played CNN and other channels in the cafeterias, the background noise was so high we had to rely on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. The news anchor might have been talking about the war; we were reading about Anna Nicole.

Probably the most surreal incident in that connection was looking up at the TV at lunch one day to find Stephen Colbert arching an eyebrow, his irony garbled by the bad acoustics. The soldier at the end of my table was straining to hear and having better luck than I. But he wasn't laughing.

Even news that directly affected us was sometimes hard to get. Again in Bagram, Air Force personnel at the hospital asked us one day whether we'd heard that the base had come under attack the day before.

Really? Yes, mortars rained down just inside the perimeter for about four hours – or was it six? Accounts varied, and nobody we spoke to could tell fact from rumor because, though we'd all been right there, we hadn't heard or seen a thing.

By contrast, when rockets hit Salerno, a medium-sized FOB (forward operating base) south of Kabul, we all knew it. I'd just spent two days hopping in and out of Black Hawk helicopters, shadowing Air Force Chaplain Gary Linksy as he traveled to seven tiny outposts to say mass. I'd already discovered that the dust, whether whipped up by nature or the whir of rotor blades, acts like those old dry shampoos that absorb the oil in your hair, leaving it technically clean but feeling dull and gritty.

When I got back to Salerno, I headed straight for the shower trailer. I had the place to myself and was all lathered up when I heard the first big boom. It felt like the world had taken a convulsive in-out breath.

People talk about the fight or flight response – my response was freeze and focus. I stood still, water pouring over me. Then my focus narrowed: Rinse off. Get dressed. Gather toiletries. Poke head out of trailer.

I could see the walls of various structures coming in at angles to one another, as deserted and stark as a De Chirico painting. Another boom. Do I leave? Stay put? Someone is speaking over the loudspeaker, but I can't make out the words. Then laughter – guys must be playing cards over in that tent, so how bad can this be? But, wait, that's not a tent. That's a bunker. A bunker. I need to be in that bunker.

The thought propelled my legs, and the next thing I knew I was staring up at a man with an open, kind face and a body so massive the largest size neck armor was too small. I took one look at Sgt. Robert Walker and stuck to him like glue. When the next rocket hit, those of us near the opening of the bunker saw the dust kick up 300 yards away.

"How bad can it be?" one soldier said, "The guys in the guard tower are still there." Right on cue, the guys in the guard tower charged down the stairs, chins tucked in and backs hunched. I looked at Sergeant Walker. When he headed for a bunker farther inside the FOB, I was right behind him. (About a week later an all-female singing group called Purple Angels performed at the base – and who do you suppose was their designated driver and bodyguard? You know it – Sergeant Walker.)

We sat in the next bunker for about an hour. A soldier told me all about his wife; a civilian contractor explained bluntly that we were basically defenseless – "If a rocket hits the bunker square on, we're gone." And a jolly-looking fellow brought us bottles of water. (It was my introduction to National Guard Chaplain Kurt Bishop, whose operating room ministry I would later profile for the Monitor.) And here I was clutching toiletries instead of my camera. I consoled myself, thinking that maybe a camera would have stifled conversation – but I now doubt it. (Note to self: About the camera – never leave hooch without it.)

Largely, troops were pretty open and happy to talk once we'd hung around for a while, and especially after we'd gone on patrols with them. At one small FOB, Terry literally ran with marines on three consecutive night patrols. .

I spent hours in guard towers, usually late at night when the watch feels the longest. I heard about future plans ("My ambition," one marine said, "is to get a job I can quit, not signing on any dotted line"), girlfriends back home, and the boredom (on one tower, the guys had been feeding a mouse and were a little worried that he hadn't shown up in a day or so; in another camp, marines spun a fantasy of being on an island with just one obstacle between them and freedom; the challenge was devising ever-weirder ways to get around it).

At first I felt like an interloper – a woman their mothers' age coming in from the civilian world, asking questions, filming – but there was something I hadn't counted on: the power of diversion. I was something different. I broke the routine, and Lance Cpl. Chad Travers a few days later told me in a flat Rhode Island accent, "That was the fastest hour of the watch." So maybe I'm not quite as entertaining as a Purple Angel, but still...

In order to get a feel for what chaplains do and how they fit into the military, Terry and I had from the start decided we needed also to document the lives of the troops. We hadn't realized just how much we would appreciate the diversion this, in turn, gave us – especially with units that got out of their vehicles. For once, we could see the world directly without the mediation of a dirty Humvee window.

Still, it wasn't exactly your usual reporting. We were wearing body armor and helmets and arrived with a bevy of heavily armed men.

Surprisingly, this didn't always get in the way. More than once, Iraqi women pulled me in for a chat, whether they were the wives of sheikhs, teachers in a school, or just women in a neighborhood soldiers were patrolling.

On one mission with a Minnesota National Guard unit in Iraq's Anbar Province, we went to Tourist Town, on the banks of Lake Habbaniyah, a huge body of sparkling blue water that came as a shock and relief in this land of tans and browns. It turns out that Saddam Hussein spent some time in a Swiss resort and liked it so much he duplicated it here.

There amid pine trees and pink oleander, a woman wearing a deep blue head scarf and long caftan had just finished baking flat bread in an open oven and mimed the process for me. She and her teenage daughter invited me in for tea.

It felt rude to stomp into their home with boots, but every time I tried to untie them, they shook their heads and stopped me. So I shed the helmet, and the sight of my sweaty head triggered fits of giggles from mother and daughter. I couldn't tell whether it was my foreign brazenness that tickled and perhaps embarrassed them or whether they were laughing at my helmet hair.

While the woman heated the tea on a kerosene burner, we communicated in gestures and facial expressions. I gathered that life is tough with kerosene being so expensive and a husband out of work, that they are Sunni from Baghdad and left when violence erupted, that their future is a blank page onto which the hand of Allah will inscribe their fate – inshallah.

10 police officers detained on embezzlement charges

KABUL, Nov 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Interior Ministry Monday detained 10 high-ranking police officials of the counter- narcotics department for misappropriating three million afghanis and 47,000 dollars.

Gen. Abdul Qadeer, chief of the police prosecution department, told Pajhwok Afghan News the detainees had embezzled funds from salaries, stipends and logistical expenses of the counter-narcotics police unit.

Without disclosing identities of the tainted officials, Qadeer said the detainees included senior officials of the unit. "We have sufficient evidence against the corrupt officials," the general insisted.

Italy pledges 2.9m for construction of Musahi roads

KABUL, Nov 26 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The Italian government will allocate 2.9 million euros (approximately 4.2 million dollars) for the construction of road infrastructure in the Musahi Valley through the National Rural Access Programme (NRAP).

The ambassador of Italy to Afghanistan, Ettore Francesco Sequi, said on Monday the initiative would be a significant contribution to the development of the Afghan road infrastructure, particularly in rural roads, representing a crucial element for the economic and social uplift of the country --- specially relevant in terms of security.

Sequi added: The road network is a key factor in enhancing the long-term growth potential of the Afghan economy. Road infrastructure is an instrument of economic development and, potentially, poverty reduction.

In a statement emailed to Pajhwok Afghan News, the ambassador said: Poor road infrastructure reduces productivity, drives up transport maintenance costs and negatively affects the price of goods to consumers.

In order to address the important issues, he said, investments in the road sector were required for province-to-province and district-to-district roads, to enhance rural mobility, decrease rural isolation and lower transaction costs for basic food commodities.

This is why Italy will continue to assist the government of Afghanistan also in this area, Sequi continued. The restoration of an efficient transport sector was essential to strengthen the unity of the country and promote economic recovery and development, he argued.

Pakistani militants issue moral code in tribal area: witnesses

Khar (AFP) - Pro-Taliban militants in a Pakistani tribal district have warned residents not to put musical ring tones or pictures in their mobile phones, witnesses said Wednesday.

A pamphlet distributed in Khar, the main town of Bajaur district bordering Afghanistan, also told people not to shave their beards, listen to music or smoke cigarettes and hashish.

Islamic militancy is spreading in conservative northwest Pakistan, where militants -- emulating the ultra-orthodox Taliban who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 -- are trying to impose their own strict brand of Islam.

Bajaur is one of seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in the area. In the past militants have blown up music shops and hair salons and plucked stereos from vehicles.

The pamphlet, handwritten in Pashto language, also forbade tribesmen from leaving their homes without caps or to carry weapons without permission from the militants.

Bajaur is a known Al-Qaeda and Taliban hideout. Many tribesmen sympathise with militants across the border in Afghanistan and are pushing for a Taliban-style system of governance in the rugged region.

[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.]