In this bulletin:

• Afghan suicide bomber kills 3 family members
• 'Civilians killed' in Nato raid
• Two militants killed near Afghan border
• Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president
• Koran tested after claims against US troops in Afghanistan
• Battling the Taliban With Soviet-era Weapons
• German chancellor plans to visit war-stricken Afghanistan
• Is it time to pull out?
• Canadian troops recount suicide bomb attack in Afghan border town
• Afghanistan issue won't be solved by panel: Rae
• Herat's silk weavers struggle to keep an ancient trade alive
• Injured Afghan children travel to Germany for hospital treatment
• Projects worth millions of dollars on the boil in Khost
• Afghanistan struggles to preserve rich past despite ongoing war
• Sparsely populated valley a haven of Afghan prosperity

Afghan suicide bomber kills 3 family members

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed his mother, sister and 11-year-old brother when his explosives vest blew up prematurely in southern Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Monday.

The blast occurred in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan on Sunday where mainly Dutch and Australian troops have suffered a number of casualties fighting Taliban insurgents.

Australia suffered its first combat death in Afghanistan a week ago when a soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in Uruzgan. Two Dutch soldiers have been killed by suicide bombs in Uruzgan this year. Eleven Dutch troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

Further north, 14 troops from the NATO-led force in Afghanistan were wounded in a Taliban ambush southwest of the capital Kabul, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Monday.

The troops came under fire during a patrol in the province of Wardak, immediately southwest of Kabul, on Sunday. The troops called in air support, but there was no word on Taliban casualties and no reports that any civilians had been hurt in the fighting, the spokesman said.

Turkish troops make up most of the ISAF contingent in Wardak, which has seen escalating violence in the last year as Taliban militants have spread their influence northwards from their traditional strongholds of support in the south. (Additional reporting by Catherine Hornby in Amsterdam)

'Civilians killed' in Nato raid – BBC

Three civilians were killed and seven injured when Nato planes attacked insurgents outside Kabul on Sunday, a senior Afghan police officer says.

The deputy chief of police of Wardak province said Nato called in air support after militants had ambushed a Nato convoy. He said the air attack left five insurgents dead and three civilians, including a husband and wife.

Nato said it had no information about the incident. International forces have been severely criticised within Afghanistan for killing civilians during their battles with insurgents.

Two militants killed near Afghan border

AP - Miranshah: Pakistani troops shot and killed an Uzbek militant and his local associate near the Afghan border yesterday as they tried to flee in a car after attacking a military checkpoint, officials said.

The men were slain near Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan where the army claims it killed about 200 militants in a series of raids on their hide-outs this month, said a local security official.

About 50 soldiers also died, while scores of others were wounded in the bloodiest clashes last week, raising questions about Pakistani forces' ability to fight militants who on August 30 had abducted more than 250 soldiers as they travelled through a narrow valley in the neighbouring South Waziristan.

Since then, Pakistan with help from tribal elders and local clerics has been trying to secure the release of the soldiers who reportedly surrendered without firing a single shot after Islamic militants surrounded them.

Yesterday, the official - who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to media - said the slain men were believed to be among those who often target troops in the region.

Taliban sets out demands to Afghan president

· Contact raises hopes for eventual end to conflict
· Militants want control of southern provinces

Declan Walsh in Islamabad, Sami Yousafzai in Peshawar
Monday October 15, 2007 – The Guardian

Senior Taliban commanders in Helmand province have sent a list of demands to the Karzai government as part of tentative back-channel talks to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.

The militant leaders - who include a key aide to Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar - want control of 10 southern provinces, a timetable for withdrawal of foreign troops, and the release of all Taliban prisoners within six months. The demands were passed through a former Taliban foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, and the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.

The demands are unlikely to be taken seriously. However, British and Afghan officials supporting such contacts consider them a sign that a negotiated settlement may be possible with at least some insurgent commanders. But officials on all sides stress that the contacts are in their infancy and are unlikely to trigger an early end to the violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives this year.

A senior diplomatic source in Kabul confirmed that Mr Muttawakil and Mr Zaeef, who was released from Guantánamo Bay in 2004, were part of a wide group of intermediaries between the government and Taliban commanders. "There are many groups involved. It's a very wide range," he said.

The contacts are a tacit recognition from the coalition and the Taliban that, in the short term at least, neither side is capable of winning the Afghan war.

They face stiff hurdles, some in Kabul. The idea of negotiations is anathema to ethnic Tajiks who fought the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in the late 1990s. "There is controversy in the non-Pashtun community about something horrible coming in through the back door," said the diplomatic source.

President Hamid Karzai also faces a more practical problem of which phone number to call. Analysts describe the Taliban as a network of loosely linked groups divided by region, tribe and criminal affiliation. Motivations vary enormously - some are involved in the lucrative heroin trade or petty crime, while some are driven by nationalist sentiment or a hardline Islamist ideology. "It's a shifting group of alliances and networks. They have to adapt constantly to survive," said the diplomatic source.

All are united behind Mullah Omar, the undisputed Taliban leader. The one-eyed cleric heads a 30-member shura - leadership council - and a smaller 10-member military council. Both bodies are believed to operate out of the lawless borderlands in neighbouring Pakistan, which provide a crucial sanctuary.

One node centres on Quetta in western Pakistan. Black-turbaned fighters openly roamed the streets until a Pakistan government clampdown earlier this year. However, the Taliban's operations hub is thought to be Kuchlak, a small town 12 miles north of the city.

The other node is 250 miles to the north-east in North Waziristan, where Sirajuddin Haqqani, the son of a famous jihadi commander, controls military operations that span Pakistani, Afghan and al-Qaida fighters.

Waziristan is considered a major training hub and the source of many of the suicide bombers who have struck across Pakistan and Afghanistan this year.

Nato and Taliban officials said a turning point in talks came after the Korean hostage crisis this summer in which two aid workers were killed but 21 were freed unharmed. After that, a Nato official said, "both sides had faith that talking could actually work".

Mullah Omar has repeatedly spurned Mr Karzai's advances. Six years after September 11, the fugitive leader remains more of an enigma than Osama bin Laden. He rarely makes public statements. When he does it is through Mullah Brader, a commander in Helmand with whom he has marriage ties.

One Taliban source said that Mullah Brader supported the recent list of demands sent to the Karzai government.

Mullah Omar's lieutenants are under immense pressure. Nato and Pakistani military actions have taken out a slew of mid-level commanders and three major figures this year. The ruthless battlefield commander Mullah Dadullah was killed in a special forces raid; Mullah Akhtar Usmani was killed after crossing over from Pakistan; and Mullah Obaidullah was arrested in Quetta. Due to these and other losses the Quetta shura has been unable to meet for the past two and a half months, said the diplomatic source in Kabul.

Taliban officials admit they are worried about losing their sanctuary in Waziristan. Major clashes with the Pakistan army in the past eight days have left 200 militants and 50 government soldiers dead, according to army figures.

And for some, talks of any sort give the Taliban an unwarranted legitimacy. One official in Kabul, who declined to be named, was enraged by the defence minister, Des Browne, comparing the Taliban to Hamas. "It's utter nonsense. You can't compare a coherent political organisation like Hamas with a non-unified movement with little grassroots support."

Koran tested after claims against US troops in Afghanistan

Assadabad (AFP) - Investigators have sent burnt pages of a Koran to Kabul for tests to verify when they were set ablaze after allegations they were torched by US soldiers, Afghan police said.

The US military has rejected that its soldiers burnt the Muslim holy book during a raid in the eastern province of Kunar early Saturday but said it would investigate what happened. The issue is highly sensitive in devout Afghanistan and has prompted angry protests.

"We have sent burnt pages of the Koran and ash samples to the capital to the interior ministry criminal investigation branch to find out if the pages were set on fire that night or earlier," Kunar police chief Abdul Jalal Jalal told AFP.

At a heated meeting in the Kunar capital Asadabad on Sunday, villagers from the Narang district where the raid occurred demanded an apology.

"If the perpetrators do not apologise... and if they are not brought to justice and punished for what they have done, we will stand against you, you will see an uprising," said one local, Azem Khan.

There are about 55,000 foreign soldiers here, about half of them from the United States, helping Afghan security forces fight back an insurgency by the extremist Taliban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001.

Battling the Taliban With Soviet-era Weapons

Fawzia Sheikh - KANDAHAR, Oct 15 (IPS) - In the dry Afghan heat a small band of hopeful soldiers, vying to become elite commandos, swiftly falls into line as drill instructor Lt. Abdul Hussein barks orders during a physical fitness exam.

Located minutes from the coalition-run Kandahar Airfield, a southern Afghan military base known as the 205th Hero Camp, that is marked by nondescript white structures known as connexes and a yard of old Soviet tanks, is the site of this morning's test.

Sgt. Hussein Anwary, a 22-year-old from Herat province who has served for two years, eagerly talks to reporters about his "pleasure to be a soldier" and the chance to defend his country.

But though he believes the Afghan army can take the fight to the Taliban and other insurgents, he laments that his country's armed forces have "weak" equipment, lacking body armor and air support like fighter jets.

Like most issues in Afghanistan, the debate about the military's skill to act alone, as well as the availability of weapons and equipment, is a complex one.

The Afghan army is arguably well ahead of the police in its readiness to defend the nation, but is still wracked by equipment problems due to limited economic progress, a lack of maintenance facilities, slow-paced NATO weapons contributions meant to be a short-term solution ahead of American equipment deliveries, among other issues.

Brig. Gen. Gul Aqa Nahibi, who commands over 13,000 soldiers of the 205th Afghan army Hero Corps scattered throughout the southern provinces of Kandahar, Zabul, Helmand and Uruzghan, acknowledged that his corps' arsenal stems back to the 1980s war with the Soviets and the civil war between mujahideen factions in the 1990s.

Speaking from his Hero Camp office, Nahibi, a 41-year veteran of Afghanistan's army, said the Afghan military more recently has collected old weapons acquired from civilians but many are ineffective. He was quick to point out, however, that Western forces have provided combat and telecommunications vehicles as well as uniforms.

"It's the coalition's responsibility to equip the Afghan, as they promised the Afghan government . . . but they have a schedule," he said. His soldiers can carry out independent operations if properly armed, he said, adding that checkpoints stationed outside the camp are manned by Afghan National Army soldiers with coalition forces acting only in supportive roles.

Back in Kabul, Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, commanding general of the U.S. Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, told IPS that the U.S. is on track to issue most weapons, including M16s and other machine guns, in the fall of 2008.

"What we're really working to do is get donations from NATO right now in the interim until the U.S. weapons are available" but the process could be better, conceded Cone, the senior-most American general in charge of training and coaching the Afghan army. He said some countries have been quite generous, noting recent offers from Canada and a donation of some 1,500 brand-new weapons from Montenegro.

The security forces, seen as a prominent fixture throughout the country driving Toyota pickup trucks and similar light tactical vehicles, are in line to receive heavy trucks, he added. The process is 50 percent completed, he said.

"And again, my concern is getting it into the hands of the right people that can account for it and are not going to lose it," he stressed. "And that sometimes slows this process down. One of the problems you have is you can't just give them equipment. You have to build maintenance facilities. They have to know how to maintain them otherwise they'll just be broken down all over the countryside."

Cone said the debate on assigning vehicles has included questions about the extent to which the Afghan army and police should be "uparmored," since the country's insurgency has featured fewer roadside bombs and suicide bombers than neighboring Iraq's.

"This is an insurgency and you need the support of the people," he concluded. "And it is essential that the Afghan security forces can move in and among the people ... without being, I think, decked out like an American soldier", known for travelling in conspicuous convoys of humvees.

To that end, certain force-protection items like body armor, helmets and a limited number of unarmoured vehicles will be issued to security forces operating only in "really high-risk areas", he told IPS.

Cone, echoing the earlier concerns of aspiring young commando Sgt. Anwary on the Afghan military's need for close air support, said coalition forces have turned their attention to building systems such as logistics, command and control, casualty evacuation and air support.

Describing Afghans as fearless in combat, he went on to say there is no doubt several Afghan units can, and have, battled the Taliban on their own but he questioned whether they can do so "without needless loss of life". In some instances, at least on the logistics side, the best-performing Afghan units are ones that show initiative by operating apart from American systems, he said.

For example, one Afghan solution has been to scrap ready-made halal meals the U.S. military bought for local soldiers and instead ask field-ordering agents to buy and slaughter goats, he said.

"In my view that's a success," said Cone. "I tend to think we have to look at different solutions for the Afghans and stop imposing sort of the Western standard for things like logistics. The Afghans were very happy that they happen to eat three hot meals a day as opposed to eating a lunch out of a plastic bag."

Despite coalition efforts to help develop a logistics system for the Afghan army, U.S. navy Lt. Col. John Matthew Anderson, a senior mentor of the navy garrison of the Afghan army's 205th Corps, said nearly 30 years of war have exacted a huge toll on Afghan economic life. He has been posted in Kandahar since April.

"There's no tax base and they literally do not have the financial resources to even have a supply system," Anderson said in an interview at Kandahar airfield. "The government brings in no revenue from the people of Afghanistan, so they have no money to buy bullets. They have no money to buy uniforms. They have no money to buy rifles, pick-up trucks," food, medicine and other supplies.

Summing up the country's woes, Anderson doubted military logistics progress will be made until Afghanistan develops an economic base but acknowledged the war-torn country is hard-pressed to develop an economy until it achieves security.

Although the Afghan government is striving to attract investment, foreign aid drives the country in which the war-weary south sees little business development, said Norine MacDonald, president and lead field researcher of the international non government organisation (NGO) the Senlis Council.

Surprising pockets of success have emerged, though. The absence of land lines has boosted the growth of cell-phone networks, offering people -- including the insurgents -- communications in even the poorest corners of the country, MacDonald, who is based in Kandahar, said in an interview.

Yet, arguably the most robust economic activity in the country is road-building financed by the international community, she told IPS. She said for the most part non-Afghan businesses lead these operations, hiring Pakistani and Chinese nationals and in the past rightfully prompting complaints from the Afghan government.

In the midst of Afghanistan's uncertain economic future, the building of the military forges on. The Afghan army's 203rd and 209th Corps, in particular, have shown the greatest promise in leading operations against their enemies, said Cone, the American lead trainer. He predicted that certain Afghan units will be poised to carry out independent missions in the spring but will still rely on the coalition for casualty evacuation. He said the process of readying units will continue for about 18 months.

Regardless of international agendas to shape the Afghan security forces, the army's ultimate effectiveness will be "in the mind's eye of the Afghan people," he concluded.

"I'm reluctant to just to go to any kind of a timetable simply because I think it does not reflect the complexity of the task or the reality," he said.

(*Fawzia Sheikh was recently embedded with US troops in Afghanistan)

German chancellor plans to visit war-stricken Afghanistan

Berlin, Oct 15, IRNA - German Chancellor Angela Merkel plans to visit Afghanistan to get a first-hand picture on the situation in the country, however no date has been set for the trip, deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg told journalists here Monday.

"The chancellor intends to travel to Afghanistan at a due time ... but no date has been set," the Merkel spokesperson said. The chancellor also wants to see how the cooperation between the German armed forces and aid workers functions, Steg added.

The chancellor faced harsh criticism by the opposition Greens for her failure to visit German NATO-led troops in Afghanistan Green party leader Renate Kuenast said a Merkel trip to the war-ravaged country was "overdue".

As expected, German lawmakers voted last week in favor of extending the controversial Afghan military mandate for another year. Some 453 legislators approved renewing the mission, while 79 opposed it and 48 abstained.

The new mandate allows the deployment of up to 3,500 soldiers in Afghanistan and will primarily focus on northern Afghanistan and the Kabul region.

Meanwhile, the mandate covers also the stationing of six Tornado econnaissance fighter jets in Afghanistan. Around 3,000 German soldiers are also presently based in northern Afghanistan as part of the NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

Germany has faced intense pressure in recent months from its Nato allies, notably the US, Britain and Canada, to widen its military presence into southern Afghanistan where NATO troops are battling a revitalized Taliban insurgency.

The recent spate of kidnappings of German nationals in Afghanistan has also negatively influenced public opinion about the futile western military campaign in the war-ravaged country. According to the latest opinion polls, most Germans oppose the NATO-led war in Afghanistan.

Is it time to pull out?

The truth about Canada's mission in Afghanistan

By MICHAEL DEN TANDT, SUN MEDIA

KANDAHAR -- The Afghan war is not one conflict but three -- a guerrilla war, a development war, a communications war. Canada is gaining ground in the first, slowly winning the second and losing the third.

The military and the media deserve some measure of blame for this. Mainly though, responsibility falls to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Even as he struggles to sell the Afghan mission to an increasingly uneasy public, his mania for control is stifling the truth about what's happening here.

On Friday, Harper announced he has tasked a blue-ribbon team to study Canada's future role in Afghanistan. Led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, the five-member group will begin by meeting with troops and development workers in Kandahar. The panel is expected to report back in February 2008.

The truth of what is happening in Afghanistan is extraordinary: It's a story of courage and grit and idealism that, if more Canadians only knew it, would make them very proud. But most don't know it, because the people best positioned to tell it have been gagged.

I came back to Afghanistan to find answers to two questions: Is Canada's deployment here still worthwhile, despite the rising toll in lives? And if it is, then why do so many people back home think it isn't?

In the past week I've spoken to dozens of Canadian soldiers, non-governmental aid workers, and Afghans, some who are very critical the U.S.-led international effort here, and of the Karzai regime.

Their message was clear: Please, Canada, don't go. Our country has an influence and a reputation here that is vastly disproportionate to the number of troops we have on the ground.

That's partly because we are spending money -- a great deal of money, $1.2 billion committed over 10 years -- on rebuilding and redevelopment.

Your tax dollars are helping pay for a vast national de-mining project, led by Canada but in partnership with the United Nations. Every day on a mountain top in Kabul, Afghans mentored by Canadians carry on the painstaking and dangerous work of removing and destroying the thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance that litter this country. Canada is the single largest donor, contributing $20 million annually.

Your tax dollars are paying for a project that will help 3,000 war widows in Kabul start micro-businesses this year. Often, the aid begins with a single cow or goat.

Your tax dollars are paying for the training of a professional Afghan National Army, which is increasingly imposing order in the volatile south.

Thirty-four thousand troops are already trained. A thousand new troops a month are graduating from the Afghan National Training Centre in Kabul. Canadians are in the forefront of the training effort.

Your tax dollars are paying for 200 small aid projects in Kandahar City, all geared to stimulating local business and trades, and developing a functioning local economy.

These efforts are not being carried out on your behalf at arms' length. They're led, supported and protected by a Canadian military that has learned, through half a century of peacekeeping, how to properly and modestly engage with a foreign culture.

You may have heard that no one can tell Canadians and Americans apart any longer. In Afghanistan, everyone knows the difference.

Canadians are leaders here in the delicate trick of combining military power with aid. Other nations in the 37-member international coalition come to our Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Kandahar City, to study our methods.

The PRT, Camp Nathan Smith, is a model, an experiment in a new kind of military engagement: Soldiers, working hand in hand with RCMP officers, diplomats, lawyers, doctors, specialists in governance and foreign aid workers helping the Afghans manage their own affairs, raise their standard of living and establish a functional state.

You've heard about the 71 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat who've lost their lives in Afghanistan. You've heard about the CBC journalist and cameraman whose armoured vehicle was blown up by a roadside bomb.

What you haven't heard, perhaps, is that the vast majority of the casualties and injuries in this civil war are Afghan. Mentored and supported by Canadian officers. The Afghans are in the forefront of every combat operation in the south and 85% of the casualties treated for war injuries at Kandahar Air Field, the main coalition base in the south, are Afghan army or Afghan police.

It follows from this that our deployment here is not an occupation: It's a support mission. But few people back home appreciate this, because nobody's covering the Afghan side of the war. Afghan casualties, even mass casualties, get short shrift.

The leading edge of Canada's humanitarian engagement here is the PRT, Camp Nathan Smith. But for reasons that defy explanation, only the soldiers stationed there are allowed to speak publicly about their work.

The five officials from foreign affairs, the 10 RCMP officers engaged in training Afghan police, the head of the CIDA mission in the province (with a budget of $39-million this year alone), are not allowed to speak to the media. According to multiple sources here, they have been gagged by the Prime Minister's Office.

Figure that one out. The very people who could best spread the word about the good works Canada is carrying out beneath the security umbrella provided by our troops, can't talk about it. This translates into a distorted portrait of the mission at home.

The military can't get off scot-free either. The Canadian army's communications resources in Kandahar province are located at the Kandahar Air Field -- the centre of combat operations. Reporters at the airfield are supported by satellite and media tents with sophisticated communications equipment.

At the PRT, there's a single media tent. It has no reliable, permanent Internet hookups. There's no satellite for television transmissions. As a result, most reporters choose to stay at the airfield -- where they don't hear a lot about development work, because it's all based at the PRT.

The media? We're at fault too. Reporters driven by competition and the demands of editors back home, are hell-bent on covering Canadians in combat. That's a good thing, as far as it goes: Canadians need a public witness to the exercise of lethal force by their representatives abroad. Combat stories are dramatic and gripping and the tales we hear about soldiers at war can inspire and move us the way few other stories can.

But the entire mission stands or falls on whether development can succeed. For media to ignore the tangible evidence of progress simply because these stories aren't as dramatic as combat, is beyond belief.

Here's why all this matters so much: The Taliban are not fighting a conventional guerrilla war. All their efforts are geared towards forcing Western governments to pull their soldiers out of Afghanistan.

DISTORTED VIEW - Every suicide bombing and IED attack is about hurting Western troops, but it's even more about causing fear and uncertainty back home. This is why there's such frustration, among soldiers here, about the posturing and chest-beating in Ottawa each time a Canadian dies in combat. Each cluster of front-page stories is, in effect, a tactical victory for the insurgents.

What happens if we pull out? Some say it would make no difference. The Americans could easily replace us.

But it's not nearly that simple. The Afghans don't trust the Americans. Their approach is different from ours -- much more blunt, less culturally sensitive. Canada has an institutional memory now in Kandahar, won by five years of hard work on the ground.

Canada has the aid projects, just now beginning to bear fruit. Canada has credibility with the Afghans, won by our soldiers' willingness to fight and die on their behalf.

If we pull out, much of that will be lost. The mission will continue but the setback will be huge and Canada's standing in Afghanistan, and the world, will suffer immeasurably.

Canadian troops recount suicide bomb attack in Afghan border town

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The suicide bomber who blew himself up at a crowded marketplace in the border town of Spin Boldak on Saturday stuffed ball bearings among the explosives packed into his vest.

It is a crude but effective weapon and an indiscriminating one when it comes to killing, spraying deadly shrapnel in all directions.

Of the eight people who died in the blast, five were civilians celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr at a community festival. Three of the dead were Afghan National Border Police officers who are so often targeted by insurgents.

"It's the end of Ramadan, so there are a lot of festivities taking place in Afghanistan," said Maj. Pierre Huet, commanding officer of the Canadian reconnaissance squadron, which set up an emergency triage at Canada's forward operating base in Spin Boldak to treat the victims.

"The market was full. There were lots of games for children, many people in the market. . . ."

Seven people were killed instantly when the bomber blew himself up around 7 p.m. One more victim died en route to the military hospital at Kandahar Airfield. Two children, ages 8 and 9, were among the survivors treated by Canadian soldiers at Spin Boldak.

"We received about 10 pick-up trucks loaded with injured people, about five to six injured in each truck," Huet told reporters Sunday.

Two doctors were dispatched from Kandahar Airfield but emergency medics with the reconnaissance squadron went immediately to work. "Within two hours, everyone had been evaluated, treated and evacuated," Huet said.

Twenty-one of 36 survivors were evacuated by air to the multinational military hospital at Kandahar Airfield. Canadian soldiers in Spin Boldak took the rest to the local hospital by armoured vehicle.

The entire multinational medical staff at Kandahar Airfield, 120 people, was pressed into service. From just after 9 p.m. until 3 a.m. the victims arrived in waves.

The medical headquarters for the hospital was quickly turned into a temporary triage area as medical staff waited for the sound of helicopters to cut through the night sky.

"The injuries, most of them were shrapnel wounds," said Maj. Jocelyn Dodaro, the physician in charge of hospital services for the Canadian contingent and one of the two doctors dispatched to Spin Boldak to help treat the wounded.

The ball bearings had the desired effect. Body parts were brought to the hospital with the victims. "The people closest to the suicide bomber received the most serious injuries," Dodaro said.

He lauded the reconnaissance squadron for their response. "I don't have a number of lives that were saved but the Canadian Forces saved a number of lives, that's for sure," Dodaro told reporters.

Five patients remained at the military hospital at Kandahar on Sunday. The others were evacuated to military facilities at NATO bases in Terin Kot, Camp Bastion and Kabul.

"It's the largest incident of mass casualties we've had," said Lt.-Cmdr. Charles Gendron, deputy commander of the military hospital at Kandahar Airfield.

"At the moment, everyone is stable, everyone has received the appropriate care and everyone is basically out of danger. Most, if not all, will fully recover from their injuries."

It was the third incident in recent months in this bustling border town. In August, a Taliban ambush killed five and injured 11 policemen and in September another suicide bomber injured 12. A second suicide bomber was arrested by Afghan security forces before carrying out his deadly plan.

Huet said Afghan national security forces, in particular border police chief Abdul Razik, was the target of these attacks.

Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, called it an "abominable violent act."

"Yet again, we see in such senseless acts that the victims have been largely civilians," McNeill said Sunday. "Taliban extremists do not offer a hopeful future for this country, but one of violence and death."

Afghanistan issue won't be solved by panel: Rae

Updated Sun. Oct. 14 2007, CTV.ca News Staff

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is obviously hoping to "defang" the Afghanistan issue with his new panel, said Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae.

"I don't think frankly that's possible. The issue is much too alive for Canadians, much to important to Canadians, to simply say we're going to let five individuals go off in a corner and tell us what to do," he told CTV's Question Period on Sunday. The panel has to be part of a broader discussion, he said.

For the Liberals, the important things are that an exclusively military solution isn't possible in Afghanistan, and that Canada remain engaged there, Rae said.

Many Liberals were surprised Friday, when Harper appointed former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley as chair of the five-member panel.

"That's Mr. Manley's choice," Rae said, sidestepping questions about whether some Liberals saw Manley's action as providing political cover for Harper.

"Imagine if he was not there," Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said of Manley in a separate Question Period interview.

"All the others -- three out of four -- have strong connections to Mr. (former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian) Mulroney," he said.

The other panel members are:

• Derek Burney, Canada's former ambassador to Washington and former chief of staff
  to Mulroney
• Broadcaster Pamela Wallin, who was Canadian consul general in New York
• Former Mulroney-era Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Jake Epp
• Paul Tellier, former Clerk of the Privy Council during the Mulroney era and former president and CEO of Canadian National Railway and Bombardier

"All of them have no understanding at all of Afghanistan," Dion said, adding while those four were honourable Canadians, they are better known for their connections to the United States.

The panel has four options to consider before it is scheduled to report at the end of January:

• Option One -- continue training the Afghan army and police with the goal of creating a self-sufficient indigenous security force in Kandahar province so that Canadian troops can withdraw in February 2009
• Option Two -- focus on reconstruction work in Kandahar, which would require other countries to take over security role
• Option Three -- shift Canadian security and reconstruction efforts to another region in Afghanistan
• Option Four -- withdraw all Canadian military forces after February 2009 except for small contingent to provide security for aid workers and diplomats

Rae said the Liberal party would be putting forward its own option to the people of Canada, "whether it's in an election campaign or in Parliament."

Industry Minister Jim Prentice told Question Period that the panel's appointment "is an attempt to have a reasoned, thoughtful, non-partisan discussion about the options available to us in Afghanistan.

"There's been no attempt to put the Liberals into an impossible position. The Liberals, led by Mr. Dion, find impossible positions all by themselves," he said.

Herat's silk weavers struggle to keep an ancient trade alive

AFP (Herat) - by Beatrice Khadige - An important stop on the ancient Silk Route, the beautiful city of Herat has for centuries lured travellers and businessmen.

But today it is fighting to keep alive one of the symbols of this splendid past -- silk spun from the delicate cocoons of silk worms.

About 120 kilometres (74 miles) east of the Iranian border, the key city in the 14th century Timurid empire of conqueror Tamerlane still prides itself on the skill of producing the precious material.

But the small industry is being crushed by competition from China, which has 70 percent of the world silk market, and its neighbours Pakistan and Iran.

Of the 156 enterprises in the province, few are dedicated to the production of silk and only 100 families make their living from the craft. This is a marked drop from a few years ago.

"In 2002 there were more than 300 manufacturers with 800 employees in the province," says the head of Herat province's trade unions, Abdul Qadir Akbari.

"We prefer to invest in products that are easy to export, like biscuits sold in the neighbouring former Soviet republics," explains the secretary of the province's separate industrial union, Mir Mohammad Mashouf.

In Afghanistan the delicate work of producing silk is still done by hand because there is no money to bring in modern machines, says Akbari, himself involved in sericulture.

"It takes between 45 and 50 days for an average family of five people to raise 40 kilogrammes (88 pounds) of cocoons," he says.

"We give them boxes imported from China that contain the leaves of the white mulberry tree to feed the eggs, which will develop into the cocoons," he says.

The next stage is unravelling the cocoon, when one has to avoid breaking the fine thread that can reach between 300 and 1,500 metres (yards).

In Herat, just four to five manufacturers are in the industry and they "barely survive," says Akbari. Ghalem Haidar Azimi runs his business from an old suburb of mudbrick houses.

His dozen employees work eight hours a day, six days a week, to produce 40 kilogrammes a month of rough silk which he says he can sell for 40 dollars a kilogramme. This thread then has to be treated and refined.

It is too expensive to hope to export on a world market where one can bargain for silk half the price. "Here we find silk from China and more often a Pakistani imitation (polyester) much cheaper," says Azimi.

Mohammad Amine, who runs a fabric shop near the city's landmark Friday Mosque, says: "Today, artificial silk from Pakistan costs 20 dollars for a quarter kilogramme, already dyed. Here, four kilogrammes of silk costs 160 dollars and it still has to be dyed."

The Pakistani thread is also easier to use, says this former warrior who lost a leg fighting the Taliban in the 1990s. "In one day, we can make three shawls with this material, compared to one with the real silk from here."

Silk shawls are prized in the region. Men traditionally keep them for their turbans, even though it's a sign of wealth forbidden by Islamic teaching.

"It is hard work that benefits few people," says Jamshedi Ghulam Mohammad, an expert in their manufacture. There are also silk carpets, he says, although those from Iran are more valued.

"Thirty years ago, Afghan silk carpets sold well: 75 percent of them were exported compared to hardly two percent today," Mohammad said.

Injured Afghan children travel to Germany for hospital treatment

DPA - Hamburg - A flight carrying 57 injured Afghan children requiring surgery is to arrive in Hamburg this week, German health authorities said Monday. The return charter flight is to bring home 20 Afghan youngsters who have successfully undergone treatment in German hospitals.

The 57 children, who arrive in the northern city on Wednesday, are to be sent to 30 hospitals across Germany for treatment under a scheme run by the organization Kinder brauchen uns (Children need us). They are being accompanied on their flight by five doctors and other medical staff from Hamburg's Albertinen Hospital.

The flight is budgeted to cost 110,000 euros (156,000 dollars). The organization plans two such flights a year, if it can collect sufficient funding.

Some 300 Afghan children have undergone surgery in Germany since 2002, most of them victims of bomb blasts, burns or heart complaints.

Projects worth millions of dollars on the boil in Khost

KHOST CITY, Oct 12 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Calling 2007 the reconstruction year for the underdeveloped Khost province, Governor Arsala Jamal says projects costing millions of dollars are on the boil.

Praising what he described a 10n-folded increase in uplift funds for the province, the governor claimed the US had pledged millions of dollars to the reconstruction of the province this year.

"We have constructed buildings for five district headquarters and 12 police headquarters this year," Jamal pointed out in an exclusive chat with Pajhwok Afghan New. In Khost, not even a single district is without a new headquarters building," he claimed.

Paving roads in all districts was the most important project for the current year, he observed, saying the ongoing development work in Khost was a model as all districts had got paved roads within a year.

Work has already got under way on a road linking Ghulam Khan with Khost, revealed the governor, who promised the construction of Khost-Babrak Khana and Zazai-Maidan roads would begin shortly.

Arsala said they would construct 47 schools at the cost of $4.7 million this year in addition to digging up 400 water wells in the province.

Provincial Education Director Aziz Ahmad Hashimi remarked the construction of 47 buildings in one year would be unprecedented in the history of Khost, which has 180 schools and seminaries. Only 40% of Khost schools have proper buildings.

Provincial Water Supply Department head Engineer Abdul Mar Khan Lemar said they had built 32 water dams in Khost at the cost of about two million US dollars this year. The US embassy has pledged them a good deal of assistance this year, the governor added.

The US PRT based in the province supports most of the projects in Khost, Sr. Capt Adams said. He added the Khost PRT had received a greater budget this year. The Khost governor has presented us with proposals while other provinces did not. The donors were impressed by his proposals and allocated Khost a greater development budget. Saboor Mangal

Afghanistan struggles to preserve rich past despite ongoing war

MURAD KHANE, Afghanistan - Hedayatullah Ahmad Zai slaps his hand against one of the ancient mud brick walls that separate this historic neighbourhood from the rest of Kabul, a bustling city now despite the remnants of war.

"There was garbage up to here," he says, shaking his head. "We hauled it out for weeks. And there were people living in that."

Murad Khane was once a thriving area that played host to Afghan royalty. It had grand houses that people loved to live in and a busy market along the Kabul River. Through decades of war, the area had fallen far from its glory days.

The landmark buildings were crumbling. Raw sewage ran in the streets. The wells were dry, and the only people who remained were those too poor to have anywhere else to go.

"This area has a story that is 300 years old," says Ahmad Zai, the head of engineering for an ambitious project to rebuild the area.

"The people like living in these houses," he says as he strolls through a maze of alleys and construction sites. "They have been here for generations."

And for generations they had watched as the grand buildings of Murad Khane buckled from neglect and returned to mud. Like the buildings, the people showed the signs of neglect.

Poor and uneducated, few had the prospect of earning a living. Children worked if they could, and women stayed hidden inside their homes in fear of Taliban reprisals.

Enter Turquoise Mountain. Born of a meeting between Prince Charles and Afghan President Hamid Karzai in January 2006, the Turquoise Mountain project aims to rebuild Murad Khane one brick at a time. The neighbourhood's ancient buildings are slowly being restored to their former glory.

There is an embroidery centre where the neighbourhood women earn a stipend for their work, and an elementary school for the children. Eventually, there will be a school for traditional arts and architecture. It will teach subjects ranging from carpentry, tile-making to calligraphy.

Every afternoon, a volunteer doctor runs a medical clinic and health workers visit local families. The well has been restored and proper sewage drains have been dug.

Earlier this month, Canada's International Co-operation Minister Beverley Oda announced $3 million for the project, funded so far by individual donations from philanthropists including Prince Charles and the Crown Prince of Bahrain.

"It is a hard-hit city and one of the ways that it helps people here initially is with instant job creation," says Anna Woodiwiss, spokeswoman for the project, as she strolls through the returning bazaar area.

"Any unemployed man in Murad Khane who wants a job on this project has one - whether it's clearing garbage, doing brick work or restoring these buildings."

The idea is to build a visible symbol of regeneration amid the ruins, one that will draw Afghans from across the country and, eventually, foreign visitors.

Looking at the rocket-pocked landscape of poverty and decay, it is difficult to imagine that one day anyone would come to Afghanistan of their own accord. Many buildings left standing are doing so by the slimmest of margins. Even cherished mosques have fallen into disrepair.

It is easy to forget that this land was once a celebrated stop along the Silk Road between China and Rome. Its history stretches back over thousands of years of civilization.

But Afghanistan has also been plundered throughout history - by Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Ottoman Empire, to name a few.

At one time, the national museum in Kabul hosted the world's richest collection of artifacts from central Asia.

But the museum was bombed in 1993. Then the Taliban sacked the place in 2001, around the time they blew up two giant 5th century Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

What hadn't fallen victim to war or the strict Islam of the Taliban has been looted.

Museum staff tried to preserve what they could, squirrelling away artifacts across the country for safekeeping. But it has been estimated that about 75 per cent of the original collection has been destroyed or stolen and sold off to private collectors around the world.

The museum re-opened in 2004 but most of its collection is still missing. "We have a lot of work to do," says curator Omar Khan Masoodi. "Our museum was looted and damaged and destroyed."

Some progress is being made. More than a thousand works taken to the Afghanistan Museum in Exile in Switzerland during the Taliban years have now been returned. Thousands of other pieces have been recovered, and museum staff are busy trying to restore damaged works.

The museum itself still needs much work but with the help of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization, and various foreign governments and museums, "the work is going well," Masoodi says.

Six thousand visitors have come through the doors already this year. "It's important for us to preserve our ancient civilization, not only for our younger generation, but for the whole world," Masoodi says.

Sparsely populated valley a haven of Afghan prosperity

By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post  |  October 14, 2007

PARAKH, Afghanistan - Slashed across the side of a rugged mountain like the sign of Zorro, the Z Road started as a simple $59,000 US project to put a radio tower atop a small peak in the Hindu Kush, so people in the remote Panjshir Valley could for the first time pick up commercial radio from Kabul, about 60 miles away.

After road crews conquered the mountain's 270-foot face last November, other forces took over. By the new year, private companies had extended the road to the next hilltop, two-thirds of a mile away and 640 feet higher, for a bank of cellphone towers.

Then came another half-mile extension to the next peak for a television tower, then plans for a wind farm, and, last month, a series of switchbacks down the far side of the range to give villages in the next valley their first road to the outside.

This is the way reconstruction in Afghanistan was supposed to be. A little bit of US pump priming, combined with profit motive and human need, would be harnessed by a grateful, liberated population to transform their lives and country. In the process, the people would become loyal allies in the fight against terror.

It hasn't always worked that way. Afghanistan is besieged by a growing insurgency that is shifting US money and manpower from reconstruction to security, undermining vital road, electricity, school, and other projects that are designed to extend the authority of the national government and win hearts and minds.

But in Afghanistan's famed Panjshir Valley - a remote, sparsely populated mountain region that is almost entirely ethnic Tajik - an unprecedented synergy among the local government, the people, and US soldiers has helped spark a development boom that is modernizing and transforming the valley, which became Afghanistan's 34th province three years ago. Underpinning it all is an unusual sense of calm that has come with the people's success in keeping the Taliban at bay.

When a US reconstruction team recently returned to Forward Operating Base Lion about 10 miles inside the valley, troops parked their military vehicles for the duration of their stay and traveled throughout the province in regular sport utility vehicles, without body armor and helmets. They often eschewed convoys and went out on missions in single vehicles.

Ambassadors, politicians, and NATO and US military officials "all ask the same thing: Can we do this in other provinces?" said Governor Bahlol Bahij of Panjshir. He extols his zero tolerance for opium poppy cultivation and his systems for working with the US military and foreign aid workers, and for stopping the spread of the extremist Taliban into his province.

In addition to being mostly Tajik, Panjshir Province is almost entirely Sunni Muslim, so the region lacks many ethnic, religious, and cultural differences that have fueled the insurgency elsewhere in Afghanistan.

The province, about 1 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island, has 300,000 residents and is isolated. An indigenous intelligence network with a knowledge of the landscape enabled Panjshir fighters to repel repeated Soviet, mujahideen, and Taliban offenses in the 1980s and '90s and helped this region remain the only unconquered area of Afghanistan.

The fighters were led by national hero Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of Panjshir, who was killed in an Al Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States. Today, nomad sheep herders graze their flocks on the valley floor among rusting Soviet tanks and decrepit armored vehicles. Terraced gardens line the lower slopes, which climb to slate gray mountaintops scarred by foxholes and trenches.

Pictures of Massoud peer out from the windows of mud-brick houses, car windshields, billboards, and storefronts. Women in all-encompassing sky blue burqas walk along roads with girls in black dresses and white shawls - the traditional school uniform in the valley. Irrigation canals feed groves of walnut, almond, and mulberry trees and fields of potatoes, beans, and grapes.

[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.]