In this bulletin:

• 80 Taliban killed in Afghanistan
• Suicide bomber kills four Afghan soldiers
• Purported jihadists ask Afghan government for forgiveness
• Hillier denies contradicting Prime Minister's timeline
• The challenges ahead in Afghanistan
• NATO wants to publicize Taliban outrages; gets Danish funding for video gear
• Rice on Pakistan and Afghanistan
• 'No sign of increased Iranian influence in Afghanistan'
• Hundreds rally against poppy cultivation in Nangarhar
• Germany to donate X-ray machine to Kabul Airport Customs
• Afghan Ex-Militia Leaders Hoard Illegal Arms
• Canada should end Afghan combat role: activist
• Abdul Bari, Afghanistan: “I go to school risking my life and my parents’ lives”
• 100-km road asphalted in Nimroz with Indian assistance
• Kite Runner Kids Moving To Dubai
• Bamiyan's Buddhas revisited

80 Taliban killed in Afghanistan

Sun Oct 28, KABUL (AFP) - Around 80 Taliban fighters were killed when they tried to ambush a patrol of Afghan and international soldiers in the south of Afghanistan, the US-led coalition said Sunday.

The coalition said the troops were forced to call in air support when they were ambushed Saturday in the highly volatile province of Helmand.

"The combined patrol immediately returned fire, manoeuvred, and employed close air support, resulting in almost seven dozen Taliban fighters killed during a six-hour engagement," it said in a statement.

The attackers fled after the clash in the town of Musa Qala, which has been held by the Taliban since February. The statement made no reference to any coalition or civilian casualties.

However, the Afghan commander for Helmand told AFP no troops were killed. "Our initial assessment is that over 73 Taliban were killed in the direct fire and air bombing," said Afghan general Mohaidin Ghori.

"The attacks took place at different hours of the day yesterday in different locations. There have been no casualties to civilians and our forces."

International military forces helped to remove the extremist Taliban from government in late 2001 and are fighting the insurgency led by the hardline group and joined by other radical factions.

Much of the opium that funds the insurgency grows in Helmand, and last month about 2,500 NATO and Afghan troops launched a new operation to clear Taliban fighters from the southern province.

Separately, several Taliban were killed by a joint Afghan and international patrol in the neighbouring province of Kandahar Saturday, the coalition said.

"The Afghan National Security forces spotted the enemies of Afghanistan before they could carry out their attack," said spokesman Chris Belcher.

"The patrol immediately engaged the Taliban element, killing several enemy fighters before they fled the area," the coalition spokesman said.

The coalition statements could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, five police officers guarding an Indian road construction company were killed in an ambush late Saturday in Nimroz province, which shares a long border with neighbouring Iran, the provincial governor said.

"Five police guards were martyred in a Taliban ambush, but there were no casualties to the company engineers or civilians," Ghulam Dastagir Azad said.

The road connects the provincial capital Zaranj on the border with Iran to the country's ring road. The officers killed were part of an auxiliary force that reinforces the regular police in rural parts of Afghanistan.

In another incident, Taliban militants killed a former anti-Soviet commander in Gardez, the capital of eastern Paktia province, on Saturday, provincial spokesman Din Mohammad Darwaish told AFP.

Local leaders fought against the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

"Mohammad Gul was abducted by Taliban two days ago and his body was found yesterday in the area. He was an active social figure taking active part in local shuras (councils)," he said.

Locals refusing to give their names said a letter from the Taliban found with the body said Gul was killed for spying for the Americans and the US-backed Afghan government.

Suicide bomber kills four Afghan soldiers

Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:48am

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed four Afghan soldiers outside a U.S. military base in Afghanistan's eastern province of Paktika on Saturday, U.S. official said.

"A man approached the front gate of Forward Operating Base in Bermel ... he detonated himself killing four Afghan security forces and wounding four other Afghan soldiers and one civilian", said Major Christine Nelson-Chung, a U.S. spokeswoman.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Taliban insurgents often use suicide attacks as part of their campaign against the Afghan government and its foreign backers.

Afghanistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in the past two years with almost daily incidents between Afghan backed international forces and Taliban militants. More than 7,000 people have lost their lives during that time.

Purported jihadists ask Afghan government for forgiveness

Last Updated: Saturday, October 27, 2007 | 9:32 PM ET

CBC News

Afghanistan's government displayed three self-proclaimed would-be jihadists to the media on Saturday in what Afghan officials said is proof the Taliban recruits new fighters from neighbouring Pakistan.

In an unusual press conference in Kandahar, Afghan security intelligence officers paraded the three young men, legs shackled, before reporters to tell their incredible tale, which the CBC's Carolyn Dunn described as either a stunning confession or well-orchestrated propaganda.

The men brought before the media on Saturday claim they were convinced by a man in their home in Peshawar, Pakistan, to travel to Afghanistan to fight foreigners. (CBC)

The men were arrested a week ago on their way to Uruzgan province, where they say they were planning to wage jihad, or holy war, against foreigners.

They said they come from Peshawar, Pakistan, where they met a man at a mosque who persuaded them to fight in Afghanistan.  

"He just told us to go to Afghanistan and there are foreigners, infidels who are oppressing Muslims," said one of the men, who identified himself as Khalid Ghulam. "He told us to do jihad."

According to the men, they travelled from Peshawar to Chaman, Afghanistan, where they claim to have completed three days of insurgent training. The training included how to fire Russian rifles and to set explosives, they said.

They were convinced they were doing the duty of Islam until they began the trip through Afghanistan and didn't see any infidels, the men said. "When I arrived here, I saw the people were Muslim," another of the men, Wajit Hussein, told reporters. "They even brought us water to do ablution and pray."

The men said they have not been forced to say anything and have been treated well. "We ask the government to forgive us for our mistake," said the third man, Usman Haji-Khan. "The man misled us and he is misleading others. I hope God helps him to stop doing these things."

Ghulam said with their confession, they hope to battle the lies they were told. "We hope to be released and then we will tell others who are doing this not to," he told reporters. "We saw it was wrong with our own eyes."

With their last-minute conversion told to the world and no comment from the security officials, the men were led away again, presumably back to a jail cell, the CBC's Dunn said.  

Hillier denies contradicting Prime Minister's timeline

Top general counters opposition criticism by saying his long-haul prediction referred to securing the whole country, not just Kandahar

BILL CURRY October 27, 2007 Globe and Mail

OTTAWA -- General Rick Hillier, Canada's military leader, made a series of television appearances last night as he attempted to stem a growing controversy over his relationship with the Prime Minister.

The televised comments were made at the end of a difficult day for the general, who was portrayed by the opposition as being at odds with the Prime Minister's proposed timeline for leaving the battlefields of Afghanistan.

Defending his position that he believes it could take at least a decade for Afghanistan to be a stable country, Gen. Hillier was at pains to make clear he had not intended to undermine the Conservative Throne Speech earlier this month that had set out a timetable of troop withdrawal for 2009, and 2011 at the latest.

"I have not contradicted anybody," said Gen. Hillier, who had just returned from an unexpected visit to the battlefields of Kandahar province.

"The last time I saw the Prime Minister was the night from the Speech from the Throne and we had a conversation about a whole variety of things. I'm very clear on where the direction comes from. ... We're on exactly the same page and I believe actually we see things exactly the same way."

All three opposition parties were demanding answers yesterday in the House of Commons as to why Gen. Hillier and the government appeared at odds over how long it will take before the Afghan army is ready to take over.

Gen. Hillier said yesterday he agrees with the government that the Afghan army will be ready to take the lead in military efforts in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, where Canadian troops are stationed.

His estimate of 10 years referred to how long it would take for the Afghan army to be ready to defend the entire country. The Throne Speech estimate makes no distinction between Kandahar and the entire country. It predicts that by 2011, "the Afghan army can defend its own sovereignty."

Michael Ignatieff, the deputy leader of the Liberal Party, said the confusion is a troubling sign.

"You can't go out in a Throne Speech and say 2011 and then have your Chief of the Defence Staff saying well, actually, it's 2017," he said.

Cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister's Office stood by their original estimate.

"Building up the capacity of the Afghan people is obviously going to take time," Government House Leader Peter Van Loan told the House of Commons yesterday morning. "We want them to be able to defend their sovereignty. We know that will not happen overnight, but our government does believe it can happen by 2011, the end of the period that is covered in the Afghanistan Compact."

Ultimately, the Prime Minster's Office said, the decision will be made by the House of Commons.

Retired Major-General Lewis MacKenzie said yesterday that he could understand the distinction Gen. Hillier was making. He dismissed the debate as a "tempest in a teapot" but said small defence issues do sometimes explode into far bigger political stories.

His main issue with the comments is the notion that an end date can be predicted at all.

"Nobody can predict when NATO's mission is going to be over," he said. "It will go on forever unless we get enough troops on the ground to win this thing."

Gen. Hillier's free-speaking demeanour has provided regular fodder for the opposition. Former defence minister Gordon O'Connor is widely believed to have been shuffled out of the job earlier this year partly because of a series of public contradictions with the Chief of the Defence Staff.

While seen as a strong and independent communicator, Gen. Hillier has been accused of straying too far at times into the political realm.

In August, Mr. O'Connor said Canadian troops could "basically be in reserve" by early next year as Afghan soldiers move to the front lines. Before long, Gen. Hillier seemed to contradict the minister by saying the process would take a long time.

In July, Gen. Hillier shot down the Conservative government's promise to create 14 territorial defence battalions, saying "we don't need new units."

TWO SIDES OF STORY?

The Conservative government's Oct. 16 Throne Speech stated that Canada should not abandon the people of Afghanistan in February, 2009, when the mission is scheduled to end.

"Canada should build on its accomplishments and shift to accelerate the training of the Afghan army and police so that the Afghan government can defend its own sovereignty. This will not be completed by February, 2009, but our Government believes this objective should be achievable by 2011, the end of the period covered by the Afghanistan Compact. Our Government has appointed an independent panel to advise Canadians on how best to proceed given these considerations," the speech stated.

Then on Thursday, General Rick Hillier said it would take 10 years for the Afghan army to be ready to defend itself.

"It's going to take 10 years or so just to work through and build an army to whatever the final number that Afghanistan will have, and make them professional and let them meet their security demands here," Canada's Chief of Defence staff said.

"I think most Canadians, living in the incredible country that we have, don't always see all the complexities of trying to rebuild a country and, in some cases, build a country from the 25 years of destruction that took place in Afghanistan."

The challenges ahead in Afghanistan - BBC

After a breakfast meeting in Downing Street, Gordon Brown and Afghan President Hamid Karzai painted an upbeat picture of developments in Afghanistan.

Far from concentrating on battles by NATO and British troops against Taleban insurgents, Mr. Brown spoke of 7% economic growth, the building of hospitals and clinics, putting millions of children into schools, and training up Afghan troops to help take the pressure off the NATO and U.S. forces there.

However this optimistic scenario was tempered by the lack of a time frame in getting Afghanistan up and running and constant references to long-term commitment.

While Mr. Brown vowed that Afghanistan would never become a failed state again, President Karzai described Afghanistan's history as one of many years of tragedy and destruction -- that now had hope.

The official visit of President Karzai to Britain coincides with the NATO defense ministers' meeting in the Netherlands where there is much pressure for more NATO countries to send more troops.

Both leaders referred to this as 'burden-sharing', stressing that it was central to Afghanistan's long-term success.

At present, American, British, Canadian and Dutch troops are bearing the brunt of the military deployment of about 50,000, with Britain supplying almost 8,000 troops.

Opium crop

If Afghanistan is ever to succeed as a self-supporting nation analysts believe it will need three specific policies to keep development on track.

Troop deployment will have to be measured in decades rather than years.

Elements of the Taleban will have to be brought into the political process. President Karzai outlined those with whom he would not do business -- those with connections to al-Qaeda and terrorism and those who advocate violence against his government.

And opium growing will have to be substantially curbed in order to cut off funding to the Taleban.

Since their defeat in 2001, Afghanistan has become the source of 90% of the world's opium -- the raw product that's refined into heroin.

Gordon Brown said that the number of opium-free provinces had increased in recent years from six to 13 (out of 34), but President Karzai ruled out a U.S. appeal to allow the aerial spraying of opium fields.

Only 10% of the crop in the past year has been destroyed in operations from the ground, and Mr. Karzai also gave no deadline as to when he expected to make significant inroads.

Alternative means of livelihood for the farmers needed to be put in place.

Development and security

While Iraq remains a predominantly American responsibility, Afghanistan -- once host to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda training camps -- poses a specific challenge to all Western democracies and particularly to Europe.

It's clear from the present NATO meeting that members have not yet decided on the issue of 'burden sharing'.

In effect, NATO remains unsure as to whether it is in Afghanistan as a united political and military force.

The Netherlands, for example, is under pressure to pull out its troops, and Germany, Italy and Spain are reluctant to send theirs down to the more hostile areas.

It is there, specifically in the opium-rich Helmand province, that the population needs proof that Western democratic institutions can deliver more development and security than a resurgent Islamic Taleban funded by the narcotics trade. (Source: BBC)

NATO wants to publicize Taliban outrages; gets Danish funding for video gear

NOORDWIJK, The Netherlands - When NATO put out a call for more equipment in southern Afghanistan, it was expecting guns and helicopters - not cameras and video-cataloguing gear.

But that's what it got from Denmark: an offer of 1 million euros, or about C$1.4 million, to buy video equipment that will ultimately be used to deliver documented Taliban outrages to a television near you - or to the popular video website YouTube.

At the end of a two-day informal meeting of defence ministers in the Netherlands, NATO's secretary general reiterated Thursday that the alliance needs to do a better job in public relations both in home countries and Afghanistan.

"What we can do is improve our public messaging," Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters.

"Part of that public messaging could be to show to the people - and they can draw their own conclusions - what our opponent, our enemy in Afghanistan, looks like; what they do."

He accused the Taliban of performing "the most horrendous human rights violations."

Two weeks ago, de Hoop Scheffer made a pitch to declassify video surveillance footage shot by NATO forces throughout the Afghan conflict. Allied countries have a variety of electronic intelligence-gathering means at their disposal.

The Danes responded with an initiative to provide equipment to transfer and catalogue existing video taken by the various countries involved in fighting the insurgency war. There will also be cameras so that more video can be shot.

The alliance, for all its high-tech hardware and gizmos, does not have such a facility right now, said Canadian Col. Brett Boudreau, a spokesman for Gen. Ray Henault, head of NATO's military council.

Faced with sagging support in countries like Canada and the Netherlands for the Afghan mission, NATO sees the videos as a way of shoring up public opinion.

But one man's YouTube video could be another man's propoganda. De Hoop Scheffer bristled at such a suggestion in questions from a Danish journalist.

"Citizens in Denmark or elsewhere are usually well informed, adult people," the secretary general said.

He said he doesn't think any Danish, Dutch or Norwegien citizen "will be in a position to have himself or herself cheated by NATO propaganda."

"That is definitely not what NATO would do. It is definitely not something I would authorize in any way."

Any declassified footage released by NATO will be "unmanipulated," the secretary general insisted.

In addition, it's been suggested that a special communications team will be assembled to rapidly react to insurgent claims.

Convincing member countries to share intelligence on Taliban activities is going to be a challenge, Boudreau conceded.

NATO apparently possesses a trove of classified, clandestine footage.

One video, which de Hoop Scheffer said was shown to commanders recently, depicts an insurgent who pulled a burka from a backpack and draped himself in the head-to-foot robe to take on the appearance of a woman. He then opened fire with an AK-47 on western troops.

Despite talking up the compelling footage, NATO has yet to make it public.

Public debate over civilian casualties in Afghanistan has been limited almost exclusively to criticism of NATO for misdirected air strikes and inadvertant shootings by western troops.

The Taliban has been quick to exploit the resentment of Afghans over civilian casualties while portraying carnage caused by insurgent tactics as justified.

Unlike al-Qaida, which has a sophisicated production company posting hard-line Islamist messages on the Internet, the Taliban are relative newcomers. Last winter, in conjunction with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, the Taliban released footage of what it claimed was a successful attack on a U.S. position in southern Afghanistan.

Videos of Taliban suicide bombers alledgedly being dispatched to western countries received breathless coverage last spring from North American and some European media.

Insurgents in Iraq have long used videos of roadside bombings as a propaganda and recruiting tool.

De Hoop Scheffer noted that the western media are quick to pick up on Taliban claims and the occasional video, but by the time NATO responds, the news cycle has usually moved on.

Rice on Pakistan and Afghanistan

NEW YORK, Oct 25, 2007 (Pajhwok Afghan News): US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday Washington was paying the price of neglecting Pakistan after the Soviets left Afghanistan.

We paid for it in not having the contacts, we paid for it in the rise of extremism, Rice told a Congressional hearing in Washington.

The secretary of state added the US effectively had no relationship with Pakistan after the Russian troops left Afghanistan. As a result, she pointed out, Afghanistan and Pakistan became a hotbed of terrorism.

I think everybody can see this is a country that was really at the brink of extremism, had close relations with Taliban and one of two countries in the world that actually recognised the Taliban government in Afghanistan during that period of time, Rice observed.

We effectively had no relationship with Pakistan. And we're paying -- we paid for that, the secretary observed in her testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on the US policy in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, in an interview to the PBS news channel, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists were using the tribal region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as their base.

The most important is its ability to use that mostly lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan as a safe haven to regenerate, Hayden remarked.

Our national intelligence estimate about three months ago said they had leadership, a safe haven and what we call operational lieutenants, kind of the operational leadership, that were present in the FATA, in the federally administered tribal area. So that has allowed them in some measure to regenerate, he concluded. Lalit K. Jha

'No sign of increased Iranian influence in Afghanistan'

NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): While there has been concrete evidence of Iranian influence in Afghanistan in terms of supply of explosives to Taliban, there has been no indication of an increase in it, a top US army official said Wednesday.

As far as Iranian influence goes in Afghanistan, we have seen weapons come across the border. We have seen a number of indicators that say Iran is attempting to influence and is attempting to push higher technology accelerants into Afghanistan, the official added.

Major General Richard J. Sherlock, director for operation planning and Joint Chief of Staff, told a press briefing at the pentagon: I've not seen anything that indicates there's been any increase in that (trend).

At the same time, he said: There have been a number of operations that ISAF, the NATO force, has taken in all regions in Afghanistan to try to stem that. I think they would be in a better position to talk specifically as to what the levels are in the regions than I am in.

Availability of Iranian arms and explosives to the Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan has been a major issue of concern to the US in the past few months. However, the Afghan government has repeatedly said there has been no concrete evidence of such arms supplies. It is, however, monitoring such reports. Lalit K. Jha

Hundreds rally against poppy cultivation in Nangarhar

JALALABAD, Oct 24 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Hundreds of people including tribal elders and growers rallied against poppy cultivation in the eastern Nangarhar province on Wednesday.

Participants of the peaceful rally, marching through the main bazaar of Chaparhar district, shouted through loudspeakers: We will neither plant poppies nor allow its cultivation.

The hour-long protest, which converted into a public meeting after some time, was addressed by tribal elders, who highlighted the perils of poppy plantation. They urged farmers to stop cultivating the outlawed crop.

Haji Sher Baz Khan, speaking on the occasion, accused the government of rejecting peoples genuine demands for alternative livelihood despite their willingness to cooperate with the authorities in eliminating the scourge.

All residents of Chaparhar had unanimously decided against cultivating poppies, he claimed, asking the rulers to reciprocate their gesture by helping the farmers who shunned the opium crop.

Syed Azim, another elder from the area, told Pajhwok Afghan News they had promised Provincial Council chief Fazli Hadi Shinwari they would not grow the illicit crop. Anyone breaching the vow would be turned over to the government, he warned.

For his part, Shinwari said a 50-member jirga had been constituted to ensure poppies were grown nowhere in the district. The Provincial Council head was confident the jirga would translate its pledge into action.

Mines defused: Provincial discovered and defused three landmines in the fifth police district of Jalalabad late Tuesday evening. Police spokesman Col. Abdul Ghafoor said the explosives were found near an ice factory.

Germany to donate X-ray machine to Kabul Airport Customs

KABUL, Oct 25 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Germany would donate to Afghanistan modern X-ray equipment for use at the Kabul International Airport, the German embassy said here on Thursday.

The machines - donated by the German Federal Customs Authority - will be handed over to the Afghan Customs Authority at a ceremony here on Saturday, according

to a press release issued by the embassy.

The donation package, worth some 100,000 euros, includes a branded X-ray machine 'Rapiscan 528 HR' as well as special equipment for effective car searching. An expert introduction and maintenance are also cared for by the German partner.

The contribution is part of the efforts of the German government to assist the rehabilitation and modernisation of infrastructure in Afghanistan, the press release added.

It said the German X-ray and specialised equipment was to expand the capabilities to detect drugs, weapons, explosives and other illegal goods to the benefit of the security of travellers arriving at and leaving the Kabul airport.

The ceremonial hand-over will take place on October 27 at 10am at the passenger exit at Kabul airport and includes a ribbon-cutting and demonstration of the appliance. Present at the event will be German Federal Customs Authority representative Wolfgang Maierhofer as well as Deputy Minister of Finance Sharifulah Ibrahim, Director-General for Customs of the Ministry of Finance Jalil Jemrani and head of the Kabul Airport Customs Authority.

Afghan Ex-Militia Leaders Hoard Illegal Arms

By KIRK SEMPLE – NY times 10.28.07

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 — Many former militia commanders and residents in northern Afghanistan have been hoarding illegal weapons in violation of the country’s disarmament laws, giving the excuse that they face a spreading Taliban insurgency from the south that government forces alone are too frail to stop, Afghan and Western officials say.

After years of moderate success for government disarmament programs, rumors of widespread defiance in the north have arisen recently among government officials and intelligence agencies in Kabul and elsewhere. Although there is little hard evidence that commanders are greatly enlarging their arsenals, officials say, some have been thwarting government programs, refusing to disarm and possibly even remobilizing militias.

The talk of rearming underscores a deepening north-south ethnic divide that some diplomats and Afghan officials privately worry could lead the way toward a shift of power back to warlords — and toward a countrywide armed conflict — if left unchecked. And the situation poses a major challenge for President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from the south, whose administration has failed to win the confidence of many non-Pashtun leaders and northerners.

Prices on the weapons black market in the north have skyrocketed as residents, governed by suspicion and foreboding, have kept their firearms, driving down the supply.

“There is an environment of mistrust” in the government, Brig. Gen. Abdulmanan Abed, a Defense Ministry official who works with the government’s demilitarization program, said in an interview this month in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province. “There is a fear of the return of the Taliban.”

A prominent political leader from the north, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it this way: “The Taliban are coming toward us. What should we do? Who will defend us? Who will protect us? This is in the minds of the people in the north.”

Col. Mats Danielsson, the Swedish commander of a 450-man military unit helping to provide security in four northern provinces, said the Karzai administration and its international allies must find a way to roll back the Taliban threat and reassure northerners.

“We have to keep the window of opportunity open, but I feel that the window is closing,” he said.

The Taliban insurgency is strongest in southern and eastern Afghanistan. And while it has been able to bedevil Afghan and international troops in some other regions of the country, before this year its reach rarely stretched into the northern provinces.

But government officials report an increase in Taliban activity in the north this year, particularly in the northwest. The number of Taliban attacks on Afghan and international security forces in Balkh and the other relatively peaceful provinces of north-central Afghanistan has risen from last year, the authorities say.

Residents here in Balkh Province and elsewhere in north-central Afghanistan say they are beginning to feel encircled.

“The Taliban is trying to start up its old networks here,” Colonel Danielsson said in an interview in early October at his headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif. “We have to figure out how to stop this influence.”

Afghan and Western officials also say that in addition to an increase in Taliban activity, there has been an escalation in crime and, in some areas, tensions among rival northern political factions. These officials say it is often difficult to determine who is to blame for specific violent acts.

The most apparent signs of rearming, officials say, are in Faryab Province, in the northwest, where commanders have organized an armed militia to fend off a growing Taliban presence in neighboring Badghis Province that has gone largely unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.

Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a recent interview in Kabul that he had received unconfirmed intelligence reports that small shipments of weapons had been smuggled across the border “from one or two countries to the north” and delivered “to receivers in some of the northern provinces.” But he declined to provide further details.

Afghan government officials also say that in certain northern districts, militia commanders have evaded government weapons inspectors by breaking down their stockpiles of illegal firearms and redistributing them throughout their communities, making them harder to find.

Afghan and Western officials say that weapons are hidden everywhere: in grain silos and closets, in mountain caves and in holes in the ground.

And though the government’s demobilization programs have gone some way toward dismantling many of the hundreds of illegal militias, and have removed nearly all the heavy weapons from those factions, former warlords still hold considerable sway.

“They have the power of a phone call to put hundreds, or thousands, in arms,” Colonel Danielsson said. “There are a lot of weapons up here.”

All the weapons in Afghanistan were supposed to be in the government’s hands by now, all the private militias were to be a thing of the past.

After the Taliban fell in 2001 and fighting erupted among rival warlords, the Afghan government began the first of two disarmament and demobilization programs that were principally intended to dismantle warlords’ militias and other illegal armed groups. In three decades of war, weapons had poured across the borders and authority was often established by the rule of the gun.

The programs, which are voluntary, have dismantled at least 274 paramilitary organizations, reintegrated about 62,000 militia members into civilian life and recovered more than 84,000 weapons, including thousands of heavy arms that had fallen under the control of regional warlords. Afghan and NATO forces have confiscated and destroyed many other weapons, officials said. But Afghan and international officials acknowledge that hundreds of illegal armed groups still operate in Afghanistan. And hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of weapons remain in private hands, although they are mostly small arms rather than heavy weapons, the officials say.

Of the weapons that have been collected, they say, at least 40 percent were not functional.

“There is at least one weapon in each house,” said General Abed, who was an officer in the anti-Taliban mujahedeen. Government officials note that the demilitarization programs were not intended to collect arms and were instead focused on disbanding armed groups.

“I think it will take many, many years” to disarm the population, said Hameed Quraishi, manager of the government’s demilitarization program in the north. “It doesn’t matter how hard you try. It’s the level of confidence the people have in the government.”

But the talk about rearming is not entirely military. It also appears to be a means of pressing the Karzai government, which many northern leaders have accused of favoring the south, a region mostly populated by members of his Pashtun ethnicity.

“We selected Karzai to unify the country,” said a prominent politician from the north and former member of the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban. “But people who joined him have pushed him to being a Pashtun leader, not a national leader.”

Disproportionate amounts of aid money and weapons have flowed to the south to prop up the regional leadership and battle the Taliban. As part of this effort, the government has been trying to build an auxiliary police force among southern Pashtun tribes to confront the insurgency.

Many northern leaders say that they have been shortchanged in the distribution of development aid and worry about the militarization of the south as they are being asked to disarm.

“Northern commanders are saying: ‘We can’t disarm. This guy is trying to unite all Pashtuns. We have to defend ourselves!’ ” a European diplomat said in Kabul.

General McNeill doubts some of the northern claims. “There’s no question that there’s a hell of a lot of political posturing in the northern sectors,” he said. “Where they think they’re ignored in the reconstruction process, there often is a report: ‘They’re here! The Taliban! They got us surrounded!’ ”

In interviews, northern Afghan leaders said that in spite of their concerns about the central government, they were standing by Mr. Karzai. And most of them denied that any stockpiling of weapons was occurring.

“If we take up arms, it means the democratic process is defeated,” said Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, spokesman for the National Front, a political coalition mainly composed of non-Pashtun leaders from the north. “We want this government to survive its entire term because we don’t want the process to be defeated.”

Canada should end Afghan combat role: activist

Updated Sat. Oct. 27 2007 2:42 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

NATO and Canadian actions in Afghanistan are building resistance rather than the peace, says a Toronto academic and anti-war activist.

Michael Skinner, a PhD candidate at York University, told CTV Newsnet on Saturday that he travelled to Afghanistan this summer with an Afghan-Canadian colleague to make a documentary film.

"Certainly the reason I went to Afghanistan is that I'm quite skeptical of the claims of the government," he said.

"We're involved in a counter-insurgency war that's very similar to what occurred in Vietnam and Central America."

Skinner, who is also a researcher at the York Centre for International and Security Studies, said he visited four provinces. He found Afghans to be skeptical about the role of foreign troops in Afghanistan and that they saw very little progress in reconstruction.

"Up to this point, thousands of Afghans have been killed. We really  have no idea how many have been injured, how many people have been made homeless or become refugees and how many people are arbitrarily arrested or detained," he said.

"All of these things are creating resistance rather than support," he said.

The Afghanistan situation is undermining the United Nations' traditional peacekeeping role, he said.

Skinner's remarks come on a day when anti-war protesters are to hold rallies in Canadian cities and elsewhere in the world to call for an end to the Afghan mission.

In addition, the panel reviewing the Afghan mission is to hold meetings today and Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to touch on the mission when he addresses a military audience this evening at CFB Valcartier in Quebec.

Public opinion polling has found that most Canadians oppose Canada's military role in Afghanistan.

Harper would like to see the mission extended to 2011, while the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois would like to see the combat role end after February 2009 -- the limit of Canada's current commitment.

NDP Leader Jack Layton would like to see Canada's combat role end now.

John Holmes, the UN's undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, has said recently that Canada is making a difference on the  ground in Afghanistan and that it should maintain its commitment there.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has asked foreign troops to stay, but he has also expressed frustration at the number of civilian deaths as a result of NATO and U.S. clashes with the Taliban.

Abdul Bari, Afghanistan: “I go to school risking my life and my parents’ lives”

October 28,  2007 (IRIN) - LASHKARGAH, Abdul Bari, 13, and his two brothers have had to leave their home in Nad Ali District and rent a room in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, in order to go to school. Taliban insurgents have attacked and closed down over 100 schools in different parts of Helmand Province, including one in Abdul Bari’s village that he used to go to. Abdul Bari told IRIN about the problems he faces in his quest for education.

“My father is a doctor and wants us to be educated and become doctors and engineers. After the Taliban burnt a school in our village and told villagers to send their children to Madrasas in Pakistan for their education, my father sent us to Lashkargah to continue our studies.

“We have rented a room in a market [in Lashkargah]. It’s so noisy here that I can’t concentrate on my studies. I’m also scared because I see people from my village that come here to buy things and I’m afraid that when they see us going to school they will tell other villagers and that will endanger our parents.

“My family can’t move to Lashkargah and live with us because our home, our land and our cows are in our village and they can’t abandon everything.

“I miss my parents. I haven’t seen them for over three months now. We wanted to go to our village for the recent Eid holiday but we changed our plans after a dreadful incident occurred.

“One of our classmates, who was coming from Musa Qala District, was identified by the Taliban on his way to Lashkargah by bus. The Taliban cut his neck and wanted to kill him but passengers on the bus begged them not to and so saved his life. He’s now in a hospital in Lashkargah. When I visited him there he cried and said he missed his classmates and school. But he said he couldn’t come back to school because the Taliban made him swear that he wouldn’t go to school again.

“The Taliban have also told people in rural areas not to send their children to schools in Lashkargah or they will kill them. The Taliban say schools drive Muslims to profanity and Christianity. I know this is untrue... but people are frightened by their threats. Some people have stopped their children from going to school.

“My father says we should continue our education even if the Taliban kill him. My father says gaining knowledge is good and will secure our future. He says it’s better to die while gaining knowledge than die illiterate.

“I want the Americans and other foreigners to defeat the Taliban and restore peace and security in our village and in all our country so that we can go to school freely and without fear.“

100-km road asphalted in Nimroz with Indian assistance

Pajhwok news, October 27, 2007 - Asphalting of a 101 kilometres Indian-funded road was completed in the southwestern Nimroz province on Saturday. Similarly, construction of a 17- kilometre road was launched in the southern Ghazni province.

India had provided 70 million dollars assistance for the scheme, a provincial official told Pajhwok Afghan News. The road linking provincial capital Zaranj with the Khashrud district has a width of 7.3meters and passes over 68 bridges - big and small.

Public Works Director Habibullah Obaidi claimed work on asphalting the road was carried out to international standards. It would facilitate residents of the province in general and the two districts in particular.

Governor Dr Ghulam Dastgir Azad acknowledged the project that got under way in September 2004 had provided employment opportunities to more than a thousand people. Another 113km road between Khashrod to Dil Aram district is also being built with financial support from India.

Meanwhile, a 17-kilometer road linking Ghazni City with Khwaja Omari district is being built at the cost of $3.2 million provided by the US-led Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). Engineer Zia, head of the Alfa Construction Company, promised the projected would be executed in a year.

Kite Runner Kids Moving To Dubai

Fox News Sunday, October 28, 2007 By Roger Friedman

The three boys who star in The Kite Runner, a new film with Oscar potential, will be moved from their homes in Afghanistan to new ones in Dubai thanks to Paramount Vantage, the studio releasing the movie.

The boys, two aged 11 and one 12, plus their parents, are going to be relocated in early December, right after their school sessions let out and before the film opens in the US on December 14th. Once they’ve been moved to Dubai, Paramount Vantage hopes to bring them to the US to do publicity for "The Kite Runner."

'The Kite Runner,' directed by Marc Forster and based on the bestselling novel by Khaled Hosseini, has caused a lot of concern in Afghanistan because it concerns the forced rape of one of the boys and how it changes their lives. Hut I saw the film last night (Saturday) at a special screening and call tell you the scene is handled with great restraint and conveyed without any graphic revelations. Yet, in Afghanistan, and most of the Arab world, such a story could cause problems for the families involved.

Once the moves are made, 'The Kite Runner' will open here on December 14th and be considered a contender for Oscar and other award nominations. 'There’s no question that it will be a hard sell with or without the publicity surrounding the boys. The Kite Runner' is told mainly in Pashtun and Dari, Afghan dialects, with English subtitles. There are no movie stars on the screen, not even a cameo by anyone recognizable. The actors are all Afghan, Iranian or some mixture thereof. Almost no English is spoken in the two-hour film and there are no Western actors. But all of the actors give outstanding performances, including Homayon Ershadi, as the young Amir’s father in the 1978 section. He is a possible Best Supporting Actor nominee. The other principals—Khalid Abdalla as the adult Amir, Atossa Leoni as Soraya, his wife, and Shaun Toub—are all excellent, just unknown.

The Kite Runner, if you don’t know, is pure fiction, based on nothing but the novelist’s imagination. It takes place in two times—1978, before Afghanistan is overrun by the Russians—and 2000, when the Amir, the main character, must face the childhood he left behind. The book has something of a soap opera-ish twist that feels unnecessary in the film. But Forster and screenwriter David Benioff have stayed true to the material, for better or worse. Mostly it’s for the former.

Forster deserves kudos simply for making a film in two complex dialects of a foreign and—to Americans—obscure language. The overall effort of making The Kite Runner seems impossible while you’re watching it. Somehow, Forster and his team make life in 1978 Afghanistan seem frighteningly real and true. None of it feels forced either, another remarkable achievement for the director of Finding Neverland, Monsters Ball, and Stranger than Fiction.

The title of the film, by the way, comes from the novelist’s metaphor used through the book and depicted by Forster in the film with great beauty. The children’s favorite hobby in 1978 is flying beautiful kites high in the air competitively. It’s a recurring theme that could have been heavy handed, but Forster—who made the children in “Finding Neverland” so appealing—keeps aloft with a subtle touch.

How exactly 'The Kite Runner' will stack up when it comes to Academy Awards and such is still very much of a question mark, and similar to the situation that attached itself to Memoirs of a Geisha a few years ago. 'Kite Runner' is not a foreign film even though it’s in a foreign language. This year we have a couple of movies like that, with Julian Schnabel’s mesmerizing Diving Bell and the Butterfly foremost in that category. Mira Nair’s “The Namesake” is in English but large chunks of it take place in India.

“The Namesake” and “The Kite Runner” are similar in other ways too. And if it comes down to some kind of choice, I think “The Namesake” is the more likely choice for a Best Picture nomination. Other Best Picture titles in the mix right now, realistically, are Tamara Jenkins’ “The Savages”; Sidney Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”; “Michael Clayton” directed by Michael Clayton; Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”; Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men”; Schnabel’s “Diving Bell” and Shekar Kapur’s “Elizabeth The Golden Age.”

Still unseen: “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Sweeney Todd,” “There Will Be Blood,” and “The Great Debaters.”

Bamiyan's Buddhas revisited

By Roger Cohen, The International Herald Tribune Sunday, October 28, 2007

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan: People still speak of the Buddhas as if they were there. The Buddhas are visited and debated. A "Buddha road" just opened. It boasts the first paved surface in Afghanistan's majestic central highlands and stretches all of a half-mile.

But the 1,500-year-old Buddhas of Bamiyan are gone, of course, replaced by two gashes in the reddish-brown cliff. They were destroyed in March 2001, by the Taliban in their quest to rid the country of the "gods of the infidels." The fanatical soldiers of Islam blasted the ancient treasures to fragments.

"It is easier to destroy than to build," Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal, then the Taliban information minister, noted on March 3, 2001. True enough, but few in the United States or elsewhere listened.

Memory, however, is another matter. It is stubborn and volatile and hard to eradicate. The keyhole-like niches in the rock face are charged. Absence is presence. The visitor is drawn into the void as if summoned, not by vacancy, but by the towering Buddhas themselves.

Yet they are in pieces. Nasir Mudabir, 29, a director of the site, ushered me into a makeshift shelter where boxes filed with sandstone and plaster fragments from the two Buddhas are kept. Metal remnants of the bombs that destroyed them are preserved separately: They are jagged where the stones are smooth to the touch.

Why keep evidence of the barbarians' arsenal? "It's part of the story," Mudabir said. "It's history, bad or good. Instead of going forward, we went backward."

Bamiyan, an island of peace in an uneasy land, lies half-forgotten in its sacred valley. Oxen plow potato fields. Pale poplars trace golden lines. A war-blasted bazaar lies in dusty ruin. Mud-colored mountains, their geometric folds and pleats as intricate as robes by Vermeer, rise to snowy peaks.

Hazara refugees, who have returned from Iran after Afghanistan's decades of conflict, eke out an existence in Taliban-despoiled caves once covered with bright murals.

That this is a holy place, sought out by Buddhist pilgrims over the centuries, is written in light, form and stone.

The smaller, eastern Buddha, known locally as "Shamama," stood 125 feet tall and has now been dated to the year 507. The larger, called "Salsal," rose to 180 feet. It was constructed in 554. One theory holds the builders were dissatisfied with the first and erected its neighbor in the pursuit of perfection.

I climbed the steep staircase in the rocks beside Shamama's absence, reaching a rickety platform at the level of the vanished Buddha's head. "The head was comfortable," said Mohammed Qassim, my guide. "Ten people could sit and sip tea."

They could. I sat on the Buddha's head myself in 1973, gazing in wonder. The Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, had just been ousted after a 40-year reign. The coup would soon usher in the turmoil that has taken Afghanistan backward.

We knew nothing of that. We were travelers without a map. The "hippie trail" had taken us, at the wheel of a Volkswagen kombi called "Pigpen" (named for the Grateful Dead drummer who died that year), from London across Iran to this noble, generous country.

Looking again, after 34 years, at this beautiful place, first from the top of the smaller niche and then from the larger, ("Twenty people could sit on this head," said Qassim), I wondered: Was it my own innocence that was gone or the world's?

Nobody could make that journey now. Nobody could even drive from Kabul to Kandahar in safety. The unknown shrinks. Fear spreads. Experience gets diluted.

The Cold War ended, only to be replaced by the explosive conflict of secular and theocratic worlds. What began here in March, 2001, has spread. The Taliban are back, sort of, seeping across the Pakistani border in a campaign fed by an Internet-borne jihadist message. The Web is a force multiplier for any guerrilla movement.

This was the Afghan burning of the books. The Nazis burned Brecht. The Taliban, then sheltering Osama bin Laden, bombarded the "un-Islamic" Buddhas. The burning presaged war. The destruction presaged 9/11: two Buddhas, two towers.

Heinrich Heine noted that "When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings." When Buddhas buckle, people will be crushed.

There is talk of reassembling the Buddhas, or of using solar power to beam laser holograms of their forms onto the cliff. I say, reassemble one, for hope, but not both. Absence speaks, shames, reminds.

[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.]