In this bulletin:

• Troops destroy Taliban compound, kill 25: coalition
• Alleged Pakistani bomb-makers detained in Afghanistan
• Afghan VP Calls For Spraying Of Poppies
• The war on poppies
• Ridding Afghanistan of drugs to take a generation: UK
• Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt
• MacKay wants Canadians to understand Afghan role
• Canadian commander looks back on anniversary of historic Afghan military operation
• Afghanistan role hinges on Dutch
• Freed SKorean hostages say they were given gift of life
• Carter assails Bush for abandoning Afghanistan
• Afghans hurt themselves through tribalism
• Militants claim abduction of Pakistani soldiers, one killed in blast
• Calling all tourists to Bamiyan
• Last-placed Afghan achieves goal

Troops destroy Taliban compound, kill 25: coalition

Kandahar (AFP) - Afghan and international soldiers destroyed a Taliban headquarters in an operation just outside Kandahar city Sunday that killed an estimated 25 rebels, the US-led coalition said.

The overnight swoop on the complex about 17 kilometres (10 miles) southwest of Kandahar was based on intelligence that insurgents were attempting to re-establish control after being defeated there last year, it said.

Soldiers moved through the compounds, coming under heavy fire. One man blew himself up in an apparent suicide attack that did not cause casualties to the security forces, it said in a statement. Coalition war planes struck the area, causing many of the deaths, it said.

The complex of seven buildings was believed to be the base for several attacks on the nearby Highway One, an often-targeted road linking Kandahar and the western city of Herat, the statement said.

The Taliban first took Kandahar in their sweep to power in 1996 with the help of elements in Pakistan who are said to be aiding the insurgency against the new administration.

They were driven from government in late 2001 by the coalition, which is still tracking Taliban fighters and their allies in Al-Qaeda.

Authorities in Kandahar city said Sunday they had detained four Pakistanis on suspicion of helping insurgents build bombs.

"On a tip-off we captured four Pakistanis who are experts in making suicide-bombing vests and remote-controlled bombs," intelligence official Abdul Qayoum Katawazi told AFP. He would not provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Roadside bombs and Iraq-style suicide explosions have become key tactics for the rebels, who have intensified their attacks as part of a bloody insurgency they are waging against the government in Kabul.

A new bombing killed three patrolling Afghan army soldiers on Saturday in Kandahar's Zahri distict, the defence ministry said in a statement. Two other soldiers were injured.

Around 10 Afghan civilians were meanwhile injured in a bombing in the normally calm northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif late Saturday, police said.

The bomb, which was attached to a bicycle, was detonated by remote control, police official Abdul Rauf Taj said. "It was an act of terrorism," Taj said. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but similar attacks have been blamed on Taliban guerrillas.

Alleged Pakistani bomb-makers detained in Afghanistan

Sun Sep 2, 7:09 AM ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Authorities in Afghanistan said Sunday they had detained four Pakistanis on suspicion of helping insurgents build bombs, as new blasts killed three soldiers and wounded a dozen people.

The alleged militants were seized on Friday in the southern city of Kandahar soon after they arrived from Chaman, a town just across the border in Pakistan, intelligence official Abdul Qayoum Katawazi told AFP.

"On a tip-off we captured four Pakistanis who are experts in making suicide-bombing vests and remote-controlled bombs," Katawazi told AFP. He would not provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Afghan officials say Taliban insurgents are being aided by extremist circles in Pakistan. Roadside bombs and Iraq-style suicide explosions have become key tactics for the Al-Qaeda-linked rebels, who have intensified their attacks as part of a bloody insurgency they are waging against the government in Kabul.

A new bombing killed three Afghan army soldiers on Saturday in Kandahar province, a hotbed of Taliban activity over the past two years, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The soldiers were on patrol in the Zhari district when they were killed, it said. Two other soldiers were injured.

Around 10 Afghan civilians were injured in a bombing in the normally calm northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif late Saturday, police said.

The bomb, which was attached to a bicycle, was detonated by remote control, police official Abdul Rauf Taj said.

"It was an act of terrorism," Taj said. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but similar attacks have been blamed on Taliban guerrillas.

The Taliban were toppled from power by a US-led invasion in late 2001 but are still able to wage an insurgency which is being fought back by tens of thousands of Afghan and international forces.

Afghan VP Calls For Spraying Of Poppies

The Associated Press, 09/02/2007

After Record Crop, Afghan Leader Calls For Destruction Of Opium Poppies

An Afghan vice president has called for aerial spraying to destroy opium poppies after the cultivation of the illicit crop reached a record high this year, accounting for over 90 percent of global supply, according to a report Sunday.

Ahmad Zia Massoud, one of Afghanistan's vice presidents, said the international community's counternarcotics policy has failed in southern Afghanistan, where most of this year's crop was grown.

Writing in a commentary in Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Massoud said poppies have spread like "cancer" in Helmand province, where British forces are based.

"I have no doubt that the efforts of Britain and the international community in fighting the opium trade in Afghanistan are well-intentioned, and we are grateful for their support," he wrote.

"But it is now clear that your policy in the south of our country has completely failed."

Last week, the U.N. announced that the area of land used to cultivate opium had increased by 17 percent this year, with more than half of it in Helmand, a Taliban stronghold.

The report forecast that Afghanistan would produce 9,000 tons of opium this year - about 93 percent of global supply. That is up 34 percent from 2006, and is enough to make more than 880 tons of heroin.

The surge in production has stepped up pressure on President Hamid Karzai's government to consider new ways of to curb it - including aerial spraying, which it has previously opposed, saying that tactic would harm legitimate crops and water supplies, thus increasing rural support for the Taliban militia.

Massoud said the booming opium trade is closely linked to insecurity that prevails in the south, where Taliban are waging a bloody campaign against foreign and Afghan security forces.

He also said those growing the lucrative crop are not being punished.

"The time has come for us to adopt a more forceful approach. We must switch from ground-based eradication to aerial spraying," Massoud said.

He said that spraying is "safe," and that "farmers will no longer be able to bribe officials to protect their crop."

"The opium directly supports those who are killing Afghan and international troops," Massoud said. "Failure to achieve a substantial reduction in the opium crop will be equivalent to supporting the Taliban."

It was not immediately clear whether Massoud's comment reflected a change in government policy. Afghan and British counternarcotics officials were not available for comment Sunday.

The war on poppies

Los Angeles Times, 09/02/2007, By Peter Bergen and Sameer Lalwani

U.S. efforts to eradicate Afghanistan's crop are empowering the Taliban by sowing seeds of resentment.

Stepping onto the balcony of the governor's mansion in Uruzgan in southern Afghanistan, you quickly grasp the scale of the drug problem gripping the country. Beginning at the walls of the mansion and stretching as far as the eye can see are hundreds of acres of poppy fields ready for harvesting for opium sap, pretty much the only way to earn a living in poverty-stricken Uruzgan.

In late April, at the height of poppy-growing season, a team of more than 200 police officers from Kabul led by contractors working for the American company DynCorp International arrived in Uruzgan to undertake the first eradication efforts in the province. After some tense negotiations with local officials, the teams went out to begin destroying the poppy fields. For two days, nothing much happened, mostly because of a dispute about which fields were to be eradicated. But on the third day, when the work was getting underway in earnest, a Taliban-led force bearing small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars appeared from nowhere and attacked the eradication teams as they destroyed the fields. Four Afghan police officers were seriously injured.

The Uruzgan attack demonstrated, for those who hadn't yet figured it out, just how the Taliban is seeking to exploit popular resentment against eradication efforts. All across the country, Afghan support for poppy cultivation is on the upswing; 40% of Afghans now consider it acceptable if there is no other way to earn a living, and in the southwest, where much of the poppy crop is grown, two out of three people say it is acceptable. In Uruzgan's neighboring province, Helmand -- which supplies about half the world's opium, the raw material for heroin -- favorable ratings for the Taliban now run as high as 27% (compared with 10% in the whole of Afghanistan).

Instead of taking such findings to heart, the Bush administration's counter-narcotics policy over the last three years has placed eradication at its center, even though it has been met with growing Afghan skepticism and, in some cases, violence, and has coincided with a general decline in public support for the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan. Why is the policy so unpopular? Consider that Afghanistan's farmers will produce an estimated 9,000 tons of opium this year from 477,000 acres, according to a United Nations report released last week, and that the total farm value of the crop will be about $1 billion. Most farmers who cultivate poppies do so because few other options -- either alternative crops or alternative livelihoods -- exist in their part of the world. You simply cannot eviscerate the livelihoods of the estimated 3 million Afghans who grow poppies and not expect a backlash.

What's more, our policy is not effective. Though the U.S. spends about the same amount on counter-narcotics activities in Afghanistan annually as all Afghan poppy farmers combined take home in a year, our policies have not prevented record-setting poppy crops from springing up with every succeeding year, nor have they prevented Afghanistan from becoming a quasi-narcostate where corruption is rampant. Last week's U.N. report said Afghanistan continues to be the center of the world's heroin trade, accounting for 93% of global opium production. It noted a 17% spike in poppy cultivation in the last year, on the heels of a record 59% rise the year before.

The U.S. government, in short, is deeply committed to an unsuccessful drug policy that helps its enemies. The Taliban derives not only substantial financial benefits from the opium trade, according to U.S. military officials in Afghanistan, but wins political benefits from its supportive stance on poppy growing, masterfully exploiting situations in which U.S.-sponsored eradication forces are pitted against poor farmers.

Eradication has also become a wedge in the fragile relationship of the NATO countries that are part of the coalition in Afghanistan. Many European countries, including the Dutch, who have forces stationed in Uruzgan, oppose the American eradication policy. The U.S. needs its NATO partners to maintain the legitimacy of the multinational force in Afghanistan. Holding to a failed eradication policy threatens those relationships.

In early August, the U.S. State Department presented its updated counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan. For the most part, the proposal offered few new initiatives other than a welcome emphasis on cracking down on drug kingpins. At its center, the strategy still depends on eradication efforts, along with veiled hints that the U.S. government may also pursue aerial chemical spraying, a tactic that many fear will further alienate the Afghan population. The increased funds set aside in the new plan to help farmers find alternative livelihoods -- $50 million to $60 million -- are woefully inadequate and constitute a paltry 6% of American counter-narcotics spending in Afghanistan for 2007. Eradication continues to receive the largest share of the budget.

The State Department strategy misses the forest for the trees. The priority of the United States and NATO should be first to thwart the Taliban insurgency while bettering the lives of typical Afghans through significant economic and reconstruction efforts to win hearts and minds. Doing nothing on the poppy front would do more to achieve this goal than the counterproductive eradication path the U.S. currently pursues. The U.S. should adopt a "first do no harm" policy that temporarily suspends eradication while implementing a promising portfolio of new initiatives to build up alternatives for farmers.

To begin with, the U.S. needs to invest in building up the legitimate Afghan economy. Though poppy fetches much higher prices than most other crops, subsidies, price supports and seeds for alternative crops should be offered to offset that price gap. Because other crops often face pitfalls such as the absence of distributors, domestic demand or consistent prices abroad, the international community should help Kabul set up an agency, modeled on the Canadian Wheat Board, that would purchase crops from farmers at consistent prices, and market and distribute them internationally. The U.S. and other NATO countries should open their markets and extend trade preferences to Afghan agricultural products and handicrafts.

Currently, the U.S. funds alternative livelihoods at one-third the rate of eradication efforts -- and the money is still not making its way into the pockets of farmers. Because of bureaucratic inefficiencies, only 1% of the $100 million in funds for alternative livelihoods had been disbursed as of March, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. One reason for this is that the Afghan narcotics ministry lacks the staff and skills to quickly and effectively disburse funds. So the task should be outsourced -- in the same manner the U.S. outsources its eradication efforts to private companies like DynCorp -- until the Afghan government develops the capacity to get the job done.

The U.S. and NATO should also endorse a pilot project proposed by the Senlis Council, an international nongovernmental organization with offices in southern Afghanistan, to harness poppy cultivation for the production of legal medicinal opiates such as morphine for sale to countries, such as Brazil, that are in short supply of cheap pain drugs for patients.

The U.S. must stop targeting poor farmers and focus on the traffickers who make the bulk of the profits from heroin. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents on the ground should step up efforts to interrupt money-laundering networks and interdict labs and shipments. The DEA should also turn Afghanistan's shame-based culture to its advantage by making public the list of top Afghan drug suspects, including government officials, as it did in the 1990s, when it publicized the names of Colombia's drug kingpins.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Council on Foreign Relations estimate that the elimination of narcotics from the Afghan economy will take well over a decade. Given that time frame, our counter-narcotics policy needs to be guided by a clear strategic purpose -- providing security and defeating the Taliban. These are not simple drug dealers but narcoterrorists with a political agenda. A "first do no harm" approach would ensure that battling the drug trade does not compromise the fight against the terrorists.

Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden," is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Sameer Lalwani is a policy analyst there.

Ridding Afghanistan of drugs to take a generation: UK

LONDON, Aug 30 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Britain has voiced concern over a record increase in poppy cultivation and opium production in Afghanistan, linking the rise to insecurity in the embattled south.

Reacting to a survey released by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on August 27, the Foreign Office here said: The increase in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan for a second year in a row is a real cause for concern.

A statement from the Foreign Office said the increase had been driven by rising cultivation in Helmand and the south, in areas where security conditions prevented us from pursuing an integrated approach.

The figures for Helmand were particularly disappointing, it acknowledged, but hastened to point out: There are signs of progress. In parts of the north and centre, cultivation is coming down or stabilising and the number of poppy-free provinces has increased from 6 to 13.

Balkh, once the third largest poppy cultivator in the country, had been declared poppy-free, the Foreign Office said, observing progress suggested that the integrated approach to the narcotics problem set out by the Afghan government could produce results.

On the August 9, it recalled, Lord Malloch-Brown announced a future package of measures to tackle the drugs trade in Afghanistan including an additional 22.5 million for the Afghan interdiction forces.

However, we must be realistic in our expectations for progress. Ridding Afghanistan of this curse will take a generation, perhaps more - in Thailand and Pakistan it took 15 to 20 years. There are no short cuts to ending the drug trade and we must be wary of silver bullet solutions, which will not work. We have learnt from successes in Pakistan and SE Asia that a balanced approach is essential.

Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt

By DAVID ROHDE, The New York Times Published: September 2, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than they did last summer.

The Panjwai and Zhare districts, in particular, highlight the changing nature of the fight in the south. The military operation there in September 2006 was the largest conventional battle in the country since 2002. But this year, the Taliban are avoiding set battles with NATO and instead are attacking the police and stepping up their use of roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or I.E.D.’s.

“It’s very seldom that we have direct engagement with the Taliban,” said Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche, the commander of Canadian forces leading the NATO effort in Kandahar. “What they’re going to use is I.E.D.’s.”

The Taliban also wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.

“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”

NATO and American military officials have declined to release exact Taliban attack statistics, and collecting accurate information is difficult, particularly in rural Afghanistan. According to an internal United Nations tally, insurgents set off 516 improvised explosive devices in 2007. Another 402 improvised explosive devices were discovered before detonation.

Reported security incidents, a broad category that includes bombings, firefights and intimidation, are up from roughly 500 a month last year to 600 a month this year, a 20 percent increase, according to the United Nations.

The rising attacks are taking a heavy toll. At least 2,500 to 3,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, a quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations tally, a 20 percent increase over 2006.

NATO and American fatality rates are up by about 20 percent this year, to 161, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan police continue to be devastated by Taliban bombings and guerrilla strikes, with 379 killed so far this year, compared with 257 for all of last year.

Yet the Taliban have been unable to take large towns this year and have carried out 102 suicide bombings, roughly the same number as last year, according to the United Nations. A conventional Taliban spring offensive was predicted by many but never materialized, and Western officials say that raids by NATO and American Special Operations forces have killed dozens of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders this year.

Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said the Taliban’s leadership was in “disarray” and had not been able to carry out the attacks it had hoped this year and would be even weaker next year.

“This has been a shaping year,” he said. “I think next year will be a decisive year.”

Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials. The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas. Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.

Recent visits to three southern provinces revealed territorial divisions that largely resembled those of last year. In Kandahar and Helmand, the government has a strong presence in about half of each province, the local police said. And in Oruzgan Province, where Dutch NATO forces focus more on development programs than on combat, the government controls the provincial capital, several district centers and little of the countryside.

The seesaw nature of the conflict is evident here in Kandahar, where the local governor cites a slight drop in suicide bombings in the provincial capital as a sign of progress. But police officials and villagers bitterly complain that Canadian forces abandoned Panjwai and Zhare.

Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August, he said.

The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen policemen were killed.

“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to collect our dead.”

General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops then arrived as quickly as they could.

Canadian forces are now establishing joint checkpoints in Panjwai and Zhare where Canadian troops, Afghan Army soldiers and police officers will all be present, he said. And Canadian forces recently retook a checkpoint in Zhare.

General Laroche and General Champoux said it was vital to train Afghan police forces who could secure areas after NATO and Afghan soldiers cleared them, and to find strong, honest local leaders to administer them.

“The most important part is holding it,” General Champoux said. “We’re most effective when we’re holding it with Afghans.”

The Panjwai police chief, Bismillah Jan, said Taliban attacks on the local police began intensifying four months ago. Deploying far more roadside bombs than last year, the Taliban have destroyed 11 police vehicles and killed several dozen policemen.

Today, Mr. Jan has 64 policemen — each with one month of training — and five functional vehicles to defend the district from several hundred Taliban fighters. He said that his men could make forays into Taliban areas but that they could not hold terrain.

“We can go there, but we cannot control it,” he said. In separate interviews, half a dozen tribal elders from Panjwai described the Taliban attacks on police posts and other new tactics. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the insurgents.

After moving though the area in large groups last summer, the Taliban now operate in bands of no more than 20. Instead of sleeping in freshly dug bunkers and trenches, they sleep in mosques and houses, apparently to avoid NATO airstrikes, or, in the event of an attack, to increase the likelihood of civilian casualties, villagers said.

“Last year, they had their own trenches and their own places,” one elder said. “Now, they are very close to the houses and families. Their tactics changed.”

Another elder said: “They are very rude. First, they ask you for food. Then, they search you 20 times.”

Officials in Helmand and Oruzgan Provinces described dynamics similar to those in Kandahar. Security improved somewhat in provincial capitals this summer, they said, but rural areas remain no man’s lands dominated by criminal gangs and the Taliban.

In Helmand, where 7,000 British troops are based, residents credited the new police chief, Muhammad Hussain Andiwall, with improving security somewhat in the provincial capital. But opium cultivation and lawlessness are flourishing in the countryside.

Last month, the mayor of Gereshk, Helmand’s second-largest town, was kidnapped as he drove through a stretch of desert separating the town from the provincial capital. When Mr. Andiwall drove to the scene to try to find him, a roadside bomb exploded as his vehicle passed, killing four civilians.

After the mayor’s family paid a ransom to local criminals they freed him. In Oruzgan, Dost Muhammad Dostiyar, the counternarcotics chief, said people were waiting to see if the government and Dutch forces could reassert themselves.

“One of the big reasons the people have distanced themselves from the government is that the government only has control of the capital,” he said. “The rural areas are totally under the control of the militants.”

Afghan officials in all three southern provinces said the Taliban had evolved as a movement as well. Taking advantage of popular frustration with government corruption, the Taliban have broadened from a close-knit, ideologically driven movement to an amalgam of loosely affiliated groups fighting the government.

Across the south, the term “Taliban” now encompasses a shifting array of tribes, groups, criminals, opportunists and people discontented with the government. In private, some Western officials say a political approach to more moderate insurgents is needed. Elders from Panjwai blamed the United States and President Hamid Karzai for not including more southern tribes in the government formed after the fall of the Taliban.

“When the Americans came, they didn’t contact the right people,” one elder said. “They empowered two or three tribes and they pushed away others.”

Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan, said there was disorientation among insurgent groups. The Taliban have lost much of their senior leadership, he said, and other insurgent groups are not gaining popular support. At the same time, Pakistan is showing signs of cracking down on Taliban leaders there. All of these factors, present an opportunity for the Afghan government and NATO forces, he said.

“The Taliban are vulnerable in many ways,” he said. “Enormous achievements haven’t yet been made, but there has been progress.”

MacKay wants Canadians to understand Afghan role

Updated Sun. Sep. 2 2007 12:50 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff

Canada's new defence minister Peter MacKay says parliamentary debate leading up to a vote in the fall will give Canadians a new insight into the nation's role in Afghanistan.

Canada's combat role in Afghanistan is scheduled to end in February, 2009 unless MPs in the House of Commons vote to extend the mission.

Most analysts believe that is unlikely to happen, with the opposition parties urging the government to begin backing away from the combat role.

During an interview that aired on CTV's Question Period on Sunday, MacKay was asked whether Canada should send a message to NATO that its combat role will most likely end when the deadline arrives.

MacKay didn't directly address the question, but said Canada is in contact with its allies.

"We're in regular contact with NATO. I speak to Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the secretary general, I speak with our NATO allies, as does the prime minister, as does our new foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier, so there's no lack of communication taking place," MacKay said.

"As far as the signal that has been sent already, our current configuration will end in February 2009, obviously the aid work and the diplomatic effort and presence will extend well beyond that, and the Afghan compact itself goes until 2011."

MacKay said Afghanistan has experienced great progress in the years since the U.S.-led invasion in 2002. Women are now taking part in government, girls are allowed to attend school and roads and schools are being built under the protection of Canadian troops.

"I hearken back to where that country was just five or six years ago -- an incubator for terrorism that was being exported all over the world -- and North America we know is not immune," MacKay said.

MacKay said the government needs to do a better job of explaining how Canadian involvement is helping Afghanistan.

"The Canadian public does deserve to be fully informed and that's why we're committed to this debate in the House," he said.

"That's why were continuing our effort throughout the summer and into the fall to give Canadians a clear understanding of the need for Canada to be there, the work we're doing, the importance of that and how it benefits Canada as well."

However, MacKay's comments come after a report from the Senlis Council, an international policy think tank that visited Afghanistan this month, revealed little good news about the effectiveness of Canadian aid efforts.

Here are some of the Senlis Council's findings:

• Little evidence that Canadian money was being going to the Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, as CIDA claimed;

• There was no trace of the Maternal Waiting Home project, listed by CIDA as one of the agency's projects;

• A ward for starving children "not only still exists but is horribly over-crowded," according to the report.

Canadian commander looks back on anniversary of historic Afghan military operation

OTTAWA (CP) — Despite successful targeted raids over the last month, Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan can expect some "tough slogging" before this year's fighting season ends, says a senior military commander.

But any military action in the Kandahar region over the coming months will likely pale in comparison to Operation Medusa, a NATO-led offensive that one year ago ultimately cost a dozen Canadian soldiers their lives, says Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, the commander of Canadian troops overseas.

"Challenges lay ahead. It's going to be tough slogging without question," Gauthier said in an interview in advance of the anniversary of Medusa.

"But with the prospect of some light at the end of the tunnel. I have difficulty imagining the need to conduct another Medusa-like operation."

Canadian forces have recently focused efforts on smaller combat operations, capturing or taking out specific people, including Taliban leaders and bomb builders.

"We have conducted some targeted operations over the course of the last month which have seen ... a number of known bomb makers and commanders and IED cells and so on apprehended, detained or otherwise taken off the streets," Gauthier said.

But there have been no large-scale operations of the magnitude of Operation Medusa, which began over the Labour Day weekend of 2006 and involved nearly all of Canada's combat forces on the ground in Kandahar, as well as British, American and Afghan troops.

For Canada, and for NATO, Operation Medusa was historic. It came at a time when Taliban forces were grouping for a fight, and waging a propaganda battle against the residents of Kandahar City, distributing DVDs in local markets depicting the killing of foreign "sympathizers," and warning of a similar fate for anyone who opposed them.

"This was a situation where the insurgent adopted a conventional posture and we had to engage in combat at the formation level," said Gauthier.

At the time, NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, hadn't fully conceived of the notion of a full-scale battle against the Taliban.

"I don't know that any of us even could have conceived of that possibility in a NATO context in the prior five years, 10 years," said Gauthier.

"It was an awakening for not just the Canadian public, but the international community and NATO itself and the Canadian Forces."

Medusa was preceded by what became known as the Battle of Panjwaii, a fierce fight that was largely centred on an abandoned schoolhouse, in which five Canadian soldiers were killed in a bloody 24-hour period.

"I think one led to the other in the sense that because our forces were quite focused on setting the conditions for the NATO transition," Gauthier said.

Canada was at the forefront of the mission only by circumstance. The Canadians were the first, and largest, NATO force in the south, given the job of securing Kandahar City and the surrounding regions for the arrival of troops from other NATO countries.

"We were blazing the trail for the rest of NATO to come into the south, and by virtue of that, we couldn't just be focused on Kandahar City or central Kandahar," said Gauthier.

"We had to be focused on keeping open the deployment route and line of communication open."

It became clear that the Taliban were getting set for battle, and the Canadians knew it. Intelligence was pouring in, sometimes leaked to the media by the Taliban itself, that insurgents were gathering for a face-to-face confrontation.

"The Taliban were adopting, honest to God, a conventional posture," Gauthier said. "Upwards of 1,000, well dug in, (with) well-fortified positions."

Defeating the resurgent Taliban in that operation was a psychological victory for the Canadians, and for NATO, Gauthier said.

Prior to Medusa, civilians in Kandahar were constantly on guard, expecting a return of Taliban fighters to reclaim the city.

It was not uncommon to hear teenaged Afghans yelling "The Taliban are coming, the Taliban are coming," after hearing suicide bombs or IEDs explode.

Few locals believed that the Canadians were prepared, or willing, to defend them against a Taliban offensive. The outcome of Operation Medusa changed those beliefs, said Gauthier.

"Senior Afghans, government officials, to this day refer back to how Canadians saved southern Afghanistan," he said.

"So many Afghan senior folks have thanked me as a Canadian for the role that we played in the south of Afghanistan."

Afghanistan role hinges on Dutch

Anne Davies Herald Correspondent in Washington, September 3, 2007

AUSTRALIA may need to review its continuing deployment in Afghanistan if the Netherlands decides to withdraw its troops, the Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, has said.

Dr Nelson, who had a meeting with the US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, in Washington on Friday, said the Australians depended on Dutch forces to ensure secure operations in Oruzgan but the Dutch parliament was considering whether to recall its troops.

"We respect of course the sovereign right of the Netherlands to decide whether they will or won't deploy in Afghanistan, but the fact of it is that the Dutch are making the decision whether to stay, whether to reduce numbers, or whether to go, and have asked NATO to see whether there are any other potential partners that could replace the Dutch capability," Dr Nelson said.

"However, if there were not any other partner country there, whether it be the Netherlands or any other NATO country, Australia would have to review its continuing deployment, certainly in Oruzgan in Afghanistan."

Australia was not in a position to substantially increase its troop numbers in Afghanistan, meaning it was "very important that we have a lead NATO country with whom we can partner".

Dr Nelson held talks with Mr Gates before the report on Iraq by the American commander, General David Petraeus, which is due next week.

The US is widely expected to announce an extension of its "surge" strategy in Iraq, but Dr Nelson said Australia had no intention of reducing its presence.

"We are not about to leave Iraq prematurely. We will make sure that the decisions that we make in relation to Australian troops are based on the conditions that exist on the ground," he said.

Dr Nelson ruled out increasing the number of Australians troops, or moving personnel to more dangerous missions.

Freed SKorean hostages say they were given gift of life

by Jun Kwanwoo - Sun Sep 2

SEOUL (AFP) - Nineteen South Koreans held captive by Afghanistan's Taliban for six weeks under threat of death arrived home on Sunday, saying they felt as if they had died and then got their lives back.

The former hostages had tearful reunions with their families at a hospital outside Seoul before undergoing medical checks.

"We apologise to the people for causing trouble and thank everyone who helped us return home safely," the spokesman for the Christian aid workers told reporters at Incheon airport after a drama which gripped the country.

"We owe the country and the people a great debt," said Yu Kyeong-Sik.

"We had basically died and have got our lives back. We plan to live in a way that will make you proud, and we promise that to you and we will repay our debt."

Guerrillas posing as passengers abducted 16 women and seven men on July 19 from their bus in insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan.

The extremists murdered two men last month to press their demands to exchange the Koreans for Taliban prisoners, a condition firmly rejected by the Kabul government.

After starting talks in Afghanistan with South Korean officials, the Taliban on August 13 released two women in what they called a "goodwill gesture" and finally freed the remainder of the group last Wednesday and Thursday.

It was only then that the 19 learnt that two of their colleagues had been killed.

"When we heard about that, all of us were unable to recover from that," said Yu, 55. "We ask that you give us a little bit of time and space and once we are able to rest we will explain everything in detail."

Some of the women in the group sobbed as he spoke to journalists. "Having my two children back today, I cannot but thank the people," Suh Jeong-Bae, whose son and daughter were held by the Taliban, said in a big smile during the family reunion.

A pastor from the Saem-Mul Presbyterian church at Bundang on the outskirts of Seoul, which organised the mission to Afghanistan, said later Sunday that some of the hostages had been "severely beaten" for refusing to embrace Islam.

"Their ordeal was harder than anticipated as some hostages were severely beaten because they refused to convert," the pastor, Park Eun-jo, told reporters after holding services with the former captives at the hospital.

The two surviving male hostages, Je Chang-hee and Song Byung-woo, were threatened with death for refusing to convert, Park said, adding that some of the woman had been "at risk of being sexually assaulted".

The South Korean government, powerless to meet demands for a prisoner swap, finally reached a deal for their release with the help of an Indonesian diplomat.

Seoul agreed to go ahead with a previously scheduled withdrawal of its 210 non-combat troops from Afghanistan by year-end, and to ban its missionaries from visiting the Islamic nation.

Despite several media reports that a ransom was paid, the head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service -- who was in Afghanistan personally overseeing the discussions -- denied making payments to the Taliban.

"There was no such deal," Kim Man-Bok told reporters upon his return home with the group.

Presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-Seon on Sunday also repeatedly denied that South Korea bought the release of the hostages, telling journalists: "We have never paid any ransom."

"I thank the public for their support. I am sorry for having failed to rescue all 23 kidnapped people," Kim said.

"I hope that the government and the public make efforts so that this kind of incident will not happen again."

While Seoul apparently made no major concessions to the Taliban, the Afghan and Canadian foreign ministers criticised the deal, saying it had given the insurgents legitimacy.

"The government struggled to strike a balance between the international norms and custom concerning this kind of issue and the absolute premise that we have to save the people's lives," Foreign Minister Song Min-Soon said Saturday.

"The international community will understand it well." Now that the hostages are free, the church has also come in for strong public criticism for organising what was seen as a reckless trip.

The group ignored foreign ministry warnings against travel to Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 South Korean Christians were deported en masse last year because of security concerns.

Carter assails Bush for abandoning Afghanistan

Lalit K. Jha  - OTTAWA, Aug. 30, 2007 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Former US president Jimmy Carter has criticised George W. Bush for the way he has handled Afghanistan, resulting in resurgence of Taliban militants and record poppy cultivation in the Central Asian country.

The prevailing situation in Afghanistan is one of the proofs of mistakes that America has made in the last few years," said Carter, who was US president when Russians invaded Afghanistan. He was addressing a presidential campaign meeting in Americus, Georgia, on Tuesday.

Sharing the stage with Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards at the Georgia Southwestern State University, Carter said instead of facing head on the Taliban and other terrorists with full force, the Bush administration abandoned Afghanistan and moved troop and money to Iraq. This, he said, was a terrible mistake.

"I fully supported the US invasion of Afghanistan, expecting the government to concentrate there and to remove the Taliban from control of the country and to establish a real democracy in Afghanistan that all the world could have been looking at with pride, Carter remarked.

"Instead, as you know, we abandoned Afghanistan and moved our troops and our emphasis and our money and everything else over into Iraq, he said.

The result was there for all to see, he observed. Since then, except for some small areas right around Kabul, Taliban have come back, he claimed, citing opium production as the major source of revenue for the insurgents.

"They (the Taliban) can't get money like they used to from Saudi Arabia and other places or wherever they get their money (from). They get their money from selling opium made out of poppies. And you're right, 90 something-percent -- I think 93 percent of all the opium in the world is now produced in Afghanistan because we abandoned the country. And that's one of the serious problems, Carter maintained.

John Edward, in his speech, also expressed concern over the resurgence of Taliban fighters and the increase in poppy cultivation. "It had been squelched to a large extent, but now it's popping back up and strengthening over time, he said while referring to a recent UN report.

Observing that President Hamid Karzai needed all support to stabilise the country and take it on the path of peace and development, Edward said the other NATO allies present in the war-battered country were not doing enough.

"Unfortunately, from my perspective, the other NATO countries have not met their responsibilities in Afghanistan, which puts more responsibility on America, he believed.

Afghans hurt themselves through tribalism

blog.al.com/Afghanistan, Posted by Michael Tomberlin September 02, 2007

GHAZNI, AFGHANISTAN -- The Afghans call it "tribalism," as if it is somewhat noble in its purpose; as if it's akin to "patriotism" on a smaller scale. Certainly it sounds better than calling it what it really is: racism.

For decades, the people of this once-great country banded together to drive out invaders only to revert back to infighting among the various groups, ethnicities, "tribes."

There are many obstacles today's Afghanistan has to overcome to reach and surpass the modernity of its neighbors, to become an advanced society.

Its biggest obstacle to progress, its biggest obstacle to stability, its biggest obstacle to peace is tribalism. Afghanistan has seen the enemy, and it is itself.

Generally speaking, Pashtuns hate Tajiks and Tajiks return the sentiment. Both look down on the Hazaras, though Tajiks have historically formed alliances of convenience with Hazaras and Uzbeks to match the strength of the Pashtuns. The Uzbeks don't have enough numbers to impose any will on anyone alone.

Pashtuns account for about 45 percent of Afghanistan's population. Among Pashtuns, half are of the Durrani tribe, and the other half is the Ghilzai tribe. Pashtuns think of themselves as being of Arab descent, and the majority of the Arab and Muslim world view Afghanistan as a Pashtun country. They speak their own language known as Pashtu.

Tajiks are the next largest group with more than 25 percent of the population. They were the original inhabitants of what we know today as Afghanistan. They speak a Persian Farsi language known as Dari, which is the official language of Afghanistan.

Hazaras hold 10 percent of the population. Their ancestry goes back to the days when Genghis Khan invaded and controlled the country. They are mostly a poor, agrarian people who occupy an area in central Afghanistan.

Uzbeks make up less than 10 percent of Afghans with the rest made up of smaller tribes such as Turkmen, Baluchi, Kyrgyz, Qizilbash, Kazakhs, Aimaq, Wakhis, Sikhs, Nuristanis and others.

It is unknown exactly why the Pashtuns (and to a lesser extent the Tajiks) look at Hazaras as second-class citizens. Some theorize it is retaliation for the brutality Genghis Khan showed the people of Afghanistan during his control of the country. Others believe the intermixing of Mongol blood with that of other tribes is the root of the racism.

But the real reason Pashtuns and Tajiks look down on Hazaras may have its roots in religion. Pashtuns and Tajiks are primarily Sunni Muslims. In fact, both are predominantly of the same Hanafi sect of Sunni. Hazaras, on the other hand, are Shiite Muslims.

But unlike other Muslim countries, the infighting in Afghanistan is rarely along religious lines such as we see in Iraq. The more critical factor seems to come down to tribe or race.

It was the disunity of the country that created the environment for the Taliban to come into power. The racial scars were deepened during the rule of the Taliban, members of which were mostly Pashtun and Tajik. The Taliban devastated entire villages of Hazaras. There are heartbreaking stories of Taliban brutality of Hazaras that are recounted among the people here to this day.

This fragmentation of Afghanistan prevents any sort of real unity from taking hold. Such nationalism will be vital for this young and some say fragile government. But if you ask many of the people today whether they are "Afghan" most Pashtuns will take on that label while Tajiks and Hazaras are more reluctant and more likely point to their tribe first, seeing "Afghan" as a Pashtun word.

I am told that is changing as the country progresses, but it will take time.

President Hamid Karzai is Pashtun, but all of the tribes have a voice in the government through representation. Tajiks and Hazaras maintain there was fraud in the election, and an investigation agreed, though not enough to change the outcome.

The country's leader may be Pashtun, but it is Ahmed Shah Massoud, a Tajik, who is its national hero and most believe would have been the country's new leader after the Taliban. Massoud was the commander of the mujihadeen freedom fighters who drove out the Soviets and enjoyed numerous military victories against the Taliban. His murder by agents of Osama bin Laden two days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon only helped cement his place in the hearts of Afghans. Billboards and placards bear his image all over the country, and he is talked about in the hallowed tones we once used for our own Founding Fathers.

The Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police are a big part of today's desegregation plan of this country. The ANA has made it a point to mix its units for the past five years, and the ANP has followed suit. However, in an effort to retain and recruit soldiers, the ANA is allowing them to re-enlist or enlist into units closer to their home village. Some fear this will lead to segregation within its ranks again because villages themselves remain segregated throughout the country.

The ANP has mixed police of different tribes for some time now, with mostly successful results. There are still instances where a Hazara chief will be slandered in the community by his Pashtun subordinates to the point of making him ineffective at his job. There are cases of a mostly Tajik police force setting up in a police district center in a Pashtun neighborhood and not getting any sort of support from the locals.

As an outsider, it is frustrating to watch this country try to rebound from some very significant setbacks that were not of their own doing while shooting themselves in the foot over something that looks to be so petty, so insignificant.

I recently met an Afghan man, a war hero who has fought the Taliban countless times and today works as a police chief trying to create the Afghanistan he envisions.

He derided his fellow Pashtuns for holding on to their backward ways (his word, not mine). He said if you go to the universities in Kabul today, you will find a large number of Hazaras there -- learning, growing, enlightening, progressing.

"We will wake up one day and find the Hazaras are in control of this country, and maybe they should be," he said, speaking of the idea as something he hopes for rather than fears. "They are the ones showing the real desire to move forward while the Pashtuns want to cling to the old ways and go backward."

His thoughts echo what others have told me is the key to ending tribalism here. The children, they say, are more open to progress and care little for the differences older Afghans cling to. Education is doing much to rid the country of outdated ways of thinking, I'm told.

It's encouraging to look back on U.S. history to see the growing pains our own country went through. The Civil War, women's suffrage and the civil rights movement have similarities to some of the problems the people of Afghanistan need to address and learn from.

I have no doubt they can and will. They can start by looking at "tribalism" as the dirty word it is.

Michael Tomberlin is a captain in the Alabama Army National Guard deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and a reporter with The News. This is another in a series of dispatches from his yearlong tour there.

Militants claim abduction of Pakistani soldiers, one killed in blast

Peshawar (AFP) - Pro-Taliban militants said Sunday they had abducted scores of Pakistani soldiers, demanding the withdrawal of troops from tribal areas near the Afghan border in exchange for their release.

Military authorities have insisted that some 150 soldiers were stranded after straying into Ladha region in restive South Waziristan district in stormy weather on Thursday, amid tensions between militants and local tribesmen.

"Our colleagues have captured them and put them in jails," Zulfiqar Mehsud, a spokesman for the militants, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Mehsud said the fighters had "surrounded the soldiers and forced them to surrender" their weapons.

"We took them into custody because the soldiers were preparing to launch an operation in South Waziristan," he said, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping Saturday of 10 additional soldiers from the army's Frontier Corps.

He said negotiations for their release could start once the government agreed to "honour" a peace accord it concluded with tribal militants in February 2005, under which Islamabad agreed to withdraw troops from the area.

Pakistan's Western allies have criticised the deal for giving the Taliban and Al-Qaeda space to regroup and mount attacks in Afghanistan.

Chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad reiterated that the soldiers had not been kidnapped, but were "trapped" amid a dispute between the militants and local tribesmen.

"We have not received any demand from them," the general told AFP.

He said members of a jirga, or tribal peace committee, were holding talks with local tribesmen to secure safe passage for the soldiers.

The soldiers were travelling to neighbouring North Waziristan when they lost contact with army headquarters.

Arshad on Friday dismissed reports the troops were kidnapped by armed militants. He said a group of militants wanted to take the soldiers hostage but tribal people had opposed the fighters.

The border area is a known hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants engaged in a bloody confrontation with tens of thousands of troops deployed in the region to hunt them down since 2002.

The incident in South Waziristan comes after militants released 19 Pakistani soldiers who were abducted early last month. One soldier was beheaded on video by a teenage boy on August 14.

Pakistan has been hit by a wave of Islamist bloodshed since the siege of the extremist Red Mosque in the capital in July in which more than 100 people died, most of them militants.

A powerful bomb, apparently targeting pro-government tribesmen ripped through a shopping centre in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, on Sunday, killing one person and wounding eight.

"It was a powerful blast -- a man was killed and eight others were injured," a security official said, adding that several shops were damaged in the explosion.

Residents said the blast took place near the office of pro-government tribesmen who had expelled ethnic Uzbek militants after bloody clashes in the mountainous region in March this year.

Mittha Khan, a pro-government tribal commander who played an important role in those clashes, was wounded, witnesses said. He was airlifted by helicopter to the northwestern city of Peshawar for treatment, they said.

The Uzbeks were among thousands of militants who fled the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 and sought shelter in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt.

The blast came as local militants vowing to follow fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's call for Jihad (holy war) Sunday warned local tribes not to side with government forces "killing innocent men, women and children" in the region.

"Like in Afghanistan, we have established suicide squads for attacks on troops and their allies in Pakistan," militants calling themselves Mujahedin (holy warriors) of Waziristan said in a statement, adding that those captured in future would be "slaughtered."

Calling all tourists to Bamiyan

By Charles Haviland - BBC News, Bamiyan, central Afghanistan Saturday, 1 September 2007

Breakfast is being prepared at the Abdul Hamid Hotel. The proprietor, Abdul Hamid, is rushing around with his helpers preparing a meal of unleavened Afghan bread and a thick white butter, and omelettes.

This is a popular breakfast stop, about two hours up from Bamiyan town into the hills on the way to the popular Band-e Amir lakes.

It is a modest establishment - perhaps not the type of hotel or restaurant that well-heeled travellers would want. But business is buzzing.

In the dining area, 15 young men are already devouring their feast. Others, including us, take their food to the rise across the road and eat al fresco.

There, we unexpectedly find ourselves eating next to the burnt-out shell of a tank - a reminder that Afghanistan is still an abnormal tourist destination.

The dirt road on which the hotel sits is perhaps the spine along which Afghan tourism will develop.

Afghanistan has mountains galore, sweeping valleys, rushing rivers and deserts. And a culture thousands of years old. And, in Bamiyan province, it now has relative security.

Two hours' bumpy ride further on, we reach Band-e Amir - long ago declared Afghanistan's first national park but only now being implemented as such.

These are six lakes with extraordinarily blue water, sitting under towering pink cliffs. Each lake is held up by a natural "dam" of limestone, and has a string of waterfalls tumbling out of it.

Today, on a Friday, there are several hundred tourists, nearly all of them Afghan. Some come from other parts of Bamiyan, others from further afield.

The brave plunge into the water, which is chilly here at 3,000 metres up. Mohammed Ayub and his large family are spending the day here in their big tent.

They, like many others, have come because they believe the lakes have religious importance - an association with Hazrat Ali, an important descendant of the Prophet Mohammad.

"We can buy bread here, and hire boats," he says. But they bring all the rest of their food and a stove. He is happy.

Others, on the busier side of the lake where simple cafés serve meat and rice, are less content with the facilities.

They include almost the only foreigners to be seen, Ivana Stipic Lah from Croatia and her husband Samo Lah from Slovenia. They work in Kabul and have left the city as tourists for the first time.

"Someone has to build a road here," says Samo. "And, let's say, toilets. When we asked someone where we can find a toilet, he said 'all around'!"

"It needs a little more organisation," Ivana agrees. She reflects that in parts of Bamiyan town they had been told they needed tickets but there was nowhere to buy them.

"If you want to be a tourist in Afghanistan you have to be ready for a huge adventure," she adds, laughing.

Zahir, an Afghan usually resident in Belgium, is staying a few days here with his family and relatives. They have had a great time and caught a lot of fish. But he says things could be better.

"The accommodation is just a small house, no showers no lights, so it's very poor," he says.

"Of course, I would like to have proper toilets and proper kitchens, proper beds and proper home."

Asked where else he goes as a tourist in Afghanistan, he mentions the Blue Mosque in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif, describing it as "fantastic".

He would like to see Kandahar and the south, but says it's probably not secure enough now.

Once back in Bamiyan town, I climbed a steep fortress - part of an old ruined Muslim city with fantastic views over the valley, including the remains of the 6th-century Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taleban.

My companion on the walk, Amir Fuladi, is a local development expert drawing up a tourism blueprint for the government to consider.

He speaks bluntly about Bamiyan as it is today, saying the roads are not good, there are few good hotels and people simply do not know how to receive tourists.

"The quality of services is really bad," he says. "There is no information centre. There is no guide."

Mr Fuladi says local people need to develop a more commercial attitude - more focused on making a profit. He is recommending that these pitfalls be gradually rectified, and tourism developed with social care.

"The majority of the benefits should go to the poor families or the local people," he says. He is recommending that any newly-built hotel should have a fixed quota of local employees and use local materials and foods.

"And then, people who want to invest, they can come." But he is also concerned that the environment be protected.

On a recent visit to Band-e Amir he was shocked to see cars driving onto the fragile limestone rocks, a vehicle being washed in the lake, and a lot of rubbish. This, he says, must change.

Bamiyan Province has all the natural and cultural potential for tourism. Now, hotels must be built and more roads constructed, as people learn to use local products and resources to increase its attractions.

What would be best of all to bring in the tourists would be for security to take a grip around the country, not just in Bamiyan.

Last-placed Afghan achieves goal

Kiyomi Arai / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

A 19-year-old Afghan high school student who came last in a women's 100 meters heat at the world athletics championships says she just wanted to show the world how women now have pride and rights in her home country.

Fatima Mohammadi ran with a hijab headscarf and long pants and finished last in a heat last Sunday with a time of 16.17 seconds.

"I'm really happy I could participate in the international race. It's not a problem I couldn't get the first or second place," she told The Daily Yomiuri, reflecting on her performance at her first international meet.

She said she was sure that with the right training and facilities she could do better.

After watching the finals of the event, she said, "I hope one day I can also be like them [the finalists]."

Before the championships, she completed a 21-day training program in Germany. Her times, which were around the 16-second mark to begin with, shortened to 15 seconds during the program.

"But when I went back to Afghanistan, [my times] got bad again," Mohammadi said. Afghanistan, which is racked by the Taliban insurgency, has only one major multiuse sports stadium and even that has a track made of cement.

Her high school's athletic track, meanwhile, is only 60 meters long. She hopes some day a specialized athletics stadium will be built, so she and other girls can train there and improve.

"My family encourages me and tells me to do everything I want. But in my country, people are different--some educated, but some uneducated--and there aren't many people who are supportive," she said.

[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.]