In this bulletin:

• Afghan, coalition force clashes kill 13 Taliban fighters
• Eight civilians killed in suicide attack in southern Afghanistan
• UN Warns Pakistan's Afghan Refugees Against Repatriation Plan
• After Decades, Pakistan Forces Afghans to Leave
• UN Envoy Urges International Funding For Afghanistan Elections - AFP
• Afghan militants seem to be embracing new strategy to undermine election
• Attacks on NGOs rise sharply in 2008 - report
• Karzai should end Afghan death penalty - rights group
• Turkmenistan minister to discuss trans-Afghan gas pipeline with Pakistan
• Red Cross urges reform of U.S. prisons in Afghanistan
• Nato making mistake in Afghanistan, warns Turkish minister
• The Taliban blowback
• New draft law may take Afghanistan back to Talibanisation
• Liberals demand Bernier resign over Afghan gaffe
• 'Dark day' in Kandahar as soldiers learn of Hillier's imminent retirement
• Editorial: Threat ‘from’ and ‘to’ Pakistan
• Clinton promises more focus on Pakistan, Afghanistan
• 50 years for killing Afghan immigrant
• Penalty for crossing an Al Qaeda boss? A nasty memo

Afghan, coalition force clashes kill 13 Taliban fighters

Kabul 17 April 2008 - Afghan and coalition forces killed 13 Taliban fighters and arrested 15 others in separate raids and clashes in Afghanistan, officials said on Thursday.

Afghan police, intelligence and US-led coalition forces killed ten Taliban militants on the Kabul-Kandahar highway on Thursday morning, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Two other militants were wounded and two were arrested in the operation which took place in Pasht Ganda area of southern Ghazni province. In a separate clash with Afghan army forces in the same province Thursday, three militants were killed, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.

There were no casualties among the combined forces in either encounter, the Afghan officials said.

In a separate statement the Afghan Interior Ministry said their forces arrested a Taliban commander, Mullah Toor Jan, who was involved in terrorist activities in Uruzgan province.

The arrested commander has been sought by the police for the past two years, before he was arrested in the province on Wednesday, the statement said.

US-led coalition forces meanwhile arrested 'two targeted militants and 10 suspected militants' in an operation in south-eastern and western Afghanistan, US military said in a statement.

The combined forces detained two known militants involved in roadside attacks, along with five of their associates in Khost province Wednesday, the statement said.

The suspects were arrested in Tani district of the province, it said, adding several weapons, ammunition, an ammunition vest were confiscated and destroyed on-site of the operation.

Also on Wednesday, five other suspects were detained in Khashroad district of western Nimruz province, it added.

In a separate incident on Tuesday, coalition forces detained a Taliban commander and some of his associates in Qalat city of Zabul province, a separate US military statement said.

Afghan and coalition forces have arrested thousands of suspected Taliban militants since the ouster of Taliban regime in late 2001, but most of them have not been tried so far.

Eight civilians killed in suicide attack in southern Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Canadian Press) 17 April 2008 - A suicide car bomber lying in wait for a passing military convoy killed eight civilians and wounded 22 others Thursday when he blew himself up at the edge of a crowded row of shops.

The explosion occurred just moments after the convoy, which did not include any Canadian troops, passed by the bomber's car, said Provincial police Chief Sayed Agha Saqib.

The explosion, which blew out the back walls of several of the tiny shop cubicles that line Kandahar's busy, poverty-ridden streets, left the roadside strewn with shards of wood, twisted sheet metal - even a pile of overturned motorcycles.

"It was one of the biggest explosions I ever heard in my life," said Haji Kaleem, 47, a resident of Kandahar who was on his way to work when the blast occurred.

"After that, I heard several people screaming and shouting ... I saw a lot of people dead and wounded. I saw a lot of human blood as well."

Canadian soldiers were among the coalition troops dispatched to provide security at the scene.

A statement from the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, the formal name of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military presence, said three coalition troops were slightly hurt in the blast.

"We strongly condemn this ruthless attack that killed and injured so many innocent civilians in Kandahar," ISAF spokesman Brig.-Gen. Carlos Branco said in the statement.

"Our deepest sympathies are with the families of those who were killed and injured in this cowardly attack."

Abdullah, 34, a car salesman, received a phone call from a client and had just left the scene moments before the explosion. "I am very very lucky that I was far from the incident," he said. "There was (a) difference of one minute between me and death."

Canada has about 2,500 troops based in Afghanistan, most of them in the Kandahar province. Canadian military officials confirmed no Canadian troops were involved in the incident.

The 22 wounded included two policemen and seven people who were in hospital in serious condition, Saqib said.

The Taliban regularly launch suicide bombings against Afghan and foreign troops in the country, but most of the victims in such attacks have been civilians. "The people who are dead and wounded are also Afghans," Kaleem said.

"I am extremely sorry for them. My request to the Taliban is to stop these suicide attacks because it is a loss for Afghan people."

The number of suicide attacks spiked in 2007, with the Taliban launching more than 140 suicide missions, the highest number since they were ousted from power by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

More than 8,000 people were killed in insurgency-related violence in 2007, the UN says.

UN Warns Pakistan's Afghan Refugees Against Repatriation Plan

ISLAMABAD (AP)17 April 2008--The United Nations urged Pakistan on Thursday to revise its plan to repatriate 2.4 million Afghan refugees by 2009, saying the strategy is unworkable and could fuel militancy.

Pakistan announced the schedule last year, largely in response to international criticism over cross-border attacks by Taliban militants who Pakistan says often shelter in refugee camps.

"People are not commodities," Kilian Kleinschmidt, assistant representative in Pakistan for the U.N. refugee agency, told The Associated Press. "The strategy based on the policy that all the Afghans should be repatriated by 2009 needs to be revised and reviewed."

Most of the refugees arrived in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s or were born here. The majority make a living in towns and cities and do not live in camps.

The repatriations are meant to be voluntary, but the vast majority of the refugees who have registered in Pakistan say they do not want to return to Afghanistan. They lack land to settle on and fear fighting between Taliban militants and NATO and Afghan government forces.

On Thursday, Pakistan acknowledged that conditions in Afghanistan made it unlikely it could reach its repatriation target - but it said it still aimed for most of the refugees to go back by the end of 2009.

"We will give it our best shot," said Imran Zeb Khan, Pakistan's commissioner for Afghan refugees.

He appealed to Afghanistan to provide land and to the international community to fund development work for returning refugees.

"We don't want Pakistan alone to carry this burden. Our concerns should be addressed. Just saying that since 2.4 million people can't return so Pakistan can keep them as long as the situation in Afghanistan does not improve - that's something we cannot accept," Khan said.

The U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees has agreed to Pakistan's plan to close four border camps that Islamabad says pose a security risk. Authorities have already closed one and are in the process of clearing another settlement with about 80,000 others.

But the U.N. says more camp closures and mass repatriations could backfire because refugees would likely return as illegal migrants.

"It could even push a number of these returnees into the hands of militants. It could be counterproductive and really affect regional stability," Kleinschmidt said.

The Afghan government predicts it will be able to absorb just 1 million returning refugees in the next five years. Millions have already returned from Pakistan, Iran and further afield since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Mian Jamil, a top official at Pakistan's Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, said it remained committed to voluntary repatriation of refugees and would consider Afghanistan's ability to absorb them.

Jamil expected Pakistan's recently elected civilian government to review the 2.4 million target, set in early 2007 during a period of especially tense Pakistan-Afghan relations.

Last year, only about half of the 800,000 slated for repatriation in 2007 went back, Khan said.

After Decades, Pakistan Forces Afghans to Leave

Washington Post - World By Candace Rondeaux Washington Post Foreign Service Wednesday, April 16, 2008

JALOZAI, Pakistan-About the only thing Aziz ur-Rehman remembers about his life in Afghanistan is his month-long walk through the mountains to Pakistan after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

He was 5 years old then -- too young to remember much about the events that drove his family out of Afghanistan. Most of his memories were born here among the sprawling mass of mud-brick homes, tin-roofed shops and rutted dirt roads that make up the oldest Afghan refugee settlement in Pakistan. And when the Pakistani government closes the camp this week, most of his memories will be buried here.

Three decades after thousands of Afghan refugees fled to this U.N.-backed settlement in northwestern Pakistan, the Pakistani government has begun to demolish homes and other buildings here. Citing concerns about extremist influences in Jalozai and the economic burden of hosting 80,000 refugees, officials set a Tuesday deadline for closing the camp, located about 20 miles southwest of the city of Peshawar.

Pakistan had pressed for an earlier closure but was persuaded to wait until after the winter by U.N. officials, the Afghan government and tribal elders.

Still, years after fleeing Afghanistan, many refugees like ur-Rehman are far from eager to return to a war-torn country they have never really known. "Life is better here in Pakistan. There is peace here, and I have my own life," ur-Rehman said.

Jalozai is one of more than 80 refugee encampments remaining in the country that are slated to close by the end of next year. So far, about 3,800 residents have left Jalozai for Afghanistan, according to U.N. officials.

More than 2 million registered Afghan refugees are settled in camps that stretch across parts of Pakistan's northwestern frontier and tribal areas. Although an estimated 3 million Afghans have returned home since 2002, the continued presence of millions of others in places such as Jalozai has become a thorny issue for Pakistan since the start of U.S.-led counterterrorism operations in the region.

A major U.S. ally, Pakistan has struggled for years to quell the rising influence of Taliban fighters inside Afghan refugee settlements.

A Western diplomat in Pakistan familiar with the camps said that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former U.S. ally with ties to the Taliban, has long held sway over extremists in the camp at Jalozai and in Shamshatoo, another Afghan settlement near Peshawar, making the camps a refuge for Taliban fighters. "They provide the perfect location for disappearing and recruiting, which is why we have been pushing for closure of these camps. You don't want to create a humanitarian crisis, but the security there is an issue," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

More village than camp, Jalozai has a thriving economy built primarily on the transportation of goods and services across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Homes are modest but have provided shelter for at least two generations of largely ethnic Pashtuns with Afghan roots. With fighting still underway in Afghanistan, many in the camp are fearful of what they will find on the other side of the border.

"I don't want to go back. In Afghanistan, the situation is clear," ur-Rehman said. "Every day there are bombings there, or suicide attacks. You never know where the attack is coming from."

Many Jalozai refugees have roots in the eastern provinces of Afghanistan, where the fighting has been especially heavy in recent years. More than half, however, were born in Pakistan. Three-quarters of the camp population is younger than 28, according to Pakistan's commission on Afghan refugees. Few have firsthand knowledge of life in Afghanistan.

Zalmay Rasul, Afghanistan's national security adviser, said in an interview in Kabul last week that the government there is working to ensure a smooth return of Afghan refugees. Repatriation efforts have been complicated, however, because many Afghans are returning to conflict areas. "The return of refugees has already happened, and we are ready to accept those refugees who are coming," Rasul said. "We need to have at least a humanitarian infrastructure in place, however, to receive them."

According to U.N. and Pakistani government officials, the number of Afghan refugees who have returned to their country since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in late 2001 has slowed, while international aid for refugees has dropped precipitously in the wake of the fighting. About 1.6 million refugees left the camps for Afghanistan in 2002 compared with 133,000 in 2006, according to U.N. data.

Meanwhile, aid donated by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has decreased from $28.9 million in 2001 to $9.3 million in 2007, a drop of 68 percent, a Pakistani government official said. "This is a very troubling aspect for us -- that the world and the donors are losing interest in the refugee problem. There is donor fatigue in the international community, yet they are asking us to do more and more," said Abdul Rauf Khan, the outgoing chief commissioner for Afghan refugees in Pakistan.

As Pakistan rushes to close the settlements, refugees are left with scant economic resources, according to Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the U.N. commissioner's office in Pakistan. "This is a forgotten humanitarian crisis, yet the refugees are a major player in stabilizing the region," Tan said. "If you push them out in one go, then you destabilize the region. If you get them to go gradually, then there can be peace and stability."

Refugees who agree to return to Afghanistan receive about $100 each from the U.N. refugee agency to aid in the journey home. But with food, energy and lodging prices on the rise on both sides of the border, the money barely pays for transportation, several refugees at the camp said.

Abdullah, a bookseller at Jalozai, was an infant when his family moved to the settlement in the late 1980s. "Our whole extended family has been living here, and this camp is now like our ancestral village. We have seen the ups and downs of life here, with marriages and deaths in the family," said Abdullah, who like many ethnic Pashtuns uses only one name.

His family has been looking for a new home in Peshawar or its suburbs but has not found anything affordable. Government workers have already bulldozed the bookstore that he, his wife and four children relied on for income.

"My shop is demolished, but my home is still there," Abdullah said. "I will be the last person to leave this place."

Special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.

UN Envoy Urges International Funding For Afghanistan Elections - AFP

BRUSSELS (AFP)--The new U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, Wednesday urged the international community to offer major financial support for elections in the country next year at an upcoming donors' conference.

"It is important...the international community commit itself in funding the election process," he told reporters following his first visit to North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters, where he met representatives of the 40 nations involved in the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Afghanistan under NATO command.

The presidential election, the second in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, is due to be held in late 2009, though no date has been set. Legislative polls should follow.

"We have to see a firm commitment of the international community and full support of the Afghan government," at the Paris donors' conference in June, he added.

The Norwegian diplomat, named to the post last month by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, admitted preparations for the conference were still in their early stages. A preparatory "forum" would take place in the French capital on May 24, he said.

Like its predecessor in Berlin in January 2007, the Paris conference is part of an international roadmap to support peace and democracy in Afghanistan.

Afghan militants seem to be embracing new strategy to undermine election

Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota - By JONATHAN S. LANDAY McClatchy News Service  April 15, 2008

WASHINGTON -While Americans' attention remains focused on Iraq, violence is escalating in Afghanistan. And there are indications that Taliban and Al-Qaida militants there have adopted a new strategy of avoiding U.S. and NATO forces by staging attacks in provinces that haven't seen major unrest and by choosing easy targets such as aid groups and poorly trained Afghan police.

With Afghanistan due to hold a presidential election next year, pressure is growing on the United States and NATO to contain the insurgency so the government of Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and the United Nations can proceed with the complex balloting preparations.

Several new reports have found that insurgent violence has risen sharply in the first months of this year.

A study by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, a group funded by the European Commission, found that there were 704 insurgent attacks from January through March this year, compared with 424 during the first three months of 2007. The civilian death toll was 463 for the period, compared with 264 in the first quarter of last year.

There also were 16 attacks on aid organizations in the first quarter, double the number for 2007.

Along with attacks on aid groups, Afghan police increasingly have been targeted. In the latest attacks, a roadside bomb reportedly killed two policemen and injured three Tuesday, a day after insurgents killed 11 other police officers.

The NGO Safety Office report agrees with several other new studies that have found insurgent attacks rising outside southern and eastern Afghanistan, where most of the 47,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops are deployed.

"Operationally, the Taliban appear to be putting more resources into attacking in provinces where allied forces are weaker and which are less accustomed to clashes," says an April 6 analysis written by John McCreary, a former senior intelligence analyst for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for dNovus RDI, a Texas-based contracting firm.

"They are starting to show the manifestations of a strategy" of keeping under-strength U.S. and NATO forces tied down in the south and east while stoking instability elsewhere, McCreary said in an interview.
David Lamm, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in Afghanistan, said the Taliban wants to prevent next year's election by hitting enough "soft targets" in enough places that the "U.N. security folks say they are not sure they can run the elections."

Attacks on NGOs rise sharply in 2008 - report

KABUL, 15 April 2008 (IRIN) - Attacks on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and aid workers by anti-government forces, chiefly Taliban insurgents, have risen sharply in the first quarter of 2008, according to a report by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO).

"NGO security incidents attributed to armed opposition groups have doubled from eight in the first quarter of 2007 to 16 in the same period this year," said Nic Lee, the ANSO director in Kabul.

Sixteen of the 29 direct attacks on NGOs across the country, from January to the end of March 2008, were initiated and/or executed by Taliban insurgents and other rebel fighters, the report said. The remaining 13 were attributed to criminals who attack NGOs mostly for financial gain.

Nine NGO workers lost their lives and nine others were wounded in seven separate armed attacks by anti-government elements, ANSO said.

Furthermore, in seven armed incidents 12 people were kidnapped, leading to two additional fatalities, including a female US citizen who worked for the Asian Rural Life Development Foundation in Kandahar Province.

"Our data demonstrates a serious escalation in fatalities with nearly as many killed in the first three months of 2008 as were killed in all of 2007," Lee told IRIN, adding that cases of abductions had also seen a marked increase.

Conflict-related violence, which was once restricted to the restive southern parts of Afghanistan, is now spreading to other parts of the country. As a result, civilians and humanitarian workers have been extensively affected, aid agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross warned.

Meanwhile, criminal groups have increasingly opted to work on behalf of the armed opposition, and have deliberately disregarded NGOs' impartiality.

These worsening security trends are unlikely to change and aid agencies should anticipate a "difficult year" and more violence in the coming months, the ANSO said.

According to Lee, respect for humanitarian impartiality has increasingly been "eroded" among opposition forces, and NGOs have been brought into the "gravity of conflict".

"Anywhere else in the world NGOs would, should and do operate on both sides of a conflict. Only here, for one reason or another, that sense of independence has become a lot more politicised and subject to agendas which really [they] should not be subject to, and it has become very difficult for NGOs to implement and enforce their neutrality," he said.

To cope with the increasing security threats, many international organisations have "quietly" evacuated their international staff members from the restive province of Kandahar over the past few months, ANSO found. Others have "changed their profile" by stepping up recruitment of local people and minimising office visibility.

"The total civilian deaths recorded in the first quarter of this year is 463 compared to 264 in 2007, indicating a dire worsening of the situation for the average Afghan civilian," ANSO said.

However, the number of civilian casualties resulting from aerial strikes and ground military operations conducted by international military forces in the first three months of 2008 had declined by about 20 percent compared with 2007.

Karzai should end Afghan death penalty - rights group

Thu Apr 17, 2008 1:25pm IST - KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai should not sign execution orders for about 100 prisoners sentenced to death by the Supreme Court because of concern fair trial standards are not met in capital cases, a rights group said on Thursday.

Human Rights Watch said the Supreme Court's recent announcement of about 100 death sentences showed a "disturbing disregard for the right to life".

Supreme Court officials told the media that those sentenced to death had been convicted of serious crimes, such as murder and rape, kidnapping, hostage taking and armed robbery.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said legal experts and human rights organisations in Afghanistan have long expressed concern that international due process and fair trial standards were generally not met in capital cases.

"President Karzai should suspend the death penalty immediately," Elaine Pearson, the group's Asia deputy director, said in a statement.

The Afghan government, set up after the ouster of the Taliban in 2001, has retained the death sentence but executions have been relatively rare.

But last year, 14 people accused of various serious crimes, were executed at the same time by a firing squad in Kabul's Pul-i-Charkhi prison.

"More mass executions will be a huge setback for the rule of law in Afghanistan," Pearson said. Afghanistan's judiciary, like much of government, is criticised for endemic corruption and red tape.

Under the Afghan criminal code, death sentences handed down by criminal courts are reviewed by an appeals court. If the sentence stands, it must be confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Confirmed death sentences must then be endorsed by the president. Karzai has commuted some death sentences.

Turkmenistan minister to discuss trans-Afghan gas pipeline with Pakistan

ACHKHABAD (Thomson Financial) 16 April 2008 - Turkmenistan industry minister Baimyrat Khodjmukhammedov will travel to Pakistan at the end of the month to discuss plans to build a gas pipeline linking the two countries via Afghanistan, state press agency TDH reported.

President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov in July 2007 said during a visit by his Pakistani counterpart Hamid Karzai that he was prepared to study proposals for a gas pipeline with a capacity of 30 billion cubic metres per year.

Red Cross urges reform of U.S. prisons in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) 16 April 2008- The Red Cross criticized the way the U.S. handles prisoners at the highly secretive Bagram military base, urging reforms Monday that would allow detainees to introduce testimony in their defense.

The criticism of the prison, which few outsiders have seen, goes to the heart of the system the Bush administration uses to justify holding detainees outside the U.S.

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said many of the 600-plus detainees at Bagram complain they do not even know why they are being held. Kellenberger spent a half day at the prison during a one-week visit to Afghanistan that ended Monday.

"They do not know what the future brings, how long will they be there and under which conditions will they be released," Kellenberger told a news conference.

While Kellenberger's comments were aimed specifically at Bagram, Red Cross chief spokesman Florian Westphal said there was "a strong parallel" with the U.S. military detention centers in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We've talked about the absence of a clear legal framework and of sufficient procedural safeguards with regard to Guantanamo, in particular, as we have done for Bagram," Westphal said in Geneva.

In Iraq, the U.S. military currently holds about 23,000 detainees and schedules review hearings every six months to decide on release or continued custody. But new evidence is rarely - if ever - introduced, and the panel mostly assesses a detainee's conduct and statements while in custody.

Unlike Afghanistan, the U.S. asserts a U.N. Security Council resolution gives it the authority to detain prisoners in Iraq. U.S. forces can recommend a detainee be put on trial in an Iraqi court, but they are not bound by the court's ruling, military spokesmen have said.

Kellenberger welcomed the establishment of "enemy combatant review boards" in Afghanistan that examine every six months whether a detainee can be released. But he called Monday for expanded prisoner rights, including allowing detainees to introduce outside testimony.

"I do consider the establishment of this body as progress, but I think it was high time," Kellenberger said. "This body should also get evidence from the persons outside, ... evidence which can speak in favor of those who are detained ... Evidence of people who know them, so that this evidence is brought into the process."

U.S. military officials at Bagram declined comment Monday. The prison is highly secretive, and unlike the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, the military does not allow journalists to visit. It also does not reveal who is detained there or what their alleged offenses are. Some of the detainees are fighters who were held after clashes or raids.

"If you are (an) interned person for security reasons, one of the rights you have is to have a regular review by the body which is seriously examining if you are still a security problem or not," Kellenberger said. "We want to see that in this review process you get in as much evidence as possible, also from the outside."

Kellenberger praised U.S. authorities for acting on some Red Cross recommendations, such as allowing video-conferencing between families and detainees.

The Red Cross and the U.S. military set up a video-conferencing system this year that allows Bagram prisoners to speak with and see family members on a video hookup, the only outside contact the prisoners are allowed to have.

Kellenberger said he is hopeful family visits will soon be allowed at Bagram. "It is not yet achieved, but I am confident," he said.

Human rights groups accuse the U.S. military of holding prisoners without charge at facilities like Bagram, in some cases for over five years.

The ICRC has visited the Bagram prison facility 120 times, according to Reto Stocker, head of the Red Cross in Afghanistan.

During his weeklong visit to Afghanistan, Kellenberger met with top U.S. military commanders and President Hamid Karzai.

As the conflict in Afghanistan has escalated over the past year - more than 8,000 people were killed in hostilities in 2007 - so have the number of wounded, Kellenberger said.

He said that during talks with the Taliban, the militants asked for more medical help.

"They say they wish us to extend our medical activities, especially in the remote areas in the provinces in the south," Kellenberger said. "I said that is fine for us provided I have necessary credible security guarantees for our staff."

Nato making mistake in Afghanistan, warns Turkish minister

London, Apr 16, IRNA - Nato is courting disaster in Afghanistan by relying too much on force to defeat the Taliban, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan warned Wednesday.

"If the people of that country start to perceive the security forces as occupiers, it's going to be a very complicated situation," Babacan warned.

"What is important is winning their hearts and minds," he was quoted saying in an interview with the Daily Telegraph while visiting London.

His concerns were that the shift to a more militaristic approach against Taliban insurgents would backfire and ultimately undermine the Afghan government.

The Turkish official rejected the criticisms from British and US officials that have been directed recently at Ankara and other Nato members for refusing to deploy their troops to the country's troubled south and east regions.

Instead, he criticised the autonomous Kurdish government in northern Iraq as a "huge problem" and predicted that Turkish raids across the border would continue.

During his interview, Babacan was said to have also complained of the continued resistance of President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany towards letting Turkey join the EU.

Babacan said that this, combined with the lack of a final peace deal in Cyprus, had changed attitudes within his homeland.

"This is number one news in Turkey," he said. "The feeling of not being wanted just goes deeper and deeper."
During his visit, which comes ahead the British monarch marking a state visit to Turkey next month, Babacan met Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

The Taliban blowback

The US enlisted the help of the mujahideen to fight the Soviet army in 1980s Afghanistan. But Pakistan, too, began fostering Islamist extremism. Now, Declan Walsh reports, it is suffering the violent consequences
The Guardian Declan Walsh Wednesday April 16 2008

Two recent films feature Pakistan's lawless North-West Frontier province. The first is Charlie Wilson's War, a glossy Hollywood tale about how a cocaine-sniffing, skirt-chasing congressman helped goad the CIA into a massive covert war against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s.

In one scene Tom Hanks, who plays Wilson, and Julia Roberts, his flinty southern belle, bring a powerful Washington politician named Doc Long to a squalid refugee camp near Peshawar in neighbouring Pakistan. Moved by the plight of the Afghan refugees, Long promises he will send weapons to fight the infidel communists.

"This is good against evil. And I want you to know that America is always going to be on the side of the good," the pudgy white man declares to the turbaned crowd of Afghan exiles. "Allahu Akbar!" they yell. Long punches the air in return. "Allahu Akbar!" he shouts.

The second film is far from glossy; in fact it is a non-fiction production. Shot in Mohmand, a tribal area in Pakistan's borderlands near the Afghan refugee camps created by that conflict in the 80s, Revenge is a straight-to-DVD job. It sells for the equivalent of 40p in the bazaars of Peshawar and its budget is evident in the wobbly camerawork and harsh lighting. But the action is all too real.

In the climactic scene, a Taliban gang parades six men, accused of theft and betrayal, before a crowd of perhaps 5,000 tribesmen. The prisoners are badly beaten, naked to the waist and smeared with their own blood. They are shoved before the central figure - a man in traditional shalwar kameez and basketball boots, brandishing a knife as long as his forearm. Amid much ballyhooing, he beheads the prisoners, one by one.

The camera spares no detail. The head-chopping Talib clamps his hand over his victims' mouths as he hacks at their necks; fellow fighters clamour to take photos with their mobile phones; blood squirts on to the soil. But only one sound is audible. "Allahu Akbar!" the crowd cries. "Allahu Akbar!"

The film exemplifies the fundamentalist fury sweeping Pakistan's frontier region, a fury that has swelled to alarming proportions. Across the North-West Frontier province that abuts Afghanistan, self-proclaimed Taliban forces - a hotchpotch of religious diehards, foreign fugitives, angry tribals and village thugs - are imposing their influence at gunpoint. Girls' schools have closed, movie and music stores have been torched and barbers who dare to shave beards have shuttered their pokey little stalls. Perceived enemies are kidnapped or, in some cases, beheaded.

Even more worrying, the violence is spilling into other parts of Pakistan. A cascade of suicide attacks and bombs have rocked the main cities. Recent victims have included a three-star general stalled in traffic, FBI agents at a pizza joint and the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, killed as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi.

In one of the largest attacks, a massive car bomb gutted a seven-storey police headquarters in Lahore. For days afterwards terrified city residents streamed past to gawp at the awesome destruction. "It looks like we've been attacked by an enemy country," said Muhammad Umar, a municipal clerk, staring at the sagging mess.

The bloodshed has stalled in recent weeks as a new, civilian-led government takes control. But few expect the calm to last. Many Pakistanis blame America. Since 2001 the Pentagon has given the Pakistani army more than £5bn to fight militants in the tribal badlands. But for many Pakistanis this is "America's war" - a fight inadvertently started by Charlie Wilson.

Throughout the 80s the US used Islam as a weapon against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, funnelling billions of dollars in weapons to the mujahideen fighters. The struggle became a cause celebre across the Muslim world, sucking in disaffected young men like Osama Bin Laden.

After the Soviet forces crawled home in 1989, Wilson and the CIA largely forgot about their jihadi creation until the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001, when the realisation came painfully late.

Pakistanis make this argument forcefully and frequently (though usually omitting to mention that their more respected ally, Saudi Arabia, paid for half of the anti-Soviet jihadi budget). But the 80s jihad also spawned a home-grown malignancy - one that now poses a powerful threat.

Recognising the jihadis' skill with a Kalashnikov and dedication to God, Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) gave them a fresh assignment in the 1990s: Kashmir. Led by Afghan veterans, fighters were secretly trained, armed and funded by the ISI to fight Indian soldiers in Kashmir. The best were later sent to help the Taliban in Afghanistan, then also sponsored by elements within Pakistani intelligence.

But when Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, backed the United States after 2001, the footsoldiers felt betrayed. First they tried to kill Musharraf in 2003; in the past nine months they have launched a blistering offensive against the security forces. A senior Pakistani police official told the Guardian that he believes these elements - loosely termed the "Punjabi Taliban" - have played a central role in the recent violence. Frankenstein's monster has turned on its master.

"The intelligence agencies were so short-sighted not to see the blowback," says another figure with front-line experience, Hassan Abbas. He was a sub-divisional police chief in North-West Frontier province in the late 90s, and is now a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "You can switch these guys on," he says. "But it's 100% more difficult to switch them off."

Yet for all that, Pakistan is strangely reluctant to crack down on certain Islamists. While there are those who have been captured or killed, others are allowed to roam free. Some shadowy figures seem almost untouchable: men such as Qari Saifullah Akhtar.

Akhtar, a jihad veteran of three decades' experience, has seen it all. He has been portrayed as hero and villain, godfather and coupster, idol and assassin. He has skirted American bombs, fought dirty wars and become pals with the Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar. Today his past seems to have caught up with him. He languishes in a Karachi jail, accused of orchestrating an attempt on Benazir Bhutto's life last October. But if history is a guide, he is unlikely to see a trial. He may be quietly released or, who knows, mysteriously slip from custody. People like him, it seems, simply know too much.

Akhtar wasn't always seen as the bad guy. Back in 1980, just months after the Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan, he became a pioneer of the modern Pakistani jihad. He left his home in the city of Chishtian in Pakistani Punjab, and headed north to Peshawar in North-West Frontier province. Teaming up with other religiously minded men, he signed up for the fight. News of the glorious exploits of his group, Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami (HUJI), inspired others to follow.

"He was my first amir [commander]," said Maulana Tahir Ashrafi, 35, a baby-faced cleric who heads the Pakistani Ulema (scholars) Council and is a former religious adviser to the government of Punjab. "The Russians were demolishing an Islamic country and it was our duty to defend it. At that time we were the Americans' sugar babies. They thought we were doing their job. We thought we were doing it for God."

Men like Akhtar were friends of America, allying themselves to Afghan commanders and, in the bubbling cauldron of jihad, befriending wealthy Arab fighters, such as Osama bin Laden, according to a former Pakistani intelligence officer, Khalid Khawaja. He said he met Akhtar in a training camp in 1987. "He was one of the first Pakistanis to go for jihad," he said.

After the Russians fled in 1989, a generation of jihadi fighters found themselves fired up with nowhere to go. Pakistan's ISI spy agency gave them a destination. Within a few years, Pakistani guerrilla groups were infiltrating Indian-controlled Kashmir, all under the control of the ISI. Battle-hardened warriors such as Akhtar led the fight. Saudi-funded madrassas provided a steady flow of recruits. "It was an arrangement that suited the ISI very much," said Muhammad Amir Rana, author of The A to Z of Jehadi Organisations in Pakistan.

But Akhtar soon made it clear that his first allegiance was to Allah, not Pakistan. In 1995 he was part of a fanciful plot by a fundamentalist army general, Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, to overthrow Benazir Bhutto's second government, oust the army and turn Pakistan into an Islamic caliphate. Akhtar's job was to provide the muscle. Once the generals had been arrested or killed, he would lead up to 300 jihadis into action, said Rana.

The plot failed miserably and Akhtar was jailed. But in a pattern that was to recur, he was quietly released months later. Soon after, he slipped back to his stomping ground in Afghanistan, where the Taliban were sweeping to power.

At a time when the ISI was openly supporting the Taliban, Abbasi became a close adviser to Mullah Omar. "He was a sort of consultant," said Rana. And that allegiance made him a new enemy after 9/11: America.

In October 2001, on the first night of the US-led offensive aimed at crushing the Taliban and extremist training grounds in Afghanistan, the US air force blitzed a HUJI training camp in Rishikor, south of Kabul. It was later identified as a graduate school for jihadis. Students from Arab countries, Pakistan and Uzbekistan learned how to kidnap, bomb and shoot.

By the time the bombs landed Akhtar had already fled. But he was less lucky a month later. A spokesman for HUJI reported that US bombs had killed 85 Pakistani fighters in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Akhtar, it was said, had gone to Kabul to make preparations for the bodies to be repatriated.

Weeks later, he disappeared. One swashbuckling fable has Akhtar fleeing through the deserts of southern Afghanistan on his motorcycle with Mullah Omar riding pillion as American bombs destroyed the Taliban headquarters in Kandahar. Either way, Akhtar surfaced again three years later, several thousand miles away, in Dubai.

In a highly publicised coup for America and Pakistan, he was seized at Dubai airport and flown to Islamabad. The White House and Musharraf claimed to have nabbed a key al-Qaida player. "Very important," declared President Bush's terrorism adviser, Frances Townsend. The Pakistanis accused Akhtar of involvement in two attempts on Musharraf's life nine months earlier.

Akhtar was kept in custody for almost three years. No court case was lodged, no charges were brought and he disappeared from view. Then last May, amid much public anger about Pakistan's many "disappeared", he was dumped on a busy road south of Islamabad. He went home.

Akhtar might have hoped for the quiet life. His lawyer and family say that he had retired from jihad and started building a khanqah, or religious retreat, on the Grand Trunk Road outside Lahore. In December he spent the holy month of Ramadan deep in meditation at the Syed Ahmed Shah khanqah, a collection of neat, low buildings amid maize fields and lychee orchards to the west of the city.

On a recent Friday morning, a group of young men with frizzy beards welcomed me in a small room off the polished courtyard. They offered sweet tea and biscuits but their faces were sour. "You foreigners call us terrorists because of our beards," snapped one, a clerk from the city's high court, in Urdu.

But after a few sips of tea the harshness melted. Of course they remembered Akhtar, they said. He stayed in a simple upstairs room, fasting through the day and praying deep into the night, said Rehan Ishfaq. "You could tell he was a commander," he said. "But he was treated no differently to anyone else."

To prove the point he named other respected guests who had been treated as equals - Maulana Masood Azhar, leader of the extremist Jaish-e-Muhammad, another Kashmir militant group; and Azam Tariq, a sectarian leader gunned down in 2003.

The men were upset that Akhtar was now in jail. It was all Benazir Bhutto's fault, they said. A few weeks earlier Bhutto's family had posthumously published Reconciliation, the book she was finishing at the time of her death on December 27. In it, she names Akhtar as the puppet-master for a huge suicide bombing that killed 150 people during her homecoming parade in Karachi last October.

"A bomb maker was needed for the bombs. Enter Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted terrorist who had tried to overthrow my second government," she wrote.

Akhtar's lawyer Hashmat Habib says there is no evidence to link his client to the plot. "Qari sahib [sir] is a pious and religious person, yes. But fighting for freedom is no crime," he said. And he has launched an ambitious libel case against the book's New York publishers for $200m in damages - the alleged value of Bhutto's own insurance policy. "A mujahid's [religious fighter's] life is worth more than that of a political leader," he says.

As before, Akhtar is surrounded by more questions than answers. He has not been charged. When the first detention order expired, police flew him to Karachi. When that detention order expired late last month, they renewed his detention for another 30 days. Experts are sceptical he will ever see a trial. A man such as him could shed much light on the intelligence services' past - and possibly present - links with the murky Islamist underworld.

Suspicions linger that the intelligence agencies have not entirely closed the chapter on jihad - possibly in case its practitioners are needed in any future war with India. "Some people seem to be still in the 'good books'. The police are afraid to touch them," said Abbas of Harvard. Several western diplomats echoed this view.

Meanwhile the bombs and the blowback continue. Nobody is safe, not even the family of the man who started it all through his policy of "Islamisation" in contemporary Pakistan - the dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled Pakistan through the 80s and was a key ally of Charlie Wilson. In the movie, the congressman apologises for requesting a scotch on the rocks in the alcohol-free presidency. "I'll bet that visitors often make that mistake," he quips. "No they don't," says Zia.

A few weeks ago I went to see Ijaz-ul-Haq, Zia's softly spoken son. Until last year, he served as minister for religious affairs under Musharraf. Sitting under a tobacco-coloured portrait of his father, he looked a little dejected. Now the Islamists were out to get him too, he said.

In late December a bomb prematurely exploded 300 yards from his house in southern Punjab. The police linked the putative killer to the Red Mosque, the radical Islamabad mosque where over 100 people died in a confrontation with the army last summer. Haq had led unsuccessful attempts to find a peaceful solution.

There were other ominous echoes. The killer belonged to a militant group that had fought in Kashmir. He had also been to Afghanistan. And he came from a village close to the home of Qari Saifullah Akhtar.

"This is a whole new phenomenon," said Haq. "Even during Afghanistan and Kashmir, we never saw suicide attacks like this." He had raised the walls around his house and erected concrete barricades. Security men roamed the garden. But still he was worried.

"Time is on their side," he said. "They go slowly. It's very scary."

A bearded man wearing a tracksuit, who looked like an ex-soldier, came into the room. A gun appeared to bulge from one pocket. It was time for his employer's evening jog.

The American who funded jihad is also quietly contrite. After September 2001, Charlie Wilson told biographer George Crile that the 1980s fight was a "glorious" time. But the endgame, he admitted, had gone disastrously wrong.

New draft law may take Afghanistan back to Talibanisation

April 16th, 2008 - 7:36 pm ICT

Kabul, Apr.16 (ANI): The Afghan Parliament is to take up new legislation banning the wearing of make up by women, men and women talking to each other in public, men wering T-shirts and sporting long hair, use of loud speakers, pigeon flying, animal fights.

The news makes the old timers to shudder as it reminds them of the six years of Taliban rule when strict Islamic laws were enforced and those not following were whipped publically.

Already the clerics have succeeded in coercing the liberal Karzai Government int banning the Indian soap operas on private TV channels. T he new law seeks to include a ban on girls wearing make-up in the work place, on men dressing like girls, a ban on loud-speakers in public places, on people playing with pigeons, and on men and women speaking to each other in the street.

Even vehicles travelling into the country are proposed to be searched for material considered offensive to Islam. Defying these regulations would attract heavy fines The legislation would ban:Men from wearing bracelets, designer jeans, necklaces, earrings and T-shirts Men from growing their hair long, like a girls Men and women from talking with each other in public, unless they are related Loud music and loud speakers at weddings and restaurants Betting in snooker clubs Shops selling revealing clothing TVs, radios and cable companies from airing programmes that are ‘anti-Islamic’ and detrimental to the young People from selling, keeping or importing DVDs or photos of naked or semi-naked women People from swearing at children or women in public.

Pigeon flying, animal fighting and playing with birds on rooftops Girls would also have to start wearing the Hejab properly by covering all of their hair with the shawl. The Commission for Anti-social Behaviour and Counter-narcotics has concieved the new law which would be enforced by police. A repeat offence for pigeon-flying would attract a fine of Afg1,000, while media companies could be fined as much as Afg5,000 for airing anti-Islamic images.

Restaurants caught hosting weddings where men and women mix in the same room could be fined up to Afg10,000. Anyone who starts a bird fight, a traditional sport in Afghanistan, would be fined up to Afg1,000. Some of the MPs are apperehensive about the law dragging Afganistan into the black ages of the dreaded Taliban who are otherwise also knocking at the door of Kabul. (ANI)

Liberals demand Bernier resign over Afghan gaffe

Updated Thu. Apr. 17 2008 - The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- Opposition parties are slowly roasting Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier over his diplomatic blunder on Afghanistan.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae called today for Bernier to be fired, describing him as incompetent and irresponsible.

And the NDP put a motion before a Commons committee demanding the minister appear to explain why he publicly called for the removal of the governor of Kandahar.

Bernier ended his visit to the war-torn country on Monday by effectively calling for the removal of Asadullah Khalid, linking him to the rampant corruption that plagues the impoverished region.

He was quickly forced to issue a "clarification'' after the Afghan government expressed concern about foreign interference in its internal affairs.

Rae says it's just the latest in a series of embarrassing gaffes by Bernier. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said he supports Bernier and has no plans to replace him.

'Dark day' in Kandahar as soldiers learn of Hillier's imminent retirement

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canadian soldiers at Kandahar Airfield marked a "dark day" Wednesday as they awoke to news that Gen. Rick Hillier, the popular, populist leader many consider the principal architect of Canada's mission in Afghanistan, was stepping down as chief of defence staff.

Word of Hillier's departure - he confirmed Tuesday he would be stepping down in July after more than three years in Canada's top military job - seemed to be on the lips of every soldier in a uniform with a Canadian flag on the shoulder.

Lt.-Col. Dan Drew, deputy commander of Canada's Operational Mentor and Liason Team, which trains members of the Afghan National Army, described Hillier as a "personal hero" who won't be easily replaced.

Hillier almost single-handedly breathed fresh life into a Canadian military that had been robbed of its resources and its sense of value, said Drew, 50, a no-nonsense commander from Medicine Hat, Alta.

"He took us out of the dark ages of the 1990s and reshaped us, reformed us, made us proud to be who we are, and he made the Canadian people know who we are and to be proud of us again," Drew said.

"We're more focused on operations now, we care more about our own people, and Gen. Hillier's the guy who led us out of that darkness."

Drew called Hillier the best chief of defence staff since "J-Dex" - Gen. Jacques Dextraze, a Canadian Army general who served from 1972 to 1977. "It's a dark day for us to be losing him."

Despite Hillier's persistent denial he has any designs on a political posting, Drew said he considers him worthy of the top job in the land. "There's only one Gen. Hillier, so whomever's coming in behind him's going to have a tough job - I'm thinking Hillier for prime minister next," he smiled.

Hillier, 52, was the most visible Canadian Forces leader in a generation, a blunt, straight-talking "soldier's soldier" who showed visible affection for the "soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen" under his command and constant admiration for their work.

His visits to Afghanistan were frequent, as much to bolster the morale of the members of the rank and file as to meet with senior commanders.

Twice within a year, most recently last month, Hillier arrived at the airfield with a squad of retired hockey players and the Stanley Cup in tow, talking trash in advance of a ball-hockey showdown with soldiers and boasting of a Cup win by his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs.

"The Taliban have been closer to the Stanley Cup than the Maple Leafs," he liked to crack.

Along the Kandahar Airfield boardwalk, just down the way from the ever-popular Tim Hortons outlet where the gleaming trophy has twice been on display, Master Cpl. Bob Gaudet was among a group of soldiers talking about Hillier's departure. "He's been fantastic for the military," said Gaudet, 40, originally from Moncton, N.B.

"I've been in 20 years, and he's done wonders for us. He is one of the pinnacle figures in the Canadian Forces that is going to be missed. He's done a lot for us."

Drew said one of Hillier's most important accomplishments has been to fundamentally change how the Canadian Forces treats its injured members and the families of those who are killed in action.

Jim Davis, whose son Cpl. Paul Davis died in a light armoured vehicle accident in Afghanistan in 2006, echoed that sentiment.

Davis was one of eight family members who arrived Tuesday at Kandahar Airfield for a first-hand look, arranged by the Canadian Forces, at the country where his son lost his life.

"Gen. Hillier told me once that he wanted to make sure the families are taken care of and looked after, and I think this is proof of that, this is the result of that," Davis said of the trip.

"The soldiers here are welcoming us with open arms to make sure we are comfortable and I think the Canadian military has gone overboard to make sure that grieving families are not forgotten."

Master Cpl. Brad McCaughey, 36, with the National Command Element, said news of Hillier's departure came as a blow to many soldiers. "Definitely disappointment, absolutely - I think everybody has a sense of disappointment that he's leaving," he said.

"He was such a personable guy and everybody liked him, so everybody is disappointed that he's leaving."

McCaughey said he was proud to have served under Hillier, who did an "amazing job" during his time as chief of defence staff. "We were very fortunate that we had him for the time we had, and I hope that whomever follows suit does as equal a job as he did," McCaughey said.

"I don't think anyone's ever irreplaceable, but definitely some, as the saying goes, big boots to fill. We certainly have some lofty expectations of whoever comes next."

Hillier issued a statement on his departure, saying the military has "reached the critical milestones I originally set out for us to reach."

"We have transformed how we recruit, train, equip, command, deploy, employ, bring home, recognize and care for our operational forces and our families, focused on achieving a strategic effect for Canada."

"We have been strengthened, immensely, by the vocal and visible support of millions of Canadians who have demonstrated that they recognize, understand and honour your service, and the sacrifice of your families."

Having earned a science degree from Memorial University in his native Newfoundland, Hillier joined the army 36 years ago and trained as an armoured officer.

He said when he joined he had no ambitions to be a general: "I just wanted to be a soldier."

Hillier's career took him from regimental duties in a tank unit to staff jobs in Montreal and National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa, where he eventually became army, then defence, chief.

He has served across Canada, twice in Europe and the United States, and did a term as the senior NATO officer in Afghanistan.

His predecessor, air force Gen. Ray Henault, served five years in the job, while Gen. John de Chastelain served two separate appointments - from 1989 until 1993, and again in 1994-95.

Editorial: Threat ‘from’ and ‘to’ Pakistan

Daily Times - In an interview to a US TV channel President George W Bush has said that “if another September 11 style attack is being planned, it probably is being plotted in Pakistan and not Afghanistan”. He thought that if the plotters had been located in Afghanistan they would have been “routed out” by the US-NATO forces by now. He described the tribal region (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as one of the most dangerous areas in the world today where “Al Qaeda has established safe havens and is plotting attacks against the United States”.

Pakistanis would disagree and the official line is that Al Qaeda is not in Pakistan. Indeed, before President Bush’s recent statement, there was a consensus that Al Qaeda existed vaguely somewhere on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, preferably straddling the Durand Line. Therefore it is possible that the US president may have been persuaded by the universally agreed proposition in the Western press that Pakistan is “the most dangerous place in the world today”. They point to recent developments and also to the trend of “denial” among the politicians and people and media of Pakistan about the existence and activity of Al Qaeda.

Disagreement with President Bush is neither here nor there. There are facts that we have to face up to — unless we think that these facts too are being created by the United States which is actually behind the terrorism taking place in Pakistan. A large part of FATA is out of Pakistan’s control and the rest of it is under severe pressure. The Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan, presiding over an “emirate” in South Waziristan and Bajaur, has nailed its theses of “conditions” on the wall, well before the new government in Islamabad puts in place its mechanism of “negotiation” with it.

After a period of intense suicide bombing which persuaded the public, politicians and officialdom in favour of the Taliban/Al Qaeda jihad, there is a period of “switching-off”. When the offensive is on, we say “it is not our war”. Cessation in suicide-bombing is equally persuasive in favour of the killers through the sensation of relief. This tactic persuades us that it is the return to democracy in Pakistan that has stopped the terror.

The NWFP government wants to negotiate in Swat where the “Taliban-plus” invaders have regrouped after their rout at the hands of the army earlier. Knowing that there isn’t much to negotiate, the Peshawar government is “anticipating” what the militants will demand. And the ANP-led coalition is said to be ready to concede “sharia” in the region to get it back. But it is hardly sure what the militants will be ready to “give” in return. Warlord Fazlullah is back on the scene and will have nothing less than his hegemony re-established there.

Pakistan appears scary to outsiders because charismatic leaders like Ms Benazir Bhutto and generals like Mushtaq Beg can be killed near the capital without much willingness on our part to analyse the phenomenon objectively. In fact civil society in Pakistan is too busy with its own sporadic outbreaks of meaningless violence to grasp the fact that South Waziristan’s warlord Baitullah Mehsud is wanted by an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi for the assassination of Ms Bhutto.

Behind our demand for investigation by the United Nations is an unspoken desire to somehow spare Al Qaeda and pin the assassination on the establishment that has ruled Pakistan for eight years by keeping the two mainstream political parties out of the country. The barely concealed passion behind getting the establishment investigated is the desire to brand it an “anti-people” handmaiden of the Americans.

The embedding of Al Qaeda and its foot soldiers in Pakistan may not move us just because it worries the world outside. But if we work towards letting the terrorists find some kind of power-sharing inside Pakistan we will be facing a crisis outside our capacity to overcome. And it is not only America and Europe which will be upset, but our neighbours in Central Asia and our neighbour towards our west, too, as happened when we were exploring our “strategic depth” in Afghanistan with the help of the Taliban.

There is no running away from the “negotiation phase”, but we know where it will end. Indeed, after it has collapsed we will need all the help we can get from the world outside to save ourselves from the brainwashed killers who are dynamiting our schools and destroying our culture. *

Clinton promises more focus on Pakistan, Afghanistan

Times Online 16 April 2008— In a brief interview with The Times Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said that she would be “more open and engaged” than the Bush administration in trying to resolve problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan, two fronts in the war on terror that are frequently overshadowed by Iraq.

Clinton said President Bush gambled and lost when he put his faith in Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, who’s been criticized for not pursuing terrorists living in remote areas of his country. “That turned out not to be a good bet,” Clinton said.

As president, Clinton said she would pressure nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to deliver on promises of putting troops in the region and compel tribal leaders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to stop harboring al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

“I have said for some time that we took our eye off the ball when we directed resources from Afghanistan to Iraq,” Clinton said.

Asked whether she learned anything from the Senate hearings Tuesday with Gen. David Petraeus, America’s top military officer in Iraq, Clinton said, “I learned that the goalposts keep shifting.”

Reducing the bloodshed in Iraq was an initial goal of the troop surge, she said, but now that the violence has dipped, Congress is being told that troops can’t leave because the Iraqi government needs their help in battling militias.

“You just see this constant shifting rationale as to why we need to keep our troops in Iraq,” she said. “As long as George Bush is in office, nothing’s going to change.”

Penalty for crossing an Al Qaeda boss? A nasty memo

Recently declassified documents reveal a little-known side of the network: an internal culture that has been surprisingly bureaucratic and persistently fractious. By Sebastian Rotella Los Angeles Times Staff Writer April 15, 2008

LONDON -- Mohammed Atef was furious. The Al Qaeda leader had learned that a subordinate had broken the rules repeatedly. So he did his duty as the feared military chief of a global terror network: He fired off a nasty memo.

In two pages mixing flowery religious terms with itemized complaints, the Egyptian boss accused the militant of misappropriating cash, a car, sick leave, research papers and an air conditioner during "an austerity situation" for the network. He demanded a detailed letter of explanation.

"I was very upset by what you did," Atef wrote. "I obtained 75,000 rupees for you and your family's trip to Egypt. I learned that you did not submit the voucher to the accountant, and that you made reservations for 40,000 rupees and kept the remainder claiming you have a right to do so. Also with respect to the air-conditioning unit, furniture used by brothers in Al Qaeda is not considered private property. I would like to remind you and myself of the punishment for any violation."

The memo by Atef, who later died in the U.S.-led assault on Osama bin Laden's Afghan refuge in 2001, is among recently declassified documents that reveal a little-known side of the network. Although Al Qaeda has endured thanks to a loose and flexible structure, its internal culture has nonetheless been surprisingly bureaucratic and persistently fractious, investigators and experts say.

The documents were captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and date from the early 1990s to the present. They depict an organization obsessed with paperwork and penny-pinching and afflicted with a damaging propensity for feuds.

"The picture of internal strife that emerges from the documents highlights not only Al Qaeda's past failures but also -- and more importantly -- it offers insight into its present weaknesses," concludes a study of the documents issued in September by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. "Al Qaeda today is beset by challenges that surfaced in leadership disputes at the beginning of the organization's history."

In the years after 2001, anti-terrorism officials worked to understand a foe that defied a Western mind-set. In contrast to state-sponsored extremist groups, Al Qaeda was a decentralized alliance of networks. Recruits in Afghanistan had access to Bin Laden and other bosses. Operatives were often given great autonomy.

But the egalitarian veneer coexisted with the bureaucratic mentality of the chiefs, mostly Egyptians with experience in the military and highly structured extremist groups.

"They may have imposed the blindingly obdurate nature of Egyptian bureaucracy," said a senior British anti-terrorism official who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. "You see that in the retirement packages they offered, the lists of members in Iraq, the insecure attitude about their membership, the rifts among leaders and factions."

Like newly arrived fighters in Iraq today, recruits in the 1990s filled out applications that were kept in meticulous rosters. The shaggy, battle-scarred holy warriors of Afghanistan were micromanagers. They scrupulously documented logistical details -- one memo accounts for a mislaid Kalashnikov rifle and 125 rounds of ammunition. They groused and nagged about money.

In a brief letter from the late 1990s, a militant wished Atef "Peace and God's mercy and blessings" and "praise to the Lord and salvation to his prophet." Then he got down to business: "I have not received my salary in three months and I am six months behind in paying my rent. You also told me to remind you, and this is a reminder."

A stern Egyptian bean-counter set the austere policies. Mustafa Ahmed Al Yahzid, a 52-year-old trained as an accountant, ran the network's finance committee between 1995 and 2007, said Rohan Gunaratna, author of "Inside Al Qaeda."

"He is known as being a very stringent administrator, who keeps tight control of Al Qaeda's finances," Gunaratna said.

Committees and titles proliferated. And for years, schisms pitted Bin Laden's inner circle against factions who saw him as a chaotic commander prone to military miscalculation. They also faulted him and his deputies for disdain toward non-Arabs, a persistent point of conflict, according to the West Point study.

Dissent was loud. Two influential Syrians scolded Bin Laden "like a disobedient child" in an e-mail in 1999, the study says. They urged him to end tensions with Mullah Omar, the Taliban chief.

"I think our brother [Bin Laden] has caught the disease of screens, flashes, fans and applause," the Syrians wrote. "You should apologize for any inconvenience or pressure you have caused."

The documents also suggest a vexing struggle to retain operational control in recent years. Iraq is the best example. The rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq under Abu Musab Zarqawi attracted new fighters and funds. But the fiery Jordanian had kept his distance even when he ran his own Afghan training camp. As he gained the spotlight in Iraq, he feuded with the core leadership in Pakistan, who worried that his onslaught of bombings and beheadings would backfire.

Their efforts to rein in Zarqawi are documented by a letter from a Libyan chief known only as Atiyah. U.S. troops found the 13-page letter in the safe house where an airstrike killed Zarqawi in 2006. Atiyah sounds like a sage veteran alternately chiding and praising a rookie hothead as he urges Zarqawi to mend fences with Bin Laden and refrain from indiscriminate violence.

"My dear brother, today you are a man of the public," Atiyah wrote from Pakistan on July 9, 2005. "Your actions, decisions and behavior result in gains and losses that are not yours alone, but rather they are for Islam."

As predicted, Zarqawi's rampage had weakened Al Qaeda in Iraq by the time he died. In the aftermath, the leadership in Pakistan lost a chief who was captured en route to Iraq on a mission to take charge there.

Atiyah's advice describing the fall of Algerian Islamic movements a decade ago remains relevant, experts said. "They destroyed themselves with their own hands," Atiyah wrote to Zarqawi. "Their enemy did not defeat them, but rather they defeated themselves."

[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.]