In this bulletin:

• U.S.: Intelligence Chief Assesses Security Threats From Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan
• Gov't insists it controls Afghanistan
• 29 militants killed in south Afghanistan
• Al-Qaeda Deputy Vows to Avenge Death of Afghanistan Commander
• Slovak minister in running for UN Afghan envoy post
• MacKay optimistic about extra NATO troops for Kandahar
• Prince Harry fighting Taliban
• Taliban will target Canadians if they sense political weakness
• Most Pakistani refugees return home
• UNHCR to resume Afghan refugees repatriation from Pakistan from March 1
• Breath of Fresh Air for Lashkar Gah
• Helmand Ex-Governor Joins Karzai Blame Game

U.S.: Intelligence Chief Assesses Security Threats From Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, February 28, 2008

It has been more than six years since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and help establish a stable central government.

During that time, international forces have been working under a UN mandate to help expand the authority of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government beyond the capital of Kabul.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell now says Karzai's government has control over only about 30 percent of the country, while the Taliban controls about 10 percent of Afghan territory.

McConnell told the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee on February 27 that the remainder of Afghanistan is mostly under local tribal control -- a reference to factional leaders and regional power brokers who have maintained their own private militia forces.

Some media that covered McConnell's testimony paraphrased his remarks in a way that suggests that 70 percent of Afghan territory remains beyond the control of Karzai's government.

But Sebghatullah Sanjar, a policy adviser for Karzai, tells RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that those reports are irresponsible because they fail to recognize that many local tribal leaders and commanders support and cooperate with Karzai's central government.

"The state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, in accordance with the laws of the country, has complete sovereignty throughout Afghanistan with the exception of two or three districts in southern Afghanistan where we have security problems," Sanjar says.

"The commanders in Afghanistan -- be it at district level or higher and in the furthest provinces and districts [from Kabul] -- completely respect the rule of law and abide by Afghan laws," he continues. "They obey governors, district chiefs, and all those who are appointed by the state of Afghanistan and are responsible for tending to the daily affairs of the state of Afghanistan in villages and districts."

McConnell's report to the Senate says that although international forces and the Afghan National Army continue to score tactical victories over the Taliban, the security situation deteriorated in some parts of the south during the past year -- with Taliban forces also expanding their operations into previously peaceful areas of western Afghanistan and near Kabul.

It says that the death or capture of three senior Taliban leaders last year -- the Taliban's first high-level losses -- does not yet appear to have significantly disrupted Taliban operations.

McConnell's report concludes that Kabul must work closely with the Afghan parliament -- as well as provincial and tribal leaders -- to establish and extend the capacity of the central government. It also says that although the buildup of the Afghan National Police and the judicial system has improved in the past year, the police and court system remains constrained in its ability to deploy programs at the provincial and local levels.

It also says Afghanistan faces a chronic shortage of resources and of qualified and motivated government officials at both the national and local level.

A large part of McConnell's security assessment focused on the threat of nuclear proliferation or the possibility that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of terrorist organizations.

It says Pakistan's political crisis does not appear to have seriously threatened the security and control that Pakistan's army has over Islamabad's nuclear arsenal. But it says there are some vulnerabilities.

Meanwhile, several pages of the 45-page report focus on concerns about Iran's nuclear intentions.

Expanding on a U.S. intelligence report last year that said Tehran appeared to have halted design work on nuclear weapons in 2003, McConnell said the latest intelligence suggests Tehran may have restarted work on nuclear weapons since mid-2007.

More importantly, McConnell stressed in his testimony that Iran has continued to work in two areas related to producing nuclear weapons -- the enrichment of uranium into weapons-grade material and the development of long-range, ballistic-missile systems capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

McConnell concluded that Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon as soon as late 2009 -- though he said it is "very unlikely" that Iran could succeed so soon. More likely, he said, Iran probably will be technically capable of producing enough enriched uranium for a weapon sometime between 2010 and 2015 -- though it could take longer.

(RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan contributed to this report from Kabul and Prague.)

Gov't insists it controls Afghanistan

By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press, February 28, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's Defense Ministry on Thursday denied an assertion by the top U.S. intelligence official that only 30 percent of the country is under the control of President Hamid Karzai's government.

Michael McConnell, the U.S. National Intelligence Director, told a Senate committee in Washington on Wednesday that Afghanistan's central government controls just 30 percent of the country. The Taliban controls about 10 percent and local tribes control the rest, he said.

"This is far from the facts and we completely deny it," the Afghan Defense Ministry said in a statement. "All Afghan people know that in the 34 provinces of Afghanistan and in more than 360 districts ... the government has control," the statement said.

The Defense Ministry has previously said that several districts in the southern province of Helmand are not controlled by the government. Afghanistan has about 365 districts.

In one example of the Taliban's sway in outlying areas, militants in February 2007 overran the town of Musa Qala and held it until December, when U.S., British and Afghan forces took back the Helmand province town. But the militants used that year to their advantage, processing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of opium poppies in dozens of heroin labs.

U.S. plans to install a new turbine in a hydroelectric damn in nearby Kajaki have been waylaid for months by militant violence. And the Kabul-Kandahar highway, the country's main north-south conduit, can no longer be traveled by Westerners. Afghan truck drivers hire security to travel the road but still suffer frequent attacks.

Last year was Afghanistan's bloodiest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, and analysts have warned that the Taliban's resurgence is threatening to turn the international effort here into a failure.

In diplomatic circles, Karzai is sometimes referred to as the "Mayor of Kabul," a reference to his control of the capital but weak authority in remote areas of the country.

Afghanistan's hundreds of tribes tend to provide their own security through militias. They also administer justice and solve problems using traditional methods, such as large council gatherings known as shuras.

"For a long time we know that tribal leaders were effective in ensuring security in their areas, and because of that we will give them opportunities and encourage them to provide security in their areas," said Asif Nang, a spokesman for the minister of state for parliamentary affairs. "But this does not mean that the government is not present."

Many of the tribes tend to be allied with the government but remain staunchly independent. Securing tribal loyalties is an important element of enabling the government to conduct work in certain areas of the country.

Recognizing that fact, the U.S. military has organized a number of gatherings with tribal elders. The approach, coupled with millions in aid and reconstruction projects, is part of the ongoing international effort to prop up the central government and create a police and army respected nationwide.

29 militants killed in south Afghanistan

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press, February 28, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Militants ambushed an opium poppy eradication force in southern Afghanistan, sparking clashes that left 25 Taliban fighters and a policeman dead, police said Thursday. Four other militants died when a bomb went off.

Insurgents ambushed the drug eradication force Wednesday in Marja district of Helmand province, killing one police officer and wounding two, said Gen. Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, the provincial police chief.

Police attacked the militants afterward, killing 25 Taliban fighters, including a senior regional militant commander, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Helmand, a front line between militants and foreign forces, is the world's largest opium-producing region. Officials estimate that up to 40 percent of proceeds from Afghanistan's drug trade — an amount worth tens of millions of dollars — is used to fund the insurgency.

Separately, four militants died and another was wounded Thursday when the roadside bomb they were planting on a main road in Helmand exploded prematurely, Andiwal said. Militants regularly target Afghan and foreign troops with roadside bombs, though many civilians are killed by the blasts.

Last year was the deadliest in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 6,500 people — mostly militants — were killed in violence linked to the insurgency, according to an Associated Press count.

The top U.S. intelligence official told a Senate committee in Washington on Wednesday that President Hamid Karzai's government controls just 30 percent of the country.

The resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country, while local tribes control the rest, National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell said.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry rejected McConnell's assessment, insisting the government controls the vast majority of the country. "This is far from the facts and we completely deny it," the Defense Ministry said regarding McConnell's testimony.

"All Afghan people know that in the 34 provinces of Afghanistan and in more than 360 districts ... the government has control," the statement said.

The Defense Ministry has previously said that several districts in Helmand are not controlled by the government. Afghanistan has about 365 districts.

In international diplomatic circles, Karzai is sometimes referred to as the "Mayor of Kabul," a reference to his control of the capital but weak authority in remote areas of the country.

Afghanistan's hundreds of tribes are an important element of the country's social fabric. Tribes tend to provide their own security through militias and administer justice and solve problems using traditional methods, such as large gatherings known as shuras.

"For a long time we know that tribal leaders were effective in ensuring security in their areas, and because of that we will give them opportunities and encourage them to provide security in their areas," said Asif Nang, a spokesman for the minister of state for parliamentary affairs. "But this does not mean that the government is not present."

Many of the tribes tend to be allied with the government but remain staunchly independent in running their affairs. Securing tribal loyalties is an important element of enabling the government to conduct work in certain areas of the country.

Recognizing that fact, the U.S. military has organized a number of gatherings with tribal elders. The approach, coupled with millions in aid and reconstruction projects, is part of the ongoing international effort to prop up the central government and create a police and army respected nationwide.

Al-Qaeda Deputy Vows to Avenge Death of Afghanistan Commander

By Ed Johnson - Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Qaeda deputy commander Ayman al- Zawahiri vowed to avenge the death of a commander fighting NATO- led forces in Afghanistan, according to a U.S.-based group that monitors extremist Web sites.

Zawahiri made the threat in a videotaped eulogy to Abu Laith al-Libi, who was killed in Pakistan's tribal region last month, according to a transcript e-mailed today by IntelCenter.

``No chief of ours has died a natural death. Nor has our blood been spilled without a response,'' Zawahiri said in the 10-minute recording released yesterday by al-Qaeda's media production group, as-Sahab.

Al-Libi was a senior leader in Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. The U.S. military has said he helped organize the Feb. 27, 2007, bombing of an American air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, which killed 23 people. Vice President Dick Cheney, who was visiting, escaped uninjured.

Al-Libi was responsible for setting up al-Qaeda training camps in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, Xenia Dormandy, a former White House and State Department official now at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in an interview last month.

He may have been killed in an attack by an unmanned U.S. aircraft on a site in Pakistan, Dormandy said.

Al-Libi ``made the Americans drink draughts of death,'' said Zawahiri, according to IntelCenter. He tore Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's ``hunting dogs apart limb by limb in his ambushes and raids.''

The company, based in Alexandria, Virginia, provides counterterrorism intelligence support to the U.S., British, Australian and Canadian armed forces.

Zawahiri, an Egyptian-born cleric, makes frequent video and audio addresses for al-Qaeda. He said in a videotape released in September the U.S. is being defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A month earlier, he called on Pakistani Muslims to attack Musharraf to avenge an army assault on pro-Taliban clerics in the capital, Islamabad.

The U.S. says al-Qaeda has established bases in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan and funds Islamic militant groups waging a guerrilla war against President Hamid Karzai's government.

Slovak minister in running for UN Afghan envoy post

Agence France-Presse, 28 February 2008

Slovak foreign minister Jan Kubis is among the candidates to become the

special UN envoy to coordinate operations in Afghanistan, Slovak daily

Pravda reported on Thursday.

"Kubis is in play to become the UN's special envoy to Afghanistan," the

paper reported, citing two unnamed sources in NATO and at the UN.

Slovak ministry of foreign affairs spokesman Jan Skoda told AFP he would

not comment on the report.

Kubis, a former secretary general of the Organisation for Security and

Cooperation in Europe, faces competition for the post from candidates from

Canada, the Netherlands and Norway, the paper added.

The European Union recently called for early agreement on a special UN

envoy to coordinate operations in Afghanistan after Kabul rejected British

candidate Paddy Ashdown.

European foreign affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said this

month that a number of names had been advanced to fill the post but refused

to elaborate.

MacKay optimistic about extra NATO troops for Kandahar

Defence Minister rejects reports French unlikely to join Canadians in south; won't name other countries which might send contingent

STEVEN CHASE - From Thursday's Globe and Mail February 28, 2008

OTTAWA — Defence Minister Peter MacKay says there is "reason for optimism" that Canada will get the extra 1,000 NATO troops and equipment it's demanded as a condition of staying in Afghanistan.

He dismissed news reports from France that suggest French President Nicolas Sarkozy is leaning against sending troops to join Canadians in the deadly south of Afghanistan.

Mr. MacKay told an Ottawa news briefing yesterday that he's hopeful as he prepares for an early April meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization members in Romania.

He declined to earmark which countries might provide troops although it's widely expected the United States will act as a backstop if other countries don't offer sufficient aid.

"Heading into Bucharest for the upcoming NATO meeting, I think that there is reason for optimism," Mr. MacKay said. "But I am not going to state specifically where and when those troops will [arrive]."

Canada has warned it will not renew its deployment past 2009 unless other NATO allies come up with 1,000 troops to support its operation in Kandahar. Ottawa has approached France, with nearly 2,000 soldiers around Kabul, as a possible partner.

This week the French newspaper Le Monde and other news outlets reported that Mr. Sarkozy is mulling committing troops to fight insurgents in east Afghanistan instead.

But Mr. MacKay dismissed reports that France is looking to send troops elsewhere, saying he doesn't believe Mr. Sarkozy has already decided to reject Canada's request.

"My opinion is that this isn't the fact," he said. "I am sure [Mr. Sarkozy] takes this request quite seriously.

"It was purely speculation that was in Le Monde. ... It has not been communicated to us, which I expect it would be if they had taken a decision."

The handful of NATO countries that are directly fighting the Taliban insurgency in the south, including Canada, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands, have encountered stiff Taliban resistance, with Canada suffering the highest casualty rate, and have been imploring other NATO countries for assistance.

Mr. Sarkozy's eastern plan, if he adopts it, could still aid the Canadians. According to French news reports, his staff is discussing a plan whereby perhaps 1,000 French troops would go to eastern Afghanistan to replace U.S. forces there, who in turn would be moved to Kandahar to fight alongside the Canadians.

Mr. MacKay said he expects the opposition Liberals will accept the fact that Canadian troops will still find themselves in combat after 2009, the mission's original end date, if the deployment is extended to July of 2011, as the Tories are proposing.

The Liberals have yet to say whether they will support a Tory Commons motion to extend the mission, but Leader Stéphane Dion has said he wants other NATO countries to assume the lead and leave Canadians to reconstruction, security and training.

"I think there is a general acceptance by the Liberal Party, certainly an understanding on our part, that these operations ... often do involve combat, that [they] involve engaging in fighting with the Taliban when the Taliban confront them," Mr. MacKay said.

Prince Harry fighting Taliban

Reuters and Associated Press February 28, 2008

Prince Harry has been serving on the front line in Afghanistan with the British Army, calling in air strikes on Taliban positions and going out on foot patrols, the Ministry of Defence announced Thursday.

Officials said the prince, a lieutenant in the Blues and Royals regiment, was still deployed in the country.

"His conduct on operations in Afghanistan has been exemplary," said the head of the army, General Richard Dannatt. "He has been fully involved in operations and has run the same risks as everyone else in his battle group."

Prince Harry, who is third in line to the throne, has been in Afghanistan since December.

In this image made available in London, Thursday, Britain's Prince Harry patrols through the deserted town of Garmisir, Afghanistan, close to Forward Operating Base Delhi, on Jan. 2. Prince Harry has been serving on the front line in Afghanistan with the British Army, according to an announcement by Britain's Ministry of Defence. The Prince, who is third in line to the throne, and is still deployed in the country, has been in Afghanistan since December. The deployment was not reported due to an agreement between the Ministry of Defense and news organizations, including The Associated Press. The story was leaked by an Australian magazine and a German newspaper. (John Stillwell/AP)

The planned deployment had been disclosed to reporters, with no specific date, and was not reported previously under a pool agreement between the Ministry of Defence and all major news organizations operating in Britain. The news blackout was intended to reduce the risk to the prince and his regiment.

The news embargo was broken, however, after reports of the prince's deployment were leaked by an Australian magazine and a German newspaper, and then reported on a U.S. website, the Drudge Report. Gen. Dannatt, the military commander, said he was "very disappointed" that the story had leaked.

Prince Harry, 23, has been deployed in the restive Helmand province for 10 weeks, where most of the 7,800 British troops in Afghanistan are based, according to the military's statement.

In a recorded interview, Prince Harry said he was happy to be standing shoulder-to- shoulder with his colleagues.

"It's nice just to be here with all the guys and just mucking in as one of the lads," said Prince Harry, who had expressed bitter disappointment when he was banned from going to Iraq with his battalion last year. Army chiefs said publicity surrounding his deployment could put him and his unit at risk.

Pooled video footage of Prince Harry in Afghanistan showed the prince dressed in camouflage fatigues patrolling arid and dusty terrain and firing a machine gun.

Prince Harry graduated from Sandhurst military academy in 2006 and trained as a tank commander. After the decision not to send him to Iraq, he retrained as a battlefield air controller, the job he has been filling in Afghanistan.

Taliban will target Canadians if they sense political weakness

CHRISTE BLATCHFORD February 25, 2008

The last time I was in Kandahar, last fall, I had a few calls from one of The Globe and Mail's fixers, the man whose particular job it is to make contacts with local elders and the Taliban and to report back to the journalist in the field. These conversations were all pretty much of a piece.

I was then out in the middle of nowhere with the Canadian soldiers then just newly in theatre -- the Van Doos, or Royal 22nd Regiment, from Valcartier, Que. The fixer was somewhere else. The cell service was sketchy, the fixer's English rudimentary but infinitely better than my Pashto.

I should say that unlike other Globe correspondents, who sometimes bravely cover the war in Afghanistan as unembedded reporters, or free agents, I spend most of my time embedded with Canadian troops, am able to write what I see or hear with my own ears and eyes, and don't have to rely on our fixers for very much except the occasional ride into the city.

Anyway, as I recall, this fellow initiated every call, and would begin always by doing what I took to be establishing his bona fides: He would mention a cousin or friend of his who was either in village A or who had a cousin or friend in village A, and who was thus allegedly in a position to know what was happening there. Then he would give me the news, such as it was.

But one day, he volunteered that his Taliban contacts were talking about this new group of Canadian soldiers, that they were French-speaking, and that they'd noted their purported unwillingness to go out of their forward operating bases or to fight. He actually chuckled, making me wish I could smack him, as he delivered this last bit.

I was stunned, to be honest - not because I believed what he said was true or had seen any evidence of it, not because I relied on his information or used it, but because he or his informants were sophisticated enough not only to be aware of the recent shift in Canadian troops but also of nuances in the realpolitik of our country.

I thought of this when I read and saw coverage this weekend of a speech given last Friday by the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier.

I wasn't there when he spoke and haven't been able to find a complete transcript of his remarks, but from all I've found there was nothing remotely controversial in what he had to say.

Contrary to some reports, Gen. Hillier didn't push MPs to extend the mission so much as he strongly urged them to give soldiers "clarity of purpose" (in other words, give them clear marching orders and do it as quickly as possible) and to suggest that if MPs are, as it now appears, going to extend the mission (past the now-artificial deadline of 2009 to a new artificial deadline of 2011), to do so with one firm voice.

Part of Gen. Hillier's rationale, perfectly within his mandate as the head of the Canadian Forces and his duty to speak for his soldiers, was that young troops deserve to know what it is their Parliament is asking of them.

The other part was that with the fate of the mission uncertain, "we are, in the eyes of the Taliban, in a window of extreme vulnerability. And the longer we go without that clarity, with the issue in doubt, the more the Taliban will target us as a perceived weak link," he said.

Well, if the Ottawa press corps didn't directly pronounce the very idea preposterous, (though I thought some of the all-knowing smiles and body language of the TV reporters hinted at that), it was implicit in story lines suggesting the speech had "raised eyebrows" or that the general had somehow "crossed a line."

Certainly, NDP defence critic Dawn Black's reaction, that it was "beyond belief" for the CDS to even suggest that recent suicide bombings could be linked to the Canadian debate, was widely repeated. That is hardly a shocker: Ms. Black has been to Kandahar all of once, on one of those VIP-type quickie visits that are largely confined to the big base at Kandahar Air Field and environs, and the lead item on her website is a "Peace Advocacy" page. Those eyebrows are easily raised.

Truth is, it is quite believable that the Taliban would target Canadians if they sense that it is a useful time to inflict casualties.

Afghanistan may be a country reduced to rubble by decades of war and invasion, its infrastructure in tatters, its people mostly illiterate, but that doesn't translate to a primitive enemy, as my instructive chat with the fixer reminded me. A senior Canadian commander once described Afghanistan as "Babylon with cellphones," and it remains the best description I've heard, precisely because it incorporates both the roughness of the place and the clever, self-sufficient adaptability of the people.

If only because Afghans have been fighting for so long on their own turf - in recent history against the invading former Soviet Union, against one another - they are singularly good at it. It is no happy accident that virtually everything in that bloody country, whatever else its function, is also purpose-built for fighting.

Where a decade ago the word Taliban meant the group of religious zealots who controlled the country for a few exceptionally brutal years, the word now is shorthand for a veritable soup of fighters - the young and impoverished, drawn in by money, boredom or intimidation; those affiliated with tribal bosses or drug lords who share only the Taliban's goal of instability; foreign fighters from Pakistan and elsewhere, and old-school ideologues. But the one sure thing is that they are a smart and informed fighting force, as capable of recognizing political weakness in NATO home countries as they are a military one in the field.

There was nothing in Gen. Hillier's remarks to suggest that there should not be a debate about Afghanistan. And Lord thundering Jesus, as they say in Gen. Hillier's native province, there has been nothing but debate in this country since our soldiers first went to Kandahar. With every Canadian soldier's death, there is debate; with every Senlis Council report, there is debate; with every public opinion poll, there is debate.

Nor was there anything in his remarks to suggest that Parliament's authority ought to be usurped, or undermined. Gen. Hillier said that Parliament's servants, the soldiers, await Parliament's direction. He merely asked that the direction be clear, cogent and given swiftly.

Most Pakistani refugees return home

KHOST, 28 February 2008 (IRIN) - Most of the Pakistani families that had fled sectarian violence in Pakistan by seeking refuge across the border in southeastern Afghanistan earlier this year have returned to their homeland.

Listen to radio report in Pashto

"When peace is restored, we too will return," said Khan Malik, who along with 16 other family members arrived two months ago from the village of Bakzai across the border in Kurram Agency, in Pakistan's increasingly volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas. He is currently in Afghanistan's Khost Province.

"There is a peace agreement, but it's not clear whether it will hold," the 30-year-old said, referring to ongoing clashes between Shia and Sunni extremists just weeks earlier.

Most of the nearly 5,000 Pakistanis that had initially sought refuge in Afghanistan in early January have since returned. "Of the old caseload of Pakistanis, the vast majority have since returned," Nadir Farhad, information officer for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Kabul, told IRIN on 27 February.

His comments come after an Associated Press report on 19 February said the number of Pakistanis who had fled had risen in recent weeks to about 10,000.

"That was really a response to some of the turmoil that was taking place inside Pakistan and the people there understood that their lives potentially could be better if they were in Afghanistan," US army Col Jeffery Johnson was quoted as saying.

But according to the UNHCR that does not appear to be the case: "The UNHCR is not aware of any new arrivals," Farhad said. Over 100 families still in Paktia Province

According to local authorities on the ground, of the 593 families that had arrived in southeastern Paktia Province, just 125 now remained - in the districts of Jaji and Dand-e-Patan - while in neighbouring Khost Province, of the 201 families there, just one was left.

Pakistan, particularly the country's North West Frontier Province, has been struck by a wave of militant activity against the government and security forces over the past year, and it was a recent outbreak of sectarian violence that prompted many families to flee across the border.

Most of the refugees were ethnic Pashtoons - elderly people, women and children - who had sought refuge with local people and/or had set up tents, Din Mohammad Darwish, a government spokesman in Paktia, told IRIN at the time.

The government of Afghanistan and its people generously responded to the Pakistani families that fled sectarian violence in early January, Farhad said.

The UNHCR, in conjunction with the government and other UN agencies, responded by providing food and non-food related relief items, he added.

Millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan after the December 1979 Soviet invasion, where they lived as refugees for decades - a fact duly acknowledged by the Afghan government.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on provincial authorities to repay the hospitality they had received by providing the families with relief supplies.

According to the UNHCR, there are some two million registered Afghans still living in Pakistan today.

UNHCR to resume Afghan refugees repatriation from Pakistan from March 1

KABUL, Feb 28, 2008 (Xinhua) -- The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) would resume the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan from this coming Saturday, a spokesman of the agency in Afghanistan said Thursday.

"The UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation of registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan would be resumed from Pakistan on March 1st, 2008," the UNHCR spokesman, Nadir Farhad, told Xinhua.

From the first of March, the first batch of registered refugees would be repatriated to their home country from Quetta, the provincial capital of Pakistan's Balouchistan province, while the second batch of refugees would be dispatched from Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), he added.

More than 2 million Afghans are still living in Pakistan as refugees, and nearly the same number including 920,000 registered ones are in the neighboring Iran.

"Registered Afghans who choose to voluntarily repatriate with UNHCR assistance during the year can approach the Voluntary Repatriation Centers (VRCs) located in Peshawar and Quetta," the UNHCR spokesman stressed.

Any registered refugee wishing to return homeland with UNHCR assistance will get an average of 100 U.S. dollars per individual as a transport and re-integration grant to help them settle in Afghanistan based on distances to their destination.

Some 5 million Afghan refugees have returned home with over 4 million under UNHCR-assisted voluntary repatriation province since the collapse of Taliban regime six years ago.

Breath of Fresh Air for Lashkar Gah

Despite security concerns, a new park in Helmand is proving a surprising hit, and a PR success for the provincial government.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting, By Mohammad Elyas Dayee in Lashkar Gah (ARR No. 284, 27-Feb-08)

Children laughing, young people milling around, winding paths leading down to a wide river – can this be Helmand? The war-torn southern province is better known for insurgents and poppy than for broad vistas and recreation areas.

But even in winter, the recently-opened Bolan Park is already attracting many visitors. Spread alongside the Helmand river on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, it provides welcome relief from the tension and congestion of the provincial capital.

Abdullah Jan, who lives in nearby Hazarajuft, was sitting with friends and sharing a picnic of fruit and nuts.

“I hadn’t been to this area for ages,” he said. “But when I heard the park was open, and it was so beautiful, I asked a few of my friends to come here with me. I think that however much money they spent on this park, it was worth it.”

The park was begun in March 2007 by the Helping Afghan Farmers’ Organisation, a local non-government group. Funded by the British, the project cost over 700,000 US dollars.

At the time, many Helmandis were upset by so much money being spent on so frivolous a scheme. The location of the park, on the other side of the river from Lashkar Gah, was also cause for concern. This area, Bolan is one of the province’s richest poppy-growing sites - which is saying a lot in Helmand, the world opium capital.

The area has also seen a growing Taleban presence. Many residents of Lashkar Gah do not dare venture into Bolan. But now that the park is open for business, people seem to welcome it.

“I couldn’t believe they had made such a nice park,” said Abdullah Jan. “We thought that because our government is so corrupt, they’d just have poured the money into their own pockets. But they have made a very pretty place here.”

The park contains swings, stone animals for children to climb on, and large grassy areas where people can sit and relax. The paths are well lit on a winter’s evening, a rarity given Helmand’s chronic power shortage. As a park gardener explained, the site has been fitted with solar panels which store up energy to generate light.

Attaullah, a mechanic in Lashkar Gah, was looking everywhere for his four children, who had scattered to other parts of the park.

“I didn’t want to bring my family here,” he said. “There are problems with security. What if there’s a bomb? Then our relatives would get worried and search for us. But my children saw the park on national television and they made me take them.”

Despite his harried expression, this family man was quite positive about the park. “I am very happy that this park was built,” said Attaullah. “I think it might even make people respect the government. Before this, the government never kept any of its promises.”

There are people of all ages in the park, but the majority are men. Many heads of families in this deeply conservative area do not allow their wives and daughters to go out to public places unless absolutely necessary. The unstable security situation also makes it difficult for women to leave their homes.

This is ironic, since the project was billed as a haven for Helmand’s women as it wound its way through the British bureaucracy.

“We knew it would get funding if we called it a ‘women’s park’,” laughed one diplomat. But women are largely absent.

“I love my wife,” said Abasin, a resident of Nawa distrct, who looked like a religious scholar with his big, bushy beard and booming voice. “But I never take her out. What am I supposed to do? My family is religious and my parents don’t allow me to go places with my wife. We have to respect our elders.”

But the girls of Lashkar Gah are trying their best to get to Bolan Park.

“Yesterday I was driving by the park in my father’s car,” said Shahla Sahar, a sixth-grade student in Lashkar Gah. “I asked my father to take me as it looked so nice, but he said no. He told me it wasn’t safe. I hope that one day we will be able to go. The government should maintain security. This is very necessary.”

Nazia Nanzai is another local girl anxious to visit the park. “My father is religious, but I don’t think he will stop us from going to the park if it is secure,” she said.

Fawzia Olumi, director of Helmand’s Department of Women’s Affairs, applauds the park, but fears that most women will be unable to take advantage of it until things improve.

“I do not think that women can go to the park under current conditions,” she told IWPR. “But if security improves, the park will be a great help to the women of Helmand.”

The new park is, however, proving attractive to the local drug users. “I can’t tell you how happy I am about this park,” said Abdul Wadud Bawer, a resident of Lashkar Gah, as he lit up a cigarette full of hashish. He and his friends were passing the joint and speaking animatedly among themselves.

“It used to be that there was no place to meet friends. We never saw each other. Now we thank the government for building this park,” he said. Yet even Wadud said, “I would never allow any members of my family to come here.”

He and his friends attracted the ire of several other park visitors. “This is a place to relax, not to smoke cigarettes and other drugs,” said Taza Gul, who had come over from Pakistan. “The smoke may disturb other people. It should be forbidden here.”

But apart from the wafting smell of hashish, Taza Gul was full of praise for the park.

“I am really happy here,” he said. “I never thought there could be such a nice park in Helmand.”

Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand.

Helmand Ex-Governor Joins Karzai Blame Game

Controversial former official joins chorus of criticism of British presence in Helmand, but some say seeds of violence were laid long before NATO troops arrived.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

By Mohammad Ilyas Dayee in Helmand and Jean MacKenzie and Hafizullah Gardesh in Kabul (ARR No. 284, 26-Feb-08)

“When I was governor of Helmand for four years, NATO did not drop a single bomb on the province,” said Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, the controversial former chief of the troubled southern province. “No civilians were killed, and no districts fell to the Taleban. If I were still there, I am sure things would be the same as before.”

Powerful words indeed, given the sad state of affairs in Helmand, arguably the most volatile of all of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

Yet while technically accurate, the former governor’s statement is also a bit misleading. NATO did not get involved in Helmand until the spring of 2006, months after Sher Mohammad was removed as governor, under pressure from the international community which was concerned at his alleged ties to the drug mafia.

But it does reflect one indisputable fact – in the past two years since Akhundzada’s dismissal, the situation has deteriorated steadily.

“Even a child can see that things are getting worse,” said one young journalist who lives in Lashkar Gah.

Afghan president Hamed Karzai created an international storm last month when he told a group of journalists at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the arrival of the British in Helmand had marked a downturn in the province’s fortunes.

“Before [the British came] we were fully in charge of Helmand,” he said. “They came and said ‘your governor is no good.’ I said, ‘all right, do we have a replacement for this governor? Do you have enough forces? Both the American and British forces guaranteed to me they knew what they were doing and I made the mistake of listening to them. And when they came in, the Taleban came.”

Karzai has since tried to back away from his comments, claiming he was misquoted.

Sher Mohammad Akhundzada was replaced in December 2005. According to media reports, the international diplomatic community called for his removal after nearly ten tons of opium was discovered in his offices. Having a provincial chief deeply implicated in the drug trade would hardly be a great advertisement for the counter-narcotics efforts that were gathering steam at the time.

The loudest voices demanding Sher Mohammad’s ouster belonged to the British, who were scheduled to take over military command of Helmand in May 2006.

“Akhundzada made it his personal crusade to grow as much poppy in the province as possible,” said one British diplomat, speaking to IWPR on condition of anonymity in early 2007.

Sher Mohammad’s “punishment” was to be elevated to the senate or upper house of parliament in Kabul, while his younger brother, Amir Mohammad Akhundzada, was left in Helmand as deputy governor.

The new provincial head, Engineer Daud, quickly lost control. His roots in the area were too shallow. While he had relatives in Helmand, he himself was seen as a Kabul appointment, with his background in international development and the United Nations.

He was also undercut by his powerful deputy, his predecessor’s brother.

The strong backing Engineer Daud received from the British was a two-edged sword. In an area where the British are historically unpopular, he became seen as a creation of the foreigners.

A power vacuum developed almost immediately. The private militia chiefs loyal to Sher Mohammad, who maintained relative security through brutal tactics, now either stayed at home or, worse still, joined the Taleban.

“The mistake was that we removed a local arrangement without having a replacement,” said Karzai in his now-famous Davos comments. “We removed the police force. That was not good. The security forces were not in sufficient numbers or information about the province.”

Meanwhile, the United States-led Coalition Forces, with their strong counter-insurgency mission under Operation Enduring Freedom, were replaced by a British-dominated NATO contingent, which initially announced that it would assume a more defensive peacekeeping role.

The insurgents lost no time in capitalising on the situation. At present, the Taleban control much of Helmand.

Daud himself lasted barely twelve months. He was removed in December 2006.

Sher Mohammad Akhundzada has said that he largely agrees with Karzai’s assessment of the British efforts, and is not shy about claiming the credit for the comparative stability in the province during his tenure.

“The people of Helmand supported me and cooperated with me,” he told IWPR. “My father and grandfather had governed there. People did not allow the Taleban to gain a foothold.”

He places the blame for current problems on both the international forces and the Afghan administration.

“The local officials and NATO must cooperate. This is of vital importance,” he said. “I am sorry that their connection is so weak. The situation is unstable because they have not managed to build a strong relationship.”

Down in Helmand, people seem to agree with him.

“Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhund[zada] was one of the really active governors,” said Abdul Khaliq, a prominent tribal elder in Helmand. “If he were here then Barancha - a remote district of this province - would never have fallen under Taleban control.”

Abdul Khaliq compared Akhundzada’s successors to him unfavourably, saying, “Anyone who wants to govern here needs to be unafraid. He cannot be encircled by fences and sandbags. That’s impossible.”

The present governor, Assadullah Wafa, is often walled up in his compound, with armed guards and barbed wire protecting him.

These security measures are quite justified. The previous governor, Daud, suffered a serious attempt on his life in December 2006, when a suicide bomber killed eight people and injured seven others outside his office. In January 2008, another suicide attack in a mosque on the governor’s compound killed the deputy governor, Pir Mohammad, along with six others.

Abdul Satar Mozahari has been the provincial director of refugee affairs since Sher Mohammad’s time. According to Mozahari, it was a golden era.

“Everything was safe during that period,” he told IWPR. “Abdul Rahman Jan [then chief of police] was able to walk alone through Garmseer at that time. Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhund would go to Dishu district with just two vehicles.”

Garmseer and Dishu, in Helmand’s south, are two of the most unstable areas of the province today.

“[Akhundzada] was a religious scholar,” continued Mozahari. “He understood religious matters well. Thousands of Taleban fighters surrendered to him. I am confident that if Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhundzada came back, there would be no need for foreign troops in Helmand province at all. Then we wouldn’t have bombings, and civilians wouldn’t be killed.”

Hajji Muhammad Aka, a resident of Chanjir in Nad Ali district, also longs for the old days.

“Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhundzada was a known personality of his tribe,” he told IWPR. “He would be able to bring security to the province the way he did before. The commanders who were with him then have all joined the Taleban. He knows them all and he could approach them. They would then abandon the Taleban and either join the government or stay at home. Security would improve.”

The lines between Taleban and the government are a bit fluid in Helmand. The present governor of Musa Qala, the Helmand district recently retaken from the insurgents after close to a year under their rule, is a former Taleban commander. So is his de facto chief of police.

But Sher Mohammad has his share of detractors in the province, who remember the behaviour of militia commanders associated with him.

“I would not want Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhund to be governor of Helmand,” said Taza Gul, a resident of Lashkar Gah. “I didn’t like him then, and I don’t now. He did not pay any attention to reconstruction or security when he was governor. He had aggressive and independent commanders who did whatever they wanted. They killed and terrorised people. Where there is tyranny, you cannot have anything good.

“I agree that there is no security in Helmand now. But there has been a lot of work on reconstruction. [Current governor] Wafa is a nice man, and I think he is a good governor.”

Ghulam Ghaws Dawari, general director of the Helmand Olympic Committee, also defends the present administration.

“Yes, it is true that the situation in Helmand was satisfactory a few years ago,” he said. “But now, even though there is insecurity, there have been some remarkable developments. I would not say that Sher Mohammad Akhund’s era was better than now.”

Among the achievements of the present regional government, Dawari listed reconstruction projects and police training, work that has been sponsored and funded by the British-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT.

Mohammad Hossein, who fled embattled Musa Qala for the calmer Nad Ali district, said that that if the ex-governor were to return it would make matters worse.

“Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhundzada was always a cause of tribal disputes,” he said. “During his time, his men abused their government positions and did a lot of damage. They lit a fire that nobody can put out now.”

Tribal tensions run deep in Helmand, and the present administration has been less than adept at easing them, according to Mirwais Patsoon, who runs one of Helmand’s two independent radio stations and heads the Helmand Journalists’ Independent Association.

“Tribal issues are the most important for people in this region,” he told IWPR. “The tribes help those who represent them - they know who is their enemy and who is their friend.”

At the moment, he said, “Helmand is not being governed by its own people. If Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhund comes back to Helmand and is helped by the central government, I think the situation will change.”

Sher Mohammad belongs to the powerful Alizai tribe, which controls much of northern Helmand. Other major groups in the province include the Barakzai and Ishakzai, all of which have numerous sub-groups that often war with one another. Negotiating these waters can be treacherous and calls for someone with a thorough knowledge of the hidden dangers.

The overall situation is not eased by the current tensions between the British and the central government. As most observers predict, Helmand and the rest of the country can only lose from confrontation.

“The media have reported Karzai’s statement criticising the British for the destabilisation in Helmand,” said political analyst Ahmad Sayedi. “This upsets the British, and makes other NATO countries mistrust Afghanistan. British forces have suffered casualties and mothers have lost their sons. Other countries now think that even if they work as hard as possible for Afghanistan, they will still get blamed one day. So these disagreements must be resolved as soon as possible.”

In addition to Karzai’s backpedalling, his press office has been at pains to downplay the Davos gaffe.

“[The president’s] remarks were not published in their entirety,” said presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada. “The president was not talking about only one country. He spoke in general, saying that we and the international community made mistakes in the past, jointly, but that now things are improving.”

Observers are not convinced.

“Britain accuses Karzai of being unsuccessful over the past six years,” said political analyst Fazel Rahman Oria. “The Taleban are resurgent, drug cultivation has increased, and corruption is at an all-time high. Karzai feels himself in a perilous position, so he is beginning to attack Britain.”

Oria does not agree that the British are to blame for the situation in Helmand province, placing the responsibility closer to home.

“Helmand has been a drug centre since earlier times – and the governor and other officials were involved. The situation in Kandahar and Uruzgan has also deteriorated. The British are not to blame. The government is.”

However, Habibullah Rafi, a member of Afghanistan’s Academy of Sciences and a prominent analyst, told IWPR that the only problem with Karzai’s criticism is that it came too late. He recalled the historical enmity between Britain and Afghanistan, which looms much larger in the Afghan memory than in that of most British. In fact, many Afghans are of the opinion that the British are still hungry for revenge for past defeats.

The British fought three bitterly contested wars with Afghanistan in the 19th and early 20th centuries, gaining little and losing thousands of troops in the process.

“The British are hostile people; they are trying to take revenge on Afghanistan for their previous casualties,” said Rafi.

A major bone of contention between the government and the British is Musa Qala, the district in northern Helmand that was the subject of a hotly-disputed truce with the Taleban. There has been much dispute over who negotiated the agreement, but in October 2006, the British withdrew, thereby opening the door to the Taleban takeover.

In December, 2007, the British and the Afghan National Army mounted an operation to clear the Taleban out of Musa Qala. Now the government is back in control – albeit of the town rather than the whole of the surrounding district centre – but no one can tell how long it will last.

“It took us a year and a half to take back Musa Qala,” said Karzai in Davos. “This was not a failure but a mistake.”

Akhundzada agrees. “From the very beginning I did not agree with that truce,” he said. “Nor am I very optimistic right now. I told both the government and NATO that it was a mistake, that it was a poisoned chalice. But they drank it.”

Mohammad Ilyas Dayee is an IWPR staff reporter in Helmand. Jean MacKenzie is IWPR’s Programme Director for Afghanistan. Hafizullah Gardesh is IWPR’s local editor in Kabul.

The Long Haul in Afghanistan

The New York Times, 02/28/2008 By Roger Cohen

A whole post-cold-war European generation has grown up in peace, give or take “some Balkan horror on television,” which makes it hard to explain that “it’s a political and moral imperative to fight for our core values in the Hindu Kush.”

The words are those of Jaap de Hoop Scheffer of the Netherlands, the NATO secretary general. As he utters them, he leans forward, insisting that he doesn’t think “Europe is becoming pacifist.” But Afghanistan is testing European military resolve. It’s the long war. It’s Europe’s Iraq.

Just back from Afghanistan, where NATO now has some 50,000 troops deployed, de Hoop Scheffer tells me it will be four to five years before international forces can pull back, taking a limited role in support of the emergent Afghan National Army.

“A window of four to five years from now is an interesting window to watch in terms of reaching a situation where our forces are in the background,” he says. That takes us to 2013 or thereabouts. I wonder if a Europe more energized by carbon footprints than military footholds has the stomach for that.

Robert Gates, the U.S. defense secretary, has not concealed his concern over European commitment to the better war — better than Iraq, that is.

He’s had the honesty to say Iraq dampened European zeal to fight in Afghanistan. He’s pleaded for more troops and matériel. He’s warned that the alliance risks going “two-tiered,” with “some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security and others who are not.”

De Hoop Scheffer is categorical: “I am not overseeing a two-tier alliance.” Then he pulls back — “NATO is not monolithic.” Among the 26 members there are varying “caveats.” For that Latinism read limitations — set by the German, Spanish, Italian and other governments — on when, why and where soldiers will fight and die rather than do the soft-power, school-building, Euro thing.

“As secretary general, I will always advocate zero caveats and if zero is not achievable, I will fight for the least possible,” he tells me. “But I have to be realistic. If I must choose between forces with caveats or no forces at all, my choice is easily made.”

That’s understandable: 3,200 German troops in the quiet north are better than none. But as I’ve said before, it’s time for some Bundesmacht, or German war-fighting commitment.

Hauling Afghanistan from the Middle Ages and the Taliban’s vestigial clutches will involve every lever of power — economic, social, diplomatic and military. The last of these is not the least. If solidarity dissolves at the point of danger, the war’s lost.

Already, Canada, which does front-line stuff in the Afghan south, speaks of withdrawing its 2,500 troops if European allies don’t do more. The United States just committed 3,200 additional marines. No better front exists for President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to demonstrate his increased alliance commitment. He should dispatch more French troops.

“We are missing 10 percent of the military requirement we have set ourselves,” de Hoop Scheffer says. The shortfall includes close to two dozen training teams for the Afghan Army. “I am not happy until I get what we need. I want 100 percent.”

But if NATO gives more, so should President Hamid Karzai. “He can do better in fighting corruption and seeing that noncorrupt police chiefs are appointed,” de Hoop Scheffer says.

In one measure of the political disarray, Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been getting daily calls from Afghan politicians urging him to run for president next year. He says he won’t. Still, the impression is widespread that Karzai’s office resembles a tea house.

Karzai blames Pakistan for the Taliban’s resurgence. He’s not wrong. U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan has been all over the place. De Hoop Scheffer says: “NATO must enter into a serious dialogue with a new Pakistani government soon because those destabilizing Pakistan are the same as those destabilizing Afghanistan.”

I see Europeans yawning. Can Waziristan really be a threat to the West? O.K., the frontier regions are where Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Al Qaeda leaders are said to be hiding, but they’re isolated. As for the Madrid and London bombings, bad stuff happens. Always did, always will.

Such insouciance is an alliance failure. NATO has failed to prove its relevance to a post-modern European generation. NATO needs re-branding. It needs to be more hip in getting across where a precious peace came from.

I’d start with an ad campaign in which Poles or Slovaks enthuse about locking in security and freedom through NATO membership. Ask the Macedonians, Albanians and Croats why they’re banging on NATO’s door. Ukraine and Georgia should also be welcomed one day: Let the Russians, who once subjugated them, bleat.

Kabul is an unlikely Berlin, but as pivotal.

Afghan police shut down dozens of snooker clubs

AFP, 02/28/2008 - KABUL - Police closed down dozens of snooker clubs in the Afghan capital, alleging the entertainment venues were being used by men involved in petty crimes, chiefly gambling, a city police chief said yesterday.

More than 200 people, including teenagers, were also picked up from the clubs in the city-wide raids yesterday but most already had been bailed out by their families, Kabul police chief General Mohamed Salim Ahsas said.

We closed about 70 clubs and detained about 200 people, most of them bad boys,  said.

The raids were conducted after complaints by residents that the clubs were being used by people involved in crime, he said. Before carrying out the operations, we had sent in our secret police who found and took pictures that people were gambling there. The venues had turned to places for bad boys and criminals, he said.

Gambling is illegal in this conservative Islamic country but it is rife, with bets placed on dog fighting and buzkashi a form of polo played with a calf or goat carcass among other pastimes.

Snooker halls were banned during the 1996-2001 Taliban regime but have since flourished becoming among the main entertainment venues in a country where basic infrastructure was destroyed during nearly three decades of war.

This Is Pakistan’s War

Newsweek, 02/27/2008, By Fareed Zakaria

'If [people] are permitted to choose their own destiny the extremists will be marginalized.' True or false?

In one of his many speeches on the sources of Islamic terrorism, George W. Bush argued that "when a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme." In Bush's opinion, the antidote is democracy. As he said in another address, "If [people] are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow, and eventually end."

Pakistan took Bush's advice last week, and in a historic election voted for a democratic future. The results returned to power civilian parties that had based their campaigns on opposition to the rule of President Pervez Musharraf. And what has been the reaction of the Bush administration? Awkwardness and ambivalence toward the victors, affection toward Musharraf. After the results came in, Bush called the Pakistani leader to congratulate him on holding the elections. "We are going to continue to work with President Musharraf," said Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman. In the most important real-world test of the Bush thesis—that democracy destroys terrorism—George Bush finds himself opposed to his own rhetoric.

If Bush the statesman is hypocritical, is Bush the political scientist right? Does democracy prevent the breeding of terrorism? The scholar Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont has pointed out that, by almost all calculations, most terrorist attacks take place in democracies, not authoritarian countries. According to one study, between 1976 and 2004 there were 400 terrorist attacks in India and 18 in China. This may be because terrorist attacks are easier to pull off in open societies. Such attacks are also more effective: if the purpose is to create mass panic and thus influence government policy, where better to strike than a highly responsive political system.

But the broader explanation is surely that the origins of terrorism are more complex than a simple lack of democracy. After all, the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship and it did not spawn terrorist groups. India has suffered so many terrorist attacks over the past four decades because it is a highly diverse country in which many different groups feel deeply about their identity and autonomy. Saudi Arabia has bred its terrorists by encouraging a purist and militant streak of Islam.

Pakistan, like Saudi Arabia, is a state defined by religion. But its terrorism problem is recent, bred because it served as the conduit and recruiting ground for jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. This problem was then exacerbated by various forces—a military eager for proxies, the collapse of state capacity in fields like education, and the continuing neglect of Pakistan's tribal areas. The notion that any simple solution, like elections, will magically cure these deep-rooted problems is a mistake.

Last week's vote will likely alleviate Pakistan's political and constitutional crisis. Musharraf had perpetuated his rule by sacking Supreme Court justices and altering the Constitution last year, moves that were extremely unpopular. The rebirth of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party, which went from 16 seats in the 2002 parliamentary elections to 69, is the best indication of how loathed Musharraf had become, since Sharif's only campaign themes were the restoration of the judiciary and ouster of the president. While Sharif and Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari, have not worked out exactly how they will unravel Musharraf's 2007 actions, they seem committed to doing so in some way. At the same time, the lawyers' opposition to Musharraf is being judicious. The president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, has indicated that as long as the judiciary is restored, some compromises on other issues (Musharraf's fate perhaps?) could be worked out. This is how democracy should work.

But will this bring an end to the jihad? Sharif and Zardari have both spoken about taking a different approach to the militants up in the tribal areas than Musharraf, one that involves more diplomacy and less force. This makes sense in theory and is a version of the counterinsurgency strategy being tried in Iraq: Reach out to the militants, try to make a deal with those who are amenable, and isolate the true irreconcilables, who must then be captured or killed. In fact, Musharraf himself has tried this strategy but with little luck so far. It may be that Musharraf was hesitant about the approach, or did not have the credibility to pull it off. In any event, whatever the civilian government wishes, the Pakistani Army will have to embrace any new approach.

One thing is for sure. If the two parties which together won almost two thirds of the vote adopt a forthright anti-terror strategy, it will be seen as a Pakistani strategy, not one being directed by the Army or the Americans. Until now, the battles against militants have been seen as America's obsession. What democracy could do is make Pakistanis understand that this is their war.

Why I Think Obama is the Best Candidate on Foreign Policy

Huffington Post, 02/28/2008, By Lisa Gans

Barack Obama is better equipped to handle the United States' foreign policy on the world stage than either Hillary Clinton or John McCain. As an international human rights lawyer who has worked in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand better than most the security situation facing Americans and the world. Recently, I survived a large-scale attack by the Taliban on a hotel in Kabul, so my sense of urgency about national security and the safety of Americans abroad is based on a very real understanding of the dangers we face. I plan to return to Kabul shortly, and I know I will feel safer and more confident of success in Afghanistan if Barack Obama is in the White House.

In my time abroad, people have expressed to me that they doubt the United States' commitment to its own ideals and even the very existence of true democracy in the U.S. The misguided policies, arrogance and incompetence of the Bush administration have alienated our friends and inflamed our enemies. Americans working abroad can no longer rely on the good reputation of their country, and instead we are often called upon to explain or justify its actions. We need a leader who can revive American diplomacy, and with it, the reputation of the U.S. in the world.

I believe that Barack Obama is the candidate who can restore credibility to the United States in the international community. He, more than any other candidate, can prove that the U.S. is capable of making a serious change in its policies and leadership overseas in the wake of the disastrous blunders of the Bush administration. Unlike the presence of another Clinton in the White House, an Obama presidency will lead to a sense among needed allies that there is a new political order in the U.S. An Obama presidency will convince our allies that the American people recognize that new approaches are required to deal with the post 9/11 world, and that unilateralism and political arrogance breed hatred of this country and its citizens.

The claim that Barack Obama is inexperienced in foreign policy is a red herring. Having served for two years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has more on-the-job foreign policy experience than Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Ronald Regan did when they took office. And his experience came during the post 9/11 era. The experience Hillary Clinton touts from her White House years is from an outdated period in history, and her vote on the Iraq war demonstrates that her judgment in the current environment is not sound. She was wrong about what may prove to be one of the most key foreign policy decisions of our time, and for years, has been unable or unwilling to recognize her error and move forward. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Obama was right about the war, but has tried, as he said last night, to work with others to drive George Bush's bus out of the proverbial ditch and turn the focus back to Afghanistan. He had this clarity even when he was a state senator. By Hillary Clinton's own account, George Bush fooled her, but, given the same information, Obama came to a different conclusion and spoke out against the Iraq war at the time and has continued to focus on fighting those in Afghanistan who were responsible for the September 11th attacks.

Barack Obama has the ability to deal both with American's allies and its enemies. Right now, in Afghanistan and around the world, the U.S. needs the support of its friends. Not only does Obama have the skills necessary to reach out to those we have alienated, he has expressed a willingness to do so. His comments about Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, in particular demonstrate that he is focused on cultivating relationships with moderate factions within the country without surrendering to any one group or relying on one person. He avoids the alienating strong-arm "you're with us or against us" rhetoric of the Bush administration. Instead, when discussing international security, he immediately looks to international coalitions and partnerships, including NATO, and recognizes the importance of engaging with the international community to achieve American interests. He understands what the war in Iraq has meant for the U.S. on the world stage, and the damaging effect it has had on the centrally important U.S. campaign to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. Obama clearly is aware that the U.S. needs to make smart choices about its policies in the Islamic world in order to ensure our national security and to work with our allies to do so.

Given his early opposition to the Iraq war and focus on the battle against extremism in Afghanistan, his values, good judgment and intelligence are clear. And throughout this primary season, he has demonstrated that he has the ability to convince others and make his visions a reality. Hillary Clinton does not understand that his poetic rhetoric is used in the service of getting people to work together toward real accomplishment. Witness the success of his campaign in organizing victory after victory (while her campaign has been losing more supporters the longer it continues) against one of the most formidable political machines in Democratic Party history.

I believe that Obama's conduct of his campaign reveals the way in which he would conduct foreign (and domestic) policy. He knows how to defuse arguments and focus on shared values while relentlessly pursing his ultimate goal. He knows when to make his point and when to stand above the fray. He is able to disagree in a principled way, and accept and incorporate an argument made by someone else if it is proven to be well-reasoned. The respectful way he treats his political opponents is a model of how he will treat the rest of the world. This is exactly the sort of political skill and diplomacy that America needs to employ when conducting international relations. The world will welcome a more open United States, dedicated to advancing its own interests without riding roughshod over other countries.

Finally, as someone who works to establish respect for human rights and democracy in a post-conflict environment, I think that Obama will be an example for the world of the fruits of a true democratic process -- something in which many people in struggling parts of the world no longer believe. Whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, most people's experience with politics is that it is run by dictators, family dynasties or clans. So, in a world where the fate of Pakistan, a nuclear power which created the Taliban, is being fought over by a military dictator and the family of a powerful slain former leader, it frightens me to hear Hillary Clinton say things like "It did take a Clinton to clean after the first Bush and I think it might take another one to clean up after the second Bush." To much of the world, a Hillary Clinton presidency will be no surprise, but will look like their own national clan-driven politics. An Obama presidency, on the other hand, will be proof to the world that the democratic process can allow leaders who have vision and talent to come to the helm, despite a lack of family connections and in the face of potential racial or ethnic discrimination. It will show the world that the U.S. is truly a great democracy where the people control the government.

I believe that an Obama presidency will bring about a new respect for the U.S. around the world. President Obama will renew a sense of partnership with our allies, admit our mistakes in Iraq, and focus on rooting out terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He will bring to American diplomacy a fresh, intelligent perspective on the causes and effects of extremism and a more effective approach to combating terrorism. If Obama is elected, I will be safer, more likely to be shown respect as an American and more likely to succeed in democracy-building in Afghanistan. In my mind, that makes Barack Obama the strongest candidate for president in the realm of international affairs.

[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.]