In this bulletin:

• Afghan president chairs high-level meeting
• No Way Left Open For Foreign Officials Return
• ISAF chief sees Afghan drug trade rising in 2008
• Taliban in quandary after sacking of senior commander
• Afghan troops kill 13 insurgents, capture 30
• Bomb Kills 2 Afghan Security Guards
• Five Taliban killed by own car bomb in Afghanistan: police
• Pakistan says kills 5 militants near Afghan border
• At least 16 Taliban killed in Afghanistan: officials
• Tripartite Commission discusses Pak-Afghan border security situation
• 2007 ends with 137 suicide attacks in Afghanistan: PAN
• Two anti-government commanders held in Nangarhar
• At least 27 militants killed in Pakistan: military
• Families migrate from Kurram Agency to Afghanistan
• Helmandians cry for making both ends meet
• Japan PM pledges new anti-terror mission
• Gov't pressured to ease up on Afghan combat efforts
• Troop pullout favoured, poll finds
• Stay the course
• 'Be proud; you deserve it,' general tells Canadian troops receiving service stars
• Soldiers recognized for service in Afghanistan
• helped create Taliban monster
• 'If it was jihad then, it's jihad now.'
• Karzai visit’s unanswered questions
• VIEW: Two Benazir Bhuttos

Afghan president chairs high-level meeting

KUNA, 01/01/2008 - KABUL - Afghan President Hamid Karzai Tuesday chaired a meeting of parliamentarians and former jihadi leaders and officials to inform them about his visit to neighbouring Pakistan.

The meeting expressed grief and shock over the assassination of Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on December 27 and said the government and people of Afghanistan fully share the grief of their brethren in Pakistan.

President Karzai also informed the meeting about his government's decision of expelling two European diplomats for their alleged meetings with the Taliban militants in the southern province of Helmand.

The Afghan government, earlier responding to a call from the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA), reiterated its stance that the two diplomats would not be allowed to come back to Afghanistan.

The meeting also reviewed the reconstruction activities in the war-battered country and observed that there must be greater coordination among donor countries regarding assistance to Afghanistan.

No Way Left Open For Foreign Officials Return

AFP, 01/01/2008 - KABUL - The Afghan government Tuesday defended its decision to expel two foreign officials over national security charges, saying "no way is left open" for the pair's return to the strife-torn country.

The government last week expelled two Westerners - the second most senior European Union official in Afghanistan and a top UN political advisor - accusing them of threatening national security.

The UN dismissed the charges as a "misunderstanding" and hoped the pair would be cleared of the allegations.

But the Afghan government is not backing down. "The government's definite decision is that the two individuals have... been expelled... and no way is left open for their return," President Hamid Karzai's senior spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, told reporters in Kabul.

Kabul has said the two expelled officials - Irish national Michael Semple, working for the EU, and Briton Mervyn Patterson - made contact with the Taliban during visits to the southern province of Helmand, a rebel stronghold.

Hamidzada would not provide details but said: "The two individuals were involved in activities that were not consistent with their original jobs and they had engaged in unauthorised activities."

The spokesman said the expulsion of the two - both key figures in the international deployment here - was sending a message that the U.S.-backed government of Karzai was "watching everyone."

"This sends a message that the Afghanistan government is watching everyone and any unauthorised activities... will be stopped," he added.

The UN has been involved in post-Taliban Afghanistan for the past six years. The EU has also played a role in major development projects here.

Hamidzada said the expulsions would not affect relations between the two bodies and Karzai's government, which largely relies on international aid to stand on its own feet after decades of conflicts.

ISAF chief sees Afghan drug trade rising in 2008

Wed Jan 2, 2008 - By David Fox

KABUL, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's already booming drugs trade is likely to grow even more this year, the head of foreign troops in the country said on Wednesday, warning this would bankroll the Taliban insurgency.

Afghanistan's poppies already produce more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, but the government, the United Nations, donor countries and commanders of the 40,000-plus foreign force are divided over how best to tackle the problem.

General Dan McNeill, commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, told his first news briefing of the new year on Wednesday there was a clear link between poppy growing and the strength of the insurgency.

"When I see a poppy field, I see it turning into money and then into IEDs, AKs and RPGs ...," he said referring to the improvised explosive devices, Kalashnikov rifles and rocket propelled grenades favoured by the Taliban.

Acknowledging he had little hard data to back him up, McNeill estimated that 20-30 percent of Afghanistan's multi-billion dollar illicit drug economy -- vastly bigger than the formal economy -- was funding the insurgency.

With long-term weather forecasts suggesting perfect growing conditions this year, rising demand and higher prices, both the industry and insurgency will grow unless "pressure, incentives or dissuasion" are significantly increased, he said.

While the hardline Islamic Taliban managed to virtually eradicate poppy cultivation in the year before they were ousted by a U.S.-led force after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the crop has made a remarkable comeback in the years since Western-backed President Hamid Karzai took power.

The Taliban, backed by foreign fighters, including al Qaeda operatives, have made a comeback too -- and not coincidentally in the south and east, heartland of poppy production.

Most analysts agree that the simplest way to wipe out the drugs trade is to eradicate, with chemical spraying, poppy crops while they are in the field.

But the government, less than confident of its rule outside the capital and other main centres, is reluctant to alienate the rural population, hundreds of thousands of whom are dependent on poppy production for their livelihoods.

The poppy, requiring water just once every five days while growing, is a perfect crop for Afghanistan's frequently dry summers and where irrigation is generally provided by snow melt from the mountains.

Western-led crop replacement programmes have worked in areas where security has allowed development and construction projects to develop irrigation schemes to sustain them, but in the Taliban "badlands", the poppy is still king.

McNeill, emphasising how concerned he was at the growth in the drug industry, said tackling the problem was beyond his mandate.

"ISAF is neither trained, manned nor equipped to be an eradication force," he said. "The government of Afghanistan must take it on, but it needs help to do so."

On the insurgency, McNeill said he expected the Taliban would be reluctant to take on "toe to toe" either foreign troops or the Afghan National Army and would instead resort to "asymetrical tactics" including suicide bombings and IEDs.

"There have been some spectacular events," he said, referring to a spate of Taliban bomb blasts last year in which hundreds of people, mostly civilians, were killed or injured.

"But 70 percent of events occured in 10 percent of the country. Much of this country enjoys a fairly good degree of security." (Editing by Bill Tarrant)

Taliban in quandary after sacking of senior commander

Indian Express / January 1, 2008 - Taliban is in turmoil in Afghanistan after its top leadership sacked a senior commander for disobeying orders, British intelligence officers stationed in that country have claimed.

The sacking of Mansoor Dadullah, the senior most ground commander fighting the British forces in southern Afghanistan, by Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Islamist militant organisation, has already created divisions in the Taliban, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.

"These divisions are close to producing a tribal revolt in the north of Helmand ahead of an operation (by the British forces) to retake the key town of Musa Qala," MI6 officials were quoted as saying by the British daily.

Though Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, has said Dadullah was sacked for disobeying orders and conducting activities against the Taliban's rules and regulations, the former commander claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy by his enemies.

"It's not true that Mullah Omar kicked me out of the Taliban. If he wanted me to leave the Taliban, then he would send me the message and I would put down my weapons because he is our top commander.

"If Mullah Omar wants me to disarm, there is no need to publish this in the media. In jihad, there is no personal interest. In jihad, you will be injured or killed only for the sake of Islam," he said.

Dadullah took over after his notoriously brutal brother, Mullah Dadullah Akhund, was killed by troops from the Special Boat Service in May.

Afghan troops kill 13 insurgents, capture 30

KABUL, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Afghan government troops backed by international forces in a host of operations conducted in southern and eastern provinces have killed 13 Taliban insurgents and arrested 30 others, a press release issued by the Afghan defense ministry said Wednesday.

"Eight rebels were killed in Musa Qala of Helmand province while five other militants lost their lives in clash with government troops in Kandahar and Khost province Tuesday," the press release said.

Among the killed Taliban fighters is Mullah Jabar who was active in Panjwai district of Kandahar province, it added.

During the operations, 30 more insurgents have been arrested elsewhere in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar and eastern province of Khost, the press release added.

Bomb Kills 2 Afghan Security Guards

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A roadside bomb killed two Afghan security guards working for a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan, and police separately shot and killed a would-be suicide bomber, officials said Wednesday.

The guards were traveling in Khost province's Yaqoubi district Tuesday when an explosion from the roadside device ripped through their vehicle, said Wazir Pacha, a spokesman for provincial police chief.

Police in the same province killed a would-be suicide bomber who was carrying hand grenades as he tried to enter a police checkpoint Tuesday, Pacha said.

Afghanistan experienced a record level of violence that killed more than 6,500 people in 2007, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Five Taliban killed by own car bomb in Afghanistan: police

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — Five suspected Taliban militants were killed when a suicide car bomb they were building went off prematurely in the southern province of Kandahar, police said Wednesday.

"These men were killed while trying to build a suicide car bomb to target and kill innocent people but it killed themselves," provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqeb said after the blast Tuesday.

He said intelligence reports suggested the five were Taliban. Taliban militants have stepped up the use of Iraq-style suicide blasts in their anti-government insurgency over the past two years.

Separately, a remote-controlled roadside bomb killed a former anti-Soviet militia commander and two bodyguards just outside Kandahar city on Wednesday, Saqeb said. "The bomb was remote-control and Taliban were behind it," Saqeb added.

Two policemen were killed by a similar device as they patrolled along the Pakistani border on Tuesday, a local police official said. Kandahar border police chief Mohammad Raziq blamed the bombing on the Taliban.

The interior ministry said this week that nearly 1,000 Afghan civilians were killed in 2007, the bloodiest year since the toppling of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Another 1,000 Afghan security forces -- most of them poorly-armed and under-paid police -- were killed in last year's violence, the ministry said.

More than 60,000 foreign troops, mainly in a UN-mandated NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, are based here to battle the Taliban insurgency and help train Afghan security forces.

Pakistan says kills 5 militants near Afghan border

ISLAMABAD, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces killed five al Qaeda-linked militants and captured 20 in an operation near the Afghan border on Tuesday after insurgents abducted four troops in the area, the military said.

Pakistani forces pounded suspected militants positions in the restive South Waziristan tribal region with artillery.

"Security forces apprehended 20 miscreants and killed five others," a military spokesman said.

He did not say whether forces had secured the release of four troops kidnapped earlier on Tuesday from a check point near one of the main camps in a region regarded as a hotbed of support for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Many militants fled to Pakistan's lawless tribal lands after U.S.-backed troops ousted the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001. They have been conducting raids into Afghanistan and Pakistan from their mountain strongholds.

Hundreds of people have been killed in clashes and suicide bomb attacks in recent months, much of the violence in the restive North West Frontier Province.

Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a gun-and-bomb suicide attack near Islamabad late last week.

The government blames an al-Qaeda linked Pakistani militant for the killing. His spokesman has denied it. (Reporting by Kamran Haider, Editing by Simon Gardner)

At least 16 Taliban killed in Afghanistan: officials

Tue Jan 1, HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - At least 16 Taliban rebels including a suspected would-be suicide bomber were killed in US-led and Afghan operations across insurgency-plagued Afghanistan, officials said Tuesday.

A man wearing a bomb-filled waistcoat was shot dead near a police checkpost in the eastern province of Khost on Tuesday, a police official said.

"He wanted to target our police but our guys shot him dead before he succeeded in exploding his bombs," the police official, Mohammad Yaqoub, told AFP.

Meanwhile, the US-led coalition said its troops and Afghan forces killed "several" Islamic guerrillas in an operation in the southern province of Helmand on Tuesday. It did not give an exact figure.

The militants were killed in a gun battle with troops searching a compound for rebels "associated with Taliban and foreign fighters," it said.

"There were no immediate indications of injuries or deaths to civilians not taking part in hostilities," the statement from the coalition added. A cache of rifles, rockets and explosives was found and destroyed following the battle.

Helmand, Afghanistan's biggest opium-producing province, has been badly hit by the Taliban-led insurgency, which is at its bloodiest since the hardline Islamic militia was ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

Afghan and NATO-led troops last month captured the town of Musa Qala, which the rebels had turned into their biggest base in the country.

In a separate incident linked to the Taliban insurgency, 10 Taliban rebels were killed after attacking an Afghan police checkpost in the western province of Badghis on the Iranian border, the interior ministry said.

One police officer was also killed in the attack late Monday in the province's Balmurghab district, the ministry's spokesman, Zemarai Bashary, told AFP. Two other police were wounded, he added.

Elswhere, in Zabul province, another Taliban-dominated region in the south, two rebels were killed when a bomb they were trying to plant on a road to target security forces exploded prematurely, police official Mohammad Zaman said.

And the defence ministry said three rebels were killed in separate Afghan army operations elsewhere. Two had been captured. The unrest in Afghanistan last year claimed about 6,000 lives, many of them rebels. 

Tripartite Commission discusses Pak-Afghan border security situation

Rawalpindi, Jan 1, IRNA - PTI -- The Tripartite Commission, comprising senior military representatives from Pakistan, Afghanistan and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, at its 22th plenary meeting Monday discussed matters of professional interest with particular reference to border security situation on Pak -Afghan border.

The delegates at meeting in Pakistan's garrison city of Rawalpindi were led by General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan Army, General Bismullah Khan, Chief of General Staff, Afghan National Army and General Dan McNeill, Commander ISAF.

The participants also reviewed progress made by Border Security Sub Committee, Military Intelligence sharing working group and counter IED group, working under Tripartite Commission and expressed satisfaction on progress made so far.

2007 ends with 137 suicide attacks in Afghanistan: PAN

KABUL, Dec 31 (Pajhwok Afghan News): During 2007 137 suicide attacks have been launched inflicting over 1730 casualties. Even though the number of suicide attacks was less as compared with previus year, however the casualties were 1.5 times high.

According Pajhwok reports in 2006 141 suicide attacks had taken place with 1166 casualties. The number of civilians' casualties was higher this year as of the 2006.

According Pajhwok reports 1057 civilians were hurt including 300 killed and 757 wounded in 137 suicide attacks.

171 policemen were killed and 213 wounded, 37 Afghan National Army killed and fifty other wounded while 12 foreign soldiers were killed and 54 other wounded in these blasts.

140 suicide attackers have been killed in these 137 suicide attacks, three attackers were killed in one attack in Nangarhar province.

NATO press office in Kabul told Pajhwok Afghan News that they have counted 127 suicide attacks in 2007.

Major Chris Bilchar a coalition spokesman in Bagram told Pajhwok Afghan News they can not give details about suicide attacks due to security reasons.

Some of the suicide attacks were most bloody as of Baghlan which killed 80 including six MPs and wounded 100 more.

30 policemen and five civilians and over 50 others were killed in a suicide attack across Kabul police headquarter in June 2007.

In another suicide attack in Baharistan locality of Kabul city, 27 ANA troops were killed and 23 including civilians wounded on September 9.

Khost province witnessed 11 suicide attacks in 2007, while it was 21 in 2006.

Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesman said even though they had threatened for more suicide attacks in 2007, but they have changed their strategy.

He said they have diverted their plan to ambushes: "we want to hurt opposition, instead of losing our colleagues, we use other tactics to inflict more loses to enemies"

He added they have been very successful in ambushes, but they also launch suicide attacks according to the plan.

He said suicide attacks are planed very accurately and civilians have been told not to get close to foreign and Afghan forces.

42 suicide attacks have been launched in Kandahar that tops number of the attacks in any province.

22 suicide attacks were carried out in Kabul and 21 in Helmand province in 2007. Khost and Paktika witnessed 11 while seven in Kunduz.

Paktia, Nangarhar, Zabul, Nimroz, Urozgan, Logar, Herat, Farah, and Balkh also witnessed suicide attacks this year.

Takhar, Kunar, Laghman and Maidan Wardak witnessed suicide attacks for the first time. The first suicide attack was launched in Afghanistan in September 2001 on former Afghan defence minister Ahmad Shah massood

Two anti-government commanders held in Nangarhar

KABUL, Dec 31(Pajhwok Afghan News): The National Security Department (NSD) on Monday informed arresting two alleged anti-government militant's commanders in the eastern Nangarhar province.

The press statement released from the (NSD) office here said the arrested were working for Anwarul Haq Mujahid a high profile insurgent in the region.

The statement named the twin as Mulla Rahmatullah and Shir Haider, both residents of Khugiani district.

The detainees were assigned by Haq to carry out disruptive activities in Khugiani, Achin, and on main Kabul-Jalalabad highway. The statement however did not specify where and when the two were apprehended.

Anwarul Haq was son of late Maulvi Muhammad Younis Khalis who is leader of the Hezb and in charge of the insurgents in Tora Bora front.

Allegedly hundreds of supporters of the party led by Haq are engaged in assaults and fighting against the central government in the eastern zone.

At least 27 militants killed in Pakistan: military

ISLAMABAD (AFP) — At least 27 militants were killed in two days of clashes in restive northwestern Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan, a military official told AFP on Wednesday.

The clashes broke out after pro-Taliban militants kidnapped four Pakistan soldiers in the troubled South Waziristan tribal district on Tuesday, the official said. "Five militants were killed yesterday and 22 overnight," he said.

South Waziristan is the stronghold of Baitullah Mehsud, an alleged top Al-Qaeda commander who was blamed by the government for orchestrating the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto last week.

Through a spokesman, Mehsud denied any involvement in her death. The official said that the kidnapped soldiers were delivering food rations from one post to another when militants seized them. Their fate was not immediately known.

After Pakistan forces fired at militants, five of them were killed and 20 were taken into custody, the official said. Later a tribal peace council was convened but failed to resolve the stand-off, he said.

Both sides used heavy weaponry in tit-for-tat firing that went on through the night, resulting in the death of 22 militants with no loss of life on the army side, he said.

Pakistan's rugged tribal areas along the Afghan border are a known hub of Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who slipped into the region after the US-led invasion of neighbouring Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Pakistan has deployed 90,000 troops to hunt down militants in the region, which the Afghan government alleges is used as a base for cross-border attacks on Afghan and international troops based in Afghanistan.

Families migrate from Kurram Agency to Afghanistan

By Daud Khattak – Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The ongoing sectarian clashes in Kurram Agency have forced hundreds of people to migrate to the border provinces of Afghanistan, Daily Times reliably learnt. Sources said some 520 families have migrated and taken refuge in the Aryub Zazai and Dand Patan districts of Paktia province in Afghanistan. The two neighbouring countries are sharing around 2,640-kilometre ill-defined border straddled by Pashtun tribes, like Mohmand, Wazir, Shinwari, Yousafzai and Mehsud.

Although officials in the troubled Kurram Agency were unavailable for comments, locals confirmed the migration but would not give the exact number. Dozens of people have been killed and scores more injured in the Shia-Sunni clashes erupted about one and half month back in the Kurram Agency. Dozens of houses, shops and other buildings have been torched by the rival sects while the clashes are still going on.

According to sources, the migrated families are mostly Sunnis and they are stationed in the Kotaki and Ahmad Khel areas of the two districts of Paktia province. The families have no roofs and the locals have provided them with tents which are not enough to guard them against the tattering cold, said an Afghan official.

A source in the agency, however, said those migrated were Afghan residents living on this side of the border since long. Contacted for comments, local journalist Ahmad Jan Siddiqi confirmed the migration of some families, but said those were Afghans who were living in the border villages of Bagzai, Tangai and Inzari. There might be some locals but most of them were Afghans and nomadic people, who left those areas after the breaking out of hostilities about one and a half months ago.

Meanwhile, a local Afghan news agency reported that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had ordered immediate assistance for around 520 families migrated from Pakistan.The Kurram Agency borders the Khost and Paktia provinces of Afghanistan.

Helmandians cry for making both ends meet

LASHKARGAH, Dec 31 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Residents complain skyrocketing of flour price in the war-stricken former Taliban stronghold of Musa-Kala district in restive Helmand province where many can not make the both ends meet.

Toryalai a local complained the price of a piece of bread increased to 20 afghanis. "People will face great problems unless emergency aids were provided to the locals here." He warned.

Shir Muhammad, another resident of Musa-Kala district of the province, lamented price of bread was being sold from 12 to 16 afghanis. People preferred to buy cookies to eat from the market rather than the bread; he complained price of a 100kg wheat bag went up to 3000 afghanis here.

Prices of other food stuff also registered increase here, he said.

Shah Wali a wheat seller in Lashkargah complained assassination of Ms Bhutto had badly affected wheat exports to Afghanistan. He said "not a bag of wheat had been imported to Afghanistan since the assassination of Bhutto."

Reports and interviews with individuals in other districts of the southern Helamand province also reveal hike in edible commodities.

They demanded of the International NGOs and central government to heed to their plight and send them emergency aid.

Japan PM pledges new anti-terror mission

The Associated Press 01/01/2008 - TOKYO - Japan's prime minister pledged Tuesday to resume naval operations near Afghanistan after he resolves a political dispute over Tokyo's role in the global fight against terrorist groups.

"At this very moment in the Indian Ocean, numerous countries are cooperating carrying on their fight against terrorism," Yasuo Fukuda said in a New Year's message. "I want Japan to be working hard for the world along with other countries as soon as possible."

Japan's naval mission in the region the past six years provided logistical support to forces involved in the war in Afghanistan. It mainly supplied some 132 million gallons of fuel to coalition warships, including from the U.S., Britain and Pakistan, the Defense Ministry says.

The mission was recalled Nov. 1 after Japanese opposition parties raised concerns that the operation did not have explicit support from the United Nations. The opposition also said the mission possibly violated Japan's pacifist constitution.

The retreat was a major embarrassment for Fukuda, who has been a staunch supporter of a continued presence for Japan in the region, and cast doubt on how far Tokyo can back Washington in its global war on terrorist groups.

Fukuda's government has now submitted a bill to parliament to allow the ships to be deployed again, but in a more limited role. The ruling bloc is expected to use its majority in the powerful lower house to push the bill through the upper chamber, which is controlled by the opposition.

Under the new bill, Japan's deployment would be limited to refueling and supplying water to ships used in monitoring and inspecting vessels suspected of links to terrorism or arms smuggling. Ships would not refuel coalition vessels directly involved in military operations inside Afghanistan.

In his New Year's message, Fukuda also promised to spearhead efforts to curb global warming in 2008 after Japan takes over the presidency of the Group of Eight industrial countries from Germany. Japan has fallen far behind its Kyoto Protocol commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

"By sharing the world's most advanced technology, Japan is prepared to play a major role" in the fight against climate change, Fukuda said.

Gov't pressured to ease up on Afghan combat efforts

Updated Tue. Jan. 1 2008 The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- As Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan enters its third full year, there's increasing pressure on Prime Minister Harper's government to do more talking than fighting.

Louis Delvoie, a former high commissioner to Pakistan, says diplomacy is one of the elements that's been missing from the conflict. There are mounting calls for more dialogue.

For instance, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is encourging the Afghans to recruit moderate Taliban members into the government.

Colonel Dennis Thompson, who will become the commander of Joint Task Force Afghanistan this winter, says the army already knows that development and diplomacy are part of the solution.

He says winning in Afghanistan is more than just being in a gunfight.

Canada's chief of defence staff says mastering the complexities and rivalries of war-torn Afghanistan was a major preoccupation for the army throughout 2007.

General Rick Hillier says commanders going into Kandahar are getting some savvy training in the nuances of tribal culture and conflicts. He says it's setting them up for success.

Troop pullout favoured, poll finds

53 per cent tell survey they want Canadian soldiers home from Afghanistan war before 2009 deadline - January 01, 2008 - Richard Brennan – Toronto STAR

OTTAWA–With the body of another Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan due to arrive home tomorrow, the majority of Canadians are calling for an early troop withdrawal from the war-torn country.

Gunner Jonathan Dion, 27, a member of the 5th Régiment d'Artillerie légère du Canada, based in Valcartier, Que., was killed by a roadside bomb Sunday, bringing Canada's armed forces death toll to 74 since 2001.

An online survey of 1,052 Canadians by Angus Reid Strategies, conducted Dec. 19 and 20, shows 53 per cent of those polled believe Canada's troops should be withdrawn before the February 2009 deadline. Sixty-one per cent reject any suggestions of extending the mission beyond the deadline.

While Prime Minister Stephen Harper has mused about extending the mission if the House of Commons is agreeable, the poll shows 60 per cent of those surveyed don't believe Harper has done a good job of explaining Canada's role in Kandahar.

"The federal government continues to face a challenge in courting Canadians," concludes the survey, which is considered accurate plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Seventy-one per cent – up dramatically from 58 per cent in July – believe Canada is shouldering too much of the burden of the NATO Afghan mission, which involves nearly 40 countries and a total force of about 41,700 troops.

While Canadian troops – some 2,500 – amount to roughly 6 per cent of all soldiers in Afghanistan, they account for 10 per cent of the fatalities. Canada is now third on the list of fatalities, behind the United States and Britain.

Among those surveyed in the poll, 47 per cent regard Canada's role as a war mission, while only 28 per cent believe the country is playing its historic peacekeeping role.

An independent panel, led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, is looking into Canada's role in Afghanistan and is to report to Parliament. It has been charged with gathering information and recommending what Canada's role should be after 2009.

"The release of the Manley panel's conclusions could certainly change perceptions. If the panel emphasizes areas such as peacekeeping and nation building – and Canada's role is less focused on actual conflict – the entire rationale of the mission would change," said Angus Reid spokesperson Mario Canseco.

Support for early withdrawal from Afghanistan increased slightly this month from 49 per cent in July.

Polling Data

Do you agree or disagree with this statement? - Canada should extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond February 2009

Source: Angus Reid Strategies
Methodology: Online interviews with 1,052 Canadian adults, conducted from Dec. 19 to Dec. 20, 2007. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Other poll highlights: 47% regard Canadian participation as war mission; 57% say Afghan people are benefiting from Canadian efforts; 53% call for an early withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan; 60% say the Harper government has not effectively explained the mission; 71% say Canada is shouldering too much of the burden of NATO’s mission.

Stay the course
National Post editorialPublished: Wednesday, January 02, 2008

The death in Afghanistan on Sunday of Royal Canadian Artillery Gunner Jonathan Dion and the assassination last week of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto are related, although not directly. Whether the forces fighting our soldiers in Kandahar province are connected with those who murdered Ms. Bhutto or not, our enemies stand to benefit from the resulting internal chaos in Pakistan. It is unfortunate this new threat should arise at a time when our casualties are down and the Taliban are having increasing trouble recruiting new insurgents. But it does highlight yet again why it is premature for our forces to withdraw and leave Afghanistan's democratic government unprotected.

The Pakistani government has trouble maintaining order in its border provinces at the best of times. Al-Qaeda and its surrogates, the Taliban, operate more or less freely in Pakistan's tribal territories, training and equipping there, sneaking into Afghanistan to attack our troops and other NATO forces, then retreating back across the line. This often goes on with the blessing -- if not the direct assistance of -- Islamist elements within the Pakistani army and secret service, the ISI.

It's easy to believe al-Qaeda is behind Ms. Bhutto's death, just as it is easy to conceive of the ISI playing a role, or even Ms. Bhutto's political rivals, such as President Pervez Musharraf. The Islamic fundamentalists of al-Qaeda would have been one of Ms. Bhutto's first targets had she been elected prime minister next week. Before returning to Pakistan from exile last fall, she promised to rout the terrorists, even if that meant allowing foreign special forces to operate more or less freely in her country's lawless western regions.

Yet even if al-Qaeda is not responsible, it and its allies within the Pakistani military and secret police will undoubtedly use the current disruption caused by the Bhutto assassination to step up their attacks in neighbouring Afghanistan. Ironically, a civil war in Pakistan might make our troops safer, temporarily diverting our enemies' attention and resources away from us and to the fight for power in Pakistan.

But despite the recent turmoil, though, a full-fledged civil war seems a remote possibility, which means the non-radical elements in the Pakistani government will be more preoccupied than usual with fighting for their political lives and even less able to impose control. This could well mean that this winter and spring will be particularly dangerous for our men and women in Kandahar.

Still, it would also be the wrong time for us to cut and run. The Afghan economy has expanded an estimated 6% this year as normalcy and stability have returned to more of that troubled land. And NATO commanders have noticed fewer Afghan nationals among the Taliban, a sign, they say, of the insurgents' recruiting troubles. The Taliban are having to rely more on foreign fighters.

On top of those successes, Canadian battlefield losses are down over 2006, despite Gunner Dion's tragic death. We are making progress and new dangers from Pakistan or not, Canada should stay the course in 2008.

'Be proud; you deserve it,' general tells Canadian troops receiving service stars
Ottawa soldier among honourees also carries great-grandfather's medal from 1897

Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - CBC News - An Ottawa soldier based in Afghanistan whose great-grandfather fought in the same part of the world 110 years ago was among about 150 personnel honoured with service medals during a ceremony in Kandahar Tuesday.

Maj. Walter Taylor's ancestor served in the Tirah Campaign in 1897-98 in what was then India and is now a region of Pakistan close to the Afghanistan border.

The latest in a long line of military men in his family, the 33-year-old Taylor carries in his breast pocket a British army medal that Pte. Charles Taylor earned in 1897.

"Before coming on this mission, my father, who inherited the medal, gave it to me to take along as a token of family history," said Taylor, who serves with the 53rd Field Squadron, Field Engineers in Afghanistan. "I guess it's a bit of a talisman as well, for good luck."

Now he has a medal of his own to bring back to Canada, one of about 150 General Campaign Stars awarded Tuesday by Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche, commander of the Canadian forces in Afghanistan.

"Hopefully someday one of my children will be as proud to inherit my medal as I was to inherit his," Taylor said of his great-grandfather's medal.

During the ceremony at Kandahar Airfield, the general thanked the troops for their service. "I would like to congratulate all of you who receive this medal today. Be proud; you deserve it."

Laroche later told reporters the General Campaign Star represents sacrifice and duty. "It's very important to all of us and it shows that we have responded to the call of our country."

Capt. David Holsworth was one of the soldiers on parade at Kandahar to have the star pinned to his chest. "It's been a long five months," said the combat engineer, who had three soldiers in his unit wounded in a bomb attack just a few weeks ago.

"It feels nice to get a little pat on the back and a medal like this."

Laroche also told the soldiers that the families of their dead and injured comrades have told him they give Canada's soldiers their full support to carry on with the mission.

"Over the last days, I've spoken with the vast majority of the families of our departed, I've also called our injured, and I can tell you that all these people, the families who have lost one of their loved ones, are giving us support and they are supporting with all their hearts," he said.

The medal ceremony was held just one day after the latest fallen soldier, 27-year-old Gunner Jonathan Dion of Val-d'Or, Que., was honoured at a ramp ceremony in Kandahar.

Dion's remains will arrive at CFB Trenton in Ontario on Wednesday afternoon.

Taylor said his mission is worlds apart from the work carried out by his great-grandfather's unit more than a century ago, as the British attempted to subdue Pashtun tribe members in a valley in modern Pakistan.

"The main difference is that when the British were here in the 1890s, it was to colonize the area against the will of the people," he said, "whereas right now, we're here at the behest of the democratically elected government of Afghanistan in order to provide assistance to them, in order to provide security and stability within their own country."

About 2,500 Canadian soldiers are serving in Afghanistan, contributing to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) by battling pockets of Taliban insurgents and aiding reconstruction efforts in the war-scarred country.

Soldiers recognized for service in Afghanistan

Updated Tue. Jan. 1 2008 - CTV.ca News Staff

Dozens of Canadian soldiers received tour medals in Afghanistan on New Year's Day, and among them was a soldier whose grandfather was honoured for military service in the same country more than 100 years ago.

In total, 133 soldiers were awarded the General Campaign Star medal by Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche in recognition of their service in Afghanistan. The general thanked them for their work but reminded them that their task is not yet complete.

Laroche also said he has received personal assurance from families of dead and injured soldiers that they fully support Canada's troops in Afghanistan and want them to complete the mission.

"Over the last days I've spoken with the vast majority of the families of our departed, I've also called our injured, and I can tell you that all these people, the families who have lost one of their loved ones, are giving us support and they are supporting with all their hearts," Laroche said.

The ceremony at Kandahar Airfield was especially moving for 33-year-old Maj. Walter Taylor, of Ottawa.

As he stood at attention during the ceremony, Taylor carried in his breast pocket a medal that was awarded to his great grandfather, also in recognition of frontline service in Afghanistan.

The medal was given in 1897 to Private Charles Taylor, who fought with the British to subdue Pashtun tribes in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan -- a rugged, mountainous area that is still considered a wild and often lawless area.

Taylor is facing many of the same risks and challenges his greatgrandfather dealt with more than a century ago. But their missions are different, he told CTV News.

"The main difference is that when the British were here in the 1890's it was to colonize the area against the will of the people," Taylor said.

"Whereas we're here at the bequest of the democratically elected government of Afghanistan in order to provide assistance to them in order to provide security and stability within their own country."

The Taylor family's military tradition has continued unbroken through the generations between Charles and Walter. His grandfather fought in the Second World War and his father was an army reservist.

He carries his great grandfather's medal, which was passed to him from his father, both as a symbol of pride, and luck.

"They say there's no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole. Everyone needs to believe that there's someone looking out for them, and in my case, I'm hoping that my great-grandfather is doing that job for me."

In total, 74 Canadian military personnel and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since the mission began in 2002.

With a report by CTV's Murray Oliver in Kandahar

helped create Taliban monster

January 02, 2008 - Rosie DiManno – Toronto star
In 1991, Pakistan's intelligence services stashed a massive cache of assault rifles and ammunition at a secret weapons dump in Spin Boldak, rushing armaments across the border as a (phony) deadline loomed for ending direct supply of their favoured combatants in Afghanistan's civil war.

Seventeen tunnels beneath the dump contained enough weaponry to arm thousands of soldiers.

Three years later, the Taliban broke the depot open and handed out rifles – still wrapped in plastic – to volunteers summoned from local madrassas, an incident documented in the authoritative book Ghost Wars.

Within 24 hours, the Taliban captured Kandahar, Mullah Omar took possession of the governor's headquarters, and the airport was seized – with its six MiG-21 fighter jets, four Mi-17 transport helicopters, fleet of tanks and armed personnel carriers.

The Taliban gutting of Afghanistan was on, nearly all opponents swept aside, Kabul falling with barely a whimper. As Ghost Wars author Steve Coll so dryly put it: "Benazir Bhutto was suddenly the matron of a new Afghan faction."

The late – twice – but no longer future prime minister of Pakistan was far, far from a stupid woman. The Taliban was a gamble she took, cunningly if not without considerable trepidation – and certainly at the behest of a powerful intelligence service, the ISI, she feared but had to accommodate, in the doomed hope of retaining office.

But make no mistake: The woman who is now being so widely mourned – assassinated last week, perhaps by the very elements she empowered more than a decade ago – was nurturing stepmother to terrorists incubated under her watch; the same Islamist fanatics she inveighed against during the election campaign that came to a screeching halt in the calamitous assault on her motorcade.

She was a brave woman, without question, but Bhutto was much to blame for the tinderbox that Pakistan became during her exile in Dubai and London – the toxic military entanglement with the Taliban – having helped to create a monster that not even the sponsoring ISI can control any longer.

For years, during her second tenure as PM, Bhutto lied brazenly to Washington about the extent to which Pakistan, with her approval, was covertly arming and funding the Taliban. As Bhutto admitted in a 2002 interview: "Once I gave the go-ahead that they should get the money, I don't know how much money they were ultimately given ... I know it was a lot. It was just carte blanche."

For Bhutto, the objective was to keep a new Afghanistan yoked to Pakistan and out of India's orbit. (Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was considered far too Delhi-friendly.) Out of this relationship would flow the riches of a Pakistan-controlled trucking industry circumventing Kabul – a modern Silk Road trade incorporating the markets of Central Asia – the never realized gas pipeline from Turkmenistan, and training camps, off the Pakistan reservation, for fighters deployed to Kashmir.

Bhutto had an economic and political vision for Pakistan, one that depended largely on creating a compliant client state next door. It all got away from her, as it did also from the ISI. Indeed, Al Qaeda – now firmly interwoven with the Taliban – was contemptuous of Bhutto from the start, plotting her political demise, at the invitation of some ISI officers, as early as 1989.

Maybe by 2007, Bhutto had learned from her mistakes. Perhaps there was more to her than the democratic platitudes she espoused, as Washington's latest putative ally in the region. But this was a woman who lied and connived with brio, bewitching even the most garrumphing skeptics with her intelligence, charm and beauty.

She's already a better martyr than she ever was a leader of state.

'If it was jihad then, it's jihad now.'

Colin Freeze, Globe and Mail, 1.2.08

A former Pakistani intelligence officer says he has a message for Canadian and NATO forces in Afghanistan: “Ultimately you will lose,” he told me a phone interview. “You are not bringing any peace here."

Khalid Khawaja, an English-speaking ex-spy, spoke from Lahore after I called him from Kanadhar, where I am an embedded journalist with the Canadian Forces. The idea was to try to suss out the views of a known extremist, one who might put regional events in a different kind of perspective. 

“In [1980s] Afghanistan, when the Russians attacked, the Canadians and Americans and Europeans supported the jihad against the Russians,” Mr. Khawaja said.  Foreign policies and foreign armies may shift over time, he said, but real Muslims stand firm.

"Our religion has not changed," he said. “If it was jihad then, it is jihad now.”

Mr. Khawja is the most accessible of Pakistan's rogue elements. The agency he once worked for, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate (ISI), has been getting lot of press this week, amid allegations of complicity in the last week’s mysterious assasination of Benazir Bhutto and of continued ISI meddling in Afghanistan. 

These events occurred after Mr. Khawaja's time. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was something of a regional power broker. Firmly ensconced within Pakistan's military-intelligence apparatus, he first served as an Air Force squadron leader, then as an ISI operative, while forging personal relationships with Afghanistan-based  jihadists. He says he has met Osama bin Laden, Taliban Leader Mullah Omar, and just about every Afghan warlord of note.

He also is close to Canada's Khadr family, which is how I know of him. In his latest incarnation, he has been acting as a self-styled civil-liberties advocate, publicly criticizing the Musharraf dictatorship for arresting, disappearing, and killing allegedly dangerous fundamentalists -- people who include the Khadrs and himself.

NATO maintains it is in a war against the Afghan Taliban, but the conflict could be morphing into a broader struggle. Networks of religious extremists on both sides of the border have found a  haven in Pakistan-Afghanistan border regions, with some seemingly powerful, if generally unseen, patrons.

Few in the West would have any sympathy for the views of Mr. Khawaja, which might not be all that widely held inside the agencies he used to work for. Even so, if the rogue elements of the ISI are a fraction as radical and as powerful as critics maintain they are, then his point of view may give an insight into a mindset that's crucial for the West to understand.

In other words, how does an extremist ex-spy in Pakistan see Afghanistan and the wider world? 

Mr. Khawaja upholds that the world is divided into two: Pakistan’s friends and Pakistan’s foes.

Who are the foes? The "Americans are enemies of Afghanistan and they are enemies of Pakistan,” he said. “They are using even the Canadians now. And for what?”

Who are Pakistan's defenders? 

"Topmost," he says, is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. And the nukes, he said, are closely followed by:

2. The Army.

3. The ISI / intelligence

4. The "mujahedeen"

5.  The Taliban

6.  Insurgents in the tribal areas.

Mr. Khawaja doesn't appear to be saying that all these entities and the people that control them are necessarily in cahoots and conspiring together. Rather, they amount to powerful forces with common interests that Pakistan can steer and benefit from.

He makes no mention of al-Qaeda, per se. For him, there is no such entity.   “Where is al Qaeda?” he asked rhetorically. “I have not met somebody who says ‘I am al Qaeda.’ They never used this word.” He describes the Arab fundamentalist fighters he knows,  as “mujahedeen,” or literally Islamic holy warriors.

I had last spoke to Mr. Khawaja a year ago. (At the time, I was working on a strange story about how 1995-era exports of two-way radios from North America to the Pakistani Army seem to have figured into post-9/11 arrests of several Canadian and U.S. Arabs. First fingered by Western intelligence, most were accused of having links to Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, but were ultimately let go, uncharged, after horrible ordeals in foreign prisons. )

Since that conversation I hadn't checked in, and was surprised to find out that Mr. Khawaja's own fortunes had taken a nosedive. A few times in 2007, Islamabad had him jailed on a host of allegations involving extremist conspiracies. Friends of his died this summer as Pakistani forces raided an jihadist hotbed known as the Red Mosque.

“I wasn’t arrested, I was abducted,” Mr. Khawaja said, defiant as ever. His words drip with grievance and outrage.“I can prove in any court of law any case against me is fake.”

Pakistan and Afghanistan are one part of a greater struggle, he said, where stalemates are being reached all over the global chessboard.  “This will never end,” said Mr. Khawaja.  “In Palestine, with all the Israeli and American might, they could not finish this thing. Same thing with Kashmir.”

"This is a game being played by Americans,” he said.  “Their ultimate aim is to break Pakistan.” 

But “kill 2,000 [fighters] and you will find 5,000 more,” he asserted. “This is not Taliban and al Qaeda, it is the people of Afghanistan who are resisting this foreign occupation.”

But is it really?

Some Afghans I’ve spoken to  suggest they are sick of 30 years of war and foreign interference -- interference not just from the superpowers, but also regional powers, especially Pakistan.

The Taliban (once propped up by the ISI) is trying to regain control of Afghanistan even though there appers to be no great outcry for the return for Mullah Omar, known for stringing up infidels, banning kites, and jailing men whose beards were too short. 

Mr. Khawaja concedes that Taliban rule had some unfortunate glitches. “Mullah Omar’s style, his technique – I can differ with him,” he said. But he adds that at least the mullah tried to rule by the Koran, he said, which is important. "As Muslims we claim that we will obey God and the Prophet.”

Other governments, he complains, including the ones run by Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf, place themselves above God’s law. 

“Musharraf speaks against the beard and calls himself Muslim? This is wrong,” said Mr. Khawaja.  No fan of Karzai, he still has some former friends sitting in the Afghanistan government. He complains his power hungry warlords have sold out to become  “stooges” of the Americans.

In Pakistan, Mr. Khawaja said, the ISI is not above trying to influence who its secular masters are. It was pointed out that there are credible accounts the spy agency spending millions in the 1990s to influence Pakistan’s polls. “I have been into these games myself," Mr. Khawaja said. "It’s a game of money. It’s a game of sources.”

But he suggests such intelligence conspiracies wouldn't extend to murder.

Not everyone agrees. Before the assassination of Benazir Bhutto last week, the liberal Pakistani political leader threatened to blow the lid off of a host of the intelligence-agency conspiracies against her.

“This was stupid by Benazir. She was being fed mostly by Americans,” said Mr. Khawaja. While he said he had no real insight into the assassination, he said he didn't think some of the people Ms. Bhutto had fingered as her enemies would have killed her.

His views on the surviving democratic hopeful for Pakistan's presidency,  Nawaz Sharif, are well known. Mr. Khawaja has asserted in past interviews that he personally saw the politician solicit funds from Osama bin Laden.

As for President Musharraf, Mr. Khawaja calls the former military leader a hypocrite.  “A day before 11 September he had given all-out support for Taliban,” said Mr. Khawaja, complaining the general then caved to U.S. pressure in what became a with-us-or-against-us world.

Given the options, the ex-spy says that elections are a false choice for Pakistan. “Why should I vote? No way. To me this whole system is bogus. It just gives you privileged people who are sponsored by Americans.”

He said that while the President Musharref may switched course, some elements of Pakistan's military-intelligence complex have always stood their ground. 

“Whether you are in ISI or the Army, the feeling is the same,” Mr. Khawaja said.  “In their hearts, everybody hates Americans."

Karzai visit’s unanswered questions

Khalid Saleem – The Post (Pakistan) opinion

The visit of Afghan President Hamid Karzai was welcomed as auspicious. Pakistan and Afghanistan are bound by several links, among them common faith and culture, shared perception of regional peace and security, as well as a practical vision of a prosperous future for the peoples of the two neighbours. It is something of a pity though that, of late, certain misgivings and a measure of lack of trust had entered the exchanges between the two countries with some intensity. Given that the optimum future course of the region’s security lies in a policy of mutual accommodation and shared perceptions, frequent exchanges of views between the leaderships of the two countries are of fundamental importance. The visit of President Karzai can hopefully be seen in this very context.

A significant aspect of the visit has been obscured by the coincidental tragedy that hit the political landscape of the country. President Karzai was not only the last foreign dignitary to interact with the late PPP leader, but the meeting between the two can also be seen as one of the highlights of the visit. The timing of the Afghan visit, juxtaposed with the presence of the late political personality in the capital, was just a bit too close to be a mere coincidence. One cannot rule out an American connection. But the fructification of this meeting was overtaken by subsequent tragic events. Several questions would consequently remain unanswered.

President Karzai had an exclusive meeting with President Pervez Musharraf. It was followed by formal talks at the delegation level. The two leaders subsequently described their meeting and talks as excellent and productive. They described extremism and terrorism as their common enemy and vowed to increase intelligence cooperation in order to bring peace and stability to this somewhat volatile and troubled region. President Musharraf further stressed the view that improved cooperation between the intelligence agencies of the two countries was the key to fighting extremism and terrorism.

The president also laid emphasis on the premise that besides the military fighting the terrorists, there was an imperative need for effective border control measures to keep a check on cross-border movement of undesirable elements. People of both countries were suffering at the hands of these extremists and terrorists and both the countries were bearing the brunt of their activities. There was need for Pakistan and Afghanistan to work together for the mutual benefit of the two countries.

President Musharraf added that the meeting also looked at the important regional aspects regarding the advantages to be gained through the geographical affinities among the Central Asian Republics, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There was need, he stressed, for cooperation in the development of communication infrastructural linkages of roads and railways for having homogeneity of trade and commercial activities in the region. The president announced that it would be Pakistan’s proud privilege to host the next Jirga Commission meeting.

On his part, President Karzai termed the meeting productive in all aspects and expressed the hope that the two governments would follow up on the matters that had been discussed and decided during the meeting. He was thankful for the gesture of Pakistan giving 1,000 scholarships for Afghan students to come and pursue higher studies in Pakistan.

The President of Pakistan hosted a state banquet in honour of the visiting President of Afghanistan. Speaking on the occasion, the president made the following remarks:

* Pakistan had a firm policy of not allowing its territory to be used against Afghanistan. The two countries needed to stand together to combat extremism and terrorism.

* The destinies of the two countries were intertwined. Militancy and Talibanisation were neither the future of Pakistan nor of Afghanistan.

* The two countries needed to stand together to defeat these regressive forces that have disrupted the peace and harmony of our societies and have maligned our noble faith, Islam.

* Pakistan wished to see Afghanistan succeed and emerge as a strong, united and prosperous country, contributing, together with Pakistan, to the stability and development of the region.

* Peace and stability in one country benefits the other and instability in one causes harm to the other. No two countries in the world are so closely interlinked and interdependent as Pakistan and Afghanistan.

President Karzai in his reply stated:

* The two countries were suffering due to extremism and terrorism and this was casting a shadow of doubt on the bilateral relations.

* It was vital for the two countries to join hands to liberate their peoples from the common enemy of extremism and terrorism, to ensure a better future for their youth and future generations.

He invited Pakistani investors to participate in investment ventures in Afghanistan.

Having covered the pro forma aspects of the visit in the foregoing paragraphs, it needs to be pointed out that the visit leaves several questions unanswered. Subsequent events in Pakistan have precluded any attempt at deciphering the small script. The most that can be hoped for is that regular exchange of views would help sweep away the cobwebs that continue to becloud the relations between the two countries.

Despite the diplomatic verbiage of President Karzai’s pronouncements, it was evident that the Kabul regime is still not willing to give up the blame game or even to give Pakistan the benefit of the doubt. Kabul still feels that, for some obscure reasons, it is expedient to pass the blame for its own failings on to Islamabad. This attitude is regrettable to say the least and helps neither party. One can only hope that this attitude would be short-lived and wiser counsel will prevail before long.

The writer is a former ambassador and former Assistant Secretary General of the OIC.

VIEW: Two Benazir Bhuttos — Anne Applebaum (Washington Post)

Given the choice, of course I would have preferred to see Bhutto leading Pakistan instead of Pervez Musharraf, let alone Mohammad Omar. Nevertheless, it was a mistake for Western governments to expect too much from her return to Pakistan

What with the president of France jetting off to Luxor to spend Christmas with a supermodel and things looking up in Iraq, 2008 seemed set to be more cheerful than 2007. But the assassination of Benazir Bhutto— possibly marking the beginning of an Islamic nuclear power’s descent into chaos — has already put a sober cast on the normally frivolous end-of-the-year news. It would have been hard to invent a better reminder of how events in faraway countries, of which we once knew little, now affect us directly.

It would also be hard to think of a person in the Muslim world who could possibly have inspired more affectionate and well-informed obituaries. An extraordinarily high percentage of the world’s English-speaking pundits appear to have known Bhutto at Harvard, to have encountered her at Oxford, or to have interviewed her, at some length, the last time they visited Karachi or Rawalpindi. If one read only the encomiums to her bravery and her zest for politics over the past week, it would have been difficult, without knowing anything else about her, to understand why such a person was so hated by so many of her own compatriots.

Yet in retrospect, it is very clear that Bhutto belonged to that not-very-exclusive club of foreign politicians who are admired or respected in the West but bitterly despised by at least a portion of their fellow citizens. The late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat; the late shah of Iran; and until recently the “moderates” of the Saudi royal family were stellar examples of this phenomenon (though none had anything in common with Bhutto). So was Mikhail Gorbachev, the last general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

At one level, it is obvious why we like the Bhuttos and the Gorbachevs of the world while some of their countrymen do not. Their very “Western” qualities, their excellent English or their preference for Scotch whisky, their interest in “doing business with us” (in the Saudi case) or in liberalising, even democratising their countries (as in the case of Bhutto) are precisely what some of their compatriots hate most about them. Any Pakistani who sympathises with Taliban beliefs about women automatically loathed Bhutto. Any Russian who could call himself a Soviet imperialist had plenty of reasons to despise Gorbachev. Equally, any Egyptian who wanted the Israelis wiped off the map had cause to resent Sadat, the man who made peace with them.

But there are other reasons why there might be a division in Western and domestic feelings about certain politicians, particularly when that politician is associated with domestic issues that we either don’t know about, don’t care about or don’t understand. Bhutto, despite her eloquent and sincere defence of democracy on the pages of The Post, was just as well known in Pakistan for the long-standing corruption charges against her and her husband, as well as for encouraging the birth and growth of the Taliban itself during her years as prime minister: Allegedly, she had hoped to make use of the fanatical group’s military success in Afghanistan as a tool in Pakistan’s long struggle with India for regional dominance. To many Pakistanis, even those who didn’t want to see her murdered, these were not insignificant political errors but horrendous, unforgivable, disqualifying blunders.

We didn’t know about these sides of Bhutto’s character, or didn’t remember them, or simply didn’t think them as significant as her democracy rhetoric — just as we didn’t believe the internal collapse of the Soviet economy under Gorbachev had anything like the world-historical importance of the external collapse of the Soviet empire. But many Russians felt the negative effects of the economic crisis far more quickly than they felt the positive effects of better relations with the West. By the same token, many Saudis have never thought that their rulers’ massive import of Western technology and specialists made up for the damage wrought by the House of Saud’s profound corruption and fanatical authoritarianism.

Given the choice, of course I would have preferred to see Bhutto leading Pakistan instead of Pervez Musharraf, let alone Mohammad Omar. Nevertheless, it was a mistake for Western governments to expect too much from her return to Pakistan. It also would have been wrong to invest too much in her leadership, and it is worth remembering all of this in the future — especially when pondering the possible fate of some of Bhutto’s neighbours. How big, for example, might be the gap between the Western perception of Hamid Karzai, the well-spoken, well-meaning, liberalising president of Afghanistan, and the perception of his countrymen? So far, attention has focused on how Bhutto’s assassination might affect the course of events in Pakistan. My wish, for 2008, is that it not be a harbinger of what is to come elsewhere.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post on January 1, 2007

[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.]