In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan warns of dire food shortages
• Measles leaves over 20 children dead in Musa Qala
• White House: Bush To Build Support For Afghanistan
• US general warns on Afghan defence plan
• Noted expert faults Bush's reliance on Musharraf
• Kouchner, Musharraf confer on Pak-Afghan border security
• India to continue with aid to Afghanistan despite bombing
• Poland wants own military zone in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan: Some schools more vulnerable to attack than others?
• Talking poverty in Afghanistan
• 16 villages electrified by solar energy in Badakhshan
• SOME KYRGYZ SELECT AFGHANISTAN AS A LABOR MIGRATION DESTINATION
• Military operations in Swat, Fata
• Next-Gen Taliban
• Charlie Wilson's Zen lesson

Afghanistan warns of dire food shortages

BERLIN (AFP) — Afghanistan could face serious food shortages in the coming months that could lead to a famine, Economy Minister Mohammad Amin Farhang told a German newspaper in an interview published Friday.

Farhang called on the international community for help, noting that 400,000 tonnes of wheat were still needed to feed the population through the winter and sufficient oil, sugar and flour were also lacking.

"The situation is serious," he told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung, adding that President Hamid Karsai had formed a special commission to head off a potential humanitarian disaster.

Farhang said it would cost the Afghan government at least 80 million dollars if it has to buy grain on the free market.

"We call on the World Food Program, (German food aid group) Welthungerhilfe and friendly governments to help us in this crisis," he said.

Farhang said rising grain prices on the global market posed a serious problem while the political crisis in Pakistan made it difficult for food shipments to reach Afghanistan.

But he also acknowledged that Afghan authorities had ftan's warring factions to give safe passage to food aid convoys before the harsh winter cut off people in remote parts of the country.

It said more than 100 aid workers were either killed or abducted in 2007, with 55 humanitarian convoys looted.

Afghanistan is wracked not only by a spiralling insurgency led by the Islamist Taliban militia but also growing lawlessness blamed on drug gangs, criminal organisations and powerful local warlords.

Measles leaves over 20 children dead in Musa Qala

LASHKARGAH/KABUL, Jan 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Measles has left a number of children dead in the restive Musa Qala district of the southern Helmand province, residents and officials said on Wednesday. Many others are down with the contagious disease.

Confirming the breakout of the viral infection in the town, a former Taliban bastion, Dr Roohullah Mazloom told Pajhwok Afghan News the affected children were faced with great problems as vaccine and drugs for measles were not easily available in the district.

Since the arrival of the harsh Afghan winter, the highly communicable ailment has claimed more than 20 lives, with many more minors down with it. A Lanay Nawa dweller urged the authorities concerned to rush emergency medical aid to the victims. Shah Agha stressed efforts at preventing the disease from spreading to other areas.

Regay area resident Sanaullah, who lost a nephew to the contagion three days back, said the child had red blotches all over his body before suffering from a fatal fever. He also requested the government to ensure the dispatch of the requisite medicines to the district before it was too late to control the measles spread.

Helmand Public Health Director Dr Inayatullah Ghafari, unaware of the epidemic, said: We have sent two tonnes of medicines to the area, where a government-run clinic remains open to treat visitors.

The government has received no complaint about the measles outbreak, according to the director, who said inhabitants with any medical problem could visit the Musa Qala Hospital to seek advice and treatment from doctors.

In Kabul, a Public Health Ministry official also denied receiving any report about the flare-up in Musa Qala. I dont think there is such an illness in the district. A team of experts will be sent to the area to assess the situation if we are formally provided with a report, Dr Ahmed Shah observed.

Cough, coryza (runny nose), conjunctivitis (red eyes) and a fever for at least three days are among the classical symptoms of measles, doctors explain. The fever may soar to 104 Fahrenheit, with red spots visible inside the victims mouth.

The characteristic measles rash erupts several days after the fever attacks the child. It starts on the head before spreading to cover most of the body, often causing itching. The rash is said to stain, changing colour from red to dark brown before disappearing.

Research shows the measles is a highly contagious airborne pathogen which spreads primarily via the respiratory system. The virus is transmitted in respiratory secretions and can be passed from person to person via aerosol droplets containing virus particles, such as those produced by a coughing patient.

After several days of intense fighting in early December, Taliban guerrillas withdrew from the town they controlled for more than 10 months. The insurgents said they left the district to avoid civilian casualties in fierce clashes, touched off by an Afghan-NATO offensive.

White House: Bush To Build Support For Afghanistan

AFP, 01/02/2008 - WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush Wednesday told President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he would use a visit to the Middle East next week to build support for the strife-torn country, the White House said.

"The president will raise with leaders in the Middle East region, when he travels next week, the importance of supporting the people of Afghanistan, and he told President Karzai he would be doing that," said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

During a secure videoconference, Bush and Karzai also discussed the turmoil in Pakistan following the assassination last week of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, Perino said, without elaborating.

Bush leaves Jan. 8 for Israel, the West Bank, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

US general warns on Afghan defence plan

FT.com, 01/03/2008 -British plans to equip tribes to defend their villages against the Taliban will not work in the region of Afghanistan in which UK forces are responsible, the top US general commanding Nato forces in the country warned on Wednesday.

With overstretched international and Afghan security forces struggling to contain the country’s insurgency, some countries, including the UK and Denmark, are pushing for greater use of tribal militias to strengthen efforts against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces.

Last month Gordon Brown, British prime minister, said the UK, which has responsibility for the southern province of Helmand, would increase its support for “community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai”.

But General Dan McNeill, commander of the International Security and Assistance Force, on Wednesday said the model would be effective only in the south-east, and not in Helmand, the province where UK troops are located. “My information, from studying Afghan history, is that arbakai works only in Paktia, Khost and the southern portion of Paktika and it’s not likely to work beyond those geographic locations,” he said.

Gen McNeill said although there was a role for “local security solutions”, care had to be taken not to fuel inter-tribal fighting.

“What we should not do is take actions that will reintroduce militias of the former power brokers. There has been some good work here to get those things back in the box and we shouldn’t seek to go back there.”

British interest in community defence initiatives has been prompted by the difficulty of quelling the insurgency in Helmand and by frustration with the quality of Afghanistan’s police force, which is being retrained.

The tribal militia plans have appalled some analysts who say that any attempt to provide tribes with weaponry will further undermine a disarmament process that is already criticised for being ineffective.

Ehsan Zahine, director of the Tribal Liaison Office in Kabul, said it was unlikely that a 200-year-old arbakai system would be effective even in the three south-eastern provinces where it has traditionally held sway.

“In a place like Khost it will be very hard to persuade villages to fight for a government which they regard as abusive. Two years ago our proposal to use arbakai in the south-east was rejected. Now it’s unlikely the tribes would be willing to fight for a government they no longer trust.”

Jelani Popal, the head of the recently created Independent Directorate for Local Administration, is promoting the use of “community self-defence forces” but he told the FT they would have to be relatively formal bodies more akin to a locally recruited police force. In many cases, such local forces would not even be armed.

He said he had come under strong pressure from one of the foreign missions in Kabul to agree to non-uniformed “loose militias”.

“I did not agree to that, we do not want to create mujahedeen groups when we have worked so hard on national disarmament.”

Mr Popal said his proposal was similar to the ill-fated auxiliary police scheme introduced in 2006.

“It was a good idea, but it was badly implemented. Not enough attention was paid to recruitment – people just went to warlords to get 60 people or so. Many of them were drug addicts or criminals, or related to the warlord. We will ensure the community defence forces are properly screened and trained.”

An official at the British embassy in Kabul said the UK was not planning to exactly replicate the arbakai outside the south-eastern border lands. Proposals were being worked out for a small-scale trial of the plan.

Last month, a senior UK Ministry of Defence official described the arbakai as “local defence volunteers” who could perform certain roles in some places in Afghanistan.

The UK was seeking to place more responsibilities for security in Afghan hands, he said. However, the idea was not to create new militias.

Noted expert faults Bush's reliance on Musharraf

NEW YORK, Jan 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News): A prominent American expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan Tuesday alleged the policy of President George Bush to rely so heavily on President Pervez Musharraf had only helped in strengthening the al-Qaeda terrorist network in the region.

Recent events demonstrated more clearly that the Bush administration's policy of relying on a personal relationship with a megalomaniac manipulator like (Pervez) Musharraf to fight al-Qaeda had strengthened that organisation immeasurably and perhaps fatally damaged the US ability to form the coalition it needed to isolate and destroy the network, he observed.

Dr. Barnett Rubin, in an article posted on his blog, said: The Bush administration's terrible simplification has not only harmed US security interests, it has also done perhaps irreparable damage to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the best known American experts on Afghanistan, Dr. Rubin is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at the New York University. He spends much of his time in the region, where al-Qaeda is said to be reorganising.

Rubin said many - probably most or nearly all - Pakistanis did not see the "war on terror" as a struggle of "moderates" against "extremists." They saw it as a slogan to legitimise the military's authoritarian control, he insisted.

He maintained through the classic psychological mechanism of reducing cognitive dissonance, it was only a short jump from believing the al-Qaeda threat was being manipulated to strengthen authoritarian rule to believing the menace was a hoax perpetrated to boost the dictatorial regime.

A similar mechanism of reducing cognitive dissonance has led many Americans to accept propaganda that the anti-American Saddam Hussein and the anti-American Islamic Republic of Iran must be allied with the anti-American al-Qaeda, he continued.

Rubin alleged script writers in Washington imposed their own terrible simplifications on the people whose behaviour they were trying to affect without understanding as to who those people were and what they wanted, often with disastrous consequences. The current situation in Pakistan was a case in point, he believed.

The Bush administration has decided that in the Muslim world, a battle is going on between pro-American moderates and anti-American extremists. According to them, the Muslim world has a two-party system organised around how Muslims feel about America.

"In Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf is a pro-American moderate. Benazir Bhutto was a pro-American moderate. Therefore, it is only logical (and in US interests!) for the US to realign Pakistan politics so that the moderates work together against the extremists," he observed. Lalit K Jha

Kouchner, Musharraf confer on Pak-Afghan border security

RAWALPINDI, Jan 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The visiting French foreign minister Wednesday conferred with President Pervez Musharraf on the security situation in areas along the troubled Pak-Afghan frontier.

At a meeting with Gen Musharraf here, Bernard Kouchner assured Islamabad of strong support from Paris in the ongoing campaign against terrorism and extremism, the state-controlled Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency reported.

While acknowledging Pakistans efforts at battling extremism, the visiting dignitary vowed France would help the South Asian country fight the menace effectively. He also showed solidarity of the government and people of Pakistan over the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Afghanistan and along the Pak-Afghan border against the backdrop of last weeks meeting between President Hamid Karzais and his Pakistani counterpart, according to APP.

Later in the day, the French foreign minister met with Caretaker Prime Minister Muhammadmian Soomro. Calling terrorism a global challenge, Kouchner stressed greater international efforts to fight the scourge in all its manifestations.

France was willing to assist Pakistan in investigating the shooting of the iconic female politician, he said. Soomro replied the death of Benazir Bhutto was a tragic incident and a great shock for the Pakistani nation. A probe was underway to track down the assassin, he said, adding Islamabad would seek French cooperation in case of need.

India to continue with aid to Afghanistan despite bombing

Monsters and Critics.com, UK Jan 3, 2008, 18:28 GMT New Delhi

The Indian government said Thursday that its humanitarian and development aid to Afghanistan would continue despite the latest bomb attack.

India's Ministry for External Affairs confirmed that at least two Indian security personnel of the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), which specializes in building and maintaining highland roads, had been killed in a bomb attack in Afghanistan, IANS news agency reported.

A spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs said two Indian engineers were injured in the attack.

'The Government of India strongly condemns this act of terrorism aimed against its aid and humanitarian programme in Afghanistan and reiterates its determination to continue to work for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of Afghanistan and the well-being of Afghan people,' External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said.

The Indian embassy in Kabul was in touch with Indian personnel working in northern Afghanistan and efforts were being made to airlift the injured, Sarna said.

He said the Indian government intended to work closely with the Afghan government to strengthen security at sites where Indian nationals were working.

'A team to review security arrangements and identify additional measures is visiting Afghanistan immediately,' he said.

This is not the first time Indian workers have been targeted by Afghan militants. Ramankutty Maniyappan, a driver working with the Border Roads Organization was kidnapped and killed by Taliban in 2006. The same year K Suryanarayana, an Indian telecom engineer working for an Afghan company, was found dead after being kidnapped.

Each time, the Taliban had demanded that India stop all assistance to the Hamid Karzai government and withdraw all Indian personnel from Afghanistan.

India has pledged assistance of 750 million dollars for various projects in Afghanistan, including building of roads, power projects and setting up a national television network.

Poland wants own military zone in Afghanistan

PakTribune.Com - Friday January 04, 2008 WARSAW

Defense minister Bogdan Klich told Polish Radio 3 that he wanted Polish troops stationed in different parts of Afghanistan to be responsible for one zone - Paktika province.

Klich explained that if such a zone was created, the mission objectives, including peace enforcement and long-term benefits for Poland, would be easier to meet. The defense minister said that the first talks with the allies on the establishment of a Polish military zone in Afghanistan had already commenced.

The final decision will be made by the US and is expected sometime this month. Bogdan Klich stressed that the Afghan mission had been the most difficult and dangerous of all the international military missions involving the Polish Army since WWII and the Polish contingent in Afghanistan would have to be increased from 1,200 to 1,600 soldiers.

Afghanistan: Some schools more vulnerable to attack than others?

(IRIN) - 2 January 2008 KABUL - Schools built and/or reconstructed by international forces are more vulnerable to attack by Taliban insurgents and other radical elements than those built by civilians, according to experts.

"Oxfam is aware of research which suggests that in some areas schools built by international military forces are twice as likely to be targeted by militants as those built by civilian agencies," Mat Waldman, policy and advocacy adviser for Oxfam International in Kabul, told IRIN.

At least 230 students and teachers have been killed and about 250 schools attacked by militants in the past three years, according to the Afghanistan Ministry of Education (MoE).

Owing to these attacks, over 400 schools remain closed, mostly in volatile southern provinces, denying education to thousands of students, MoE officials said.

Almost 70 percent of school-age children are not attending schools because of insecurity in Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces, Haneef Atmar, the Afghan minister of education, told a meeting in Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand, on 9 December.

Confused roles?

NATO-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and US-led coalition forces have built and/or rebuilt hundreds of schools in different parts of Afghanistan and have spent large amounts of aid money on education support activities, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

On 26 December, dozens of US forces inaugurated a girls' school in Aftabachi village, Kapisa Province, US military said in a press release. The project cost US$120,000 and took six months to complete.

"They [local people] don't have enough schools around here, so this one's a big one for them," Sergeant Henry Rodriguez, a US military official, was quoted in the press release as saying.

On 30 December, Afghanistan's education minister, teachers and US military personnel discussed education issues at Forward Operating Base Fenty in the eastern city of Jalalabad, a separate US press release said.

Experts - including Abdul Qader Noorzai, an official at the human rights commission in Kandahar - warn that the increased involvement of Afghan and international military forces in school-building efforts, and continued interactions with schoolchildren, could send the wrong signals to Taliban insurgents and other extremist militants who have repeatedly attacked schools and students as "soft targets".

Research carried out by the Canadian Council for International Co-operation (CCIC) in October said that in Afghanistan the role of the military is often confused with that of humanitarian and development non-government organisations (NGOs).

"There needs to be some space between them [NGOs and military]. They need to be independent. If not, we can end up with civilians being targeted," Gerry Barr, president of CCIC was quoted as saying by CTV Canada.

Sensitive logos - Donors' use of sensitive logos, flags and other markings in their funded projects and on aid items such as school bags, notebooks and books could also incite militants, observers - including Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai - say.

"Every donor and every NGO also has a responsibility to consider whether using a logo or emblem of any kind would endanger the beneficiaries of a project. If in any way there is a significant risk that this could generate attacks or make people who use that project targets, or less secure, then I think that the logo should not be used," said Waldman of Oxfam.

Education Ministry disagrees - However, officials in MoE played down concerns that the involvement of the military in education projects, and the use of sensitive logos, may increase attacks on schools and students.

"Those who attack schools and schoolchildren will do so even if we were to put verses from the holy Koran on a school gate and a student's bag," said Siddiq Patman, deputy minister of education.

ISAF spokesman Carlos Branco also repudiated claims that military-built schools were more vulnerable to attack.

According to Branco, ISAF-led PRTs conduct school-building and other education projects in close consultation and cooperation with Community Development Councils (CDDs) and relevant government bodies. "No school that has been constructed through the respective CDC has been burned down," he said.

Patman gave assurances that aid provided by military forces would be stopped immediately if it were found to jeopardise schoolchildren's safety.

Talking poverty in Afghanistan

IINS, 01/03/2008 - Afghanistan is ranked as the fourth poorest or most deprived country in the world, and the poorest country in the entire Asia-Pacific region, according to the Afghanistan 2007 Human Development Report.

THE FIRST snows of winter have begun to fall in Badakhshan, a mountainous province in northeastern Afghanistan. A weak sun tries to break through a haze of fog and dust as our horses pick their way along the steep and rocky path that winds alongside a boulder-filled river valley.

We are headed for remote Yosaif village, home to some 75 households, or about 650 people, that to date has received no development assistance or other support through internationally supported efforts to rebuild Afghanistan’s war-torn society and economy.

We are here to present to village leaders the findings of a pilot participatory poverty assessment (PPA) funded through the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) Management for Development Results Cooperation Fund.

Over the past five months, three member organizations of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) have facilitated in-depth discussions about poverty and the effects it has on the lives of ordinary Afghans. The discussions have been held with men and women in eight communities in four of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. The results are important because they will help guide the government of Afghanistan and the international community in the finalization of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy – the road map for the country’s continued reconstruction and development. .

Afghanistan is ranked as the fourth poorest or most deprived country in the world, and the poorest country in the entire Asia-Pacific region, according to the Afghanistan 2007 Human Development Report.

Surprisingly, however, little is known about the scope or nature of poverty in Afghanistan, or the impact poverty has on the lives of the country’s estimated 30mn people. With no census over the past 30 years, even the country’s population is unknown, with more than 1 million Afghans still seeking refuge in neighboring Pakistan and Iran as the result of more than 30 years of war.

The PPA, conducted in both rural and urban communities in Badakhshan, Herat, Nangarhar, and Uruzgan provinces, has featured discussions about various aspects or dimensions of poverty, including education, health, gender, institutions of government, justice and security, livelihoods, markets, power relationships, and rights and entitlements.

The focus of these discussions has been on how the various interrelationships between such aspects contribute to becoming or ceasing to be poor. The exercise, the first of its kind in Afghanistan, has utilized a range of participatory appraisal techniques to focus discussions with the communities, and to help villagers both understand and explain how poverty shapes their lives.

Oxfam (Great Britain) has been the PPA implementing partner in Badakhshan. Oxfam has supported relief and reconstruction projects in the province since 1998, when a major earthquake destroyed many villages. The PPA discussions have been facilitated by a team of Oxfam female and male community development workers, with guidance from a small PPA team established by ACBAR to manage the overall PPA exercise. In Badakhshan, the PPA discussions have been held in two communities: Shaykhan, a village where Oxfam has worked for a number of years; and Yosaif, a more remote community that has received no development assistance to date.

Arriving in Yosaif, we are welcomed by the village elders. In accordance with Islamic tradition, most activities in Afghanistan are segregated along gender lines, with the PPA discussions thus conducted in parallel with female and male villagers. Oxfam’s female PPA staff, clad in sky-blue burkas, disappear to meet with the village’s women, while we gather with the village’s men in the shura, or traditional village council, communal meeting room, seated on pomegranate-red carpets and cushions spread around the room’s perimeter, with cups of steaming green tea to ward off the cool December temperatures.

After the long series of poverty-focused discussions with the village, conducted over a period of two months, today’s meeting is to validate the overall findings of the PPA for Yosaif village. This is done by confirming with the village representatives the major points, issues and concerns presented by the community through the participatory appraisal process. As Oxfam staff verbally present the findings, outlined on flipchart paper posted on the shura meeting room walls, turbaned heads nod with assent. “Yes, you have heard us well,” says one bearded elder.

The PPA process has included wrap-up meetings in three of the provincial capitals. Because of poor security, a wrap-up meeting could not be held in Uruzgan province. The meetings have allowed village representatives to discuss their poverty-related concerns with provincial government staff. With separate financing from USAID, video presentations have been made of the three meetings.

In addition, radio and television “round-tables” have been organized in Kabul, where representatives from the eight target communities have shared their PPA findings with government officials and other stakeholders. Based on such discussions and dialogue, ACBAR also is preparing a series of advocacy papers that highlight key poverty-related issues.

In addition to validation of the PPA findings for Yosaif village, today’s meeting includes a screening of the video of the provincial consultations.

Using a portable generator, and with a bed sheet as an improvised screen, the video is shown to the villagers. Not in the least intimidated by the technology, the village men give close attention to the video, again nodding in agreement to the cogent and often very eloquent statements made by representatives from each of the PPA target communities, and noting, with particular interest, statements made by women representatives.

Like many communities in Afghanistan, Yosaif village is very conservative, and particularly with respect to gender issues. Watching the video, and seeing the active and vocal participation of women from the other PPA communities, the shura decides that the voices of the women of Yosaif also should be documented.

As a result, Mitra Khaleghian, the Team Leader for the Badakhshan PPA team, is summoned from the meeting with village women and is given a hasty lesson on the operation of a documentary-quality video camera. She then goes to capture on videotape the faces and voices of Yoisef’s women.

She later reports an almost transformational change in the Yosaif women. While they had participated fully in the PPA process, and been very vocal, “They were galvanized,” she later said. “Seeing other Afghan village women talk about poverty and their daily lives, the women of Yousaif seemed even more committed to presenting how poverty is at the root of Afghanistan’s many development challenges”.

After too short a time, we say good-bye to the village of Yoisaif, and with winter clouds descending ever lower, mount our horses for the trip back to the nearest district town.

The PPA discussions, including an overall report on PPA findings now under preparation by ACBAR, will contribute toward the finalization of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS). The full ANDS is expected by March 2008, following an extensive process that has included the elaboration of ministry and sectoral strategies, the preparation of provincial development plans, as well as other sub-national consultations, including the PPA exercise.

The ANDS, which will have the status of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), will guide the government and its development partners in the achievement of Afghanistan’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as the Afghanistan Compact, a unique agreement between the government and people of Afghanistan and the international community to bring lasting peace and development to the country.

Based on the success of the pilot participatory poverty assessment, ACBAR is now planning a larger, more extensive participatory assessment exercise that will provide even more information about poverty in Afghanistan.

16 villages electrified by solar energy in Badakhshan

Pajhwok , 01/02/2008 -FAIZABAD - Around 1200 families in 16 suburbs of the distant northeastern Badakhshan province were provided with $600.000 Indian-funded solar system power supply scheme to brighten their houses, officials said.

Engineer Nazira Badakhsh an official of the Rural Rehabilitation Department of the province talking to Pajhwok Afghan News termed the scheme as an extraordinary project.

She said every family in the 16 villages was provided with a-40w electricity-generating solar system machine.

As the residents in Wakhan district were poor Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development (MRRD) allocated the electricity machines to them. She said each power system project cost $500 from the total $600.000 Indian grant.

She expected the Ministry will extend the facility to 16 remaining villages of Wakhan and later to the people in other parts of the country.

Nawroz Baig a local resident hailed the new step saying in the past they were faced with great problems and could not afford to buy enough fuel to brighten their house.

"Besides having bright nights we can also watch TV now," he praised. The far-flung Wakhan district shares porous borders with Pakistan and China.

SOME KYRGYZ SELECT AFGHANISTAN AS A LABOR MIGRATION DESTINATION

Daniel Sershen: 1/03/08

The Republican Council of Veterans, located on Gogol Street in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, is dedicated to assisting those who fought in Soviet conflicts. Most of its members – now middle-aged – served during the 1979-89 war in Afghanistan.

A few doors down, 29-year-old Talgat Chotkarayev works in a hair salon. He too is a veteran of Afghanistan – serving not as a soldier, but as a barber and pizza chef for coalition forces now battling radical Islamic insurgents.

Kyrgyzstan's persistent poverty has driven many to seek work abroad; estimates vary, but they hover around 10 percent of the country's 5 million population. The vast majority of labor migrants tend to head north to the booming economies of Russia and Kazakhstan. But a small number have turned instead to their war-torn southern neighbor, drawn by the promise of higher wages.

"I could have gone to Russia or Kazakhstan, but how much does a barber make there?" Chotkarayev asked. He currently earns about 15,000 som (approximately 430 dollars) per month in Bishkek, a good living by Kyrgyz standards. But while seeking work in 2004, friends told him he could make three times that much in Afghanistan. "I thought for a long time. I was afraid – there's a war there, after all," he said.

US forces employ approximately 29,000 private contractors in Afghanistan, Defense Department officials have said. Despite headline-grabbing reports of misdeeds by independent security providers in Iraq and Afghanistan, most contractors provide mundane support services that form the backbone of US operations on the ground. Many of the workers in Afghanistan are third country nationals – TCNs, in military lingo – from South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

The number of Central Asian TCNs appears to be relatively small – perhaps several hundred, according to Kyrgyz who have been there. Nurlan Kubenov, chief of external migration at the Kyrgyz State Committee on Migration and Employment, said Kyrgyzstan had no data on the subject. "We focus more on migration to Russia [and] Kazakhstan. The fact that people are going to Afghanistan, that's something new for us," he said.

Nurlan Torobekov, the chairman of the Republican Council of Veterans, acknowledged the irony that he had covered the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan two decades ago only to see his compatriots return there now to work. But the world had changed, he acknowledged: the triumph of market economic forces was inducing Kyrgyz to seek opportunities where they were available.

"Where there's a chance to make some money, that's where they are. Not to defend someone's interests in a political sense, but to feed their family," Torobekov said.

Given his own gloomy employment prospects, Chotkarayev eventually took the plunge. He signed on as a barber in Kandahar with a Korean contractor, later working in Herat for an Italian firm. Putting in six 12-hour days a week for half-year stints, he earned over 1,000 dollars per month, mostly in tips. Two later spells, as a pizza chef in Kabul and at the US's Bagram airbase, were less profitable; he brought home a little more than half that amount.

Elvira Aiylchiyeva, 23, also had some doubts when she saw an ad seeking English-speaking university graduates to work at Bagram. While security concerned her, she mostly wondered what it would be like to work on an isolated airbase surrounded by soldiers.

After friends who had already been there convinced her to apply, Aiylchiyeva realized that Bagram more closely resembled a small city, complete with movie theaters, gyms, and stores. She sold mobile phones in a retail shop for nearly a year, working eight-hour days with one day off per week and earning 500 to 1,000 dollars a month.

"Since my company was an American company, I had better conditions than the other Kyrgyz," Aiylchiyeva said.

Joseph Stewart, CEO of iFONE, the company that employed Aiylchiyeva, needed a handful of English speakers to help provide mobile phone service at US bases in Kandahar and Bagram. "Certainly hiring a third country national cost a lot less than hiring an American," he said, noting that he was initially attracted to Kyrgyzstan by the presence of an American university. He continued hiring Kyrgyz because they had "a good work ethic and [were] extremely honest," adding that the presence of a coalition airbase outside Bishkek also made logistics easier.

Conditions for Central Asian workers appear to vary widely. While Aiylchiyeva had a relatively light workload, Chotkarayev said his time as a pizza chef was truly grueling. "Each day we worked 13, 14, 15 hours, and without days off. I worked six months without a day off," he said. The constant standing had taken a toll on his health, leading to leg and back pain.

An October 3 article published in the local Kyrgyz newspaper Delo No. alleged that some Kyrgyz were subject to much worse treatment. Based on interviews with two anonymous Kyrgyz citizens who had worked at a Bagram shop run by the US military, the report said that TCNs were treated as people of "a third sort," lower than both Americans and Afghans. After enduring months of discrimination, the men said, they were unfairly accused of theft and sent home immediately. The article concluded that they were falsely accused to avoid implicating an American manager.

The two men worked for a Bishkek-based firm that held a contract with AAFES, the branch of the US military that sells products and services to members of the armed forces. Delo No. identified the company only by the letter Z, but EurasiaNet identified a local firm named Zalzar that held a similar contract with AAFES.

A Zalzar representative, Leila Seyitbek, and a lawyer hired by the firm, Tatiana Ivaschenko, said they had not read the October 3 article and could not confirm whether it referred to Zalzar. However, Ivaschenko said, "there have been no complaints" of unfair treatment from anyone the firm sent to Afghanistan.

Seyitbek added that Kyrgyz employed by Zalzar "work in very good conditions" and receive visa support as well as health and life insurance via the firm. The salaries paid by Zalzar to workers in Afghanistan – averaging around 800 dollars per month – had allowed many of them to buy cars, open businesses, or finance weddings upon returning home, she said.

Chotkarayev and Aiylchiyeva said they had not met with any discrimination from their employers, although they had observed isolated cases where other contractors mistreated TCNs. Both said they would go back, for the right price. "They [make] use of our strength, because we're the cheapest labor force," Chotkarayev said. "But we agree, right, because the money is good."

Editor’s Note: Daniel Sershen is a freelance writer based in Central Asia.

Military operations in Swat, Fata

Taliban movement gives two-day deadline to govt

By Mushtaq Yusufzai, The News International, January 3, 2008

PESHAWAR: The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) (Taliban movement), a conglomerate of all militant groups operating in Fata and settled districts of NWFP, Wednesday gave a two-day deadline to the government to stop military operations in Swat and rest of the tribal areas, else it would re-launch attacks on security forces and government installations.

And in South Waziristan Agency's Ladha subdivision, a tribal jirga succeeded in putting an end to the 2-day clashes between militants and paramilitary forces that erupted with the abduction of four FC soldiers Tuesday.

Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for TTP and Commander Baitullah Mahsud, called The News from an undisclosed location and said the decision to give a deadline to the government was taken in their Shura meeting.

He said senior militant commanders from all the seven tribal agencies, Frontier Regions (FRs) and settled districts of NWFP attended the meeting. Omar said all of them were unanimous on giving the two-day deadline to the government to stop military operations in Swat, North Waziristan and rest of the tribal regions and release all the detained militants.

The deadline started Wednesday and would expire today (Thursday), he explained. "We would definitely launch attacks on security forces and other government installations if our demands are not accepted before the deadline," remarked the militants' spokesman.

When asked about extension of a ceasefire announced by militants in North Waziristan Agency till January 20 to facilitate a tribal jirga negotiate between them and the government to restore peace, Maulvi Omar said: "This issue was thoroughly discussed in the Shura meeting. We are in contact with senior commanders of militants in North Waziristan who assured us of their full cooperation in case of any resistance against the government," he claimed.

Omar said after merging their groups in Tehreek-e-Taliban, all militant commanders have agreed not to hold talks or sign peace accord with the government on their own. He said all the militant groups would take the TTP Shura into confidence prior to any talks or signing peace agreement with the government.

Baitullah Mahsud is the Amir (central leader) of the movement, Maulana Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is militants' head in North Waziristan, senior Naib Amir and Maulana Faqir Muhammad, militants' commander in Bajaur, as the Naib Amir.

In his televised speech to the nation Wednesday evening, President Gen (R) Pervez Musharraf personally mentioned Baitullah Mahsud and Maulana Fazlullah and blamed them for masterminding the suicide attack on Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi.

Baitullah has however already defended his position and denied his hand in the assassination while Fazlullah, who had not been accused earlier by the government, is yet to clarify his position.

Meanwhile, following heavy clashes between the paramilitary Frontier Corps and militants in Ladha subdivision, a tribal jirga has initiated efforts for restoration of peace and ceasefire between the two sides.

A pro-MMA senator from South Waziristan, Maulana Selah Shah told The News that they started efforts to stop the fighting. He said the jirga would sit with both the sides to listen to their viewpoints. There were unconfirmed reports that 20 people were killed in the latest spate of fighting between militants and security forces but officials termed it baseless.

Murder Inc.

United Press International. 01/02/2008 By Arnaud de Borchgrave

(Editor's note: The following piece was published Oct. 25, soon after Benazir Bhutto returned home to Pakistan and escaped an assassination attempt against her. Prior to traveling to Pakistan, she told UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave in an e-mail message that she had received intelligence that three men -- Baitul Masood, an Afghan, Hamza Bin Laden, an Arab, and a Red Mosque militant -- had been sent to kill her. In the message, she also said she had told Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of the threat.

Bhutto was killed Thursday by an assassin at a political rally she was addressing in the city of Rawalpindi.)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 (UPI) -- No sooner did Benazir Bhutto narrowly escape a two-man suicide bombing attack than she faced the next death threat of many more to come. Like paparazzi chasing down a celebrity, would-be assassins will be dogging her every step as she leads her Pakistan People's Party in the coming election campaign to reclaim Pakistan's prime ministership, from which she was deposed in 1990 and again in 1996.

Five days after 140 people were killed and some 400 wounded in Bhutto's brush with martyrdom, she received a two-page handwritten letter in Urdu from a "friend of al-Qaida" that threatened to eliminate her "by any means."

Frighteningly long lists of plots are being hatched by a wide variety of extremist organizations and groups. And there is no shortage of killers and volunteers for suicide bombings, martyrs anxious to die for a new global caliphate. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf himself has been the target of nine assassination attempts, two by suicide bombers. Conspiracy is Pakistan's middle name.

Government sleuths reassembled body parts to get a lead on the would-be assassins. Released to the media were ghoulish photos of the severed head of what the police were certain was one of the perpetrators. Pakistani intelligence from a northern tribal territory reported another 30 suicide bombers had been assigned to "high-value political targets."

Radical groups pollute Pakistan's political scene. Since Sept. 11, 2001, when Musharraf, under U.S. pressure, dumped his Taliban proteges, extremist groups, once encouraged by the all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency for the "liberation" of Indian Kashmir, were ordered to shut down. Many of them had offices in the major cities that were closed only to reopen with a different name a block or two away.

The most ominous warning of all for Bhutto came from the federal railways minister, Sheik Rashid Ahmad. He accused her of "raising the flag of imperialism (i.e., Bush administration support), which means she "will have to face suicide attacks. We have already conveyed to her that the ground realities have changed (since she was last in her country eight years ago)."

This perennial Cabinet minister ran a jihadi training camp in the 1980s. He also served in the previous military government under President Zia ul-Haq. As Musharraf's information minister, he was known as a champion spin doctor who affects an always-in-the-know image. This time he inadvertently validated Bhutto's claim that some elements in Musharraf's government collude with militant radicals assigned to sabotage her political comeback.

Ahmad is a close friend of retired Gen. Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who acts as strategic adviser to the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition of six politico-religious extremist parties that governs two of Pakistan's four provinces (Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier province). Gul hates the United States -- and anything Washington favors -- with a passion. He assisted the creation of the Taliban in the early 1990s and to this day believes the Sept. 11 al-Qaida attacks were a plot engineered by Israel's Mossad, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force. ("How come no fighters were scrambled to take on the planes you say were hijacked?" he asked this reporter.)

From al-Qaida and Taliban sanctuaries in the tribal areas on the Afghan border to Karachi, a teeming port city of 15 million some 600 miles away, there are tens of thousands of fanatics who would love to see Bhutto dead. To lengthen the odds, the government banned political rallies and street demonstrations. But she will still have television, now accessible to 60 percent of the country. The privately owned ARY television network has 12 24/7 channels for news and commentary and for everything from food to fashion. ARY Chief Executive Officer Salman Iqbal was in Washington and New York this month to recruit "intellectual talent" for a new a "think tank" channel, directed by Ammar Turabi. It will focus on counter-terrorism, human rights and distance learning.

Despite the newly acquired accoutrements of modernity, a large part of Pakistan is still stuck in the past. More than half its 160 million people are illiterate. And aligned against Bhutto's return to power are renegade ISI cadres; the nationwide MMA coalition of extremists throughout the country; supporters of the late military dictator ul-Haq, who seized power from Bhutto's father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and then ordered him executed by hanging (Zia himself died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 and Benazir became prime minister in a restored civilian government); and the countless flat-Earth clerics and their followers who regard a female leader as an abomination.

Yet Bhutto's popularity in this deeply divided society remains high. And her Pakistan People's Party is the country's largest, backed and funded by a burgeoning middle class in a country with an annual growth rate of 7 percent. Her power-sharing deal with Musharraf called for corruption charges against her to be dropped as she returned from self-imposed exile in London and Dubai, in exchange for which Musharraf would doff his general's uniform after the Supreme Court certifies his election to another five-year term. He seized power in a bloodless military coup eight years ago.

Several hundred lame-duck lawmakers from four provincial assemblies, the federal Assembly and the Senate re-elected him recently; all opposition parties boycotted the balloting.

Assuming all goes according to plan -- always a big "if" in Pakistan -- the big question will be who will wield the most clout on defense and internal security matters? Bhutto believes the seven troubled tribal areas on the Afghan border, now under the sway of al-Qaida, the Taliban and assorted jihadis from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, can be brought to heel by introducing political parties and election campaigning to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

Today only the MMA is authorized to recruit and propagandize in the FATA. The MMA is pro-Taliban and its leaders are self-avowed admirers of Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted terrorist. Pakistan's mainstream political parties are not welcome in North and South Waziristan where the Taliban and al-Qaida rule and where Pakistani troops are loath to fight.

Pakistani intelligence reported from the northern tribal territories another 30 suicide bombers had been assigned to terminate high-value political targets. Bhutto is now the target with the highest value. The late ul-Haq once said his greatest mistake was not killing Bhutto the daughter as he had ordered the execution of her father. Benazir's assassination would relegate Pakistan to "failing nuclear state."

Next-Gen Taliban

New York Times Magazine, January 6, 2008 issue By Nicholas Schmidle

One day last month, I climbed onto a crowded rooftop in Quetta, near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and wedged myself among men wearing thick turbans and rangy beards until I could find a seat. We converged on the rooftop that afternoon to attend the opening ceremony for Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam’s campaign office in this dusty city in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, better known by its abbreviation, J.U.I., is a hard-line Islamist party, widely considered a political front for numerous jihadi organizations, including the Taliban. In the last parliamentary elections here, in 2002, the J.U.I. formed a national coalition with five other Islamist parties and led a campaign that was pro-Taliban, anti-American and spiked with promises to implement Shariah, or Islamic law. The alliance, known as the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or M.M.A., won more than 10 percent of the popular vote nationwide — the highest share ever for an Islamist bloc in Pakistan. The alliance formed governments in two of the country’s four provinces, including Baluchistan.

A cool breeze blew across the rooftop, and a green kite flew above in the crisp, periwinkle sky. The J.U.I. was gearing up again for national elections, then scheduled for the second week of January, but the message this time was remarkably different from what it was five years ago. One by one, hopefuls for the national and provincial assembly constituencies gave short speeches. Most of them spoke in Pashto, but, knowing Urdu, I could understand enough to realize that they weren’t rehashing the typical J.U.I. rhetoric. No one praised the Taliban. Shariah was mentioned only in passing. Just one person, a first-time candidate in a suede jacket who probably felt obliged to prove his credentials in a party of fundamentalist mullahs, attacked the United States. Afterward, party workers handed out free plates of cookies and cups of tea.

This seemed altogether too gentle. Had the J.U.I. gone soft? Among several firebrands conspicuous by their absence was Maulvi Noor Muhammad, Quetta’s former representative in the National Assembly and an outspoken supporter of the Taliban, so I went to see him at his madrassa. Adolescent students, many wearing the black turbans favored by the Taliban, mingled by the metal entrance gate. Muhammad had told me in the fall of 2006 that the sole reason that the Taliban hadn’t defeated NATO forces in Afghanistan yet was because NATO had B-52’s, and when I reminded him of this, he smiled through a mouthful of missing teeth. “The Taliban have more than made up for that disadvantage now with suicide bombers,” he said.

If the government’s version is correct, radical Islamists pressed their advantage to terrible effect in assassinating Benazir Bhutto during a rally on Dec. 27. Bhutto’s family and her party clearly have no faith in the probity of President Pervez Musharraf’s government, and many - including Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto’s nearest rival in the Pakistani opposition - have accused the government of creating the security situation that led to her murder. Musharraf responded in a nationally televised speech on the evening of Jan. 2 by doubling his insistence that terrorists were responsible: “We need to fight terrorism with full force, and I think that if we don’t succeed in the fight against terrorism, the future of Pakistan will be dark.” Efforts at democratic integration by parties like the J.U.I. have now been overshadowed by the violence of their antidemocratic Islamist colleagues - a network of younger Taliban fighting on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, jihadis pledging loyalty to Al Qaeda and any number of freelancing militants. Disrupting and discrediting democracy may, of course, be the point. The Bhutto assassination could well make moderation impossible, as Islamist radicals savor their disruptive power - and enraged mainstream parties threaten the stability of the government itself. For now, the Bhutto killing has given the opposition a rare unity, and the elections, although delayed to Feb. 18, may well go ahead. The J.U.I. remains determined to continue campaigning. Six weeks, however, could prove to be a very long time in Pakistan’s embattled politics.

In Quetta, Maulvi Noor Muhammad, who is 62, sat on the madrassa’s cold concrete floor wrapped in a wool blanket as he leafed through a newspaper. Speaking in Pashto through an interpreter, he said that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the J.U.I. chief, had visited three times in the previous few weeks to persuade him to enter the election. Muhammad claimed to have refused each time because he believed the J.U.I. had drifted from its core mission: to lead an aggressive Islamization campaign and provide political support to what he referred to as the mujahedeen, a term for Muslim fighters that can shift in meaning depending on who is speaking. “Participating in this election would amount to treason against the mujahedeen,” he said. I asked about the others in the party who had decided to run for office. Muhammad shook his head in disappointment and explained how, following the government operation against the Red Mosque rebels in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital city, in July, President Musharraf put religious leaders under tremendous pressure. “Musharraf threatened to raid several madrassas,” Muhammad said. “The political mullahs got scared.”

Maulana Fazlur Rehman is exactly the sort of “political mullah” whom Muhammad portrayed as running scared. In the past year, the J.U.I. chief has tried to disassociate himself from the new generation of Taliban wreaking havoc not only across the border in Afghanistan, as they have for years, but also increasingly in Pakistan. At the same time, Rehman has been trying to persuade foreign ambassadors and establishment politicians here that he is the only one capable of dealing with those same Taliban. (Rehman told me that he never offered Muhammad a chance to enter the election; he even added that the J.U.I. had already expelled the Taliban guru “on disciplinary grounds.” ) In the process, some Islamists maintain that Rehman has sold them out. Last April, a rocket whistled over the sugarcane fields that separate Rehman’s house from the main road before crashing into the veranda of his brother’s home next door. A few months later, Pakistani intelligence agencies discovered a hit list, drafted by the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, with Rehman’s name on it.

“The religious forces are very divided right now,” I was told by Abdul Hakim Akbari, a childhood friend of Rehman’s and lifelong member of the J.U.I. I met Akbari in Dera Ismail Khan, Rehman’s hometown, which is situated in the North-West Frontier Province. According to this past summer’s U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, approved by all 16 official intelligence agencies, Al Qaeda has regrouped in the Tribal Areas adjoining the province and may be planning an attack on the American homeland. “Everyone is afraid,” Akbari told me. “These mujahedeen don’t respect anyone anymore. They don’t even listen to each other. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is a moderate. He wants dialogue. But the Taliban see him as a hurdle to their ambitions. ”

Rehman doesn’t pretend to be a liberal; he wants to see Pakistan become a truly Islamic state. But the moral vigilantism and the proliferation of Taliban-inspired militias along the border with Afghanistan is not how he saw it happening. The emergence of Taliban-inspired groups in Pakistan has placed immense strain on the country’s Islamist community, a strain that may only increase with the assassination of Bhutto. As the rocket attack on Rehman’s house illustrates, the militant jihadis have even lashed out against the same Islamist parties who have coddled them in the past.

Western audiences might find news about Islamists fighting among themselves rather appealing. But jihadi wars, at least since the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, have tended to spill over borders, all the more so since Sept. 11, 2001. And within Pakistan, the struggle for supremacy between those Pakistani Islamists who want to gain power democratically and those who want to abolish democracy altogether could well tear the country apart.

The election season got off to a late start, postponed by President Musharraf’s suspension of the constitution and declaration of a state of emergency. In November, when politicians should have been out stumping and rallying support, many were dodging the police. Besides sacking dozens of judges and pulling private television channels off the air, Musharraf arrested thousands of lawyers, students, social activists and political leaders during the 42-day emergency regime, which ended on Dec. 15.

The most damaging result of the emergency, however, may have been the doubt it sowed within the opposition, splitting those advocating participation from others calling for a boycott. The split hit the six-party Islamist M.M.A. alliance hardest of all. While Rehman repeated the J.U.I.’s intention to field candidates, his main partner in the alliance, the Jamaat-e-Islami party, argued that the polls would be rigged and participation would legitimize Musharraf’s regime. Both parties stuck to their positions, and in mid-December, the Islamist alliance fell apart.

Rehman maintained that he could persuade Jamaat-e-Islami supporters to vote for the J.U.I. this time around, but even some of his fellow party members doubted that would work. “In the last election, everything was related to Afghanistan and how innocent Afghans were being killed,” Chaudhry Sharif, a longtime J.U.I. member from Rehman’s district, told me last month. Now Rehman “has to answer his people when they ask him, ‘What happened in our own country?’ ” Despite the M.M.A.’s taking power in the North-West Frontier Province, hundreds of civilians have died in Islamist terrorist attacks. The public’s previous image of mullahs as incorruptible politicians has also been tarnished. Rehman’s chance of attracting swing voters appeared dim.

For now, it is Islamist violence that seems to have the political upper hand rather than the accommodation of Islamist currents within a democratic society. The mainstream parties have addressed Islamic militancy strictly as a security issue. Benazir Bhutto used particularly aggressive rhetoric against militants — her main rival, Nawaz Sharif, has a more religiously conservative base — but all of the main political figures outside the M.M.A. treated jihadi violence within a pro- or anti-Musharraf context, and as an effect of U.S. relations rather than as a problem integral to Pakistan’s political culture. “This election comes down to whether you are pro-Musharraf or anti-Musharraf,” a lawyer at a Pakistan Peoples Party rally told me a few weeks ago. In the North-West Frontier Province, the Awami National Party, a secular, nationalist Pashtun outfit, also stands to gain from the M.M.A.’s decline and will dilute the Islamists’ influence in the provincial assembly.

Jihadis have, of course, increasingly opted to intervene in Pakistan by attacking mainstream politicians and their supporters. Only a week before Bhutto’s assassination, a suicide bomber targeted the former interior minister, leaving more than 50 people dead. It was the second attempt on the minister’s life; the first, in April, killed nearly 30 people. And of course Bhutto’s arrival home in October, after years abroad, was greeted by two suicide bombers who detonated themselves beside her float, killing about 140 people. In the aftermath of her killing, more violence seems inevitable. But the politics of terror and assassination are probably secondary, among jihadis, to the gradual extension of their control over rural and semiurban stretches of western Pakistan — a power base that, at least in the short term, can be disrupted only by the Pakistani military. Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban commander from South Waziristan who captured about 250 soldiers in August, recently warned a J.U.I. candidate there not to run unless several of his arrested Taliban fighters were released. More ominously, in mid-December, 40 representatives from different Taliban gangs from across the North-West Frontier Province and the Tribal Areas banded together into a single group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban Movement). The movement named Mehsud their leader. He has also been named by Pakistani authorities as a suspect in Bhutto’s murder.

The sound of an explosion punctured an otherwise pleasant evening. I had been sitting under a giant mango tree, drinking Southern Comfort with a group of friends, including a midlevel intelligence officer in the army. It was my first night in Dera Ismail Khan, Rehman’s hometown in the North-West Frontier Province, about 100 miles from the Afghan border. While the blast jerked me upright, no one else seemed too bothered. Locals had grown used to the bangs and booms. The previous night, Pakistani Taliban bombed a music store in the town bazaar. The sound I heard was the explosion from a small grenade targeting the owner of a cable-TV service.

Musharraf’s government says the increasingly frequent bombings are evidence of Talibanization creeping east from the Afghanistan border. The local Taliban militants blast shops selling un-Islamic CDs, cable-TV operators, massage parlors and other sites they consider havens of vice. A newspaper editor in Dera Ismail Khan showed me a letter he received, signed by the Taliban, warning him not to print anything that defamed the mujahedeen. They threatened to blow up his office if he didn’t comply.

Rehman’s critics blame him and his party for facilitating the local Taliban, an allegation he resents. “We are politicians, and we will have to go to our constituencies to get votes in an election,” he told me, as we sat together in the drawing room of his home in Dera Ismail Khan. “If there is a war going on, no one can vote.” Halogen spotlights dotted the ceiling, and soft leather couches lined the walls. Rehman wore a pinstripe waistcoat over a shalwar kameez. The room smelled of strong cologne. He added, in a rare moment of candor, “But even we are now afraid of the young men fighting.”

For many years, few people questioned Rehman’s command over the mujahedeen along the border separating Pakistan from Afghanistan. His father, Maulana Mufti Mahmood, ran the J.U.I. for 20 years. Mahmood helped kick-start the Afghanistan jihad by issuing a fatwa against the Soviet-backed communist government in Kabul. A year later, when Mahmood died from a heart attack, Rehman, a 27-year-old madrassa student with scant political experience, inherited the J.U.I. and his father’s jihadi enterprise. Thousands of Islamic seminaries profess political allegiance to the J.U.I., and thousands of Taliban warriors first imbibed radical theology in Rehman’s madrassas.

Over time, Rehman cultivated his pragmatic side and played power politics in Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad. He eased his way into the establishment just as the Taliban were taking over Afghanistan. In 1993, Benazir Bhutto, then the prime minister, named him chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs, a post that “enabled him to have influence on foreign policy for the first time,” writes Ahmed Rashid in his book “Taliban.” Rehman still argues that, particularly in the Taliban’s later period of running Afghanistan, he was having a moderating influence on Mullah Omar. “They should,” he told me, “have been given more time.”

During Pakistan’s 2002 election campaign, Rehman played up his links with the Taliban, and the Islamist coalition did well. In retrospect, that may have been his high point. The divide between the pro-Taliban leaders of yesterday and those of today was fully exposed by the insurrection at the Red Mosque in Islamabad, which began last January under the leadership of Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his brother. As the weeks and months passed, the rebels kidnapped a brothel madam, some police officers and, finally, six Chinese masseuses. They made a bonfire of CDs and DVDs and demanded that Musharraf implement Shariah. Defenders paced the outer walls of the mosque holding guns and sharpened garden tools.

Rehman tried to talk the Ghazi brothers out of their reckless adventure, but his influence inside the mosque was limited. “They are simply beyond me,” he said at one point.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his entourage of Islamic militants finally clashed with state security forces in early July, but the real rebellion actually occurred in the preceding months, when Ghazi and his brother flouted efforts by Rehman and other religious elders to talk them down. Back in April, when I had asked Ghazi how he felt with the entire old guard turning against him, he looked more amused than worried. “Everywhere you look, you can see youngsters rejecting the old ones because old people do not like change,” he said. “They are rigid.” Before army commandos killed him in July, Ghazi promised that a government assault on the Red Mosque would be a blessing for the mujahedeen. His “martyrdom,” he used to say, would further invigorate the jihadis and expedite an Islamic revolution in Pakistan.

Since Ghazi’s death, hundreds of soldiers and policemen have died in suicide blasts or in gunfights against the Taliban. The capture of the soldiers in South Waziristan has perhaps been the worst of it. (In a Taliban-produced DVD circulating around Dera Ismail Khan, a teenager saws the head off a soldier while, in the background, three of his adolescent peers chant “Allahu akbar.”) But the militants have not spared Pakistan’s top spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.), which orchestrated the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s. In September, twin suicide blasts went off, and one ripped through a bus carrying I.S.I. employees to work in Rawalpindi, the military’s garrison city near Islamabad, killing at least 25 people. The intelligence officer I met in Dera Ismail Khan, whose area of operations included the Taliban-ruled enclave of South Waziristan, maintains that his contacts with the militants were severed long ago. “We can hardly work there anymore,” he told me. “The Taliban suspect everyone of spying. All of our sources have been slaughtered.”

I asked Rehman, who used to refer to the Taliban as “our boys,” if he still considered the Taliban, even those who might be firing rockets at his house, his boys. “Definitely,” he replied. “But because of America’s policies, they have gone to the extreme. I am trying to bring them back into the mainstream. We don’t disagree with the mujahedeen’s cause, but we differ over priorities. They prefer to fight, but I believe in politics.”

Mushahid Hussain, secretary general of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, told me that no one can negotiate the politics of the North-West Frontier Province better than Rehman. “We know that we need a bearded, turbaned guy out there,” Hussain told me. It is perhaps a measure of how inextricable Islamism and politics have become in Pakistan that even the United States would deal with an anti-American like Rehman. In September, he had the first meeting of his 30-year political career with an American ambassador. What did Rehman and Anne Patterson, the American envoy, discuss? “She urged me to form an electoral alliance with Benazir Bhutto and Musharraf,” he told me a few days after the meeting. “I am not against it. But politically, because of the American presence in Afghanistan and rising extremism, it is a bit hard for us to afford.” Plus, the fact that the Americans thought Bhutto could tackle the Taliban had simply baffled him. “She has no strategy in those areas, and nothing to do with those people,” he said.

When asked if Patterson’s meeting signaled a change in American attitudes, an embassy spokeswoman said it “reflects our approach to democratic politics in Pakistan” and was “part of a process of talking to all those who represent political movements in Pakistan, across the spectrum.” The U.S. has given more than $5 billion to Pakistan in the past few years to fight Islamist militants, but recent reports suggest that the aid has not been effective. Late last month, Congress put restrictions on some military aid and called for the restoration of democratic rights.

Even after the Bhutto assassination, Rehman told me he would stay in the election — although, as he put it, “the reality is that this is complete anarchy, and no one can run a campaign.”

Before his death at the end of the Red Mosque standoff in July, Abdul Rashid Ghazi was allies with a young cleric in the Swat Valley, in the North-West Frontier Province. The cleric’s name is Maulana Fazlullah. For a year, Fazlullah trained his militia and amassed a following. Twice a day, he delivered a radio address, broadcast to tens of thousands of people in Swat, over his illegal station. He preached about the virtues of Shariah, the ills of female education and the honor of jihad and the Taliban. In retaliation for the assault on the Red Mosque, Fazlullah’s militiamen and suicide bombers launched attacks on convoys and police stations throughout the Swat Valley.

When, in October, I asked Rehman if he had any control over Fazlullah, he said the negotiating efforts of the J.U.I. leader there, Qari Abdul Bais, were saving Fazlullah and the Pakistani Army from going to war. But when I met Bais, a septuagenarian with a cane, he offered this estimation of Fazlullah: “He is totally out of control.” Fazlullah created a more difficult situation for Musharraf and the generals — and, in a different way, for local religious leaders — because his ambitions exceeded the mere creation of an Islamic emirate in Swat. In November, his men began conquering territory and taking over police stations in neighboring districts, pulling down Pakistani flags and raising their own. By late November, the Pakistani Army had had enough and mounted an immense offensive against Fazlullah and his men, a bloody battle that continued into late December. I was able to visit Fazlullah’s compound (since destroyed) just before the military attacks began and get a sense of what a Taliban-controlled area in Pakistan would be like.

Fazlullah’s base was a sprawling mosque and madrassa compound in the village of Imam Dehri, located across the Swat River from the city of Mingora. The entire Swat Valley is surrounded by mountains blanketed with pine forests. The river pours from the Hindu Kush Mountains and meanders through the valley, nourishing apple and persimmon orchards. During the summer, thousands of Pakistanis flock here for a break from the heat and humidity choking the lowlands. When I visited Swat in June, for example, still weeks before the Red Mosque assault began in Islamabad, I had trouble getting a room at the exclusive Serena Hotel. By the time I returned in October, I was the only guest. Almost immediately after arriving the second time around, I saw why: at the edge of town, Taliban rode around in flatbed trucks, pointing weapons in the air and ordering motorists to remove the tape decks from their cars. Fazlullah, like his Taliban predecessors in Afghanistan, deemed music — and anything that plays music — un-Islamic.

The following Friday, I went to Imam Dehri, where I met the commander of Fazlullah’s militia, a man with glacier-blue eyes named Sirajuddin. (Fazlullah appeared briefly, but didn’t stay long; he was observing aitekaaf, a meditation period that lasts 10 days at the end of Ramadan.) To get from Mingora to Imam Dehri, my Pashto interpreter and I boarded a small metal tram attached to a zip-line. Six other people piled in. We got a light push to get moving, and then soared over the river. Sirajuddin waited on the other side, and he led us through a crowd of Fazlullah’s supporters. The P.A. system blasted prerecorded jihadi poems while Taliban walked about with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.

“We are struggling for the enforcement of Shariah,” Sirajuddin told me inside a brick shed that was his office. “Twice, in 1994 and 1999, the government said it was committed to enforcing Shariah in this area, but it never did. The people here want Islam to be a way of life.” He added: “We are Muslims, but our legal system is based on English laws. Our movement wants to replace the English system with an Islamic one.”

Four Taliban sat in the room with us, watching me with dark, intent eyes. I asked one of them, a 32-year-old named Abdul Ghafoor, what he was fighting for. Islam? Revenge? “This is not personal revenge; this is our religious obligation,” he told me, speaking Pashto through an interpreter. Ghafoor crouched on a low stool, a Kalashnikov resting on his lap. He said he was a recent graduate from the University of Peshawar with a master’s degree in Islamic theology, and that he earned his living as a schoolteacher. Every day after school, and on holidays, he grabbed his gun and joined Fazlullah. He wore a long beard, a black turban, an ammunition vest stuffed with extra banana clips and pistols and Reebok high-tops with a Velcro strap. Messages crackled over the walkie-talkie attached to the collar of his vest. The Taliban were coordinating their movements.

Later, Ghafoor took me from Sirajuddin’s office to a platform where some supposed criminals were scheduled to be lashed. About 15,000 men and boys, some sitting on picnic blankets, encircled the wooden platform, which was supported on drum barrels and had been erected by Fazlullah’s group as a place for public punishments. The Taliban paraded three men, accused of aiding kidnappers, before the crowd. Fazlullah’s mujahedeen had caught the kidnappers as they were shuttling two women out of Swat. The Taliban sent the women back home and arrested everyone involved with the crime. Now the youngest of the criminals, who appeared to be still in his teens, scaled the steps to the platform. He looked as if he might collapse, legs wobbling with fear, as hundreds of heavily armed Taliban spread out around him. I stood among them, waiting to see the boy receive 15 lashings — the appropriate Islamic punishment, according to Fazlullah.

The boy lay face-down on the platform. Taliban held his arms and legs so he wouldn’t flop around. Another jihadi, clutching a thick, leather whip, roughly two feet long, wore a camouflage shalwar kameez and a ski mask over his face. Every time the whip crashed on the boy’s back, the crowd called out the corresponding number of lashes, as if counting the final seconds of a basketball game. The teenager’s body convulsed under the crack and thud of each lash; when he finally stood up, he was shaking and drenched in tears.

“This punishment is permitted in Islam,” announced one of Fazlullah’s deputies over a P.A. system fixed to a flatbed truck parked beside the platform. Along with the three accused men, who were lashed in turn, a dozen militants also stood on the platform, holding Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers. Another lay on his stomach on the roof of a nearby shed, his eyes lined up behind the sights of an automatic machine gun. Everyone knew that Fazlullah’s decision to take the law into his own hands was in blatant defiance of the government’s writ: the militants’ job was to repel any sudden ambush by the Pakistani Army or paramilitary forces; the deputy on the P.A. system, meanwhile, had to persuade the people that the lashings accorded with Islamic law. “Even if there is no central Islamic government, these punishments are permitted in parts of the country if it contributes to maintaining peace,” the deputy explained, speaking in Pashto. “We have no intention to occupy the government or for any political authority. This is only for peace and security.”

After the lashings, thousands of people lined up to ride the tram back across the river. Ghafoor took us to Mingora by another route, through a cluster of villages loyal to Fazlullah. On the way, I asked Ghafoor what he thought about Maulana Fazlur Rehman. “He and his party deceived the public for votes, all in the name of Islam,” Ghafoor said. Ghafoor voted for the M.M.A. in 2002, hoping that they would enforce Shariah as they had promised. “But Maulana Fazlur Rehman didn’t even implement an Islamic system within himself,” Ghafoor said. “He gets photographed with women, which is against the principles of Islam. And he failed to resolve the Jamia Hafsa crisis. He couldn’t protect all the innocent people who died.” Jamia Hafsa was the women’s madrassa adjoining the Red Mosque.

We got into an S.U.V. and rode on a single-lane dirt road, lined with lush fields of cauliflower, apricot orchards and persimmon trees, their ends tipped with the bright orange fruit. We passed through a village made of mud-brick homes, and on one of the walls someone had chalked “Shariat ya Shahadat” (“Shariah or Martyrdom”). “I will never vote for the M.M.A. again,” Ghafoor said, “and we will totally boycott the next election.” Democracy, he added, was un-Islamic.

The Pakistani Army now claims to have killed hundreds of Taliban, and arrested hundreds more, in its Swat Valley operation. The army also says that local people in Swat greeted them with sweets, and that the homes of some top leaders, including Sirajuddin, had been destroyed. Ghafoor’s phone line has been cut for weeks, as have those of others in the group — although Sirajuddin has made occasional calls to the press, as when he accepted responsibility for a suicide attack in late December.

When I met Rehman in Peshawar in the fall we sat outside on plastic lawn furniture in the shade of a large oak tree. He rubbed a strand of chunky, orange prayer beads, and we discussed the changing leadership in the borderlands of Pakistan. In the past five years, more than 150 pro-government maliks, or tribal elders, had been killed by the Taliban. Oftentimes, the Taliban dumped the bodies by the side of the road for passers-by to see, with a note, written in Pashto, pinned to the corpse’s chest, damning the dead man as an American spy. “When the jihad in Afghanistan started,” Rehman told me, “the maliks and the old tribal system in Afghanistan ended; a new leadership arose, based on jihad. Similar is the case here in the Tribal Areas. The old, tribal system is being relegated to the background, and a new leadership, composed of these young militants, has emerged.” He added, “This is something natural.”

Though Rehman describes the emergence of the local Taliban in evolutionary terms, he explains it as a result of a leadership crisis in Pakistan. He respects the secular-minded people who created Pakistan but insists that social and religious changes over the past two decades have made such leaders much less relevant: “We have to adjust to reality, and that demands new leaders with new visions.”

I asked if he considered himself such a new leader with a new vision.

“I don’t consider myself as someone extraordinary,” Rehman said. “I have the same feelings as everyone else in the current age: if the weather is warm, everyone feels warm; if it is cold, everyone feels cold. The difference between me and other people is in our responsibilities.” He took a long breath of the fresh, fall air, continued rubbing his prayer beads and leaned over the chair to spit. “That’s why I am so careful, because my decisions can affect many, many people. I am trying to bring people back from the fire, not push them toward it.” Rehman once seemed ready to introduce Taliban-style rule in Pakistan. Now he is trying to preserve democracy from being destroyed by ruthless militants. If he can’t succeed, can anyone?

Nicholas Schmidle is a Pakistan-based writer and a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs. This is his first article for the magazine.

Music man

Emporia Gazette, KS, 01/03/2008 By Brandy Nance -The Afghan National Army Band is filled with more musical notes these days thanks to the efforts of an Emporian.

Brad Harzman, who was serving in the military in Afghanistan, returned to Emporia just in time to participate in the Veterans Day Parade. He was deployed to Afghanistan to work with their National Army Band.

“Which was pretty cool because Emporia has a long history of involvement in the Veterans Day celebration, so I was very happy about that,” Harzman said Wednesday morning in an interview.

Harzman has been in the military for 22 years and 2008 marks his second year of active duty. Afghanistan was his first deployment. He was stationed at Camp Phoenix, which is outside Kabul.

“It was a great experience and met a lot of good friends,” he said. “I enjoyed myself and that’s why I decided to stay on active duty.”

Harzman volunteered for the deployment after hearing the position was open. He was in Afghanistan for a year. Here at home, he is a part of the Kansas National Guard Band, 35th Division Band, out of Olathe. In Afghanistan he was an advisor to the Afghan National Army Band. During his service, he worked with the local band commander running rehearsals and working with each of their staff positions including logistics, training and doing what he could do to help the program run more efficiently.

“This is the highlight ... ” Harzman said. “I was able to secure nearly $190,000 worth of funding to buy musical equipment. It was purchased from Flint Hills Music here in town.”

Military bands across the world have long traditions. “Military bands are a part of preserving the culture, preserving traditions and a part of celebrations,” He said.

Harzman taught band at Northern Heights High School for 13 years, which is why he was interested in the position in Afghanistan.

For 15 years, music in Afghanistan was silenced, Harzman said. During the time of the Taliban, there was no music in the country.

“If you were a musician you put your music away,” he said. “If the Taliban saw you going down the street with a cassette player, they would take the cassette player and beat you. At the least.”

Many of the musicians either got different jobs or took off to another country, Harzman added. Harzman said he really encouraged the Afghan band commander to push for a standing military school of music because many of the members of the band now are aging.

“While I was there they had just begun the process of starting to have a standing military school of music,” he said. “They had run their first crop of students through.”

During his time in Afghanistan, Harzman said the band gained in popularity.

“Everybody is happy with the band,” he said. “The band is beginning to be supported.”

While in Afghanistan, Harzman learned a lot about their culture, he said. He said if he was out on the street and met a family and had a piece of candy in his pocket and gave it directly to the child, it would be considered an insult because he didn’t give it to the father to give to his child.

“In the U.S. I wouldn’t think twice about giving it to the child,” he said. “(In Afghanistan) you have to say to the father, ‘Your family is very beautiful. Would you like a piece of candy to give to your child?’”

Harzman also noticed several other things while stationed in Afghanistan.

“They are building as fast as they can in Kabul,” he said. “I sense that the civilians in Kabul (know they) have the opportunity to better their lives and they’re taking advantage of it.”

Harzman talked about the atmosphere in the country. He said he hasn’t been there in a month so his observations are based on that period.

“It’s a war zone,” he said, adding that troops receive hazard pay for being in the area. “You couldn’t go out by yourself. You had to have somebody with you. You had to go out in Humvees with guns loaded.”

Every night Harzman would be thankful that he was safe and every morning he would be thankful for a new day, he said. He added that he is very proud of what he did while in Afghanistan.

“I know I made a lasting impact on military music there,” he said. “I would do it again if I had the chance.”

The next step in Harzman’s military career is to train soldiers to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. He will be in training the next couple of weeks in Mississippi for this position.

Charlie Wilson's Zen lesson

January 4, 2008 - GLOBE EDITORIAL

TWO MESSAGES are appended to the end of "Charlie Wilson's War," the artful Hollywood flick about a hedonistic Texas congressman who in the 1980s raised covert funding for the Afghan mujahideen from $5 million to $1 billion, thereby helping to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan and precipitate the implosion of the Soviet Union. An explicit moral of the movie comes from the real-life Wilson, who lamented that America did the right thing in Afghanistan but messed up "the endgame." Today there can be little doubt that Washington's brusque loss of interest in the fate of Afghanistan after the Soviets' withdrawal was a calamitous error.

But it is the second, more philosophical message that ought to be at the center of current debate about America's role in the world. This lesson, which the Bush administration has learned all too slowly, teaches the need for humility in those who make America's moves on a global chessboard - a virtue that seems almost totally absent from the patriotic posturing of the presidential candidates.

Toward the end of "Charlie Wilson's War," a CIA officer played by the pitch-perfect Philip Seymour Hoffman cautions the Wilson character (played by Tom Hanks) not to be too sure they have done something glorious. To make the point, he tells the story of a Zen master who observes the people of his village celebrating a young boy's new horse as a wonderful gift. "We'll see," the Zen master says. When the boy falls off the horse and breaks a leg, everyone says the horse is a curse. "We'll see," says the master. Then war breaks out, the boy cannot be conscripted because of his injury, and everyone now says the horse was a fortunate gift. "We'll see," the master says again.

This is screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's way of warning against triumphalism. Yes, Afghan suffering at the hands of the Soviet invaders was atrocious, and the Soviets' defeat by Afghan mujahideen armed with US Stinger missiles ought to have been a humanitarian liberation. But the fighting among Afghan warlords that ensued opened the way for the fanatical Taliban to take power, for Al Qaeda to set up terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, for the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, and then for to the Bush administration's global war on terror, whose destabilizing effects are likely to extend far into the future.

In a similar vein, Bush should have foreseen that the invasion and occupation of Iraq could become a strategic gift to Iran; that his pledge to foster democracy in the Muslim world while backing Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan would make America look hypocritical; or that his reluctance to seek a United Nations Security Council resolution to halt Israel's bombing of Lebanon in the summer of 2006 would inflame anti-American feelings in the Arab world. These are the sorts of unintended consequences a Zen master would expect - and a president must try to anticipate.

[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.]