In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan's Mullahs demand TV crackdown
• Afghan clerics warn Karzai against missionaries
• Expelled British envoys tried to turn Taliban chief
• U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan
• Pakistan says it will not allow US forces to hunt militants on its soil
• Pakistan is 'central front,' not Iraq
• Al Qaeda’s Newest Triggerman
• To be or not to be ...
• Putting food on Afghan tables getting harder
• Why are we in Afghanistan?
• U.S. law firms could help shape Afghanistan's future — for price

Afghanistan's Mullahs demand TV crackdown

01/06/2008 -KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's Islamic clerics have called on President Hamid Karzai to clamp down on a burgeoning television industry which it accused of spreading "immorality and unIslamic culture."

The call was made during a meeting between Karzai and dozens of clerics from an influential religious council in Kabul on Friday, an official in Karzai's office told AFP under condition of anonymity on Saturday.

"The unrestrained programmes on TV has angered and prompted the Ulemas (scholars) to react," the conservative council comprising religious clerics said in a statement to Karzai, a copy of which was provided to AFP.

"Hop... is spreading immoralities and hurts the sacred religion of Islam," the statement said, referring to an MTV-style music show on Tolo TV, one of the biggest among several private stations launched after the fall of the Taliban regime.

"Afghan Star... encourages immorality among the people and is against Sharia (law)," the statement said referring to an American-Idol-type show on Tolo.

Over a dozen privately run television stations have sprung up following the fall of the Taliban, who banned TV as unIslamic during their strict 1996-2001 rule before they were toppled in a US-led invasion.

"These TVs (stations) are spreading immorality and unIslamic culture," the statement said.

Karzai ordered his information minister which handles broadcasting to "look into the concerns of the Ulemas," government-owned newspapers said, citing Karzai's office.

The US-backed Karzai -- the first-ever democratically elected Afghan president -- has been leading a democracy in the war-torn nation with a free media which has often been questioned by conservative circles.

Afghan clerics warn Karzai against missionaries

Reuters, 01/05/2008 By Sayed Salahuddin - KABUL - Afghanistan's Islamic council has told President Hamid Karzai to stop foreign aid groups from converting locals to Christianity and also demanded the reintroduction of public executions.

The council, an influential group but without binding authority, is made up of Islamic clergy and ulema (scholars) from various parts of Afghanistan and made the warning in a statement during a meeting with Karzai on Friday.

The ulema have always played a crucial role in Muslim Afghanistan and have been behind a series of revolts against past governments.

But since the ousting of Taliban's radical Islamic administration by U.S.-led troops in 2001, Afghanistan has seen an unprecedented period of freedoms.

"The council is concerned about the activities of some ... missionary and atheistic organs and considers such acts against Islamic sharia (law), the constitution, and political stability," said a copy of the statement obtained by Reuters.

"If not prevented, God forbid, catastrophe will emerge, which will not only destabilise the country, but the region and the world."

Quoting what he said were reliable sources, Ahmad Ali Jebrayeli, a member of the council and also a member of parliament, said unnamed Christian missionaries had offices in Kabul and in the provinces to convert Afghans.

"Some NGOs are encouraging them (to convert), give them books (Bibles) and promise to send them abroad," he told Reuters on Saturday.

Numerous foreign aid groups and charities operating in Afghanistan have strong direct or indirect links to Christian organisations, but they insist they are not proselytising.

Some 23 South Korean missionaries, were kidnapped by the Taliban last year and, amongst other things, accused of trying to convert Muslims. Two of the group were murdered before the rest, almost all women, were freed following a complex secret deal.

The conversion and spiriting out of an Afghan Christian convert following the intervention of several Western leaders and Pope Benedict in 2006 also sparked a series of protests locally.

Strict interpretations of Islam as practised in Afghanistan treat conversions as apostasy, which is punishable by death.

The council also urged Karzai to stop local TV stations from airing Indian soap operas and movies -- enormously popular in Afghanistan -- which they said showed obscenities and scenes which threatened the morality of society.

The council also demanded a return to public executions for murderers as well as a crackdown against graft.

The Taliban, leading an insurgency against Karzai's government and foreign troops, used to publicly execute those convicted of capital crimes -- usually on Fridays after midday prayers.

While Afghanistan still has the death penalty on its books, it has been rarely been carried out since the Taliban's fall and never in public.

Karzai instructed various government departments to address the demands of the council, but stopped short of committing to change, Jebrayeli said.

"If he fails to listen to the Ulema, people will further distance themselves from the government (and) there will be more pessimism and instability," he said.

Expelled British envoys tried to turn Taliban chief

The Sunday Times, 01/06/2008 - TWO British diplomats expelled from Afghanistan over the Christmas holiday were trying to “turn” a senior Taliban commander, it has emerged.

They held secret meetings with Mansoor Dadullah - a thorn in the side of British military in Helmand province - to try to persuade him to break with the Taliban and form his own political party and militia, according to Afghan government sources.

If they had succeeded it would have been a coup for the western allies shoring up the government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul. Instead, Mervyn Patterson, a high-ranking UN official, and Michael Semple, the acting head of the EU mission to Afghanistan, were expelled after an Afghan national “confessed” to Afghan intelligence that he had accompanied the two to a secret meeting with Dadullah in Musa Qala.

Days later the Taliban sacked Dadullah for refusing to obey orders, according to a statement to the Pakistan-based Islamic Press Agency by a Taliban spokesman. He said that sympathisers of Dadullah should break all contacts with him and continue their jihad.

Dadullah took over the Taliban’s southern stronghold last May after his brother, Mullah Dadullah, was killed by Afghan forces. Of 86 Britons killed in Afghanistan since October 2001, 27 were killed by the Taliban since Dadullah took charge. He now claims to command more than 25,000 battle-hardened fighters who are loyal to him.

Patterson, from Northern Ireland, and Semple, an Irish passport-holder who has worked as a British diplomat in Pakistan, are regarded as two of the most knowledgeable and experienced political officers in Afghanistan. They speak fluent Dari and Pashtun and have extensive contacts.

According to friends, they were visiting Musa Qala on a fact-finding mission. However, the governor of Helmand province, Assadullah Wafa, complained to Karzai that they had met Taliban commanders, and demanded action be taken.

The UN denied the men were involved in an intelligence operation or that they held talks with Dadullah. Dadullah also denied meeting foreigners.

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

The New York Times, 01/06/2008 By Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt

WASHINGTON - President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.

Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.

Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.

The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf. Early in his career, General Kayani was an aide to Ms. Bhutto while she was prime minister and later led the Pakistani intelligence service.

But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country. “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself,” one senior official said.

The new options for expanded covert operations include loosening restrictions on the C.I.A. to strike selected targets in Pakistan, in some cases using intelligence provided by Pakistani sources, officials said. Most counterterrorism operations in Pakistan have been conducted by the C.I.A.; in Afghanistan, where military operations are under way, including some with NATO forces, the military can take the lead.

The legal status would not change if the administration decided to act more aggressively. However, if the C.I.A. were given broader authority, it could call for help from the military or deputize some forces of the Special Operations Command to act under the authority of the agency.

The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan. Any expanded operations using C.I.A. operatives or Special Operations forces, like the Navy Seals, would be small and tailored to specific missions, military officials said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who was on vacation last week and did not attend the White House meeting, said in late December that “Al Qaeda right now seems to have turned its face toward Pakistan and attacks on the Pakistani government and Pakistani people.”

In the past, the administration has largely stayed out of the tribal areas, in part for fear that exposure of any American-led operations there would so embarrass the Musharraf government that it could further empower his critics, who have declared he was too close to Washington.

Even now, officials say, some American diplomats and military officials, as well as outside experts, argue that American-led military operations on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan could result in a tremendous backlash and ultimately do more harm than good. That is particularly true, they say, if Americans were captured or killed in the territory.

In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri. Currently, C.I.A. operatives and Special Operations forces have limited authority to conduct counterterrorism missions in Pakistan based on specific intelligence about the whereabouts of those two men, who have eluded the Bush administration for more than six years, or of other members of their terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, hiding in or near the tribal areas.

The C.I.A. has launched missiles from Predator aircraft in the tribal areas several times, with varying degrees of success. Intelligence officials said they believed that in January 2006 an airstrike narrowly missed killing Mr. Zawahri, who had attended a dinner in Damadola, a Pakistani village. But that apparently was the last real evidence American officials had about the whereabouts of their chief targets.

Critics said more direct American military action would be ineffective, anger the Pakistani Army and increase support for the militants. “I’m not arguing that you leave Al Qaeda and the Taliban unmolested, but I’d be very, very cautious about approaches that could play into hands of enemies and be counterproductive,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University. Some American diplomats and military officials have also issued strong warnings against expanded direct American action, officials said.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military and political analyst, said raids by American troops would prompt a powerful popular backlash against Mr. Musharraf and the United States.

In the wake of the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, many Pakistanis suspect that the United States is trying to dominate Pakistan as well, Mr. Rizvi said. Mr. Musharraf — who is already widely unpopular — would lose even more popular support.

“At the moment when Musharraf is extremely unpopular, he will face more crisis,” Mr. Rizvi said. “This will weaken Musharraf in a Pakistani context.” He said such raids would be seen as an overall vote of no confidence in the Pakistani military, including General Kayani.

The meeting on Friday, which was not publicly announced, included Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser; Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and top intelligence officials.

Spokesmen for the White House, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon declined to discuss the meeting, citing a policy against doing so. But the session reflected an urgent concern that a new Qaeda haven was solidifying in parts of Pakistan and needed to be countered, one official said.

Although some officials and experts have criticized Mr. Musharraf and questioned his ability to take on extremists, Mr. Bush has remained steadfast in his support, and it is unlikely any new measures, including direct American military action inside Pakistan, will be approved without Mr. Musharraf’s consent.

“He understands clearly the risks of dealing with extremists and terrorists,” Mr. Bush said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday. “After all, they’ve tried to kill him.”

The Pakistan government has identified a militant leader with links to Al Qaeda, Baitullah Mehsud, who holds sway in tribal areas near the Afghanistan border, as the chief suspect behind the attack on Ms. Bhutto. American officials are not certain about Mr. Mehsud’s complicity but say the threat he and other militants pose is a new focus. He is considered, they said, an “Al Qaeda associate.”

In an interview with foreign journalists on Thursday, Mr. Musharraf warned of the risk any counterterrorism forces — American or Pakistani — faced in confronting Mr. Mehsud in his native tribal areas.

“He is in South Waziristan agency, and let me tell you, getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers, the Mehsud tribe, if you get to him, and it will mean collateral damage,” Mr. Musharraf said.

The weeks before parliamentary elections — which were originally scheduled for Tuesday — are seen as critical because of threats by extremists to disrupt the vote. But it seemed unlikely that any additional American effort would be approved and put in place in that time frame.

Administration aides said that Pakistani and American officials shared the concern about a resurgent Qaeda, and that American diplomats and senior military officers had been working closely with their Pakistani counterparts to help bolster Pakistan’s counterterrorism operations.

Shortly after Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, Adm. William J. Fallon, who oversees American military operations in Southwest Asia, telephoned his Pakistani counterparts to ensure that counterterrorism and logistics operations remained on track.

In early December, Adm. Eric T. Olson, the new leader of the Special Operations Command, paid his second visit to Pakistan in three months to meet with senior Pakistani officers, including Lt. Gen. Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Admiral Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force of about 85,000 members recruited from border tribes that the United States is planning to help train and equip.

But the Pakistanis are still years away from fielding an effective counterinsurgency force. And some American officials, including Defense Secretary Gates, have said the United States may have to take direct action against militants in the tribal areas.

American officials said the crisis surrounding Ms. Bhutto’s assassination had not diminished the Pakistani counterterrorism operations, and there were no signs that Mr. Musharraf had pulled out any of his 100,000 forces in the tribal areas and brought them to the cities to help control the urban unrest.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad, and David Rohde from New York.

Pakistan says it will not allow US forces to hunt militants on its soil

The Associated Press, 01/06/2008 - ISLAMABAD - Pakistan reiterated Sunday that it will not let American forces hunt al-Qaida and Taliban militants on its soil, after a news report said Washington was considering expanding U.S. military and intelligence operations into Pakistan's tribal regions.

The Foreign Ministry dismissed as "speculative" a story in the New York Times on Sunday saying U.S. President George W. Bush's top security officials discussed a proposal Friday to deploy American troops to pursue militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border.

"We are very clear. Nobody is going to be allowed to do anything here," said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army's top spokesman.

"The government has said it so many times," Arshad said. "No foreign forces will be allowed to operate inside Pakistan."

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Bush's top security advisers — including Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — debated whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to "conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan," the Times reported.

Recent reports indicate al-Qaida and the Taliban are "intensifying efforts" to destabilize Pakistan's government, the newspaper said.

It said Bush's security advisers' discussion on the proposal was part of an assessment of Washington's strategy following the Dec. 27 assassination of populist opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, a moderate pro-U.S. politician who had vowed to fight Islamic extremists if she was elected in an upcoming parliamentary vote.

The Pakistan-Afghan border area has long been considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, as well as an operating ground for tribal Taliban sympathizers.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, a close U.S. ally in the war against terror, has blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a tribal militant leader allegedly tied to al-Qaida, for Bhutto's death. Mehsud has reportedly denied involvement.

Pakistan is 'central front,' not Iraq

AlJazeera, 01/06/2008 By Robert Parry - Intelligence evidence, gathered from intercepted al-Qaeda communications, indicate that Laden’s high command views Iraq as a diversion for U.S. military strength, not the ‘central front’.

The chaos spreading across nuclear-armed Pakistan after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is part of the price for the Bush administration’s duplicity about al-Qaeda’s priorities, including the old canard that the terrorist group regards Iraq as the “central front” in its global war against the West.

Through repetition of this claim – often accompanied by George W. Bush’s home-spun advice about the need to listen to what the enemy says – millions of Americans believe that Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders consider Iraq the key battlefield.

However, intelligence evidence, gathered from intercepted al-Qaeda communications, indicate that bin Laden’s high command views Iraq as a valuable diversion for U.S. military strength, not the “central front.”

For instance, as the Iraq War was heating up in 2005, a letter attributed to al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri asked if the embattled al-Qaeda operatives in Iraq might be able to spare $100,000 to relieve a cash squeeze facing the group’s top leaders in hiding, presumably inside Pakistan near the Afghan border.

Instead of money going from Pakistan to Iraq, the cash was flowing the opposite way. U.S. intelligence analysts recognized that this was not the way one would normally treat a “central front.”

In another captured letter sent to Jordanian terrorist Musab al-Zarqawi before his death in June 2006, a top aide to bin Laden known as “Atiyah” upbraided Zarqawi for his reckless, hasty actions inside Iraq.

The message from Atiyah, who is believed to be a Libyan named Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, emphasized the need for Zarqawi to operate more deliberately in order to build political strength and drag out the U.S. occupation. “Prolonging the war is in our interest,” Atiyah told Zarqawi.

So, instead of seeking a quick ouster of U.S. forces from Iraq and using it as a base for launching a global war– as Bush and his supporters claim – al-Qaeda actually saw its strategic goals advanced by keeping the United States bogged down in Iraq.

To some U.S. analysts, the logic was obvious: “prolonging” the Iraq War bought al-Qaeda time to rebuild its infrastructure in Pakistan, where the extremists have long had sympathizers inside the Pakistani intelligence services dating back to the CIA’s war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Charlie Wilson’s blowback - That CIA war, lionized in the new movie “Charlie Wilson’s War,” funneled billions of dollars in U.S. covert money and weapons through Pakistani intelligence to Afghan warlords and to fighters who had flocked to Afghanistan to drive out the Russian infidels. One of those was a wealthy Saudi named Osama bin Laden.

While relying on Pakistani intelligence to assist the Afghan rebels, the Reagan administration also averted its eyes from Pakistan’s clandestine development of nuclear weapons, an apparent trade-off for Pakistan’s help in giving the Soviet bear a bloody nose in Afghanistan.

After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the war dragged on, with a triumphant United States unwilling to broker a deal with the secular Afghan government that the Soviets left behind. George H.W. Bush’s administration wanted these “Soviet puppets” dragged from their offices and killed (as some eventually were), replaced by the CIA-backed rebels.

Then, in 1990, the alliances began to shift. U.S. military bases inside Saudi Arabia, which were established for driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, offended bin Laden and alienated him from his patrons in the Saudi royal family.

When the U.S. bases remained after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, bin Laden began to view his old American allies as another band of infidels encroaching on Muslim lands. So, bin Laden’s followers in Afghanistan shifted their sights onto a new enemy and developed a new organization known as “the base,” or al-Qaeda.

For obvious reasons, the Bush administration has sought to blur this complicated history for the American people. It takes some of the shine off the glorious Cold War victories of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

But this shadow struggle at the end of the Cold War was the backdrop for the 9/11 attacks, which in turn led to Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, ousting bin Laden and his Taliban allies, but failing to catch bin Laden, Zawahiri and other key leaders.

Then, rather than finishing the job in Afghanistan, Bush made an abrupt detour into Iraq, a decision rife with settling old scores and other unspoken justifications, but which Bush sold to the American public as necessary because Iraq’s secular dictator Saddam Hussein was in league with bin Laden and might give him WMDs.

When that justification proved false and a stubborn Iraqi resistance emerged to challenge the U.S. occupation, Bush initially presented the resistance as an al-Qaeda offshoot operating under bin Laden’s control.

Again, U.S. intelligence saw a different problem: Sunni and Shia Iraqis contesting the American presence and competing for dominance with each other, while a violent smattering of foreign rebels like Zarqawi tried to insinuate themselves into the Sunni faction and spread havoc.

Though Bush eventually acknowledged that most of Iraqi resistance was homegrown, he still asserted that al-Qaeda planned to use Iraq as the launching pad for a global “caliphate” from Spain to Indonesia, another alarmist claim that scared some Americans into backing Bush’s war policies.

“This caliphate would be a totalitarian Islamic empire encompassing all current and former Muslim lands, stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia,” Bush said in a typical reference to this claim in a Sept. 5, 2006, speech. “We know this because al-Qaeda has told us.”

But many analysts saw Bush’s nightmarish scenario as preposterous, given the deep divisions within the Islamic world and the hostility that many Muslims feel toward al-Qaeda, including its recent much-heralded rejection by Sunni Iraqis in Anbar province.

Also, according to a National Intelligence Estimate representing the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community in April 2006, “the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse.”

The NIE also concluded that the Iraq War – rather than weakening the cause of terrorism – had become a “cause celebre” that was “cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.”

The grinding Iraq War – now nearing its fifth year – also prevented the United States from arraying sufficient military and intelligence resources against the reorganized al-Qaeda infrastructure in Pakistan and the rebuilt Taliban army reasserting itself in Afghanistan.

So, when the Bush administration supported former Prime Minister Bhutto’s return to Pakistan in October 2007, the wishful thinking was that she could somehow energize the more moderate elements of Pakistani politics and marginalize extremists.

But the overstretched U.S. military and intelligence services could do little in helping to protect Bhutto beyond hectoring Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf to give his political rival more security. Musharraf, who himself has dodged multiple assassination attempts, either couldn’t or wouldn’t ensure Bhutto’s safety.

Now, with Bhutto’s death and with unrest sweeping Pakistan, Bush’s Iraq War backers are sure to argue that these developments again prove the president right, that an even firmer hand is needed to combat terrorism and that the next president must be someone ready to press ahead with Bush’s concept of a “long war” against extremism.

But the reality again appears different. Though rarely mentioned in the American press, the evidence is that bin Laden and other extremists have cleverly played off Bush’s arrogance and belligerence to strengthen their strategic hand within the Muslim world.

By keeping Bush focused on Iraq, al-Qaeda and its allies also bought time to transform themselves into a more lethal threat in Pakistan, with the danger that the new turmoil could win al-Qaeda its ultimate prize, control of a nuclear bomb.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush , can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there.

Al Qaeda’s Newest Triggerman

Baitullah Mehsud is being blamed for most of the suicide bombings in Pakistan, including Benazir Bhutto's assassination. The rise of a militant leader.

By Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK Jan 5, 2008

How do you track down a foe without a face? That is the challenge posed by Baitullah Mehsud, the man who could well be the newest Enemy No. 1 in the War on Terror. Since he first emerged as a young jihadist leader three years ago, the black-bearded and slow-talking tribal leader has transformed his Mehsud clan's mountainous badlands in the northwest corner of Pakistan into a safe haven for Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and outlawed Pakistani jihadists. Though uneducated, and only in his mid-30s, Baitullah snookered Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf into a fake peace deal two years ago—and even got him to hand over a few hundred thousand dollars. Just as important, Baitullah has learned the hard lessons of previous jihadists who grew too enamored of the spotlight for their own good. According to Afghan Taliban who know him, he travels in a convoy of pickups protected by two dozen heavily armed guards, he rarely sleeps in the same bed twice in a row, and his face has never been photographed. They say his role model is Mullah Mohammed Omar, the equally mysterious Taliban leader who disappeared from view in 2001.

U.S. officials have distanced themselves somewhat from the Pakistani government's swift—perhaps too swift—conclusion that Baitullah was behind the Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The slain former prime minister's Pakistan Peoples Party also disputed that claim, pointing the finger instead at figures within the government. Even Musharraf toned down previous statements from his own officials definitively assigning blame to Baitullah, and late last week he invited Scotland Yard to help with the investigation.

Still, most U.S. experts agree that Baitullah is the most likely culprit. Musharraf told a press conference last Friday that the tribal leader was behind most if not all of the 19 suicide bombings in Pakistan, including the two aimed at Bhutto, in the past three months. "He is the only one who had the capacity," says one Afghan Taliban with close connections to Mehsud, Al Qaeda and Pakistani militants. (The source, who has proved reliable in the past, would speak only if his identity were protected.) Last week the Pakistani government produced an intercept in which it claims Baitullah was heard telling a militant cleric after Bhutto's murder: "Fantastic job. Very brave boys, the ones who killed her." Pakistani and U.S. authorities now fear that Baitullah, encouraged by the chaos that followed Bhutto's assassination, will try to wreak more havoc before the rescheduled Feb. 18 national elections.

The Afghan Taliban source claims that Baitullah and his Qaeda allies had laid out remarkably intricate plans for killing Bhutto, who was a champion of secular democracy and a declared enemy of the jihadists. He says Baitullah and Al Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri—along with Zawahiri's deputy, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, Al Qaeda's new commander of military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan—had dispatched suicide-bomber squads to five cities: Karachi, Peshawar, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, where she was killed. Their orders were to follow Bhutto with the aim of assassinating her if an opportunity presented itself. (Two U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing the investigation, say there are growing indications of Baitullah's involvement in the assassination.) Baitullah and his allies have even grander plans, the Afghan source says. Her assassination is only part of Zawahiri's long-nurtured plan to destabilize Pakistan and Musharraf's regime, wage war in Afghanistan, and then destroy democracy in other Islamic countries such as Turkey and Indonesia.

Baitullah's alleged emergence as the triggerman in this grand scheme illustrates the mutability of the jihadist enemy since 9/11. As recently as June 2004, Iraq was said to be Al Qaeda's main battleground, and Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi was the terror chieftain whom U.S. authorities worried about most. Baitullah was then a largely unknown subcommander in South Waziristan. But that same month, a U.S. Hellfire missile fired from a Predator drone killed Nek Mohammad, the young, dashing and publicity-hungry tribal leader in Waziristan. Al Qaeda and tribal militants promoted the young Baitullah to a command position. His equally young Mehsud clansman, Abdullah Mehsud—a one-legged jihadist who had recently been released from two years of detention in Guant?namo—also seemed to be a rising star. But after the botched kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working on a dam in the tribal area, a local council backed by Al Qaeda removed Abdullah and replaced him with the little-known Baitullah, who was seen as being more levelheaded. (Abdullah was later killed in a shoot-out.)

Since then, Zarqawi has been killed by U.S. forces, Iraq has receded as a haven for Al Qaeda, and Baitullah has come into his own as a terrorist leader in newly unstable Pakistan. Last month a council of militant leaders from the tribal agencies and neighboring areas named Baitullah the head of the newly formed Taliban Movement in Pakistan, a loose alliance of jihadist organizations in the tribal agencies. Taliban sources who would speak only on condition of anonymity describe Baitullah as a key middleman in the jihadist network: his tribesmen provide security for Al Qaeda's rough-hewn training compounds in the tribal area as well as foot soldiers for Qaeda-designed attacks. With a long tradition as smugglers, the tribals (most of whom, like Baitullah, take Mehsud as their surname) run an extensive nationwide trucking and transport network that reaches from the borderlands into teeming cities like Karachi, allowing Baitullah to easily move men and weapons throughout Pakistan.

Baitullah has clearly outsmarted the unpopular Musharraf, whom President George W. Bush praised again last week as an "ally" who "understands clearly the risks of dealing with extremists and terrorists." In February 2005, with his military getting bloodied in the tribal areas, the Pakistani president decided to strike a peace deal with Baitullah and other militant leaders and their frontmen. Under the terms of the deal the militants agreed not to provide assistance or shelter to foreign fighters, not to attack government forces, and not to support the Taliban or launch cross-border operations into Afghanistan. As part of the deal, Baitullah coaxed the government into giving him and the other leaders $540,000 that they supposedly owed to Al Qaeda. The large cash infusion bolstered the jihadist forces, and under cover of the ceasefire Baitullah's territory became an even more secure safe haven. He and other militant leaders have assassinated some 200 tribal elders who dared to oppose them. The Pakistani government struck a similar peace agreement with militants in North Waziristan in September 2006, transforming much of that tribal area into a militant camp as well.

One of Baitullah's biggest successes came in August, when his men captured more than 250 Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary troops, who surrendered without firing a shot. Mehsud demanded the release of 30 jailed militants and the end of Pakistani military operations in the Mehsud tribal area as the price for the men's release. To show he meant business, he ordered the beheading of three of his hostages. Once again, Musharraf gave in. On the day after Musharraf declared a state of emergency—which he claimed was aimed at giving him a stronger hand to fight militants like Baitullah—the Pakistani president released 25 jailed insurgents including several failed suicide bombers. Last week Mehsud's forces captured four more Pakistani paramilitary troops in several brazen operations that may have led to the death of 25 of his men.

In his few statements to the press, Baitullah has made his agenda frighteningly clear. He vowed, in a January 2007 interview, to continue waging a jihad against "the infidel forces of American and Britain," and to "continue our struggle until foreign troops are thrown out" of neighboring Afghanistan. He knows he's a marked man: "The Angel of Death is flying over our heads all the time," he told the now deceased Taliban leader Mullah Akhund Dadullah at a dinner, according to one senior Taliban source. But from his secure corner of Pakistan—a country run by a widely despised autocrat who, after Bhutto, has few real democratic successors—Baitullah may well wage that fight for a long time to come.

To be or not to be ...

Asia Times, 01/04/2008 By M K Bhadrakumar - The Cassandra-like foretelling by American opinion makers almost uniformly makes out that Pakistan may not survive. True, it is hard to be optimistic. Setting right these disjointed times is way past the capacity of the present US administration.

The only silver lining seems to be that in an year's time another team will move into the White House and a clean break becomes possible. Even ardent specialists in the US security community admit as much. A commentator for Stratfor, a think-tank closely linked to the security establishment, says, "In this endgame, all that the Americans want is the status quo in Pakistan. It is all they can get. And given the way US luck is running, they might not even get that."

It isn't quite a matter of "luck". Plainly speaking, in the winter of 2001, the George W Bush administration bit off more than a superpower should chew in the Khyber Pass. Today, it has no Plan B. The best hope for the White House is that Pakistani military chief General Ashfaq Kiani "must become Washington's new man in Pakistan" (to quote Stratfor). That is to say, let's pin the blame for Benazir Bhutto's assassination last week on al-Qaeda, get on with old business and sit out the coming 12 months.

But smart soldiers like Kiani can't be that dumb, can they? Three types of prophets of doom are setting the tone in Washington. First come the FOBs - "Friends of Benazir". The people in the media, think-tanks and government in the US over whom Bhutto cast her spell - by way of her irresistible personal charm or through the skills of her top-class public relations handlers - simply cannot think of a Pakistan without her.

Second, there are America's legions of South Asia experts from an earlier era who are peeved that the administration with its neo-conservative agenda ignored their advice in the crafting of Washington's post- 2001 Pakistan policy. They feel vindicated the policy turned out to be a mess. Third comes the tribe of terrorism specialists who proliferated in recent years and are greatly experienced in the politics of fear - including some among them who seem to believe their phantom enemy is of absolutely cosmic significance.

US shuffles Iran cards
But theirs needn't be the only story. The shadow that Bhutto's assassination is casting on regional security is of varied hues. That is how it is already being felt in Tehran. In one swift sweep, almost overnight, Pakistan replaces Iran on the Bush administration's radar screen. Israel may not like what is happening, but Vice President Dick Cheney and company won't have even a fighting chance of reviving the Iran bogey in the remaining term of the administration.

The Bush administration cannot overlook that the crisis brewing in Pakistan and Afghanistan may turn out to be manifold more serious than all of Tehran's nuclear program and its support of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iraqi Shi'ite militia in Iraq combined together, let alone the political challenge posed by Iran's rising regional influence.

For the first time since it expounded the "axis of evil" theory, exactly six years ago - grouping Iraq, Iran and North Korea - the Bush administration is compelled to view Iran with a sense of proportion. The hardline policies aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime look downright irresponsible in the changed circumstances. A military option is out of the question. A regime change in Tehran? Ridiculous.

But the "Iran question" as such may not fade away from the Middle East, though rhetoric - US and Iranian - has appreciably diminished in recent weeks. Part of the problem is that a bitterly contested parliamentary election looms ahead in March in Iran. Nonetheless, Iran-US relations are poised for a change of course. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's offer to meet her Iranian counterpart Manuchehr Mottaki "any place and any time and anywhere" testifies to that. There is guarded optimism in Tehran about the upcoming fourth round of US-Iran meetings regarding cooperation over Iraq's stabilization.

Rice said a week ago, "We don't have permanent enemies ... what we have is a policy that is open to ending confrontation or conflict with any country that is willing to meet us on those terms." Mottaki promptly responded, "Ground can be prepared." He welcomed Washington's "more respectful and logical approach" toward Tehran, which, he insisted, became possible since "they [US officials] have gotten a better understanding of Iran's key role in the region and its determination to obtain its legal rights [for enriching uranium]."

Iranians are pragmatists and after Bhutto's assassination they will have assessed by now that the developments in Pakistan leave the Bush administration with no option but to earnestly probe for ways of normalizing relations with Tehran.

To be or not to be ...
Iran may once again prove to be useful, as in 2001, for the logistical needs of Washington's "war on terror" in Afghanistan. Arguably, Iran can be a substitute route if the supply lines for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan via Pakistan become choked. NATO and the US cannot get a more realistic partner than Iran for stabilizing Afghanistan. Iran's cooperation will be useful in forestalling the Taliban's northwardly march to the Amu Darya region and in stabilizing western Afghanistan, where NATO forces are coming under threat.

The alternative would be for Washington to go crawling back to Moscow and ask for air and land corridors to Afghanistan. It appears NATO made some soundings at the Russia-NATO Council meeting at foreign minister level in Brussels on December 7. Following the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We discussed the situation in Afghanistan. The vital security interests of Russia and the NATO nations coincide here. It is both the threat of drugs and the lingering terrorist threat. They have to be fought by combined efforts."

Lavrov added, "We [Russia and NATO] are also considering other cooperation possibilities, particularly in logistic support of the International Security Assistance Force and in helping to equip the Afghan National Army. I think there is a good field in this regard where we can move towards finding mutually acceptable forms of interaction."

Writing in the Russian journal Ekspert a week later, in a lengthy essay on Russian foreign policy, Lavrov seemed to hark back to the discussions in Brussels when he revealed intriguingly, "We're [Moscow] also witnessing some gleams of qualitative shifts in the analysis of the contemporary phase of world developments in the US and Europe, although so far mostly at the level of the expert community. At the same time, it is obvious that our partners are thinking that the thought process has begun. One of the conclusions being drawn at that is the realization of the fundamentally non-confrontational character of Russian foreign policy."

With Bhutto's assassination, Washington must now hasten its "thought process". There is a hard decision to take. Both Iran and Russia would be sensible partners in the "war on terror" in Afghanistan. But neither would respond to a selective engagement by Washington. The Bush administration will need William Shakespeare's Shylock to weigh the relative advantage in engaging Iran or Moscow. That's where Bush's forthcoming tour of Israel, the Palestinian territories and the Persian Gulf allies could be useful.

One thing is already clear. The Iran nuclear issue refuses to go away. It may have taken a turn for the better lately, but, as China's People's Daily noted, this is far from a denouement. The US "will have to ferment new plans and work out new strategies over the Iranian nuclear issue both during and after the Bush administration ... Iran might benefit from the disparity among the world powers: it could strive for a more favorable international environment and strategic standing. In conclusion, concerned parties on the Iran issue are presently considering their own interests in relation to actual conditions in preparation for a new round of strategic contests."

Question mark on US global strategy - But Moscow poses even more fundamental difficulties. In the runup to the Russia-NATO meeting in Brussels, in exhaustive media comments, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman in Moscow underscored in December that "both successes and complications" bedeviled Moscow's relations with the trans-Atlantic alliance. He said the work ahead is not going to be easy.

Among problem areas, he listed "international legal implications" of NATO's transformation as a global political organization outside the control of the United Nations; NATO military structures "drawing closer to our borders"; further NATO enlargement plans; differences over the CFE (Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) Treaty; and "deployment of a third US global missile defense system in Europe and its conjunction with MD [missile defense] research and development within the framework of NATO."

In other words, in the post-Bhutto scenario, Washington needs to rework the agenda of the forthcoming NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, in April. NATO's third round of enlargement plans was listed as the key topic of discussion in Bucharest. Now, Pakistan and Afghanistan will inevitably overshadow.

Will Washington press ahead with earlier plans to get the NATO summit to endorse the admission of Ukraine and Georgia? In the present crisis situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, can the Bush administration afford to annoy the Kremlin? A Russian spokesman has warned, "We [Moscow] are convinced that the process of NATO enlargement has no relationship to the modernization of the alliance itself or to the ensuring of security in Europe whatsoever. On the contrary, it is a serious factor of provocation, fraught with the appearance of new dividing lines and a lowering of the level of mutual trust."

The Kremlin has clearly stated the bottom line, it will not be happy even if the US and the EU do not insist on forcing Kosovo's independence, or proceed to deploy NATO in the breakaway republic outside the framework of the United Nations Security Council. Lavrov underlined, "The main thing is the striving to jointly work on a basis of mutual respect, including respect for the analysis of each other regarding the threats, which today are common to us." He stressed that at the Bucharest summit, if NATO went ahead with its enlargement policy in parallel with the alliance's transformation, "we [Moscow] are convinced that this would not contribute to bolstering our common security or fighting the common threats to us". The implicit warning is that cooperation in the "war on terror" could be conditional on Washington rolling back its containment policy toward Russia.

It is obvious that both Moscow and Tehran now estimate that the crisis in Afghanistan and Pakistan has a direct bearing on US global strategies. If NATO fails in Afghanistan, a huge question mark would arise over the alliance's future. As a US Congressional Research report in October noted, NATO's mission in Afghanistan is "a test of the alliance's political will and military capabilities". But that isn't all. What the US think-tankers obfuscate is that the US's ability to retain its trans-Atlantic leadership role in the post-Cold War era is itself in the firing line.

Both Moscow and Tehran stand to gain in a multipolar world order in which their regional influence comes into greater play. If Washington fails in its post-Cold War strategy of bolstering NATO by whipping up enemy images (eg, al-Qaeda), the process towards multipolarity will substantially gain. Significantly, Tehran and Moscow refuse to characterize Bhutto's assassination as the work of al-Qaeda.

Beijing's reaction has been equally cautious. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman initially condemned Bhutto's assassination as an "act of terrorism". But Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister He Yafei, who visited the Pakistan Embassy in Beijing to sign a condolence book the next day, didn't refer to terrorism at all, but expressed the hope that the people of Pakistan "could overcome the current difficulty as soon as possible and jointly safeguard social stability and development of the country".

Chinese commentators have noted that "the situation in Afghanistan proved far more sophisticated than predicted" and it had become difficult for NATO to "cover up the troops' embarrassing position in the country". A People's Daily commentary analyzed last year that the Afghanistan debacle, coupled with the deterioration of NATO's relations with Russia and the failure of Brussels' efforts to secure a footing in Central Asia, have hampered the alliance from fulfilling its target of making 2007 its year of "transformation".

The commentary assessed that consequently that "the US pull within NATO has declined, and the US's trans-Atlantic role is becoming uncertain. It was widely hoped that the shift of top leadership in Germany, France and Britain might inject new vitality to US-European Union relations. But it is still hard to say whether the new 'troika' can usher in a situation Washington optimistically predicted."

All three countries - Russia, China and Iran - openly share an interest in seeing that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Collective Security Treaty Organization play a significant role in stabilizing the Afghan situation. None of them has remained content with the US's (or NATO's) monopoly over conflict resolution in a region of such vital importance to their security, though they are supportive of the "war on terror" in Afghanistan as such.

Clearly, with Bhutto's assassination and with Pakistan tottering on the abyss, what stares the Bush administration in the face is a potential unraveling of its global strategy built around the "war on terror" and "Islamofascism". The easy way out will be to goad General Kiani to become Washington's "new man in Pakistan" so that the hunt for al-Qaeda goes on.

M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).

Putting food on Afghan tables getting harder

CanWest News, 01/06/2008 By Allison Lampert - KANDAHAR - Shopping for an extended family of 35 is never an easy task for Faida Mohammad.

But with his grocery bill rising by about a third over the last few months, shopping for food at the downtown market has become especially arduous. The same bags of groceries he bought this week for $60 US would have cost about $40 in October.

"It's very hard to buy now because of the higher prices," said Mohammad, 52, while attaching a bag filled with rice, sugar, tea, and oil to the back of his motorcycle. "The situation seems to be getting worse because of the turmoil in Pakistan."

Higher global prices for wheat, the rising price of oil which hit $100 US a barrel this week for the first time, and regional security concerns are all contributing to inflationary pressures on food staples such as flour, oil and sugar. Prices have been growing across the country over the past 12 months, attracting the attention of the World Food Program (WFP).

"The increase in prices are across the board," said Rick Corsino, country director of the United Nations food agency in Afghanistan.

"WFP has been working with the Afghan government over the past month to get a better idea of the incidence and impact of the increases."

Corsino couldn't say whether the recent crises in Pakistan - the largest exporter of goods to Afghanistan - has contributed more recently to the rise in prices. But several merchants and customers at the Kandahar market told CanWest News Service they've seen significant price increases after emergency measures were adopted in Pakistan in early November.

"We are in an emergency situation because people don't have enough money to buy flour," said shopkeeper Mirajan, who like many Afghans only goes by one name. "Since one and a half months, the prices have been rising."

Mirajan says he fears that instability in Pakistan, stemming from the recent assassination of opposition party leader Benazir Bhutto, would make it harder for trucks to deliver goods to Afghanistan.

"People are always coming and complaining about the prices," he said. "We are neighbours, we are Muslims, if they are at peace, we will be at peace. "If Benazir were alive we would be very happy. It would be good for us."

In Kandahar, the price of wheat flour has grown from roughly 28 cents a kilogram in January 2007 to about 40 cents a kilogram this past December, WFP statistics indicate. The increases are even more egregious elsewhere in Afghanistan: the cost of wheat flour has grown by 80 per cent over the year in the remote northeastern city of Faizabad, while prices in the capital Kabul have jumped by 70 per cent during that same period.

The inflation is linked to a global trend - wheat prices have grown by about 40 per cent over the last year, Corsino said. Add to that higher transportation costs, including fuel and the expense of trucking goods in a region plagued with security concerns.

"The one (expense) we see very directly is the increased cost of moving food," he said. "The risk of the vehicle being attacked is higher than it was a year ago."

In all of 2006, five attacks were carried out against convoys carrying WFP food, Corsino said. In 2007, there were more than 30. About 870 tonnes of food, with a value of more than $630,000 US was lost.

Crew members and Afghan police escorts were either killed or wounded in at least four of the attacks.

"Many of (the attacks) occurred along the southern ring road between Kandahar and Herat, specifically in the western part of Kandahar province, Helmand province and between Dilaram and Bakwa in Farah province," Corsino said.

"Because of these, we have largely been unable to move food along the ring road for the past several months. While it remains unclear whether many of the attacks were conducted for political reasons, pure criminality, or a combination of the two, we suspect criminality to play the larger part."

Rising inflation is especially serious in Afghanistan where unemployment is estimated at 40 per cent. And many Afghans who do work don't make ends meet; about half of the population lives under the poverty line, a February 2007 report by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says.

Once a net agricultural exporter, decades of war has made Afghanistan heavily dependent on imports from neighbours like Pakistan and Iran. In 2005, agricultural products accounted for up to one third of Afghanistan's total imports, the Agri-Food Canada report says.

Afghanistan is forced to rely on imports from Pakistan as vast stretches of the country's fertile land in Helmand and Kandahar provinces are being used to grow lucrative opium and marijuana crops, instead of wheat, said Nisar Ahamad, a wholesaler of imported oils, flour and sugars at the Kandahar market.

"If people weren't growing poppies then we would have our own flour," he said. "We wouldn't need to import so much.

"We have fertile land, we have an irrigation system, but the people feel that they must grow the poppies because they are so poor."

Shopkeeper Mirajan urged the Afghan government and coalition forces to intervene by giving out free food in an effort to depress the prices. The insurgency in Afghanistan's volatile southern provinces, he said, is fueled more by poverty than ideology.

"An empty stomach is the real reason for this fighting."

Why are we in Afghanistan?

SALLY ARMSTRONG - January 5, 2008 OUTSIDE THE WIRE The War in Afghanistan

In the Words of Its Participants Edited by Kevin Patterson

Outside the Wire is a strange hybrid that mixes the surreal, the surprising and the exceedingly monotonous with a few heart-pounding flashes of drama and one brilliant chapter called Mascara that's so entertaining that it's worth the slog through almost two-thirds of the book to get to it.

Sample: When Cpl. Ryan Pagnacco wakes up in a drug-induced stupor after being severely wounded in action, he hears the sound of rocket fire and sees a nurse throw a blast blanket over him. He asks, "Are we being attacked?" She replies, "Yes ... go back to sleep." Or this: The Taliban use blocks of ice to hold down the release lever of a rocket so they can be a good distance away when it fires and the retaliatory helicopters become airborne. And who knew that "cold blood does not clot properly." Or that "an Afghan woman can accept three more other wives if Allah wills it, but if she feels another woman got a slightly better brand of mascara (or lipstick), she'll make a nasty desert sandstorm look mild compared to the rage that'll rise."

There are moments in this collection of chapters written by soldiers, aid workers and volunteer doctors that sizzle. But much of it ... The blogs and journal entries and letters home bring to mind the comments of the one-time über-editor at Saturday Night magazine, Barbara Moon. She once told a story at the National Magazine Awards gala about a writer who complained about her unkind cut of what the author saw as the best paragraph in the article. "Guilty," she told the crowd. She went on to explain that the paragraph had indeed been beautifully written, descriptive and moving. But, she opined, it didn't fit with anything else written in the entire piece. So taking a page from "which one of these things doesn't belong," she cut the best and left the rest.

Some of Outside the Wire would have been better left outside this book. In an age of YouTube, blogging and Facebook, it is a fine idea to hear the story of this war that has preoccupied Canadians from someone other than pundits and politicians. But pages stuffed with mundane daily schedules: "0700: wake up; 0730: shower and shave; 0800: in the office," that sort of thing, or, "I spent some time talking to old friends and comrades at the compound but we didn't stay too long," begin to feel like fillers.

That said, there are chapters in this book that leap from the page. The powerfully written foreword by Roméo Dallaire is one. In fact, his treatise about war zones should be required reading for anyone who decides to comment on or demonstrate over Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.

"In Afghanistan, experiencing the intensity of battle; being the cause of the destruction of villages, of putting peoples' homes in the target cross-hairs; being able to do little to address the extreme poverty and deprivation of the children; witnessing the burden and abuse of women in this male-dominated social order; hearing the suffering and cries of the wounded, civilian and military alike; seeing the cold and cruel face of death on your enemy as well as your comrade: These are some of the realities veterans carry back to Canada."

He goes on to speak of the other realities that shock the returnees: "The debates and posturing of politicians wanting to grab the next headline without knowing much about the war."

Editors Kevin Patterson and Jane Warren follow with an introduction that explains the goal of the texts that will follow: "Political decisions made so far from the battlefield must be informed by knowledge of it. Which is why these voices have to be heard."

A first-hand account from those voices is what we get in this book. Sgt. Russell Storring describes the stench of Kabul as "something that hits the back of your throat and stays with you like you swallowed it." And Cpl. Pagnacco begins his story with, "To my surprise, my brush with death came just after breakfast on September 4, 2006."

Marija Dumancic's hilariously funny and very telling tale, Mascara, is written from Kunduz, where she's teaching Afghan women to become radio journalists and winds up buying them mascara during her R&R leave out of the country. (Note to editors: Why do you save the best for almost last?)

As she prepares to leave Calgary for her posting, Dumancic considers the message she's received about complaints from her protégées regarding the brand of cell phones they have, and comments, "I couldn't really comprehend women in Afghanistan complaining about cell phones. Weren't they all starving and eating bark off trees? Or was that North Korea?" She tells a story about tripping over her shoelaces and crashing to the ground, thankful that her camera bag has broken her fall (as well as one of her ribs) and suffering the smirks of the men on the street who watch this infidel trying to get to work. She writes, "I soldiered on to work and hoped that I could find the Dari phrase for punctured lung. Possibly it's synonymous with bruised ego. Or growing realization."

The shortest chapter in the book - On a Chilly Evening in March, by Dr. Peter Sherk - is a stark and poignant entry that reads like a take on the Death of the Unknown Soldier.

Cap. Martin Anderson posts his story from the safety of his 19th-floor office in London, Ont., where he works as a financial adviser, and while staring at the photo of an orphan girl he helped when serving as a reservist in Kabul. "I look at that picture and think back to a time when I was part of something bigger. ... I am forever grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of this mission."

He closes by quoting Winston Churchill: "We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst - and we will do our best."

No doubt all of these authors did their best. And some of that makes a memorable read.

Sally Armstrong is the author of the novel The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor, to be published in paperback next month. She is working on a book about the women of Afghanistan.

U.S. law firms could help shape Afghanistan's future — for price

[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.]