In this bulletin:

• Afghan Violence Leaves 10 Dead
• Canadians killed in Afghanistan saluted by Ottawa for their sacrifices
• Pakistan: Militants Kill 8 Tribal Elders
• Report: Bin Laden Bodyguard Arrested in Pakistan
• Pakistan 'not particularly looking for' bin Laden: Musharraf
• Top general says no evidence Iran behind IEDs
• Pakistanis flee into Afghanistan
• Foiling U.S. Plan, Prison Expands in Afghanistan
• China enters Afghanistan with $3bn mine bid
• "Our invasion of Iraq resulted in us taking our eyes off the ball" - Obama
• Afghanistan sets up panels for women's rights
• AFGHANISTAN: TB deaths halve but challenges remain – WHO
• As 2007 ends, progress in Afghanistan proving elusive

Afghan Violence Leaves 10 Dead

By NOOR KHAN – KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a border police patrol on Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing a policeman, as officials reported that clashes and a roadside bomb elsewhere left nine people dead, including four civilians.

Four other policemen were seriously wounded when the bomber struck the police vehicle in the Spin Boldak district of Kandahar province, said border security police commander Gen. Abdul Raziq.

In neighboring Helmand province, police discovered and tried to defuse a remote-controlled roadside bomb Monday in Nad Ali district, but it exploded, killing two policemen and two civilians, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain Andiwal. Four other civilians were wounded.

In the Zhari district of Kandahar, three Taliban militants were killed in a battle between police and NATO troops on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Another militant was detained during the operation, it said.

In neighboring Uruzgan province, a clash between NATO troops and Taliban insurgents near Tirin Kot, the provincial capital, left two civilians dead and five others wounded on Friday, an alliance statement said. The violence followed a roadside bomb attack on NATO's International Security Assistance Force soldiers.

"The dead are a child and an adult; the injured included three children," the statement said. "It is not clear how they sustained their injuries."

"ISAF sincerely regrets the loss of those civilians and is saddened that casualties were caused as a result of a deliberate attack against ISAF forces that was instigated by the insurgents," the statement said.

Civilians are often caught in the line of fire during fighting between the Taliban and international forces or during airstrikes by foreign troops because insurgents often hide among civilian homes.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pleaded repeatedly with NATO and the U.S.-led coalition to coordinate more closely with their Afghan counterparts to prevent civilian casualties.

Last year, insurgency-related violence left more than 6,500 people dead — a record number — including nearly 900 civilians, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Canadians killed in Afghanistan saluted by Ottawa for their sacrifices

OTTAWA - Two Canadians killed in Afghanistan when their armoured vehicle rolled over in wet, rugged terrain were honoured Monday by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean.

Harper said the contributions made by Warrant Officer Hani Massouh and Cpl. Eric Labbe won't be forgotten.

"They deserve the gratitude of all Canadians for their commitment and the work they performed on our behalf," Harper said. "Warrant Officer Massouh and Corporal Labbe made an important contribution to the lives of the people of Afghanistan."

The Governor General said she was "deeply saddened."

"With the New Year having just begun, this new tragedy reminds us of the perilous conditions our soldiers are facing in Afghanistan," Jean said. "I salute their merit, their hard work and all the sacrifices they made so fearlessly. On behalf of all Canadians, I would like to tell their families and friends, who are grieving today, that they will not be forgotten."

Defence Minister Peter MacKay said: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to their loved ones at this time of loss."

Massouh, 41, and Labbe, 31, were members of 2nd Battalion, Royal 22nd Regiment - the Van Doos - based out of Valcartier, Que. Massouh was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Labbe was from Rimouski, Que.

They died when their light armoured vehicle flipped over Sunday evening in the region of Nalgham, about 40 kilometres southwest of Kandahar city. The military said they were travelling on dirt tracks, and rain in recent days had made the terrain very difficult.

It's the third time Canadian soldiers have died as a result of a light armoured vehicle rollover. Cpl. Paul Davis and Master Cpl. Timothy Wilson died in March 2006 when their armoured vehicle ran off the road, while Pte. Braun Woodfield was killed in a similar rollover in November 2005.

The soldiers were involved in a multiday operation in the volatile Zhari district of Kandahar province at the time.

Meant to disrupt insurgent activity in the area, Operation Steadfast Decision is expected to continue despite the accident, the military said. There were four people in the vehicle at the time of the accident and the two who died were sitting in the turret.

The two fatalities bring the number of Canadian military personnel killed in Afghanistan to 76. The majority of those deaths were the result of improvised explosive devices.

Pakistan: Militants Kill 8 Tribal Elders

By SADAQAT JAN – ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Suspected Islamic militants fatally shot eight tribal leaders involved in efforts to broker a cease-fire between security forces and insurgents in Pakistan's volatile northwest, authorities said Monday.

Meanwhile, a suicide attacker detonated a bomb near a guest house where military officers were staying Monday, also in the country's northwest, wounding one person, authorities said.

The tribal leaders were killed in separate attacks late Sunday and early Monday in South Waziristan, a mountainous region close to Afghanistan where al-Qaida and Taliban militants are known to operate, a security official and the military said in a statement.

The suspected insurgents killed three of the men in a market in Wana, the region's main town, while the other five were killed in attacks on their homes, the security official said. The men were scheduled to meet each other on Monday in Wana to discuss the negotiations, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

Pakistan is an ally in the U.S. war on terrorism, and its security forces have fought intense battles with militants in South Waziristan. Although the government has encouraged moderate tribal elders to broker a cease-fire in the region, there has been little sign of success.

In the suicide attack, the bomber blew himself up when he was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint, wounding one other person, according to a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The attack happened in the town of Kabal in the Swat region, a former tourist destination where security forces have been battling loyalists of a pro-Taliban cleric. Swat is about 175 miles north of South Waziristan.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan border area has long been considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, and the U.S. has pressured the government of President Pervez Musharraf to crack down on militants operating in the area.

On Sunday, Pakistan reiterated that it will not let American forces hunt al-Qaida and Taliban militants on its soil, after a report in The New York Times said that the Bush administration was considering expanding U.S. military and intelligence operations into Pakistan's tribal regions.

The Pakistani government also has blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a South Waziristan-based militant leader with links to al-Qaida, in the Dec. 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud has reportedly denied involvement, and many Bhutto backers claim elements within the government played a role in her killing.

About 2,000 supporters of the All Parties Democratic Movement, a coalition of small opposition parties that have called for a boycott of upcoming parliamentary elections, held a protest in Chaman near the Afghan border, chanting "Arrest the killers of Benazir Bhutto" and "Death to fraudulent elections."

Protesters also denounced the government for a scarcity of flour and electricity. Rallies were scheduled for later Monday across the country, said Shahid Shamsi, a spokesman for Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic group, which is also part of the anti-Musharraf coalition.

Report: Bin Laden Bodyguard Arrested in Pakistan

Monday , January 07, 2008, Fox News

The alleged security coordinator and bodyguard for Al Qaeda terror chieftain Usama bin Laden was arrested in Pakistan sometime last week, the influential newspaper The Nation reported Monday.

Amin al-Haq, 48, also known under the alias Dr. Amin Ah Haq, was arrested last week in Lahore during a special police operation and is being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence, the newspaper reported citing an anonymous law enforcement source. Pakistani officials have not yet confirmed the arrest.

Amin al-Haq was part of the Afghan delegation flown to Sudan in 1996 to bring bin Laden to Afghanistan. Amin al-Haq is believed to be an active member of the Hizbe Islami Afghanistan party, which joined the Taliban movement in 1996.

The U.S. froze Amin al-Haq's assets after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Pakistan 'not particularly looking for' bin Laden: Musharraf

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Pakistan is not specifically looking for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as there is no proof he is in Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf has said.

"We are not particularly looking for him, but we are operating against terrorists and Al Qaeda and militant Taliban. And in the process, obviously, combined, maybe we are looking for him also," the Pakistani leader told CBS television in an interview aired late Sunday.

Asked what Pakistan was doing to find the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Musharraf said it was fighting extremism and terrorism.

"We are fighting first of all Al-Qaeda. Let's take Al-Qaeda. We have arrested or eliminated about 700 Al-Qaeda leaders ... which other country has done this?"

"Well, which other country has Bin Laden?" his CBS interviewer replied, inciting a sharp retort from the Pakistani leader. "No, I challenge -- I don't accept that at all. There is no proof whatsoever that he is here in Pakistan."

Mahmoud Ali Durrani, Pakistan's envoy to the United States, sought to clarify Musharraf's remark, in an exchange with CNN.

"I think the president is suggesting that neither we, nor the US, has any intelligence where exactly Osama bin Laden is," Durrani said. "He may be in Afghanistan," the ambassador said. "He may be in the border region. If we knew where he was, we would have taken him out."

Durrani noted that US and other foreign intelligence agencies believe bin Laden to be sheltering in the tribal area along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But "that's just speculation," the envoy said. "Believe me. If they knew or we knew we would have taken him out," he said.

"And when Musharraf says that he's not specifically looking for Osama, what he really means is that we are totally focused on destroying Al-Qaeda and the Taliban network and not just one person."

The New York Times reported that under a proposal being discussed in Washington, CIA operatives based in Afghanistan would be able to call on direct military support for counter-terrorism operations in neighboring Pakistan.

Top general says no evidence Iran behind IEDs

Updated Fri. Jan. 4 2008 10:46 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Canadian military officials in Afghanistan say they're concerned about the influx of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) entering the country from Iran. But they contend there is no evidence the Iranian government is behind the export of weapons that end up in the hands of Taliban fighters.

During a visit to Afghanistan over Christmas, Defence Minister Peter MacKay surprised reporters by accusing Iran of supplying IEDs to Afghan insurgents.

But the general in charge of Canadian forces in the country says the source of parts used in the IEDs is unclear.

"There were parts coming from Iran, there was parts also coming from other countries" said Brig.-Gen. Guy Laroche.  "I cannot say from what I see on the ground that Iran is behind that."

NATO officials also say they are seeing weapons from Iran but remain cautious about naming a source for the IEDs in Afghanistan.

"The border between Iran and Afghanistan is relatively porous and we have noticed that weaponry and ammunition does come across that border," said NATO spokesperson Antony McCord.

MacKay -- who was accompanied on his trip by David Wilkins, the U.S. Ambassador to Canada -- said Canada had spoken to Iran about the issue on several occasions. But it was the first time that Canada had voiced its concerns publicly.

MacKay said that Canada was "very concerned that weapons are coming from Iran. We're very concerned these weapons are going to the insurgents and keeping this issue alive."

The Iranians say Canada is merely repeating a familiar U.S. message. Washington has accused Iran of supplying weapons and parts for IEDs to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. has also claimed that Iran has a nuclear weapons program -- an allegation that was refuted last month by a U.S. intelligence report.

The Iranian government has denied allegations that it is behind the weapons being smuggled into Afghanistan. Iran's Shiite government has historically had frosty relations with the Taliban, which is the main insurgent force fighting against NATO and Afghan national forces. The Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents are composed of Sunni Muslims, who have traditionally been antagonistic towards Iran's Shiite Muslims.

Iran's consul in Kandahar told CTV News that the presence of thousands of foreign troops in Afghanistan is destabilizing the country, and that was a threat to Iran's national security. The Iranian official added that Iran will defend itself against any dangers.

Afghan officials have said they have good relations with Iran and they are not sure who is behind weapon-smuggling operations along their shared 1,000-kilometre border.

Omar Samad, the top Afghan diplomat in Canada, told CTV Newsnet following MacKay's comments that his country is working with its partners, including Canada, to find an answer.

IEDs were responsible for 75 per cent of Canadian deaths in Afghanistan last year.

With a report from CTV's Murray Oliver

Pakistanis flee into Afghanistan

By Alastair Leithead - BBC News, Kabul

Thousands of Pakistanis have fled into Afghanistan with the security situation deteriorating in Pakistan's tribal regions over the past week.

Hundreds of families, comprising some 6,000 mainly women and children, have been crossing the border. The UN refugee agency says clashes between Pakistan's Shia and Sunni groups have forced people to flee.

It is the first time so many people have crossed this way as for years it was Afghans fleeing fighting. The refugees have been crossing the border between Pakistan's tribal areas and south-eastern Afghan provinces.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) says historic clashes between Shias and Sunnis in the villages in Kurram, North West Frontier Province, have escalated in the past couple of weeks.

This and the unstable situation in that part of Pakistan have led to the movement of so many people, the UNHCR says.

"It's the first time that we see this in very large numbers which shows that security in those areas has seriously deteriorated and it's probably become out of control," said Salvatore Lombardo, a UNHCR representative in Kabul.

He said many of the people had been given shelter in Afghanistan by villagers who live by the Pashtun Valley tribal code of hospitality, and tents were being handed out to help provide shelter as winter was intensifying along the border.

Over the past three decades millions of Afghans fled the violence in their country during the Soviet occupation, the civil war and then in the fighting that saw the Taleban take control of Afghanistan.

With the rise of the Pakistani Taleban and militant Islamic groups along the Pakistan side of the border, the UN says it now appears that parts of Afghanistan are safer for families.

It is hoped discussions within the tribal groups can resolve the situation and allow the people to return home.

Foiling U.S. Plan, Prison Expands in Afghanistan

By TIM GOLDEN – NY Times 1.7.08

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration struggles for a way to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a similar effort to scale down a larger and more secretive American detention center in Afghanistan has been beset by political, legal and security problems, officials say.

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners — more than twice the 275 being held at Guantánamo.

The administration has spent nearly three years and more than $30 million on a plan to transfer Afghan prisoners held by the United States to a refurbished high-security detention center run by the Afghan military outside Kabul.

But almost a year after the Afghan detention center opened, American officials say it can accommodate only about half the prisoners they once planned to put there. As a result, the makeshift American site at Bagram will probably continue to operate with hundreds of detainees for the foreseeable future, the officials said.

Meanwhile, the treatment of some prisoners on the Bagram base has prompted a strong complaint to the Pentagon from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside group allowed in the detention center.

In a confidential memorandum last summer, the Red Cross said dozens of prisoners had been held incommunicado for weeks or even months in a previously undisclosed warren of isolation cells at Bagram, two American officials said. The Red Cross said the prisoners were kept from its inspectors and sometimes subjected to cruel treatment in violation of the Geneva Conventions, one of the officials said.

The senior Pentagon official for detention policy, Sandra L. Hodgkinson, would not discuss the complaint, citing the confidentiality of communications with the Red Cross. She said that the organization had access to “all Department of Defense detainees” in Afghanistan, after they were formally registered, and that the military “makes every effort to register detainees as soon as practicable after capture, normally within two weeks.

“In some cases, due to a variety of logistical and operational circumstances, it may take longer,” Ms. Hodgkinson added.

The obstacles American officials have faced in their plan to “transition out” of the Bagram detention center underscore the complexity of their challenges in dealing with prisoners overseas. Yet even as Bagram has expanded over the last three years, it has received a fraction of the attention that policy makers, Congress and human rights groups have devoted to Guantánamo.

“The problem at Bagram hasn’t gone away,” said Tina M. Foster, a New York human rights lawyer who has filed federal lawsuits on behalf of the detainees at Bagram. “The government has just done a better job of keeping it secret.”

The rising number of detainees at Bagram — up from barely 100 in early 2004 and about 500 early last year — has been driven primarily by the deepening war in Afghanistan. American officials said that all but about 30 of those prisoners are Afghans, most of them Taliban fighters captured in raids or on the battlefield.

But the surging detainee population also reflects a series of unforeseen problems in the United States’ effort to turn over prisoners to the Afghan government.

In a confidential diplomatic agreement in August 2005, a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times, the Bush administration said it would transfer the detainees if the Kabul government gave written assurances that it would treat the detainees humanely and abide by elaborate security conditions. As part of the accord, the United States said it would finance the rebuilding of an Afghan prison block and help equip and train an Afghan guard force.

Yet even before the construction began in early 2006, the creation of the new Afghan National Detention Center was complicated by turf battles among Afghan government ministries, some of which resisted the American strategy, officials of both countries said.

A push by some Defense Department officials to have Kabul authorize the indefinite military detention of “enemy combatants” — adopting a legal framework like that of Guantánamo — foundered in 2006 when aides to President Hamid Karzai persuaded him not to sign a decree that had been written with American help .

Then, last May, the transfer plan was disrupted again when the two American servicemen overseeing the project were shot to death by a man suspected of being a Taliban militant who had infiltrated the guard force.

The Pentagon initially reported only that the two Americans, Col. James W. Harrison Jr. and Master Sgt. Wilberto Sabalu Jr., were killed May 6 by “small-arms fire.” But American officials said the Afghan guard had opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle as two vehicles carrying senior officers waited to pass through the prison gate. The killings forced more than a month of further vetting of the Afghan guards and the dismissal of almost two dozen trained recruits, Pentagon officials said.

The Bagram Theater Internment Facility, as it is called, has held prisoners captured as far away as Central Africa and Southeast Asia, many of whom were sent on to Guantánamo. Since the flow of detainees to Cuba was largely shut off in September 2004, the Bagram detention center has become primarily a repository for more dangerous prisoners captured in Afghanistan.

Despite some expansion and renovation, the detention center remains a crude place where most prisoners are fenced into large metal pens, military officers and former detainees have said.

Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site, on an American-controlled military base 40 miles north of Kabul, as far more spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers. Some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years, officials said.

The treatment of prisoners at Bagram has generally improved in recent years, human rights groups and former detainees say, particularly since two Afghan detainees died there in December 2002 after being beaten by their American captors. Two American officials familiar with the Red Cross complaint that was forwarded to the Pentagon over the summer described it as a notable exception.

A Red Cross spokesman in Washington, Simon Schorno, said the organization would not comment on its discussions with the Defense Department. But in remarks about the organization’s work in Afghanistan, its director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuehl, emphasized on Dec. 13 that “not all places of detention and detainees” are made available to the group’s inspectors.

“The fact that the I.C.R.C. does not publicize its findings does not indicate satisfaction with the conditions of any given detention place,” he said on the group’s Web site.

The two United States officials, who insisted on anonymity because of the confidentiality of Red Cross communications, suggested that the organization had been more forceful in private. They said the group had complained that detainees in the isolation area were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogations and were not reported to Red Cross inspectors until after they were moved into the main Bagram detention center and formally registered — after being held incommunicado for as long as several months.

One former Bush administration official said the Pentagon told Congressional leaders in September 2006 that a small number of prisoners held by Special Operations forces might not be registered within the 14-day period cited in a Defense Department directive issued that month. The exceptions were to be “approved at the highest levels,” the former official said.

Bush administration officials have at times discounted complaints about the crowding and harsh conditions at Bagram by saying the detention center was never meant to be permanent and that its prisoners would soon be turned over to Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Bagram detainees have been released outright as part of an Afghan national reconciliation program. But by early 2006, internal Defense Department statistics showed that the average internment at Bagram was 14.5 months, and one Pentagon official said that figure had since risen.

After a White House agreement by President Bush and Mr. Karzai in May 2005, the plan to transfer the prisoners was drawn up by administration officials and outlined in an exchange of confidential diplomatic notes that August.

The two-page Washington note — the first document to become public showing the terms that Washington has sought from other governments for the transfer of detainees from Guantánamo and Bagram — asks the Kabul administration to share any intelligence information from the prisoners, “utilize all methods appropriate and permissible under Afghan law to surveil or monitor their activities following any release,” and “confiscate or deny passports and take measures to prevent each national from traveling outside Afghanistan.”

At the time, some Bush administration officials predicted that transfers from Bagram could begin within six months. Col. Manuel Supervielle, who worked on legal aspects of the transfers as the senior United States military lawyer in Afghanistan, recalled that officials in Washington expected the primary difficulty to be the rebuilding of a cellblock at Afghanistan’s decrepit Pul-i-Charkhi prison to meet international standards of humane treatment.

“We’ve got a bunch of guys we want to hand over to the Afghans,” Colonel Supervielle said, recalling the prevailing view. “Build a jail and hand them over.”

But complications emerged at almost every turn. Afghan officials rejected pressure from Washington to adopt a detention system modeled on the Bush administration’s “enemy combatant” legal framework, American officials said. Some Defense Department officials even urged the Afghan military to set up military commissions like those at Guantánamo, the officials said.

Officials of both countries said the defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, was reluctant to take responsibility for the new detention center as the Pentagon wanted, fearing he would be besieged by tribal leaders trying to secure the release of captives. The minister of justice, Sarwar Danish, opposed sharing his control over prisons, the officials said.

American officials finally brokered an agreement between the ministries, internal documents show. But that did not resolve more basic questions about the legal basis under which Afghanistan would hold the detainees.

For nearly a year, American military officials and diplomats worked with the Afghan government to draft a plan for how it would detain and prosecute all prisoners captured in Afghanistan. Colonel Supervielle, who had helped set up legal operations at Guantánamo, said the effort in Afghanistan was in some ways more complex. “You weren’t dealing just with a U.S. interagency process,” he said. “It involved the interagency process, bilateral relations with Afghanistan, the military coalition and other international interests.”

The draft law was finally delivered to Mr. Karzai in August 2006. Despite American entreaties, he decided not to sign it after opposition from senior aides, officials said.

The construction of a new detention center at Pul-i-Charkhi also proved more complicated than United States officials had anticipated.

A New Project Is Flawed - When Afghan contractors broke ground on the $20 million project in 2006, United States officials estimated that the center would hold as many as 670 prisoners. But as the military police colonel overseeing the project toured the site with Afghan and Red Cross officials, they pointed to a significant flaw. In other parts of Pul-i-Charkhi, men were crammed as many as eight to a cell, and used toilets down the hall. To improve security and hygiene, the Americans equipped each two-man cell in the new block with its own toilet.

But because the cultural modesty of Afghan men would make them uncomfortable sharing an open toilet, it was subsequently decided that the prisoners should be held individually, two former officials involved in the project said. That immediately reduced the optimal capacity of the main prison to about 330 detainees, they said, although a Pentagon spokeswoman said its “maximum capacity” was 628 prisoners.

The training of Afghan military personnel to guard and administer the new prison has posed other challenges. After initially budgeting $6 million for guard training, the Defense Department decided it would need about $18 million for training and “mentoring” of guards over three years, officials said.

A first group of 12 Bagram detainees was moved into the Pul-i-Charkhi prison on April 3. Over the next nine months, that number rose to 157 prisoners, including 32 from Guantánamo, official statistics show. Afghan officials decided to release 12 of those detainees soon after their transfer.

American officials said the modest flow had been dictated mainly by the Afghan military, which has wanted to make sure its guards could handle the new arrivals. But some United States officials say they have also had to reassess the Afghans’ ability to hold more dangerous detainees. They said the detention center at Bagram would probably continue to hold hundreds of prisoners indefinitely. “The idea is that over time, some of our detainees at Bagram — especially those at the lower end of the threat scale — will be passed on to Afghanistan,” one senior military official said last year. “But not all. Bagram will remain an intelligence asset and a screening area.”

Ms. Hodgkinson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, acknowledged that the military was holding more detainees at Bagram than it had anticipated two years ago and that the Pentagon had no plan to assist the Afghans with further prison-building. But, she added, “A final decision on the higher-threat detainees has not yet been made.”

And even now, the legal basis under which prisoners are being held at the Afghan detention center remains unclear. Another Defense Department official, who insisted on anonymity because she was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue, said the detentions had been authorized “in a note from the attorney general stating that he recognizes that they have the legal authority under the law of war to hold enemy combatants as security threats if they choose to do so.”

Afghan officials said they were still expecting virtually all of the Afghan prisoners held by the United States — with the possible exception of a few especially dangerous detainees at Guantánamo — to be handed over to them.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said, “What is agreed is that all the detainees should be transferred.”

China enters Afghanistan with $3bn mine bid

FT.com, 01/07/2008 By Jon Boone in Kabul - The debris left over from previous attempts to extract some of Afghanistan’s colossal mineral wealth can be found just 35 kilometres south-east of Kabul.

All that remains from Soviet attempts in the 1970s to assess one of the world’s biggest copper reserves is exploratory drill holes.

But in five years time, if all goes to plan, the landscape in the Aynak exploration area will finally be changed into one of the world’s largest open cast mines thanks to a $3bn investment by the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC).

In November, the Chinese state-owned company beat eight other major mining players, including Phelps Dodge of the US, Hunter Dickinson of Canada and London-based Kazakhmys to become the government’s preferred bidder.

If contract negotiations are successfully concluded, MCC will have access to a reserve which, with copper prices currently running high, could be worth $42bn, according to one estimate.

By international standards, it is a huge project, representing the second-largest unexploited deposit in the world. By the standards of Afghanistan, it is gargantuan.

And therein lies both the potential reward and risk for a war-battered country which desperately needs the money such a deal could bring, but which experts say is totally unprepared for regulating the sort of mega-projects which have caused social, political and economic catastrophes in other developing nations.

Lorenzo Delesgues, executive director of Integrity Watch Afghanistan, an independent research organisation which last month published a report on Aynak, says Afghanistan is not evenly matched with the company. “This is a multi-national company that is far bigger financially than Afghanistan. It’s like David and Goliath, only David doesn’t have any laws or regulatory framework to help him.”

Copper mining can be particularly destructive to the environment. Acid waste, for example, needs to be carefully controlled to stop it polluting drinking water supplies and the run off from the Aynak basin could spill into Kabul’s water supply, experts have warned.

But the rewards for getting the project right could be enormous for Afghanistan.
The investment in just the one project is equal to 35 per cent of all the international development money spent on Afghanistan since 2002.

Analysts say annual royalties will equal around $400m – or 40 per cent of the 2006 Afghan state budget. The cash will be vital for a country that struggles to collect taxes and knows that it has to wean itself off international aid money.

The project will also bring infrastructure projects which the country would otherwise have to wait decades for, including Afghanistan’s first railway line, which would link the country to Tajikistan and Pakistan.

MCC has also promised to build a 400MW power plant which, it is hoped, will supply its excess power to Kabul, which currently has only intermittent electricity supply.

Mahmoud Saikal, an economic adviser to the government, says Afghanistan should look to the example of post-independence India which focused on developing its mineral wealth.

“The MCC deal only covers one quarter of the exploration area, and the country’s other resources could be a lot more than we currently understand,” he says. “There will be plenty of other opportunities for similar deals.”

Those other minerals include iron ore, gold, marble, emeralds, lapis lazuli and hydrocarbons.

But if the Aynak deal, which is being seen as a litmus test of how the country handles big foreign investment projects, goes sour then much of that potential will remain untapped.

In the summer, concerns were raised about the tendering process by James Yeager, a consultant who worked with the Ministry of Mines. He warned that legal requirements for an inter-ministerial council to consider the rival bidders was simply being ignored. Other sources close to the deal have warned that the process lacked transparency.

The World Bank, which is bankrolling efforts to sharpen the ministry’s capacity to handle mega-deals, has pronounced itself satisfied with the tendering process.

Analysts warn, however, that contract negotiations and a yet to be done feasibility study still offer potential pitfalls.

One westerner with intimate knowledge of the country’s embryonic mineral extraction regime described it as a “Soviet-era structure that simply does not have the capacity to do the job.”

“The risk will be that without having the lawyers and accountants in place to monitor all of this, there just won’t be able to stop problems before it’s too late,” he said.

But Ibrahim Adel, Afghanistan’s mining minister, says his ministry was being well advised by international advisers and that the country still has plenty of time. “Extraction will not start for five years so there will be sufficient time to get our experts and environmental inspectors trained,” he told the Financial Times.

If those challenges cannot be tackled, however, the landscape around Aynak will be disfigured by more than just a few Soviet-era holes.

"Our invasion of Iraq resulted in us taking our eyes off the ball" - Obama

AFP 01/06/2008 -DES MOINES, Iowa (AFP) — As the top Democratic hopefuls jostle for position in the first contests of the 2008 White House race, there is one thing uniting Barack Obama and John Edwards -- they are not Hillary Clinton.

The latest polls have shown the three are in a tight race as the key state of Iowa prepares to cast the first dice Thursday in nominating contests for Democratic and Republican Party presidential candidates.

A Zogby poll published Wednesday showed Obama and Clinton running neck-and-neck in Iowa with 28 percent of the vote each, with the former North Carolina senator Edwards just behind on 26 percent.

With everything still to play for, both the charismatic young Illinois senator Obama, making his first pitch for the nation's top job, and the more seasoned political veteran Edwards are piling the pressure on.

And both are marking their differences from front-runner Clinton, the New York Senator and former first lady, who is as much loved as she is hated and who has shown she is the woman to beat for the Democratic ticket.

Obama, seeking the moral high ground, points repeatedly to his opposition to the Iraq war, even though he only entered the Senate in 2005, three years after a key vote by US lawmakers.

Clinton's aura is still tarnished by her 2002 vote in favor of the US-led invasion the following year, although she now blames President George W. Bush and the Republican administration for misleading the nation.

The United States cannot have politicians who "vote and act like George W. Bush," argued Obama at one campaign rally.

"Our invasion of Iraq resulted in us taking our eyes off the ball. We should have been focused in Afghanistan, finishing off Al-Qaeda.

"They're the ones that killed 3,000 Americans. We've been so distracted with the war of choice instead the war of necessity that Al-Qaeda is now stronger than in 2001."

And the 46-year-old Obama has also played on his status as the new boy on the block, touting his bid for the presidency as a vote for change.

His supporters argue he would bring a breath of fresh air to the dusty White House corridors, trodden for seven years by President George W. Bush and for eight years prior to that by Clinton's husband, Bill.

"There's one Democrat -- one Democrat -- who beats every Republican potential opponent. And that's me," he said.

He was speaking after a Zogby poll at the weekend suggested that lined up against any of the five of the Republican candidates -- Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson -- Obama would win.

Clinton in the same poll was seen as only able to beat either former Massachusetts governor, Romney or actor-turned-politician Thompson.

Edwards meanwhile, polling consistently in a strong third place, is appealing to middle class voters as their candidate, saying he is not in the pockets of the big interests and yet has the experience to run the nation.

On Tuesday he took out an advertisement in the Des Moines Register, pointedly suggesting that while Obama might be a fresh face, he was not tough enough to take on the job.

"Why on earth would we expect the corporate powers and their lobbyists, who make billions by selling out the middle-class, to just give up their power because we ask them nicely?" Edwards wrote.

While Edwards also voted for the Iraq war, he candidly admits now: "I was wrong to vote for this war. Unfortunately, I'll have to live with that forever. And the lesson I learned from it is to put more faith in my own judgment."

Edwards is also questioning the role that Bill Clinton would play if his wife is the first woman elected to the White House, suggesting it was "complete fantasy" that the former president would keep out of White House policy.

"You watch him out on the campaign trail and he spends an awful lot of time talking about his views and not as much time talking about Senator Clinton's," he said.

Described as "relentless" and a person who "hates to lose," Newsweek magazine has predicted that Edwards, a former trial lawyer, could surprise the pundits and win in Iowa by "wrapping up smaller, far-flung precincts" even if he loses out on the state's bigger cities.

A wealthy lawyer who is the son of a textile worker, Edwards has emphasized throughout his campaign the "two Americas" theme, describing the clash between the haves and have-nots; the corporate giants versus the individual.

Afghanistan sets up panels for women's rights

Kabul, Jan 6 (Xinhua) The Afghanistan Ministry for Women Affairs has constituted two new organisations to protect women's rights, a local newspaper reported Sunday.

The two new sets-up 'Healthy Family, Happy Society' and 'Law and Women' are aimed at eliminating violence against women and establish a healthy and prosperous society, Afghanistan Times quoted Minister for Women Affairs Hosn Bano Ghazanfar as saying.

The 'Healthy Family, Happy Society' will involve religious leaders in various provinces to sensitise people on women rights.

The 'Law and Women', to be managed by legal experts, will launch campaigns by publishing posters that will disseminate knowledge about the rights of women envisaged in the country's constitution and guaranteed by Islam.

The Taliban regime did not recognise rights of women and encouraged them to remain confined to their homes. It also closed down schools for girls. The six-year Taliban rule was toppled in 2001.

Women's rights situation has improved in post-Taliban Afghanistan and women have more freedom, and they serve as ministers, parliamentarians and teachers.

Nevertheless, a vast majority of them in the war-ravaged country are still illiterate, poor and uninformed and have still to go a long way to realise their rightful place in the society.

AFGHANISTAN: TB deaths halve but challenges remain – WHO

KABUL, 7 January 2008 (IRIN) - The number of people dying from tuberculosis (TB) in Afghanistan has been going down by 50 percent over the past few months, thus saving the lives of at least 10,000 people on an annual basis, according to new statistics from the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and World Health Organization (WHO).

MoPH officials and Afghanistan’s national human development report 2007 had previously reported that about 20,000 people every year (two TB patients every hour) were dying in the country.

“WHO estimates that now the number of TB cases resulting in death has declined to 10,000 annually,” said Syed Karam Shah, a WHO official in charge of the TB control programme in Afghanistan.

Following decades of conflict, the health status of the Afghan people has seen “substantial improvements” over the past two years, according to assessments conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Indian Institute of Health Management Research in July 2007.

Tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment is part of the Basic Package Health Services (BPHS), which Afghan officials say now reach over 80 percent of the country.

Over 103,000 TB cases were diagnosed and treated from 2001 to 2006, which not only saved the lives of over 67,900 patients but also reduced the chances of TB infection for over 500,000 other people, WHO said. The total number of health facilities providing TB diagnostic and treatment services has increased from 36 in 2001 to 991 to date.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) has also contributed to the fight against TB in Afghanistan through its mixed food aid for TB patients.

“WFP gives wheat and cooking oil to all TB patients which helps patients with food insecurity to recover quickly and effectively,” said Yunus Ghanizada, a specialist at the national TB institute in Kabul.

Despite marked progress, Afghanistan is still one of the 22 TB high-burden countries in the world where the disease is considered a major public health problem.

“WHO estimates that every year over 50,000 new cases of TB occur in Afghanistan,” Karam Shah told IRIN on 7 January.

Afghan women make up about 67 percent of all TB patients in the country and are considered particularly vulnerable to TB infection due to their acute food insecurity, multiple pregnancies and a general lack of awareness about TB, public health specialists say.

Funding is also a major challenge for the impoverished country to sustain its anti-TB efforts in the future.

From a requested US$12 million budget for TB control and treatment in 2007, the WHO received $2 million from international donors, according to WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Control Report 2007.

“The whole TB control programme in Afghanistan is based on donors’ support,” said Karam Shah of WHO, adding that there were concerns about the “long-term” sustainability of donors’ funding.

“Afghanistan will be able to eliminate TB by 2050 only if it is enabled to sustain its efforts in the long-term,” he said.

As 2007 ends, progress in Afghanistan proving elusive

December 14, 2007 - By Chris Herlinger, Church World Service

KABUL, Afghanistan - How, after six years since the fall of the Taliban, is it possible to measure progress in Afghanistan?

It is a frustratingly difficult question to answer, especially for someone who recently made his third visit to the country since 2001 and has seen Afghanistan in three distinct periods.

Let me retrace my steps. It is hard to convey how hauntingly devastated the capital of Kabul appeared in the summer of 2001 (immediately before Sept. 11), when I and a Danish colleague visited Afghanistan on behalf of the Action by Churches (ACT) International network. We were in Afghanistan to report on a drought that together with oppressive Taliban rule and the effects of years of internecine warfare were crippling the country.

A return visit a year later, in the fall of 2002, saw some hopeful changes -- clearly Kabul was a livelier and more humane place, especially for women and young people. But it was already clear that the country's humanitarian (not to mention political) problems would take years to solve, and that a power vacuum was already being filled with entrenched forces like warlords. That did not augur well for the future.

My recent visit confirmed those earlier fears: In a recent report, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) cited some progress in the areas of economic prosperity, access to health care and education but also warned that "the needs of many remain unfulfilled."

Expressing the hopes of many, one Afghan man, Faqirullah Hamidi, a father of eight who lives on the outskirts of Kabul, said: "We want a secure country, we want peace in this country, we want development in this country."

The UN report said Afghanistan's "human development index," which measures such benchmarks as health and education, was the lowest among its neighbors, including Pakistan. That placed the country 174th out of 178 countries. Only four countries had lower indicators than Afghanistan, all in sub-Saharan Africa.

My recent trip introduced new worries. As the year 2007 ends in Afghanistan, the level of day-to-day safety and security had dropped markedly, making travel outside the perimeters of Kabul risky. Security, or perhaps more to the point, insecurity, has become a mantra among a population that in recent months had had difficulty inuring itself to suicide bomb blasts, kidnappings and robberies.

A new shopping center in Kabul - A new shopping center in Kabul, an example of new prosperity for a small number of Kabul residents. Photo: Chris Herlinger

But perhaps most striking was a clear and growing gap between a very small group of "haves," and the overwhelming population of "have-nots." The UN report was spot on: yes, there are signs of progress in Afghanistan; certainly striking evidence of change, including amenities that would have been impossible to conceive of in 2001 or even 2002 -- including shopping centers with luxury goods and cash machines that, tellingly, dispense both Afghan and American currencies.

At the same time, large sections -- I was told about half -- of Kabul were still astonishingly, six years after the fall of Taliban, without electricity.

Moreover, a city with a population of anywhere from 3 to more than 4 million is growing with returnees and those displaced or frustrated by continuing rural poverty -- and most of them struggle to find places to live. Their living standards are in marked contrast to those who live in opulent mansions being built in once war-ravaged neighborhoods. (Many are reportedly drug lords and warlords.)

The poor, understandably frustrated by tight job prospects -- one woman told me she and others hate Afghanistan and want to leave because there are no jobs here -- are asking why they have not seen the benefits of the billions in relief and reconstruction that have flowed into Afghanistan since the end of 2001.

Some say such frustration in part explains why the Taliban have experienced something of a resurgence, particularly in poor rural areas. And that, the argument goes, explains the possible link between poverty and insecurity.

"Poverty is the source of the instability," said Mohammad Zakir Stanikzai, a senior CWS program officer whose work takes him to many of Afghanistan's rural areas. "People feel like, Why not join the Taliban? We have nothing to lose."

Unfortunately, by those standards progress in Afghanistan since 2001 has proven frustratingly elusive.

CWS Afghanistan refugee health project saves lives, teaches health care

Female Community Health Supervisors

Female Community Health Supervisors at Khaki refugee camp in Pakistan discuss nutrition with an Afghan mother and provide nutritional supplements for her children. Photo: Mohammad Arshad, CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan December 12, 2007

Hi-res photos to accompany this story are available at: www.churchworldservice.org/media/hires.html

NEW YORK CITY -- As time runs out for three million Afghan refugees to stay legally in Pakistan, Church World Service and its nearly 30-year-old Pakistan/Afghanistan Community Health Project are working to prepare the refugees to take care of their own health upon return to Afghanistan, a country with one of the world's worst health records.

CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Program staff Dennis Joseph and Wajahat Latif described their work in meetings Dec. 3-7 with governmental and nongovernmental bodies in New York and Washington, D.C.

Since 1978, successive conflicts have displaced millions of Afghans within Afghanistan and to neighboring countries, including Pakistan. Now Pakistan is pressing all Afghan refugees, most of whom live in camps, to return home by 2009. Many face return to rural areas of Afghanistan that lack even the most basic health services.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR projects 1.6 million will return from Pakistan to Afghanistan by the deadline, said Mr. Joseph, associate director of operations for CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan.

"We have a window to talk with Afghan refugee men and women before repatriation, when it will become harder especially to talk about health, especially HIV/AIDS and family planning," he said. "We are telling people, 'This is the time to absorb information.'"

Intensive community education will be complemented by enhanced training of medical, paramedical and other project staff ? many of whom are Afghan refugees themselves ? as well as Community Health Committees, and Male and Female Community Health Workers, who together carry out the CWS work.

The CWS project currently serves over 57,000 Afghan refugees through three Basic Health Units in three camps in Pakistan's Mansehra District (North West Frontier Province). CWS is concerned that these communities not lose their substantial improvements in health, including effective control of tuberculosis, malaria, and leishmaniasis; a dramatic decline in maternal and infant mortality at childbirth, and high rates of vaccination against preventable diseases.

CWS has carried out its work in a context that is highly conservative socially, and highly volatile in terms of politics, economics, and security, noted Mr. Latif, the CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan senior program advisor, thanks to long-term, effective relationship building with civic and religious leaders.

"We've gained religious leaders' confidence over the years," Mr. Joseph said. "Their support has enabled us to work with local communities," even on more sensitive issues like family planning and HIV/AIDS education.

"When a refugee child is born, the parents come straightaway for vaccinations," he said. "Religious leaders even participate in the annual World AIDS Day walk each December 1 in Mansehra District."

CWS also has built Afghan men's support for women to receive ? and provide ? health services. Afghans' cultural and religious norms forbid women to be examined by males. To bolster the work of its female medical and paramedical staff, CWS has recruited, trained, and deployed hundreds of Female Community Health Workers to assist in safe, normal childbirth at home and to recognize complications that require referral to a hospital.

The general population in Pakistan suffers a maternal mortality rate of 500 per 100,000 live births and an infant mortality rate of 57 per 1,000 live births, according to the World Health Organization's 2006 Annual Health Report. Among Afghan communities in Pakistan where CWS works, those numbers dropped to 122.69 and 5.52, respectively, in 2006, according to CWS project data.

To further equip Female Community Health Workers for repatriation, "in 2008 and 2009, they will be receiving additional training for care of common ailments," Mr. Joseph said.

The CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Community Health Project already works in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, where it serves roughly 200,000 internally displaced persons, returnees, and local residents through six Basic Health Units. These are the only health services available in the province. Church World Service is looking to strengthen that work and expand into an additional province in 2008, Mr. Joseph said.

In Afghanistan in the general population, 1,900 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 live births, and 60 of every 1,000 newborns die, according to the World Health Organization?s 2006 Annual Health Report. According to CWS project data, those numbers dropped to 860 and 5.2, respectively, in 2006 in communities CWS serves.

Medical staff of the CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Community Health Project Medical staff of the CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Community Health Project in Mansehra District in Pakistan gather in advance of World AIDS Day 2006 observances at the Khaki Basic Health Unit, which serves just over 20,000 Afghan refugees. Photo: Mohammad Arshad, CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan

CWS also offers preventive services to local Pakistanis in Mansehra district, and additional services are provided to those displaced by the 2005 earthquake. As Afghan refugees leave, CWS will be expanding its work with Pakistani communities. CWS is participating in the new "Refugee-Affected Host Areas" initiative, a collaborative effort of the Government of Pakistan, UNHCR, UNDP and nongovernmental organizations. The initiative is examining the ways in which the infrastructure and knowledge developed through refugee assistance programs can be utilized for the benefit of local Pakistanis, in areas such as water and sanitation, health and education.

"We don't want to lose the human and technical resources we have developed over the years in Pakistan," Mr. Joseph said.

Mr. Latif added, "Pakistan's rural areas are a vast field for nongovernmental organizations to do health work. In both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the governments' ability to deliver humanitarian assistance in remote areas is diminishing. Organizations like Church World Service with a strong community base need to kick into high gear. Otherwise, the people out there will be left high and dry."

Afghans also are being forced back to Afghanistan from Iran, and Mr. Joseph said, "We are looking at ways to assist them with unmet basic needs."

Mr. Joseph and Mr. Latif met with a number of groups while in the United States, including a "Population and Family Health Departmental Seminar" at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; the U.S. Permanent Mission to the United Nations; UNAIDS; members of Refugee Council USA and InterAction; the U.S. State Department; members of Congress; and the Reproductive Health Working Group of USAID, the U.S. State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and nongovernmental organizations.

[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.]