In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan Welcomes US Deployment Plans
• NATO welcomes U.S. troops boost in Afghanistan, urges greater civilian effort
• Hillier welcomes news that U.S. sending 3,000 marines to Afghanistan
• Afghanistan Seeks End to Deportations
• Bombers 'may come from Pakistan'
• Pakistan tribe says will take on al Qaeda fighters
• Out of Kandahar by 2009, Liberals say
• 09 Afghan pullout too soon, experts say
• One NATO soldier killed, another wounded in southern Afghanistan blast
• More Macedonian troops leaves for Afghanistan
• Clinton favours more NATO troops for Afghanistan
• Britain Sees Role for Afghan Tribes
• Afghanistan: A First Step Toward 'Turning' Moderate Taliban?
• Pakistan Turns On Its Islamic Radicals
• Taliban Commander Emerges As Pakistan's 'Biggest Problem'
• A Fight Between Fundamentalism and Moderation
• Rudimentary Kabul
• Youth projects bring new hope to blighted Afghan region
  

Afghanistan Welcomes US Deployment Plans

By FISNIK ABRASHI – KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan welcomed Pentagon plans to send an additional 3,000 U.S. Marines to the country's volatile south in April, although it said Thursday the long-term solution is to bolster Afghan forces.

Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammed Zahir Azimi said the deployment — still to be approved by Defense Secretary Robert Gates — would help combat Taliban insurgents. But Azimi added the long-term solution was to boost the fighting strength of Afghanistan's own army.

"Afghan security forces will be the force that will remain in Afghanistan and protect its peace and security, as well as defend the country," Azimi said.

On Wednesday, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said that a proposal set to go before Gates on Friday would send a ground and air Marine contingent and a Marine battalion — totaling more than 3,000 troops — to southern Afghanistan for a "one-time, seven-month deployment."

The U.S. had previously said it would not provide the extra troops.

Many other NATO nations — facing public opposition at home to deeper involvement — have refused to fill the need for as many as 7,500 extra troops that commanders on the ground have asked for.

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

In the latest violence, a NATO vehicle struck a mine in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing a soldier and wounding another, said Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. The nationalities of the soldiers were not disclosed.

Currently, there are about 27,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, including 14,000 with the NATO-led coalition. The other 13,000 U.S. troops are training Afghan forces and hunting al-Qaida terrorists.

Morrell said the Marine ground and air contingent would be put in place to prevent a spring Taliban offensive, and the Marine battalion would likely be used to train Afghan forces.

The U.S. and its allies are stepping up their training of Afghanistan's security forces, with a particular focus on its troubled police force, which is often accused of corruption.

The Afghan army will reach its target of 70,000 troops by the end of 2008, U.S. officials say.

NATO welcomes U.S. troops boost in Afghanistan, urges greater civilian effort

BRUSSELS, Belgium - NATO's top diplomat today welcomed a U.S. plan to send 3,000 extra troops to volatile southern Afghanistan.

But NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warned that military means alone will not bring stability and urged greater international civilian efforts. Scheffer said the answer in Afghanistan is not military - it's civilian.

On Friday, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates is expected to consider a proposal to send more than 3,000 marines to southern Afghanistan for a one-time, seven-month deployment.

The U.S. previously said it would not provide the extra troops, but other NATO countries have failed to come up with the 7,500 more troops that commanders on the ground have asked for.

Canada has about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, most of them in the country's southern Kandahar province.

De Hoop Scheffer noted that other allies had recently stepped forward with greater contributions to the 41,000-strong NATO force in Afghanistan - notably Poland, which is expected boost its contingent from 1,200 to 1,600 in April and send much-needed helicopters.

However, he acknowledged that allies need to do more. "I'm not fully satisfied," he said. "I still think we should do better."

De Hoop Scheffer said international efforts should also focus on training Afghan forces and development aid efforts.

Hillier welcomes news that U.S. sending 3,000 marines to Afghanistan

HALIFAX - Gen. Rick Hillier is welcoming news that the United States is preparing to send at least 3,000 marines to Afghanistan in the spring.

The Pentagon's announcement comes after months of repeated insistence that the U.S. wasn't prepared to fill the need for troops in the country.

Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff, says any surge of troops would accelerate progress against the Taliban and improve security in Afghanistan.

Canada already has about 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in the southern province of Kandahar, and has pushed for a larger contingent from the U.S.

Hillier says he hasn't seen any formal commitment from the United States, but he would welcome extra help from any country.

On Friday, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates is expected to see a proposal from the Pentagon to send a ground and air marine contingent as well as a marine battalion - together totalling more than 3,000 personnel.

Afghanistan Seeks End to Deportations

By RAHIM FAIEZ – KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan urged Iran on Thursday to stop deporting its citizens during the winter months, saying doing so could cause a humanitarian disaster.

Iran has said it plans to deport all of the nearly 1.5 million illegal Afghan migrants it says are living in the country. It says many of the migrants are there for economic reasons.

Iran is also trying to persuade the some 910,000 registered refugees from Afghanistan to return home.

Many of the migrants have no homes in Afghanistan and could be forced to live outside on their return.

On Wednesday, some 220 men were deported, said Shamsudin Ahmed, an Afghan government official in western Herat province, which borders Iran. Iran often deports small batches of illegal Afghan migrants, but these were the first of 2008.

The deportations provoked an unusually strong response from Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry, which has been criticized by lawmakers for not doing enough to protect the rights of Afghans in neighboring countries.

"The continued deportation of Afghan refugees from Iran will cause a humanitarian disaster and big problems during this cold weather," Foreign Minister Spokesman Sultan Baheen said at a news conference in Kabul, adding that heavy snowfall and cold had claimed several casualties in recent days.

"This action goes against the friendship of both countries and is worrying the Afghan people and its government," Baheen said.

In the mid-1990s, after years of war, Afghans constituted the world's largest refugee population, with 8 million people scattered in more than 70 countries across the globe. Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, millions have returned home, though some 2 million still live in neighboring Pakistan.

Bombers 'may come from Pakistan'

By Abdullah Hai Kakar - BBC Urdu service, Peshawar Wednesday, 9 January 2008

Suicide bombers targeting Afghanistan may be recruited from Pakistan, a Pakistani government minister has said.

Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told the BBC Urdu Service that the possibility of Pakistani suicide bombers crossing over the border "cannot be discounted".

The statement is a rare admission by the government that its citizens may be involved in attacks in Afghanistan.

A Taleban spokesman told the BBC that about 140 such bombers had struck in Afghanistan over the past two years. Afghan officials often allege that the Taleban in Afghanistan recruits suicide bombers mainly from Pakistan.

Mr Nawaz said that the reason many suicide bombers originated from Pakistan was because mujahideen training camps were located in the country's tribal areas during the war against the Soviet occupation of the country from 1979.

He said that was especially the case in North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

A Taleban spokesman told the BBC that many Pakistani suicide bombers were recruited from NWFP or Pakistan's tribal regions to hit targets in Afghanistan.

The spokesman also said that at least 40 came from the Pakistani province of Punjab. "All of them came from jihadi organisations," he told the BBC.

Mr Nawaz disputed the Taleban claim that 140 Pakistani nationals had been involved in such attacks over the last 24 months. "The actual figure is much lower," he said.

A UN report released in September said that at least half of Afghanistan's suicide bombers were of foreign origin. The report claimed that 80% of the suicide bombings in Afghanistan were planned from Pakistan.

One alleged Pakistani would-be suicide bomber was pardoned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai after he was captured.

"The government is trying to eliminate the root causes of such acts," Mr Nawaz said. "We are trying to locate their hideouts... where such activities are planned. "Whenever we get information about them, we crack down on them and arrest them."

Last year there was a large rise in suicide bombings, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, over 50 such attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives.

Pakistan tribe says will take on al Qaeda fighters

WANA, Pakistan, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Members of a Pakistani ethnic Pashtun tribe vowed on Thursday to raise a militia aimed at forcing al Qaeda-linked foreign militants from their lands on the Afghan border.

For several year Pakistani security forces have been trying with little success to rid the border tribal belt of foreign militants, who are blamed for raids on foreign troops in Afghanistan and for attacks inside Pakistan.

Thursday's decision by men from the Wazir tribe came four days after gunmen, believed to be Uzbek militants, attacked two offices of a government-sponsored peace movement in South Waziristan and killed eight members of the tribe.

"A lashkar of 600 people will be organised tomorrow," tribal elder Meetha Khan told a gathering in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. A lashkar is a militia force.

Wazir tribesmen sheltering the foreigners must now give them up, he said.
"The lashkar will give two options to those sheltering the foreigners, either to stop sheltering them and return to their tribe, or face the eviction of their families from the area," Khan said.

Thousands of foreign militants, including Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks, fled to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal lands after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

The militants were given refuge by the Pashtun tribes who live on both sides of the porous border.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is also believed to be hiding somewhere along the 2,500-km (1,600-mile) frontier.

But relations between some of the tribesmen and their foreign guests began to break down last year when tribesmen, with the backing of the Pakistani military, turned against foreign militants after they had tried to kill a tribal elder.

About 300 foreign militants and up to 40 Pakistani tribal fighters were killed in days of clashes that followed.

U.S. security officials say al Qaeda militants have been able to regroup in sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal lands.

Taliban insurgents, most of them ethnic Pashtuns, are also able to plot their war against foreign forces in Afghanistan from the Pakistani side of the border, U.S. military officials say.

The Pakistani government has blamed a Pakistani militant leader from the Mehsud Pashtun tribe, based in South Waziristan, for a recent wave of suicide attacks, many on security forces.

The government said the militant, Baitullah Mehsud, was also responsible for assassinating opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27.

The Wazir militia was expected to operate only in the Wazir tribal area, and would thus have little or no impact on Mehsud and the al Qaeda allies in his area.

The fiercely independent, conservative Pashtun tribes have never been brought under the authority of any government, including British colonial rulers. (Writing by Zeeshan Haider; editing by Robert Birsel and Roger Crabb)

Out of Kandahar by 2009, Liberals say

ALAN FREEMAN - From Wednesday's Globe and Mail January 9, 2008

OTTAWA — The opposition Liberals insisted yesterday that Canada must end its counterinsurgency combat mission in Kandahar by February of next year, although the party opened the door to "other possible military roles in Afghanistan," including training, protection of civilians and reconstruction.

In a written presentation to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan, the Liberals said they would reject any government attempt to reconstitute the current mission in Kandahar by dropping its combat emphasis.

"We are open to other possible military roles in Afghanistan to continue training the Afghan National Army and police, protect Afghan civilians or for reconstructions," said Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion. "But we will not accept the simple rebranding of the current combat mission as a training mission."

In its presentation, the Liberals said the combat mission was never intended to be "life-long effort or even a 10-year commitment." Canada had already done its part and rotation out of Kandahar should not be seen as abandoning Afghanistan or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they said.

Asked whether the Liberals would accept rotation to another province in volatile southern Afghanistan, Mr. Coderre said they would only consider rotating Canadian troops somewhere in the more peaceable north. That is an unlikely scenario, since countries such as Germany and Italy, whose troops are in safer parts of Afghanistan, are not willing to move them into more dangerous locations.

The independent panel, led by former Liberal deputy prime minister John Manley, is expected to make its report on the future of the mission by the end of January. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has already made clear he would like to see Canada's participation in the NATO-led mission continue until 2011.

The Tories have promised a parliamentary vote on the deployment, as occurred in 2006.

The Liberals said the current mission is putting a strain on the personnel and equipment of the Canadian Forces that cannot continue indefinitely. The Afghan commitment is also of such a scale that it precludes Canadian involvement in other hot spots, such as Darfur in Sudan and Haiti.

09 Afghan pullout too soon, experts say

Gains Endangered - James Cowan,  National Post 01.09.08

It is already too late for Canada to withdraw from combat in southern Afghanistan when the mission expires in 2009, military analysts said yesterday.

The federal Liberal party made a submission this week to the panel studying Canada's future role in Afghanistan, headed by former finance minister John Manley.

In it, the party insisted Ottawa should formally notify NATO now of Canada's intention to end its combat mission in Kandahar next year, contending it would be a "travesty" if the mission continued beyond February, 2009.

But experts warned yesterday that there is not enough time to safely replace the 2,500 Canadian troops in the region with soldiers from other NATO countries. And pulling out without a replacement would endanger the mission's hard-won progress, they say.

"Pulling out Canadian forces from Kandahar in 2009 is risky," said Roland Paris, a former foreign policy advisor with the federal government who now teaches at the University of Ottawa. "It is so soon that NATO would likely be scrambling to fill the hole, and that could create a real security vacuum in this strategically vital part of the country."

Mr. Paris said it would likely take NATO until 2010 or 2011 to move Canadian soldiers out of the region. Extending the combat mission would offer other advantages as well, such as allowing time to digest the results of the presidential election in the United States.

"It's unclear what the stance of the American government will be under a new administration," Mr. Paris said. "It would make sense to buy some time to take the measure of the United States after the election."

Wesley Wark, a professor with the Munk Centre for International Studies, said the Liberal proposal to shift Canadian troops from a combat role to providing training for Afghan troops and assisting with development efforts is a valid proposition.

He noted, however, that it was very similar to the scenarios being contemplated by the independent advisory panel led by Mr. Manley at the instruction of the Conservative government.

"We could choose to do that, and certainly other NATO allies have chosen to do that," Mr. Wark said. "It may even be a sensible strategy if it's explained as a necessity in order to provide some practical relief to the strain being placed on Canadian defence resources."

However, Mr. Wark said any change to Canada's mission would need the co-operation of other NATO countries, which has been difficult to acquire in the past and likely impossible to obtain within the truncated time frame contemplated by the Liberal submission.

While there are roughly 32,500 NATO soldiers in Afghanistan -- including 11,800 from the United States, 2,700 from Germany and 1,800 Italians -- many countries have refused to allow their soldiers to participate in counter-insurgency missions.

The Liberals contend Canada must push for "needed reforms" to NATO operations, but Mr. Wark said any such effort would be unlikely to succeed.

"I think the Liberals are being very unrealistic about that; I think they're grasping at straws," he said. "Canada has achieved some greater credibility within NATO, but our credibility was pretty low before. It's been a long time since Canada made any substantial contribution to NATO."

The Liberals' policy statement contends that a shift in Canada's mission would offer such benefits as freeing troops for other international missions. But even if Canada significantly reduced its Afghan presence, it would still be unable to tackle other substantial missions, Mr. Wark said.

"The reality is:The Canadian Forces are relatively small, they are engaged in a massive program of rebuilding and there are a host of missions it faces already other than Afghanistan, including the Conservatives' commitment to Arctic strategy," he said. "Canada likes to be a player in both North American defence and international security, but rarely is willing to pay the price for that."

One NATO soldier killed, another wounded in southern Afghanistan blast

KABUL - An official says a NATO vehicle struck a mine in southern Afghanistan, killing one soldier and wounding another.

Major Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, says the attack happened Wednesday but it was not clear if the mine was planted recently or was old ordnance.

The nationality of the dead and wounded soldiers and the exact location of the blast was not disclosed.

More Macedonian troops leaves for Afghanistan

TIRANA, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- A new batch of Macedonian army contingent left for Afghanistan on Wednesday to take part in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission on the ground.

The fourth rotation of the mission is composed of 127 members of Macedonia's First Mechanized Infantry Brigade and three officers, news reaching here from Skopje reported.

The Macedonian peacekeepers, under the command of the British army, will take part in providing security to the ISAF command in Kabul, patrolling streets and guarding military bases and facilities.

"Our detachment has the honor to be part of the mission in the year when Macedonia is expecting NATO membership invitation at the upcoming Bucharest summit, and we will do our best to complete our mission ahead of us," Goran Pertusevski, commander of the contingent said at the sendoff ceremony.

Macedonia has been longing to join NATO for years. It signed the Adriatic Charter with the United States along with Croatia and Albania in 2003 in order to facilitate its entry into the alliance.

Macedonia is taking part in the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and the US-led coalition forces in Iraq. It also has soldiers serving in the EU-led mission in Bosnia.

A total of 205 of its soldiers and officers are deployed abroad,130 in Afghanistan, 40 in Iraq, and with the rest in Bosnia.

Clinton favours more NATO troops for Afghanistan

By: Lalit K Jha - NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Pajhwok Afghan News): Former first lady and a leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Saturday favoured more NATO troops for Afghanistan and faster training of the Afghan army so as to go aggressively after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The Senator from New York said this while participating in a Democratic presidential debate at Manchester, New Hampshire, which goes into primary coming Tuesday. Organised by the by the ABC News, popular internet networking site Facebook and local WMUR-TV, other participants of the debate were Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson.

Bin Laden has in large measure regrouped because we did not put in the troops and make the commitment to aggressively going after him inside Afghanistan when we had a chance, she argued during the debate, a part of which focussed on recent developments in Pakistan and its impact on Afghanistan.

Therefore, we need more NATO troops and a faster effort to train the Afghan army so that we do have the personnel and the technology, including the Predators, to be able to be on the spot in time to try to move as quickly as possible, Clinton argued.

All the four Democratic presidential aspirants agreed on the point: the US forces should strike positions inside Pakistan if they had actionable intelligence against the elusive al-Qaeda leader.

If they (Pakistan) could not, or would not, do so, and we had actionable intelligence, then I would strike, said Obama, who won the Democratic Iowa caucuses Thursday. My job as commander in chief will be to make sure we strike anybody who would do America harm when we have actionable intelligence do to that, he observed.

But Clinton had a word of caution though. Any actionable intelligence that would lead to a strike inside Pakistani territory must be given the most careful consideration, primarily because of the dynamics of Indo-Pak relationship, she explained.

At some point -- probably when the missiles have been launched -- the Pakistani government has to know they're on the way. Because one of the problems is the inherent paranoia about India in the region in Pakistan, so that we've got to have a plan to try to make sure we don't ignite some kind of reaction before we even know whether the action we took with the missiles has worked, said Clinton.

Asserting he would try to get as much as possible from Pakistan, Obama said: But we have to make sure that we do not hesitate to act when it comes to al-Qaeda. Because they are currently stronger than they were at any time since 2001, partly because we took our eye off the ball.

Britain Sees Role for Afghan Tribes

Militias Would Help Fight - Taliban, but U.S. Reaction Is Split

By YOCHI J. DREAZEN, January 10, 2008; Page A4

British military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing for the creation of armed tribal militias to aid in the fight against the Taliban, underscoring Western concern about deteriorating security in the country.

The British proposal takes a page from the U.S. military playbook in Iraq, where American forces persuaded many Sunni Arab tribes to join the fight against religious-extremist groups, including al Qaeda.

But this time, the proposal has drawn a mixed reaction from American officials, who debated and rejected a similar idea in 2004, saying their aim was to build national forces. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has a long history of militias falling under the sway of local warlords.

Instead, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that the U.S. might be forced to send fresh combat troops to Afghanistan if matters continue to worsen. Pentagon officials said yesterday they are considering plans to send several thousand additional U.S. troops.

For now, with the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan facing manpower shortages, British officials said the militias would be helpful in expanding the number of Afghans willing to fight the Taliban. The plan calls for creating new forces modeled on arbakai, the centuries-old village militias.

"They'd be focused solely on defensive activity, not to replace the national forces, but to assist and help them," said Nick Allan, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington.

The British proposal, still in planning, comes as fear grows in both Washington and London that early success in Afghanistan may be slipping away.

Last year was the deadliest for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Suicide bombings and civilian casualties also rose sharply, steadily eroding the popularity of President Hamid Karzai's central government.

Many senior American commanders attribute security problems to a shortage of foreign troops. NATO, which commands a 41,000-person force, has struggled to find nations willing to contribute more. The U.S. has 15,000 soldiers and Marines in the NATO force, and about 11,000 others under separate American command. That compares with 155,000 deployed to Iraq.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown first raised the arbakai idea publicly in mid-December, telling Parliament that his government would be increasing its "support for community defense initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modeled on traditional Afghan arbakai." The British envision using the forces to improve conditions in the southern province of Helmand, a longtime Taliban stronghold.

The arbakai system has been a mainstay of remote regions of eastern Afghanistan for centuries. Clans from the region's tribes take turns providing small numbers of fighters to each village. In times of emergency, the tribesmen pound drums to summon hundreds of additional fighters.

British officials said they would like to recruit small numbers of tribal fighters in a handful of villages to evaluate how well the forces perform in defending their communities from the Taliban. The fighters would use their existing firearms and wouldn't receive any new weapons, British officials said.

The U.S. military already has studied a variant of the arbakai concept. U.S. Special Forces commanders proposed building tribal forces in eastern Afghanistan as far back as 2004; senior Pentagon officials rejected the idea.

"We shouted it down," said Joseph Collins, a professor at the National War College who was serving in a senior Pentagon post at the time. "We said we'd started down a path of building national forces, and we needed to continue that approach."

Ali Jalali, Afghanistan's interior minister until the fall of 2005 and now a professor at the National Defense University, Washington, said the Karzai government found arbakai forces useful in helping maintain security in eastern Afghanistan during presidential and parliamentary elections in 2004-05. But he opposes the British proposal to establish the tribal forces in southern Afghanistan, arguing they can be trusted only in areas where the central government has a strong presence.

"If the Taliban are there and the government is not," he said, "the tribes will nominally swear allegiance to the central government but practically do as they please."

Afghanistan: A First Step Toward 'Turning' Moderate Taliban?

By Ron Synovitz – RFE/RL -

For years, Afghan officials including President Hamid Karzai have extended an olive branch to moderate Taliban to lay down their arms and back the government.

But their overtures have been largely rejected -- until now.
 
On January 7, the Afghan government announced that a former Taliban commander who switched sides before a battle last month to secure Musa Qala, a Taliban-held southern town, had been named the government's top official there.
 
By making a deal with Mullah Abdul Salaam, the new district chief of Musa Qala, the government appears to have taken a key step toward changing the face of Afghan politics. And Kabul is hoping the move will encourage more defections by moderate Taliban.
 
From his headquarters in Musa Qala today, Mullah Abdul Salaam told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that his appointment is already fostering reconciliation between the government and moderate Taliban.
 
"There were many problems before. There was no trust before. There was no one you could trust," he said. "People didn't know whom to contact. Now they are talking with me. They give me assurance and I give them assurances. There were many problems before. There was no trust before."
 
Mullah Abdul Salaam was once the Taliban's governor in the southern Afghan province of Oruzgan -- the birthplace of the Taliban's spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, as well as Karzai. 

Now, the powerful local commander brings some 300 militia fighters to the side of the Afghan government in a strategic part of Helmand Province. More importantly, his allegiance to Kabul helps extend the central government's authority into an area seen as a bastion of popular support for the Taliban.
 
Christopher Langton, who studies Afghanistan at London's International Institute For Strategic Studies, says it is a particularly important area for President Karzai to stabilize.
 
"If it is stabilized, all sorts of follow-on could occur in other parts of the country when people see a successful outcome [in Helmand Province]," Langton says.
 
Langton says the stabilization of Musa Qala and the fertile farmland of the nearby Sangin Valley would allow repairs and upgrades to the nearby Kajaki hydroelectric dam. That, in turn, would allow the government to provide more irrigation, water, and electricity to as many as 2 million people in southern Afghanistan.
 
That would signal to Afghans elsewhere that their living conditions can be improved if they cooperate with the Afghan government. Langton says it also would allow the international community to be seen as an agent of positive change in Afghanistan rather than as an invader and occupier.
 
Taliban fighters captured Musa Qala in February 2007 after the collapse of a British-backed peace deal with militants in the area. Just before last month's NATO-led offensive to recapture the town, delegates from Kabul met with Mullah Abdul Salaam and won promises for the allegiance of his Alizai tribe. Since then, other tribal leaders in Helmand Province have supported Salaam's appointment as Musa Qala district chief.
 
Still, Langton warns there could be limits to the deal. He warns that Salaam's willingness to support the Kabul government doesn't necessarily reflect a strong desire on his part to strengthen Afghanistan as a whole.
 
"It's a very localized thing because Abdul Salaam fits into the requirements of the Kabul government in that locality. In Afghanistan, typically, deals are struck in the interest of individuals principally," Langton says. "We shouldn't come away from this with a notion that this is a good thing across the board and there is a massive interest in building the nation by Abdul Salaam. He is obviously getting something out of it. And that is how things work."
 
Afghan presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada says Mullah Abdul Salaam's appointment reflects Kabul's policy of seeking to engage in dialogue with moderate Taliban who recognize the country's Islamic constitution and agree not to fight the authority of the central government.

"The president has said before that all those former Taliban who come and accept the constitution and who want to participate in the political process through non-violent means, they are all welcome. And Musa Qala is one example," Hamidzada says.
 
"Mullah Salam had a role in liberating Musa Qala from the terrorist elements. And he had a role in bringing unity among the different tribes and also among the larger community there. And he is now at the service of his people. And he enjoys the support of the government as well as the support of the people."
 
Yet the issue of government negotiations with the Taliban has been a subject of heated debates in the Afghan media and in the parliament.
 
On the one hand, such deals could weaken Taliban hard-liners by creating divisions between local commanders in different parts of the country.
 
But steps toward a political dialogue with former Taliban officials also could anger politicians from the former Northern Alliance who fought on the side of U.S.-led coalition forces to help drive the Taliban from Kabul in late 2001.
 
Some members of Afghanistan's upper house of parliament, the Meshrano Jirga, have accepted the principle of negotiating with the Taliban. They argue that improving security in Afghanistan is directly linked to the Taliban's participation in national politics.
 
The appointment of Mullah Abdul Salaam as the Musa Qala district chief demonstrates that Kabul aims to win over disaffected Taliban commanders who are unhappy about ties between Taliban hard-liners and foreign Al-Qaeda fighters.
 
Hamidzada stresses that hard-liners still trying to reestablish Taliban rule through militancy have no right to participate in Afghanistan's evolving political dialogue. "As far as other Taliban are concerned, whoever is accepting the [Afghan] constitution and wants to do what they can through the political process, the doors are open to them," Hamidzada says.
 
But the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, the moderate Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaif, says Kabul will have to talk to Taliban hard-liners too, if it wants real peace in Afghanistan. "The Afghan government wants to reach members of the Taliban individually. And Mr. Karzai himself is trying to contact the Taliban individually," Zaif says.
 
"But they are fighting for a specific purpose. So until they start trying to resolve the problem in a broader way, I think [the Taliban] will continue to fight."
 
(Contributors to this story include RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan correspondent Saleh Mohammad Saleh in Helmand Province as well as Radio Free Afghanistan's Ajmal Siddique, Mohmand Hashem, and Asmattullah Sarwan)

Pakistan Turns On Its Islamic Radicals

Strategy.com 01.09.08: Pakistan may not be winning its war with Islamic radicalism, but at least it is now fighting harder. In 2007, the security forces (army, police and tribal paramilitaries) made a major effort to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda groups operating along the Afghan border. The main reason for this was that the Pakistanis had run out of options.

The Taliban are a transnational organization, having been created in Pakistan, but achieving their greatest success when they took control of Afghanistan in the 1990s. More than that, the Taliban are but one part of a collection of religious, ethnic and tribal disputes that have been around in Pakistan for a long time. Islamic radicalism first became a major problem in the 1970s.  The military government back then sought to use Islamic fundamentalism as a political tool against internal and external enemies. It hasn't worked out very well. Both politicians and generals (when they periodically took over) thought they could negotiate with the radicals. That proved to be disappointing as well. Last July, a ten month old truce with the Taliban came apart. It was the usual problem. The radicals saw the truce not as an agreement, but an opportunity. While the government kept their word, the radicals continued terrorizing tribal leaders who did not agree with them. That is one of the major problems in the tribal areas along the border. There are always power struggles among various factions, as well as feuds between tribes and clans. But since the Taliban came along, the younger, and more religious tribesmen have been trying to take control from the more traditionalist tribal elders. This has caused a major upheaval in the tribal areas. The Taliban were basically organized around this cult of religious fanaticism and youth. The old-timers have cut deals with the government in an effort to defeat their Islamic radical foes.

If we take the fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a whole, about a third of the violence in 2007 took place in Pakistan. That means 3,500 dead in Pakistan, most of it along the Afghan border. The tempo of combat is slower in Pakistan, because the Pakistani military is full of troops who sympathize with the Islamic radicals. But the troops will fight, albeit slowly. In Afghanistan, the government has fast moving, hard hitting NATO troops to smash the Taliban fighters. But those bad guys have formidable allies in the form of wealthy drug gangs, who also want to keep the government out of areas where poppies are grown, and opium and heroin processed from that crop. The main connection between the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban is the large amount of cash available to Pakistani tribesmen who are willing to go fight in Afghanistan.

While most of the fighting in Pakistan is along the border, there is still tribal violence to the south in Baluchistan, which left 452 dead in 2007.  While the Baluchi tribes are pro-Taliban, they are mainly fighting for more autonomy, and a larger share of the money earned from local natural gas fields. The Baluchis are getting beaten, partly because they are only 3.6 percent of the population, while the Pushtun tribes up north are fifteen percent. These two tribal groups comprise the poorest and least educated Pakistanis, but the most heavily armed and willing to fight.

Elsewhere in the country, 201 people died in sectarian violence (different ethnic or religious factions going at each other.) Much of the violence involving the Taliban is basically sectarian, with the non-Taliban tribesmen resisting the lifestyle rules (no music, video, booze, shaving and so on) the Taliban insist on imposing. The Taliban are seen, by most tribesmen, as a bunch of sanctimonious bullies. The government agrees with that, and is eager to arrange a coalition of tribes that are willing to shut the Taliban down. This is difficult to do, what with the current popularity of the Islamic radicals. But as has happened many times in the past, the Islamic radicals eventually turn too many people against them with their violence, and failure to accomplish anything useful. That's what's happening to the Islamic radicals in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While the Afghan group has drug money to keep them going, the Pakistani bunch are running out of options and local support.

Taliban Commander Emerges As Pakistan's 'Biggest Problem'

Radical Accused in Bhutto's Death Has Quickly Gathered Power

By Imtiaz Ali and Craig Whitlock - Washington Post Thursday, January 10, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan. 9 -- Even as his reputation has grown more menacing and his militia more powerful, the Taliban commander accused of ordering the death of Benazir Bhutto has shrouded himself in mystery.

When Baitullah Mehsud attended a February 2005 signing ceremony for an ill-fated cease-fire with the Pakistani government, he bundled his face and upper body in a black cloth before appearing in public to scrawl his signature. Like the man to whom he has sworn allegiance, Afghan Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, Mehsud has obsessively avoided cameras and maintained an ascetic lifestyle.

Since then, Mehsud has emerged as perhaps the greatest military threat to the Pakistani government. Last August, just weeks after the cease-fire ended in recriminations, his fighters from South Waziristan stunned the country by capturing a group of more than 200 soldiers who were patrolling the lawless tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. Three were executed; the rest were freed in a prisoner swap.

In recent days, Pakistani officials have blamed the Taliban commander for the death of Bhutto, the former prime minister who was killed Dec. 27 while campaigning to return to power. Investigations are ongoing, and it remains to be seen whether Mehsud was directly responsible.

What is clear, however, is that Pakistan's past efforts to control or neutralize Mehsud have repeatedly backfired, leaving him stronger than ever and adding to the general instability that is plaguing the country, Pakistani officials and analysts said in interviews.

"Baitullah Mehsud is the biggest problem of today's Pakistan, and he is the main factor behind the failure of the government's current policies in the tribal region," a senior government official said on condition of anonymity in Peshawar, a frontier city near the Afghan border. "Kidnap after kidnap of the security forces by his militants has become a routine matter now and a big embarrassment for the government."

Mehsud, 34, is also accused by Afghan and U.S. officials of organizing suicide attacks in Afghanistan and helping to supply Taliban fighters there. But the Pakistani military, distracted by political problems, has been reluctant to mount a direct assault on his refuge in South Waziristan, a rugged tribal area that has successfully resisted outside control for centuries.

"There's really no choice for the government now," said Muhammed Amir Rana, director of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies in Islamabad. "They'll have to go in and do a military operation to weaken him. He's become too strong. They need to do something to stop the Taliban and the Talibanization of that region."

Analysts and officials said there are other Taliban commanders who control more territory or bigger forces than Mehsud. But they said his political influence within the notoriously fractious movement has grown rapidly and is probably unparalleled on the Pakistani side of the border.

Last month, for instance, Mehsud was chosen to serve as the head of a 40-member shura, or consultative council, that was formed to coordinate various Taliban factions in Pakistan.

Mehsud is also a favorite commander of Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, including Omar, the one-eyed cleric who has led the movement for a decade, and Jalaluddin Haqqani, a grizzled insurgent leader who has organized attacks against Soviet, U.S. and NATO troops there since the 1980s.

"There are a couple of other local Taliban commanders who have been influential in their own localities, but Baitullah has overshadowed them all lately and now his name carries the day when it comes to militancy in Pakistan," said Ashraf Ali, a researcher at Peshawar University and specialist on the Taliban.

Mehsud was an unknown figure outside the movement until late 2004, when he rose in the ranks after the death of another Pakistani Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, who was killed in a U.S. cross-border airstrike in South Waziristan.

In the internal power struggle that followed, Mehsud at first was overshadowed by a fellow clansman, Abdullah Mehsud, a former inmate at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was released in 2004 and returned to Pakistan only to take up arms again.

A one-legged daredevil with a taste for publicity, Abdullah Mehsud ordered the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in South Waziristan in 2004 and was soon named one of Pakistan's most wanted men. But he fell out of favor with Omar and other Taliban elders, who saw him as a loose cannon and decided to replace him, analysts said.

Abdullah Mehsud was killed in a raid by Pakistani security forces in July.

Pakistani leaders thought they had successfully brought Baitullah Mehsud under their control when they persuaded him and several other militant leaders from South Waziristan to sign the cease-fire in February 2005.

Under the deal, the Pakistani army withdrew its forces from the area in exchange for a pledge by the militants to stop launching attacks against U.S., Afghan and coalition forces across the border, as well as a promise to refuse shelter to al-Qaeda members and other foreign fighters.

At the time, there were widespread reports that the Pakistani government gave bags of cash to Mehsud and other tribal leaders as a sweetener. Officials have denied it.

Regardless, Mehsud and his faction quickly broke their promises to keep the peace and allowed al-Qaeda leaders to resettle in the area, U.S. officials said. After pressure from U.S. and Afghan officials, Pakistani leaders admitted the peace accord had failed. The cease-fire collapsed last summer, along with a similar deal in North Waziristan.

Analysts said that the nonaggression pact enabled Mehsud to consolidate his power and that his forces are now stronger and better financed than before. They also said he has expanded his sphere of influence from South Waziristan to other tribal areas along the border.

"A bigger portion of South Waziristan now seems like a state within the state, and Baitullah Mehsud is running this like a head of government," said Silab Mehsud, a tribal journalist from the Mehsud clan and the author of a book on the history and culture of the region. "Now he's an all-powerful man whose writ and command is visible across the tribal belt."

Whitlock reported from Berlin.

A Fight Between Fundamentalism and Moderation

Slate.com - January 10, 2008, Nicholas Schmidle

PESHAWAR, Pakistan—A dozen men sat in a circle in a village outside Peshawar on a recent afternoon. Wearing red caps, they gossiped and drank green tea. The sun fell behind a roof, and several of the men wrapped wool blankets around themselves. All belonged to the Awami National Party, a secular political party based in the North West Frontier Province. The ANP is predicted to win big in the coming elections, mostly at the expense of the Islamist parties who've frightened U.S. policy-makers for the past five years. "This election is a straight fight between those who want war and those who want peace," Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of the ANP, told me. He drew a line between Islamic militants on the one hand, and his own party on the other. "It is between fundamentalism and moderation."

In the last elections, which took place in October 2002, the Muttahida Majles Amal, a six-party Islamist coalition, defeated the ANP, the Pakistan Peoples Party, and all other contenders by a wide margin in the North West Frontier Province and went on to form the provincial government. The MMA's critics, led by the ANP, allege that the Islamists' rhetoric and sympathies allowed so-called "Talibanization" to spread throughout the regions bordering Afghanistan. Sitting in the circle of red-capped men, I asked if any of them had voted for the MMA last time around. One man sheepishly raised his hand. "That was a vote for paradise and the Quran," he said, as if excusing himself. "When they shoved the Quran in my face and said 'Vote!' I had no other choice. But once the MMA got their bungalows in Islamabad, everything changed. They went to Islamabad, not to Islam."

The World Bank praised the MMA government for its fiscal responsibility and health programs, but local perceptions of corruption, broken promises, and excessive politicking tarnished the coalition's image at home. "We expected them to implement Islamic law and establish a system of justice," said Salauddin, a middle-aged civil servant from Chardsadda. In 2002, the MMA pledged to implement sharia law and support the Taliban in Afghanistan. At the time, people couldn't have cared less about fiscal restraint. Now they have turned from the MMA, not because the Islamists were too hard-core, but because they failed to fulfill their campaign promises. What did they have to show for their time in government? "Acts of terrorism only increased under the mullahs," Salauddin exclaimed. During 2007, 60 suicide-bomb attacks killed more than 770 people in Pakistan, according to a recent report by the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies. Most of the incidents occurred in the North West Frontier Province.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the ANP is the desire to rehabilitate the image of Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. Street-level supporters, such as the men in red caps, and party leaders cited this as their greatest concern. More than 25 million Pashtuns live along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they've been renowned as fierce fighters for centuries. Pashtun militias have repelled British armies, Sikh armies, Soviet armies, and now American, NATO, and Pakistani ones, too. The majority of the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan today are Pashtuns. "At this moment, if you talk about Pashtuns, the world thinks he is a terrorist, has a beard to his navel, hair to his shoulders, and holds a Kalashnikov," said Khan, the ANP chief. "Islamic fundamentalism is destroying the basic fabric of Pashtun society."

But the success of the ANP's election campaign signals a shift in the politics of the North West Frontier Province, where the rhetoric of secular nationalism is finding more appeal than that of Islamic fundamentalism. For instance, the ANP proposes changing the name of the province to Pashtunistan ("Land of the Pashtuns") or Pakhtunkhwa ("Pashtun Nation"). (The MMA tried to change the name to Dar-ul-Islam, or "Domain of Islam.") Khan said that all the other provinces of Pakistan shared "frontiers" with Iran, Afghanistan, or India. "But if they—Sindh, Punjab, and Baluchistan—can have their own names, why can't we? This is a matter of our identity."

According to Khan and the ANP, Pashtuns are not naturally brash, militant people—an impression that's been created by the Taliban. If anyone can reform the Pashtuns' image, Khan's family history suggests that he's the man for the job. His grandfather Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan earned the nickname "Frontier Gandhi" for his role in leading the Pashtuns in a nonviolent resistance movement against the British Raj during the 1930s and '40s. His organization became known as the "Red Shirts," which is why the ANP's flag is red and its supporters wear red caps. Ghaffar Khan opposed the Muslim League, the main outfit lobbying for the creation of Pakistan, and supported Gandhi's Congress Party. Ghaffar Khan argued that religious identity shouldn't determine the country where a person should live—and thus denied the rationale for the creation of Pakistan. Instead, Ghaffar Khan contended that ethnic identity was more important, and he called for the creation of an independent Pashtunistan. A year before the birth of Pakistan, fellow Muslims physically attacked him for being, in their minds, anti-Muslim, illustrating the tension that's long existed between Pashtun nationalists and Islamists.

To find out how the Islamists felt about their fall from power, I went to Mardan to meet Ata-ur-Rahman. Rahman is a senior leader of Jamaat-i-Islami and a former member of Pakistan's National Assembly. Jamaat-i-Islami is one of the main component parties in the MMA. In December, Jamaat-i-Islami opted to boycott the coming elections in protest against President Pervez Musharraf's regime and what they believe are destined to be rigged elections on Feb. 18. I had met Rahman several times in the past, but when I arrived at his madrasah in late December, he appeared pensive and distracted. He didn't agree with the party's decision to boycott the elections and had argued that doing so would leave the field wide open for the ANP. He lost the argument, and now Jamaat-i-Islami expected him to convince local people of the merits of a boycott.

But what worried him most was the legacy that the Islamists had left behind. "The worst result of our rule was the rise in militancy throughout the region," he said. Rahman is a moderate, with a Ph.D. from the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as comfortable speaking English or Malay as he is speaking Urdu or Pashto. He is one of the only Islamists I've heard admit that so-called "Talibanization" was a product of the Islamists being in government.

We discussed the pro-Taliban uprising in the nearby Swat Valley, where a radical cleric determined to implement sharia is waging an insurgency against the state. I asked Rahman if he believes that people's disappointment with the MMA's failure to implement sharia had led some to turn to the Pakistani Taliban, believing they were the only ones capable of doing so. He nodded his head slowly and stared out the window. "If the MMA had been able to bring sharia to Swat, that would have definitely weakened the militants," he said.

With those alternatives, does anyone wonder why U.S. policy-makers are paralyzed when it comes to Pakistan?

Nicholas Schmidle is a Pakistan-based writer and fellow at the Institute of Current World Affairs.

Rudimentary Kabul

Kabul's growing population and lack of adequate and affordable housing leaves the poor squatting in mud and wood houses while nursing their reconstruction dreams.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008 - By Anuj Chopra

It's a daily ritual for 8-year-old Bismillah. Every morning, with five grimy plastic cans slung over his tiny shoulder, he descends a rugged hillside, negotiating the steep pitches of gravel with great agility.

At the bottom of the hill, he waits under the broiling sun in a long queue leading up to a spigot: But wait he must or his family will be left without drinking water for the day.

Bismillah lives with his handicapped father, mother and four sisters in a mud and wood house in a cramped settlement clinging to a shale-brown hill overlooking Kabul. With no direct water supply, dwellers of these rudimentary housing settlements - all illegally built - must lug their water from the bottom of the hill.

"Life is hard," said Suraiya Begum, Bismillah's mother, her face hidden behind the lavender fabric of her burqa. "We wouldn't live here if we had a better choice."

Six years after the US-led invasion, if you ask ordinary Afghans to describe their greatest challenge, their answer is not likely to be the Taliban. It is, in fact, to find a roof over their heads.

Kabul is in particular need because of the destruction of nearly 70,000 houses during almost 30 years of war. And a steady inflow of returnees has further exacerbated the problem. With a population of 800,000 before the 2001 invasion, Kabul is now home to over four million people, many of them refugees who have returned home since the fall of the Taliban. It is estimated that as much as half of Kabul's population lives in squatter settlements.

The city is sinking under the weight of its own citizens, and its most urgent urban planning issues are linked to its rapid population growth.

The situation is the same in other larger cities such as Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar. According to UN estimates, the nation's population is expected to increase by 14 million to a total of about 37 million by 2015; more than half of this projected growth will be in urban areas.

So far, foreign firms have invested US$4.5 billion in rebuilding Afghanistan, but very little of it has gone to housing construction, according to Omar Zakhilwal, director of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA) in Kabul.

In fact, an acute shortage of affordable housing is forcing people to recklessly build mud houses on the slippery slopes of denuded hills around Kabul. Overcrowding has put a tremendous of pressure on the city's already frail civic infrastructure.

The UN has deemed Afghanistan the world's sixth least developed country. Only 13 percent of Afghans have access to safe water, 12 percent to adequate sanitation and just 6 percent to electricity. Life expectancy is 44 years (compared to 59 years for low-income countries worldwide).

For Suraiya Begum's family, life in this overcrowded settlement is unforgiving. When it rains, her porous roof leaks and a flood of muddy excrement flows down the slopes, filling up sewers and cesspits already choked with garbage. Mounds of trash collect in heaps in the alleyways leading up to her house. Open sewers are besieged by flies and disease.

Sanitation facilities are scarce. There is a dearth of potable water. (Piped city water reaches only 18 percent of people in Kabul.) Daily power cuts last from dawn until dusk in the winter - longer in the summer.

Afghanistan's Urban Development Ministry, with World Bank assistance, is now in the process of upgrading formal and informal settlements in Kabul city. This US$28.2-million project, which will take at least a few years to implement, will help improve infrastructure and provide basic services like drinking water, sanitation, surface water drainage, concrete roads and street lighting.

"Given a vast majority lives in these settlements, the solution is to upgrade, not demolish these homes and make more people homeless," Yousaf Pashtun, the Afghan minister of urban development and an architect and town planner by training, told ISN Security Watch.

But despite the government's efforts, Kabul is facing a chronic shortage of housing for the poor. The per capita income in this post-Taliban nation, according to the World Bank, has increased from US$180 in 2002 to US$300 in 2006. This figure is expected to reach US$500 soon. Still, buying a house or an apartment remains a distant dream for most of Kabul's citizens.

A two-bedroom apartment in Kabul can cost US$200 to US$400 a month, compared to US$7 a month for a three-bedroom home in 1978. In the neighborhoods of Wazir Akbar Khan and Shahr-e-now, private housing rents have reached thousands of dollars, making them out of reach for the poor and dramatically widenening the class of impoverished Afghans.

Last year, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) expressed concern that Afghanistan's housing prices were spiraling out of control and making a difficult situation worse for the Afghan poor.

"I didn't think we would face so many problems when we came back to Kabul," said Sangar Khan, a 24-year-old Afghan who returned to the country from Pakistan, where he had fled during the Taliban's reign. "We keep hearing so much money is being given to the reconstruction of Afghanistan, but getting a [home] is the biggest challenge. Renting a house is just not affordable any more," he told ISN Security Watch.

Khan rents a squatter shack in another informal settlement. As most land in Kabul is claimed by one or more owners - individuals, companies or government institutions - squatter households are usually obliged to pay some amount to remain on a property.

Pashtun says he is aware of the acute housing shortage. The Afghan government, he said, with an investment of over US$200 million, is in the process of building a small satellite town in northeast Kabul called Shar-i-Sabz, with 100,000 units of housing due to be completed in the next three years.

But beyond the efforts of the government, according to Pashtun, the private sector can play a big role in building housing for war-weary Afghans.

At a dust-choked construction site some 32 kilometers north of Kabul, a private firm is building a swanky new housing complex, which, its builders promise, will change the face of Kabul's rustic skyline forever.

Called " Green City," this ambitious US$10 million housing project being financed by Khawar, an Afghan NGO, promises housing for more than 3,000 families in multi-storey buildings and row houses spread over 2.5 million square feet. The project is due to be completed in the next two years.

Enayat Sahary, Green City's Iranian-born chief engineer, bent over an expansive blueprint of the township with a cigar dangling between his lips, explained the plans. "The madrassah will be over here, the masjid here.

"At the moment, Kabul stinks. It needs a makeover [...] Green City is something Afghans have never seen before," he told ISN Security Watch.

However, the prices of the apartments being built are almost beyond the reach of ordinary Afghans.

Sahary attributes the high cost to the rising price of overhead: cement, diesel, labor prices of all have skyrocketed since 2002. "Fifty kilos of cement cost 100 Afghani in 2002, now it costs 400; the cost of diesel has nearly doubled since then," he told ISN Security Watch.

Afghanistan is facing unprecedented population growth and rapid urbanization, which is widening the gap in demand and supply of housing in urban areas like Kabul and Jalalabad.

"Increasing access to housing finance is key to developing a large-scale housing market in Afghanistan," said Sahary.

At a workshop conducted by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation in April to present the findings of a study on Afghanistan's housing sector, experts recommended introducing microfinance loans for home renovation, construction and purchase.

"Mortgage," said Pashtun, "is the only way we can make homes affordable to our middle class. People can't afford to pay lump sum amounts."

At Shar-i-Sabz, in order to make apartments within the financial reach of Afghans, banks will buy homes from the government and then mortgage them to buyers who will pay up to US$150 a month for 15 years before becoming owners. Pashtun is hopeful Afghanistan's 14-odd banks will show keen interest in buying them up and offering them to those who need them most.


Anuj Chopra is a freelance journalist whose stories have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and The San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. Chopra lives just outside Mumbai in India and is the 2005 recipient of the CNN Young Journalist Award in the print category. Source: ISN.

Youth projects bring new hope to blighted Afghan region

NAN GAB, Afghanistan (AFP) — The building of a new school for more than 2,000 children is bringing fresh hope to Nan Gab, a remote town in western Afghanistan blighted by corruption and the drugs trade.

Nan Gab is in Farah province, a huge region that borders Iran and is the country's fourth-biggest opium-producing province.

The pressure is on Afghanistan to develop this resource-poor, sparsely-populated province, whose fewer than 400,000 inhabitants are caught in a vice between crime, insurgency and corruption.

Nan Gab's 1.2-million-dollar new "Centre for Excellence" will provide a technical and religious education to the young people of this desolate area, some 800 kilometres (500 miles) from Kabul. Local sensitivities dictate religion must be part of children's education.

The school is just one of a number of projects worth a total of six million dollars being run by the Farah Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), with the assistance of the United States and the European Union. Comprising small joint civilian-military teams, PRTs are helping promote security and reconstruction across the country.

Frank Hughlett, the Farah team's American commander, says the project is "targeting the younger folks, not the older generation."

By May, its leaders aim to have a boarding school, a mosque and a library up and running near the province's main town of Farah.

With unemployment running at 85 percent, the provincial deputy governor Yunus Khan Rasouly says locals have little choice but to turn to crime. "You have to steal to stay alive, to survive," he said sadly.

"Unemployment is the most sickening part of the region, the most important part of one's life... Crime pays, even if it is risky."

Neither are local literacy rates encouraging, hovering around the national average, with 71 percent of the population -- and 86 percent of women -- unable to read, according to the UN Children's Fund, UNICEF.

UN figures show that in 2006, opium cultivation grew by 93 percent in Farah, which has a greater problem with crime than with Taliban insurgents.

There are certainly some Taliban here, but for the most part those using the name are criminal gangs hoping it will give them more clout.

But corruption is hampering efforts to improve security. Farah's last police chief lost his job over graft, and when one of the province's three districts was overrun by Taliban for several days in October, the police did not even put up a fight.

"Without security, the government cannot proceed with its development programmes," said Musa Khan Nasrat, a member of the national parliament for Farah.

Provincial education chief Attiq Ullah says Farah's thousands of pupils must be educated, and that he is doing his best to bring the issue to the international community's attention.

Lieutenant-General Jonathon Riley, deputy commander of the NATO-led International Security Force, concluded on a visit to the region: "If Afghanistan is going to progress and take its place in the world, education is the best way to do it. A country that relies on terrorism and drugs is not a real country."

[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.]