In this bulletin:

• Suicide attack on Afghan luxury hotel kills six
• Afghan "Peace Convoy" tries to coax Taliban rebels
• Dutch troops kill 4 in friendly fire
• Afghans taking on more of a combat role: NATO
• Liberals still keen on ending Afghan combat mission despite positive visit
• Dion meets Canadian soldiers in Kandahar
• Power cuts still leave Kabul in the dark
• Afghan Police Struggle to Work a Rough Beat
• Dead soldier found his calling in Afghanistan, say mourners
• A Warning from the Past
• Northern Afghan province bans male tailors from measuring women

Suicide attack on Afghan luxury hotel kills six

KABUL, Jan 14 (Reuters) - A suspected Taliban suicide attack killed six people on Monday at a luxury hotel in Kabul where the Norwegian foreign minister was staying, Afghan officials said.

Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was unhurt in the attack at the five-star Serena Hotel in central Kabul and sheltered with other guests in the basement, Norway's public broadcaster NRK said.

Six people, most of them security guards, were killed in the attack and six were wounded, an Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman said.

The attack started with a suicide bomb at the heavily guarded gate of the hotel which is surrounded by high walls, he said.

"After the suicide bombing, there was another explosion which we are not sure ... whether it was a suicide attack or it was a bomb," Interior Minister Zemarai Bashary told a news conference.

Then, he said, there was some shooting. "We are uncertain about the shootings as well; whether it was by the security guards of the hotel or by the enemies," Bashary said.

Police had earlier said up to four attackers had thrown hand-grenades at the gates, then shot their way into the compound and at some time set off a suicide bomb.

Norway's Stoere was safe and had been taken to a secure location, the foreign ministry in Oslo said in a statement.

A Norwegian Foreign Ministry employee and a Norwegian journalist were among the injured and had been taken to hospital, the ministry said. Norwegian television stations said the injured journalist worked for the daily newspaper Dagbladet.

"The national intelligence service has taken responsibility for the investigation," said an Afghan police official who declined to be named. "There was gunfire inside and outside the hotel, plus a suicide attack ... it is very complicated at this time."

The hotel is mainly frequented by foreigners.

The hardline Islamist Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Taliban militants carried out more than 140 suicide attacks in 2007 in their campaign to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government and expel foreign forces.

Norway has about 500 soldiers in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led international force sent there after U.S. and Afghan opposition forces ousted the Taliban government in 2001.

U.S. troops cordoned off the roads around the Serena Hotel, completed in 2006 at a cost of $35 million, partly funded by the Aga Khan Foundation. (Additional reporting by Sayed Salahuddin in Kabul and Aasa Christine Stoltz in Oslo; Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Sami Aboudi)

Afghan "Peace Convoy" tries to coax Taliban rebels

KABUL (Reuters) - In a new effort to end the growing Taliban insurgency, a council of Afghan political and tribal leaders hopes to hold talks with elements of the Islamic group aimed at including them in the government.

The Taliban movement, led by the reclusive Mullah Mohammad Omar, has repeatedly turned down peace offers by President Hamid Karzai, saying talks can be held only when foreign troops leave the country.

Made up of provincial governors, tribal chiefs and lawmakers representing four eastern provinces, the council, which calls itself the "Peace Convoy", met with Karzai on Sunday and gained his approval for its peace quest, an official involved in the drive said on Monday.

The council was behind a meeting last year with tribal chiefs from border areas of neighbouring Pakistan and the two nations' leaders to discuss cooperation in fighting al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents operating in both countries.

That led to reduction of border infiltration by the Islamic militants and improvement of the uneasy ties between the two countries' leaders.

In its new effort, the council initially will hold talks with local residents and Taliban field commanders in eastern and southern areas, where the al Qaeda-backed insurgents are most active.

More than 10,000 people, including hundreds of foreign troops, have been killed by violence in the past two years, largely in regions bordering Pakistan. It has been the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops toppled the Taliban government in 2001.

"The aim (of the council) is national unity and holding talks with those Afghani Taliban who are upset with government," said Noor Agha Zwak, spokesman for the governor of the strategic eastern province of Nangahar, Gul Agha Sherzai. Sherzai is leading the effort.

"The talks will be with those Taliban who have no links with al Qaeda and (will aim) to include them in the government," the spokesman said.

He said the council would not be reaching out to Taliban leaders such as Omar and other guerrilla figures like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who runs a separate front.

Asked if the council's effort to end the bloodshed could succeed without talking to such top insurgent leaders, Zwak said: "We believe so for if we can persuade the fighters (to try) reconciliation and give them a role in the government, then the leaders will have not much means to keep up the fight."

Taliban officials could not be contacted immediately for comment, but the movement's purported spokesmen in the past have ruled out talks unless foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military pull out of Afghanistan.

Some foreign commanders say the Afghan battle cannot be won militarily and some of the insurgents need to be brought into the political mainstream.

Dutch troops kill 4 in friendly fire

By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer

Bagram - Dutch troops in Afghanistan killed two of their own men during a nighttime battle, and separately two allied Afghan soldiers they mistook for enemies, the Defense Ministry said Sunday.

"Darkness, the weather conditions and the confused situation" played a role in the mistake Saturday in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, Gen. Dick Berlijn, the top Dutch military commander, said in a statement.

Opposing fighters were in between Dutch units during the fighting several miles northwest of Camp Hadrian, near Deh Rawod.

The two Afghan soldiers, who were not "recognizably in uniform," also were killed Saturday after they approached a wounded Dutch soldier six miles to the south, Berlijn said.

Military police were investigating both incidents.

In the most famous friendly fire case of the Afghan conflict, Pat Tillman, a former U.S. football player who became an Army ranger, was killed in April 2004 by fellow troops near the Pakistani border.

In August, a U.S. warplane mistakenly dropped a 500-pound bomb on British troops after they called for air support in Afghanistan, killing three soldiers and seriously wounding two others.

And in 2002, four Canadian soldiers were killed when an American F-16 pilot on a night patrol dropped a 500-pound bomb on Canadian troops conducting a live-fire training exercise near the southern city of Kandahar. The pilot apparently mistook the Canadians for enemy forces and thought he was acting in self-defense, U.S. officials have said.

The Dutch soldiers killed Saturday were identified as Pvt. Wesley Schol, 20, and Cpl. Aldert Poortema, 22. The ministry did not release the names and ranks of the Afghan soldiers.

Around 1,650 Dutch are serving in Uruzgan province as part of the NATO mission there. The soldiers who were killed were part of an operation in which several hundred Dutch and Afghan soldiers are attempting to gauge prospects for refugees currently sheltering in the Deh Rawod bazaar to return home, Berlijn said.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende announced in November that the Dutch would extend their mission in Afghanistan for two years after it was due to expire in August 2008, reducing troop levels by 200 to 300 soldiers. Saturday's death brings the Dutch death toll in Afghanistan to 14.

Also Sunday, U.S. Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel, the deputy commanding general for operations at the American base at Bagram, said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has not yet decided if 3,000 additional Marines will be deployed to Afghanistan.

The proposal is being considered ahead of a seasonal increase in violence by militants in the spring. "I think if they do come, I think they will probably go to the south, to the Kandahar-Helmand area," Votel said of the Marines.

He said militant activity has dropped significantly near the Pakistan border because U.S. forces are placed more strategically there, and because of increased communication with Pakistan forces.

"Weather has an impact and slows things down, but right now it's about 42 percent below where it was last December and January. It has significantly dropped off," he said, citing a reduction in roadside and suicide bomb attacks, ambushes and other forms of intimidation.

Meanwhile, a newspaper quoted British Defense Secretary Des Browne as saying the country could be engaged in Afghanistan for decades.

"There is only so much our forces can achieve," Browne told People newspaper. "The job can only be completed by the international community working with the Afghan government and its army. It is a commitment which could last decades, although it will reduce over time."

Britain has had forces in Afghanistan since November 2001, when it participated in the U.S.-led operation to topple the Taliban. The country currently has about 7,700 military personnel serving there, most of them fighting in the country's volatile south.

Taliban militants killed eight officers in an attack Sunday on a police checkpoint in Kandahar province, said Sadullah Khan, a police officer in neighboring Neven district.

A suicide bomber killed another policeman and wounded eight other people when he blew himself up in a housing compound in the town of Lashkar Gah in neighboring Helmand province, officials said.

Afghans taking on more of a combat role: NATO

Updated Mon. Jan. 14 2008 11:46 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

NATO agrees its time for the role of foreign troops in Afghanistan to shift away from one of combat to one of support, says a spokesperson for the international organization.

James Appathurai discussed the NATO position after Liberal Leader Stephane Dion and deputy leader Michael Ignatieff visited the war-torn nation and called for Canada to stay on beyond February 2009 when the mission is scheduled to end, but in a non-combat role.

"I think actually we all agree on the end state -- NATO and I think probably the political parties here too -- and that's transition," Appathurai, a Canadian, told CTV's Canada AM on Monday.

"We want to move to a phase where the Afghans are in the lead and we provide support, training, close air support, emergency support but let them do the frontline fighting. It's a question of when."

Appathurai, who recently returned from a visit to the Panjwaii region of Afghanistan, said that transition -- which many see as no more than a distant and unlikely possibility -- may actually not be that far off.

"We have two Afghan battalions now, with Canadian troops, and taking an increasingly leading role. But the key is, from my perspective but also from NATO's perspective, we haven't reached a tipping point. We're not at the phase where we can take that step."

Canada has taken a lead role in the volatile south of Afghanistan, facing the Taliban head on and taking casualties, with 76 soldiers and one diplomat now killed since 2002 -- and several more injured over the weekend.

That has many Canadians questioning why the frontline fighting isn't being shared more evenly among the NATO countries serving in Afghanistan.

But Appathurai said other countries are helping shoulder the burden.

"I think the first thing to say is we're not alone. There are eleven countries directly involved in the combat all the time. Two Dutch were just killed yesterday," he pointed out.

"And eight countries in the last three or four months have stepped up their contribution to the combat role. The Poles just announced a couple of days ago, 400 new troops, eight new helicopters. The Americans are considering 3,000 more soldiers for the south."

The problem, he said, is that Canadian journalists travel to Kandahar where Canadians are taking a leading role, and most of the stories that emerge cover the risks Canadian soldiers are taking in that region.

A Liberal news release issued Saturday said Dion and Ignatieff met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and told him that while the party believes Canada's combat mission should end in 2009, the party supports diplomatic and development efforts.

"We are convinced after the day we've had that we will have plenty of things to do that will involve, yes, to take risks, but anywhere we will go whether Darfur or Haiti, there are always risks," Dion told reporters in Kabul.

"We are not afraid of the risks. But we want to sure that we have a balanced mission after 2009 that will be optimally helpful for the people of Afghanistan."

Karzai's reaction to the statement isn't known yet, but reports indicate he thanked Canada for its service in his country to date.

Appathurai said the proposal put forward by Ignatieff and Dion is not unrealistic. In fact, there are already indications that it is on the way, he said.

"It's already happening. In Panjwaii it's happening. We saw a major operation in a town people might have seen in Helmand where the Taliban ... was actually in charge until a couple of months ago. The Afghans led the mission, we came in behind, we kicked them out."

The ultimate goal, he said, is for the Afghan National Army to be handling security in the country and for other nations to support those efforts.

He also said it is critical, both to NATO and the United Nations that the mission in Afghanistan results in a successful outcome. High level UN officials have said that if NATO pulls out, they will also leave because they won't have the necessary security.

"I think to the whole international community, Afghanistan is critical. If we fail in Afghanistan, it means that the UN fails, this is a UN mission, that NATO is doing basically on contract," Appathurai said.

Under that scenario, Afghanistan could easily return to a Taliban-run country, he warned.

"Afghanistan will again be the grand central station of terrorism. There will be terrorists from all over the world, like there were in 2001, training and leaving again to go back to their countries to be more extreme. We will all suffer."

Liberals still keen on ending Afghan combat mission despite positive visit

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Liberal vision for Canada's future role in Afghanistan has changed little despite a whirlwind tour of the war-torn country by the party's leaders.

While deputy leader and former journalist Michael Ignatieff was in Kabul just two days after the Taliban invasion a decade ago - his first of three visits to the country - this was Stephane Dion's first time in Afghanistan.

But despite a jam-packed weekend that included visits with President Hamid Karzai and other Afghan officials, a trip to Camp Nathan Smith to meet with development workers, a stop at Kandahar Airfield to chat with military brass and a chance to meet front line soldiers in the volatile Zhari district, the Grits stood by their recommendation to end Canada's combat mission by February 2009.

"We think that the military forces of Canada have a role to play after February 2009," Dion insisted in an interview with reporters at Kandahar Airfield.

"Even though it's not combat, it will be for security. The difference is that you don't proactively be in a situation to engage the enemy, you are there to help civilians to do their job to improve the development of the country of Afghanistan. You are there to train the police, train the military."

Echoing the recommendations his party submitted a week ago to a panel reviewing Canada's Afghan mission, Dion said Canada's future role should focus more on things like women's rights, education and water management.

Noting the biggest successes appear to be those that enable Afghans to stand on their own, both Dion and Ignatieff suggested efforts to train Afghan security forces while emphasizing development makes the most sense.

"The initiatives that are working best are the ones that are from the bottom up," Dion said. "We are successful, Canadians, because we involve (the Afghans)... At the end of the day the goal is they will take care of their country on their own."

Speaking below the glow of the boardwalk lights outside Tim Hortons' following a quick photo op with a group of Canadian soldiers on a nearby hockey rink, what the leader's weren't clear on is just what the future mission would look like on the ground if they had their way.

For the last two years Canadians have been stationed in Kandahar province where some of the fiercest fighting has been taking place. The Liberals are advocating a rotation of troops that would see some of the other coalition forces moved in to replace Canadians in the dangerous region.

The duo, however, appeared committed to the continued support of Canadian troops involved in 24-7 mentoring of both the Afghan National Army and more recently the Afghan National Police.

In fact, Ignatieff said what stood out most for him during his visit was the progress made by the ANA as a result of the support soldiers have received from the Canadian Operational Mentoring Liaison Team.

"The Afghan army is presently working side by side with the Canadians in ways I did not realize," he said.

"They're taking a much more active role in the development of their own country and what we're saying is as a party, we want to work with the Afghans on the development field, on the diplomacy field... but also in the security field to assist the Afghan army to take over the job which is to defend their own country."

Ignatieff, who during his 2006 bid for leadership of the Liberal party supported the Conservatives when they sought to extend the Afghan mission the first time, insisted that while his party wants to "change" or "alter" the mission, it still plans to "see it through."

"We will evolve the mission. We will change the mission as circumstances require, but one thing is clear, Canada made a serious commitment to this country and we're not going to give up under a Liberal government," he said.

"It'll change but it'll sustain. I'm absolutely convinced the Taliban are not going to win here."

Dion and Ignatieff's visit to Afghanistan comes just a week after the Liberal party submitted its recommendations on the future of the Afghan mission. A panel studying Canada's role in Afghanistan is expected to report back to the government by the end of the month.

While the Conservatives favour extending the current mission, the Liberals are promoting a revised role that will see Canadian soldiers removed from the volatile Kandahar province.

Dion meets Canadian soldiers in Kandahar

COLIN FREEZE - Globe and Mail Update January 13, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canada's top two Liberal politicians visited troops around Kandahar this morning, meeting Canadian Forces soldiers, speaking with them, even briefly playing hockey with them.

But Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff came away upholding their party's position that the troops must cease combat operations in this restive southern province of Afghanistan by early next year.

"The military forces of Canada have a role to play after February 2009 — even though it's not combat, it will be for security," Mr. Dion told reporters.

He maintained Canada should continue to play a role in reconstruction in the future, but "the only difference is you don't proactively be in a situation to engage the enemy."

Shortly before boarding a plane out of Kandahar around 8 p.m. local time, Mr. Dion ended his two-day trip by insisting that the best initiatives in Afghanistan have been ones led by Afghans themselves.

Canada currently has about 2,500 troops stationed in the southern Kandahar province, a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency.

The two politicians flew into the Kandahar Air Field Saturday night before leaving it Sunday morning to tour satellite military bases.

They met soldiers, diplomats, Afghans and charities at a base where reconstruction efforts are headquartered.

Then they visited a forward operating base in the Zhari region, where Canadian Forces soldiers live and work with Afghans soldiers, to teach them how to fight the Taliban.

Mr. Dion said the Afghan Nation Army has made significant strides, but that the local police remain "a big problem."

He said Afghanistan's security forces as a whole are becoming increasingly self-sufficient. This is key, he said, because "at the end of the day, the goal is that they will take care of their country, by their own."

The weekend visit was Mr. Dion's first trip to Afghanistan. He was joined by Deputy Leader Michael Ignatieff, who was making his third trip to Afghanistan, having made two previous ones as a journalist.

"I've seen what the Taliban did do the women of Kabul in 1997, with my own eyes, which is why I feel passionate about what we're trying to do here," Mr. Ignatieff told reporters.

"I'm convinced — based on the progress we've seen today — [that] Afghanistan will be defending itself.

"I am absolutely convinced the Taliban are not going to win here."

Mr. Ignatieff, who vocally supported the current mission in Parliament two years ago, occasionally sounded more hawkish than his boss, Mr. Dion.

Upon arrival, the Deputy Leader was asked if he supported his party's current position. "I wouldn't be on this airfield if I didn't," Mr. Ignatieff said.

A policy paper released by the party last week pointed to some disturbing trends in Afghanistan.

For example, it argues there is "clear evidence" that "Taliban fighters and suicide bombers are being trained and indoctrinated and equipped in Pakistan."

It also adds: "Afghanistan has now become a virtual narco-economy with most estimates putting the contribution of the poppy and heroin trade to the GDP at 50 per cent."

The United States is considering an influx of 3,000 more troops this spring, specifically to deal with an anticipated Taliban offensive and the drug issue.

In Canada, a commission led by former cabinet minister John Manley is to chart out a course for the Canadian Forces and other departments, ahead of a parliamentary vote on the mission this spring.

The mandate for the current military mission expires in February 2009, which could force NATO's International Security Assistance Force to rotate troops from other countries into the province — a job for which few other countries have shown enthusiasm.

The Conservatives hired Mr. Manley to make recommendations, but key figures, including Defence Minister Peter MacKay who visited Kandahar last month, have broadly spoken in support of the status quo.

Mr. Dion said the Liberals feel that Canadians can make a non-military difference to Afghanistan by improving the police force, and also by increasing women's rights, improving access to education, and implementing better fresh water management.

Mr. Dion made similar points when he met Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday. He said Mr. Karzai thanked Canada for its current contributions during the talks

In Ottawa, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper scoffed at Mr. Dion's visit.

"It has taken more than a year after becoming Liberal leader for Stéphane Dion to finally find Afghanistan on the map," Helena Guergis, secretary of state for foreign affairs, said in a statement Saturday.

"The irony of Dion and Iggy being in a war zone and being protected by the same troops who protect Afghan women and children is palpable," Ms. Guergis said.

"I think he should apologize to our troops while he is touring the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) in safety because the same reason he needs bodyguards is why our troops need to stay to protect democracy, women and children," she added.

Power cuts still leave Kabul in the dark

Kabul (By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer) - Gul Hussein was standing under a pale street lamp in a poor section of east Kabul when the entire neighborhood suddenly went black.

"As you can see, it is dark everywhere," the 62-year-old man said, adding that his family would light a costly kerosene lamp for dinner that evening. "Some of our neighbors are using candles, but candles are expensive, too."

More than five years after the fall of the Taliban — and despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid — dinner by candlelight remains common in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Nationwide, only 6 percent of Afghans have electricity, the Asian Development Bank says.

The electricity shortage underscores the slow progress in rebuilding the war-torn country. It also feeds other problems. Old factories sit idle, and new ones are not built. Produce withers without refrigeration. Dark, cold homes foster resentment against the government.

In Kabul, power dwindles after the region's hydroelectric dams dry up by midsummer. This past fall, residents averaged only three hours of municipal electricity a day, typically from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., according to USAID, the American government aid agency. Some neighborhoods got none.

"That's a scary sounding figure because it's pretty tiny," said Robin Phillips, the USAID director in Afghanistan. "So we're talking about the relatively poorer people in Kabul who have no access to electricity at this time of year."

Electricity was meager under the Taliban too, when Kabul residents had perhaps two hours of it a day in fall and winter. The supply has since increased, but not as fast as Kabul's population — from fewer than 1 million people in the late 1990s to more than 4 million today.

Meanwhile, souring U.S. relations with Uzbekistan have delayed plans to import electricity from that country. Power is not expected to arrive in a significant way until late 2008 or mid-2009.

"Life takes power," said Jan Agha, a 60-year-old handyman from west Kabul who recalled how the city had plentiful power during the 1980s Soviet occupation. "If you have electricity life is good, but if there's no electricity you go around like a blind man."

Some in Kabul do have electricity: the rich, powerful and well-connected.

Municipal workers — under direction from the Ministry of Water and Energy — funnel what power there is to politicians, warlords and foreign embassies. Special lines run from substations to their homes, circumventing the power grid. International businesses pay local switch operators bribes of $200 to $1,000 a month for near-constant power, an electrical worker said anonymously for fear of losing his job.

If high-ranking government officials visit the substations, workers race to cut off the illegal connections. Large diesel generators, which businesses and wealthy homeowners own as a backup, rumble to life.

Ismail Khan, the country's water and energy minister, dismisses allegations of corruption as a "small problem."

"The important thing to talk about is that in six months all of these power problems will be solved, and everyone will have electricity 24 hours a day," he said, an optimistic prediction that relies on heavy rains next spring and quick work on the Uzbekistan line.

Colorful maps on the walls of Khan's office show existing and future power lines. There's a wall-mounted air conditioner — a luxury in Afghanistan.

India, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on new power lines — including transmission towers installed this summer at 15,000 feet over the Hindu Kush mountains — to import electricity from Uzbekistan.

Though the line from Kabul to the Uzbek border is in place, a 25-mile section in Uzbekistan has not yet been built. And the U.S. has little leverage to speed it up, said Rakesh Sood, the Indian ambassador here.

Initially, Uzbekistan supported the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, opening an air base to U.S. planes. But the Uzbek government no longer views America as a friend, ever since U.S. leaders loudly criticized the country's human rights record when government-backed forces massacred peaceful demonstrators in 2005.

Even when the Uzbek line is completed, Afghanistan can no longer expect the 300 megawatts originally envisioned, Sood said. That would have been more than the 190 megawatts Kabul has today and a significant boost to the 770 megawatts Afghanistan has nationwide.

"We know we'll get significantly less. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to what it will be," Sood said. "At that time the U.S.-Uzbek relationship was very high and it has deteriorated substantially."

President Hamid Karzai, during a radio address to the nation last fall, said he discussed with President Bush the country's need to produce its own electricity.

But some efforts have run afoul of the continuing Taliban insurgency. A new U.S.-financed turbine for a hydroelectric dam in Helmand province is a few months away from being installed because of the "lack of permissiveness in the environment," USAID's Phillips said, using a euphemism for the spiraling violence there.

Also, more than $100 million is needed to upgrade Kabul's antiquated distribution system, and it remains unclear who will pay.

"One doesn't like to see the kinds of numbers that we've been talking about, but I wouldn't call it a failure," Phillips said. "To put a little more positive spin on it we all wish things could happen more rapidly."

The lack of power has hamstrung U.S. efforts to boost agriculture production, too.

"The No. 1 challenge to agribusiness is electricity," said Loren Owen Stoddard, USAID director in Kabul for alternative development and agriculture. "You can't keep things cold and you can't bottle them without power."

The U.S. is purchasing fuel-powered generators that will provide 100 megawatts of power for Kabul by late next year. The power will not come cheap at 15 to 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with just 3.5 cents for electricity from Uzbekistan.

But until the Uzbek power comes in, Afghanistan has no choice.

"It's going to be more oil-fired power and praying for rain to get the hydropower going," said Sean O'Sullivan, regional director with the Asian Development Bank.

On a smaller scale, India has spent $2.2 million to outfit 100 villages with $450 solar cells. They dot the flat rooftops in Mullah Khatir Khel, a mud-brick village an hour's drive north of Kabul. Each cell can power a couple of light bulbs.

"I am very happy, why should I not be happy? I am using these bulbs and lanterns provided by India," said villager Abdul Gayoom. "Before we used to burn oil lamps, now it's a big saving."

Afghan Police Struggle to Work a Rough Beat

The New York Times, 01/12/2008 By C. J. Chivers

NAWA — Many of the problems frustrating Afghanistan’s efforts to secure its dangerous eastern and southern provinces were evident in the bizarre tour of duty of Shair Mohammad, a police officer who spent 18 months in an isolated swath of steppe.

Until December, when a colonel arrived to replace him, Mr. Mohammad, 30, had been the acting police chief in the Nawa district of Ghazni Province. The job gave him jurisdiction over hundreds of square miles near Pakistan that the Taliban had used as a sanctuary since being ousted from power in 2001.

But his ability to police his beat was severely compromised.

Mr. Mohammad had no rank, no money for food and not enough clothing or gear to operate in cold weather. Two of his six trucks were broken. The ammunition the Pentagon provided him came in cardboard boxes that immediately crumbled, exposing cartridges to the elements on his storeroom’s dirty floor.

Compounding his woes, the possibility of mutiny was on his mind. It was a natural worry, he said, because since April none of his men had been paid.

“My commanders always just give me promises,” he said. “They never send the money.”

In its simplest distillation, the strategy driving this American-led war is straightforward. Western troops are an interim force to provide security, spur development and mentor indigenous security forces until the Afghan leadership can govern alone.

But in the past two years, the insurgency has blossomed, making control of many provinces a contest. The Afghan Army, under American tutelage, has made considerable progress, American officers say.

The police lag far behind. Lightly equipped, marginally trained, undermined by corruption and poor discipline, they remain weak, though their expected role is daunting. They are not asked merely to police a country that lacks the rule of law. They are being used to fight a war.

The American and Afghan governments say improving the police’s capabilities is a priority. American financing has sharply increased to do so.

“If you look at how the Afghan Army has changed for the better, and project that kind of change for the Afghan police, there is reason to be optimistic,” said Lt. Col. Timothy J. McAteer, who commands the Second Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry, the principal American unit working in Ghazni Province.

But Mr. Mohammad’s tour, undermined by mismanagement from above and the poor discipline that surrounded him, suggested how difficult any transformation might be. As his tour ended in mid-December, he spent his last evenings crouched by a hissing space heater in a mud-walled fort, sipping tea and waiting for his government to provide the help the police needed.

Mr. Mohammad himself, and his sense of commitment, provided reason to be hopeful, American officers said. Tiny, bearded, wild-eyed and bedecked with long strands of unkempt black hair, he led with a style that was variously whimsical, pragmatic, resolute and cunning.

“He is a true patriot,” said First Lt. Mordechai Sorkin, a platoon leader who worked alongside him. “He has been here almost all alone, trying to make Afghanistan better.”

In the deadpan lexicon of infantry life, several soldiers nicknamed him “Charles Manson,” to whom he bears a slight resemblance. The name was meant in good humor. The soldiers said Mr. Mohammad was a character of his own: he managed a gentle and wry demeanor, but never declined to join them on patrols and was courageous under fire.

In a Taliban ambush in October, they noted, one of his officers was killed and four others wounded. Mr. Mohammad survived and tried to rally his penniless ranks.

He was also steadfast in the face of intimidation. Another day, the mutilated body of an elderly man who had spoken against the Taliban was found on the road. The man had been beheaded. Afghanis, the national currency, had been stuffed in his nose.

On patrols with Americans through villages that harbor the Taliban, Mr. Mohammad gathered elders and gave speeches against the insurgents and such behavior, telling villagers that siding with the government was the surest route away from barbarism to a more secure life.

Resolve was not enough. As his tour ended, Mr. Mohammad said, his own government had failed to match his sense of duty.

His district had long been a transit corridor for insurgents between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and had had almost no government presence. Since 2006 the area had been covered only by Mr. Mohammad’s detachment and one American platoon, roughly 40 soldiers. Many villages in the district had never been visited by either the military or the police.

In early December, Colonel McAteer, the American commander, augmented the firebase with most of his battalion’s Company B — more than two more platoons. The company commander, Capt. Christopher J. DeMure, moved to Nawa with a detachment of Afghan Army soldiers and about a dozen Afghan police officers, including a colonel to relieve Mr. Mohammad.

The officers in Nawa, the only government representatives that had ever entered much of Nawa, were surviving on donations — some might call it extortion — from a local bazaar.

When Captain DeMure arrived, Mr. Mohammad told him the government’s logistics system was such a failure that he owed $3,400 to shopkeepers for goods he had commandeered to keep his police station fed and supplied. The sum equaled roughly three years of his salary.

Lt. Col. Amanuddin, the police supervisor who arrived with new officers, appeared to be just as disappointed as Mr. Mohammad. (Like many Afghans, Colonel Amanuddin has only one name.) “I need 20 good police officers, and could use 100,” he said. “Good people — not any hashish smokers. And I need sleeping bags and mattresses and a generator for power.”

Without more officers and better equipment, he said, it would be impossible to conduct night patrols with American soldiers.

But there were signs as well that Mr. Mohammad, for all of his courage and sense of loyalty, lacked other fundamental leadership traits. The station Colonel Amanuddin was inheriting was a picture of disorder and filth.

Its front yard was a junkyard of scrapped vehicles and broken artillery pieces. Inside was a garbage pit. The garbage was not confined to this hole; it was everywhere. The courtyard was overrun by dogs that fed on it.

At least three unexploded rockets littered the grounds, and the police had taken to using a guard tower as a toilet. Human waste covered its floor.

Seeing the depth of the problems, Captain DeMure contacted a provincial coordination center that supervises the police. He hoped to get more gear, wages for the officers and more officers for the district.

He also organized the police into patrols, led by Americans, to search for Taliban fighters and meet villagers for introductions.

But on Dec. 6, Mr. Mohammad’s fear of mass desertion came true. Destitute and dispirited, most of the officers under his command abandoned their posts at sunrise; it was not the first time, he said, that such a thing had happened.

Nine of Colonel Amanuddin’s officers announced that they were leaving, too. Only one new officer remained: Amir Mohammad, a driver with only one arm.

The only other officers to agree to work were three of Mr. Mohammad’s relatives — cheerful but largely untrained men. At one point, Mr. Mohammad had commanded more than 15 men.

Captain DeMure urged the new chief to ask the men to keep working. It was no use. “None of the officers have been paid,” the colonel said. “If we force them, they might kill us.” Mr. Mohammad nodded knowingly.

Captain DeMure was soon back in contact with Ghazni, asking for police officers again. The patrols he had organized had been encouraging; many villagers had seemed friendly and said they wanted the government to move into the district.

“There are people here who welcome the government and the change it can bring,” he said. “But we need the police down here to help make that happen.”

A few days later, at the captain’s urging, eight more officers arrived to work with Colonel Amanuddin. More were expected soon, he said.

Mr. Mohammad’s tour was over at last. Earlier, he had said that when he was relieved he would confront the supervisors he suspected of embezzling his officers’ wages.

But even this wish showed how much work was ahead. He would have to travel in an American convoy, he said, because if a police officer risked driving to the capital alone, he would almost certainly be shot.

“This looks like a fortress,” he said, gesturing to the compound where he had lived for a year and a half. “Really it is an island. The Taliban is all around.”

Dead soldier found his calling in Afghanistan, say mourners
Canwest News Service , Sunday, January 13, 2008

OTTAWA -- Gunner Jonathan Dion was something of a lost soul until he joined the army and found his mission in Afghanistan to "make a difference," said friends as they mourned the soldier who was killed late last month.

More than 400 family and friends crowded into a small Gatineau church on St. Rene Boulevard West Saturday for the private funeral of Gunner Dion held with full military honors.

Dion, who would have turned 28 years old last week, died Dec. 30 during his first NATO mission after his light-armored vehicle struck a roadside bomb about 20 kilometers west of Kandahar city.

After an hour-long mass, his flag-draped casket was carried down the stairs of Jean XXIII Catholic Church by eight military pallbearers, followed by his mother Lise Marcil, stepfather Raymond Pelletier and sister Guylaine Dion, as a dozen members of his regiment, 5 Regiment d'artillerie legere du Canada, gave him the traditional gun salute.

As they loaded his wooden casket into the waiting gray hearse, the family released a white dove, which flew over the heads of a somber crowd that had gathered silently outside.

"He believed strongly in the mission," said fellow Gunner Daniel Corriveau following the funeral service. "He died believing he was doing something good for his country and the mission."

Dion was born in Val d'Or Que., but spent most of his life in Gatineau. Friends said he was good athlete, was generous, selfless and "one of the gang" who was always willing to help his friends.

Kevin Graham, who grew up with Dion and later followed him into the military, said his friend found his calling in the armed forces. He had dropped out of school, tried his hand at a few jobs - and then someone handed a pamphlet about the military and was he sold, said Mr. Graham.

He said his emails from Afghanistan revealed how much Dion loved his work and had found his niche. In fact, Graham said it was Dion who inspired him to join the military a year later.

"It was the best decision he made in his life," said Graham. "He wanted to make a difference in the world and that's what he did."

Gunner Dion was killed and four other soldiers were wounded after the tracked light-armoured vehicle they were riding in hit a roadside bomb.

The five were on a routine patrol in Zhari district and were headed to the Kandahar Airfield. He was the first soldier killed in combat from the 5 Regiment d'artillerie legere du Canada, a francophone unit of the Royal Canadian Artillery based in Valcartier.

"It is the first time we lost someone in operation . . . but morale is good. It's a hard thing happening to us but we will get over it and and he will not be forgotten," said Lieutenant-Colonel Danny Fortin.

Dion's uncle Ronald Marcil said his nephew was a proud soldier who was determined to go back to Afghanistan even before he finished his first tour of duty. Despite his death, he said, the family supports the mission and distributed "Support Our Troops" pins and magnets during the funeral.

A Warning from the Past

San Francisco Chronicle, 01/13/2008 By Vanni Cappelli

A noted American diplomat raised serious questions about the Pakistan army's Islamic threat nearly 40 years ago

Benazir Bhutto's assassination - not far from the jail yard where her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged - symbolizes the tenuousness of civilian political life in Pakistan. Yet, though many in Washington assert that the killing has severely limited U.S. policy options, few are fundamentally questioning the wisdom of supporting a foreign military establishment whose values are so alien to our own.

There have, however, been sagacious voices who questioned this self-defeating policy from its inception decades ago.

In 1970, as the United States was mired in a disastrous conflict that was a colossal distraction from the real imperatives of the Cold War, Chester Bowles, one of the old liberal lions of the Democratic Party, wrote a piece in the New York Times, "Will We Ever Learn in Asia?"

Given the national crisis of the hour, readers back then might have expected that Bowles' article would be about the war in Vietnam. Yet Bowles, twice ambassador to India, had a surer sense of looming threats to our national security.

With virtuosic insight and prescience, he outlined the salient features of America's alliance with Pakistan, a relationship whose dynamics have remained constant from the early days of the Cold War to the war on terror. And he prophesied that the contradictions underlying this alliance would harm vital American interests.

"American military assistance to Pakistan in the last 15 years will, I believe, be listed by historians as among our most costly blunders," Bowles wrote. Its continuation, he concluded, would serve the interests of no one except the Pakistani military. "Certainly not the interests of the American people in Asia. Or the cause of world peace. Or the welfare of the people of Pakistan, who need tractors, not tanks."

With the United States mired in a disastrous conflict in Iraq, which is a colossal distraction from the real imperatives of the fight against Islamist terrorism, there is a critical need for a clear strategy that will counter this threat. Yet the oft-touted solution of shifting our efforts from Iraq to Afghanistan will also end in disaster unless the true nature of our putative ally, Pakistan, and its historical culpability in the rise of Islamic radicalism, are correctly perceived - and our policies are dramatically altered.

With Osama bin Laden still menacing us from the tribal areas of Pakistan, it is vital that we realize that the epicenter of terror has always lain inside that country, not Afghanistan. And the reason for this is that Islamic extremism has long been fostered by the Pakistani military itself in the service of its ideological and strategic goals.

Bowles' five main points provide a framework that is essential to understanding the historical context from which the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks emerged, and for building a security structure in south-central Asia that will contain, and eventually eliminate, the terror threat emanating from there:

-- The alliance is based on false assumptions. Since the 1950s, Washington has provided enormous amounts of military aid to Pakistan in the belief that it is a moderate, pro-Western country with a professional military that could be relied upon to fight America's enemies, from communists to Islamists.

This uncritical assessment ignores the ethos behind that state's foundation in 1947 by Mohammad Ali Jinnah under the cry "Islam in danger," a world view that later evolved into the "Pakistan ideology" espoused by its dominant military. This ideology portrays Pakistan as the citadel of a Muslim world under siege. It is a lighter shade on the spectrum of political Islam than fundamentalism, yet is similarly antagonistic to the West.

-- Military aid enables the "guns-not-butter" paradigm of the Pakistani military. Pakistan's military has always sought to block socio-economic change and further its international ambitions by fostering violent religious sentiment. Real issues such as democracy, secularism, ethnic autonomy, feudalism, economic development, women's rights, poverty, illiteracy and the quality of relations with neighboring states have been buried under the cry of defending Islam.

Yet these problems are too overwhelming to be brushed aside, especially since the peoples who comprise Pakistan are not historically known for religious fanaticism. The military has therefore fostered a jihadi tone in national life, repressing those who raise these issues. Pakistan's religious parties and transnational terror networks have been the keystone of this policy.

-- Pakistan uses military aid against its own enemies. Pakistan has repeatedly and brutally used this power to pursue the Islamic nationalist agenda against its neighbors and its own citizens.

For example, Pakistan has for decades supported the Islamic militants who are fighting to wrest Kashmir from India, in addition to three direct wars it launched toward this end in 1947, 1965 and 1999. In 1971, it perpetrated a genocide in what is today Bangladesh that killed 500,000 people. During and after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan backed the most radical mujahedeen groups while marginalizing moderate forces in its pursuit of domination in Afghanistan. No postwar U.S. ally has such a bloody record.

-- Military aid to Pakistan has been counterproductive. America's search for Cold War allies led it to enable the Pakistani military-security services complex based in Rawalpindi, the city from which the country is actually ruled.

Although for decades the returns on this investment were meager, this policy appeared to end in triumph when the alliance forced the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989. Yet the hard-line jihadi cast that Rawalpindi imposed on that conflict turned south-central Asia into a stronghold of Islamic extremism, installed the Taliban in power, provided a haven for al Qaeda, and created the international climate that led to 9/11.

-- America never learns from its past mistakes regarding Pakistan. Washington has provided military aid with scant quality control and a failure of ideological scrutiny. That the leitmotiv of the central jihadi narrative presented by bin Laden, "Islam in danger," is identical to that of the "Pakistan ideology" does not seem to trouble the Bush administration's view that Rawalpindi is a "key ally" against Islamic radicalism.

Pakistan's behavior would have landed any other country on the State Department's list of terror-sponsoring nations. Its avoidance of this designation is a tribute to Rawalpindi's pragmatic extremism.

The centrality of the "Pakistan ideology" to the military's ethos; its desultory campaigns against militants; the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the fact that the state of emergency was directed against the country's nascent civil society, not extremists; and the unresolved degree to which the government was responsible for Bhutto's death all point to one thing: The Pakistani military cannot be an American ally against terrorism because it is a root cause of the problem.

Given the stranglehold that the military has on Pakistan's politics and economy, no possible outcome of the current turmoil will loosen it. Even had she lived to become prime minister again, Bhutto could have done little to break this monopoly. What is needed is a dramatic break from the past.

In my essay "Containing Pakistan: Engaging the Raja-Mandala in South-Central Asia" (published in the winter 2007 issue of Orbis), I argued that the United States should change course and commit itself to an American-Indian-Afghan alliance aimed at containing Pakistan and the Islamic ideological and terrorist threat that it poses under military rule. Only by joining with secular democratic and other anti-extremist forces in the region can the United States combat the violence perpetrated in the name of an "Islam in danger."

Cutting off military and economic aid to Pakistan, formally designating it a state sponsor of terror and working with its neighbors to contain it will allow the United States to effect the same internal collapse of a dictatorial order that occurred when the Soviet Union's weak economy proved unable to sustain its military superstructure. Rawalpindi's possession of nuclear weapons need not deter such a policy any more than Moscow's did the successful Cold War containment strategy.

A new alliance would cripple Pakistan's capacity to support militants and give the country's secular democratic forces their first real chance to transform their troubled land into one that is no longer a threat to international security.

Vanni Cappelli, a freelance journalist, is president of the Afghanistan Foreign Press Association.

Northern Afghan province bans male tailors from measuring women

Reuters, 01/13/2008 By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Male tailors in an Afghan province have been barred from measuring female clients for fittings following a new local ruling that resembles the restrictions the ultra-conservative Taliban imposed on the country when in power.

The decision was made by a council of Islamic clergymen in northeastern Takhar province recently, governor Abdul Latif Ibrahimi said.

"The male tailors have been told to stop measuring women," Ibrahimi told Reuters by phone on Saturday. "They need to be measured by female tailors."

While many Afghan women have excellent needlework and dressmaking skills, the overwhelming majority of commercial tailors are men.

Ousted in 2001, the Taliban's radical Islamic government banned male tailors from outfitting women. They also barred women from most employment and education and also forced them to wear an all-enveloping burqa while venturing outdoors.

The curbs drew stern criticism from many countries. Violators would have been punished publicly. Ibrahimi did not say what would happen to anyone failing to comply with the new ruling.

The clergy plays a crucial role in Afghanistan and in the past has been behind a series of uprisings in the deeply Islamic conservative country.

During a meeting last week with President Hamid Karzai, who has been leading Afghanistan since the Taliban's ouster, a national Islamic body urged him to ban the TV airing of hugely popular soap operas, mostly Indian, which it deemed un-Islamic.

The council also demanded the re-introduction of public executions, another policy during Taliban rule.

[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.]