In this bulletin:

• US-led forces say 55 Taliban killed in Afghanistan
• Pakistani rebels kill four Afghans in rocket attacks
• Afghans protest alleged civilian casualties by US forces
• FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan
• From Afghanistan, NATO Shells Militants in Pakistan
• ‘Taliban advance only made possible by Al Qaeda’s help’
• Afghan gov't arrests 2 suicide bomber suspects
• In Afghan police training, US aims to curb corruption
• Routing of Fighters Brings Anxious Calm to Kandahar
• Wheat from Canada helps poor Afghans deflect high prices
• Germans to boost Afghan mission
• Iran opens port to Afghan business
• Governor lashes out at Iran over 'water theft'
• Amid Iraqi gains, Afghanistan stumbles
• Karzai’s threats result of reprimand by Western leaders’
• ANP offers help in mending Pak-Afghan ties
• Can Pakistan peace deal hold?
• Terrorism help for Pakistan
• A sliver of hope
• Taliban issue burqa warning

US-led forces say 55 Taliban killed in Afghanistan

KABUL (AFP) — US-led forces killed around 55 militants including three "key extremist leaders" in clashes near the troubled Afghan-Pakistani border, a coalition statement said on Monday.

Fighting erupted in the Zerok district of eastern Paktika province after rebels attacked a coalition patrol on Friday, a statement said, while a coalition spokesman said the casualties occurred over the past three days.

The violence comes amid the bloodiest phase of an insurgency launched by the Islamist Taliban after their ouster from government by US-led forces in late 2001, with seven foreign soldiers killed over the weekend.

"The coalition patrol received rocket-propelled grenade and small-arms fire from extremist forces. The coalition responded with a combination of small-arms fire and air support," the coalition said after the Paktika clashes.

Another 25 insurgents were wounded and three detained, while three "three key extremist leaders" were among the dead, the statement said. Patrols were bringing in details of further militant casualties, it added.

The announcement came hours after around 200 protesters took to streets in the Khogyani district of eastern Nangarhar province after a father and son were allegedly killed by gunfire from US-led soldiers.

District Khogyani governor Haji Zalmai Khan told AFP that US-led and Afghan troops killed a militant found planting a roadside bomb overnight, but that a coalition base then fired cannons on a suspected rebel hideout.

"One of the cannon shots landed on a house in the nearby village and killed a father and son, who were civilians not Taliban," he said.

The coalition forces denied causing any civilian casualties in Khogyani district and said the operation was ongoing. A spokesman for the Taliban claimed they had killed 10 "American soldiers" in a roadside blast in the district.

The ultra-orthodox Taliban have stepped up their insurgency in Afghanistan in the past two years and there has been a further upsurge in violence this month, posing a major challenge for US-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Six foreign troops including a Polish national were slain in bombings in Afghanistan on Saturday, making it the deadliest day for international soldiers in the war-torn nation this year.

Another US-led soldier and six Afghans died in a suicide bombing on Friday.

The Taliban scored a propaganda victory this month when suicide bombers attacked the main jail in the southern city of Kandahar on June 14, allowing more than 1,000 prisoners to escape including hundreds of militants.

Days later Afghan and NATO troops backed by air power launched a major operation to drive out rebels massed in villages on the outskirts of Kandahar. Afghan officials said 56 rebels were killed.

The violence has meanwhile damaged relations with neighbouring Pakistan.

In the wake of the prison escape, Karzai said that the Kabul government would be justified in striking militant hideouts in Pakistan. Islamabad summoned the Afghan ambassador to protest against the comments.

Pakistani rebels kill four Afghans in rocket attacks

KHOST, Afghanistan (AFP) — Four civilians including two children were killed Sunday when militants from inside Pakistan fired rockets at NATO bases in eastern Afghanistan, the alliance force and police said.

Some 20 rockets slammed the area in two separate incidents, with five of them coming from inside Pakistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.

Afghanistan's defence ministry said in a statement 13 rockets were fired from across the border on NATO and Afghan army bases in Khost.

ISAF in a statement it "responded in self-defence" with artillery fire on the launch site, which it said was "located about 300 metres (985 feet) inside Pakistan."

The force also responded by artillery and an airstrike to an earlier rocket barrage fired from a location inside Afghanistan.

Islamabad was notified about the rebel attack on its bases, ISAF said. "The Pakistan military was immediately notified when ISAF forces came under fire," it said.

The dead included two Afghan children, a doctor in the city's hospital said. "Two dead children and ten people including women and children were admitted to our hospital," the doctor, Abdul Majid Mangal of Khost hospital, told AFP.

The attacks come days after President Hamid Karzai threatened to target insurgent leaders on the Pakistani side of the lawless tribal region where Afghan and NATO officials say Islamic militants maintain training camps.

"This is another reason why the international community must pressure Pakistan to stop militant activities within it's territory," Karzai's chief spokesman, Homayun Hamidzada, told AFP.

"President Karzai was right when saying those threatening the security of Afghans and the international forces must be dealt with by force in their hideouts, wherever they're," the spokesman added.

The Afghan defence ministry said that the army separately to ISAF's response returned artillery fire, targeting militants on the other side of the frontier.

"In response, the army fired... 28 artillery rounds into the launching site of the rockets in Pakistan. There were no reports of casualties yet," the ministry's spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi, said in a statement.

The latest attack came a day after another NATO military outpost and an Afghan army base came under rocket attack in the neighbouring Paktika province but there were no casualties.

In separate incidents linked to the Taliban insurgency a suspected would-be suicide bomber detonated himself up after a security guard fired at him in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday, a police commander said.

The bomber was trying to climb up a wall into the house of a pro-Kabul tribal chief, Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told AFP.

Afghans protest alleged civilian casualties by US forces

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AFP) — Hundreds of protesters took to streets in eastern Afghanistan on Monday after a father and son were allegedly killed by gunfire from US-led soldiers, a governor and witnesses said.

Around 200 people demonstrated in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, chanting "We want the trial of those responsible for the death of civilians," witnesses said.

US-led coalition and Afghan troops were on patrol overnight in Khogyani when they saw a militant planting a bomb by a road, Khogyani governor Haji Zalmai Khan told AFP.

"They opened fire and killed the militant on the spot and it was followed by cannon fire from a coalition base on a suspected Taliban hideout in the area," Khan said.

"One of the cannon shots landed on a house in the nearby village and killed a father and son, who were civilians not Taliban," he said.

The coalition forces denied causing any civilian casualties in Khogyani district but said they could not provide details since their operation in the area was ongoing on Monday.

A spokesman for the Taliban, who were ousted from power in late 2001 by a US-led invasion, claimed they had killed ten "American soldiers" in a roadside blast in the district.

FACTBOX - Security developments in Afghanistan

Reuters, Sun Jun 22, 2008 - Following are security developments in Afghanistan at 9 a.m. British time on Sunday:

KHOST - Rockets fired from Pakistan hit a residential area in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday killing one woman and three children, the Afghan provincial governor said on Sunday.

KUNAR - A suspected Taliban rocket fired from Pakistan hit a hospital in the northeastern town of Asadabad in Kunar province on Saturday, killing one man and wounding another man and a woman, provincial Governor Sayed Fazlullah Wahidi said.

PAKTIKA - Artillery shells fired from Pakistan landed in an Afghan army compound and close to an international military base in Afghanistan on Saturday and NATO forces returned fire, the alliance said. No casualties were reported.

GHAZNI - Afghan soldiers detained several militants, including one Pakistani national, in two separate districts in the province of Ghazni, south of Kabul, on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said.

ZABUL/KUNAR - Five Afghan soldiers were killed and three more wounded after coming under insurgent fire in two separate incidents in the northeastern province of Kunar and the southern province of Zabul on Saturday, the Defence Ministry said. (Compiled by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Valerie Lee)

From Afghanistan, NATO Shells Militants in Pakistan

The New York Times - By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and DEXTER FILKINS - June 23, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO forces in Afghanistan shelled guerrillas in Pakistan in two separate episodes on Sunday, as escalating insurgent violence appeared to be eroding the alliance’s restraint along the border.

NATO officials said they had retaliated against rocket and artillery attacks launched by militants from sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, where they operate freely. The insurgents’ attacks, launched into Khost and Paktika Provinces, killed four Afghan civilians, at least two of them children, Afghan and NATO officials said. Casualty figures for Pakistan were not available.

The firing by NATO forces into Pakistani territory followed an American airstrike on a Pakistani border post earlier this month that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers. The Pakistani government denounced the strike, and the American government expressed regret, but it is still not entirely clear what happened.

Relations between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan were already extraordinarily tense. American and Afghan officials say the surging violence in Afghanistan is in large part caused by the sanctuaries that militants enjoy in Pakistan. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, have assembled in Pakistan, most of them in the area along the remote and mountainous frontier where the government exercises no authority.

In those sanctuaries, the militants are free to train, regroup and plan new attacks in Afghanistan. American and NATO commanders have expressed frustration at the violence caused by the militants who cross from Pakistan, but they have so far been refused permission to conduct military operations there.

Last week, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan threatened to send troops across the border to attack the militants if the Pakistani government did not prevent them from crossing the border. The Pakistani government has never exercised more than nominal control over long stretches of its border with Afghanistan, and Pakistani leaders say they do not have enough troops to secure the area.

The first attack came shortly after midnight in Khost Province, where militants inside Afghanistan fired 13 rockets, apparently at a base for the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO force charged with maintaining order in Afghanistan. One rocket hit the base, causing no casualties, but another killed an Afghan civilian, officials said.

Later, in a second volley, five rockets sailed in from Pakistan, striking the village of Kundai, where a woman and her two children were killed, officials said. The security forces there located the militants’ firing battery several hundred yards inside Pakistan and returned fire.

Officials from the security force gave no details of their own artillery barrage, except to say that Pakistani officials were immediately informed of the shelling. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas of the Pakistani military said he knew nothing about any incidents along the border.

“We need to defend ourselves,” said Gen. Carlos Branco, a spokesman for the security force.

In the second episode, an Afghan Army post in Paktika Province came under artillery fire from Pakistan. The international security forces located the firing battery on the other side of the border and returned fire. Officials provided no other details.

Also on Sunday, the governor of Kunar Province in Afghanistan reported that a rocket from Pakistan struck a hospital on Saturday in the town of Asadabad in Kunar. The same day, an American bomb landed on the border near a Pakistani post in North Waziristan during fighting with militants, General Abbas said.

Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, and Dexter Filkins from Islamabad, Pakistan.

‘Taliban advance only made possible by Al Qaeda’s help’

Daily Times - National - By Khalid Hasan Monday, June 23, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Taliban advance in Afghanistan could not have taken place without support from Al Qaeda, according to Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid.

He told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview on Sunday that Al Qaeda has established a route to Iraq for the Taliban and “there is a lot of traffic” on it. He said Al Qaeda is also raking in vast amounts of money from the drugs trade, some of which it is siphoning off to the Taliban. The sophistication with which the Taiban carried out the recent jailbreak seems to have been carried out with the help of Al Qaeda. “Al Qaeda seems to be very much an organisational coup for the Taliban,” he added.

Rashid, asked about Osama Bin Laden’s capture, replied that President Bush would like to see him captured before the United States presidential elections but “we have no indication on the ground that anything dramatic is about to happen”.

He said the US has stepped up its attacks, including attacks by drones, on the Pakistani side of the border and if intelligence indicates that there is a gathering of Taliban or Al Qaeda, the US acts very, very fast and does not always seem to have asked the Pakistanis for permission. Asked if the new government in Islamabad was really going to move against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he replied, “The problem is that the military has been engaging the Taliban in peace deals for quite some years and they have not been able to get very much out of it.

I think what the civilian government wants to do is to have a more comprehensive plan - political reform in the Tribal Areas, where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are based, and economic development. But such plans have to be backed by a strong military position and the problem now is that the military is in a very static position. The military is not on the offensive, it is not showing a picture of strength to the extremists and this is going to stymie the whole effort by the civilian government.”

Asked if the new government is going to take steps to go after the terrorists, Rashid answered that it would do so, provided the army and the new government were “speaking from the same page”, which he believes they are not. What is needed is a mixture of social and economic development, plus military power, which only the army can provide, he argues. Asked whether there are elements in the Pakistani military sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Rashid replied: “I think there is enormous sympathy for the Taliban within the military establishment and there is no doubt that the Taliban do have sanctuaries in Pakistan where they are not affected by any kind of military action.” He said 30-40 percent of the fighters coming into southern Afghanistan are coming from the Pakistani side of the border.

Afghan gov't arrests 2 suicide bomber suspects

KABUL, June 23 (Xinhua) -- Afghan law enforcing agencies have arrested two suicide bomber suspects in the restive Kandahar province in south Afghanistan, provincial governor Assadullah Khalid said Monday.

    "Ali Ahmad, 20 and Abdul Zahir, 30 have been tasked to carry on suicide bombings in Kandahar province and were arrested in the border town of Spinboldak two days ago on Saturday," Khalid told a press conference in Kandahar city.

    He also added that both are from the Quetta city of Pakistan. Both were shown to newsmen and Ali Ahmad confessed that he came here to make Jihad or holy war against Afghan and foreign forces based in Afghanistan.

    Kandahar became the scene of severe clashes between Taliban rebels and government forces last week during which more than 100 people including 94 insurgents had been killed.

In Afghan police training, US aims to curb corruption

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times  |  June 23, 2008

FARAH, Afghanistan - There were two good reasons why Captain Dave Panian made a perilous journey across the desert to this dusty provincial capital.

He wanted to check on his close friend, a district police chief whose family had been threatened by the Taliban. He also wanted to pry loose salaries for the chief's police officers, who were owed two months' pay.

Panian, a lanky officer from San Diego, heads a small US Army team training local police near the village of Bala Buluk, 40 miles northeast of Farah in southwest Afghanistan, where his friend Haji Khudaydad is the chief. Training is the easy part. The hard part is cutting through threats, bureaucracy, cronyism, and corruption.

The effectiveness of police and other local officials is taking on growing importance as the Taliban move to regain territory in southern Afghanistan this summer. Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops battled the Taliban last week for control of villages around the city of Kandahar, about 220 miles east of Farah.

Throughout the country, police often have been little more than hired guns who raise money for local warlords through illegal taxes, shakedowns, and corruption. Many police and district officials sell weapons and opium. Some collude with the Taliban. Since 2003, trainers such as Panian from the US military and its foreign partners have been working to reform the police.

Some units have fought effectively alongside US forces, but others remain mired in cronyism and Mafia-like criminal enterprises. With fighting picking up in southern Afghanistan, the role of police chiefs such as Khudaydad and the loyalty of their officers are crucial.

So Panian got into a shouting match with provincial officials who refused to release last month's pay for the police. He ended up storming over to the local bank and coming out with a plastic bag stuffed with the equivalent of $14,000 in afghanis, the local currency. But first he warned the officials that there would be "hell to pay" if they didn't cough up this month's pay the next day.

Then Panian found out that even though the Taliban had placed a $30,000 bounty on Khudaydad, officials had refused to help him move his wives and children outside the provincial capital, to where relatives and fellow tribesmen could protect them.

After a harrowing seven-hour drive across the desert at night in a convoy of police, US soldiers, and Marines, Khudaydad was delivered back to his Bala Buluk compound. He was relieved to be out of Farah.

"I don't trust those people," Khudaydad said of certain provincial officials.

In Bala Buluk, Panian's 14 trainers live in a spartan compound next to district police headquarters. They have run about 100 police officers through an eight-week police academy in Herat, about 140 miles to the north, and mentored Khudaydad's officers daily for six months.

"I won't deny there's still corruption, but it's at a much lower level," Panian said.

Panian and his trainers forced out two previous chiefs. One extorted cash from local shopkeepers and imposed taxes on passing vehicles. The other ran drugs and guns, according to US team members.

The trainers maneuvered Khudaydad into the chief's job, even though he is a sergeant major, not an officer. They consider him tough, fair, and honest.

"He's not blameless, but he's as good as they come based on what we've seen here," Panian said.

Khudaydad, who appears to be in his mid-40s, has a long face, a wispy, black beard, and expressive brown eyes. He seems to command respect from his men, who listen closely when he speaks.

He fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, and in 2001 turned against the Taliban, which he said has killed 38 of his family members and fellow tribesmen, including four nephews and two sons.

Twelve of Khudaydad's officers have died since he took over as chief April 2. Some were killed in a vehicle accident, but others died in fighting against the Taliban in late May, in which a US trainer also was killed.

The Taliban control much of the countryside in Farah Province, where their fighters plant roadside bombs and mount occasional ambushes. A roadside bomb killed four Marines earlier this month.

"I waited a long time for the Americans to come," Khudaydad said, referring to training, weapons, and equipment US forces have provided.

Routing of Fighters Brings Anxious Calm to Kandahar

Despite Swift Action, Confidence in NATO, Afghan Forces Waning

Washington Post - By Candace Rondeaux Monday, June 23, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - A tense quiet has settled here in Afghanistan's second-largest city, a little more than a week after hundreds of Taliban fighters mounted a dramatic prison break, then briefly took control of several villages in the area.

One of the city's main traffic circles, Chowk-e Shahidan, was nearly empty, except for a cluster of armored vehicles manned by Afghan and Canadian soldiers. Just a few shoppers roamed nearby Herat Bazaar, Kandahar's largest market, and a couple of dusty green pickup trucks full of Afghan police ranged the empty streets, past carts brimming with mangoes.

At Sarposa Prison, a few miles from Herat Bazaar, Afghan police and soldiers cleared debris from the suicide bomb attack on June 13 that blew apart the walls at the main gate. The carcasses of two dozen cars and minivans still littered the area just outside the entrance, where at least 20 Afghan soldiers and police officers were killed in the explosion and a hail of rocket and gunfire. Afghan officials say many of the 350 to 400 Taliban fighters freed in the attack remain at large.

In the lush fruit-growing district of Arghandab, about 12 miles northwest of Kandahar, NATO and Afghan troops patrol the villages that fell under Taliban control when insurgents launched an offensive there last Monday after the prison attack. The troops have largely rid the district of insurgents, but hundreds of residents remain with relatives and friends in Kandahar while soldiers remove mines laid by the insurgents.

NATO and Afghan military officials quickly claimed victory in Kandahar after more than 1,000 foreign troops were deployed to help beat back the insurgents in Arghandab. But security concerns continue to rattle many in the region, which has long been the heart of the Taliban insurgency.

And even as Afghan officials reported that about 94 Taliban fighters were killed and 29 captured as insurgents fled the area, NATO and Afghan casualties linked to the counteroffensive mounted over the weekend.

On Saturday, four foreign soldiers were killed and two were injured when a NATO convoy was ambushed after hitting a roadside bomb in Kandahar, according to Lt. Col. Paul Fanning, a U.S. military spokesman. Insurgents opened fire on the convoy after the explosion, which damaged several vehicles, Fanning said.

In all, eight foreign troops have been killed in the fighting since the counteroffensive in Kandahar was launched; their names and nationalities have been withheld pending notification of their families.

Despite the swift military response in Arghandab, confidence in the nascent Afghan security forces and NATO troops is waning in the region.

Hayatullah Alokhor, a tribal elder from the village of Loytabil in Arghandab, said he and his family fled their homes when hundreds of Taliban fighters began appearing in the district after the prison attack.

Alokhor, a member of the local district council, said he and other council members had warned Afghan, Canadian and U.S. soldiers of a growing Taliban presence in the nearby district of Kharkrez during a council meeting two weeks before the prison break.

"I told the American and Canadian soldiers that the Taliban was regrouping. I told them that the security situation was getting worse in Kharkrez," Alokhor said. "They said they would tell their superiors, but then nothing happened."

Security in districts west of Kandahar has deteriorated so rapidly that many tribal elders are considering forming their own militias to fight the insurgents, Alokhor said. "The police will not be able to bring security to the area. They are too new at this and they don't have the proper training," he said.

Kandahar -- the capital of Afghanistan's most populous southern province, also called Kandahar -- has been a center of Afghan political power for centuries. It has also been the nerve center of the Taliban insurgency, which has run like a river through the heart of the conflict in Afghanistan since the mid-1990s under the leadership of its founder, Mohammad Omar.

Afghan security officials have repeatedly blamed the resurgent Taliban activity in Kandahar on an influx of foreign fighters who have crossed into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan. Many of the inmates freed in last week's prison break are from Pakistan's lawless tribal areas on Afghanistan's eastern border, which have become a hotbed of training for suicide bombers and Islamist fighters, according to Afghan officials in Kandahar.

Kandahar's provincial police chief, Sayed Agha Saqib, said about 20 mid-level Pakistani Taliban commanders -- many of them key strategists in the insurgency's suicide attack networks -- were among those freed in the prison attack.

Saqib said that investigators believe the prison raid was planned by Taliban leaders "inside and outside Afghanistan" and that it bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda tactics. He accused Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency of having a hand in the attack.

"There is absolutely no doubt that this was an al-Qaeda-led attack, and there is no difference here between the Taliban, the ISI and al-Qaeda."

Pakistan has denied that its intelligence agencies, which funded and supported the Taliban during the Soviet incursion in Afghanistan in the 1980s, continue to harbor links with the Taliban.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the influential head of the Kandahar provincial council, expressed doubt about the Taliban's staying power, saying that the Arghandab offensive and the prison raid were meant to do little more than send a message that the insurgency is still alive.

"The Taliban is no longer a movement that can take over a city or a province," he said. "The Taliban is now the kind of movement that can say, 'We can still create problems for you.' " More than 8,000 people were killed in Taliban-led attacks last year, and more than 1,700 have been killed this year in insurgent attacks.

Meanwhile, confidence in the NATO mission in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low. Western donor countries agreed two weeks ago in Paris to give about $21 billion in aid to Afghanistan, but that amount is less than half that requested by the beleaguered Afghan government. And as NATO casualties rise -- particularly among the Canadians, who lead NATO forces in the south -- coalition partners are facing domestic pressure to withdraw from the mission.

Ahmed Wali Karzai attributed the success of the most recent anti-Taliban operation to Afghan coordination with foreign troops in the region and a more rapid response from NATO's headquarters in Kabul, the capital.

But he added that the region, and the country, desperately needed to better prepare for the next wave of attacks. "We need a quick-action force so we can go after them," Karzai said. "We shouldn't be in a position of defending the city. We should go after the Taliban instead."

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Wheat from Canada helps poor Afghans deflect high prices

Canwest News Service Sunday, June 22, 2008

KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan -- Bakht Bibi stares a visitor straight in the eye - highly unusual when it's a foreign male meeting an Afghan woman in conservative Kandahar - and describes "the pain in my heart."

"Our family has had days when we ate nothing," says the female head of a household of 10. She has had to beg and borrow to feed her family, and even when there's food, meals can consist of half a loaf of bread shared by all.

"It's very difficult in Kandahar. The prices are very, very high - people are greatly affected by this," Bibi says through a Pashto interpreter. On Sunday, the widows of Kandahar City gathered at a girls school which has been converted into a temporary food distribution centre.

It's harvest season in one of the poorest countries in the world, but the international community is still pouring food aid into Afghanistan. There's food in the stores, but at prices that are becoming out of reach for a growing number.

"How can I afford this very high-priced food?" asks Shagula, who heads a household of seven. She's more fortunate than others here. Shagula - who like many Afghans goes by one name - earns a modest income from part-time cleaning jobs. "We eat the same as before," she says proudly, but her family has switched from the main Afghan staple of bread to cheaper rice, and there's not always enough.

"Many times we have slept hungry," she says, complaining that a loaf of bread that once sold for five Afghanis now costs twice as much, and it's smaller.

Domestic drought and strife combined with a global food crisis is pushing those living on the margins closer to the edge.

There are aid worker reports from across the country of people killing themselves in despair and of daughters being sold so parents can afford to feed the rest of the family (President Hamid Karzai personally intervened in one such case).

On this day, the widows line up with their helpers to each receive two, 50-kilogram bags of wheat. Bibi says it will feed her large family for a month. The bags, stamped "Gift of Canada," are being distributed across the country, including to 25,000 families in Kandahar province, as part of an emergency intervention by the World Food Programme (WFP) to assist those hit the worst by high food prices. Widows, the disabled, the elderly and low-income large families are the focus.

The WFP tracks retail prices for food staples and monitors the proportion of household incomes that goes towards buying food. WFP Afghan co-ordinator Rick Corsino says a kilogram of wheat in Kandahar has more than doubled in price since a year ago (which is actually down from April when it was more than triple) and the average local family now spends 85 per cent of household income on food versus 50 per cent two years ago.

"That's an extremely high percentage no matter how you look at it," says Corsino. "Afghan families are spending almost all their income on food."

The Afghan government was quicker than most other nations in responding in January to the global surge in food prices by calling, and receiving, food aid assistance.
Canada, the WFP's second-largest donor in Afghanistan, was the first country to respond, has given the agency $30 million for its work here in 2008, a third of it earmarked for price mitigation food aid.

"This is a quick-response to the high prices of food," says Bakhtiar Elmi, the WFP's program head for southern Afghanistan. "This is an emergency - these people, they cannot buy the expensive food with their incomes," he says, adding the forecast is for a "very bad" grain crop this year.

About a fifth of the 65,000 tonnes in 2008 WFP Afghan food aid is going toward the price mitigation intervention, the first time such a program is being implemented. The bulk of food donations, benefitting almost two million Afghans this year, are distributed through food for work and food for learning programs, the latter to encourage families to send their children to school.

"It's very difficult for me and other big families," says Wali Mohd, who joined a crowd of mostly older men at another city food distribution centre Sunday. "It's not possible to feed our families without external assistance."

Sayed Bilind, whose household numbers 14, said the drought in Afghanistan, compounded by the south's neglected dams and gravity-fed irrigation system, forces farmers to pump well water, but that requires fuel: "It's very expensive, so we can't afford to grow wheat."

Spotting a reporter amidst the clamouring for bags of "Gift of Canada" wheat, Bilind asks a WFP organizer: "Is he from Canada? Tell him we are very thankful . . . and ask him to tell Canadians not to forget us."

Over at the girls school, Bibi, surrounded by other widows who nod in agreement from under their burqas, says she only hopes there are more such gifts from Canada when her current supply runs out sometime next month.

As with local shoppers, aid agencies are finding their money is not going as far as it used to. The WFP paid an average of $430 US for a tonne of wheat during the first four months of 2008, compared to $207 US during the same period last year.

With the food price crisis unlikely to subside soon, WFP organizers say a new international appeal for Afghanistan could be necessary.

Germans to boost Afghan mission

By Hugh Williamson in Berlin - June 22 2008 19:35

Germany is preparing to send more troops to Afghanistan following repeated requests from the US and other Nato countries, but it is unlikely to give in to pressure to deploy forces in the embattled south of the war-torn country.

Officials say Franz Josef Jung, the defence minister, is expected to announce this week a proposed increase from the current upper limit of 3,500 troops to a new limit of 4,500 soldiers from the autumn onwards, when parliament is due to approve the latest extension to Berlin’s overseas military mission.

Robert Gates, the US defence secretary told Mr Jung earlier this year in a bluntly worded letter – later leaked to the press – that Germany should pull its weight by helping to confront Taliban rebels in southern Afghanistan, where the fighting is most intense.

German troops are deployed as part of the Isaf peacekeeping force, mostly in the relatively stable north. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, said at the time that she had “absolutely no time” for such a redeployment, arguing that “continuity and stability” were more important.

This stance has essentially not changed, according to government officials and defence experts in Berlin. The defence ministry refused to comment.

Mr Jung told German radio that a higher upper limit was necessary to provide “more flexibility” – for instance, in providing training next year for 7,500 Afghan troops.

Germany is likely to highlight this week’s announcement as another sign of its strengthened commitment to Afghanistan, thereby hoping to deflect complaints over its unwillingness to redeploy to the south.

From July 1, Germany is for the first time set to deploy a “quick reaction force” of about 200 troops in northern Afghanistan, to provide rapid security and combat support to Nato troops.

The length of the new mandate is expected to be between 14 and 18 months, compared with the previous 12-month deployments, although this is largely aimed at avoiding debate on a further extension during next year’s election, expected in September.

The timing of Mr Jung’s announcement is linked to domestic politics. Parliament goes into summer recess next weekend, and since Ms Merkel’s “grand coalition” is expected to give the proposal prompt backing, the aim is to limit opportunities for opposition parties to mount effective resistance to the move.

The resurgent Left party, in particular, opposes German troops in northern Afghanistan – let alone in the south – and public support for the mission has also diminished recently.

Egon Ramms, a Nato general of German nationality with responsibility for Isaf, welcomed Mr Jung’s signal that more troops would be sent, although he said the soldiers were needed “sooner rather than later”. In total, Isaf needed an extra 6,000 troops, he added.

Iran opens port to Afghan business

www.quqnoos.com - Written by PAN Sunday, 22 June 2008 

Businessmen to get special permits to use Iranian sea port.

IRAN has agreed to let Afghan businessmen use the Iranian sea port of Chabahar to import and export goods into and out of their country.

The historic deal will weaken Afghanistan’s reliance on Pakistan as a transit route for goods travelling into and out of the country.

The head of Afghanistan’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Mohammad Qurban Haqjo, said the deal, singed on June 19, will boost trade and create business opportunities for the country’s private sector.

The port is located on the Oman Gulf, about 700km from the Afghan province of Nimroz, and serves as a jumping off point to the Indian Ocean through the Arabian Sea.

The nearest sea port Afghanistan is currently allowed to use is in Karachi, Pakistan, 1,200km from Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar.

Haqjo said the route through Pakistan was fraught with problems for Afghan businessmen: goods are often seized by customs officials or delayed for months.

Businessmen have also complained in the past of the deteriorating security situation along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The port at Chabahar will allow Afghan goods to reach the international market far quicker, he said.

The Iranian government will rent 50 hectares of the port’s land to Afghan businessmen for the next 99 years as part of the landmark deal.

The Iranian government’s representative in Chabahar, Dr Baqer Zada, said Afghans will be allowed to start up construction companies, hotels and tourism businesses in the port

"We are neighbours. We share the same religion. We want to encourage Afghan private sector development," he said.

Businessmen will be able to obtain a special permit to travel to Chabahar without having to apply for a visa. Malaysia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and China all use the port.         

Governor lashes out at Iran over 'water theft'

Written by www.quqnoos.com - Sunday, 22 June 2008 

Nimroz head accuses Iran of digging tunnels to steal province's water

THE GOVERNOR of Nimroz has accused Iran of intensifying the drought in his province by siphoning off more than its quota of water from the Hiromand River.

The recent lack of rain in the province, which shares its border and the Hiromand River with Iran, has triggered a lack of clean drinking water in the area.

Governor Ghullam Dastager Azad said the Iranian government were digging illegal tunnels to reach the river’s water supply.

In Nimroz, residents receive water in tankers but, across the border, Iran has built water towers to ensure resident have enough water. Iran refused to comment about the allegations.

Amid Iraqi gains, Afghanistan stumbles

Tampabay.com, FL - By Susan Taylor Martin, Times senior correspondent Monday, June 23, 2008

For John McCain, campaign issues involving foreign wars are like an old sofa — push the springs down in one place and they pop up in another.

For now at least, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee can boast that the troop surge in Iraq, which he supported, is having a positive effect. Iraqi deaths in May were at their lowest this year, and American deaths were the lowest since the 2003 invasion.

Unfortunately, there's also a war in Afghanistan. And that isn't going so well because — as presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama charges — the Bush administration shifted too much attention to Iraq when it should have stayed focused on eliminating al-Qaida and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan.

For the first time in five years, more U.S. and other coalition soldiers died last month on Afghan soil than Iraqi. Despite $16.5-billion in Pentagon aid, only two of 105 Afghan army units are "fully capable,'' according to the Government Accountability Office. And the Taliban is growing stronger in areas, to the point that fighters recently sprang 400 prisoners and threatened Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, before being repulsed by NATO forces last week.

"There's no question that the situation here is deteriorating,'' says Tim Lynch, head of Vigilant Strategic Services Afghanistan. "The problem is that the central government cannot exert influence or control into the provinces, and all kinds of people — Taliban, drug barons, warlords, petty criminals, military officers, etc. — are filling the power vacuum.''

Lynch, son of a retired general who lives in Tampa, is a 49-year-old no-nonsense ex-Marine. I got to know him when I visited Kabul, the capital, in late 2006.

While thousands of Americans have come and gone, Lynch has remained in Afghanistan, where his company provides security for Japanese aid workers, among others. He has traveled all over Afghanistan, giving him a good feel for what is going wrong — and right — there.

As he suggests, a huge problem is the weakness of the Kabul-based central government. The leadership woes start with President Hamid Karzai, who has been unable or unwilling to crack down on rampant corruption and firmly deal with regional warlords who derive much of their power from the opium poppy trade.

Karzai, who speaks English and cuts a dashing figure, still has the support of the West. But he is increasingly unpopular among Afghans, who have seen only modest improvement in their lives since the brutally repressive Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.

That's a problem, but also an opportunity, Lynch says.

While dislike for Karzai is strong, "the average Afghan has no use for the Taliban and their very conservative religious views, even though they are a conservative, religious people,'' Lynch says. Much of Afghanistan "desperately wants our help and appreciates us being there.''

The effectiveness of American aid efforts, though, has been hurt by the reluctance of U.S. contractors and aid workers to venture out unless they're in big armored SUVs with heavy security — security that, paradoxically, makes them highly visible targets.

The Japanese, by comparison, "spend a fraction what the U.S. does as far as security and operating expenses,'' Lynch says. "They are very, very effective in getting aid dollars to Afghanistan, and that's one area where I'm very critical of our government and its over-elaborate security precautions.''

Lynch also thinks the United States is squandering resources and goodwill trying to eradicate opium poppies, source of 93 percent of the world's heroin but also the only livelihood for many Afghans.

"It's a ridiculous policy that is only targeting the poorest and most vulnerable farmers," he says. "All the nice fields held by wealthy, connected Afghans are never touched.'' Rather than being destroyed, the poppies could be used for opiate-based analgesics in poor countries, he suggests.

On the military front, U.S. Marines have employed massive firepower to rout the Taliban from some areas that the British had virtually ceded to insurgents. But unlike Iraq, where most coalition troops are Americans under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, the 60,000 troops in Afghanistan come from several countries and lack a single strategic vision for countering the insurgency.

"I think that's a problem,'' says Lynch's father, retired Maj. Gen. Jarvis Lynch Jr. "They have different rules of engagement and different levels of aggressiveness that they're allowed to undertake. I don't think there's any particular unity of command.''

His son, though, remains optimistic that Afghanistan can be salvaged. He has expanded his business from Kabul — generally safe enough that his 22-year-old daughter did security checks at the airport — to the eastern city of Jalalabad. There he has a guesthouse and bar frequented by foreigners.

"I would say that 90 percent of the country is anything but a war zone,'' Lynch says. "All these people want is a little help to get a foot up. They're scratching their heads over how we've been here seven years and they still don't have electricity, but they are patient and willing to wait.''

Karzai’s threats result of reprimand by Western leaders’

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmad Mukhtar has said that Afghan President Hamid Karzai would not have dared to threaten Pakistan had he not been reprimanded by Western leaders on the volatile situation in his own country, a private television channel reported on Sunday.

Dawn News quoted Mukhtar as telling a public gathering near Gujrat that Pakistan might continue to receive such threats in the future if the nation did not stand united.

He said Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz chief Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had exceptional mutual understanding and they were working together to solve the problems challenging the country. He said the government could get along with the Pakistan Muslim League Quaid but only with “genuine people”, adding that the aim of the government was to forge a unity among the provinces. Mukhtar said the Pakistan Armed forces are very professional and know how to perform their professional and national obligations.

ANP offers help in mending Pak-Afghan ties

Daily Times - PESHAWAR: Afghan traders have been asked to play an effective role in improving Pak-Afghan government ties, NWFP Senior Minister and Parliamentary leader of Awami National Party (ANP) Bashir Ahmad Bilour said on Sunday while offering the services of his party and the provincial government to help improve these ties.

Talking to a joint delegation of Pak-Afghan traders and media, he said the Pashtuns are living on both sides of the Pak-Afghan border right from Pakhtoonkhwa to Balochistan and share the same language, creed, religion as well as historical and cultural values. He said it was the right time to provide maximum facilities of continuing mutual relations to both sides, instead of creating a new gulf of differences and unrest among them.

Peace: Bilour added that some members of the Afghan government and others may not be on Pakistan’s side, but peace was necessary in the region, which can only be reached through dialogue, and not war or bloodshed.

Bilour agreed with the delegation’s argument that the threat by Afghan President Hamid Karzai of action in Pakistani territories upset the Afghan population along with the Pakistani public, adding that such misunderstandings can be amended with effective relations between both governments.

The senior minister expressed his confidence that the Pakistani and Afghani governments could take concrete measures to bring peace and stability in the region by developing effective relations in the wider interest of their people. ”Both the governments can not afford to increase miseries of its people and further disturb peace in the region by hurling allegations,” he concluded. He assured proper action would be taken for certain problems and grievances voiced by the delegation. The Afghan traders also praised the policies of the ANP government concerning striking a peace agreement in Swat to ensure stability in the NWFP as well as saving Pashtuns of both countries from bloodshed.

They also thanked the Pakistani government and especially the people of the NWFP for hosting millions of Afghan refugees for such a long time and assured that the philosophy of non-violence of Afghan pride would be promoted in Afghanistan to ensure durable peace. online

Can Pakistan peace deal hold?

By Barbara Plett - BBC News, Mingora

Rugged mountains and fertile valleys slide past our windows as we near Swat, Pakistan's most famous tourist destination.

In the past year this scenic paradise in the north-west of the country has become infamous for violent conflict with Taleban militants. But the fighting has ended, and we've come to see what's changed.

It's a fragile peace, judging by the size of the security escort we pick up outside the main city, Mingora. Two police vehicles, sometimes three, keep us inside city limits.

On the outskirts, we catch a glimpse of the seminary that had served as the Taleban base. From here local militants imposed their version of Islamic rule: they torched girls' schools, and beheaded their captives.

The Taleban were routed earlier this year when the army was brought in. And now the new provincial government has signed a peace deal with them, promising to release prisoners and gradually pull back the army in exchange for an end to attacks and intimidation.

As a result, the Haji Baba Government Girls' School has come back to life, just as the semester draws to a close. The courtyard echoes with the national anthem before girls disperse to their classrooms to write exams for courses they never had a chance to complete.

Miriam and her sister Hajra carefully do their sums, sitting on the floor because the school doesn't have money for desks. They've lost a year of education, and don't want to fall further behind.

But at their home nearby, their father, Sher Ali Khan, tells us he's making plans in case the peace doesn't hold.

"If the violence starts again we'll move," he says, "for the sake of our children's education."

"The threats have stopped, but the situation isn't peaceful," says Perveen Rehman, the headmistress of another girls' school.

"Any person who goes out from his home, we're not sure he'll come back, we're worried and feel insecure."

To get this peace the government accepted the Taleban's demand that Islamic law be implemented in Swat. Many here welcomed this, even though they hated the Taleban's violence.

At the Mingora district court Ali Shah has been fighting a land dispute for two years, trying to wrest back several acres he says were seized by relatives. He misses work three or four times a month to attend hearings, and he's fed up.

"If Islamic law is enforced here our cases will be solved in two or three weeks," he tells me. "Plus in the courts right now there's no difference between the oppressed and the oppressor. If Islamic law is imposed we'll be able to distinguish between the two and get justice."

Many others agree. The government system is painfully slow and seen to favour the powerful. For ordinary people Islamic law means swift justice.

But Perveen Rehman isn't sure what kind of Islamic law to expect.

"If it's real Islamic Sharia, I am hopeful that it will bring peace," she says carefully. "But if it's the Sharia the Taleban want to bring, I don't think it will be satisfying, because how would we educate the girls, and keep our own professions?"

One profession that has really suffered is the police force. Militants specifically targeted policemen, killing and wounding more than 100. Dozens deserted for lack of protection.

But at police training grounds in Mingora 200 recruits have turned up to join the force. Eager to pass the fitness test, they race around a grassy running track, some of them barefoot, encouraged by shouts from the watching veterans.

Officers are pleased by the turnout, it shows that morale is up, they say.

Still, people's apprehensions are understandable. Recently the Taleban suspended talks with the government, saying the prisoner release was moving too slowly. Perhaps it's a bargaining tactic. Some fear it may mean a return to violence.

And some, like lawyer Sher Muhammed, believe the government's already conceded too much to the militants.

"After the peace deal these people have reorganised themselves, and they are roaming, heavily armed, with sophisticated weapons in the villages," he says. "They show their force, and the society in these areas is harassed, scared and feeling unsafe."

America has also raised objections to such deals. It's worried about the flow of Taleban fighters across the border, afraid that peace in Pakistan means more war in Afghanistan.

Swat's not part of the frontier area that America's most worried about. Still, there's no mention in the peace agreement about ending cross-border attacks, and many local Taleban clearly sympathise with the Afghan insurgency.

"Our priority is to get Islamic law in Swat, not fight in Afghanistan," the Taleban spokesman, Muslim Khan, tells the BBC. "But even so, thousands of foreign troops have come to fight a few Taleban there. So why can't a Muslim go and help his brothers?"

The government is unapologetic about the Taleban peace deal.

"Seven years we've been fighting with the people and we got no result," says the chief government negotiator, Bashir Bilour. "Why should we keep doing something that can't get us any result, we should change the path… We are not a colony of America, we have our own policies."

A crucial measure of the policy's success would be a revival of tourism, the lifeblood of Swat. The violence has been a disaster: tens of thousands of workers have been laid off. Hotels stand empty, with silent hallways, vacant rooms and drained swimming pools. Waiters continue to lay tables for guests who never come.

One souvenir seller has been left with $150,000 worth of stock, his shop has been closed for six months. Like everyone else in Swat, he's hopeful, but uncertain, that the peace deal will turn things around.

"When they started these negotiations, the bomb blasts stopped," he says, "so maybe, maybe, I'm not sure, but maybe it's a good sign, I'm not sure… "

The agreement has brought some relief. It's part of a wider policy the government hopes can contain militancy and bring stability, not only in Swat but in the restive tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Much rides on it.

For many here, it's a strategy of the last resort, because all the alternatives have failed.

Terrorism help for Pakistan

Sydney Morning Herald, Australia - June 23, 2008

AUSTRALIAN counter-terrorism experts could be sent to Pakistan under a far-reaching plan by the Federal Government to help that country promote stability, slow the spread of Islamic extremism and stem the flow of insurgents into Afghanistan.

The plan would mark a significant deepening of Australian-Pakistani relations and could result in the two countries working together on the types of extensive counter-terrorism programs that have been extended to Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. Senior Government sources told the Herald the measures would extend beyond security and include plans to develop an extradition treaty, formalise dialogues between senior officials and ministers , deal with food security, assist with security training and extend aid and development assistance.

Government sources said closer engagement with Pakistan could help promote stability - including the protection of the country's nuclear arsenal - and prevent the flow of insurgents from sanctuaries in the western tribal areas, who have been attacking NATO-led and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. It could also allay any Pakistani concerns about Australia's expanding ties with India.

It is understood the plan is being drafted by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade with input from agencies including the federal police, the Defence Force, the Immigration Department and the Attorney-General's Department. It would build on a counter-terrorism memorandum Australia and Pakistan signed in 2005.

The Rudd Government has shifted its focus from the war on Iraq - from which the last Australian combat troops returned yesterday - to the war in Afghanistan, where Australia's 1100 troops operate in some of the most dangerous provinces, including Oruzgan, which is close to Pakistan.

Government sources said Australia was well placed to provide counter-terrorism support to Pakistan because Australia was free of the baggage that beset other key allies, such as Britain, a former colonial power, and the US, which is widely disliked for its perceived intrusiveness and the fallout from military incursions such as a recent air strike that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers.

Pakistan's high commissioner to Australia, Jalil Jilani, told the Herald the Pakistani Government and public saw Australia as a "very friendly country" and would be receptive to greater co-operation.

"The Government and people of Pakistan would desire a strengthening of relations in almost every area," he said.

"I do not think there are issues involved in co-operating on counter-terrorism activities as long as it does not impinge on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan."

Mr Jilani said Australia was praised in Pakistan after the Howard government's swift provision of aid after the devastating earthquake in 2005.

Western governments have become increasingly vocal about the need for Pakistan to tackle Islamic radicalism. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, predicted two weeks ago that any future al-Qaeda attack on the US would originate in Pakistan's tribal areas, where Osama Bin Laden is believed to have been hiding since the fall of the Taliban.

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, has called for international action to help and encourage Pakistan to crack down on the flow of insurgents.

"We have got to start looking at the border between Afghanistan not just as a bilateral issue between those two nations but a regional issue" he said this month.

Mr Smith will meet the Indian Minister for External Affairs, Pranab Mukherjee, in Canberra today. It is understood that the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, has been invited to Australia and is likely to visit within the next 12 months.

A sliver of hope

Despite his bleak, brilliant analysis of the Afghan region's descent into chaos, Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid hasn't abandoned all optimism

Ottawa Citizen, Canada - Janice Kennedy June 22, 2008

Ahmed Rashid ends his bleak new book on a note of hope.

The respected Pakistani journalist, whose previous books have educated the western world in the ways and ramifications of Islamic extremism, concludes Descent into Chaos with the fervent wish that the global community learn from the mistakes it has made in Afghanistan and the nations surrounding that woefully failed state.

But it is a faint hope, almost a pro forma way of bringing to a close a 400-page tale of missed and bungled opportunities, lies and deception, tragically flawed decisions and unforgivable ignorance. For all its exhaustive scope, nuanced interpretation and analytical brilliance, Descent into Chaos (subtitled The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia) is both depressing and frightening.

But for Rashid, the prognosis is not completely dark.

"I am not without hope," he said by phone last week from New York, where he was on the American leg of his international book tour. The Lahore-based journalist, author of Taliban (2000) and Jihad (2002), visits Ottawa this week to participate in an invitation-only symposium on Parliament Hill on "Cosmopolitan Identity in the Islamic World," sponsored by the Centre for International Governance Innovation think-tank.

What gives him hope are the results of the February elections in Pakistan, where the late Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party won shared power with another former opposition party. "Those elections were positive," says Rashid, who contributes regularly to such publications as London's Daily Telegraph and the International Herald Tribune.

"In the long term, the people of Pakistan voted for a secular party."

That is reason for optimism, he says, despite the continuing problem of military influence and the Islamic extremists harboured up and down the country's border with Afghanistan.

And that is reason for optimism in Afghanistan itself, which continues to suffer from Pakistani-based Taliban incursions such as the recent Kandahar jailbreak that freed as many as 1,100 prisoners, nearly 400 of them Taliban militants. When the situation starts improving in Pakistan, it should have an impact on Afghanistan. But as Rashid makes clear, there is a vast distance to go.

Descent into Chaos is that rarest of literary creations, a crucial book -- necessary reading for any cogent understanding of how we have landed in this morass, and what we can do about it. But despite the penetratingly bright light it shines into the darkness, it is not a comforting book. Both hawks and doves on the question of Afghanistan will find much in it to enlighten, but little to support previously held views.

Rashid, who received a Pakistani award for courage in journalism and who is a consultant for Human Rights Watch, dissects the extraordinarily tangled geopolitical mess in his native part of the world with insight, warm sensitivity and surprising readability. This is a skilled analysis that, like all good journalism, never forgets the human element at the heart of the events. Readers are presented with as many empathetic, fleshed-out portraits of people and moving accounts of their role in unfolding history as they are with reportage that might otherwise seem dry.

Descriptions of children flocking to reopened schools, of Afghans scarred by war and hardship waiting in long lines on election day with patient good humour, of the energetic hope embodied by wise old peacemakers like UN representative Lakhdar Brahimi -- all put a memorable face on dusty facts.

Rashid, 60, writes with the benefit of decades of experience, uniquely informed by both his personal and professional life in Pakistan as well as his breathtaking wealth of connections. He has addressed both the United Nations General Assembly and NATO ambassadors on the situation in Afghanistan, and he counts Afghan president Hamid Karzai as his friend, though he is far from uncritical. "I'm able to be very blunt with him," he says, which may explain his characterization in the book of Karzai's leadership as weak, vacillating and impotent in the face of warlords and rampant corruption.

But Descent into Chaos is about so much more than the failure of Afghan leadership. At heart, it is about the the catastrophic results of the failure of the U.S. and its global allies to do their duty -- to recognize the need for nation building and engage in it. What Rashid presents, based on vast intimate knowledge and experience, is a picture of an escalating global crisis that could have been avoided.

NATO's boasts that it has won all its battles are hollow, he writes, since it has no "overarching strategy ... for transforming military victories into development, reconstruction, good governance, and political strategies."

Because of such failures, along with those of the Karzai government to improve the lives of the Afghan people, the Taliban have been "winning by default."

Meticulously researched and documented (there are 48 pages of footnotes alone), his book follows the tortured path of events, since 9/11, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the troubled surrounding region.

It considers the dangerous situation in Pakistan, where Islamic extremists have been not only harboured but nurtured, and looks at the repeated failings within Afghanistan of both the Karzai government and the various international powers that have left their heavy footprint.

It examines the needs of the area, and the determinedly deaf ear turned toward those needs by the administration of George W. Bush, as well as by NATO. It looks at the legacy of Bush and his henchmen Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld, zeroing in on the catastrophic results of their pathological obsession with Iraq, which meant an abandonment of Afghanistan.

Staring into the face of a thoroughly ravaged country, writes Rashid, "scholars and diplomats now argued for a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan." But, he continues, "the Bush neocons had simply no interest before or after the war in doing anything like this." And at home there was little genuine protest against such inaction as "the American public remained largely ignorant of the humanitarian crises escalating everywhere."

Descent into Chaos also explores the numerous ripe conditions that have contributed to the rise of Islamic extremism in the area, including not only an ill-waged battle for hearts and minds, but also such pragmatic realities as the rise in opium production in the "narco-state" of Afghanistan.

"The Taliban resurgence, al-Qaeda's reorganization and the restarting of its training camps for international terrorist groups after the U.S. invasion would have been impossible without the explosion in heroin production," writes Rashid, who notes that in Helmand province alone last year, for example, there was a staggering 45-per-cent increase in opium production.

Rashid also provides provocative tidbits. He describes, for example, the hugely expanding "cottage industry" in the manufacture of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in the Taliban-heavy border areas. He details the blundering of U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks that essentially permitted the escape of Osama bin Laden. He lists the countries that help the U.S. out by providing secret detention facilities for rendered prisoners.

He also offers intriguing glimpses into the realities of a region deeply foreign to, and misunderstood by, most westerners. Rashid writes (in terms Canadians will certainly recognize) of young Pakistan's tenuous sense of national identity. He describes the calculatedly split political personality of Pervez Musharraf (known as "double-talk Musharraf"), contrasting his present with his past as a fun-loving young man and indifferent student. He tells the almost romantic tale of Karzai's return home to Afghanistan in October 2001 -- on the back of a motorbike, with an old satellite phone that he keeps today as a reminder of that incredible journey.

Canada figures into Rashid's book, but only marginally. He cites the Maher Arar case in "America Shows the Way," his chapter on torture, renditions and secret jails. But the country itself appears primarily as just another member -- albeit a fully contributing one -- of a NATO presence that has been confused and misguided. He also writes of Canada's ongoing public debate on its role in Afghanistan, a heated discussion echoed by other NATO members.

"The critical mistake Canada made," he said in last week's interview, "was that it had no policy toward Pakistan. It just went along with whatever the Americans were telling them." (And the American perspective, in Rashid's view, was spectacularly flawed.) This had its impact as Canada arrived in Kandahar, where it "didn't have a clue about what to expect. You can not look at Afghanistan without looking at the neighbouring countries. You need to have a strategic policy that looks at the entire region." Rashid is referring to the whole of Central Asia, republics like Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, with their poverty, unstable governments and exploding populations of Islamic militants. His book suggests that they constitute a far greater global threat than Iraq.

Rashid's recommended strategic policy would also address what he calls the "biggest conundrum," the vast and proliferating safe havens for Islamic terrorists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In the meantime, he says, Canada should probably wait and watch, along with the rest of the world, to see what happens next November in the U.S. presidential election.

Republican hopeful John McCain is not talking much about Afghanistan, says Rashid, because it has become an embarrassment to his party. But he is encouraged -- a little -- by the Democrats' Barack Obama, who, he says, has suggested he'll concentrate on Afghanistan, rather than Iraq. "He needs to put flesh on this policy," says Rashid, but it may be a good sign.

So no, he says, based on recent events, he is not entirely without hope. But in the disastrous narrative of that powder-keg world he knows so well and describes with such compelling authority in Descent into Chaos, it will be difficult for the average reader to share that sliver of optimism.

Janice Kennedy is an Ottawa writer and Sunday Citizen columnist.

Taliban issue burqa warning

Daily Times - Monday, June 23, 2008 LAHORE

Taliban in the Mohmand Agency have warned women to either wear burqas or face punishment, a private TV channel reported on Sunday. The TTP has pasted posters announcing this in various parts of the agency, Express News reported. The posters ask women not to work in the fields and prohibit them from attending marriage ceremonies and visiting doctors and markets without a male escort. daily times monitor

[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.]