In this bulletin:

• Afghanistan's Karzai declines to say whether he'll seek another term as president
• Cheney: Afghanistan needs NATO help
• Security Council Gives UN Bigger Role in Afghanistan
• UN strengthens coordination role in Afghanistan
• British troops kill Afghan cop in shootout
• Blasts kill two Afghan police, NATO soldier
• Longer Afghan rotations on the table, but no changes planned: Hillier
• Canada reluctant to support Afghan Islamic schools
• Afghanistan war strains NATO ties
• US aims high in Afghanistan
• Helmand's new governor seeks talks with Taliban
• Thousands protest cartoons, film in Afghan capital: police
• Picture Post: Afghanistan celebrates Persian New Year
• AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Afghans reluctant to leave Jalozai refugee camp
• Suicide car bomb kills 5 Pak soldiers near Afghan border
• Turkish gov't, military split on dispatching troops to Afghanistan
• The Voice Of Turkey Radio To Broadcast For Afghanistan
• Afghanistan: Most provinces 'opium free' says US official
• Blasts kill two Afghan police, NATO soldier
• A new girls school in Afghanistan part of NATO strategy to be both warriors and well diggers
• Same game, new rules in Afghanistan
• Afghanistan: Radio Free Afghanistan Names 'Person Of The Year'
• Taliban release video of German who targeted US Afghan base
• Tetra Tech Wins $55 Million Contract
• Afghanistan launches the International Year of Sanitation
• Healthier schools and communities
• New shoes help needy Afghans walk tall
• Afghan doctors protest new security threat: gangs
• Afghan ambassador to US hails ROZs bill
• Shiekh Zayed University in Khost inaugurated
• 2-meters long bridge constructed in Kunar

Afghanistan's Karzai declines to say whether he'll seek another term as president

Associated Press / March 20, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai isn't saying whether he will seek another term as president in elections scheduled next year.

Karzai was speaking to journalists alongside U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney after the two met at Kabul's presidential palace.

Karzai says he wants to leave a legacy of strong political leaders in Afghanistan's future and that perhaps he could best achieve that by not running for re-election.

Karzai adds that as far as he's concerned, bringing forward new leadership in Afghanistan is very important.

Cheney: Afghanistan needs NATO help

By DEB RIECHMANN - Associated Press / March 20, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday called the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan "firm and unshakable" and said members of NATO need to step up their commitment to help it continue to rebound from years of tyranny and war.

Problems in Afghanistan will be a key topic at the NATO summit early next month in Romania. NATO's force is about 43,000-strong, but commanders seek more combat troops for areas in southern Afghanistan where Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are the most active.

"America will ask our NATO allies for an even stronger commitment for the future," Cheney said, standing alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai at his heavily guarded presidential palace.

Cheney, who is on a 10-day overseas trip, also said that neighboring Pakistan, like other sovereign nations, has an obligation to control its territory and ensure that it's not a sanctuary for insurgents and terrorists.

"They have as big a stake as anyone else in dealing with the threat that sometimes emerges from those areas along the border," Cheney said during a visit that was not announced in advance.

He said he has no reason to doubt Pakistan's commitment to dealing with problems emerging from the border area if terror groups are allowed to operate there because the Pakistani government itself is a target for the al-Qaida and extremists.

"You've seen a number of devastating attacks against the people and government of Pakistan, including of course the tragic assassination of former Prime Minister (Benazir) Bhutto," he said.

Cheney flew from Oman to the Afghan capital, then took a helicopter to the dusty presidential compound where he greeted Karzai with a hearty handshake. The two strolled down a deep red carpet, reviewing troops before heading inside for their talks.

"During the last six years, the people of Afghanistan have made a bold and confident journey, throwing off the burden of tyranny, winning your freedom and reclaiming your future," he said. "The process has been difficult, but the courage of the nation has been unwavering. The United States of America has proudly walked with you on this journey, and we walk with you still."

Cheney advisers said the vice president would urge Karzai to continue to work with Pakistan, in the wake of its recent elections, and stay focused on the problems of extremists and terrorists moving back and forth across the Afghan-Pakistan border, using the mountainous region as a safe place to plot attacks.

The vice president also was to push Karzai to take steps to extend Afghanistan's governance beyond Kabul and conduct successful elections next year. The discussion also was to address ways the Afghan government can curb corruption and deal with rising production of poppies, which are used to make narcotic drugs that fund insurgent operations.

More than 8,000 people died in Afghanistan last year, making it the most violent year since 2001 when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to oust the hardline Taliban regime after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Karzai hailed progress in improving security forces, saying the Afghan army is getting stronger "day by day," but added that international support will be needed for years to come. "Some day, Afghanistan will be fully in charge of the security of this country," Karzai said. "That is not going to be anytime soon."

He stressed progress in rebuilding. "We have taken significant steps — from not having even one kilometer of a paved road, now we have more than 3,000 kilometers of paved highways and other roads," he said. "Go to schools, go to hospitals, go to lots of other reconstruction activities in the rebuilding of Afghanistan. ... So thanks to you, the international community, for having giving us all of that. Please continue."

Troops from Canada, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States have done the majority of the fighting against Taliban militants. France, Spain, Germany and Italy are stationed in more peaceful parts of the country.

Canada, which has 2,500 troops in Kandahar province, recently threatened to end its combat role unless other NATO countries provide an additional 1,000 troops to help the anti-Taliban effort there. Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay said he expected a pledge for troops before or during the summit April 2-4 in Bucharest, Romania.

The U.S. contributes one-third of the NATO force, and also has about 12,000 other U.S. troops operating independently from NATO. The Pentagon says that by late summer, there will be about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan — up from about 28,000 now.

The bulk of the increase is the 3,200 Marines that President Bush has agreed to send. About 2,300 troops of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, have begun arriving at their new base in Kandahar, the Taliban's former power base.

After the news conference with Karzai, the vice president took a 20-minute helicopter ride to Bagram Air Base, encircled by rugged brown terrain turning green with the season. Spring is the start of the fighting season, which is determined by weather.

At the base, Cheney received a classified briefing, awarded medals to five troops and witnessed the re-enlistment of six others. He also enjoyed a prime rib dinner. Troops at the base said it was not a special menu for the vice president, but that it was a special day: the Afghan new year.

Security Council Gives UN Bigger Role in Afghanistan

By VOA News - 20 March 2008

The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously agreed to extend the U.N. mission in Afghanistan for another year.

The 15-member council's approval focuses on improving U.N. coordination with the Afghan government and NATO-led forces fighting Taliban insurgents.

The resolution also empowers the new U.N. special envoy in Afghanistan - Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide - to directly coordinate support provided by international donors to the Afghan government.

A lack of coordination among dozens of aid agencies has led to failed reconstruction projects. The United States and Britain hailed the adoption of the resolution.

Meanwhile, violence in Afghanistan continues. An exchange of gunfire between British troops and Afghan police in southern Helmand province Thursday left an Afghan policeman dead.

Local officials say British soldiers opened fire on the policemen patrolling in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The incident is under investigation.

UN strengthens coordination role in Afghanistan

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The Security Council on Thursday unanimously agreed to beef up the UN mission in Afghanistan to improve coordination with NATO-led forces and Kabul to fight resurgent Taliban extremists.

The 15-member body approved an Italian-drafted resolution that extended the mandate of the UN mission known as UNAMA until March 2009.

UNAMA and its new head, special envoy for Afghanistan Kai Eide of Norway, will lead international civilian efforts to promote "more coherent support by the international community to the Afghan government."

Under Resolution 1806, these efforts will notably focus on fighting drug trafficking, as well as reconstruction and development.

The UN mission will also "strengthen the cooperation with" the 40-nation NATO-led International Security Assistance Force "at all levels and throughout the country."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon appointed Eide as his new special envoy to the country early this month after Afghan President Hamid Karzai rejected his first choice, British politician Paddy Ashdown.

Eide's predecessor, Tom Koenigs of Germany, who stepped down at the end of December, was widely seen as lacking the necessary clout to play this coordinating role.

The United States, Britain and France immediately hailed the adoption of the resolution.

The Afghan-born US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, reaffirmed in a New York Times article that Washington "is fully behind the United Nations in its mission in Afghanistan."

"Success in Afghanistan will be a major step in helping to create security, stability and progress in the broader Middle East, which is the defining challenge of our time," he wrote.

His British counterpart, John Sawers, had high praise for Eide, describing him as a "skilled and effective diplomat."

And he said the resolution "set very clear priorities to bring better coherence" to the international military-civilian coordination in Afghanistan.

"We will be very supportive of the action of the new special representative, Kai Eide," French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters. "France is very committed to that aim."

Ripert noted that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had restated his determination to keep French troops in Afghanistan and reinforce their presence.

"We will certainly translate that into act at the NATO summit in Bucharest," scheduled for April 2 to 4, he added.

With some 1,600 French soldiers deployed in Afghanistan as part of the larger NATO-led force, Paris has suggested it might respond to US calls for allies to send reinforcements to Afghanistan's volatile south.

ISAF has around 43,000 soldiers battling insurgents led by the extremist Taliban and running 25 reconstruction teams around the country.

Another US-dominated force of about 20,000 soldiers is also battling militants linked to the Taliban insurgency as well as other rebel outfits that carry out attacks on the Afghan government and its allies.

Last year, more than 8,000 people were killed in stepped-up attacks by the Taliban, which ruled the country from 1996 until late 2001, when they were ousted by US-led forces.

In a related development, US Vice President Dick Cheney met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul Thursday and the two men urged NATO to step up efforts to crush Afghan extremists and rebuild the war-torn country.

The challenge posed by the Taliban will figure prominently at the NATO summit where Washington hopes alliance members will increase troops and resources, especially to Afghanistan's south where fighting is the most fierce.

Ripert also recalled that France plans to host a conference in Paris in June to review implementation of the five-year reconstruction plan for Afghanistan.

The resolution further directs UNAMA to bolster and expand its presence throughout Afghanistan to promote implementation of the five-year international Compact adopted in 2006 to coordinate financial and military support to Afghanistan.

Eide was also tasked with improving civil-military coordination "in support of an Afghan-led development and stabilization process" and extend technical aid for the electoral process through the Afghan Independent Electoral Commission.

British troops kill Afghan cop in shootout

March 20, 2008 - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - An exchange of fire between British soldiers and police in southern Afghanistan left a policeman dead and two men wounded from each side, security forces said Thursday.

The shootout, apparently a case of mistaken identity, erupted as police were patrolling the main square in the southern town of Lashkar Gah ahead of celebrations for the Afghan New Year Thursday, police said.

Helmand provincial police chief General Mohammad Hussain Andiwal told AFP that the NATO soldiers had opened fire on the policemen at around midnight, killing one and wounding another.

"I don't know why they did this because the policemen were in uniform and they were moving near the police vehicle," he said.

The British military in Lashkar Gah confirmed the incident and said a British soldier was also wounded. The event was being investigated, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Millar told AFP.

There have been several incidents of "friendly fire" among the different Afghan and international forces working together to put down an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban movement, which was ousted from government in 2001.

International troops have also come under fire for the number of civilians being killed in military operations.

On Wednesday provincial officials said US-led forces killed six Afghan civilians, two of them children, in a raid in the eastern province of Khost.

The US-led coalition confirmed only two civilians were killed, one of them a child, and said several insurgents also died.

Blasts kill two Afghan police, NATO soldier

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — A suicide attacker blew himself up near a busy shrine in Afghanistan Friday, killing two policemen, while a NATO soldier was killed in a blast elsewhere, officials said.

Another bombing in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, flooded with visitors for New Year celebrations, wounded four people Friday, a security official said.

The suicide attacker in the southern province of Kandahar detonated his explosives near a vehicle of police guarding a shrine where Friday prayers were busier than normal because of the New Year holidays, officials said.

Two policemen were killed and three were wounded in the attack in the Arghandab area north of Kandahar, said the deputy provincial police chief, named only Amanullah. A civilian man was also hurt, he said. First reports said the attacker had been riding a bicycle.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack was similar to dozens of others carried out by the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001 and is now waging an insurgency.

Security officials in Mazar-i-Sharif blamed their bomb, also near a shrine, on "enemies of Afghanistan," a term that often refers to the Taliban but could include other extremist groups.

In a separate incident, a soldier with the NATO-led force that is helping the government deal with the insurgency died on Thursday after being struck by a bomb in the south, the alliance said.

The nationality of the soldier and location of the incident were not disclosed in the International Security Assistance Force statement announcing the death.

The killing came after US Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Thursday for talks with President Hamid Karzai on international efforts to fight the insurgency.

Both leaders called for NATO to sustain and even expand its work to crush the extremists and rebuild the war-torn country. More than 30 international soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year.

Longer Afghan rotations on the table, but no changes planned: Hillier

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Canadian soldiers could one day face the prospect of longer rotations in Afghanistan but it won't happen anytime soon, Canada's chief of defence staff suggested Thursday.

Gen. Rick Hillier said the length of deployment is one of the many battlefield factors that's always under consideration and review by senior Canadian commanders. The lessons learned on the battlefield are always influencing how the mission takes shape over time, Hillier said.

"We look at those things all the time, (but) we've made no decisions at this time," he said.

"We learn lessons in this mission as we do every other, and those lessons over six, 12 or 18 months help us change and shape things, from the vehicle suites we need to the kind of training that we need back in Canada to the lengths of the deployments."

More than 12,000 Canadian soldiers - regular force and reservists - have been through Afghanistan in six-month rotations of roughly 2,500 each since the latest deployment to Kandahar began two years ago.

There are only 64,000 full-time members of all branches of the military and 23,000 primary reserve. A Conservative government election promise to expand the Canadian Forces to 75,000 regular and 30,000 part-time members has been quietly scaled back.

Now that Parliament has agreed to extend Canada's mission in Afghanistan by two years to 2011, the question of whether or not the Canadian Forces have the resources and the personnel to see it through has become a burning one.

A senior military official in Ottawa said Thursday that any rotation changes would likely be driven either by a substantial change in the situation on the ground, such as a marked deterioration or improvement in the security situation, or a substantial reconfiguration of the battle group.

"It's very much driven by circumstance," said the official, who added: "The longer a soldier is on the ground, the tougher it becomes."

On Wednesday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay deferred a question about longer rotations to Hillier, but added, "We're not ruling anything out."

Retired general Lewis MacKenzie was quoted Thursday as saying longer deployments - between nine months to a year - may be required for the forces, which are already heavily dependent on reservists.

Canada is also expecting some degree of relief in the coming months from the recent arrival of more than 2,000 members of the U.S. Marine Corps, and from an additional 1,000 NATO troops that MacKay is actively seeking from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Word of Sarkozy's intentions isn't expected until a summit of NATO leaders in Bucharest, Romania, next month.

"I'm confident that at Bucharest or following or immediately before, a nation will step up and help NATO fill that requirement, and I wait to see the details of it," Hillier said.

The United States, which contributes one third of the NATO force in Afghanistan, also has about 12,000 other troops operating independently. The Pentagon says that by late summer, there will be about 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan - up from about 28,000 now.

The bulk of the increase is the 3,200 marines that President George W. Bush has agreed to send. About 2,300 troops of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, have begun arriving at their sprawling new base at Kandahar Airfield.

Deployments among Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan vary widely, from as little as one month to up to 12 months for members of Canada's Strategic Advisory Team, which mentors the Afghan government in Kabul.

Front-line infantry units typically spend six-month tours in theatre, not including three weeks of leave, while headquarters staff usually work in nine-month rotations.

The battle group currently in Afghanistan, consisting primarily of soldiers from the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Shilo, Man., will be in Afghanistan for about seven months, Hillier said.

The goal, he said, is to balance the conditions for a successful mission with those that ensure the best possible safety for Canadian troops.

"We simply look at things all the time and make sure we're setting conditions for success in this mission, and at the same time setting the conditions to reduce the risk to our soldiers to the very lowest level we possibly can," Hillier said.

"We consider all those things, we'll continue to do it, but we have not made any decisions at this point in time to change anything." Canada has lost 81 soldiers and a diplomat since the mission began in 2002.

Canada reluctant to support Afghan Islamic schools

OTTAWA — Canada plans to build as many as 50 schools in Kandahar province over the next few years, but is hedging on whether it supports a controversial Afghan program to construct a handful of madrassas - schools of Islamic education.

Canadian officials on the ground - both civilian and military - have been quietly pushing Ottawa over the last year to encourage the development of moderate madrassas as long-term strategy to fight extremism.

However Arif Lalani, the Canadian ambassador in Kabul, would only say that the bulk of Ottawa's $60 million contribution toward building the Afghan education system will go to secular, public schools.

"What we will be focusing on in terms of our funding and our programing is going to be the building of the community schools, the type of which we just started building in Kandahar," Lalani said Thursday in a teleconference from Kabul.

Last year, Afghanistan's Education Ministry drew up plans for a $890,000 pilot program for a 16-classroom madrassa, with a dormitory for 300 students, to be located in the vicinity of Kandahar.

Unlike madrassas in northern Pakistan, which Western countries see as breeding grounds for fire-breathing extremism, the Afghan model is based on Hanafi, a less fundamentalist form of Islam.

President Hamid Karzai's government wants to establish as many as four regional religious schools. One of the schools - in the eastern portion of the war-torn country - opened last fall to mixed reviews and some skepticism among Afghans, who questioned whether the instruction was strict enough and could compete with what's offered just across the border.

The country's education minister, Hanif Atmar, is committed to the madrassa program and was quoted recently as saying the marginalization of religious schools in recent decades allowed extremism to flourish.

The government is struggling to reform the curriculum for the religious schools. Aside from meeting resistance among conservative mullahs, Atmar has faced a lack of resources.

Last fall, Canada announced it would contribute $60 million over four years through the World Bank toward the Afghan education system. In Kandahar, Ottawa has set aside $3.5 million specifically for the school construction program.

Afghan madrassas devote 40 per cent of class time to subjects connected to the Islamic faith. The rest is taken up with traditional subjects - history, geography, science, language studies and computers.

Many parents, especially those in the parched swath of farmland west of Kandahar, are conservative Muslims and want their children raised with some form of religious education.

With no Afghan alternative, they've been forced to send to madrassas in Pakistan, many of which are Saudi-financed and teach Wahhabism, a stern and rigid form of Islam. Some children return to Afghanistan radicalized.

Despite that, there is no indication the Canadian International Development Agency has earmarked any of the $3.5 million in education spending for Kandahar toward moderate religious education.

Lalani would only say that Canada, along the United Nations and other countries, are helping the Afghans develop the education system.

Afghanistan war strains NATO ties

By Kim Barker, Tribune correspondent, March 21, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — As NATO plans for a major summit in early April, the 59-year-old defense alliance is facing a serious test over European governments' commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan, where many members signed up for a peacekeeping mission but found themselves in a war.

With some nations declining to send troops into combat with Taliban-led insurgents, U.S. officials and others have warned that NATO's future is in danger if all member states do not step up. And there are increasing worries in Washington that the U.S. will have to pick up the slack and send more troops, further taxing an already overtaxed military.

About 3,200 U.S. Marines are now arriving in southern Kandahar province, largely because Canadian troops threatened to end combat operations there unless they got more help in the Taliban stronghold.

On Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney became the latest U.S. official to ask NATO for more troops. In a surprise visit to Kabul, he said the U.S. would ask alliance members at the upcoming summit in Bucharest, Romania, to increase their commitment to help Afghanistan recover from years of war, according to news service reports.

In an interview with the Tribune this month in Kabul, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said he believes the situation is much better than portrayed by some in the U.S. But he confirmed he needed more troops, especially those that can be easily moved around the country, as well as more intelligence and reconnaissance troops and more "flying machines."

He acknowledged the difficulty of running such a large multinational operation, with 40 countries where every one has different rules about how soldiers operate. McNeill said that it was "not helpful" for countries to set their own tour lengths but that he could do little to change the restrictions that every nation has.

"I try not to bang my head against the wall because that will accomplish nothing," said McNeill, who took over as ISAF commander in February 2007.

About half the time, he said, he was successful at getting countries to override their restrictions and move to the dangerous south or join potentially dangerous operations.

The last year has been the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the original U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 — about 6,500 people were killed in Afghanistan, mostly militants.

In February, after Germany initially turned down a U.S. request for more combat troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned an international military conference in Munich that if European members did not increase their troop contributions in Afghanistan, NATO could become a "two-tiered alliance" — divided, in essence, between the nations that will fight and those that won't.

"Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance," Gates told the European leaders. But in some ways, this impasse could have been expected.

In 2006, to get all the countries to sign on to the NATO plan to take over from the U.S. in Afghanistan, certain "caveats" were negotiated. Some nations agreed to send troops that would not fight; others would fight, but only in certain areas. Some sent troops in for four months, others for nine months. Troops under NATO command could fire only when fired on—but they could not start offensive operations.

So in relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan, German troops serve tours of duty that are usually only about four months — the shortest tour length in Afghanistan. After the U.S. pressure in February, the Germans said they would send 500 more troops—but under no circumstances would the troops be sent to dangerous areas.

McNeill gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel credit for increasing the number of troops, despite how unpopular the war is at home. A culture of anti-militarism has been pervasive in Germany since the end of World War II.

Even under the banner of NATO, the Germans have been reluctant warriors in Afghanistan, insisting that their efforts there focus on reconstruction rather than fighting.

The Spanish, French and Italians also have said their soldiers will not fight in the dangerous south and east, although the French are expected to announce at the upcoming NATO summit that special forces may be deployed in the east.

Meanwhile, in southern and eastern Afghanistan, troops from six nations — Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Denmark and the Netherlands—are fighting resurgent Taliban-led militants in their strongholds.

About 84 percent of the 780 foreign troop casualties in Afghanistan since 2001 have been from the U.S., Britain and Canada.

As it has been since the beginning, the U.S. has the most troops in the country. As of now, 15,000 of the 43,000 ISAF troops are from the U.S., which also has 13,000 under a separate U.S. command that allows those soldiers to chase down Taliban and other insurgents.

Most U.S. soldiers also have 15-month tours of duty, by far the longest of any country. NATO's hesitation could benefit Taliban-led militants, as the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, defined the reluctance of NATO members to send more troops as a defeat of the U.S. in a Feb. 11 statement.

Omar, thought to be hiding in neighboring Pakistan, promised more attacks and also said the "United States has failed in Afghanistan and is attempting to bring more troops from European nations to this country just in order to hide its failure."

Afghans say they are not certain that NATO is committed for the long haul. Some seem on the fence: Should they side with foreign forces, who have historically been beaten back by Afghans or simply abandoned the country, or should they ally themselves with the Taliban?

"If they beat NATO and the USA here, they will understand that now, whatever they want to do, they are free to do," said Fahim Dashty, the editor of the Kabul Weekly newspaper and a strong supporter of the NATO effort.

"This is the real danger. I have seen 30 years of war. We will not lose much because we do not have much to lose. It is much more dangerous for you than for us. If you do not fight the war here, you will fight it elsewhere — inside the borders of your country."

US aims high in Afghanistan

By Philip Smucker, Asia Times Online / March 20, 2008

KORENGAL OUTPOST, Kunar province, northeastern Afghanistan - As the battle rages, Sergeant Wayne Amos screams for Apache helicopters to bring down the house on his attackers. "We just got hit," he cries, narrating the battle as it unfolds. "It is crazy now, we took one RPG [rocket-propelled grenade], a lot of small arms. They are kickin' up now."

"Ten seconds, on the enemy," he shouts as an order to his forces as the "tat, tat, tat" of a 50-caliber machine guns lays down a round of cover and a soldier dashes into the road to fire a TOW missile launcher into the rocky cliffs above.

Amos yells for a pause - "cease fire" - as a pair of Apaches rolls over the grid coordinates he has called in. The hills light up once more in the videotape of the fight taken by Amos himself.

Just one of the recent "ticks" that Amos, an Apache Indian and National Guardsman from New Mexico, has been in against faceless al-Qaeda-backed insurgents along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, the fight underscores the intensity of the conflict with a nearly invisible enemy.

It is rare - almost never - when US forces get to count the dead enemy and take toll of who precisely has been attacking them. "I interact on a daily basis with an enemy that has both local and foreign elements," says Captain Loius Frketic, who commands a battalion known as the "Able Main Warlords" in Kunar province's Pech Valley. He is sure they are foreigners because he can hear Arab voices on the radio communications he intercepts. "But just what the foreign element is bringing to the fight, I don't exactly know."

Al-Qaeda's senior leadership was last targeted - two years ago - only 32 kilometers from his base in the neighboring Bajaur district of Pakistan. A few hours before that attack, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, is believed to have slipped away. Until four years ago, US intelligence experts believed that bin Laden himself was traveling in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province in the company of Zawahiri. Though the formerly inseparable pair is believed to have split up - likely out of security concerns - their paths may well still cross - at least for secret meetings.

In such meetings, senior al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan often review videotapes of the fighting in Afghanistan taken by surrogates and plan funding for future operations.

For fighters in the 173rd Combat Team fighting in eastern Afghanistan north of the Khyber Pass, just knowing that they fight in proximity to the masterminds of the September 11, 2001, attacks highlights their own sense of a great divide: a split between what the US forces can and must do in Afghanistan, and what al-Qaeda is planning across the border in Pakistan.

Platoon leaders in regular clashes with insurgents here say that their foe is under the direct sway of al-Qaeda. "When we are in a village, we always know that al-Qaeda and the Taliban will soon be back to try to undercut us and try to one-up us," said Sergeant Mark Patterson, whose platoon in the Korengal Valley has been in some of the heaviest fighting anywhere in Afghanistan. US forces based out of the "KOP", or Korengal Outpost, face a higher concentration of al-Qaeda-backed insurgents than most regions of Afghanistan, not least because an Egyptian lieutenant of al-Qaeda operates among them, say US officers.

While US forces rarely see their enemy, their mission is to fight for the hearts and minds of the same people al-Qaeda and its affiliates try to win over. While the insurgents try to operate with the cover of the what Chinese leader Mao Zedong once called the "sea of the people", US forces are trying to pry away that popular backing.

"We are constantly pushing into areas where the enemy operates freely - encroaching upon them and taking away their population base," says Commander Larry LeGree, who is charged with building roads into insurgent strongholds in the foothills of the Hindu Kush.

The point of building so many roads into remote areas along the Afghan border, say US officers, is also to "create a firewall" against al-Qaeda efforts to infiltrate with men and guns. At the same time, the Afghan forces that are meant to patrol these roads are being "mentored" by their US colleagues.

Yet the firewall can quickly turn into an ambush for US and Afghan fighters in the low ground. There are so many infiltration points available on the Pakistani border - particularly as the snow melts - that real issue is "who controls the high ground", according to a senior Afghan security official.

Insurgents rarely attack US fighters unless and until they have managed to position themselves at a higher altitude than their foe. "I would say that 95% of the time they hit us from the high ground - when our backs are turned," says Tanner Stichter, a soldier serving in the Korengal Outpost. "We have a very difficult time finding these foreign fighters - as they remain hidden."

The first response of US infantry when they are hit from insurgent positions in the hills above them is to call in air power and heavy artillery. This is not always effective as insurgents operate out of well-hidden redoubts - often the same positions used by guerrilla fighters in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.

American forces, whose air power is far superior to any in the world, often end up pummeling the rocks in frustration. "I've watched on - you know - Predator feeds from the drones firing 155 shell after 155 shell and slamming into a house," says Lieutenant Brandon Kennedy, a recent graduate of West Point military academy. "They watch fighters come running out of these same structures. It is fairly difficult to accurately engage these guys."

Both US fighters and their Afghan proteges agree that they could do with controlling more of the high ground along the border with Pakistan.

"The US forces, along with the Afghan army and police, need to go on the offensive now - before the weather breaks," insists police chief, Haji Mohammed Jusef. "This time of year is the best time for us to take the high ground and deny it to the enemy."

These same peaks, however, straddle the Durand Line, some of them positioned in Afghanistan and others in Pakistan. It is an international border that the US and Afghan forces are obliged to recognize, but one which al-Qaeda merely hides behind.

Philip Smucker is a commentator and journalist based in South Asia and the Middle East. He is the author of Al-Qaeda's Great Escape: The Military and the Media on Terror's Trail (2004).

Helmand's new governor seeks talks with Taliban

By Jon Boone in Kabul - Published: March 20 2008 02:00 |

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Gulab Mangal takes up what is perhaps one of the toughest jobs in Afghanistan next week when he will fly to a province that is both the country's most violent and its biggest opium producer.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the wellregarded former governor of Laghman province said one of his first tasks would be to set up traditional Afghan jirgas - councils or meetings - with "second and third-tier" fighters. He said he hoped to prove to insurgents, and to ordinary Afghans, that only the government could deliver schools, roads and social services.

The issue of talking to the Taliban sparked a diplomatic crisis in December when President Hamid Karzai expelled two foreign diplomats involved in reconciliation projects in Helmand. But Mr Mangal will have the full support of the president, who appointed him.

Mr Mangal said that he believed fighters who were not ideologically tied to the extremist movement could be won over.

Second and third-tier fighters tend to be either hired guns who fight for pay or bored youths who have drifted into fighting and have been alienated from local government because of corrupt officials.

Tier-one Taliban, the movement's ideological hard core, which has been heavily influenced by al-Qaeda, are generally considered to be irreconcilable.

Afghan officials say that they have struggled to find a new governor to take over the poisoned chalice of Helmand from Asadullah Wafa, an elderly businessman who has been heavily criticised for failing to tackle the province's drug mafia.

Governors are regarded as crucial to the success of provinces. Earlier this year Mr Karzai blamed the removal of Sher Mohammed Akhunzada at British behest for letting the Taliban back into Helmand.

Both of Mr Mangal's predecessors were from Helmand, and Mr Akhunzada retains great influence within the province.

Mr Mangal's roots in the eastern Paktika province - where he has also served as governor - and lack of tribal ties to Helmand could undermine his efforts to gain the support of the public there. But he said his outsider status could help him win allies across tribal divides.

He had also received personal reassurances from the UK and US ambassadors in Kabul that Nato troops in Helmand would co-operate with him.

Tackling corruption, eradicating booming poppy crops and increasing co-ordination with Nato forces would be crucial for turning round the situation in Helmand, Mr Mangal said.

But he expressed doubts about a multi-million dollar US-led programme, dubbed Focused District Development, which would remove badly equipped and paid police from their provinces for eight weeks of intensive training.

Mr Mangal said that corruption within the Helmand police was so deep-rooted that retraining would make little difference. Instead, police forces should be brought in from other parts of the country.

He said eradication would play an important part in the battle against poppy producers in the province but that progress would have to be gradual and that farmers should be persuaded to switch to legal crops.

Thousands protest cartoons, film in Afghan capital: police

KABUL (AFP) — Thousands of demonstrators torched Dutch and Danish flags in the Afghan capital Kabul Friday in the latest of a wave of protests against cartoons and a film said to insult Islam, police said.

The demonstrators gathered following Friday prayers from various mosques chanting "Death to George W. Bush. Death to the Jews and Christians. This is a plot against Islam," an AFP reporter at the scene said.

There have been protests in most of Afghanistan's main cities against the reprinting of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as well as an anti-Koran film set to be released this month by a far-right Dutch lawmaker.

The protesters set fire to flags and an effigy of the Dutch film maker. Anti-riot police were stationed outside the Danish embassy and at main intersections in the city.

"Police have taken necessary precautions. They provided security for the protest. It is peaceful so far," Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary told AFP.

A religious cleric making heated statements to the crowd through a loudspeaker called for Danish and Dutch troops in a NATO alliance fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan to leave. "If they don't leave, killing them is allowed," said the bearded mullah.

The Netherlands has about 1,500 troops deployed in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led peacekeeping mission, while Denmark has more than 600. In early March, about 5,000 people protested in the western city of Herat.

The first printing of the Danish cartoons caused days of protests worldwide in early 2006, including in Afghanistan, where 11 people were killed.

Picture Post: Afghanistan celebrates Persian New Year

By Jerome Taylor, Friday, 21 March 2008

After weeks of determined spring cleaning, frantic last-minute checks to ensure there are enough sugary pastries to satisfy even the sweetest-toothed relatives, and a quick dash to the clothes bazaar to buy a new outfit, Afghanistan was yesterday ready to celebrate.

In Kabul, and across much of the region, it was the start of the festival of Nowruz, a colourful celebration otherwise known as the Persian New Year. As the joyful scenes in these pictures suggest, it is also the most hotly anticipated festival on the annual calendar for the millions who celebrate it across central Asia and beyond.

The fortnight-long festival falls on the astronomical vernal equinox – the start of spring in the northern hemisphere. In Kabul, celebrations traditionally centre around the Sakhy Shrine, an area of the capital overshadowed by an enormous clifftop boulder offering families a bird's eye view of the heady celebrations.

In the dusty complex below, young men danced in groups while children queued to ride on a rickety blue Ferris wheel. Helicopters circled overhead as devotees erected a giant mace covered in bright green flags (a colour considered holy in Islam because it was the Prophet's favourite hue). Fully aware that previous celebrations have been targeted by suicide bombers, security remained tight.

From the Kurdish territories of eastern Turkey, across the mountains and deserts of Iran and Afghanistan, even as far as the Himalayan peaks of western China, Nowruz is celebrated by tens of millions of people. But for Afghanistan, the festival currently holds an extra significance. Under the Taliban, whose joyless regime made music and dancing illegal, it was banned for being "pagan" and "un-Islamic" – despite having been celebrated in the region for thousands of years.

In Kabul it is now the year 1387. The Persian calendar started AD631, a date chosen by the Sassanid Empire as the beginning of the new imperial era.

The festival traces its roots back to Zoroastrianism. Afghans celebrate Nowruz by cleaning their houses, visiting relatives, paying their respects to the dead and, above all, tucking into vast quantities of haft mewa, a specially prepared desert made from seven dried fruits served in their own syrup. The festival is also the best time to see buzkashi, Afghanistan's thrillingly energetic form of polo played with a goat's carcass in place of a ball.

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Afghans reluctant to leave Jalozai refugee camp

PESHAWAR, 20 March 2008 (IRIN) - Afghans in Jalozai refugee camp, Pakistan's largest refugee camp, are reluctant to leave, despite a deadline to vacate coming up in less than a month.

"I don't want to go to Afghanistan. There is nothing for me there. There are no jobs and it's not safe," 24-year-old Aman, who has lived his entire life in the sprawling community of mud-brick homes, 35km southwest of Peshawar, said.

"How could we possibly return?" Fatema Bibi, a 35-year-old mother-of-four asked. "Once we get there, how are we to live?"

Long slated for closure by the government, Jalozai, one of the oldest refugee camps in the country, is home to 80,000, many of whom have lived in the camp for decades.

Re-scheduled to close at the end of 2007, that deadline was later extended to 15 April 2008 due to the impending winter.

Under the terms of an agreement between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), two other camps - Girdi Jungle and Jungle Piralizai in Balochistan Province - are also slated for closure in 2008.

As part of the government's plan, camp residents have the option of either repatriating to their homeland, taking advantage of UNHCR assistance, or relocating to other camps in the Punjab or North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

"UNHCR and the Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees has facilitated a 'go and see' visit for refugees in the camps if they want to take the relocation option," UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch told IRIN in Islamabad. The UNHCR has established an information and counselling centre in Jalozai to help Afghans make an informed decision, he said.

But progress on vacating the camp has proven slow, a fact acknowledged by the government. Imran Zeb, the government commissioner for Afghan refugees, says the process will be completed by mid April, but that is not likely to be the final closure date; he cited the voluntary nature of the return process.

There are over 80 Afghan refugee camps in the country, including 71 in NWFP, 12 in Balochistan Province and one in Punjab Province.

According to UNHCR, over three million Afghans have returned to their homeland from Pakistan since the launch of the voluntary repatriation programme in March 2002, most - 1.5 million - in the first year of the programme.

Nearly two million Afghans remain in the country - one million of whom live in camps - more than seven years after the collapse of the Taliban regime in December 2001.

Since the resumption of UNHCR's voluntary repatriation programme at the beginning of March 2008, over 4,500 Afghans have returned home, 352 from Jalozai.

Suicide car bomb kills 5 Pak soldiers near Afghan border

Islamabad (AP): A suicide car bomb killed five Pakistani soldiers and wounded nine others near the Afghan border onThursday, the military said.

The bomber attacked security forces in South Waziristan's main town of Wana, a military statement said. Two vehicles were damaged, it said, giving no other details.

Al-Qaida and Taliban-linked militants are believed to operate in the rugged, lawless tribal regions along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Pakistani troops have fought intense battles against extremists there in recent years.

American forces in Afghanistan are known to operate unmanned aircraft, or drones, in the region. On Sunday, missiles that witnesses said came from a drone struck a militant safe house, killing about 20 people 5 kilometers (3 miles) outside Wana.

A string of militant attacks _ many of them suicide bombings _ have killed more than 300 civilians and security forces in Pakistan since the beginning of the year. Authorities blame the attacks on militants operating out of the tribal regions.

Thursday's bomber struck as U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting Afghanistan, where he urged Pakistan to battle extremists in the border region.

Standing beside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Cheney said the Pakistani and Afghan governments were a target for al-Qaida and other extremists. ``They have as big a stake as anyone else,'' he said

Turkish gov't, military split on dispatching troops to Afghanistan

ANKARA, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Turkish government and military are at odds over sending more combat troops to Afghanistan, local newspaper Turkish Daily News reported on Thursday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said the government might consider sending more combat troops to Afghanistan.

"Turkey has its own terrorism problem but on the other hand it has responsibilities of being a NATO member when fighting against terrorism," Babacan said during a joint press conference with the visiting Afghan FM Rengin Spanta on Wednesday.

"The general tendency is to support Afghanistan in all ways, including military ones," he added.

Spanta said that he had asked for Turkey's support in fighting against Afghanistan's terrorism problem. "Their response was positive."

However, a day earlier, Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit said that the military would not dispatch even a single troop to the southern region of Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban.

"Our troops in Kabul are under the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), which has no mission to fight against terrorism. Our troops are not there for this purpose," said Buyukanit.

NATO and the United States are pressuring allies to do more for the 42,000-strong mission in Afghanistan. NATO will discuss the Afghanistan mission in the upcoming NATO summit that will take place in April in Bucharest, Romania.

The Voice Of Turkey Radio To Broadcast For Afghanistan

turkishpress.com March 20, 2008

ANKARA - The Voice of Turkey Radio will start broadcasting programs for Afghanistan on March 21st. The radio will broadcast in Dari Farsi and Pashtu dialects and for Uzbeks living in Afghanistan.

The program will be broadcast between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Turkish local time. The Voice of Turkey Radio is now broadcasting in 29 different languages.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai sent a message to Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, expressing his pleasure with the radio's broadcasting for his country.

Afghanistan: Most provinces 'opium free' says US official

Rome, 19 March(AKI) - A top US official fighting for drug crop eradication in Afghanistan claims that most of the country is on its way to being opium free.

"The good news is that geographically, most of Afghanistan is now going poppy free," said Tom Schweich, coordinator of counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI).

"We estimate that by the end of this growing season (May and June), 26 out of 34 Afghan provinces will either have no poppy or very low poppy," said Schweich.

However, Schweich (photo) says that "in five or so southern provinces where there is a lot of Taliban activity there seems to be a very serious poppy growing problem."

While visiting Rome, Schweich met with Italian law enforcement authorities to discuss the issue of justice reform in Afghanistan as well as the problem of heroin and cocaine in the country.

Schweich told AKI that he met with Italian prosecutor Piero Grasso and discussed cooperation schemes to disrupt international organised crime

According to Schweich, half of all illegal opium ends up in Iran, while the rest is equally divided between bordering countries.

Schweich also talks about the level of coordination with Afghanistan's neighbours to eradicate the trafficking and crop cultivation and mentions having a "close collaborative relationship" with Pakistan.

In regards to Iran, Schweich had some harsher words:

"The United States does not have [diplomatic] relations with Iran, so we do not coordinate with them." "We have serious problems with the Iranians," he said to AKI.

On a possible links between poppy growing and the insurgency, Schweich says that indeed "there is a close link and is becoming closer", as well as the fact that profits from the poppy crop "are funding the insurgency."

Moreover, Schweich no longer sees poppy cultivation associated with poverty like it was a few years ago.

When asked about the strategy used in Afghanistan to rid the country of poppy growing, Schweich said: "We want to make sure the population sees specific development assistance rewards for having done so."

"I think we need a tough programme of taking out high value targets and eradicating the fields of those farmers who are wealthy and well connected to show them there are law enforcement capabilities in those areas," said Schweich.

Schweich also said that for 2008, he does not expect an increase in poppy production, "but I suspect it will be the same or maybe lower than last year."

Schweich also commented on an Italian proposal to use poppy cultivation for legal uses and why the proposal did not work.

"We analysed that proposal very carefully," he told AKI. "We found that the price of legal opium is way below the price of illegal opium,". As a result, any buyout scheme would have to be heavily subsidised.

"So there is no incentive to switch to a legal opium scheme when the price is so low for legal opium."

A buyout would then cost billions of dollars per year as more farmers began growing. Despite the difficulties encountered, Schweich remains hopeful and calls on the international community to remain united.

"We are cautiously optimistic. The signs in the north and east [of Afghanistan] are good and is important that the international community remain unified on the need to have a balance of 'carrots and sticks' and get rid of it [opium cultivations]."

Blasts kill two Afghan police, NATO soldier

March 21, 2008 - KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide attacker blew himself up near a busy shrine in Afghanistan Friday, killing two policemen, while a NATO soldier was killed in a blast elsewhere, officials said.

Another bombing in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, flooded with visitors for New Year celebrations, wounded four people Friday, a security official said.

The suicide attacker in the southern province of Kandahar detonated his explosives near a vehicle of police guarding a shrine where Friday prayers were busier than normal because of the New Year holidays, officials said.

Two policemen were killed and three were wounded in the attack in the Arghandab area north of Kandahar, said the deputy provincial police chief, named only Amanullah. A civilian man was also hurt, he said.

First reports said the attacker had been riding a bicycle.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the attack was similar to dozens of others carried out by the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001 and is now waging an insurgency.

Security officials in Mazar-i-Sharif blamed their bomb, also near a shrine, on "enemies of Afghanistan," a term that often refers to the Taliban but could include other extremist groups.

In a separate incident, a soldier with the NATO-led force that is helping the government deal with the insurgency died on Thursday after being struck by a bomb in the south, the alliance said.

The nationality of the soldier and location of the incident were not disclosed in the International Security Assistance Force statement announcing the death.

The killing came after US Vice President Dick Cheney made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Thursday for talks with President Hamid Karzai on international efforts to fight the insurgency.

Both leaders called for NATO to sustain and even expand its work to crush the extremists and rebuild the war-torn country.

More than 30 international soldiers have died in Afghanistan this year.

A new girls school in Afghanistan part of NATO strategy to be both warriors and well diggers

By PAUL AMES, Associated Press, March 21, 2008

DEH HASSAN, Afghanistan - The little girl flashed a shy smile from under her white headscarf and stepped to the front of the class when the headmaster asked who could find Afghanistan on their new map of the world.

After a little hesitation, 11-year-old Pashtun pointed to her homeland, making a successful start to her first day at school.

Pashtun and her classmates, clearly delighted as the new school opened last week, are the face of Afghanistan that NATO would like the world to see after months of headlines dominated by the upsurge in violence that made last year the bloodiest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Thanks to German and Scandinavian troops providing security, German aid workers could move in with funds to build the freshly painted yellow-and-white schoolhouse where 600 girls from Deh Hassan and the surrounding villages can finally get a proper education, seven years after the fall of the Taliban regime, which made it a crime to teach females.

The pursuit of such development projects alongside combat and security operations remains a key task for NATO forces and will likely be part of the discussion next week at a NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will attend the summit, which is due to draw up a "vision statement" laying out NATO's objectives in Afghanistan.

It aims to go beyond the squabbling among the 26-allies over contributions to the 47,000-strong NATO military force to set out a military and development strategy with a series of benchmarks to be achieved over the next five years.

They are expected to include:

_ ensuring peaceful presidential elections in 2009;

_ building up the local police and expanding the Afghan army into an effective fighting force of 80,000;

_ curtailing the booming opium trade;

_ expanding the areas free from Taliban influence.

The aim is to forge a long-term commitment that will remind increasingly skeptical publics why their soldiers are fighting and dying in a country half a world away.

"Just seven years ago, Afghanistan was the Grand Central Station of terrorism," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a recent speech. "If this mission were not to succeed _ and let me be very clear, it will _ Afghanistan would once again pose a clear and present danger to itself, its region and the broader international community."

NATO sees training the Afghan army as the key to an eventual reduction of the international force, but allied officials in Kabul say it's far too early to talk of an exit strategy, warning any sign of a pullout would be exploited by the Taliban.

"The opposition wants to say, 'It's no point in supporting the international community because they'll be gone soon,'" says spokesman Mark Laity. "What's absolutely fundamental is for us to get a strong message that we're supporting the Afghan government ... and we're not going anywhere."

The school in Der Hassan and similar projects are central to that strategy.

Der Hassan, a dusty village of camel herders and almond farmers, sits in a strip of desert separating the mountains of central Afghanistan from the northern border with Uzbekistan.

NATO troops are welcome in this region far from the battlefields in the south where troops from NATO's International Security Assistance Force are engaged in a daily battle with the Taliban.

"It's all calm and serene here," says district Governor Alhaj Sayed Abrar. "Each step NATO takes for the reconstruction of the country is positive."

Over a lunch of palao rice, lamb and the famed local pomegranates, Abrar heaped praise on the German troops and development officials working in the district and blamed the continued violence on malign foreign influences mainly from Pakistan who exploit the deep Islamic conservatism of Afghan southerners to whip up extremism.

However, just 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Deh Hassan, German army commanders in the city of Kunduz say their previously calm sector has seen a surge in attacks since last summer, forcing Berlin to send in paratroopers to reinforce the mission.

"There's hardly any week, any day, when there is not a rocket attack," says Lt. Col. Dietmar Jeserich.

Underscoring the complexity of their task, NATO commanders are unsure if the attacks are coming from Taliban who have infiltrated the region or drug runners keen to maintain lawlessness on a key route into Central Asia.

Germany has 3,200 troops in Afghanistan, mostly in the north. The refusal of key European allies such as Germany, Italy and Spain to send forces to join the British, Americans, Canadians and Dutch who are leading the fight in the south has led to months of ugly infighting within NATO.

The demands for more troops are expected to resume when U.S. President George W. Bush joins the other allied leaders in Bucharest.

An expected announcement that France will send up hundreds of extra combat troops will go some way to meet the need. However, it's not yet clear whether the French soldiers will be sent to the south in response to Canada's threat to pull out of dangerous Kandahar province unless NATO finds 1,000 reinforcements for its beleaguered troops there.

NATO diplomats hope the leaders will agree that their soldiers will have to be both "warriors and well diggers" in Afghanistan _ fighting to achieve security then following up with speedy development to win over the local population.

To do that they will need more money as well as more troops. NATO's top commander, U.S. Gen. John Craddock, says American forces in eastern Afghanistan have made great strides undermining the Taliban threat in their region through generous development handouts.

"If you go to the east and you see all these paved roads and you see logging trucks moving back and forth and new fields of fruit trees so the farmers can get the produce back and forth," Craddock told reporters in Kabul.

"In some parts of this country more than others a little money goes a long way; you can buy a lot of projects."

The school in Deh Hassan cost the German government US$67,000 ( � 43,000), "the cost of a reasonably low cost luxury car in Europe," said Craddock.

Same game, new rules in Afghanistan

By Syed Saleem Shahzad Asia Times Online / March 21, 2008

KARACHI - After more than six years, coalition forces in Afghanistan are preparing for an all-out offensive against the Taliban centered on their safe havens straddling the border with Pakistan.

This, allied with intensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization and US operations already this year, has led to much speculation on whether the Taliban will launch their annual spring offensive, with even senior NATO officials suggesting the Taliban will instead bunker down in a war of attrition, much as they did during a rough phase in 2004.

This will not be the case, according to Asia Times Online's interaction with Taliban guerrillas over the past few weeks. But instead of taking on foreign forces in direct battle in the traditional hot spots, the Taliban plan to open new fronts as they are aware they cannot win head-on against the might of the US-led war machine.

The efforts of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and its 47,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations will focus on specific areas that include the Bajaur and Mohmand tribal agencies in Pakistan, as well as South and North Waziristan in that country, and Nooristan, Kunar, Paktia, Paktika and Khost provinces in Afghanistan. The ISAF is complemented by the separate US-led coalition of about 20,000, the majority being US soldiers. This does not include a contingent of 3,600 US Marine Corps who this week started arriving in southern Afghanistan. They will work under the command of the ISAF.

For their part, the Taliban, according to Asia Times Online contacts, will open new fronts in Khyber Agency in Pakistan and Nangarhar province in east Afghanistan and its capital Jalalabad.

This move follows a meeting of important Taliban commanders of Pakistani and Afghan origin held for the first time in the Tera Valley bordering the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan. (Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders famously evaded US-led forces in the Tora Bora soon after the invasion in 2001.)

Pakistan's Khyber Agency has never been a part of the Taliban's domain. The majority of the population there follows the Brelvi school of thought, which is bitterly opposed to the hardline Taliban and the Salafi brand of Islam. The adjacent Afghan province of Nangarhar has also been a relatively peaceful area.

Conversely, the historic belt starting from Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province and running through Khyber Agency to Nangarhar is NATO's life line - 80% of its supplies pass through it. From Nangarhar, the capital Kabul is only six hours away by road.

Over the past year, the Taliban have worked hard at winning over the population in this region and have installed a new commander, Ustad Yasir, to open up the front in Nangarhar.

After seven years of the "war on terror" and the Iraqi experience, both "sides" have become more pragmatic. Slogans such as "shock and awe", "crusade" against Islamic extremism and "intifada" catch the headlines, but they are not getting the job done. Both sides have refined their approach aimed at achieving specific goals and targets. If NATO has acquired excellent knowledge of the Taliban's network, the Taliban and al-Qaeda have also excelled in gathering information on NATO and its allies.

Al-Qaeda has evolved from an organization that generally only allowed in Arabs and its ideology now accommodates indigenous factors. Today, Pakistani non-Pashtuns, popularly known as Punjabis, are the Pakistani franchise of al-Qaeda. They receive macro policies from the al-Qaeda shura (council) comprising Arabs, but are independent in the implementation of these policies - although an Arab in still in overall charge.

The same goes in Iraq, where al-Qaeda is now a local organization with its hub spread between Mosul, Diyala and Baquba.

At the same time, the "war on terror" extends beyond US-British dominance. Although there are several disagreements at the operation level within NATO in Afghanistan, some partners, such as France, cognizant of the revival of the enemy's strength, have greatly enhanced their input into intelligence resources.

French intelligence is directly involved in fresh moves to track the most wanted targets, including Taliban commander Sirajuddin Haqqani, Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, chief of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Tahir Yaldeshiv, besides bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

New funds have been allocated for clandestine operations by French intelligence in Pakistan's North and South Waziristan regions, as well as in Balochistan province, to track high-profile targets with the aim of assassinating them. This is being done in coordination with NATO forces in Afghanistan.

According to Asia Times Online investigations, French intelligence has infiltrated a network of donors who had been arranging money for the Iraqi resistance and the Taliban.

Underlying these efforts is the belief that the war cannot be won through the use of naked violence alone. The militant camps have reached a similar conclusion: their actions now are much more nuanced and calibrated and they realize there will be no quick victory.

A smooth supply of money and arms from various sources as well as thousands of new recruits have rejuvenated their cause and allowed the militants to better plan their operations and carefully select their targets. They have established good rapport within the security forces at an individual level and use these contacts whenever it is essential.

Last weekend's attack on an Italian restaurant in the Pakistani capital Islamabad shows how deeply al-Qaeda has made inroads into the Pakistani security agencies and as a result is receiving first-hand information.

The al-Qaeda attack injured, through a time bomb, four US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, including a senior official of counter-terrorism coordination with the Pakistani Special Intelligence Agency.

The restaurant is co-owned by an Italian woman who is the wife of a man believed to be the main financial backer of anti-Taliban Shi'ites in the northern areas of Pakistan.

More such attacks are expected.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief.

Afghanistan: Radio Free Afghanistan Names 'Person Of The Year'

By Sonia Winter Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, March 20, 2008

An Afghan governor has been named Radio Free Afghanistan's "Person Of The Year" for his role in keeping the peace and reconstructing his war-torn province.

Listeners of RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan (RFA) voted for Gul Agha Sherzai, the governor of the eastern Nangarhar Province, in the first-ever nationwide "Person Of The Year" contest.

The award is given for advancing the cause of democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and reconstruction.

Sherzai, a former governor of the Kandahar Province and former adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was credited with establishing the rule of law in the province, keeping the peace, eradicating poppy fields, and building an important highway between the capital Jalalabad and Torkham, on the border with Pakistan.

The announcement was made on air by RFA Director Akbar Ayazi to mark the beginning of the Afghan new year.

Sherzai, a blackbearded heavyset man with a commanding presence, is the son of a poor restaurant owner and ethnic Pashtun from the Kandahar Province.

He began calling himself Gul Agha as a mujahedin fighting the Soviet military in the 1970s. He later added Sherzai ("son of lion" in the Pashto language). Sherzai helped President Karzai drive the Taliban out of his native province and served as governor of Kandahar from 1992 to 1994.

After becoming governor of Nangarhar in 2004, Sherzai became known as "The Bulldozer," after he completed in record time daunting projects, including a network of roads, solar-powered street lights in the cities, and a historically accurate reconstruction of the presidential palace in Jalalabad.

In a 2007 interview to "The Sunday Times," Sherzai spoke about a project to turn the Tora Bora caves in Nangarhar, once Osama bin Laden's hideout, into a holiday resort. "Tora Bora is already a world-famous name but we want it to be known for tourism, not terrorism," Sherzai said.

RFA Director Ayazi said that the 10 finalists were announced at the beginning of March and, in a two-week voting period, RFA received more than 400 calls a day from listeners.

"There was tremendous excitement about this among our listeners," Ayazi said, adding: "We were amazed by the response to our contest, our listeners participated in huge numbers. This is the first time Afghans could choose their own person of the year. Governor Sherzai was the clear choice of the people."

Ramazan Bashardost, an independent parliamentary deputy praised for his uncompromising stance against corruption, was awarded second place in the contest. A well-known women's rights activist and deputy Shokria Barikzai was also in the final running.

Told by RFE/RL that he was in line for the award, Sherzai said: "No matter what, I will continue to serve my people and help make Afghanistan a lawful and law-abiding country."

Taliban release video of German who targeted US Afghan base

March 20, 2008 - Islamabad (dpa) - The Taliban have released a videotape of the last statement by a German of Turkish origin who carried out a suicide bomb attack earlier this month on a US post in eastern Afghanistan, a Pakistan press report said Thursday.

German-born Cuneyt Ciftci, also known as Saad Abu Furkan, blew himself up in a delivery truck near a US base in the Sabari district of Khost province on March 3, killing two soldiers with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and two Afghan workers. Six others were wounded.

The videotape, issued in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, also contains images of the scene of the attack, the daily News reported.

"Three of our cameramen filmed the attack when it was taking place from three sides," Taliban sources told the English-language newspaper The News' Peshawar bureau chief, Rahimullah Yousafzai.

In the videotape Ciftci, 28 called his attack a sacrifice for Islam.

"I am giving away my life for the glory of Islam," Ciftci was cited by Yousafzai, who watched the video, as saying. Some parts of his statement were in German, he told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Ciftic also made appeal to other Muslims to join him in what he calls jihad against the infidels.

"Time has arrived to give sacrifices for Islam. Since we lack resources to fight the enemy (Western powers), we will have to turn our bodies into bombs. We will have to sacrifice our lives," he said.

The reports of Ciftci's involvement in the Khost bombing first came up last week in the German press, including Der Spiegel, Focus and Bild. He had lived near Ansbach in the southern German state of Bavaria with a wife and two children and had been under observation by the security services for some time, according to those reports.

Ciftci, the first German Islamist who carried out a suicide bombing in Afghanistan, is believed to have had links with Islamist terrorist cell broken up last September 5 in Germany.

The plotters, who included two German converts to Islam and a Turkish Muslim, had allegedly been planning large bomb attacks on U.S. facilities in Germany.

All have been linked to the Uzbek terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union.

The videotape released in Peshawar also includes a message of Maulvi Jalaluddin Haqqani, one of the most wanted commanders in Afghanistan.

Haqqani praised the Khost suicide bombing and eulogized the services of Taliban and other mujahidin who laid down their lives for the cause of Islam and Afghanistan, the report said.

Tetra Tech Wins $55 Million Contract

Associated Press / March 20, 2008

PASADENA, Calif. - Tetra Tech Inc., a provider of consulting, engineering and technical services, said Thursday it has received a $55 million contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development to assist with reconstruction efforts in western Afghanistan.

Over the next two years, Tetra Tech (nasdaq: TTEK) will work with U.S. and Afghan partners on such development efforts as irrigation planning and improvements, road rehabilitation, and renovation or construction of public buildings, including schools, clinics and community centers.

Tetra Tech shares gained 8 cents to $18.18 in afternoon trading.

Afghanistan launches the International Year of Sanitation

By Roshan Khadivi, Source: United Nations Children's Fund

On World Water Day, 20 March 2008, UNICEF is focusing on the importance of sanitation and hygiene in reaching global goals for safe water. Here is one in a series of related reports.

KABUL, Afghanistan, 20 March 2008 – Afghanistan has launched the International Year of Sanitation to advance cooperation among policymakers, humanitarian partners and communities on improving sanitation and increasing access to safe water around the country.

UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan Catherine Mbengue helped launch the campaign, focusing on the impact of sanitation on education.

'We at UNICEF believe improvement in school water, sanitation and hygiene education not only promotes a healthy physical and learning environment,' said Ms. Mbengue. 'It also increases girls' enrolment and creates links between schools and communities, resulting in support for children's rights.'

Healthier schools and communities

Since 2004, the Healthy School Initiative (HIS), organized jointly by UN agencies and the Government of Afghanistan, has been implemented in 500 schools across 10 provinces.

The initiative, which is being expanded throughout the country, aims to provide children with quality education in a healthy environment – including access to safe water and separate latrines for girls and boys. HIS also conducts de-worming campaigns for schoolchildren and offers hygiene education for teachers and students.

Beyond school sanitation and hygiene, UNICEF and its partners in Afghanistan have constructed more than 11,000 wells and 59 pipe schemes for water networks, as well as building or rehabilitating over 1,700 reservoirs that serve a total of some 3.8 million people. And last year, UNICEF supported the construction of more than 23,000 latrines either in houses or in schools, benefiting 200,000 people – most of them children.

'But still, with the current rate of progress, we will not reach our MDG (Millennium Development Goal) target on sanitation, and we need to do more to reach every community,' said Ms. Mbengue.

The target set forth by the Government of Afghanistan is to halve, by 2020, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

It is estimated that only 23 per cent of households in Afghanistan have access to safe water – with 43 per cent having access in urban centres and 18 per cent in rural areas.

Sanitation needs differ depending upon location. In rural areas, the focus is on hygiene education and improved latrines. In cities, there is more of a need for functioning sewage systems.

The rural water and sanitation programme of the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development, together with the country's ongoing water-supply and sanitation projects, aim to achieve Afghanistan's long-term goals.

'We hope that the UN declaration of the year 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation will bring more collaboration between the UN agencies, Afghan institutions and NGOs, and mobilize resources to assist our compatriots in the development of rural areas and elimination of this problem,' President Hamid Karzai said in a message he sent for last week's launch event.

To celebrate World Water Day today, UNICEF is distributing an informational booklet that includes key messages on hygiene and sanitation in local languages throughout the country. Meanwhile, one village in each province has been selected to showcase how a community can participate in ensuring that all its families adopt key sanitation and hygiene practices.

New shoes help needy Afghans walk tall

By Rabia Ali in Kheshki refugee village, Pakistan
Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 20 (UNHCR) – The students at the Islamabad International School have no problem imagining themselves in someone else's shoes. In fact, they are so good at it, they've put other people in their shoes.

Inspired by a book about the plight of Afghan refugee children, these students have donated shoes and socks to hundreds of needy Afghans in north-western Pakistan.

"It all started when Khadra Mohammed, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Refugee Centre in the United States, came to the school last year to do a reading of her book, 'Four Feet, Two Sandals'," said Connie Turner, the elementary school principal at the Islamabad International School in the Pakistani capital.

"The story about friendship and sacrifice between two Afghan girls really touched the kids. They couldn't bear the idea of refugee kids going through winter in their bare feet," she added. As a result, the students started a shoe drive and collected hundreds of pairs of shoes and socks. Their parents pitched in by sorting the shoes into different sizes.

The 320 pairs of shoes and sandals, together with 750 pairs of new socks, were recently distributed in Kheshki refugee village in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP). With only 127 Afghan families and 678 individuals, Kheshki is among the smallest refugee settlements around, but its needs are great as the refugees have limited employment opportunities in the area.

"I am really thankful to those children who donated these shoes and socks," said Salima, a widow and mother of four. "It gives me a good feeling that children who have not met us have thought about us and helped us through their donation."

Families with six or fewer members were given one pair of socks per family member, one pair of shoes per family and one pack of high protein biscuits donated by UNHCR. Female-headed families and those with more than six members were given an additional pair of shoes and a pack of biscuits. An additional 36 pairs of shoes and 48 packs of biscuits were given to children below five years of age who were present at the distribution site.

Raiza Gul, a four-year-old with a bright smile on her face, was very happy to get a sandal of her choice. "I know it is big and does not fit me now, but I will wait for another year and will wear it on Eid," she said, referring to the Muslim holy festival.

Seven-year-old Shafi Muhammad was equally excited to get a brand new pair of sports shoes: "I cannot wait to wear them and run. I would love to show them to my friends who will envy me."

Kheshki refugee village was established in 1988. The majority of its residents are ethnic Pashtuns hailing from Kunar, Logar and Kunduz provinces of Afghanistan. There are more than 2 million registered Afghans in Pakistan today, less than half of them living in 85 refugee villages – mostly in NWFP and Balochistan.

Afghan doctors protest new security threat: gangs

Residents of the western city of Herat say 'Enough' to the rise of criminal activity.

By Anand Gopal | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor, Kabul, Afghanistan

When a criminal gang abducted a prominent doctor's 12-year-old son last week off the streets of Herat, residents of the western Afghan city decided they had had enough.

Doctors, nurses, and other health providers walked out on their jobs to protest what they say are the government's half-hearted attempts to address a growing security problem. Shopkeepers, judges, and the city's main trade union soon joined them, prompting the closure of close to 250 factories.

The strike, which ended earlier this week, highlights widespread dissatisfaction with government efforts to provide security and illustrates the extent to which criminal gangs – not the Taliban – are seen as the biggest security threat in Afghanistan's major cities.

"We are scared to go outside because we never know when it will be for the last time," says Herat resident Ahmad Qurishi.

Government officials report that close to 100 kidnapping incidents were registered in 2007 in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul – almost all of them at the hands of criminal gangs. The secretive, well-organized gangs often kidnap well-to-do businessmen, doctors, and other prominent figures and demand millions in ransom. The gangs also organize sophisticated robberies, often absconding with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Criminal investigations police chief Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal says there are a handful of large, powerful gangs and dozens of smaller ones that operate on an informal basis. While foreigners are occasionally targeted, the majority of the abducted are Afghans.

Two months ago, Mirza Kunduzi, an entrepreneur who owns a successful money-changing shop in Kabul's market district, returned home after a long day's work. Suddenly, six men sprang from a parked car and aimed weapons at him. "They wore military uniforms," he says. "They cut me with a knife, blindfolded me, and forced me into the back of the car."

The kidnappers took him to a nearby house, where they regularly beat him. "They asked me for $2 million, and they kept beating me because I refused to pay. They didn't even take my blindfold off – my eyes were closed for seven days."

Eventually the abductors agreed to a $40,000 ransom and dumped Mr. Kunduzi at the side of the road late at night.

Kunduzi's ordeal matches the experiences of hundreds of others, and analysts say that the climate of fear is driving talent and capital out of the country.

A local business group estimates that in 2007 private investment dropped by nearly half. "The targeting of businesses and businesspeople by criminal gangs for ransom has had the most profound impact on the morale of private entrepreneurs and, therefore, on private business and investment," the Afghan Investment Support Agency said in a recent statement.

Some experts assert that high unemployment and a lack of opportunities create ripe conditions for gangs to flourish. "When the former Mujahideen armies were disbanded, it threw a lot of people on the streets without income," says Haroun Mir, deputy director of the Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies. "When you are young and you see a disparity in wealth and no hope for the future, you will do almost anything."

Many former soldiers now work for private security companies. "We have evidence that some of these companies are involved in kidnapping, robbery, and drug trafficking," says General Paktiawal.

To compound matters, many feel that some elements of the Afghan police force are corrupt and cannot be relied upon to provide adequate security. "Many gangs have contacts in the police," Mr. Mir claims. "And there is no reward for good cops or punishment for bad ones."

The fears and frustrations that drove the people of Herat to strike are prompting Kunduzi to attempt to take matters into his own hands. "Some police have a hand in this, and the government is not protecting anyone here," he says, his voice shaking with anger. "After my kidnapping I decided the only way I could be safe is if I owned a gun."

As he waits for a gun license – a difficult and expensive process even in a country awash with arms – Kunduzi says that he may not be able to buy his freedom the next time around. "They have taken everything from me. They can kidnap me again," he says, "but I have n