In this bulletin:

• Extremists Killing Afghans They Suspect Are Spying
• Eight Taliban killed in southern Afghanistan: police
• Blast wounds 3 Dutch NATO-soldiers in Afghanistan
• Hayden: Pakistan border poses danger
• U.S.-Afghan-Pak joint military center opened in E Afghanistan
• Russian ties, Afghan war at stake for NATO summit
• British Troops, Taliban In a Tug of War Over Afghan Province
• French MPs want a debate on deploying troops in Afghanistan
• Afghan reporter on death row to plead for pardon
• Afghanistan progress a slow affair
• Afghan ministry says supplied obsolete ammunition was rejected
• Tackling rising drug addiction in Parwan Province
• Afghan minister admits failure in anti-drugs fight
• AFGHANS’ 20-YEAR HEROIN STOCKPILE
• The Opium Brides of Afghanistan
• Hungarian-Japanese projects to create jobs, improve education in Afghanistan
• Kabulis complain about lack of electricity
• Safi to fly direct to Europe
• Kabul factory cans Coca Cola for first time

Extremists Killing Afghans They Suspect Are Spying

Washington Post - By Imtiaz Ali Thursday, March 27, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan. March 26 -- Extremists in Pakistan's western tribal areas have killed dozens of people suspected of providing intelligence to the United States and its allies in recent months, according to local officials and tribal elders. The killings, some of them carried out in brutal fashion and videotaped as warnings to would-be spies, come as the U.S. government has escalated airstrikes in the region.

Officials and tribal elders say most of the victims have been Afghan refugees who can easily cross the porous border with Pakistan. Extremists have killed accused spies since the start of military operations against al-Qaeda fighters and their tribal supporters in 2001, but the recent deaths represent a marked increase in such cases.

"I don't know how much truth lies in these accusations against particular individuals. But looking at the increasing frequency of such incidents, we have also started thinking that the United States may be using Afghan refugees in this area as their informants for information about local as well as foreign militants," one official said on condition of anonymity.

The official added that the Afghans may be working for the Afghan government, outside U.S. command. But "that is considered to be like spying for the United States in this region," he said.

On Tuesday, local officials near Miram Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, found the body of an Afghan refugee, Abdullah Jan. Attached to the body was a note that warned, "Anyone working as an American spy will meet the same fate."

Extremists recently released a DVD, "The Fate of a Hypocrite," which shows the beheading of an unidentified man. The DVD shows the man confessing that he had received about $1,000 for spying for the United States. Several masked men standing behind him laugh and say the punishment of spying is death. Then a teenager steps forward and beheads the man with a knife.

Sources close to the extremists said the man had provided information to "enemy forces" about the position of Taliban fighters, who were later killed in an airstrike.

Extremists in the area rely on "a strong network of informants in every village and town" to find suspected spies, said Malik Mumtaz, a tribal elder in Miram Shah, adding that the Taliban usually releases a DVD of the person being killed.

"In a few days," Mumtaz said, "you will see a new DVD showing the assassination of Abdullah Jan."

Afghanistan's Hazaras protest over pastures

Sun Mar 30, KABUL (AFP) - More than 2,000 mainly ethnic Hazaras, many of them livestock farmers, marched through the Afghan capital Kabul Sunday to demand authorities stop nomads from using their grazing lands.

The demonstrators, some of whom travelled to the city from poverty-hit central Afghanistan, alleged that ethnic Pashtun nomads, called Kuchi, are using their pastures for animals to graze on.

"We're demonstrating to demand our rights. We want the government to stop Kuchis grabbing our pastures," a protester named Ahmad Kamal Natiqi told AFP as others shouted "Down with Kuchi."

The Kuchi, estimated to number 2.4 million, move around Afghanistan in search of pastures for the animals on which they depend.

The nomads -- leading caravans of camels, sheep and donkeys -- are due to arrive in central Afghanistan in coming weeks, moving up from the warmer south in a centuries-old migration.

They are mainly from Pashtun tribes that dominate southern and eastern Afghanistan and sometimes clash with other ethnic groups as they travel.

Armed clashes between the Kuchis and settled Hazaras reportedly left several people dead in central Wardak province last year.

There are fears that low levels of rain and snow over winter will mean drought this year, which would put extra pressure on Afghanistan's farmers.

Eight Taliban killed in southern Afghanistan: police

Sun Mar 30, KABUL (AFP) - Eight Taliban fighters were killed in an operation by Afghan and Western troops after the rebels ambushed a civilian supply convoy in troubled southern Afghanistan, police said Sunday.

The rebels were killed late Saturday in a raid launched after militants had ambushed the trucks ferrying supplies to foreign military bases in Zabul province, a police official said.

"Taliban attacked a civilian convoy. After brief fighting with security guards, the rebels retreated into a nearby village, stealing a vehicle of the guards," provincial deputy police chief Faridullah Zadran said.

"Police, the army and NATO forces chased them. In fighting that we had with the Taliban, eight of them were killed and four others were captured. The stolen car was also recovered," he told AFP.

The Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001, are waging a bloody insurgency which is particularly tense in southern provinces such as Zabul.

The Islamic extremist regime was ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001 after they refused to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, accused of September 11 attacks on US cities.

Around 70,000 international troops, mainly from Western countries, are based in Afghanistan, fighting back the insurgency and helping the Kabul government to rebuild the country from the destruction of decades of conflict.

Blast wounds 3 Dutch NATO-soldiers in Afghanistan

March 30, 2008, AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Three Dutch soldiers from NATO-led forces in Afghanistan were hospitalized on Sunday after their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device near the town of Tarin Kowt, the Defence Ministry said.

One soldier lost both his legs in the explosion and his condition was critical, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.

"It is sad to conclude that terrorists, who intend to block a peaceful and energetic Afghanistan, use this kind of cowardly method," said Dutch Finance Minister Eimert van Middelkoop.

"However our soldiers are determined to continue their hard job in Afghanistan," he said in the statement.

Violence has surged in Afghanistan in the last two years, with some 6,000 people killed in 2007, the deadliest year since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001. More than 200 foreign troops were killed there in 2007.

On Thursday Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched an anti-Koran film and before its launch NATO had expressed concern it could worsen security for foreign forces in Afghanistan, including 1,650 Dutch troops.

The film, which urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Koran, and starts and ends with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, accompanied by the sound of ticking, was condemned by Muslim nations on Friday, while Dutch Muslim leaders urged restraint.

Before the release of the film demonstrators in Kabul protested against it and chanted "death to the Netherlands, while burning Dutch flags. (Reporting by Harro ten Wolde)

Hayden: Pakistan border poses danger

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press March 30, 2008

WASHINGTON - The situation in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where al-Qaida has established a safe haven presents a "clear and present danger" to the West, the CIA director said Sunday.

Michael Hayden cited the belief by intelligence agencies that Osama bin Laden is hiding there in arguing that the U.S. has an interest in targeting the border region. If there were another terrorist attack against Americans, Hayden said, it would most certainly originate from that region.

"It's very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able for the past 18 months or so to establish a safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, and that they're bringing in operatives into the region for training," he said.

Hayden added that that those operatives "wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport, outside Washington) with you when you're coming back to the United States — who look Western."

Washington has sought reassurance that Pakistan's new coalition government will keep the pressure on extremist groups using the country's lawless northwest frontier as a springboard for attacks in Afghanistan and beyond.

Over the weekend, Pakistan's new prime minister, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, pledged to make the fight against terrorism his top priority. But he said peace talks and aid programs could be more effective than weapons in fighting militancy in tribal areas along the Afghan border. It was the new government's latest rebuke of President Pervez Musharraf's military tactics, which many Pakistanis believe have led to a spike in domestic attacks.

On Sunday, Hayden declined to comment on reports that the U.S. might be escalating unilateral strikes against al-Qaida members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas out of concern that the pro-Western Musharraf's influence might be waning. Hayden only would say that Pakistan's cooperation in the past has been crucial to U.S. efforts to stem terrorism there.

"The situation on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border presents clear and present danger to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the West in general and United States in particular," he said. "Operationally, we are turning every effort to capture or kill that leadership from the top to the bottom."

On Iraq, Hayden said it could be "years" before the central government might be able to function on its own without the aid of U.S. combat forces. Hayden said he would defer to the specific assessments of Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, top U.S. diplomat in Baghdad, who return to Washington next month to report to Congress. Hayden spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."

U.S.-Afghan-Pak joint military center opened in E Afghanistan

Xinhua / March 30, 2008 - U.S. military, Afghanistan and Pakistan have established the first joint intelligence center in Afghan eastern Nangarhar province close to Pakistani border in an effort to check militants' infiltration, an Afghan newspaper reported Sunday.

"U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officers opened the first of six joint military intelligence centers along the rocky Afghan-Pakistan border on Saturday," daily Outlook said.

Aimed at sharing intelligence information, the center was set up in Torkham border town linking Kabul with Islamabad.

Staffed by some 20 personnel from the three nations, the center represented the latest step in American efforts to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to coordinate in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents, the newspaper said.

The trio would meet regularly to review the situation along the border and chalk out plans to control cross-border activities on the Durand Line which divides the two neighboring nations.

Both the neighboring states of Afghanistan and Pakistan have been facing increasing militancy and extremist attacks over the past few years.

Russian ties, Afghan war at stake for NATO summit

By Mark John - Sun Mar 30, 9:17 AM ET

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The largest summit in NATO's history starting next Wednesday could mould the West's relations with Russia for years to come and show whether the U.S.-led alliance has the resolve to win the war in Afghanistan.

The three-day meet in Bucharest offers U.S. President George W. Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin -- an unusual guest at the NATO feast -- the chance to brush up the legacies they leave on the world stage as each prepares to leave office.

NATO decisions on the membership hopes of Ukraine and Georgia, together with Putin's reaction to U.S. ideas for a new strategic pact with Moscow, could decide whether the summit marks a turning-point or deterioration in Russia-West ties.

All eyes will be on the sharp-tongued Putin who is adamantly opposed to the two former Soviet allies joining NATO and could well seize the occasion to speak his mind.

"A lot of what happens at this summit will depend on the duet between the two presidents," Frans van Daele, Belgian ambassador to NATO, told a recent conference on the summit.

The gargantuan Parliament Palace of communist-era dictator Nicolae Ceausescu will host no fewer than 60 leaders from NATO states, partners and aspirant members, plus Afghan President Hamid Karzai and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Germany, France and a handful of other western European allies do not buy the U.S. argument that now is the time to offer Ukraine and Georgia the membership action plan (MAP) -- a roadmap to eventual entry -- they are seeking.

Such a step would give Bush the satisfaction of having set the stage for NATO's frontiers to extend all the way to Russia's eastern border from the Baltic to the Black Sea, with the exception of Belarus.

That would go alongside less controversial membership invitations that the summit is expected to hand to Croatia and Albania -- and Macedonia if it is able to resolve a long-running row over its name with NATO ally Greece.

Washington argues that Russia has swallowed past NATO enlargements to the east and that it is best to finish the business now rather than have it complicate a possible new start with President-elect Dmitry Medvedev. But others disagree.

"The German position is that ... they would like to try to establish good relations with that president. They don't want something like this, which Russia really opposes, to get in the way," said James Goldgeier at the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations, suggesting Bush was viewed as a lame-duck leader.

The Kremlin said last week that the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia was a test-case of whether the alliance wanted to cooperate with Russia.

Skeptics argue that Ukrainian public support for joining NATO -- barely 30 percent, according to polls -- is too low to start MAP, and that Georgia must first solve territorial disputes in the Russian-backed regions on its soil.

They add that ties with Russia are already strained by Kosovo's Western-backed secession and may not be able to bear a new row.

There is also the issue of U.S. plans to site parts of a missile shield in eastern Europe -- another project that Moscow opposes.

Bush is hoping the offer of a strategic framework document newly drafted by the United States may help overcome Russian hostility to the idea.

Few dare to predict Putin's response. But his move to invite Bush to his Black Sea villa after the summit has raised hopes in Washington that he may take a moderate tack.

Alliance leaders also want the summit to resolve tensions over the 47,000-strong NATO mission in Afghanistan and signal it is ready to stay the course there and defeat the Taliban.

Months of noisy infighting about troop levels, tactics and the refusal of some European allies to send soldiers into the fiercest fighting have overshadowed what alliance officials say is modest but real progress in security and reconstruction.

France has indicated it will come to the meeting armed with an offer of more troops as part of a wider reinforcement in the heartlands of a stubborn Taliban-led insurgency.

The scheduled presence of Karzai and the United Nations' Ban is designed to show Afghan authorities are serious about tackling corruption and that the world body is ready to address deficits in its aid effort.

NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also hopes to seal a pact with Putin for NATO troop and equipment transit routes via Russia to Afghanistan, plus more cooperation on tackling the Afghan narcotics trade.

Bush off to Europe to rally Afghanistan support, farewell Putin

by Laurent Lozano, March 30, 2008 - WASHINGTON (AFP) - George W. Bush heads to Europe Monday to push NATO allies for more support in Afghanistan and to meet with Russia's Vladimir Putin, probably for the last time 'president to president.'

Demanding more troop contributions from alliance members for the second front in the "war on terror," where failure would be seen as a personal blow, has emerged as a priority for Bush when he attends his final North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit April 2-4 in Bucharest.

Amid a delicate patch in relations between Washington and Moscow, Russia's presence will also be felt in the Romanian capital, even before Bush heads to the Black Sea port of Sochi for weekend talks at Putin's invitation.

Among the subjects to be discussed by NATO leaders are the military alliance's eastward expansion and US plans for a missile defense system in central Europe -- both of which have strained US-Russia ties.

Facing accusations of neglecting the mission in Afghanistan to focus on the war in Iraq, Bush affirmed Wednesday that "there is no better opportunity to deal with the threats of terror than in Afghanistan" and that he heads to Bucharest "to encourage people to take our obligations seriously."

His decision to commit an additional 3,500 Marines should "set an example and encourage others to participate," he told reporters. Less than a year before he leaves office, Bush knows his reputation rests in large measure on success in Afghanistan.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement that he would strengthen France's presence there should "ensure" a successful NATO summit, Bush added.

But while the discord throughout Europe over the war in Iraq seems remote, Afghanistan continues to be divisive among the NATO allies.

Some countries such as Germany "are being beaten up" by the Bush administration because they aren't doing well enough in Afghanistan, said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, an expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The German government has also underlined its opposition to NATO opening the door to membership to former Soviet republics Ukraine and Georgia, and about half of the 25 other NATO members have cast doubt on the bids too.

Russia, meanwhile, is particularly concerned -- incoming president Dmitri Medvedev said the prospect of NATO edging nearer its borders was "extremely troublesome."

Bush, fresh from a White House meeting with Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili, is a vocal supporter and is due to visit the Ukrainian capital Kiev on Monday and Tuesday en route to Bucharest.

But experts say Bush's partners know his ability to force decisions has been considerably diminished as he nears the end of his presidency.

His national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, let it be known that Bush would not force the expansion issue and would continue to pursue "quiet consultations" with NATO members.

Further annoying Russia is the US intention to place a missile defence shield in central Europe, right on Moscow's doorstep.

The plan would see 10 missile launchers stationed in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic by 2012 -- actions Russia has said pose a direct threat to its security.

Tensions eased somewhat with March's mission to Moscow by top US diplomats Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates in a bid to address Russia's concerns about the project, and Bush has guaranteed the system would not be aimed at Russia.

The missile defense system will be among a raft of key issues to be addressed between Bush and Putin when they meet in Sochi.

"I'm optimistic we can reach accord on very important matters," Bush said. Sherwood-Randall noted however that the US president should "expect the unexpected from Putin."

It will most likely be the last series of discussions between the two men as presidents, coming one month before Putin hands over the reins to Medvedev and takes the job of Russian prime minister.

On the trip, Bush will have his first face-to-face encounter with Medvedev since his election, and according to national security advisor Hadley, will also be massaging US-Russia ties for whoever succeeds him in the White House.

British Troops, Taliban In a Tug of War Over Afghan Province

In One Town, a Small Force Battles for Yards of Ground

By Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, March 30, 2008

GARMSIR, Afghanistan -- Perched on the banks of the Helmand River, this desolate town occupied by British forces marks Afghanistan's de facto border: Beyond here, the Afghan government is powerless and Taliban insurgents hold sway, their ranks replenished by recruits who enter unchallenged from Pakistan.

"Everything you see to your south . . . that's all enemy territory," said Lt. Nicholas Moran, a platoon leader from Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, using binoculars to survey Taliban fighters from the roof of a mud-brick compound east of Garmsir. Seconds later, he ducked as a rocket-propelled grenade whistled overhead.

A small contingent of British troops here is manning a cluster of dusty hill forts, several of them built by the British more than a century ago during the Anglo-Afghan wars. On this stark front line, they wage war against hundreds of insurgents dug into bunkers and ditches running between minefields in the canal system below.

Since 2006, Garmsir and other parts of Helmand province have changed hands between the British and Taliban forces at least three times, largely because there have been too few British ground troops to hold captured territory. Despite Defense Minister John Reid's early hope that 3,000 British forces could pacify Helmand without "firing a shot," the British have lost 89 troops to fighting in the province, where violence surged 60 percent last year, testing NATO's ability to stabilize Afghanistan's ethnic Pashtun heartland.

President Bush will attend a NATO summit this week where he hopes allies will pledge additional combat troops for Afghanistan. In Helmand, even an expanded British-led force of about 7,000 must now concentrate its efforts on the north, while the company in Garmsir controls a small segment of the southern front.

"You can't hold it against them for wanting to repel the invaders," said Warrant Officer 2 Jason Mortimer, 37, manning a sandbag-lined bunker in the ruins of an old British fort here that comes under daily attack. Afghan fighters, he noted, sent the British "packing with a bloody nose" in three wars, starting in 1839.

Today, many British forces here sleep in dirt-floored and mice-infested outposts where they eat boiled rations as well as eggs, chicken and livestock they butcher. The troops are fighting hard but are hindered by insufficient helicopters, intelligence and surveillance equipment, and armored vehicles, officers say.

"Most British soldiers would say we're absolutely knackered out after this and Iraq," said Maj. Mark Milford, commander of Bravo Company, the main British force in Garmsir, which is far outnumbered by the Taliban.

Reinforcements are on the way. Beginning next month, Helmand will be a main destination for thousands of U.S. Marines dispatched to bolster the NATO effort in southern Afghanistan. But the Pentagon has stressed that the seven-month Marine deployment is an "extraordinary one-time" commitment, and British troops say it will not suffice to end the fighting in Helmand, where the population remains wary, local security is fledgling and the Taliban replaces its losses with recruits who pass freely over the Pakistani border about 75 miles to the south.

The shortage of ground troops has led to reliance on airstrikes and artillery barrages, complicating the goal of winning over civilians. Mortimer, who has been deployed to Iraq and Kosovo twice since 2000, sees political dialogue with the Taliban as the only way forward.

"This campaign will drag on and on until we sit down at a table with the Taliban," he said. Otherwise, "we'll drop 1,000-pound bombs and make martyrs of a generation of men in a part of the world that needs its healthy young men."

'If They Go, I Will Go'

During an operation this month to seize two hills -- both old British forts -- near Garmsir, Moran's platoon infiltrated the area in darkness, bridged a canal and, backed by a handful of armored vehicles, captured one hill. Across the Helmand River, another platoon established a foothold on the second hill. Engineers hastily built bunkers of sandbags and dirt-filled barriers atop both positions. "We've pushed out to the east to take on the Taliban in some of their forward positions," Moran said.

Taliban insurgents counterattacked with grenades, mortars, machine guns and a mine that disabled one British armored vehicle. But they were pushed back by an onslaught of British artillery, missile strikes by Predator drones, aerial strafing by A-10 fighters, and several 500- and 1,000-pound bombs dropped by U.S. jets.

After months of defending static positions, the three-day operation killed at least 42 Taliban insurgents, extended the British reach several hundred yards into Taliban terrain and succeeded in abating attacks, at least temporarily. Yet in Garmsir, some Afghan elders opposed the British effort to occupy the hill fort near their village, fearing it would draw fire upon their fields and homes.

"All you've done is bring fighting to the area," one village elder scolded, turning his back in a gesture of rudeness, recalled Capt. Andy Richards of Royal Regiment Scotland, who advises local police. "I told them we have to fight the Taliban somewhere, and unfortunately it is in their village," Richards said.

British troops had used culverts to fill in irrigation ditches crossing a dirt road leading past the village to the fort, so their armored vehicles could cross it. But farmers quickly dug the culverts out. "I don't know whether it's out of spite or they may have pinched the pipes," said Lt. Tom Perrott, 26, a troop commander for the King's Royal Hussars.

The continual fighting around Garmsir has impeded efforts to resettle and rebuild the area -- considered too dangerous for civilian aid workers -- and has badly damaged the local bazaar, hospital and other buildings, forcing residents to flee and leaving the district center a virtual ghost town.

In recent months, the sustained British presence has encouraged about 140 Afghans to move back into a relatively protected zone north of the main base. Unable to travel safely, the villagers survive by subsistence farming and selling chickens, goats and produce to the Nepalese Gurkha soldiers based here. But some villagers say they will stay only as long as the British troops remain. "If they go, I will go," said shop owner Abdul Rashid, 25.

Villagers said they fear the Taliban, but doubt that Afghan government forces are strong enough to secure the area. Their views mirrored a December BBC poll of residents of southern Afghanistan that showed perceptions of Taliban strength rising and confidence in the government falling.

Under the Taliban, the town's former agricultural college was used as a madrassa. Allah Dad, a village elder, fled when the Taliban moved in because they demanded that his five sons become fighters. Now back, he is afraid to speak to a reporter lest the Taliban notice and "punish" him, he said.

Local forces are in their infancy, British officers said. Afghan police here consist of a local militia that received two weeks of training, said Richards, the police adviser. Their chief, a charismatic landowner who bought them uniforms and supplies, was killed by a car bomb late last month. They lack body armor, a steady ammunition supply and heavy weapons, and so they are outgunned by the Taliban. Corruption is a temptation because they are paid only $70 to $100 a month. The coalition has moved too slowly to fund and train the police, and it will take "years before we see significant improvement," Richards said.

Afghan Border Police recently arrived in Garmsir, but only 60 men in the 330-strong force have had any training. The force suffers from illiteracy, drug abuse and a shortage of junior leaders. Helmand is a center of Afghanistan's burgeoning opium poppy production -- which helps fund the insurgency -- and poppy farms surround Garmsir. "We frequently believe they are high," said Capt. Spencer Giles, who mentors the sometimes giggly police and has found drug paraphernalia in their living areas and at checkpoints. The Taliban threat is so great that it is inconceivable to move the border police south of Garmsir. Sending them to the real border "would essentially be sending them to their death," Giles said.

Beyond Garmsir, Taliban fighters have established a stronghold that stretches for miles along the banks of the Helmand River. There, they live with their families and farm poppies and other crops in the broad strip of cultivated land known as the "green zone."

Farther south where the river bends to the west is in an area known as the "fishhook," a possible destination for Marines deploying to the province. The Marines will be headquartered in Kandahar but will operate as needed across the south and possibly in one western province, U.S. officials said.

"To have an effect further south, you need more troops," Milford said. By keeping his force occupied, he said, the Taliban "have free rein up east to Lash [Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gar] and the rest of Afghanistan, and similarly on the west, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it."

But Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, is adamant that the Marines are not "the cavalry" coming to the rescue of British, Dutch, Canadian and other allied forces in southern Afghanistan. The British force in Helmand is expected to grow by the equivalent of another battalion this summer and has gained ground in parts of northern Helmand.

British soldiers said that the Marines will help block the flow of fighters from Pakistan and shrink the Taliban sanctuary, but that more resources are needed to defeat the insurgency. "It's not going to end the war in Helmand, but it will go a long ways towards it, hopefully," Moran said.

French MPs want a debate on deploying troops in Afghanistan

Text of report "Parliamentary revolt on sending reinforcements to Afghanistan" by French centre-left daily newspaper Liberation website on 28 March

There was an outcry over the form and criticism of the substance. The announcement that French military reinforcements would be sent to Afghanistan, which [French President] Nicolas Sarkozy made on Wednesday [26 March] in London, provoked a concert of protests yesterday. On the one hand, parliamentarians, on both the Right and the Left, took being once again kept on the sidelines (contrary to the promises made by the head of state personally) in a decision of this importance very badly. On the other hand, the Left, as well as the extreme Right, criticized the justification for this decision.

The first secretary of the Socialist Party [PS], Francois Hollande felt that "any further presence of French forces in Afghanistan is a mistake". Segolene Royal, for her part, rejects sending reinforcements "when we know neither the risks of getting bogged down nor the guarantees to protect our soldiers". As for Jean-Marie Le Pen, he feels that "there is no need for our soldiers to risk their lives for Uncle Sam's little geopolitical games".

As for the form, the deputies are all the angrier insofar as this announcement was made before their British counterparts, who enjoy a completely different influence on their country's foreign policy. Bernard Accoyer, the (UMP) [Union for a Popular Movement] speaker of the National Assembly, immediately asked [Prime Minister] Francois Fillon to have the issue "brought before parliament" for a "vital debate". The chairman of the defence committee, Guy Teissier, whipped up a statement to ! demand a "public debate as soon as possible". Nicolas Sarkozy felt the rising discontent. He claimed, from London, that he was in favour of such a debate "without any reservations". "[Foreign Minister] Bernard Kouchner said that we would hold it before the Bucharest (NATO) summit" that is being held from 2 to 4 April 2008. On Tuesday Defence Minister Herve Morin will go explain the French position to the National Assembly's defence committee.

France is one of the only major democracies where the executive branch can involve troops in external operations without even warning parliament about it. Article 35 of the Constitution simply provides that "Parliament authorizes the declaration of war". The problem is that war is no longer declared, even when it is being waged for real, as in the Gulf (1990-91) or in Kosovo (1999).

A reform of the Constitution (based on the work done by the Balladur commission) provides that in the future the "government informs Parliament of all interventions by the armed forces outside the national territory. Whenever an intervention exceeds three months, its extension is authorized by law." In the case of Afghanistan, deputies and senators would therefore have been called upon to vote.

Afghan reporter on death row to plead for pardon

AFP - 30 March 08 - KABUL • A young Afghan journalist sentenced to death in northern Afghanistan on charges of blasphemy has been moved to Kabul ahead of an appeal due soon, media rights groups said yesterday.

A primary provincial court in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif sentenced 23-year-old journalist Perwiz Kambakhsh to death in January in a case that has attracted worldwide condemnation. He had no legal representation.

Kambakhsh was moved to Kabul on Friday, said Afghan Independent Journalists Association president Rahimullah Samander. “The next trial will be soon,” he said, without being able to say when.

Paris-based media protection group Reporters Without Borders welcomed the transfer of the reporter and university journalism student saying in a statement he had been held with “criminals and terrorists” in Mazar-i-Sharif.

“His transfer to Kabul has given rise to hopes that his appeal will not be influenced by religious fundamentalists, as was the case when he was sentenced to death...,” it said.

Kambakhsh was held for three months before his trial, which reportedly only lasted minutes. Media groups inside and outside the country have asked President Hamid Karzai to intervene.

The reporter was in good health and would be represented at his next trial by lawyers from the International Legal Foundation, an Afghan body backed by international organisations, Samander said.

Afghanistan progress a slow affair

Mike Blanchfield, Canwest News Service, Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008

QALAT, Afghanistan -- They had no idea they had a traitor in their midst until the bullets started flying.

The Taliban spy was one of the 11 Afghans wearing a police uniform. They were charged with guarding the most modern facility here, a 13-month-old, American-built electricity plant that - until this explosive November night -pumped out power to tens of thousands in a dusty corner of the impoverished and war-torn southern province of Zabul. 

With the help of an insurgent who infiltrated the local police force, the Taliban attacked the plant, taking dead aim at the generators. Eight remaining police officers repelled their attackers, as their infiltrator fled into the night with his Taliban comrades.

But the cost was high. Two police officers lay dead, while one bullet-riddled generator was knocked out. It has not worked since.

"That guy worked here for seven or eight months," said Mohammad Salim, the plant director. "He killed two of his own guys. If he gets caught, he has to be executed."

Harrowing tales like this are not hard to come by in Zabul, a southern Afghanistan province where the Taliban insurgency remains as potent as it does across the rest of the Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces - Regional Command South as the NATO-led force calls the area, and which Canada now commands.

But Zabul has another distinction that makes it particularly explosive: Nestled next to Pakistan, it has become a key crossing point of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters into southern Afghanistan, where they target Canadian Forces and their British, Dutch and American allies.

The United States is responsible for Zabul, and has invested $140 million into the province, including the power plant. That's slightly more than Canada's annual development spending to all of Afghanistan.

This desolate, desperately poor, preyed upon province is a case study in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine.

In the coming months, this will entail two ongoing simultaneous efforts: smashing the insurgency through military might while doing as many good deeds on the development side as can be practically done on the Zabul-Pakistan frontier, where there is a steady flow of terrorists across the remote badlands.

"We have had a little pressure on them in the last year by using small patrols," explains Gen. Dan McNeill, the American four-star who commands all 47,000 international troops in Afghanistan. "But it's going to take a big push this year, and the increase of U.S. troops in the south give us the opportunity to do that. Before the summer, we are going to push hard into there."

The extra troops are the 2,000 U.S. Marines that have just arrived in the region. They will be joined by 400 Romanian troops, and various other Americans outside of NATO control under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom.

NATO leaders convene in Bucharest next week for a summit that hopes to show new resolve towards ending Afghanistan's woes. Six years after the arrival of Western forces, coalition countries such as Canada are restless as NATO tries to wrestle more soldiers and development dollars from its 26 member countries, its 13 coalition partners in the International Security Assistance Force, as well as the world at large.

Zabul Gov. Delbar Jan Arman has no illusions about the hardship faced by his province's 450,000 inhabitants, but he is definitely an optimist, even though he acknowledges development funding has been slow to arrive in Afghanistan, which operates under President Hamid Karzai.

"Our troops on the borderline are not trained yet. There are some people that are not yet strong to control the border," he says.

"We have a problem there. They are coming from Pakistan to the Afghanistan side, and if they need to go back, they go back. They can feed themselves from there, the people who are injured are going there, are taking rest there."

The November 2007 attack on the Qalat power station is particularly illustrative of the underlying threat that Canada and its international allies must defeat: the weakened Taliban, unable to mount a conventional fight against the best modern militaries in the world, is determined to undermine the West's reconstruction efforts.

Life is Zabul is medieval by any Western standard. But the arrival of electricity was a milestone, a sign of progress that the local people welcomed and it built goodwill with the Americans.

What's clear to everyone - from local leaders as well as their American protectors - is that progress has indeed been slow.

"The international community, they've been asleep in Afghanistan for two years. They did nothing in the past," says Gulab Sha, the outspoken deputy governor of Zabul.

Sha accuses the U.S.-backed Afghanistan government as being ineffective and slow to respond to the threat that still lingers after the defeat of the former Taliban government in 2001.

"Here everyone was busy working on politics. In Pakistan, the leaders of the Taliban were working on the Taliban to send them back to Afghanistan," says Sha.

Despite his outspoken attitude, or perhaps because of it, the U.S. authorities that operate the only Provincial Reconstruction Team in Zabul province view Sha as a "go-to" guy who can be trusted to give them insight into the region.

Arman says the government needs to show it is strong and relevant to the people.

"Most of the people want to be with the government," Arman says. "They understand that these are bad people. The government needs to show them they are strong, working for them."

Arman says most people here don't support the Taliban. "But they say we have problems and the government should solve that. Give us security, give us roads. Make us strong to go against the Taliban."

Arman knows American help is needed to do this. A big part of that job falls to Lt.-Col. Bryce Brakman, a strapping C-130 Hercules pilot by training, whose new job has him firmly rooted in Zabul as the head of the U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Qalat.

The made-up of the Qalat PRT follows the same model as Canada's in Kandahar city that boasts its own cross-departmental mix of development, diplomacy and defence.

"Ideally we're setting the conditions for NGOs to come here. Ideally we want to work ourselves out of a job" so the military can move to "less permissive areas" and open them up to further development, says Brakman, an Air Force reservist who was employed as USAir pilot during the 9/11 attacks.

Since then, he's had tours of duty flying Hercules into Kandahar and Bagram, north of Kabul, and has survived two stints in Iraq - flying missions that helped open two U.S. air strips there.

"That's our end state," Brakman says, "to create pockets of security so development can take place."

If Brakman appears optimistic, it might be because that unlike the Canadian PRT further south, he has some impressive aid spending, not the mention the might of the world's largest military to back him up.

The U.S. government has funded projects to build bridges and repair roads, but its most ambitious initiative is sprawled out on the northern edge of Qalat at the base of a grand hill where the area's past and future sit in stark juxtaposition.

A majestic sand covered castle built by Alexander the Great more than two centuries ago rises out of the sandy hillside and looks down upon a series of modern buildings.

This is New Qalat City, a yet to be completed business park that includes a governor's office, hospital, courthouse, women's centre, bank and fire station. They are empty modern edifices, only some of which are barely functioning. They sit disconnected in sand, yet to be linked by modern infrastructure. USAID hopes some other international donor can be prodded into investing in the completion of the project, that someone will come along and build roads, install a sewer system and connect it to the electricity grid.

Brakeman hopes that one day this could serve as the home of aid agencies that can pick up the ball from the military.

New Qalat City embodies the conundrum that bedevils all reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan: there can be no development here without security. Notwithstanding the initial level of U.S. investment, and the fact that the United Arab Emirates financed the hospital, no aid agency will likely come here until it is safe, and finding an international donor to pay for sewers and roads might also be ambitious.

"We've been sitting in a stalled vehicle for the last few years," said Franz Seitz, the ranking State Department official in the PRT. "So we're trying to jump start it and get it going."

Zabul's next generation is at stake if that doesn't happen. Abdul Anbi Wadon, the provincial education director, offers a litany of statistical and narrative woe: Only 50 of the province's 180 schools are open and only 2,200 girls make up the 22,000 students who actually attend class.

Life for the 525 teachers here is hell. "The Taliban are always trying to kill the teachers," Wadon explains. "Since Karzai came here, the Taliban is destroying everything that belongs to the government."

Part two: the challenge in training a viable Afghan police force to bring law and order to this troubled land. Ottawa Citizen

Afghan ministry says supplied obsolete ammunition was rejected

Text of report by privately-owned Afghan Ariana TV on 29 March

[Presenter] The Afghan Defence Ministry has denied reports by a foreign newspaper about the supply of decaying and old weapons and ammunition to Afghanistan by [a contractor of] the US government. Speaking to an Ariana TV reporter, Defence Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi said some ammunition which was purchased from a US contractor-supplier was of low-quality and out of date. My colleague Abdul Wakil Naibee has a report on this.

[Reporter] According to recent reports by The New York Times, weapons and ammunition supplied by a US contractor are obsolete and out of use. US officials have said the Pentagon suspended its contract with a company which was in charge of delivering ammunition and weapons to Afghanistan. The US officials launched an investigation into the case. According to the New York Times report, most of the ammunition provided by the US contractor was obsolete and out of use. NATO officials also called the ammunition decaying and outdated! . However, Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Defence Ministry, said only some batches of the ammunition which had been purchased from a company were not of good quality and the US government suspended its contract with that company.

[The Defence Ministry spokesman] We talk here about ammunition not weapons. A company was contracted to supply ammunition to Afghan troops and police forces. The ammunition was purchased from a wrong supplier or country. As soon as the ammunition arrived in Afghanistan, the delegation which was assigned to check quality of these munitions found out that they did not meet standards and rejected all.

[Reporter] The report on supply of sub-standard ammunition is issued while the government of Afghanistan calls on the world community, in particular the USA, to pay serious attention to training and supplying Afghan troops with modern and standard wares.

It is important to note that earlier, some Afghan troops and police offi! cers complained about low quality of some weapons and ammunition. Mili tary experts believe that the provision of modern and high-quality weapons and ammunition to Afghan troops will boost the capabilities of the troops and would greatly contribute to the restoration of peace and reinforcement of security in this country.

Tackling rising drug addiction in Parwan Province

CHARIKAR, 30 March 2008 (IRIN) - Sitting on his bed in a room with four others at a drug rehabilitation centre in Charikar, capital of Parwan Province, northern Afghanistan, 18-year-old Kharun tells how he got addicted to drugs:

"I started three years ago. One of my neighbours introduced me to opium; he smoked it and so did I. At that time I did not know that that was opium. I was a daily labourer and every evening I felt very tired… my back and arms were aching. The guy said it would help to relieve the pain and tiredness, that's how I got addicted," Kharun said.

He has been receiving treatment at the centre run by the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) in a bid to quit his addiction and had been off the drugs for 10 days.

Another addict in his forties, Mohammad Musa, told a similar story. "When I was living in Iran…I used to feel exhausted after a hard day's work, so that's how it started," he said, adding that his first encounter with the drug was 12 years ago in Isfahan (Iran) where he fled to escape the conflict in Afghanistan.

Mohammed returned to his native town of Charikar in 2004, but could not get rid of his habit. Mohammad Yusuf, a doctor at the rehabilitation centre, said drug addiction was increasing in Parwan Province by the day.

"There are about 600 registered drug addicts in the province, but the real figure could be up to 5,000. Over the past year, 300 patients alone have been treated at our centre," Yusuf said.

Zahidullah Mojadedi, head of publications for ARCS in Parwan, agreed: "It [drug addiction] is a big problem here in Parwan. The number is growing every year," he said.

Yusuf said most addicts they treated had picked up the habit in Iran or Pakistan where they were refugees.

"One of the major factors contributing to increasing drug addiction is unemployment. Also, heroin is easily available in the bazaar and it is cheap - one dose costs 25 Afghanis [about 50 US cents]," he said.

Both Yusuf and Mojadedi cited lack of awareness of the risks of using opium or heroin. "We do awareness raising and local campaigns, but it is not enough. We need more awareness raising efforts, particularly at the national level involving all mass media," they said.

An average drug addict spends about 100 Afghanis (about US$2) per day, which works out at more than an average monthly salary in the province, ARCS officials said, noting that it had a serious economic impact on the families of addicts, draining them of resources. "Instead of buying food, clothes and other basic necessities for their families, addicts spend money on opium or heroin," they said.

Experts say that increasing opium production is leading to increasing drug addiction. Afghanistan is the top producer of illicit opiates, including heroin, in the world, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In 2007 Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium (34 percent more than in 2006), becoming by far the biggest supplier of the world's deadliest drug (93 percent of the global opiates' market), according to UNODC's Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007.

UNODC said in its annual report in March 2008 that drug abuse had risen rapidly in Afghanistan among both adults and children. According to the Afghanistan Drug Use conducted by UNODC in 2005, the estimated number of drug users was about 920,000, including about 60,000 children

Afghan minister admits failure in anti-drugs fight

Text of report by Afghan independent Tolo TV, on 29 March

[Presenter] The Counter-Narcotics Ministry is working to collect evidence against drug smugglers. [Counter-Narcotics Minister] Gen Khodadad says investigations are under way, and that the names of drug smugglers will be given to the media once there is specific evidence against them. In the meantime, the minister of counter-narcotics admits the failure of his ministry in the past years. My colleague Hamed Haidari has more details.

[Correspondent] Gen Khodadad says in the 51st session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna [from 10 to 14 March 2008], the international community, especially America, has promised more efforts in the sphere of combating drugs in Afghanistan.

Mr Khodadad reported of a new strategy in his ministry, and said the poppy eradication campaign was under way in southwestern parts of the country. He said more than 4,000 jeribs [one jerib equals 44.44 sq. m, i.e. 177,600 sq. m] of poppy-cultivated land had been eradicated in th! e past three days.

[Gen Khodadad] I once again say that we are working very hardly on [collecting evidence against] drug smugglers. Four or five different Afghan bodies are currently dealing with this.

[Correspondent] The minister of counter-narcotics added that the ministry would spend 152m dollars in different provinces this year. He agreed that the ministry had failed to spend the donated amounts of money last year.

[Gen Khodadad] With the fact that we have failed to spend the [donated] money, and poppy cultivation increased from 6,200 to 8,200 [tons], we, of course, admit that we have not been successful in our activities and in doing our job.

[Correspondent] A number of experts believe fighting narcotics is one of the main challenges ahead of the government of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan produced 93 per cent of the world's opium last year, and was on top of the list of opium-producing countries.

AFGHANS’ 20-YEAR HEROIN STOCKPILE

Daily Star – UK, 30 March 2008 By Neil Chandler

DRUG lords in Afghanistan are sitting on a massive stash of heroin that could keep Britain supplied for 20 years, the Daily Star Sunday can reveal.

Gordon Brown’s Government is battling to fight the menace “at source” in the war-torn country and has launched a £90million-a-year anti-drugs campaign.

British troops are being encouraged to shut down the opium fields and are risking their lives to smash labs where the heroin is being produced.

But the fact is that even if they shut down Afghanistan’s “killing fields” tomorrow, the drug lords would still be able to sustain their evil trade for another two decades.

A senior counter-narcotics official admitted: “We are not really here to stop the flow of heroin into the UK. 

“The most conservative estimate is that there is four years’ supply in the larder, while others say there is 20 years of heroin stockpiled. Even if we stopped it all here now it won’t affect anyone at home.”

The Taliban is thriving thanks to the drugs trade, taxing farmers 10% of their opium income.

But UK experts say US calls to crop-spray farmer’s fields would cause more harm than good. Instead they say farmers must be encouraged to grow other, less harmful, crops.

The counter-narcotics official added: “The purpose is not to stop opium turning to heroin and coming to the UK. It’s to attack the 40% higher price the farmer gets for opium versus other crops.”

The Opium Brides of Afghanistan

In the country's poppy-growing provinces, farmers are being forced to sell their daughters to pay loans.

Sami Yousafzai and Ron Moreau – NEWSWEEK April 7, 2008 Issue

Khalida's father says she's 9—or maybe 10. As much as Sayed Shah loves his 10 children, the functionally illiterate Afghan farmer can't keep track of all their birth dates. Khalida huddles at his side, trying to hide beneath her chador and headscarf. They both know the family can't keep her much longer. Khalida's father has spent much of his life raising opium, as men like him have been doing for decades in the stony hillsides of eastern Afghanistan and on the dusty southern plains. It's the only reliable cash crop most of those farmers ever had. Even so, Shah and his family barely got by: traffickers may prosper, but poor farmers like him only subsist. Now he's losing far more than money. "I never imagined I'd have to pay for growing opium by giving up my daughter," says Shah.

The family's heartbreak began when Shah borrowed $2,000 from a local trafficker, promising to repay the loan with 24 kilos of opium at harvest time. Late last spring, just before harvest, a government crop-eradication team appeared at the family's little plot of land in Laghman province and destroyed Shah's entire two and a half acres of poppies. Unable to meet his debt, Shah fled with his family to Jalalabad, the capital of neighboring Nangarhar province. The trafficker found them anyway and demanded his opium. So Shah took his case before a tribal council in Laghman and begged for leniency. Instead, the elders unanimously ruled that Shah would have to reimburse the trafficker by giving Khalida to him in marriage. Now the family can only wait for the 45-year-old drugrunner to come back for his prize. Khalida wanted to be a teacher someday, but that has become impossible. "It's my fate," the child says.

Afghans disparagingly call them "loan brides"—daughters given in marriage by fathers who have no other way out of debt. The practice began with the dowry a bridegroom's family traditionally pays to the bride's father in tribal Pashtun society. These days the amount ranges from $3,000 or so in poorer places like Laghman and Nangarhar to $8,000 or more in Helmand, Afghanistan's No. 1 opium-growing province. For a desperate farmer, that bride price can be salvation—but at a cruel cost. Among the Pashtun, debt marriage puts a lasting stain on the honor of the bride and her family. It brings shame on the country, too. President Hamid Karzai recently told the nation: "I call on the people [not to] give their daughters for money; they shouldn't give them to old men, and they shouldn't give them in forced marriages."

All the same, local farmers say a man can get killed for failing to repay a loan. No one knows how many debt weddings take place in Afghanistan, where 93 percent of the world's heroin and other opiates originate. But Afghans say the number of loan brides keeps rising as poppy-eradication efforts push more farmers into default. "This will be our darkest year since 2000," says Baz Mohammad, 65, a white-bearded former opium farmer in Nangarhar. "Even more daughters will be sold this year." The old man lives with the anguish of selling his own 13-year-old daughter in 2000, after Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned poppy growing. "Lenders never show any mercy," the old man says. Local farmers say more than one debtor has been bound hand and foot, then locked into a small windowless room with a smoldering fire, slowly choking to death.

While law enforcers predict yet another record opium harvest in Afghanistan this spring, most farmers are struggling to survive. An estimated 500,000 Afghan families support themselves by raising poppies, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Last year those growers received an estimated $1 billion for their crops—about $2,000 per household. With at least six members in the average family, opium growers' per capita income is roughly $300. The real profits go to the traffickers, their Taliban allies and the crooked officials who help them operate. The country's well-oiled narcotics machine generates in excess of $4 billion a year from exports of processed opium and heroin—more than half of Afghanistan's $7.5 billion GDP, according to the UNODC.

Efforts to promote other crops have failed. Wheat or corn brings $250 an acre at best, while poppy growers can expect 10 times that much. Besides, poppies are more dependable: hardier than either wheat or corn and more tolerant of drought and extreme heat and cold. And in a country with practically no government-funded credit for small farmers, opium growers can easily get advances on their crops. The borrower merely agrees to repay the cash with so many kilos of opium, at a price stipulated by the lender—often 40 percent or more below market value. Islam forbids charging interest on a loan, but moneylenders in poppy country elude the ban by packaging the deal as a crop-futures transaction—and never mind that the rate of return is tantamount to usury.

Opium is thriving in the south, particularly the provinces of Helmand and Nimruz, where Taliban fighters keep government eradication teams at bay. But times are perilously hard for farmers in other places like Nangarhar, a longtime poppy-growing province on the mountainous Pakistani border. Mohammad Zahir Khan, a Nangarhar sharecropper in his late 40s, borrowed $850 against last spring's harvest, promising 10 kilos of opium to the lender—about $1,250 on the local market. The cash bought food and other necessities for his family and allowed him to get seed, fertilizer and help tending his three sharecropped acres. In the spring he collected 45 kilos of raw opium paste, half of which went immediately to the landowner.

But before Khan could repay the loan, his wife fell seriously ill with a kidney ailment. She needed better medical care than Nangarhar could offer, so he rushed her across the Pakistani border to a private hospital in Peshawar. It cost almost every cent they had, and Khan knew his opium debt would only grow. Worse, the provincial governor, a former warlord named Gul Agha Sherzai, chose that moment to declare his own war on drugs, jailing hundreds of local farmers who were caught planting opium. Nangarhar had 45,000 acres in poppies a year ago; today drug experts say the province is totally clean.

Late last year Khan reluctantly gave his 16-year-old daughter, Gul Ghoti, in marriage to the lender's 15-year-old son. Besides forgiving Khan's debt, the creditor gave him a $1,500 cash dowry. Khan calls him an honorable man. "Until the end of my life I will feel shame because of what I did to my daughter," Khan says. "I still can't look her in the eye." But at least she was old enough to marry, he adds. He claims one local farmer recently had to promise the hand of his 2-month-old daughter to free his family from an opium debt. Khan is raising wheat this year. He doubts it will support his family, and he worries that eventually one of his two younger daughters will become a loan bride. Neither of them is yet in her teens.

Eradication efforts aren't the only thing pushing opium marriages. Poppy acreage is expanding in Helmand province, but loan brides are common there, too, says Bashir Ahmad Nadim, a local journalist. He says moneylenders in Helmand are always looking for "opium flowers"— marriageable daughters ready for plucking if crop failure or family emergency forces a borrower into default. In the south's drug-fueled economy, fathers of opium brides often get hefty cash bonuses on top of having their debts forgiven.

But in Nangarhar, even former lenders are feeling the pinch. Enaghul, 40, used to be a relatively prosperous poppy farmer. Today he has little to show for his past wealth aside from his 17-year-old daughter-in-law, Shaukina, and a 2-month-old grandson. "She is pretty and works hard in the fields," Enaghul says, still happy to have won her for his son. Four years ago he gave Shaukina's father a loan in return for a promise of 30 kilos of opium, never imagining that both their fields would be eradicated before harvest. That's how Enaghul's son married Shaukina. But with the opium ban, Enaghul says his family is barely surviving. They make less than $2 a day growing tomatoes and potatoes. Enaghul casts an appraising eye on his youngest daughter, Sharifa, 5, as she runs after a goat in the courtyard of their mud-and-brick home. "I think she would fetch between $500 and $600," he says. With luck, he says, he might be able to postpone the wedding five or six years.

Some Western officials promise the hard times won't last much longer. Loren Stoddard, Afghanistan director for the U.S. Agency for International Development, says crop-substitution programs are already yielding results. As many as 40,000 farming families in Nangarhar are receiving some kind of compensation for the loss of opium revenues, he says, and USAID has financed the planting of 1.3 million fruit, nut and other trees in the province since 2006, with plans for an additional 300,000 this year. There's even a new mill producing 30 tons of chicken feed a day. "Good things are happening here," Stoddard says. "I think Nangarhar will take off in the next two years."

Many farmers doubt they can hold out that long. Kachkol Khan looks around his single acre of wheat in Pa Khel village and asks how he will feed his family of seven. "What we earn from this wheat won't feed us for one month," he says. Six months ago he gave the hand of his 13-year-old daughter, Bibi Gula, to settle an opium debt of $700, with roughly $1,500 cash thrown in. That's what they're living on now. At least his creditor agreed to let Gula stay home until she turns 15. "I'm not happy with what I did," Khan says. "Every daughter has ambitions to marry with dignity. I fear she'll be treated as a second-class wife and as a maid." Even worse is his worry that the same future may await his two younger daughters, 11 and 10.

Angiza Afridi, 28, has spent much of the past year interviewing more than 100 families about opium weddings in two of Nangarhar's 22 districts. The schoolteacher and local TV reporter already had firsthand knowledge of the tragedy. Five years ago one of her younger aunts, then 16, was forced to marry a 55-year-old man to pay off an older uncle's opium debt, and three years ago an 8-year-old cousin was also given in marriage to make good on a drug loan. "This practice of marrying daughters to cover debts is becoming a bad habit," says Afridi.

Even so, the results of her survey shocked her. In the two districts she studied, approximately half the new brides had been given in marriage to repay opium debts. The new brides included children as young as 5 years old; until they're old enough to consummate their marriages, they mostly work as household servants for their in-laws. "These poor girls have no future," she says. The worst of it may be the suicides. Afridi learned of one 15-year-old opium bride who poisoned herself on her wedding day late last year and an 11-year-old who took a fatal dose of opium around the same time. Her new in-laws were refusing to let her visit her parents.

Gul Ghoti is on her first visit home since her wedding six months ago. She says it's a relief to be back with her father and mother in their two-room mud-and-brick house, if only temporarily. "My heart is still with my parents, brothers and sisters," she says. "Only my body is with my husband's family." She says she personally knows of two opium brides who killed themselves. "One of the girls had been badly beaten by her husband's brother, the other by her husband," she says. Ghoti says she's considered suicide, too, but Islam stopped her. "I pray that God doesn't give me a daughter if she ends up like me."

Hungarian-Japanese projects to create jobs, improve education in Afghanistan

Budapest Times, Hungary, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 (MTI)
Two Hungarian-Japanese projects will be launched this summer to create jobs and improve education in Afghanistan, officials announced on Wednesday.

The Hungarian Ecumenical Aid Organisation won 30 million forints from the Japanese embassy in Khabul in early March, the organisation's director Laszlo Lehel said.

One of the projects will involve a course to train 20 carpenters and build a workshop on 110 square metres. At the same time, a course will be launched to train 140 people to weave rugs, Lehel said.

Under the other project, returning refugees will be offered basic knowledge and general hygiene training. A total of 900 people will be taught to read and write and 180 people will be given training of general hygiene.

Lehel said the Hungarian Ecumenical Aid Organisation has been active in Afghanistan since 2001. It operates offices in two cities to implement and co-ordinate programmes with the support of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry. The organisation has so far helped around 350,000 people in Afghanistan, he added.

Kabulis complain about lack of electricity

Written by www.quqnoos.com, Wednesday, 26 March 2008 14:08

Six years after Taliban homes in capital only average three hours of power a day

KABUL residents have complained about the lack of electricity in the capital one month after the minister for water and energy promised 24-hour power.

Minister Ismail Khan, whose secretary told Quqnoos.com that he was too sick to comment on the complaints, promised people that electricity would be restored to the entire city last month, but residents in many parts of Kabul still face random black outs.

Ismail Khan yesterday (Monday) blamed the shortages on the lack of water in the Surobi dam and the Narghlu dam in Kabul province.

Residents say they suffer whole days without electricity and are never certain when power will return to their homes.

During the winter months, Kabul residents only had about three hours of electricity per day while some neighbourhoods got none, according to the American government’s aid agency USAID.

Nationwide, only about 6% of the country has electricity, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Although electricity has increased since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001, supply has not risen in line with Kabul’s expanding population – there are about three million more people than there were in the late 1990s.

India, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on power cables connecting Kabul with Uzbekistan’s power supplies.

The lines are in place but an agreement between the Uzbek and Afghan governments has yet to be signed. Some in Kabul do have regular electricity: the rich, powerful and well-connected.

The Ministry of Water and Energy funnels what little power there is to foreign embassies and politicians.

The lines run from substations to their homes, missing out the main power grid. Ismail Khan recently dismissed allegations of corruption as a “small problem”.

Safi to fly direct to Europe

Written by www.Quqnoos.com, Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Airline will connect Kabul with Europe as new Dubai timetable nears take-off.

SAFI Airways plans to open up direct flight routes to Europe within the next three months, according to the airline’s marketing manager. V P Rajasekher said the new routes, direct from Kabul to London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, would mainly cater for Afghanistan’s foreign workers, who currently have to stop in Dubai to connect to European destinations.

“We think there will be a good market for this and we will offer highly competitive prices,” Mr Rajasekher.

The news comes just three days before the airline company begins daily flights to Dubai. On March 28, the airline’s first daily flight to Dubai will take off from Kabul International Airport at 9.00am and set out on its return trip at 12pm.

About 196 people are expected to pay $210 for an economy ticket to board the Boeing 767, the largest plane to fly the route so far.

“We think there’s terrific demand for this flight from Afghans and foreigners alike,” Mr Rajasekher said.

Kabul factory cans Coca Cola for first time

Written by www.quqnoos.com  - Wednesday, 26 March 2008

Soft drinks manufacturer now produces cans of the fizzy drink

THE WORLD’S largest soft drinks manufacturer has started to “bottle” its drinks in cans for the first time in Afghanistan.

Kabul’s Coca Cola factory now produces 100,000 cans of fizzy drink every day and factory owner Habib Gulzar believes the cans will improve the quality of the drink, which until now has only been produced in bottles.

Mr Gulzar urged the Afghan people to support their country’s economy by buying the cans. In the past six years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested in non-alcoholic drinks in Afghanistan, providing jobs for thousands of people.

[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.]