[Stoner]

From time to time I see sporadic conflict in Afghanistan and the issues there are often overlooked because of the sensationalism of events since the Taleban was removed from a governing position.
This new thread may not be as active as other issues, but I think the issue of Bin Laden's terror campaign starting there in conjunction with support of the Taliban, needs further attention as violence remains in Afghanistan, unresolved. War has spread to Iraq and may continue to Iran and South Korea.
My issue is that there is possibly a building of resistance to Bush's directives, and the expansion of hostilities is creating a future of unresolved military occupation in the Mid East. Bush does not appear to finish what he starts and proceeds to the next event under false impressions.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3014363.stm
( full story ^ )
Afghan war 'far from over'

Stephen Cviic
BBC News



The US envoy met leaders in Kabul
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has been having talks in Afghanistan with President Hamid Karzai. One-and-a-half years after the US and its allies took control, peacekeepers are on the ground but the war is far from over.

Afghanistan today is a patchwork of local fiefdoms, mostly run by former militia leaders or warlords.

These local rulers owe nominal allegiance to the central government in Kabul, but despite this they often behave independently.

Kabul itself is a special case because it is home to President Karzai and to an international peace-keeping force of 5,000 men.

There are real doubts that the Taleban can be fully defeated and local warlords' power broken

In addition to the international peace-keepers, there are a total of 8,000 US troops on the ground in Afghanistan, involved mainly in military operations.

The war in Afghanistan is far from over.

[Stoner]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2971004.stm
(full story ^ )



Peacekeepers killed in Kabul blast


A helicopter landed to provide medical assistance
A suspected car bomb has killed three international peacekeepers and injured 24 other people in an attack on a bus in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The force of the explosion threw the vehicle off the road, about five kilometres (three miles) east of the city centre near a base used by German and Dutch troops of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).

Isaf confirmed that three German soldiers had been killed and several other peacekeepers injured - several Afghan civilians who were near the scene of the blast were also wounded.

US military sources said the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, who drove a taxi filled with explosives towards the bus then blew it up.

++++++
further
++++++

About 5,000 international peacekeepers have been deployed to patrol the streets of Kabul and to provide security for the capital.

Our correspondent says it is too early to say who was responsible for the blast, but local Afghan officials have blamed the attack on remnants of al-Qaeda or Taleban.


German soldiers are part of the Kabul peacekeeping force

Anti-government forces have been issuing pamphlets calling on Afghans to rid their country of the peacekeeping forces, our correspondent adds.

And suspected Taleban fighters have been stepping up attacks in recent weeks, particularly in the south and east of Afghanistan.

About 40 Taleban fighters were killed recently in the south of the country in a battle with Afghan government forces.

Saturday's explosion was the second violent incident involving German peacekeepers in Kabul in recent weeks.

+++++++++++

Despite growing evidence of the regrouping of Taleban fighters near the Pakistani border, there has until now been little disruption to the daily life of Kabul, says our correspondent.

Saturday's attack against the peacekeepers is the deadliest assault on the Isaf force since it arrived in Afghanistan to support the government of Hamid Karzai after the removal of the Taleban.
end

[Stoner]

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reu...030612_57.html

Nine Afghans Killed in Sectarian Attack




June 12
— KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At least nine Sunni Muslims have been killed and six wounded by followers of the Shi'ite Muslim Hazaras in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, the region's governor said on Thursday.

Jan Mohammad Khan said the victims, who belonged to the country's largest ethnic group the Pashtuns, were ambushed while traveling on Wednesday afternoon through a pass to the north of Terin Kot, the provincial capital of Uruzgan.

Khan accused the intelligence network of neighboring Iran for masterminding the sectarian attack.


"Apart from the nine dead, six other people have been wounded in the incident," Khan told Reuters by telephone from Uruzgan.

"Iran's intelligence people had a hand in the incident and their aim is to provoke religious violence here," Khan said, adding that an investigation would be launched into the attack.

Hazaras and Pashtuns, from two different strands of Islam, were involved in violent attacks on each other when Afghanistan was in the grip of civil war during the early 1990s.

Wednesday's attack comes at a time of increasing violence often aimed at foreign troops and aid workers in the country.

[Stoner]

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/reuters20030612_54.html

Suicide Bombers Train for Afghan Raids -Minister




June 12
— By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - A senior Afghan official said on Thursday suicide bombers were being trained to attack foreign troops in the country.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali was addressing a news conference less than a week after a suicide car bomber killed four German peacekeepers in the worst attack on an international security force since its deployment in Kabul 18 months ago.



"Our reports indicate that there are efforts underway to train some suicide bombers in order to be used in Afghanistan against foreign troops," he said.

Saturday's attack, that also wounded 30 peacekeepers, was the first suicide attack against foreign troops in the capital.

Jalali did not elaborate on where the training was happening and who was behind it. But at a news briefing hosted by President Hamid Karzai earlier in the week Jalali mentioned training camps in Pakistan close to the Afghan border.

On Thursday he said that remnants of the ousted Taliban regime, al Qaeda operatives and followers of renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar all opposed the U.S.-backed government and the presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil.

As well as the 29-nation, 5,000-strong International Security Assistance Force in Kabul there are 11,500 U.S.-led coalition troops hunting for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

Afghan officials have said most attacks targeting Afghan and coalition forces, peacekeepers and aid workers in recent months were masterminded by Taliban members in neighboring Pakistan.

But Karzai insists that the Taliban as a force are finished, and that Afghanistan faces the same kind of terrorist threat seen in other countries around the world.

Jalali reiterated that he believed al Qaeda was behind the suicide car bombing last week that ripped through a bus carrying German troops to the airport at the end of their assignment.

Jalali also said that prior to the bombing, Afghan intelligence had foiled two planned attacks on foreign targets in Kabul.

In one case a number of people planned to detonate an explosive device near peacekeeping forces in Kabul, he said, without giving further details.

The rise in attacks on foreign targets in Afghanistan coincides with the start of nationwide consultations on the constitution that analysts and diplomats fear will be undermined by the lack of security in many areas.

[Stoner]

This is a good read and shows the obstacles to a unified Afghanistan.
Nothing appears to be settled there, just the formula for more armed conflict.



http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EF14Ag01.html

Central Asia

US turns to the Taliban
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large number of former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.

According to a Pakistani jihadi leader who played a role in setting up the communication, the meeting took place recently between representatives of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Taliban leaders at the Pakistan Air Force base of Samungli, near Quetta.

The source told Asia Times Online that four conditions were put to the Taliban before any form of reconciliation can take place that could potentially lead to them having a role in the Kabul government, whose present authority is in essence limited to the capital:

Mullah Omar must be removed as supreme leader of the Taliban.
All Pakistani, Arab and other foreign fighters currently engaged in operations against international troops in Afghanistan must be thrown out of the country.
Any US or allied soldiers held captive must be released.
Afghans currently living abroad, notably in the United States and England, must be given a part in the government - through being allowed to contest elections - even though many do not even speak their mother tongue, such as Dari or Pashtu.

Apparently, the Taliban refused the first condition point blank, but showed some flexibility on the other terms. As such, this first preliminary contact made little headway. It is not known whether there will be further meetings, but given the fact that the reason for staging the talks in the first place remains unchanged, more contact can be expected.

The channels for the contact have been set up by Taliban who defected when the government collapsed in Kabul, and fled to Pakistan, where they were sheltered in ISI safe houses. Now these defectors, working with Pakistani jihadis who know how to approach the Taliban leadership, are acting as go-betweens.

The backdrop to the first meeting is an ever-increasing escalation in the guerrilla war being waged against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Small hit-and-run attacks are a daily feature in most parts of the country, while face-to-face skirmishes are common in the former Taliban stronghold around Kandahar in the south.

According to people familiar with Afghan resistance movements, the one that has emerged over the past year and a half since the fall of the Taliban is about four times as strong as the movement that opposed Soviet invaders for nearly a decade starting in 1979.

The key reason for this is that the previous Taliban government - which is dispersed almost intact in the country after capitulating to advancing Northern Alliance forces without a fight - is backed by the most powerful force in Afghanistan: clerics and religious students.

For centuries, these people were the most respected segment of Afghan society, and before 1979 they never participated in politics. On the contrary, their role was one of reconciliation in conflicts. During the Afghan resistance movement against the USSR, things changed, and clerics threw their weight behind the mujahideen struggle, but, with a few exceptions, such as Maulana Yunus Khalis, they were not in command.

With the withdrawal of the Soviets and the emergence of the Taliban in the early 1990s, though, the situation once again changed. The Taliban, taking advantage of the power struggles among bitterly divided militias in Kabul, consolidated themselves into an effective political movement led by clerics and in 1996 seized power in Kabul. A part of their success also lay in the fact that initially Afghans, especially Pashtuns who make up the majority of the country, were reluctant to take up the gun against clerics.

Now, in the renewed guerrilla war against foreign troops, it is the clerics who are calling the shots. For instance, Hafiz Rahim is the most respected cleric in the Kandahar region, and he commands all military operations from the sanctuary of the mountainous terrain.

The US forces have employed maximum air support and advanced technology in an attempt to curtail attacks, but without the help of local Afghan forces they are unable to track down Hafiz Rahim, who to date has targeted US convoys scores of times. The United States has admitted a few deaths, while the Taliban claim they have killed many more than the official numbers state. For funds, the Taliban use money looted from the central bank before they abandoned Kabul, estimated in excess of US$110 million, in addition to money received from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.

At the same time, famed warlord Gulbbudin Hekmatyar has joined the resistance after returning from exile in Iran. His Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA) is the most organized force in Afghanistan, and its participation has added real muscle to the resistance. Many top slots in the Kabul administration are occupied by former HIA members who, although they were once anti-Taliban, are loyal to the Islamic cause and anti-US. Also, several provincial governors and top officials are former HIA commanders. They are suspect in the eyes of the Americans, but because of their huge political clout it is impossible to remove them.

With this groundswell of support - even if in places it is only passive - and with Kabul's influence restricted to the capital, the Americans and their allies will remain vulnerable targets, let alone be in a position to restore any form of law and order. It is in situations like this, argue most experts on Afghanistan, that traditionally insurrections begin in the Afghan army against foreign administrators.

This is not the end of the problems. More than 2 million Afghan refugees, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have returned to Afghanistan from countries all over the world, including India, Russia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Zimbabwe and Central Asian countries. Many of them belonged to communist factions during and after the Soviet invasion, while a number of their counterparts remained and now hold positions in Kabul.

At present, Kabul is divided into two main factions. The first is pro-US, which is represented by the US and allied troops and those loyal to President Hamid Karzai. The second is pro-Russian and pro-Iranian, represented by Defense Minister General Qasim Fahim and his Northern Alliance forces. Although the camps are cooperating at present, they are silently building their support bases to make a grab for full power once the present interim administration runs its course, a process that is due to begin in October with a loya jirga (grand council).

In this respect, every returned or returning former "communist comrade" is important, for should the Northern Alliance faction develop sufficient critical mass, it would come as no surprise if its leaders openly forged an alliance with the resistance movement.

___________

end

[Stoner]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...-attacks_x.htm
( Full Story ^ )


U.S. military: Insurgents in Afghanistan stepping up attacks on coalition
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Insurgents in eastern Afghanistan fired rockets at a U.S. base Saturday, the latest in a series of attacks against American forces.
Three rockets were fired at the U.S. base in Asadabad, the capital of Kunar province, U.S. military spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said. The rockets missed, as scores of others have over the past year, and they caused no damage or casualties.

"We've seen an increase in the number of engagements and rocket attacks ... over the last few months, but we believe that there is something seasonal to that," Davis said.

Insurgents appear to be increasingly launching attacks now that freezing temperatures have given way to warmer weather, Davis said.

[Stoner]

http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=30566

Britain agrees to send more troops to Afghanistan
Tuesday July 01, 2003 (0225 PST)

KABUL: The British Defence Ministry has said that it would send more troops to Afghanistan to help the government for restoration of peace and end of anarchy in the country.

The first group of the British would be deployed in Mazar-e-Sharif.

The officials said that this force would not only help promote the central government's authority in other parts of the country but to enhance cooperation between local officials and authorities in Kabul.

The British troops for the first time will perform duty for restoration of peace from outside Kabul. The first group of sixty persons will reach Mazar-e-Sharif on July1.

Later eight groups of international security personnel will be formed to supervise the reconstruction work in provinces.

The Afghan government has been trying for the last 18 months to increase its influences from Kabul to other parts of the country.

The crimes are increasing in every part of Afghanistan and it is still a biggest opium producer country in the world.

Meanwhile British Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon said last month that the groups of international security personnel would help in improving relations between warlords and political leaders.

He added that Britain had also headed the ISAF for six months saying that these groups would stay in Afghanistan for two years in view to improve the law and order situation in Afghanistan

[Stoner]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/1...5,00050004.htm

Attacks in Afghanistan doubled in May: ISAF commander
Agence France-Presse
Kabul, July 2

Attacks across Afghanistan doubled between April and May and are still running high, the commander of the peacekeeping International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Wednesday.

"What we realised and what we recognised over the last four or five months is really an increase of incidents and accidents in the entire country," German Lieutenant General Norbert van Heyst told reporters at his monthly press conference at ISAF headquarters.

"Basically, the total number of incidents in May doubled against the number of incidents in April."

The level of attacks stabilised "on a very high level" in June, he said.

The US military, which heads a separate 11,500 strong coalition force hunting for remnants of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, has also acknowledged an increase in attacks in recent months.

In the latest incidents a suspected bomber accidentally blew himself up Tuesday in a Kabul bazaar, police chief Basir Salangi said Wednesday, while last week a US soldier was killed in a firefight in southeast Afghanistan bringing the toll of US troops killed in combat to at least 30.

Four German ISAF soldiers were also killed and 29 others badly injured in a suicide car bomb attack on their bus on June 7 in Kabul.

A relentless campaign of attacks is being waged against foreign and Afghan troops by rebels suspected of belonging to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda and followers of renegade warlord and one-time premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Aid and human rights groups have expressed concern at the "deteriorating" security situation this year, which is hampering reconstruction efforts in the war-ravaged country.

The general said a US-led civil-military rebuilding scheme, by so-called provincial reconstruction teams (PRT), offered the best hope of improving security in the absence of any international commitment to extending ISAF beyond Kabul.

Van Heyst said around 10,000 troops would be needed to bring security to the provinces by stationing battalions in 10-12 main cities.

"Looking into the international arena I don't see a country who is willing, or some countries who are willing to provide an additional 10,000 soldiers, so from my point of view this is a completely unrealistic way (to improve security)," he said.

The nascent police force and army were also a long way from being able to ensure security, he said.

"I firmly believe that Afghanistan needs another three to four years to get these security structures operational," he said.

"If you want to bring security into the provinces, if you want to expand the power of the central government... from my point of view the only realistic way at the time being is the PRT concept," he said.

Three PRTs have been established and Britain is sending 50 soldiers to open a fourth in the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif later this month.

Germany is considering setting up a team in Herat, with a decision due in September once the German parliament returns from summer recess, he said. ISAF would stay until Afghan security forces were fully established.

Germany is leading efforts to train a new national police force while the United States is in charge of building the Afghan national army.

ISAF is currently under joint German-Dutch command. NATO will take over command on August 11, with some 1,900 Canadian soldiers replacing most of the German contingent.

[bassetman]

We now have to sticky situations to deal with!

[Stoner]

http://washingtontimes.com/world/200...3451-9293r.htm

Rebuilding Afghanistan


By Paul Rodriguez
THE WASHINGTON TIMES




High in the mountains above the Crystal Lake of Qargha, where a few months ago the reservoirs below were bone dry, people flock by foot and car and truck on Fridays to enjoy a picnic. It is for them as much a celebration of their freedom as it is a family outing.
The difficulty required to reach this place serves as a reminder that though devastated by 25 years of war, these people are unconquered because they are unconquerable.
The gathering also provides an opportunity to spend time with hundreds of Afghans to discuss the future and the lessons that should have been learned about the perils of nation building.
The model used by foreigners to control or pacify the countryside and the villages that once ringed Kabul, a city now in ruins, does not work, they say. And as immigrants daily pour into the utterly devastated land, not only parched but rubbled and alive only with spent ordnance, the Afghans become more deeply aware of their worsening plight, and of their resentment of bizarre Western interference.
Unrest is beginning to re-emerge; soldiers are being killed as well as civilians, and armed gangs (called militias) roam the highways in deadly numbers. Demonstrations, fomented by extremists, are on the rise and foreign-aid workers are less safe here than even a few months ago. This means work stoppages on projects such as school construction and interruptions of badly needed relief services that must move through rural areas into the villages.
Afghans are appreciative of the hundreds of millions of dollars in international relief that has been poured into their war-ravaged country, not to mention the cost of the U.S.-led coalition of military personnel who provide what security there is and much-needed relief and reconstruction assistance.
During the course of nearly three weeks in the country, it is evident that people here at all levels of society are grateful to the United States. But as one of only a handful of Westerners ever to venture so far up into these mountains to spend time with Afghans and then visit with them in their homes, mosques, hospitals and bazaars, one does not miss the hazards as innocent questions are put directly.
Nagging questions
"Who will protect our people" once the Americans leave, asks an old man as he watches beggar children traversing the dangerous towpaths along the rushing waters above Qargha. "Where is the aid that has been promised?" he asks.
There are questions about America's intentions from youths of military age, as well as from the tea merchants who have set up tents and booths from which to sell their goods to the picnicking crowds, to families wearing their finest clothes.
"It reminds us of what it was like before the wars," the old man says, looking over the sea of people, many too young to remember such gatherings in the past in the Pagham Mountains.
A small party of Afghans, with a foreign reporter, traveled into the countryside recently to observe the delivery of medical supplies and books to rural clinics, where, for lack of antibiotics, patients face mortality rates upward of 30 percent. The group also sought answers to three questions:
•Where's the much-publicized international aid?
•What do Afghans say that they need — as opposed to what foreigners say they want?
•What lessons have been learned in Afghanistan that might be applied in Iraq or elsewhere?
Answers were almost impossible to obtain from the dozens of U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country. Yet, the U.S.-led military coalition and the much-maligned U.S. Agency for International Development were completely forthcoming.
Spending time separately with Westerners and Afghans made it clear that there was a considerable difference between what each group thinks needs to be done to rebuild an infrastructure that has been destroyed systematically.
What should be done to build septic systems capable of preventing human waste from polluting the groundwater? Infant mortality is roughly one in four due to disease and malnutrition. Millions of land mines have been scattered over fields made barren by four years of drought and the Taliban decision to cut off water to many agricultural areas as punishment to resisting tribes. Education was for years almost completely disrupted, resulting in 80 percent of women and somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent of men being illiterate.
Nation building
While Afghanistan needs a Marshall Plan, due to international politics and the American prejudice against meddling, the United States has in recent years shown little inclination to engage in nation building.
The United States is virtually alone in the world as a nation with the know-how and experience to rebuild, restore and establish a free and open society in the face of disaster, something it proved in Germany and Japan in the aftermath of World War II.
And based on dozens of interviews with American troops — ranging from grunts to senior officers — U.S. forces in Afghanistan are ready to start full-scale reconstruction projects if only political leaders will give the go-ahead.
"It's a shame, really, given all the talent we have just sitting around," says a U.S. officer who points to the Band-Aid projects assigned to the military. "We could do so much more."
A wide array of Western and Afghan officials say that somewhere up the line the decision has been made to keep the United States in the background while leaving the bulk of the aid work to the international bureaucrats, heavily laden with overhead that eats up as much as 90 percent of funds targeted for aid on the ground. Afghans see this and express desperation. Whether aid workers are Belgian, Greek, English, Hungarian or Spanish, the Afghans view all Westerners as Americans.
The United States abandoned the Afghans after the Soviet pullout in 1989, and they fear that "America" will abandon them again.
Karzai mocked
There are constant complaints about the U.S.-backed administration of President Hamid Karzai. He derisively is called the "Mayor of Kabul" and "Mr. Commission" because of his shrinking authority and penchant for announcing new studies as civil issue after civil issue reaches crisis, according to locals all the way up to his ministerial officers.
Meanwhile, next to Kabul's bombed-out or decaying homes and businesses, new construction is going up. Some homes are selling for upward of $300,000, mostly to Westerners and rich foreigners flocking into the city. Food transported from Pakistan or Iran pours into Kabul's bazaars, where the lame and destitute gather on every corner. The bazaars sometimes are flooded by women in sky-blue burqas, many of them widows with bedraggled children in tow, begging for money. But, there is little crime in the city. Thousands of cars, taxis and buses crowd the streets from sunrise to sunset. The sanitation system is gone, and dust swirls through the streets in the heat of each day infecting, sickening and killing. Electricity and potable water are only sometimes available.
Fueling economic activity are the funds flowing in from international organizations and the thousands of relief workers, who only rarely will allow military patrols to accompany them but universally decry the lack of security throughout the country.
Thousands of Afghans survive on handouts or benefit from the presence of the United Nations and NGOs in other ways, if only from charging housing and rental fees that run $15,000 a month on average per house for Westerners or around $4,000 for single rooms. Add to that employment of locals charging up to $100 per day to serve as drivers, plus an additional $75 to $100 for each guard, and one can imagine the sums of cash the international bureaucrats have poured into Kabul.
Amid the bleakness and sickness of the city, the dangers and hardships of the countryside and the frustration and despair of locals astonished at the waste, fraud and perceived abuses by the international social workers and NGOs, U.S. military commanders quietly report growing positives. These include local villagers turning in caches of arms (for money when the cache is sizable) and providing information that has led to the capture of militants and Taliban sympathizers.
Making a difference
"We are making a difference, and it can be measured in tangible ways," says Army Maj. Robert F. Hepner.
Security is the key. It makes no difference who provides it — and this raises troubling issues, because traditional warlords have men waiting eagerly at the outskirts of Kabul and other cities to provide security for the throngs who continue to pour into the country. Democracy is given lip service, but few understand the implications of this Western concept. "It's a hard road ahead," says Jean-Jacques Blais, a Canadian national who leads his country's mission on matters of constitutional reforms for Afghanistan. The chief problem he sees, confirmed repeatedly by Afghans, is that despite the severe crisis in infrastructure and public health the international relief agencies have widely divergent agendas based upon inappropriate models or irrelevant experience.
"This is to be expected," says the head of a European delegation who has been in the country for months. An NGO chief adds, "You have to understand that there is a bureaucracy in play, and it takes huge sums of money to feed it." Even so, he expresses disgust at the waste and inefficiency he says is a major failure by groups such as his.
Still, the Afghan people express optimism about their future. "You have to understand," a mother says, "I no longer need to sleep in bed with my daughter to make certain she is safe." Adds a father: "I can send my little girl to school and know she'll be safe."
Mohamed Arif Noorzai, the minister for frontiers and tribal affairs, prays daily for a secure future. "I must ensure the peace ... and provide security for my country." Doing this, he says, requires regular physical contact with the tribal leaders in the border country and personal ventures into the interior by leaders of the central government.
A complaint cited by many Afghans who agree that Mr. Karzai is a charismatic leader is that the authority of his government does not reach much beyond Kabul. Warlords and governors of major cities and provinces control the rest of the country, some with well-armed militias that work directly with U.S.-led coalition forces involved in search missions. Coalition military officers say they have no choice but to work with the Afghan militias until a new national army and police force are established.
Battle over inertia
Minister of the Interior Ali Jalali says the job of nation building that his government faces can be accomplished if the international relief agencies will begin to cooperate more fully and coordinate their services. But Mr. Jalali and Mr. Noorzai confirm a sense of resentment among a growing number of Afghans who see the swarms of Land Cruisers driven by the international bureaucrats as a symbol of indifference and colonial intentions.
"We're tired of hearing the promises," says an older man named Abdullah, a successful entrepreneur when he has goods to sell. A retired doctor who has practiced through many years of war agrees: "They come and make studies and promise to return with services and needed supplies. But all we get are more studies and more promises."
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld recently visited and said that the war is over, that hostilities have ceased. Both Afghans and U.S. military personnel respond that a battle may have been won, but the war could be lost because Westerners, including Americans, do not have a plan for national reconstruction.
But that ignores the hundreds of schools, clinics, roads, electricity stations and other infrastructure being built. The problem is a failure to coordinate such good works through a national plan of action and provide the people with progress reports that tie together local projects and national reconstruction, says a senior communications official in the Afghan government.
A newly minted trooper of the Afghan National Army (ANA) speaks of the big picture when asked about Mr. Rumsfeld's assessment. "If the West had not walked away from us [in the early 1990s] there would not have been 9/11," he says. "I will do my best to prevent another 9/11. But I want my children to grow up and be safe, and this can only occur if we get the necessary support to do the job ourselves. And this we are not receiving."
We're not stupid
A man named Ali says he is making it possible for locals to build three- and four-bedroom houses in the villages and countryside outside of Kabul for less than $4,000 each by supplying the wooden window frames and cross beams for ceiling joists. "I supply these, and the people build their homes the way they have been doing it for centuries," he says. "These are not houses up to Western standards, but they are well-built homes by Afghan standards, and the savings from using local know-how could be used to dig new wells and install closed septic systems. This sort of thing is what is needed here, but nobody wants to listen — we're too stupid to know what we need is the impression I get."
A senior Afghan transportation official who spent many years in both communist and Taliban jails, says: "I fear we'll become a people on welfare who cannot think for themselves or do for ourselves anymore. This is very upsetting to me because I know we are capable of being better. We used to be a proud people, but now I don't know."
Yet progress comes in small ways. A U.S. soldier said: "The people were afraid, but now they realize this army is not taking things from them. ... They realize that these soldiers are theirs and want to help."
Indeed, the transformation of warring tribesmen into cohesive and organized ANA soldiers is remarkable. "They now want peace more than they want to continue the warfare among themselves. And having both NCOs [noncommissioned officers] and the regular army grunts being trained by Afghans has created an esprit de corps that bodes well for the country," says a U.S. Army officer charged with developing training programs.
One problem is that the Karzai government selects the recruits, and the volume of enlistments is disappointing. In 18 months only 4,000 Afghans have been mustered through the ANA training program. "We could train 50,000 or more a year, but there are not enough recruits," the officer says.
Fortunes spent
Overall, $5 billion has been pledged in grants and loans for the reconstruction of Afghanistan since January 2002, with a reported $2 billion for 2002 alone. But administrative overhead eats up some of the promised funds, and promised contributions are not always forthcoming or are tied to special programs such as police training or school construction.
Shaliai Mangal, a 64-year-old leader, says "only a short time remains before warfare breaks out again." He says that while "it's important that we bring all tribes together and support the national government at this time," the "Americans" should stop telling Afghans what and how to do things. "We're not stupid. We just need money to rebuild," he says.
Without hostility, the bearded tribal leader continues: "We beat the Russians and kicked out the Taliban. And we'll do the same to the 'Americans,' I promise you, unless more is done that can be seen before winter comes."
But Lt. Col. Robert Lefforge of the U.S. Air Force says he sees a lot of good coming from what the United States has invested in Afghanistan. "Look, it's easy to complain when you've been promised a car and you haven't yet seen a car come out the factory door," he says. "What you have to understand is that it takes time to assemble all of the pieces from around the world necessary to get the assembly line going to produce that car. But once we have all those pieces, I assure you, you'll see that car in short order."

[Stoner]

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...International/
(FULL STORY ^^ )
Rival warlords spar in Afghanistan

Associated Press


Kabul, Afghanistan — Loyalists of rival warlords clashed Sunday in northern Afghanistan, leaving at least four dead and three wounded, a military commander said.

The battles in Samangan province's Dar-e-Suf district were the latest in a series of deadly skirmishes between forces loyal to northern warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his rival, Atta Mohammed.

Both sides blamed each other for the fight, which started late Saturday with machine-gun and rocket-fire and was intensifying with artillery Sunday, said Gen. Abdul Sabor, one of Mohammed's senior commanders.

"It's getting worse," Gen. Sabor said by telephone from the northern capital, Mazar-e-Sharif.

The fighting between the two warlords, both of whom are aligned to President Hamid Karzai's government, is indicative of the trouble facing authorities in uniting the fractured country.

War-ravaged Afghanistan is primarily controlled by powerful warlords, who operate with little interference from the government of President Hamid Karzai and frequently turn their guns on each other.

[Stoner]

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newstories/...ies_897296.htm

Afghanistan and Pakistan confirm cross-border fire

Afghanistan and Pakistan say there have been exchanges of fire across their shared border, with Kabul saying it is investigating reported incursions by Pakistani soldiers in the east.

Kabul says it is concerned about the exchanges, but Islamabad says there is no cause for alarm and the problems are localised and will be resolved bilaterally.

A Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman says Islamabad does not know whether the people firing from the Afghan side are regular forces, militias or tribal fighters.

The spokesman says it is not clear who has been shooting at who in the rugged mountainous frontier zone where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters are believed to hide out.

Afghanistan had sent a high-level delegation to investigate reported incursions by Pakistani forces into eastern Nangarhar province.


08/07/2003 12:16:25 | ABC Radio Australia News

[Stoner]

http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/20...2003123828.asp

Afghanistan: Pakistan Closes Kabul Embassy After Attack
Kabul, 8 July 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Pakistan closed its embassy in Kabul today after it was attacked by a crowd protesting alleged incursions by Pakistani forces into Afghanistan.

In the latest protests against Pakistan, hundreds of Afghan university students broke into the Pakistani Embassy compound today, smashing windows, computers, and televisions before being chased out by police.

Pakistan's ambassador, Rustam Shah Mohmand, accused the Afghan government of doing nothing to thwart the attack. He said the embassy will remain closed until Pakistan receives an apology and compensation for the damage.

"I have closed the mission. Unless the Afghan government compensates, number one, unless the Afghan government apologizes, number two, unless the Afghan government gives tangible, concrete guarantees for the protection of the mission in the future, the mission will remain closed," he said.

Mohmand said Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman Hamid Karzai incited the protests by warning yesterday against outside interference in Afghan affairs and demanding an explanation from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf for his criticism of the Afghan government.

In another demonstration today, some 1,000 people marched through Kabul to protest the alleged Pakistani incursions.

Pakistan denies its troops have crossed into Afghanistan. But both countries have confirmed that there have been exchanges of fire across the border.

[Stoner]

Freedom Isn't Free

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http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=31516

Criminal justice system unable to protect people's HR: AI
Thursday July 10, 2003 (0320 PST)


LONDON, July 10 (Online): Human rights group Amnesty International has said in a new report that the criminal justice system in Afghanistan is unable to protect people's human rights, particularly in the country's prisons.

Amnesty says that, with the attention of donors focused on so many other areas, not enough is being done to help the thousands of people held for long periods in poor conditions.

The report says overcrowding is becoming a serious problem in prisons across the country as the number of arrests increases, while many of those already in detention are still waiting to be tried.

In extreme cases, it says inmates are ill-treated or even tortured, and there have been reports of women prisoners being abused by male guards.

The report also says prisoners often have inadequate bedding and food.

Amnesty says the problems are exacerbated by the fact that some prison staff have no training and have not been paid for months.

The Afghan Government is trying to reform the prison system, but Amnesty says this should be made a priority, with the full backing of the international community, in order to protect prisoners human rights.

"There are many things to be done in Afghanistan. There are many serious human rights violations," says Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan.

"The issue with prisons is that we're talking about the most forgotten of the forgotten, people who appear in some cases to be incredibly needy. Now if the government is going to create some credible system of justice, then it must pay attention to prisons." I saw how 50 or so men crammed in a prison cell that was only built to accommodate 10 people at Welayat Prison in Kabul. In the past year, numbers at the prison have nearly doubled to more than 500. There are also 30 or so women, some of them with young children, housed in this prison.

Their cells are cleaner and brighter than the men's, but the stories they have to tell are bleak.

One woman says she was convicted of murder even though she was not present at the trial.

She said she had acted in self-defence when her cousin tried to rape her.

According to Amnesty, there are hundreds of women across Afghanistan, who are imprisoned because of their sexual conduct - and some suffer further sexual abuse in prison from male guards.

According to report the situation is better in Kabul, but the chief of Kabul security, Basir Salangy, says even their limited resources are affecting prisoners.

"I think we do have some problems. We have been trying to provide them with food, health care and other things. But still what we have is not enough. It's not within our reach."

But the interior minister, Ali Ahmad Jalali, says there is unlikely to be a quick solution to the problems besetting Afghanistan's prison system.

"In the 25 years of war, the culture of violence has been dominant in the country. In many cases, people, in order to solve their disputes with people, the first thing that comes to their mind is violence and use of force. And it will take some time for this culture to change."

After decades of conflict, many ordinary Afghans themselves are struggling to find food, health care and adequate housing.

In fact, crime has actually risen in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taleban a year and a half ago - partly because of factional fighting, partly because of a large rise in opium production and partly because there is as yet no effective national security force.

End.

[Stoner]

Freedom Isn't Free

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More on the Drug scene in Afghanistan:


http://www.msnbc.com/news/936986.asp?cp1=1

A bounty of drugs in Afghanistan
Poppy fields, processing labs are flourishing



Legal and illegal drugs, such as opium-laced cigarettes, are available easily and plentifully in Afghanistan. Substance abuse in the country is increasing strongly and the number of drug addicts is rising.

By April Witt
THE WASHINGTON POST


JATA, Afghanistan, July 10 — The village mullah and his superior are smeared with fresh opium sap. It is harvest time, and the holy men are laboring in their poppy field, breaking the laws of Islam and Afghanistan to ease their poverty.


AS THE day wanes, they wait, fingers aching, for the ubiquitous young men who cross the countryside on shiny new motorbikes, buying up the deadly harvest reaped by local farmers.
“Of course it bothers me,” said Mohammad Sarwar, 49, the mawlawi, or authority on Islamic teachings, at the mosque in this tiny northeastern village. “But we have to cultivate it in the current situation where we’ve had to borrow money, sell household items and don’t have enough to eat. This is an emergency.”
The drug trade in Afghanistan is growing more pervasive, powerful and organized, its corrupting reach extending to all aspects of society, according to dozens of interviews with international and Afghan anti-narcotics workers, police, poppy farmers, government officials and their critics.
Already the world’s largest opium producer last year, Afghanistan appears poised to produce another bumper crop. In rural areas where wheat has historically been the dominant crop, fields of brilliant red, pink and white poppies are proliferating. Many poor farmers, who complain that the Afghan government and other countries have failed to ease their economic woes through legal means, say that they are growing illegal opium poppies for the first time.



At the same time, drug laboratories where raw opium is processed into morphine or heroin — once rare in Afghanistan — are sprouting at an unprecedented rate, police and anti-narcotics workers say. Many authorities appear less inclined to combat new drug syndicates than to share in their profits. The crude but money-making factories are largely condoned by elders, unmolested by police and guarded by militiamen and their commanders.
In the district of Daryian in Badakhshan province, police chief Abdul Qadeer Raashed said in an interview that he had shut down and destroyed all drug laboratories in villages under his control more than one month ago, after local competitors accused him of running labs and smuggling drugs.
But a Washington Post reporter who insisted on touring the supposedly defunct laboratories with Qadeer on short notice found the four fire pits of one, at a home in the village of Langar, still hot to the touch and firewood smoldering outside.
Hidden in a storeroom and outbuildings — along with the half-eaten lunches of people who had clearly been working there a short time before — were the supplies and equipment needed to produce morphine and heroin. Among them: dozens of empty oil barrels and still-damp vats for mixing and boiling, sacks of lime, more than 50 bags of chemicals such as ammonium chloride and filters for refining.
In the main house was a roster listing workers’ names and duties, instructions for using a satellite telephone, and — hidden under a mound of carpets and cushions — bags of a brown powder that appeared to be heroin. While the reporter searched the property, Qadeer stood by, looking miserable.
“Come back in 48 hours,” Qadeer said, “and I promise you, this will all be gone.”

‘A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY’
As Afghanistan tries to put two decades of chaos and combat behind it and move toward rebuilding itself into a stable country, the growing drug trade and the corruption it is spawning threaten to make moot the ongoing debates over such basic issues as law and governance. Left unchecked, worried critics say, it will turn Afghanistan into a narco-mafia state.





Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani called the drug trade “a threat to democracy” as Afghanistan tries to prepare for elections next year. “Elections are expensive propositions,” he said in an interview last week in the capital, Kabul. “The liquid funds from drugs, in the absence of solid institutions, could corrupt voting practices and turn them into a nightmare instead of a realization of the public will.”
Analysts and observers say that many well-placed politicians, police officers and military officials already are profiting from the drug trade. A high-ranking anti-narcotics official recalled discussing the problem with a U.S. general, who “asked me if I could give him a list of these officials who were involved. I told him it would be easier if I listed officials who weren’t involved. That would be a shorter list.”
While opium poppy has been cultivated in Afghanistan since the 18th century, the drug trade did not flourish here until recent decades, according to a U.N. study published this year.
After the 1979 Soviet invasion spawned a decade-long guerrilla war fought by U.S.-backed Islamic resistance forces, the Afghan government lost control of the rugged hinterlands and never fully regained it. Through the Soviet war and the years of conflict that followed, almost every faction funded itself at least partly through the drug trade.
The seemingly endless fighting also destroyed Afghanistan’s agricultural infrastructure — in particular the irrigation canals essential for nurturing crops and the roads needed to get them to market. Poor farmers increasingly turned to opium to support their families. The opium poppy requires less water than wheat, and the valuable sap it produces could be sold quickly to dealers in the fields or kept indefinitely on a farmhouse shelf and used as barter whenever a family needed something from the local bazaar.
In 1999, Afghanistan produced its largest opium crop to date: 5,060 tons, from about 224,000 acres of land, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The following year, the Taliban, the radical Islamic movement that ruled most of the country, banned cultivation of the opium poppy, but not its trade. As a result, the price of opium soared and the Taliban reportedly profited hugely from selling stockpiles of the narcotic. Poppy cultivation plummeted, except in Badakhshan province and other areas not under Taliban control.
After the U.S.-led military campaign in late 2001 toppled the Taliban, the new president, Hamid Karzai, banned every aspect of the drug trade. Governors in some traditional poppy-growing provinces cooperated with aggressive eradication programs, but the poppy has spread rapidly in many areas where it traditionally had not been grown.
As they do every year, U.N. surveyors are trying to quantify this year’s poppy harvest using satellite photography and field inspections. Their findings will be announced in September, but some surveyors say anecdotal evidence already points to an extraordinary year.
In one corner of the Borek district in Badakhshan, for example, Said Amir, a U.N. surveyor, said that “last year I could not find one poppy there. This year it’s on about 40 percent of the land.”
There is broad agreement among anti-drug workers, aid agencies and poppy farmers that efforts last year to stop cultivation by paying farmers to eradicate their poppy fields only encouraged more to grow it this year in the hope that they would be paid again. And because aid groups have made food more plentiful, some farmers are feeding their families donated wheat, leaving their fields free for planting poppy.
In the northern province of Faryab, for example, World Food Progam workers said they noticed the greatest poppy cultivation in areas where they distributed wheat most heavily. In the remote Garziwan district, accessible only by donkey or horse, villagers who used to travel to pick up donated wheat told aid workers that they could not be bothered. Newly flush with opium profits, they wanted the wheat only if aid workers delivered it to them.

‘EVERYBODY IS AFFECTED’
In Badakhshan province, known for the tenacity of its opposition to the Taliban and the beauty of its mountainous terrain, the drug trade is exerting a gravitational pull on the local economy and power structure.
The increase of poppy fields and drug labs has driven the price of a day’s labor from about $3 to $10 — beyond the reach of farmers tending low-priced legal crops, but affordable for poppy growers.
?Almost all the U.N. projects have stopped because there is no labor. People are working with the poppy.?
— MOHAMMAD HAKIM
U.N. mission in Afghanistan The rising labor costs have also stalled road and bridge projects and other reconstruction efforts that are desperately needed in the province, which is poor even by Afghan standards, said Mohammad Hakim, 30, political officer for the Badakhshan office of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.
“Almost all the U.N. projects have stopped because there is no labor,” he said. “People are working with the poppy. Roof construction, school projects — all stopped. Everybody is affected.”
Last year, Hakim said, several militia commanders scattered throughout the province tried to halt the spread of poppy cultivation and drug-processing labs. “This year, there was only one,” he said. “Next year, maybe none. In some districts, the commander is the owner of the factory. The people who are getting involved are getting powerful.”
Cmdr. Fazel Ahmad Nazari, head of criminal investigations for the Badakhshan police, said: “Day by day, it’s growing more organized. If it keeps going like this we won’t be able to combat it, ever.”
As the drug trade spreads, law enforcement efforts to combat it remain rudimentary.
The fledgling national government’s new Counter-Narcotics Department is still struggling to establish itself. Kabul-based anti-narcotics police units are largely in the planning and training stage. No one is seriously investigating official drug corruption. “We don’t have the capacity yet,” said Mirwais Yasini, director general of the Counter Narcotics Department.
In the eastern province of Logar, convoys of trucks loaded with drugs and guarded by men armed with semi-automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades travel toward the Pakistani border at least two or three times a week. The police chief says that his men don’t have the firepower to stop them and that some well-armed militiamen are in league with the smugglers.
“It’s out of our control,” said Maj. Gen. Noor Mohammad Pakteen, who has been a law enforcement officer for 36 of his 59 years. “The drug mafia is getting worse daily. When nobody will help us, we can’t do anything. . . . I’m so frustrated, actually, I’m ready to leave my job.”
Police across the country not only do not have the might to confront well-armed drug smugglers, they also lack such basics as cars, telephones and radios.
In mountainous Badakhshan, the police have just one vehicle, a pickup truck. When police at headquarters in the provincial capital, Faizabad, receive a tip about a smuggling operation in a far-flung district, Nazari often has to send an officer on foot. A round trip can take a month and leave an officer in trouble with no way to call for help.
“These mafia who are very active in Afghanistan have everything,” Nazari said. “They have motorbikes, pistols, mobile phones and tight communication. The police who are trying to combat those smugglers have nothing.”
Police in Badakhshan are supposed to receive a monthly salary of up to 1,500 afghanis — about $30. But the national government has failed to pay them for months at a time.
A demoralized police officer is ripe for bribes. “For $100, he’ll be hired,” Nazari said. “The drug smugglers will give him some money and tell him that even though he knows about a laboratory he should say that he doesn’t. It’s happened lots of times.”

FEW CONDEMNATIONS
The elder of Boymalasi village — a doctor — last year criticized the spread of poppy fields throughout the Argo district of Badakhshan. This year he’s growing poppy.
“I feel 100 percent terrible about it,” said Hasamudin, 44, looking down at his feet. “There is no rule in Afghanistan. If there was rule, the people could not do this. They would have to obey the orders of the government. There is no government in Afghanistan, just the name of government. Who will come and ask us about our crime?”
Ghulam Mohammad, 60, expressed no such misgivings. He has lived most of his life in a one-room house in Argo, farming wheat on a small plot to support his family of 10. “We never had a good life,” he said.
This season he and his son-in-law Safar planted poppy. Mohammad borrowed against anticipated profits of $1,800 — 30 times more than he ever earned selling wheat, he said — to add three rooms to his house.
Nobody, not even the local mullahs, is telling the wizened farmer and his neighbors that what they are doing is wrong. In fact, they laugh at the notion.
“In my village, the mullah himself has cultivated it,” Safar, 45, said.
“All the mullahs are cultivating it,” Mohammad said.
Along the banks of the nearby Kokcha River, Mullah Abdul Rashid of the Jata mosque is indeed laboring in his poppy field. Working with his business partner — Sarwar, the mosque’s mawlawi — the mullah deftly slices one ovoid poppy pod after another to release opium sap. All 80 families in their village are growing poppy this year, the clerics said.
“Of course we believe that growing this poppy will have a very bad moral effect on the people of Badakhshan,” the mullah, 36, said. “In the future, we hope it will be eradicated. Now, it’s everywhere because the people need it to survive.
“I won’t allow anyone to eradicate this field,” the mullah said. “In the future, if my situation got better, I’ll destroy it myself.”