Moby Media Updates Archives 2008 MMU: Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right, 09 September 2008
| MMU: Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right, 09 September 2008 |
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Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right
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Glass palaces 'not earthquake resistant' No articles featured today No articles featured today Getting the Afghan Air Corps To Straighten Up and Fly Right U.S. Mentors Confront a Tricky Mission; Oft-Asked Question: Will There Be Lunch?
The Wall Street Journal In the spring, Afghan air force helicopter door-gunners went on strike over pay and rank. The flight engineers, who sit in the cockpit with pilots, refused to take their place, sniffing that they were officers and shouldn't have to shoot. They went on strike, too. In the end, the Afghans compromised: If there's no gunner on duty, the helicopters would fly unarmed. Such are the birthing pains of the new Afghan National Army Air Corps. The U.S. has spent more than $7 billion training the Afghan National Army, Afghan Border Police and Afghan National Police to beat back the resurgent Taliban and its militant allies. The newcomer is the Air Corps, a vital weapon in a country of soaring mountains and featureless deserts. It has a new fleet of refurbished Soviet bloc aircraft, an $800 million U.S. aid budget for two years and 100 coalition advisers. With U.S. help, the Afghans have turned a shambles of a Soviet-trained air force into an Air Corps that, on a good day, can transport Afghan troops to the battlefield, haul the supplies they need to fight and evacuate the fallen. But the effort has been plagued by red tape, uneven competence and the wide cultural gap between by-the-book American mentors and damn-the-checklist Afghan flight crews. One Afghan pilot flew his Mi-17, an East bloc transport helicopter, to 15,000 feet, unaware that the reduced oxygen at that altitude could cause the crew to lose consciousness. The Air Corps doctor, an Afghan obstetrician, insists on taking the Afghan and American pilots' blood pressure and pulse before every mission. He's worried that the crews, like the Soviets before them, might be drunk. The U.S. flight surgeon advising Afghan medevac crews rarely takes off unless he has arranged for a kebab lunch at their destination. One of the first questions the Afghans ask him when assigned a new mission: Will there be lunch? "They're really good stick-and-rudder pilots -- it's not like they don't know anything," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jeff Robinson, one of the American advisers. The main problems, he said, are "cultural differences." The Afghans have a casual attitude toward flying, while "we fall back on the way we're used to doing things," he said. The American mentors share the cockpit only with what they call the "A team," the 10 or 15 best Afghan helicopter pilots. "You get down to the B team and you're getting into people who taxi into fences," said Lt. Col. Todd Burt Lancaster, one of the three coalition helicopter instructors. Stool in the Cockpit Unlike the Afghan National Army, which relies on veterans of the 1980s guerrilla campaign to oust the Soviets, the Air Corps is led by men who fought on the Soviet side. The Air Corps chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Barat, flew Mi-17s for the Soviet-backed regime and later for the Taliban. "I got orders, and I executed the mission," the 56-year-old explained. During the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, he flew an Mi-17 to his home province of Wardak, landed in a valley and covered the plane with a tarp to conceal it from U.S. bombers. After the Taliban fell, he discovered someone had stolen the pilot's seat. He put a stool in the cockpit and flew back to Kabul to report for duty. One day recently, he got a call from an army commander telling him that nomads and Hazara farmers were fighting over land west of Kabul. The army needed the Air Corps to ferry 50 soldiers to the spot. "We're ready to do any kind of operation," Gen. Barat said. "It's a point of national pride. It's like the rebirth of the Air Corps." At the moment, the Air Corps has six Antonov transport planes, 17 Mi-17 transport helicopters and four Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters, fearsome-looking craft that in Soviet hands terrorized Afghan villagers. The Afghan Hind pilots are allowed to fire their weapons only in self-defense. "We are not employing them in offensive operations," said U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Jay Lindell, commander of the coalition entity charged with rebuilding the Air Corps. The Afghans and their supporters don't want to risk an accidental strike on civilians or friendly troops. That worry highlights the central paradox of the new Air Corps: Should the Afghans conduct combat missions immediately? Or should they stick to training until they can operate to U.S. standards? "We hope we can build them capability in six to 12 months for a variety of operations," including medevac, air assaults, night flights, and landing under fire, said Lt. Col. Lancaster, who went to Ukraine to learn to fly Soviet helicopters. "But there's pressure to do something that feels like a success now." Minor Mishaps The Afghan pilots have suffered minor mishaps. One Mi-17 crashed into the side of a mountain, but there were no fatalities. Mechanics repaired the aircraft where it went down. It crashed again on the way back to base. One pilot swiped a fence with his spinning tail rotor. When the pilot flew his Mi-17 at an unsafe altitude, U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Al Davis, who mentors Afghan flight engineers, was on board and urged the commander to descend. At times, coalition advisers find the rank-conscious Afghans frustratingly slow. A three-star Afghan general has to approve every major helicopter movement in writing, except medevac missions. One day in July, the general was at a funeral, so a long-awaited mission to Jalalabad was scrubbed. At other times, the advisers try to subdue Afghan spontaneity. The Americans spend about three hours planning for every hour in the air; the Afghans reverse the ratio, according to the advisers. Traditionally, Afghan pilots gather at the front of the aircraft, look at a map, hop in and go. "If we don't get them in the habit, they won't do it when we cut them free," Master Sgt. Davis said at a coalition staff meeting. Lt. Col. Robinson warned the others that the Afghans might rebel against such rigorous procedures. "We'll lose their buy-in," he warned the other advisers. In the end, the advisers agreed to try to enforce a strict routine. The Air Corps has 66 fixed-wing pilots and 139 helicopter pilots, of a total force of 2,000. Next year, the U.S. will begin sending Afghan pilots to the U.S. for English-language and flight classes. By 2016, the Americans hope the Air Corps will number 7,000 men. The U.S. is building a major Air Corps base in Kabul, on a cleared minefield, complete with new hangars, housing, community center, stores, mess halls and a mosque. Despite the stumbles, the Air Corps is beginning to chalk up a record of successful missions. When fighting broke out north of Kandahar in June, Air Corps planes transported 200 commandos and other soldiers to the front in a single day. "For the first time, with minimal [coalition] support, they've taken the fight to the enemy," said Gen. Lindell. Write to Michael M. Phillips at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
BUSINESS Glass palaces 'not earthquake resistant'
http://www.quqnoos.com/ Thousands of houses constructed illegally in capital Kabul MORE than 2,000 buildings have been constructed illegally in Kabul over the last six years, the city council's planning department said. The city is located in an earthquake zone and so buildings must follow the standards laid out by the council, the department said. The construction of tall buildings, business centres in residential areas and low-quality materials imported from abroad are among the main problems facing the department. Deputy head of Kabul council, Wahabuddin Sadat, said: "There are problems. We have one plan for Kabul, but something different is being implemented in the city. "We know about the illegal building constructions in Kabul. In most parts of the city, we have allowed the constructors to build two story houses, which is the international standard for residential homes, but we have seen that some people have built more than two storey houses." Engineer Aminullah Amin, head of the council's planning department, said: "The buildings which are constructed according to foreign designs are not accepted by us. "The plans which our department has given to the people satisfy international standards. These maps have been inspected by another commission, and they are totally reliable." Fardin, a construction engineer said: "All buildings which are more than two stories must be built with loading systems that make them resistant against earthquakes." Some engineers say that newly built buildings covered in glass are not earthquake resistant. Should U.S. Forces Withdraw From Iraq?
New York Times, United States As Iraqi and American diplomats negotiate how long and under what circumstances American troops will remain in Iraq, Iraqis are also debating the issue. For Iraqis, as for Americans, the answer is far more complex than a simple "stay" or "go." For both it is about blood, treasure, pride, dignity and a nation's sense of itself and its place in the world. But a lot more Iraqi blood than American has already been spilled, and stands to be spilled again, if the politicians get it wrong. On the streets of Iraq, the questions being asked about the continuing American presence are about sovereignty, stability and America's intentions in Iraq's past, present and future: How many American troops will stay? How quickly will they go? If they stay, where will they be based? To do what? With what powers? And under what restrictions? For the most part, Iraqis' views fall into three categories. One group, which includes many followers of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and some intensely nationalist Sunni Arabs in parts of the country that have suffered the worst since the invasion, simply want the Americans to leave, period. They say no amount of American effort now can make up for the horrors of the occupation, including the destruction of society and the killing of innocent civilians. A second group takes a similarly dim view of the occupation, but worries that the brief period this year of improving security in Iraq will be vulnerable if the Americans abruptly withdraws. They say that the United States has a moral obligation to remain, and that continued presence of the occupiers is preferable to a return to rule by gangs and militias. A third group worries that without a referee, Iraq's dominant powers - Kurds in the far north and Shiites in the center and south - will brutally dominate other groups. The Americans are not the first to face such quandaries in Iraq. In August 1920, only two years after his declining colonial power had emerged from the devastation of World War I, the British secretary of war, Winston Churchill, wrote (but did not send) a letter to his prime minister that contained this assessment of Mesopotamia: "It seems to me so gratuitous that after all the struggles of war, just when we want to get together our slender military resources and re-establish our finances and have a little in hand in case of danger here or there, we should be compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts." A millennium and a half earlier, in A.D. 694, the Umayyad provincial governor Al-Hajjaj also faced a fractious Baghdad. His response to one angry crowd was a speech learned by all Iraqi schoolchildren: "I see heads before me that are ripe and ready for the plucking, and I am the one to pluck them, and I see blood glistening between the turbans and the beards." The turbans melted away. Five years later, Al-Hajjaj faced a rebellion in a troublesome region to his east, which forced him to move troops from Iraq. That rebellion was in Kabulistan, now part of Afghanistan, a historical parallel that drew a wry smile from Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of American forces in Iraq, when it was pointed out to him last month. General Petraeus will soon move up the chain of command to take over the Central Command region, making him responsible for an area that covers both Iraq and what was Kabulistan. Names and governments change, but there is nothing new under the Mesopotamian sun. The debate goes on. Following are some Iraqi perspectives on whether and how American troops should stay in their country. Reporting was contributed by Richard A. Oppel Jr. from Kirkuk; Riyadh Mohammed, Ali Hameed, Mohamed Hussein and Anwar J. Ali from Baghdad; and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Mosul, Salahuddin Province, Falluja, Kirkuk, Diyala Province, Najaf, Karbala, Basra and the Kurdish-administered northern region of Iraq. US missiles strike 'Taliban village'
IOL - World Missiles fired by US drones have claimed the lives of 16 people, including Pakistani and Afghan Taliban fighters, in a strike targeting a religious school founded by "an old friend" of Osama bin Laden. "There were two drones and they fired three missiles," said a resident of Dandi Darpa-kheil, a village in the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border. A military officer said the missiles targeted a house and madrassa founded by Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, who was a commander in the US-backed Afghan resistance war against the Soviet occupation in 1979 to 1988. His links with Bin Laden go back to the late 1980s. Haqqani is said to be in ill-health and his son, Sirajuddin, has been leading his group. Four women and two children were among the dead, a senior intelligence officer said. The others were Pakistani and Afghan Taliban fighters in Sirajuddin Haqqani's group. Doctors said 15 to 20 people, most of them women and children, were wounded. Badruddin, one of Haqqani's younger sons, said his father and Sirajuddin were in Afghanistan when the drones struck. He said one of his aunts had died in the attack on the family home. Six missiles had struck the house, which the family had owned for 30 years, he added. - Reuters
Bush to Cut Troops in Iraq, Send More to Afghanistan
Bloomberg President George W. Bush said he'll withdraw as many as 8,000 troops from Iraq by February and simultaneously send additional forces to Afghanistan. Bush will announce his plan tomorrow in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington. The White House released the prepared text of his remarks today. ``While the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becoming increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight,'' Bush will say, according to the text. ``As a result, we have been able to carry out a policy of `return on success' -- reducing American combat forces in Iraq as conditions on the ground continue to improve.'' The decision means that Bush's successor will inherit an Iraq force that's slightly larger than it was in January of 2007, when the president ordered a surge aimed at quelling sectarian and insurgent violence. The Iraq drawdown will begin in November when a Marine battalion comes home, Bush said. The battalion that was to replace it will go instead to Afghanistan, he said. A Marine battalion usually consists of about 1,000 troops. The withdrawal will continue ``over the next several months'' as an Army combat brigade and an additional 3,400 support troops come home, the president said. By February, a total of 8,000 will be out of Iraq. An Army combat brigade normally consists of about 3,500 soldiers. Increasing Pressure In Afghanistan -- where American, NATO and Afghan forces are under increasing pressure from a resurgent Taliban and other Islamic extremists -- the U.S. and its allies are conducting a ``quiet surge,'' Bush said. In addition to the added Marine battalion, an Army combat brigade will be sent to Afghanistan, arriving in January, Bush said. ``Afghanistan's success is critical to the security of America and our partners in the free world,'' Bush will say, according to the text. ``As we learned in Iraq, the best way to restore the confidence of the people is to restore basic security -- and that requires more troops.'' The U.S. currently has about 146,000 troops in Iraq and about 33,000 in Afghanistan, according to the Department of Defense. When Bush ordered the Iraq buildup in 2007, there were about 137,000 American troops there. Fewer Attacks The number of attacks in Iraq has since dropped, as has the rate of deaths among U.S. combat troops. The U.S. cites campaigns against militants in the cities of Basra, Baghdad, Mosul, Amara and Baquba as evidence of the enhanced ability of Iraqi forces. The U.S. last week handed to them responsibility for Anbar province, the largest and once one of the most violent of Iraq's 18 regions. Bush's decision reflects recommendations of Army General David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, that were refined by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Petraeus crafted his recommendations during a 45-day evaluation period after the departure in July of the last of five surge brigades. U.S. troop levels in Iraq are directly linked to those in Afghanistan, where American commanders have asked for three additional combat bridges, or about 12,000 troops, to counter increased levels of Taliban and al-Qaeda violence. Senior Pentagon officials have said it probably isn't possible to meet those requests until more forces are withdrawn from Iraq. For example, the transfer of responsibility in Anbar province will free for deployment to Afghanistan some of the Marine forces that would have deployed to the province, Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway told reporters last month. The Bush administration and the Iraqi government are still negotiating over an agreement on the role of U.S. troops after their United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year. To contact the reporters on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Tony Capaccio in Washington at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Team discovers horizontal Buddha in field
http://www.quqnoos.com/ Eighteen metre-long Buddha found in agricultural field, culture department says ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed an 19 metre-long stone Buddha in the central province of Bamiyan, officials said. The horizontal Buddha was discovered in a former agricultural field and some of its parts are missing or destroyed, the province's information and culture department said. Taliban learning how to win key propaganda battles
The Globe and Mail The Taliban, once dismissed as too stupid to know they would lose if they dared to fight well-trained Canadian and allied troops, have proved themselves resilient, if still ill-equipped, warriors, learning from their early defeats and adapting to stage sophisticated attacks, inflicting serious casualties and winning key propaganda battles. "They are showing greater political savvy, too," said a military analyst, who asked not to be further identified. "They understand they don't have to defeat us, they just have to defeat the will of the people back home." The analyst, who is familiar with the counterinsurgency being fought in Kandahar, added: "We are in a very dangerous time, we have an election coming up and they [the Taliban] know we have a rotation going on and that we are close to the 100 [killed] number which will provoke re-examination" of the mission at home. Last week's well-executed ambush of an armoured Canadian column is only the latest in a series of Taliban battlefield successes. The Canadian losses - three dead, five injured after a clever, daylight ambush and a fierce gun battle - were only the latest in a high-profile series of setbacks for the U.S.-led coalition that now numbers more than 50,000 troops but has so far failed to defeat the Taliban. Canada's new Chief of Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, conceded that the Taliban ambush was "worrisome in the kind of sophistication of the attack." Better communications, better intelligence and a growing cadre of young, battle-hardened new insurgent commanders all contribute to recent Taliban success. While senior Canadian military sources insist the casualty counts remain hugely lopsided - as many as 50 or 100 killed Taliban for every Canadian combat casualty - the body-bag ratio does not determine victory in any counterinsurgency. In August, 10 French soldiers were killed and 21 injured in a similarly well-executed ambush. More than 100 fighters blocked a road, forced the French out of their vehicles and then hammered them with mortar and heavy machine-gun fire from carefully placed positions. A month earlier, scores of Taliban fighters and several suicide bombers launched waves of attacks on a newly established U.S. base close to the Pakistan border. Nine Americans were killed and 15 injured in what was - until the French losses - the worst single combat defeat for foreign forces since the 2001 invasion that toppled the Taliban. "They are not only Taliban. They were [Pakistan-based] Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hezb-i-Islami, Taliban and those people who are dissatisfied with [President Hamid Karzai's] government after these recent incidents," said a former Afghan governor, Tamim Nuristani. "They all came together for this one." August was the deadliest month since 2001 for foreign troops in Afghanistan. Taliban attacks killed 43 coalition soldiers. "The three summer months have been the worst since 2001," admitted NATO spokesman Brigadier-General Richard Blanchette, adding the Taliban remain "well organized [and] still in a position to mount attacks." Just as foreign armies have adapted - for instance by shifting to ever more heavily armoured vehicles and increasingly turning to helicopters to move troops and supplies in response to the Taliban's mastery of roadside bombs - so too have the Taliban tactics changed to focus on attacks with more far-reaching impact. In June, in a spectacularly successful attack in the heart of Canada's patch, Taliban fighters blew up a tanker truck outside Sarpoza prison in Kandahar city, freeing hundreds of fellow fighters, many captured by Canadian troops over the previous three years. "These spectacular attacks have psychological impact that far exceeds their tactical significance," said Christine Fair, a senior political scientist at U.S.-based think tank the Rand Corporation and an expert on Afghanistan. "But that is, of course, the point." Yesterday, a double-suicide attack on the Kandahar police headquarters again demonstrated the Taliban's capacity to strike at the heart of Afghanistan's inadequate and often unreliable security forces, the police and army that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government hopes will be capable of coping once Canada pulls out in 2011. None of the attacks tipped the strategic balance. NATO and U.S. forces, with the growing Afghan army, remain, by far, the most powerful military force in the country. But all the attacks bore the hallmarks of better training - likely in camps in Pakistan - more effective command and control and a growing awareness by the insurgents that they, too, need to win the battle for "hearts and minds." Other analysts, like Professor Douglas Bland, chairman of the Defence Management Studies program at Queen's University in Kingston and a former army officer, believes the military prowess of the Taliban is still extremely limited. "They have some low-level commanders who are learning, but their attacks are still hit-and-miss and not a lot of consequence," he said. Prof. Bland said he believes the Taliban have underestimated the will of Western democracies to stay the course in rebuilding Afghanistan. Nevertheless, the Taliban's capacity to plan and stage spectacular attacks - beginning early this year with the assault on the heavily guarded Serena Hotel in the centre of Kabul that had the Norwegian foreign minister cowering in the basement - has dispelled any notions that they are a defeated force. Rather, both in the Afghan hinterlands and in the minds of Western voters, the Taliban are increasingly regarded as more potent, more powerful, more credible. The Pentagon is planning to shift to southern Afghanistan 5,000 troops originally destined to go to Iraq next month. Both U.S. presidential candidates have vowed to pour more American soldiers and money into winning the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. US military deaths in Afghanistan region at 514
The Associated Press As of Monday, Sept. 8, 2008, at least 514 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Monday at 10 a.m. EDT. Of those, the military reports 366 were killed by hostile action. Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 65 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen. There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death. ___ The latest deaths reported by the military: _ No deaths reported. ___ The latest identifications reported by the military: _ Army Pvt. Michael R. Dinterman, 18, Littlestown, Pa.; died Saturday at Outpost Restrepo, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, of wounds from small-arms fire; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. _ Army Pvt. Vincent C. Winston Jr., 22, St. Louis; died Thursday in Afghanistan after his vehicle struck an explosive; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas. On the Net: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/ Police arrest Buddha smugglers
http://www.quqnoos.com/ Statue dating back more than one thousand years found in village A BUDDHA statue dating back between 1,500 to 1,800 years has been discovered in the southern province of Kandahar. Head of Kandahar's information and culture department, Abdul Majeed Babai, said the valuable monument, which smugglers were trying to carry out of the country, was being kept in a house in Sanzai village. He said the smugglers had been arrested. Mr Babai said: "The smugglers wanted to sell the statue for $200,000, and if it was smuggled abroad, it would have been sold at a much higher price." Road blast kills six Afghan civilians: governor
AFP Six civilians were killed in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan Monday while guards separately shot dead a would-be suicide bomber, officials said, in fresh Taliban-linked unrest. The blast tore through a minibus in the southern province of Zabul, killing five Afghan men and a 15-year-old boy, Naw Bahar district governor Zarif Khan told AFP. Two other people were wounded. Khan blamed the attack on the "enemies of peace" -- a reference to Taliban insurgents who regularly plant bombs intended to hit Afghan and international troops trying to put down extremist violence. Roadside bombings are a hallmark of the Taliban insurgency. In a separate incident, a suicide attacker was shot and killed as he attempted to enter the intelligence department in the Zabul capital, Qalat, late Sunday, deputy provincial governor Gulab Shah Alikhail told AFP. A guard, suspicious of a man walking towards him, ordered the would-be bomber to "freeze" but the attacker ignored him, Alikhail said. "After he ignored a warning shot, the guard shot him in the head and killed him. Later they found out he was wearing a 10-kilogramme (22-pound) explosives vest," he said. The attempted attack comes a day after twin suicide blasts inside the police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar killed two policemen, with three more people dying overnight, according to an official. Nearly 40 people were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blasts, which were a minute apart. Also Sunday a suicide attacker blew himself up near Italian NATO soldiers in the western city of Herat but caused no casualties, according to local police. The day before a suicide attacker, also said to be from the Taliban, had shot dead a guard outside a government building in the southwestern town of Zaranj and then blown himself up killing five more people. Ottawa announced Sunday meanwhile that a Canadian soldier was killed and seven injured in a roadside blast in Kandahar province. And a Dutch soldier was killed, and five comrades wounded, elsewhere in the south when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb, the Dutch defence ministry said. Nearly 200 international soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an AFP tally based on official statements. Southern Afghanistan sees some of the worst of an insurgency launched by the extremist Taliban, who were in government between 1996 and 2001 when they were removed in a US-led invasion. Northwood educates Afghanistan's future
The Detroit News - Editorials Terrorists target cities and civilians rather than soldiers and battlefields so they can wield a heinous grip on the populace. The way to fight them is through economic empowerment. That's why Northwood University and the Institute for Economic Empowerment of Women -- along with the U.S. Department of State -- have cooperated on a "Peace through Business" endeavor. The program is built on the notion that nations that are economically sound are in a better position to promote and accept peaceful solutions to conflicts. We have focused on Afghanistan, where freedom and democracy slowly are being established. Unfortunately, for too many Afghan women, the road toward freedom is long and cumbersome because of a 14 percent literacy rate, as well as family and cultural obstacles. In the past two years, the Peace through Business initiative has brought Afghan women business owners to Northwood University's Midland campus to participate in a high-level business basics curriculum and mentoring program. Long distance learning and mentoring using technology provides on-going support and knowledge, helping the program participants to maintain their enterprises. The program allows the participants to take their education and experience back to Afghanistan. That is a critical component to building economic health in Afghanistan. The entrepreneurial training also helps to instill a desire to develop a real democracy. One of our graduates is working with organizations to help train and support her run for their parliament in 2009. In Afghanistan and throughout the world, education and prosperity will bring about a more peaceful society. Keith A. Pretty is president and chief executive of Northwood University. E-mail comments to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . British diplomat warns against aggressive military policy in tribal areas
Tehran Times, Iran Arguing that there is no quick way to wiping out militancy along Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas, a British diplomat and acclaimed expert on the region has cautioned the so-called anti-terrorism coalition forces against pursuing any aggressive military policy in the Pakistani tribal areas. Rory Stewart, a Scotsman who literally walked through Afghanistan and Pakistan and chronicled his first hand account of the situation in a well-received book, underscored Sunday that "there is no silver bullet out there" to enforce full security and stability in a stipulated timeframe. "We have to try to work with the best that we can find in the Pakistani government, because they're the people who have the legitimacy. They're the only people who have the kind of consent and support. "If we start rampaging around and trying to implement our own aggressive military policies, or even very independent political policies, we'll stir up huge resentment," he told CNN in an interview, citing low prevalent perceptions about the United States. Asked if a political solution through separating tribal people from the irreconcilable violent elements and accommodating to local power structures provided the way forward, Stewart replied: "I guess it's probably the best solution you've got. You can describe it in different ways. You can describe it as working with the grain of society. But essentially, you find the people who are powerful, effective, representative, and you try to work with the best of them." He saw solutions to the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan as inextricably linked. The author of the bestseller book "The Places in Between," opposed the idea of sending more troops to insurgency-hit Afghanistan and instead called for renewed international focus on socio-economic development of the people. "I think it's very dangerous, because Afghans themselves are going to feel increasingly resentful. They already perceive many of our troops as foreign occupiers. We've made very little progress in key areas in the last six-and-a-half years. "I'd rather see us focus on the things we do well-health, education, finance, infrastructure-rather than trying to do things which, frankly, I don't think we can do," said the writer, whose organization, the Turquoise Mountain Foundation is dedicated to regeneration of Afghan crafts and historical areas. Stewart described the local populations in the border region as deeply conservative but was confident of their progressing in the years ahead. "Working in those areas, you have to work with a different kind of politics. I don't mean that cynically. I think that Afghanistan can be more prosperous, more humane, more stable in 20 years' time than it is today. I think Pakistan can improve, and will continue to improve. "But I don't think there's any alternative to working with the people who actually live in those areas". Karzai sets free inmates to honour Ramadan
http://www.quqnoos.com/ Women and children among 72 inmates released in Herat PRESIDENT Karzai has released 72 prisoners from a jail in the western province of Herat to mark the holy month of Ramadan. Karzai, who released the inmates on Sunday, said 62 of the prisoners were men and 10 were women. Four children under the age of 18 were also among those released. The prisoners were selected for release because they had all completed one third of their sentences. US targets Haqqani network in Afghan east, 2 held
YnetNews The US military said on Tuesday it had targeted the network of veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani during an operation in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan, and detained two suspected militants. The raid was launched on Monday in Khost province against militants suspected of carrying out roadside bomb attacks, the military said in a statement. It did not refer to another operation on Monday in which Pakistani witnesses and intelligence officials said US drones fired missiles at a house and religious school founded by Haqqani, just across the border in Pakistan, killing 23 people. (Reuters) U.S. understated Afghan deaths, videos suggest
Globe and Mail, Canada The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos made public yesterday, lending weight to Afghan and UN allegations that a U.S.-led raid last month killed more civilians than the United States reported. The sounds of wailing women mix with the voices of men shouting inside a white-walled mosque in the western Afghan village of Azizabad, where an Afghan government commission and United Nations report said some 90 civilians - including 60 children and 15 women - were killed. The two grainy videos, apparently taken on cellphones, show bodies lying side by side on the mosque floor, covered with floral-patterned blankets and black-and-white checkered shawls. One young boy lies in a fetal position; others look as though they are asleep. Half the head of one child is blown off. Turbaned men walk around, gently lifting the blankets covering the faces of the dead. At least two elderly men are among the dead. There appear to be several dozen bodies lying on the mosque floor, though a precise count was difficult because of the poor quality of the images. It was impossible to verify conclusively that the videos show the aftermath of the Azizabad attack, but the contents appear to back assertions by Afghan and UN officials that the U.S. operation killed far more civilians than the military has acknowledged. The initial U.S. military investigation found that only seven civilians were killed in Azizabad, along with up to 35 militants. The U.S. said Sunday it will reopen the investigation because of emerging new evidence. Yesterday, a Pentagon spokesman said new "imagery evidence" came to his attention over the weekend. With violence spiralling in Afghanistan, Washington is becoming more aggressive about insurgent havens in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan. Missiles fired yesterday from U.S. drone aircraft hit a seminary and houses in Pakistan's North Waziristan region, associated with a Taliban commander. At least nine people were hit, including militants and civilians, officials and witnesses said. The targets were associated with Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan in the 1980s. U.S. commanders now count him among their most dangerous foes. A spokesman for the U.S. military coalition in Afghanistan said he had no information that he could release on the matter. He did not deny coalition involvement. The U.S. is sending more soldiers to Afghanistan as it draws some out of Iraq. One Marine battalion will go to Afghanistan in November instead of Iraq and a U.S. Army brigade will go in January, for an estimated total of 4,500 more troops in what U.S. President George W. Bush called a "quiet surge" in a speech to be given today. The new troops will bring the U.S. presence in Afghanistan to nearly 31,000, compared with about 146,000 in Iraq. "For all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," Mr. Bush said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Defense University in Washington, which the White House released yesterday. Commanders repeatedly have asked for more troops in Afghanistan, where there has been a resurgence of the Taliban and a growth in violence. Mr. Bush acknowledged the challenges there remain huge. "Unlike Iraq, it has few natural resources and has an underdeveloped infrastructure. Its democratic institutions are fragile," he said. "And its enemies are some of the most hardened terrorists and extremists in the world. With their brutal attacks, the Taliban and the terrorists have made some progress in shaking the confidence of the Afghan people." Car crash kills two security contractors
http://www.quqnoos.com/ Collision in the west kills two and wounds two, including army officer A CAR crash between an army vehicle and a car has killed two members of a private security firm and injured an army officer and a local resident in the western province of Herat. The spokesman for Herat's police force said the crash, which took place on Sunday, happened because both drivers were driving irresponsibly. The two cars collided on the Manta-Herat highway in the Engil district. U.S. drones bomb Taliban haven in Pakistan
Business Today - International Missiles fired from U.S. drone aircraft hit a seminary and houses associated with a Taliban commander, killing at least nine people, including militants and civilians, officials and witnesses said. With violence spiraling in Afghanistan, Washington is becoming more aggressive about insurgent havens on the Afghan border, despite the strain it places on relations with Pakistan. Yesterday's incident happened in a village in North Waziristan, a militant stronghold in Pakistan's tribal belt and a possible hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Quaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri. Residents told of seeing two Predator drones in the sky shortly before multiple explosions hit a seminary and several nearby houses in the village of Dande Darba Khel. A Pakistani intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of his job, said three suspected foreign militants and two children were among the dead. A U.S. military coalition spokesman said he had no information. The targets were associated with Jalaluddin Haqqani, a veteran of the fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s who American commanders now count among their most dangerous foes. Haqqani and his son, Siraj, have been linked to attacks this year including an attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai and a suicide attack on a hotel in Kabul. One of the homes hit belonged to Siraj Haqqani, but neither he nor his father were there at the time, said one witness. Reports varied on casualties in yesterday's attack. The intelligence official, citing informers, said 12 people died - three suspected foreign militants, two local men, four women and three children. Nato tightens rules of engagement to limit further civilian casualties in Afghanistan
· Video footage shows bodies of children
guardian.co.uk, UK Nato has issued new military rules of engagement in Afghanistan in an attempt to limit civilian deaths, after the air strike last month which reportedly killed 90 people, including 60 children, it emerged yesterday. The orders were issued by General David McKiernan, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, who also asked the US central command to reopen an inquiry into the air strike in the western district of Shindand, as video footage surfaced showing the bodies of child victims. US drone air strikes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are meanwhile reported to have hit a house and madrasa linked to a Taliban commander, Jalaluddin Haqqani. Taliban officials claimed Haqqani was not there at the time of the attack and that 20 people had been killed in the attacks. The rules of engagement for Nato troops will focus on house searches, saying they should be led by Afghan forces, and that permission from homeowners should first be sought. A limit on the size and weight of bombs used in air strikes was imposed last year, but there is continuing anxiety in Nato about the counterproductive impact of civilian casualties on the majority Pashtun population. The new directives seek to "sharpen tactical directives, to give more clarity to commanders on the ground", one official said. It was an attempt "to re-educate commanders, to re-emphasise how careful everyone should be" in carrying out air strikes and air support for ground troops. "Killing civilians is not the best way to attract hearts and minds," one European official noted sarcastically yesterday. But western officials also say that troops on the ground have to rely on air support because they often find themselves outnumbered. A report by the independent New York-based group Human Rights Watch said yesterday that civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and Nato air strikes nearly tripled in the past year and recent bombings have led to more killings, fuelling a public backlash. It said that despite earlier changes in the rules of engagement which had reduced the rate of civilian casualties since they peaked in July last year, continuing air strikes had greatly undermined local support for the efforts of international forces in the country. There is general alarm in Washington and London about the worsening security situation, particularly along the principal roads across the country. Route 1 from Kabul to Kandahar has become far more dangerous over the past few months, particularly for Afghan government employees. There is also trepidation over the expected withdrawal from combat of Dutch and Canadian forces in the next 18 months. Western officials say that the counter-insurgency effort against the Taliban should be strengthened by the unification of the Nato and US missions in Afghanistan under the single command of McKiernan, which is due to be confirmed by Congress later this month. Officials and diplomats in Kabul will also be carefully watching the presidential election in the US. John McCain, the Republican candidate, has said he would send three extra US brigades to Afghanistan, while the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, has said he would send two. US forces have already reinforced their headquarters in southern Afghanistan, and are expected to send an expert on counterinsurgency, Brigadier General John Nicholson, in the next few weeks. British officials are also upbeat about the role of the governor of the southern province of Helmand, Gulab Mangal, a former communist commissar in the Afghan army, whom British officers praise for being businesslike and efficient. However, there is deepening concern in western capitals about the weakening position of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who has been unable to project his authority much beyond Kabul, and has been criticised for failing to deal with ministers accused of corruption and incompetence. He faces elections next August, and he is being urged by London and Washington to take his campaign outside the capital and into the countryside, to persuade ordinary Afghans he is working for their benefit. British officials believe they have stabilised the opium cultivation in Helmand province, questioning UN figures suggesting it has increased over the past year. They have clashed in the past with American officials who have called for aerial spraying. British officers in Afghanistan believe the opium problem will only be solved by long term economic development, which in turn requires greater security. Facing Drug Trial, Afghan Says He Aided U.S.
The New York Times - National In May 2005, about a month after coming to New York and then being arrested on federal narcotics charges, an Afghan tribal leader, Haji Bashir Noorzai, sat down with United States prosecutors and offered some critical information. Mr. Noorzai, whom President Bush had designated one of the world's most wanted drug kingpins, said he knew a lot about a man the American authorities had been seeking for years: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the one-eyed cleric and reclusive leader of the Taliban who has been in hiding since the 2001 terror attacks. "He changes locations on a daily basis to avoid capture," a federal summary of Mr. Noorzai's comments quoted him as saying. Mr. Noorzai added that Mr. Omar traveled with a small entourage of four or five people to avoid detection, and that he used an intermediary, a bodyguard, to carry letters and taped messages to the Taliban. Mr. Noorzai described the bodyguard and the pharmacist who supplied the bodyguard's seizure medication, and said the bodyguard even had a phone number for the elusive Mr. Omar. Mr. Noorzai apparently wanted to trade his information to avoid prosecution. The government has not said what it did with Mr. Noorzai's information, or how accurate or valuable it was. But as far as anyone knows, Mr. Omar is still a free man, and Mr. Noorzai goes on trial Tuesday morning in Manhattan, charged with conspiring to import tens of millions of dollars worth of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan into New York and elsewhere in the United States and other countries. If convicted, he could face up to life in prison, prosecutors say. The trial in Federal District Court has been widely anticipated because it may offer a window into the shadowy Afghan opium industry, where skyrocketing production and corrupt Afghan officials have turned the country into a kind of narco-state, American officials say. But the case has also raised questions about the murky tactics that were used to lure Mr. Noorzai into captivity. The defense has argued in court papers that the government relied on private contractors who bribed foreign officials to gain access to Mr. Noorzai, and then promised Mr. Noorzai that he would not be arrested if he agreed to meet with American officials and provide information about terrorism financing. The court has ruled that even if such tactics occurred, they did not invalidate the charges and could not be used as a defense during the trial. But the details of the operation, as laid out in court papers, show a side of the government's counterterrorism effort that is not often revealed publicly. The indictment says that from 1990 to 2004, Mr. Noorzai led an international heroin trafficking group in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also provided weapons and manpower to the Taliban, the indictment says. In exchange, the indictment says, the Taliban provided him with protection for his opium crops, heroin laboratories and drug-transportation routes. At the time of his arrest, Karen Tandy, then chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the operation had "removed one of the world's top drug traffickers," and someone, she added, who "for too long, devastated the country of Afghanistan." Ivan S. Fisher, Mr. Noorzai's defense lawyer, has painted a different picture of his client, who has pleaded not guilty and has been held for more than three years pending trial. In papers filed by the defense, Mr. Noorzai repeatedly denies that he was involved in the drug business. He also says that a claim by a D.E.A. agent that he admitted to such a role during a discussion are wrong, and he blamed a faulty translation by the interpreter. Federal prosecutors declined to respond to questions about the defense allegations. Mr. Noorzai, who is in his 40s, was the chief of the Noorzai tribe, which has more than a million members and extends throughout southern and western Afghanistan and into the Baluchistan province of Pakistan, court documents filed by the defense show. Mr. Fisher wrote that Mr. Noorzai was an ardent supporter of the United States-supported government in Afghanistan, and cooperated with American military and intelligence agencies in the years before and after the 2001 terror attacks. Mr. Noorzai, in his own affidavit, said that in 1982 he began to lead a small force that grew to 1,000 mujahedeen fighters in the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. In 1990, he said, he used his network of tribal contacts to help the C.I.A. recover Stinger missiles that the United States had provided to the Afghan rebels. He eventually turned over about 12 missiles, he said. After 9/11, Mr. Noorzai said, he was detained by the United States military at Kandahar airport, where he talked with the Americans about the Taliban's military and political structure and its financial sources. After his release, he said, he and his tribe collected more than 3,000 Taliban weapons, loaded them onto 15 trucks and turned them over to American officials. "We did not ask for and did not receive any payment," Mr. Noorzai wrote. He said he continued to work with American military commanders, who wanted to capture Taliban leaders. He said that after he persuaded one former Taliban official to meet with the Americans, the man "then disappeared into one of their confinement centers for two years." After he persuaded another tribal leader, who was hiding in Pakistan, to return home to Kandahar, he said, American forces attacked the man's home and killed him. Afraid for his own safety, Mr. Noorzai went into hiding, he said. In August 2004, Mr. Noorzai agreed to travel to Dubai, where he met with the two contractors, who are identified only as Mike and Brian in court papers filed by the defense. The two men had worked in the Defense Department and the F.B.I. respectively, the papers say, and were associated with a firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting. Rosetta's goal, the defense papers say, was to collect important information about terrorist activities worldwide, and to sell that information, along with providing security services, to governments and private entities, like banks, airlines and security firms. The court documents say the firm had "developed relationships" with high-level F.B.I. and Defense Department officials, including Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. The firm developed a list of names, which became known as the "the Kill" or "Key Informant List," according to the defense papers. Mr. Noorzai's name was on that list, the papers say. In that first meeting in Dubai, the documents assert, Mike told Mr. Noorzai that "the project had nothing to do with arresting anyone or apprehending anyone." In September 2004, the papers say, Mr. Noorzai met again with Mike and Brian, in Pakistan, where they asked him about various Taliban commanders and Afghan officials. They also discussed their project to study and impede the flow of money to the Taliban resistance and al Qaeda, and sought Mr. Noorzai's help, the documents contend. Mr. Noorzai again asked whether he was being set up. Mike and Brian assured him that he would be "allowed to come to the United States, meet with important government officials, and then return to Pakistan," the documents say. About six months later, the Drug Enforcement Administration began working with Mike and Brian as confidential sources in connection with what officials say was the investigation into Mr. Noorzai's drug trafficking organization, documents show. In April 2005, Mr. Noorzai came to New York, where he met with D.E.A. agents in the Embassy Suites Hotel for 11 days. On April 23, he was arrested. Pakistan: The War Party's New Frontier
The more things change "What a world! What a world!" That's what the Wicked Witch of the West exclaimed as she melted in one of the final scenes of The Wizard of Oz, and today her plaintive cry seems the only possible reaction to the headlines reporting trouble every which way: Pakistan about to explode, the Taliban retaking Afghanistan, Iran spreading its influence deep into "liberated" Iraq, and a new cold war brewing in the steppes of the Caucasus. From Eastern Europe to the Far Eastern reaches of Central Asia, a storm is gathering. Whoever is president in 2009 is going to be facing some of the most dangerous crises since the Great War, when a single shot fired in Sarajevo sparked a global conflagration, giving rise to two world wars and the bloodiest century in the history of mankind. The most serious eruption in this world of trouble at the moment is the crisis in Pakistan, where the corrupt Pakistan Peoples Party of the late Benazir Bhutto has taken power in the latest elections and governs in a very shaky coalition that is already threatening to rip apart. New President Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of the assassinated Bhutto, is known as "Mr. Ten Percent" on account of his reputation for corruption. He is being actively undermined by the Muslim opposition parties, and he enjoys very thin support throughout the country. Worse yet, his ascension to the presidency coincides with an upsurge in violence emanating from the Taliban, the tribal areas, and indigenous Muslim fundamentalist groups. The whole country looks about to burst apart at the seams, with U.S. policymakers no doubt already nostalgic for Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani strongman forced to step down because of his notable lack of "democratic" credentials. As to whether Pakistan needs more democracy instead of more generals like old Mushie - who never hesitated to crack down when the cracking was called for - hardly seems debatable. The only question is whether or not the country can survive the next few months in one piece. That is a vitally important question, as far as our national security is concerned, because of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Musharraf, America's best friend in the region, once stood guard at the gates of the nation's nukes, but no more. Now the avaricious Zardari, weak and corrupt, is all that stands between Osama bin Laden's friends in the region and a considerable arsenal of nuclear weapons. At this point, U.S. officials should be singing the chorus loud and clear: "Oh Mushie, won't you please come home!" It's too late for that, of course, although if I were Mushie, I'd answer with a song of my own: "Who's Sorry Now?" There was a lot of pressure from the U.S. - particularly from the Democrats in Congress, such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden - to force Mushie out and to bring "democracy" to the country. Now the crisis created by U.S. interference needs to be "solved" by even more forceful intervention, and it somehow comes as no surprise that Pakistan is the preferred battlefield of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who once proposed invading the country and now gleefully points to cross-border raids into the tribal areas by U.S. forces as evidence that he was right all along. Yet precedents set by the Bush administration hardly constitute evidence of rationality and deep thinking. These are, after all, the same people who led us to disaster in Iraq. Who's to say their policies - continued and expanded on by an Obama administration - won't do the same in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Indeed, that is precisely where we are headed. The idea that the U.S. can invade and occupy Pakistan and Afghanistan just as it has invaded and occupied Iraq - albeit this time successfully - is perhaps the single most dangerous concept prevalent among partisan Democratic policy wonks and the politicians who heed their advice. Large-scale military action in Pakistan and a stepped-up war across the border in the Afghan south would dwarf our earlier error by several orders of magnitude. The Pashtun people, who make up the great majority of anti-Western opposition forces in Pakistan's tribal areas and Afghanistan, have successfully resisted waves of invaders stretching back to ancient times. More recently, they defeated the British and the Russians, who sought to impose forms of colonial rule, and the list of the vanquished goes back to the time of Alexander. It is not for nothing that Afghanistan has been called "the boneyard of empires." If this history is too ancient to be considered relevant in our day and age, then one has to wonder: Have the Americans learned nothing from their Iraqi adventure? Much is made of the Taliban's incursions into Pakistan, but this is nothing new. Tribal fighters have been crossing what is called the "Durand line" - established by British colonial authorities as the official border between Afghanistan and what was then British India - ever since it was demarcated by the British foreign secretary, Sir Mortimer Durand, in 1893. That Pashtuns live on both sides of this divide is a fact that has bedeviled the authorities in Pakistan since 1947, when the Afghan loya jirga declared the Durand line invalid. This region, like much of the rest of the world, is cursed with the legacy of colonial borders imposed by foreigners and fiercely resented. These lines on a map are the cause of most of the wars occurring in the latter half of the 20th century. The Durand line has no legitimacy, and it is fading along with the memory of the imperial power that gave it force. There is no way that the Pashtuns, a majority in Afghanistan and the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan, are going to respect this crumbling remnant of Britain's imperial heyday. Many of the same people who excoriate Bush's decision to invade Iraq are champing at the bit to launch a U.S. invasion of Pakistan, most of them partisan Democrats who support the ostensibly antiwar Barack Obama. They argue that this is the war we ought to have been fighting all along: Iraq was a diversion from fighting those who actually attacked us on 9/11, namely, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization, who were last seen enjoying the hospitality of the Taliban. Yet the Taliban is not al-Qaeda. The Taliban movement grew up as a reaction to the warlordism and lawlessness that plagued the country after the Soviets withdrew. The power vacuum was filled by characters who by no stretch of the imagination qualified for the title of "freedom fighter," as their American sponsors described them during the Cold War years. The Taliban started as a movement among religious students who grew up in the refugee camps in Pakistan. In the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal and the rise of bandit gangs as the only "law" in the land, the Taliban - students educated in the madrassas of Pakistan, imbued with the strictures of a fanatical devotion to Sharia law - held out the promise of stability. The first Taliban revolt and attempt to seize power was sparked by the taking of a young boy by a local warlord, to serve as the warlord's male concubine. Homosexuality is rampant in the region because of the unavailability of women, who live lives of seclusion strictly enforced by their male relatives. As long as it's kept quiet, it is allowed to flourish. However, this open display of impiety was too much for the deeply conservative rural population of Kandahar, and so, in 1994, the Taliban rose up, overthrew the warlord, and sparked a prairie fire that eventually enveloped the capital city of Kabul. As the only organized alternative to warlords gone wild, the Taliban gained the one thing essential to all governments, everywhere, whether democratic or despotic, and that is legitimacy. Al-Qaeda had nothing to do with the coming of the Taliban to power. Bin Laden latched on to them in his search for refuge, which had taken him out of Sudan and into the wilds of Afghanistan - the leader of a small group of fringe fanatics who had no support in the Muslim world and no base anywhere other than the cave they chose to hide in. Bin Laden gained enormous stature only in the wake of 9/11, and this is not, I contend, because he planned these terrorist acts, but because he got away with it - in spite of, or, perhaps, because of the massive and hurried U.S. invasion. The inspirer of the 9/11 terrorist attacks escaped under cover of the very war unleashed to destroy him, and he survives to this day, camouflaged by the chaos unleashed by our lumbering, thoughtless aggression. Impelled by politics rather than a real desire to capture bin Laden and his followers, the U.S. government launched a showy act of "retribution." It had to be immediate, it had to be massive - and, by its very nature, it had to fail. Lost in the fog of war, bin Laden and his cohorts slipped out of the dragnet and into the popular imagination of Muslims worldwide as a heroic figure. Consider an alternate history in which the U.S. authorities - instead of being driven by internal political considerations and the emotions of the moment - had refrained from launching an all-out attack, and instead, keeping bin Laden in their sights, had prepared a precision strike that would have cut off the head of the snake. We are reduced, today, to slashing at the monster's tail. Our insoluble problem is that each time we cut it off, it grows another in no time at all. The irony and paradox of our eternal "war on terrorism" - whether waged by Republicans or Democrats - is that it is a great gift to bin Laden and his burgeoning legion of imitators worldwide. As in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when our planes were used as weapons against us, al-Qaeda and its allies use our technological and military prowess against us. The very fighter jets that sow destruction in the hinterlands of Pakistan will reap a bumper crop of little Osamas - now one of the most popular names parents give to their male children across a wide swath of Pashtunistan and throughout the Muslim world. Pakistan looks to be the War Party's new frontier. Now there's a phrase we haven't heard for a while, until very recently. It was first utilized by the administration of John F. Kennedy to prettify his program of statism at home and war abroad. Obama is often likened to Kennedy, in his youthful attractiveness and promise of "change" - but I'm afraid that, in the realm of foreign policy, there will be no new frontiers for the Obama administration, only old ones that have long since been explored and mapped. Which only goes to show, once again, the veracity of that old truism: the more things change, the more they remain the same. Taliban leader is targeted in Pakistan
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN U.S. forces made an apparently unsuccessful attempt Monday to assassinate a Taliban commander who sometimes shelters in Pakistan's tribal areas, witnesses and military officials said. Missiles from a suspected U.S. drone aircraft struck a compound in North Waziristan, just across the border from Afghanistan, killing at least nine people, the reports said. The targeted village, Dande Darba Khel, contains a compound associated with the Haqqani clan, which has been blamed for a number of attacks in Afghanistan. Neither Jalaluddin Haqqani nor his son, Sirajuddin, who has largely taken over the father's command role in the Taliban movement, were present, villagers said. Other relatives, including one of Jalaluddin Haqqani's wives, were killed, they said. At least three militants also were reported killed. The U.S. military would neither confirm nor deny the reports. AL-QAIDA ASSAILS IRAN IN 9/11 MESSAGE Al-Qaida marked the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks with a video message. In excerpts, aired on the Arab news channel Al-Jazeera, Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, accused Iran of "cooperating with the Americans" by recognizing the "hireling" governments of Iraq and Afghanistan. AFGHAN CIVILIAN TOLL IS UP, REPORT SAYS Civilian deaths caused by U.S. and NATO airstrikes in Afghanistan nearly tripled last year from 2006 -- 321 compared with 116 -- fueling a public backlash, a report by Human Rights Watch said. NEWS SERVICES Afghan President Karzai starts visit to UAE
People's Daily - World President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai arrived Monday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), starting a multi-day visit to the Gulf country, the official Emirates News Agency reported. Karzai was received at the Abu Dhabi Airport by UAE Justice Minister Had ef Bin Jou'an Al-Dhaheri and a number of senior officials, according to the report. During his stay in the UAE, Karzai will hold talks with his UAE counterpart Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and other top UAE officials. Source:Xinhua Seven years on, Afghanistan again 'war on terror' frontline
Yahoo News - Business Seven years after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, Afghanistan is again the frontline of the US-led "war on terror" with extremist unrest intensifying and a new focus on Pakistan's tribal areas. Less than two months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States and its allies had ousted the Taliban regime which had refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. But today bin Laden is still on the run, the Taliban have regrouped -- notably in the south and in border tribal areas of Pakistan -- while the government in Kabul struggles to assert its authority. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is among those who say the United States was distracted by its venture into Iraq and did not finish up in Afghanistan. "One of the biggest mistakes we've made strategically after 9/11 was to fail to finish the job here, focus our attention here," Obama said recently. "We cannot win a war against the terrorists if we are on the wrong battlefield," hesaid, calling, as does his Republican rival John McCain, for more US reinforcements for international forces in Afghanistan. The rise of violence in Afghanistan and relative calming of Iraq have opened the way for such reinforcements, and the Pentagon has already spoken of a first deployment of 4,500 soldiers by the end of the year. A US commander in Afghanistan, General Jeffrey Schloesser last week called for extra soldiers, warning of a possible "winter offensive" by the Taliban and said the militants were preparing "spectacular attacks". Admiral Michael Mullen, the most senior US military officer, also warned last month of the growth of the Taliban and attacks that would get "more and more sophisticated", as seen with recent ambushes on foreign soldiers. "We saw that just this month (August) near Kabul, where French troops were attacked, and we saw it last month in the Wanat Valley, where nine of our own troops were killed," he told reporters. "The safe havens in the border regions provide launching pads for these sorts of attacks, and they need to be shut down," he said, referring to militant sanctuaries along the border in neighbouring Pakistan. US forces have increasingly turned their focus on the lawless frontier belt, stepping up missile strikes and this month helicopters even dropped ground troops into a village, angering Pakistan. In Afghanistan, which has a long history of resistance to outsiders, international forces are making steady progress but "victory is slow," Schloesser acknowledged. US allies are meanwhile concerned about their own growing casualties, and the difficulty of winning "hearts and minds" as Afghans grow weary of reports of civilians killed in error by military air strikes. An Afghan investigation found that one such strike late August in the west of the country killed more than 90 civilians. The US military has said only five to seven civilians were killed along with 30-35 Taliban, but agreed Sunday to reopen an inquiry. Human Rights Watch said in a report released Monday that the number of Afghan civilians killed by air strikes had tripled between 2006 and 2007, from 116 to 321. And nearly 200 were killed by foreign troops, including during air strikes, in the first seven months of this year, it said. The killings are alienating locals and helping the Taliban to recruit, said the watchdog's Asian director Brad Adams. They are also fodder for Taliban propaganda aimed at eroding support for the government and its allies. "The enemy routinely exaggerates the number of civilian casualties as propaganda, just pure and simple," said Schloesser. "They use lies and deceit They seek to wear away our partnership with the international community, with NATO and with the Afghan people." But the security situation is not the only problem facing Afghanistan seven years after the ouster of the Taliban. Presidential elections in 2004 and a parliament set up in 2005 have not succeeded in uniting the country, which is smaller than Texas but divided among several ethnic groups and tribes. Corruption fed by drug trafficking -- Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium -- is rampant, and aid promised by the international community has not always been been delivered. According to a report by the British charity Oxfam, for every 100 dollars the international community spends on maintaining the military in Afghanistan, it spends only seven on aid. Pakistan threatens to retaliate against US
Press TV (Iran) A spokesman for Pakistan's army, Major Murad Khan, has slammed Washington for killing Pakistani civilians, warning of retaliatory action. "Border violations by US-led forces in Afghanistan, which have killed scores of Pakistani civilians, would no longer be tolerated, and we have informed them that we reserve the right to self defense and that we will retaliate if the US continues cross-border attacks," Khan said in an exclusive interview with Press TV. His warning came after US forces launched cross-border attacks in tribal areas in Pakistan's North Waziristan, killing at least 20 civilians and wounding 25 others on Monday. In recent months, there has been an increase in missile strikes on what the US claims are militants in Pakistan's tribal areas. US strikes on Pakistani territory have killed scores of civilians this year and have sparked national outrage. The US accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to contain militancy in its tribal zone. Washington claims that Pakistan's policy of holding reconciliation talks with tribal leaders has led to an increase in the number of militants crossing into Afghanistan to attack American soldiers. But Khan maintains that "Pakistan is capable of fighting tribal militants without foreign help." Afghanistan toll will mount unless new strategy is found
TheChronicleHerald.ca, Canada THE TALIBAN attack in Kandahar last Wednesday that killed three Canadian soldiers and wounded another five is a shocking example of how brazen the insurgents have become in southern Afghanistan. This attack was not just another roadside bomb but rather a bold ambush by as many as 40 Taliban fighters. It is also believed that the insurgents used a powerful anti-tank weapon, possibly an 82-millimetre recoilless rifle, to penetrate the Canadian light armoured vehicle. Since the fall of 2006, after the Taliban suffered enormous casualties during NATO's Operation Medusa, the insurgents have been capable of mounting only pinprick attacks using suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices. Although such tactics continue to kill our soldiers, NATO commanders insisted that the Taliban's fighting capability had been greatly diminished. The latest fatalities, including the death of an infantryman in Panjwaii district on Sunday, bring the Canadian death toll in Afghanistan to 97 soldiers and one diplomat, with at least 750 injured. As we approach the seventh anniversary of the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan, even the most wilfully blind can no longer deny that the security situation is spiralling out of control. Large-scale terrorist attacks have rocked Kabul several times this year, and 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush just outside the Afghan capital last month. In July, a battalion-sized force of insurgents practically overran an American outpost in southern Afghanistan. That bloody battle left nine U.S. soldiers dead and 15 wounded. The most disappointing factor for Canadians is that our troops continue to fight for control of the same territory. After 30 months of Canadian deployment in Kandahar and numerous offensives and counteroffensives, obscure villages like Panjwaii, Arghandab, Zhari and Spin Boldak have become household names in Canada as they are repeatedly heard in newscasts pertaining to the deaths of our soldiers. This failure to pacify the Afghan resistance in no way reflects on the skill or courage of our soldiers. All the other contingents in the NATO coalition consider the Canadians an elite force, and our disproportionate casualty count speaks for itself in terms of our soldiers' willingness to take risks in pursuit of the mission's objectives. Our allies envy the experience of our senior officers and the counter-insurgency training centre that has been established at CFB Wainwright in Alberta. It needs to be remembered that Canada is just one of 37 countries contributing troops to the Afghan mission, and our officers are not responsible for waging the overall war. Canadian troops are instead managing security in just one small sector of Kandahar province. Regardless of our soldiers' localized tactical successes, Canada has very little influence in the strategic decisions that determine the course of the overall mission. For instance, the Taliban's use of the tribal regions across the Pakistani border as a safe staging area has often been cited as a major cause of the continued unrest. Despite a lot of political posturing on the part of the U.S. and NATO officials, it is clear that the current coalition-of-the-reluctant that is treading water in Afghanistan is hardly likely to start widening the conflict, especially into nuclear-armed neighbouring Pakistan. Likewise, the U.S. insistence on eradicating the poppy crops without compensating the impoverished farmers simply creates a desperate and disgruntled pool of potential recruits for the Taliban insurgency. Anxious to feed their families, many of those fighting for the Taliban are motivated by the lure of US $100 bills rather than the teachings of religious extremism. Errant strikes such as the U.S. air force attack in Herat on Aug. 22 that killed 90 Afghans, including 60 children, and a callous disregard for such collateral damage by other coalition contingents and even private security forces, serve only to inflame the Afghans' hatred for all foreign soldiers, regardless of their nationality. The Canadian battle group may be capable of maintaining tactical superiority over the Taliban in Kandahar. But unless there is a dramatic shift in strategic direction, the battle for Afghan hearts and minds will be lost, the wider war will remain unwinnable and the casualties will continue to climb. ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) Stop fighting the Taliban 'on their own terms'
National Post - Today's Paper Re: Commander Killed Week Before Due Home, Sept. 8. Yesterday Canadians were confronted with the loss of another of our brave countrymen in the chaos of Afghanistan. Beyond my deep sadness, however, is a growing concern that our military leadership has been too slow to adjust to the tactics of the enemy. As this article points out, almost half the deaths of our soldiers have been caused by roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). While some progress has been made in countering these weapons, their recent success at killing our soldiers shows that we are fighting the Taliban on their own terms and in places of their choosing. This is a classic guerilla campaign in an unsecured environment. So I am disturbed to read the comments from commanders about IED attacks occurring on routine "security" patrols. A security patrol is a visible display of force that is meant to maintain order in a secured environment. Except for formal reconnaissance patrols and fighting patrols for which infantry forces are well trained, other forms of patrolling unsecured territory are ineffective and provide nothing more than easy targets. Also, deploying troops as an "aid to civil power" should only be done when there is a "civil power" to assist. It is a fundamental waste of military skills and assets to try this given the present state in Afghanistan. Our tactics have to change, even if that change is politically sensitive. Our soldiers should not be paying the price. Captain Peter Lambros (ret), Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, Thornhill, Ont. Video of Al Qaeda's No. 2 denounces Iran Ayman Zawahiri criticizes Shiite-led Iran for its ties with the U.S.-supported governments of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Los Angeles Times, CA Al Qaeda released a video Monday accusing Iran of collaborating with the United States. Ayman Zawahiri, the terrorist network's second in command, claimed that Tehran was "cooperating with the Americans in occupying Iraq and Afghanistan," and denounced Iran for recognizing the two governments. Al Qaeda, a militant Sunni Muslim network, often criticizes predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran, which has good ties with Afghanistan's anti-Taliban leaders and Iraq's Shiite-led government. "Not even one Shiite authority -- whether in Iraq or elsewhere -- has issued a fatwa [religious edict] obligating jihad and taking up of arms against the American crusader invaders in Iraq and Afghanistan," Zawahiri said. Short excerpts of the message were aired on the Arabic satellite news channel Al Jazeera. Zawahiri has been increasingly singling out Iran and Shiites in his messages, most recently in April, describing the "Persians" as the enemy of Arabs and complicit in the occupation of Iraq. Monday's video, released a few days before the Sept. 11 anniversary, featured clips of Al Qaeda operations in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, Al Jazeera said. The pan-Arab network did not disclose how it obtained the recording. By late Monday, the video had not surfaced on militant websites commonly used as clearinghouses for terrorist networks' messages. AUSTRALIA: Winning 'Hearts and Minds' in Afghanistan?
Inter Press Service News Agency Responses by defence officials in the wake of a recent inquiry into claims that Australian soldiers mistreated detainees in Afghanistan undermine efforts to win the battle for hearts and minds in that war-ravaged country. "Our people were patrolling far away from our main base in Tarin Kowt. It's regrettable that there are some cultural sensitivities here, but we are at war in Afghanistan, and we are at war with people who will stop at nothing to reimpose a regime in which human rights don't exist whatsoever," said Australia's minister for defence, Joel Fitzgibbon, in a response to the uproar that has ensued following the public release of the inquiry's report. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) conducted the inquiry into the treatment of Afghan nationals detained by Australian forces in April after allegations of mistreatment were made by Afghan National Army (ANA) members. Australia is one of the 14 non-NATO contributors of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to Afghanistan. This latest inquiry follows the report of an investigation in May which cleared Australian soldiers of the mistreatment of civilians in Nov. 2007. Following a firefight to "clear" a compound in Oruzgan province on Apr.29 this year, four men -- suspected Taliban fighters -- were taken prisoner and "held in walled pens during the night and guarded by FE [force element] soldiers" at a forward operating base, according to the ADF's inquiry officer, Colonel D.K. Connery. The allegations included that Australians pushed one of the four detainees -- who included a man of 70 years of age and another whose left leg had been amputated below the knee -- against a wall "two or three times" and beat him with a stick. ANA soldiers also alleged that "the detainees were stripped naked, beaten and mistreated." However, Connery stated that the inquiry -- which was finalised in June but only released outside official corridors in late August -- did not find "credible evidence to support any of the allegations of abuse of LN [local national] detainees." Instead, the inquiry officer suggested that the ANA soldiers "objected to ‘infidels' handling Muslims and did not believe that an old man and a cripple could be Taliban." "A strong cultural sense of ‘appropriateness' underpins the initial allegations," wrote Connery. He also declared that the Afghans may have been further angered by the Australians holding the prisoners in pens "which had previously been used for dogs." This has outraged members of Australia's Muslim community. Dogs are considered unclean in Islam. Ikebal Patel, president of the Australian Association of Islamic Councils, has been vocal in slamming the use of dog pens as holding cells. Patel was "appalled" to learn of the use of such pens following the release of the inquiry's report. A spokesman for the Islamic High Council of Australia, Mohamed Mehio, also condemned the practise. He called it a "matter of human rights", declaring that dog pens were not suitable either for Muslims or non-Muslims. Such criticism has not been restricted to non-governmental groups. Afghanistan's ambassador to Australia, Amanullah Jayhoon, has also expressed concern at the treatment of the detainees. But Fitzgibbon continues to defend the actions of the Australian personnel, arguing that the treatment did not breach the Geneva Conventions. The defence minister has even appeared to contradict the inquiry -- in an apparent attempt to diffuse the situation -- by claiming on Sept.3 that "the holding facilities were never used as dog kennels." This is despite an ADF spokesman having earlier endorsed the inquiry's assertion that dogs had previously been housed in the pens. But what Fitzgibbon and others -- the Australian public has largely supported the soldiers' actions, while the head of the ADF, Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, said in May that he believed that the claims of mistreatment were false -- seem to be oblivious to is that Australia is a foreign force in Afghanistan. Practices which may be acceptable here are not necessarily seen in the same light in the country where Australian personnel are essentially part of an occupying force. Any perception of mistreatment by local Afghans is self-confirming. It is mistreatment whether or not Australian and other foreign forces think otherwise. The inquiry's report also comes at a time of heightened tensions between the Afghan government and ISAF as the country experiences its bloodiest period since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The Hamid Karzai regime has accused foreign forces of killing more than 500 civilians in Afghanistan this year. In some of the latest instances, demonstrators in the Afghan capital, Kabul, blocked roads in late August as they protested the killing by foreign troops of a local family of four, including two children. Four other children were killed in an ISAF artillery attack in Paktika which also wounded seven civilians. These incidents follow reports of large numbers of civilian deaths in an air raid in Herat. The Karzai government has said dozens of civilians were killed and the United Nations believes around 90, including 60 children, died. The United States, meanwhile, insists that five civilians were killed. Clearly, ISAF is facing an uphill struggle if it hopes to win the "battle for the hearts and minds" of the Afghans. It is positions such as the one taken by Fitzgibbon that also undermine any attempts at making headway in this battle. Cultural differences must be taken into account when undertaking the type of guerrilla-style warfare currently being played out in Afghanistan. The minister's response also indicates that lessons have not been learned from earlier cases, such as the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and the burning of two Taliban corpses by United States troops in Afghanistan in 2005. Without clear frontlines, success in winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the local populace will be a major determinant in ISAF's overall ability to confirm the western-backed regime in Kabul as Afghanistan's legitimate government. Obama: Kill terrorists, but give prisoners rights
The Associated Press Barack Obama poked some fun at his Arabic-derived first name to explain the need for the constitutional right of prisoners to appeal their detention. He said U.S. authorities sometimes mistakenly arrest the wrong person, confusing "Muhammad the terrorist" with "Muhammad the cab driver" or "Barack the bomb-thrower" with "Barack, the guy running for president." It happened Monday night before a boisterously friendly crowd in a high school gym in this affluent northwestern Detroit suburb, in answer to a woman's rambling question about civil liberties. "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty," the woman declaimed. "I want our freedom back." "There should be no conflict between keeping America safe and secure and respecting our Constitution," Obama replied. He said some critics accused him of being "less interested in protecting you from terrorists than reading them their rights." "First of all, you don't even get to read them their rights until you catch 'em," Obama said to a roar of applause. "They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden, and we should worry about the next steps later." Obama said his position has "always been clear: If you've got a terrorist, take 'em out, take 'em out. Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take 'em out." The U.S. would have made more progress in hunting down bin Laden's al-Qaida forces in Afghanistan if the Bush administration hadn't become "distracted" by the war in Iraq, Obama said. As a result, al-Qaida now is "stronger than at any time since 2001" in Afghanistan and neighboring parts of Pakistan, he said. But Obama went on to criticize the Bush administration's suspension of the right of habeas corpus for suspected terrorists. "Habeas corpus ... is the foundation of Anglo-American law, which says very simply, if the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, `Why was I grabbed?' and say, `Maybe, you've got the wrong person.' "The reason we have that safeguard is we don't always have the right person. We don't always catch the right person. "We may think this is Muhammad the terrorist. It might be Muhammad the cab driver. You may think it's Barack the bomb-thrower. But it might be Barack, the guy running for president." How the OLPC can help beat Taliban in Afghanistan Technology is playing a growing part in rebuilding Afghanistan, says the Minister of Communications and Information Technology.
Computerworld In one of the final scenes of the movie, "Charlie Wilson's War," the story of America's part in Afghanistan's victory over the Soviet Union, Congressman Wilson is shown asking for more funding to rebuild Afghanistan, a request that is denied. The message was clear: extremists gained a foothold in Afghanistan after the war because nobody else was willing to step in and rebuild the government, schools and other institutions. Instead, civil war broke out, and fighting continues today despite rebuilding efforts. Still, technology is playing a growing part in rebuilding Afghanistan, said Amirzai Sangin, [CQ] Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Afghanistan. Mobile phones, for one, have become popular in the nation. Now, people can call for help in medical emergencies or to report suspicious activity. Mobile phone base stations have been targeted by the Taliban over such calls. The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) association also wants to help reshape Afghanistan. The group is working with the Afghan government, US Department of Defense and others, including Afghan mobile phone operator Roshan, to start distributing its green low-cost XO laptops to school kids in the country. Such measures are small today and difficult to carry out for a variety of reasons, but kids in Afghanistan are excited about the Internet and want to know more, says Sangin. The laptops, and other technologies, could be instrumental in keeping kids in school, and away from extremist groups. The following is an edited transcript of an interview with Sangin at the ITU Telecom Asia show in Thailand. What role can technology play in Afghanistan? If we can invest in our youth, with ICT (information and communications technology) and with a quality education, it will make a huge difference in the future of Afghanistan. I think it will help us to stop them from joining groups like the Taliban. How can it be that hundreds of people are so easily brainwashed to blow themselves up? It's because of a lack of education. A lot of our problems in Afghanistan today, why this war is going on, why so many youngsters are joining the Taliban, is because of a lack of education. These people have never gone to school, they do not have any education and they are without work. Can you imagine young people just going around with nothing useful to do? The good thing is, the young generation has a tremendous interest in ICT, for computers, for going on the Internet. What are some of the hurdles? We are getting a lot of support from other countries but after 35 years of war, what happened? Afghanistan was a less developed country before the war but the war destroyed everything we had, so from the end of the war in 2002, we're starting from zero. Many people probably cannot imagine: no roads, no education, no hospitals, no infrastructure, no schools, no defense, no army, no police, and you want to start a country and build all these sectors in parallel? The task is enormous. The task has been made more difficult because we still have terrorism living next to us. You build a road or bridge and the next day they blow up the bridge. You build a telecom tower and the next day they blow up the telecom tower. We don't have an easy job. What are the schools like today? Education is one area our government gives high priority, but you cannot ignore health care and other areas, either. Also, because of the war, many teachers have left the country, many have died, many are now old so they don't want to keep teaching. Afghanistan has 5 to 6 million school-age kids. If you want to teach 6 million people suddenly, where do you get the teachers? It takes a long time to gather the right teachers with the right background and I'm talking about teaching from a book, not ICT teaching. So it will require some training. It's not going to be a short, quick effort. It's going to be a long process. What's the plan with OLPC in Afghanistan? This is still in the talking stage. We have agreed to sign an MOU (memorandum of understanding) with them. Roshan has also said they will buy a limited number of these (XO laptops) to give to a few schools. The concept is good. The laptop is cheap and that's good, and it also requires less power so that's good for rural areas...the bottleneck for us will still be connectivity. We don't have connectivity in most areas. We also will need to solve the problem of recharging the laptops. Most of the country has no electricity. But if you really want the project to be successful, you have to have content. Content will be a problem. OLPC is just the hardware, but what will you do with it? What software will you put into it? What content will you put into it for the Afghan schoolchildren? Who will prepare the programs and other materials that will be useful for the children, especially in the local language? How do you see implementing OLPC's laptop program in the country? We will likely start on a small scale, a pilot in different areas of the country, in a rural area, in a small town, and in a big city and try it with the students. That way, we gain experience and see the results, see if the investment is worth it. In Afghanistan we have about 6 million people of school age, so if you have to pay $200 per laptop, that is a lot of money. What kind of technologies has your government promoted since taking over? Well, you see when we first started back in 2002, initially we put in place policies that would pave the way for fast telecom development. Looking at the country's situation at that time, we had almost no telecommunication infrastructure. You know, the Afghan people had to go to neighboring countries to make a phone call, the situation was as bad as that. We also knew that to build a telecom infrastructure in Afghanistan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. So the answer was to create an environment to draw private investment. We created a fair and transparent way of giving out licenses, and putting in place a regulator to regulate the telecom market. What kind of incentives did you offer? Our incentives were in the form of giving companies a large amount of spectrum, which is a problem in many countries, but in Afghanistan the spectrum is minimally utilized so you can give companies a lot of spectrum. The other support was to limit the number of licenses initially to attract strong investors. This is probably one of the key things. We introduced first two operators, saw how the market was going, and then introduced two more. The first two came in 2003 and another in 2005 and one in 2006. Fortunately it has worked well. We have strong investors. We have Afghan Wireless, which is an American-based company, and the first license holder. We have Roshan, which is the second license holder, we have Etisalat from United Arab Emirates, and Mobile Telephone Networks (MTN) from South Africa. So we have good investors. All of them have so far invested US$1.2 billion in Afghanistan. The telecom sector is actually the largest receiver of foreign investment in Afghanistan. What are your plans for the future? We are building a fiber-optic backbone in Afghanistan which is a vision for the future. We currently don't have land connectivity with the outside world, which means that any broadband connectivity becomes very expensive because you have to go through a satellite connection and with satellite, as you know, the bandwidth is limited and the cost is very high. So we are actually putting in a fiber-optic backbone which is in the form of a ring around all the major provinces of Afghanistan. This ring will be connected to our neighboring countries, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran and Pakistan. Once we have this fiber-optic backbone in place, then we can implement broadband. The demand for broadband is there, but it should not be overestimated because Afghanistan is one of the least-developed countries in the world. You don't bring broadband services to areas where people don't have electricity. What about wireless broadband such as WiMax? WiMax is definitely going to come but how widely it will be used, how successful it will be we'll have to see from its success around the world. But definitely from a technology point of view, WiMax is attractive with the large coverage area as well as with unlimited high speed broadband connectivity. But it will depend on its commercial viability. What will be the terminal pricing? how well will it be accepted globally? This is something we will have to see. Foreign minister urges broader Afghanistan battle
Radio Australia, Australia Afghanistan's foreign minister says the battle against insurgents in his country must shift to its "breeding ground" in neighbouring Pakistan. Speaking in Berlin after talks with his German counterpart, Rangin Dadfar Spanta said the geographical approach to stamping out unrest in the country needs to be broadened. He believes the ideological and military training camps for extremists active in Afghanistan, are in the mountains of Pakistan. His remarks came after at least 21 people including women and children were killed on Monday in a missile strike by suspected US drones near an Islamic seminary in a Pakistan tribal town near the Afghan border. US admits killing more Afghan civilians
Press TV (Iran) US forces in Afghanistan have admitted that a US air raid last month in Herat province killed many more civilians than originally thought. According to Afghan government and the United Nations about 90 civilians, including women and children, were killed in a combined ground operation and airstrike by US forces in the village of Azizabad on August 22. For two weeks after the deadly attack, the US insisted that only seven civilians along with up to 35 militants were killed in what it called 'a successful operation against Taliban militants in the area'. But on Sunday, the US military said it has new evidence that contradict the initial findings and that a new investigation will be launched. Presence of videos showing dozens of dead bodies and a large number of fresh graves in the village, made the US military to re-open the investigation. The Afghan government has long criticized US-led forces for conducting indiscriminate air and artillery strikes which have killed large numbers of innocent Afghans. In July, at least 47 Afghan civilians, including 39 women and children, were killed in a US air strike as they were traveling to a wedding. The bride was among the dead. At the time, US military officials in Kabul said the airstrike had hit a group of militants. Afghan President Hamed Karzai has strongly criticized foreign forces for the civilian deaths, saying innocent people are becoming the victims of "reckless operations" by foreign forces, calling for a review of foreign military presence in the country. He also warned that the anger felt by many Afghans towards foreign forces in Afghanistan may reduce support for his government. Wolesi Jirga comission drafts Taliban-style bill
Pajhwok Wolesi Jirga, or lower house of parliament, has prepared a draft law which, when approved, will ban obscene movies, female dances and high-volume music at parties. Those indulging in such acts will be awarded deterrent punishments under the draft bill titled Law against Immoral Acts. The draft has been prepared in three chapters and 20 articles by a parliamentary commission tasked with countering drugs and immoral acts. Prepared over the last five months, the proposed bill also seeks a ban on training of women artistes including dancers. If passed, the measure will outlaw several practices which have become a routine affair in the Afghan society. The draft law, copy of which has been obtained by Pajhwok Afghan News, says contents the bill -- once signed into law -- will be implemented by the Department of Vice and Virtue, echoing a Taliban-style campaign against indecency. Article 7 of the 2nd Chapter says those who drink alcohol will face Sharia law. Those watching naked and half-naked movies, importing or producing them, or providing them to the market for business, will face legal charges based on Article 25 of the punishments law. According to the proposed law, those behind professional dancing events and those coordinating such programmes will face up to a year in jail. Hotels paving the way for males and females from different families to get together will also be taken to task. By the same token, organisers of sports events involving men and women participants too will be punished. The new bill disallows wearing shorts and skintight outfits and proposes different penalties for the practices that lead to a delay in marriage, forced weddings, and giving away girls to settle disputes. As many as 10 government departments will be reporting to the commission on implementation of the law every two weeks. Fines collected from violators will be sent to the treasury. The planned law is aimed to ensure respect for Islamic values, moral standards and safeguarding society from immoral acts. Maulvi Sayed Rahman, secretary on the commission, told Pajhwok Afghan News representatives from different government organs, civil society organisations and human rights groups as well as Kabul University lecturers were consulted on the measure. Marines turn Afghan town over to British, Afghans
Associated Press U.S. Marines who took back a key town in southern Afghanistan from Taliban militants in an operation earlier this year turned over responsibility for the area to British and Afghan forces on Monday. The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit is pulling out of Garmser in the southern province of Helmand and beginning to head back to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. The unit launched the operation in the Taliban-held area in late April and killed more than 400 militants during 35 days of fighting, according to Helmand's governor. The Marines suffered three hostile deaths, two from a roadside bomb and one from gunfire. Col. Peter Petronzio, commander of the unit, said his forces had accomplished their goal. "We are not going to solve all the problems with 2,500 Marines for seven or eight months, but what we can do is eat this elephant one bite at time, and we took a big bite and we did some great things in Garmser, and for the people there it will be a lasting, lasting success," Petronzio said. The unit's original mission was to clear a road through the Taliban-occupied area so troops could travel south. But the Marines were met with such fierce Taliban resistance that commanders decided to keep them in Garmser for their entire deployment. U.S. commanders said they believed the militants defended Garmser with such intensity because it is a key transportation route for fighters, weapons and drugs. Garmser was filled with opium poppies this spring when the Marines arrived, but the forces did not touch the illegal crops. The British military is responsible for Helmand province, but its 7,500 soldiers, along with 2,500 Canadian troops in neighboring Kandahar, haven't had enough manpower to tame Afghanistan's south. The Marines' mission in the south could be a precursor to future American operations in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, two of the country's most violent regions. The Garmser operation allowed the Afghan government to move back into Garmser for the first time in years. The relative peace allowed a civic center and a medical clinic to open. "It's really starting to turn around, to show positive growth," Petronzio said. "I think it's a great success story of what a Marine unit can do, of what the coalition effort can do." Petronzio said only one Afghan civilian was killed by his forces during the nearly five months his Marines were in Garmser. Afghanistan: Taliban behind failed attack on Italian convoy
AKI - Adnkronos International The Taliban has claimed responsibility for a failed suicide attack that targeted an Italian military convoy in the western Afghan province of Herat on Sunday. A suicide bomber blew himself up in a bid to target the convoy a few kilometres from the city of Herat in the province as they were returning to their base. But jihadi forums have disputed the damage caused by the attack. In a message published on jihadi forums by Qari Muhammad Yusuf, said "at 11 a.m. a hero of the Islamic emirate, Mujahid Shir, attacked a convoy of NATO forces occupying the area of Hud Karbaz near the city of Herat". While the Italian government said no one was injured in the bomb attack, the Taliban has told its sympathisers on the web that "two of the convoy vehicles were destroyed and six soldiers on board were killed and another six were injured". The Taliban also claimed to have carried out a second suicide attack in a nearby province against the secret services of the Afghan government.
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