Photo: Afghan refugees are seen in a village in Baluchi Pass in Uruzgan province October 31, 2007. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (AFGHANISTAN)

Security Incidents on October 30, 2007

An American soldier was killed and another wounded in a firefight with the Taliban this morning near Sperwan Ghar in Kandahar province. An Afghan soldier was also slightly injured in the ensuing firefight.

An intelligence chief and three of his men were killed Tuesday by a roadside mine in eastern Afghanistan. The head of intelligence for the Qarghai district of Laghman province was killed when a newly planted mine blew up his vehicle, said Nezamuddin Nezam, spokesman for the provincial governor.

Security Incidents on October 31, 2007

Authorities in southern Afghanistan say Afghan and NATO-led forces have killed about 20 Taliban fighters during an operation near the city of Kandahar. The chief of police in Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said another 25 Taliban fighters were wounded in the fighting around two villages in Arghandab district on Monday and Tuesday. He said Afghan and foreign troops did not suffer any casualties.

Afghan, U.S. and Canadian troops have surrounded a pocket of some 250 Taliban fighters who have commandeered people's homes in villages just outside Afghanistan's major southern city, officials said Wednesday. Hundreds of Afghans _ their cars and tractors piled high with personal possessions _ were fleeing the battleground about 15 miles north of Kandahar city. The provincial police chief said the combined forces have killed some 50 Taliban in three days of fighting. Three police and one Afghan soldier have also died, Sayed Agha Saqib said.

Seven civilians and a policeman were killed in fighting in the province of Helmand.

KUNAR - U.S.-led coalition troops killed an insurgent in Kunar, eastern Afghanistan, on Tuesday, during an operation to capture those helping foreign al Qaeda fighters.

URUZGAN - U.S.-led coalition troops and Afghan forces backed by air power killed several Taliban, the U.S. military said.

GHAZNI - U.S.-led coalition forces killed some 30 Taliban insurgents, including two commanders, in an air strike in the Gilan district of Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, the district chief said. The U.S. military said "several" insurgents had been killed in a clash in the area.

FARAH - Afghan and foreign forces killed more than 50 Taliban in two days of fighting after insurgents overran the Gulistan district centre in the western province of Farah on Monday, provincial police said.

BADGHIS - During the second phase of Operation "Desert Eagle", Afghan and Western troops killed two militants, and captured 17 insurgents in the Gor Mach district of the northern province of Badghis on Wednesday, the Defence Ministry said.

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REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Taliban Fighters Move in Near Kandahar for First Time Since 2001

Several hundred Taliban fighters have moved into a strategic area just outside the southern city of Kandahar in recent days and clashed with Afghan and NATO forces, according to Canadian and Afghan officials. The fighting, which began Tuesday, is the first time large numbers of Taliban have been able to enter the area just north of the city since 2001. Control of the area, known as the Arghandab district, would allow the Taliban to directly threaten Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city. Whether the Taliban were looking to establish permanent control over the area or were simply carrying out raids was unclear on Tuesday night. But Canadian military officials said Afghan and NATO forces had begun a “large operation” to drive out the Taliban.

Taliban causing Afghan aid crisis, says UN

The UN yesterday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans before the onset of winter. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year. Most of the victims are Afghans, including doctors, mine-clearers and engineers. Some 55 aid convoys have been looted. "Such attacks are a clear violation of international humanitarian law and they must stop," Mr Koenigs told reporters in Kabul. "We need all parties to recognise that the humanitarian needs of the Afghan people must come first, above fighting and above politics." The aid crisis is a byproduct of wider insecurity. Taliban attacks have destabilised wide swaths of south and east Afghanistan, and a pocket of provinces around Kabul. Aid workers say many areas are becoming no-go zones. The conflict is "clearly spreading and in certain areas is intensifying," said Reto Stocker, head of the International Red Cross in the country. More than 5,300 people have died so far this year.

Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer. When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives. Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

Afghan Taliban commander denies Iran links

A top Taliban military commander in Afghanistan, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, has denied any links between the Taliban and Iran, according to the transcript of a video interview posted online. The video was distributed by Al-Qaeda's media arm, As-Sahab, and contains 15 minutes of video with Mansour answering questions by an unknown interviewer, said the US-based SITE group which monitors extremist websites. Asked about the relationship between the Taliban and other mujahedeen fighters, Mansour describes "reciprocity" with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Islamist resistance fighters in Iraq, saying "military strategies and methods are shared between the groups so as to hit the enemy with the strongest force." However, asked about collaboration with Iran, as is often alleged by the United States, Mansour denies any ties. "This is the claim of the Americans who are looking for something to take as a reason to defend their defeat in front of the world," he said according to the transcript released by SITE. "They tried to find a way to prove that Iran helps the Taliban, and this is false propaganda. Neither Iran nor others help us, but we have help from Allah alone and we receive help directly from the Muslims in general."

Taliban leader vows winter war spreading to north

"God willing, ... the war will continue in the winter with the same intensity as now," Mullah Mansour Dadullah said on the video posted on an Islamist Web site. "Our operations are blazing across the southern provinces, and we shall reach the northern provinces in the same manner," said Mullah Mansour in Pashto on the video, which carried Arabic subtitles. Mullah Mansour took over as commander of Taliban forces in the southern province of Helmand in May from his brother, Mullah Dadullah, who was killed in a raid by British forces. Mainly British and U.S. forces have been engaged in almost daily battles with Taliban rebels in Helmand. Mullah Mansour said the Taliban also had contact with insurgents in Iraq. "We exchange information on planning attacks against the enemy, as well as on weapons that are developed on the battlefronts," the Taliban leader told an off-camera interviewer as he sat in what appeared to be a tent.

UN: Opium surge to hit Afghan neighbors

A "tsunami" of opium will hit Afghanistan's neighbors if border security remains weak and officials fail to intercept the drug, whose profits fund terrorism, the U.N. anti-drug chief said Wednesday. Afghanistan's opium poppy harvest poses a "major threat" to global public health and to the security of neighboring countries because more than 90 percent of the profits flow to international criminal gangs and terrorist networks, said Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Since 2005, new heroin routes have emerged through Pakistan and Central Asia into China and India, he said. "If border control is not improved, Afghanistan's neighbors will be hit by a tsunami of the most deadly drug," Costa said in a statement on the opening day of an international anti-drug meeting.

AFGHANISTAN: Women workers exposed to health risks in Herat factories

The Safi fur and wool factory, in Herat city, western Afghanistan, has more than 350 female and 300 male workers who earn only 300 Afghanis (US$6) for their 48-hour, six-day week. The factory produces coats, jackets, hats and other garments for the European and North American markets. There are more than 1,500 women working in four such factories in Herat city. The air in the Safi processing plant is full of dust from dirty furs, which workers tear to pieces with their bare hands. Jamila (not hear real name) has worked in the factory for more than a year and recently experienced an unrelenting pain in her chest. "First, I was coughing and now I feel a terrible pain in my chest," the 32-year-old said. "Doctors and medicine are expensive," she said. The modes amount she earns helps to supplement the family income to help feed her four children. Less than 2m away from where Jamila is working, her baby has fallen asleep on a thin piece of straw. Jamila brings her youngest son to the factory every day, because there is nobody to look after him at home.

Afghanistan : Fighting in the south sets off new wave of displacement

Fierce fighting between NATO troops and insurgents in southern Afghanistan has sent tens of thousands of people fleeing from their homes in a new wave of displacement. Although numbers are unverified, the government said that more than 20,000 families had been displaced due to the fighting in the provinces of Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan as of November 2006. In addition to this new wave of displacement, some 132,000 people – most of them displaced since 2001-2002, remained in relief camps as of September 2006. Most are Kuchi nomads who were forced to leave their home areas due to drought, but appear to be prevented from return by a combination of factors, including protection concerns in return areas. During 2006, thousands of Pashtuns who were previously displaced from the north and west of the country after the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001 were able to return home. Although accurate figures are not available due to limited access to the south, the total number of displaced in Afghanistan is estimated at around 270,000, as of November 2006.

AFGHANISTAN: Disarmament programme extended

The government of Afghanistan has extended its programme to disband all illegal armed groups by four years, according to officials. After the completion of the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of more than 60,000 armed militias in June 2004, the government of President Hamid Karzai had vowed that the disbandment of illegal armed groups (DIAG) would be completed within three years by the end of 2007. "The government has decided to extend the mandate of the DIAG until 2011," said Masoum Stanikzai, head of the DIAG commission, adding that the project had been unable to achieve all its goals according to the previous deadline. Afghanistan's biggest project to demilitarise thousands of armed men and boost peace and development has been hampered by "intractable warlords", weak security institutions and regional "terrorist networks", Stanikzai said. "Militia leaders and warlords still try to maintain their dominance over communities through military and violent means," Stanikzai said.

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: UNHCR suspends Afghan repatriation effort

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has temporarily suspended its voluntary Afghan repatriation programme from Pakistan for the winter. "This is something we do every year before the weather turns. The programme will restart again in March next year," Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for UNHCR, said in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. The suspension takes effect on 31 October. More than 3.2 million Afghans have returned to their homeland from Pakistan since the programme first began in March 2002 - one of the largest efforts of its kind for the agency. In the first year of the programme, more than 1.5 million people returned to Afghanistan after the collapse of the Taliban regime in December 2001. Returnees receive transport assistance, as well as a small monetary grant to facilitate their return. This year, UNHCR increased the assistance package for returnees three-fold to an average of US$100 per person, including a fixed amount of $87 to help with the initial reintegration, as well as a travel grant that varies according to the distance to the final destination.

Taliban claims strategic advance

The Taliban says it has control of three-quarters of strategically valuable land near Kandahar, a city seen as the group's former stronghold. The Taliban told Al Jazeera that it had been fighting international forces, and that a major battle was under way on Wednesday. There had been 24 hours of heavy fighting. A provincial police chief said that Afghan and Nato forces had killed 50 fighters in three days of clashes. Residents of the area say the casualties are higher. …. Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a Taliban spokesman, said fighters had captured seven checkpoints around Arghandab. Al Jazeera's Hamish MacDonald in Kabul says that the Taliban claims to control three-quarters of Arghandab, a district close to Kandahar.

US Marines delay tribunal examining shooting of Afghan civilians

A Marine Corps legal tribunal called to investigate the killing of up to 19 Afghan civilians earlier this year has been delayed until early December, a spokesman said Tuesday. The court of inquiry, a rare legal mechanism last used in 1956, will examine the roles of two Marines present during the shootings. It was scheduled to begin Thursday at Camp Lejeune but was tentatively pushed back because of scheduling conflicts, said Lt. Col. Sean Gibson, a Marines spokesman at Central Command. Mark Waple, an attorney representing one of the Marines, said the defense asked for the delay so lawyers "could get through the several thousand pages of information we have to digest." As many as 19 people were killed and 50 injured in March when members of the Marine special operations company opened fire in a crowded roadway, after their convoy was rammed by a minivan full of explosives, Army officials said. The shootings occurred in Nangahar province. Witnesses said Marines fired at civilian cars and pedestrians, according to Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission, which said it did not find evidence the military unit was under fire.