News About Afghanistan

2007-12-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

This blog is now closed. I am finding that I do not have enough time to keep up with all my blogs, and this particular blog is having serious formatting problems, as you can see from the two prior posts. No matter how many times I try to fix the spacing, it still comes out the same. I have no idea why it is doing this, but I am taking it as a sign to focus on Iraq. Thanks for reading.

2007-12-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

Photo: Medieval minarets are seen in the western city of Herat, Afghanistan, June 23, 2007. (Ahmad Fahim/Reuters) Security Incidents for December 7, 2007 The air strikes by NATO-led forces killed 17 Taliban fighters in western Afghanistan on Thursday, as another in a series of bomb blasts around Kabul damaged a German aid agency vehicle, police said. Police Say Taliban Ambushes Killed Nine Officers. Ambushes by Taliban rebels in Afghanistan Friday left nine policemen dead with five of the militants also killed, police said. The Taliban fighters attacked a police commander's vehicle while he was traveling with his wife and a child and some bodyguards in the western province of Herat, the police commander for western Afghanistan said. Security Incidents for December 8, 2007 U.S.-led coalition airstrikes killed several suspected Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said Saturday. A NATO soldier, two children and 12 ‘terrorists’ have been killed in the first day of an operation to retake the southern Afghan town of Musa Qala, the Afghan defence ministry said Saturday. ‘And one ISAF soldier was killed as a result of a mine explosion,’ it said. An ISAF official confirmed the fatality but said the nationality of the soldier could not yet be released. Afghan abductors free Bangladeshi aid worker. Security Incidents for December 9, 2007 An Afghan official says 40 insurgents have been killed in a series of battles with Afghan and NATO-led troops in the country's south. A second NATO soldier was killed Sunday as Afghan and international troops advanced on the southern town of Musa Qala which the Taliban has controlled for the last 10 months, defence forces said. Taliban leaders seized in assault on Afghan town. Afghan and NATO-led forces have captured two senior Taliban leaders during an offensive to retake the insurgents' most important stronghold in Afghanistan, the town of Musa Qala, in the province of Helmand. Thanks whisker for many of the links above. REPORTS Afghan corruption threatens security attempts: watchdog Corruption in Afghanistan, which reaches up to deputy-minister level in an administration permeated by mafia-like structures, poses a danger to the nation's efforts at stability and security, a watchdog said. It was also spreading across the country which already ranks as among the 10-most corrupt in the world, research group Integrity Watch Afghanistan said at the release of a survey into Afghan opinion of the problem Sunday. Graft ranges from every day "baksheesh" (bribes) to get things done to civil servants buying and keeping their positions, it said, adding some believed it had "taken root in Afghan culture." Mafia-like networks had spread in the administration with groups using their positions for their own gain, blocking reform and protecting their own, it said in a book containing a survey of Afghans in eight provinces. "A 'bazaar economy' has developed where every position, favour, and service can be bought and sold," it said. Afghanistan's lucrative production of 93 percent of the world's opium and billions of dollars in post-Taliban government assistance were exacerbating the problem, it said. Troops closing in on Taliban-held town: residents Afghan and international troops were Saturday closing in on the Taliban-occupied town of Musa Qala after killing several militants in overnight bombing, residents and officials said. Ground troops were in villages surrounding the strategically important town, they said, after deploying from helicopters Friday to kick-off a long-awaited operation to eject Taliban rebels who stormed in 10 months ago. A rebel commander inside Musa Qala told AFP by telephone there were up to 2,000 rebel fighters ready to defend themselves. "So far there hasn't been face-to-face fighting but we are getting ready for the fighting and we will resist," said the commander, who gave his name Mullah Hafizullah. NATO nations make new offers of troops and equipment to Afghanistan NATO nations on Friday made new offers of troops and equipment for Afghanistan, but the alliance is still seeking aircraft and at least 1,000 more military personnel, a spokesman said. "A number of ministers mentioned the increased number of contributions that they would be making," spokesman James Appathurai said, after talks between NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. He said that Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski "set out what will be an increased Polish contribution, including attack and transport helicopters and a significant number of troops -- more than we had foreseen." Appathurai said the Czech Republic would also be setting up a provincial reconstruction team -- a civilian-military team helping to foster rebuilding in areas outside the Afghan capital Kabul. IWPR Reporter Under Attack in Afghan North A leading journalist in northern Afghanistan says his brother has been imprisoned on false charges as a way of pressuring him not to write articles critical of local officials and strongmen. Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi has come under mounting pressure himself, with security service officers visiting his home and anonymous phone calls threatening his life. His brother, Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, has been in prison since October 27 on charges of writing and distributing anti-Islamic literature, which he denies have any foundation. An Afghan journalists’ rights union has condemned a decision to have Parwez’s case heard by clerics rather than in the conventional judicial system. A council of Muslim scholars has recommended the death sentence. For the past four years, Yaqub has been reporting for IWPR on Afghanistan’s northern region. During that time, he has consistently covered issues of extreme sensitivity, such as continuing abuses by strongmen who maintain paramilitary forces and undermine the rule of law in defiance of the central government’s disarmament efforts. In the past two months, he has published several reports which identify factions and individuals in the north whom local residents accuse of crimes and brutality. “The people who are threatening me had nothing official against me,” he explained. “There was nothing they could use to arrest and imprison me.” Afghans close road to save minarets Afghanistan has closed a road that threatened the foundation of a group of mediaeval minarets which Kabul wants to see listed among the World's Cultural Heritage sites. The minarets, standing at more than 100 feet, are all that remain of what was once a brilliantly decorated complex for Islamic learning and devotion along the Silk Road on the outskirts of the western city of Herat. Just over a century ago, more than a dozen minarets stood in Herat, part of a madrasa-mosque complex built in the 15th century. Most of the camel-colored, mud-brick towers, which were once sheathed in sparkling blue, green, white and black mosaic tiles, have toppled during decades of war and neglect. Experts had hoped the end of Taliban rule in 2001 and the advent of a new government would save the remaining towers. However, the city's new-found wealth in the post-Taliban era had served only to heighten concerns about the towers' stability. Heavy trucks and cars rumble along a road that runs through the middle of the remaining minarets, shaking the ground and threatening their foundations. Following repeated concerns from the U.N. cultural and educational agency, (UNESCO), authorities in October banned heavy trucks from using the road.

2007-12-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

Photo: An Afghan army soldier stands guard near the bus targeted by a suicide bomber south of Kabul. Photograph: Rafiq Maqbool/AP Security Incidents on December 4, 2007 The Taliban today carried out a suicide attack on a NATO convoy that injured at least 22 Afghan civilians to "welcome" the US defence secretary to Kabul. The attacker drove into the convoy during the morning rush hour on a road just outside Kabul's international airport. There were no casualties among NATO troops. A British soldier has been killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said. The soldier's next-of-kin have been notified, but no further details were available, it added. Security Incidents on December 5, 2007 Taliban bomber kills 13 by ramming minibus. Suicide bomber kills six Afghan soldiers and seven civilians, including four children, in attack south of Kabul. Security Incidents on December 6, 2007 The joint command of the coalition force in Afghanistan has announced the start of a large-scale military operation against Taliban insurgents in the south of the country. A coalition spokesman said the operation will begin on Thursday in the Helmand province. Residents of neighboring villages have been ordered to leave their homes to avoid civilian casualties. More than 7,000 villagers have already left the area. UN food agency driver shot dead in Afghanistan. The United Nations food aid agency said on Thursday one of its workers had been shot dead in an ambush while driving emergency rations through Afghanistan. NATO Says 17 Taliban Killed in Air Strikes Thanks whisker for many of the links above. REPORTS Afghans' support for Taliban grows Afghans are increasingly critical of U.S. military efforts in their country, while support for the Taliban is on the rise in the violence-plagued southwest, according to poll results released on Monday. The survey — conducted for ABC News, the BBC and the German public TV station ARD — noted that Afghans overwhelmingly prefer the government of President Hamid Karzai to the Taliban, but they also believe that the government should negotiate with the Taliban to end the war. In southwestern Afghanistan, support for NATO-led forces has plummeted to 45 per cent this year, from 83 per cent a year ago. “Civilian casualties blamed on these forces is a prime complaint,” the survey said. This year has been the most violent yet since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and insurgency-related violence has killed nearly 6,200 persons — a record number, according to an AP tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials. AFGHANISTAN: UN ready to aid dialogue to boost prospects for peace The UN is ready to facilitate dialogue between the Afghan government and anti-government elements who want to end violence and be part of Afghanistan's current political process, with the aim of strengthening peace and development in the country, according to a top UN official. "2008 can be a year of success for Afghanistan," Christopher Alexander, deputy special representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan and deputy head of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), told journalists in Kabul on 3 December. The UN will spearhead efforts to resolve conflict and accelerate a process of reconciliation and peace-building through political outreach work: "We will try to include those Afghans who feel excluded from current institutions and make them part of development and rebuilding," Alexander said. UNAMA has placed "political outreach, rule of law and re-integrated strategy" at the top of its agenda for 2008. AFGHANISTAN: Disabled people have tough time, lack education, jobs Plagued by over two decades of war, poverty and underdevelopment, Afghanistan has about 800,000 people with disabilities out of an estimated total population of 24.5 million. Many of these are also illiterate, unemployed or lack access to health services and other opportunities. One in five households in Afghanistan has a disabled person, according to a 2005 survey conducted by Handicap International, an international non-governmental organisation campaigning on behalf of people living with disabilities. About 36 percent of disability in the country is physical, 26 percent sensorial, 20 percent epilepsy and 10 percent mental, the survey found. Suicide blast "welcomes" Secretary Gates to Kabul A Taliban suicide bomber rammed a car into a NATO convoy near Kabul airport on Tuesday, during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to assess rising violence in Afghanistan. No casualties were reported among NATO troops in the morning rush hour blast on a road just outside the city's international airport, an alliance spokesman said. NATO said the attack, which occurred as Gates was meeting NATO commanders less than 5 miles away, wounded 22 Afghan civilians. Kite Runner stars forced into hiding Four Afghan boys aged 11 to 14 have been spirited out of Afghanistan to a haven in the Middle East to protect them from potential reprisals ahead of the world release this month of a Hollywood movie in which they star. The boys and their guardians have been taken to an unidentified town in the United Arab Emirates where they have been placed in a school with many other Afghan children. Paramount Pictures, the studio behind the film, The Kite Runner, has promised to care for the children during the release period and possibly up to the end of their schooling. The $18m film is based on the novel of the same name by the Afghan-American writer Khaled Hosseini and is one of the highlights of the autumn season, with high hopes for the Oscars. But in recent weeks its producers have been grappling with the controversy over the casting of unknown Afghan boys to lead roles, which has brought unexpected dangers. U.S. May Recruit Afghan Tribes to Fight Taliban Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived in Afghanistan on Monday to weigh new strategies for quelling insurgent violence, which has escalated here in recent years despite increases in U.S. and NATO troop levels. Senior defense officials said that under one initiative being considered, local tribesmen would be trained and armed to fight Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, the stronghold of the radical Islamic militia. Attacks in that region have been particularly intense, and one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States is "seeing early indicators that there may be some stepped-up activity by al-Qaeda." The tribal initiative would begin with a British pilot project in Helmand province and would be broadly similar to a U.S. military drive in Iraq that has recruited thousands of local fighters - including tribesmen and former insurgents - to police their neighborhoods, the officials said. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the plan reflects a concern among senior U.S. officials that coalition forces have relied too much on the central government to build security forces, an approach they say runs counter to both tribal culture and the need for community policing. A new opinion poll released Monday - conducted by ABC News, the BBC and the German public TV station ARD - showed Afghans to be increasingly critical of the performance of U.S. forces and their ability to provide security. About 42 percent of Afghans polled rated U.S. efforts in their country positively, down from 68 percent in 2005. The survey of 1,377 Afghans in the country's 34 provinces found that 42 percent believe the Taliban has gained strength in the past year, compared with 24 percent who say the group is weaker. Nevertheless, about 70 percent of Afghans polled hold favorable views of the U.S. military overall, want it to remain in Afghanistan and are glad the Taliban was overthrown in 2001. U.S. In No-Win Situations No doubt about it, the U.S. is in a no-win situation in Afghanistan, much like the Russians of a few decades back. It's too bad America didn't learn its lesson from the Russians in Afghanistan and the French in Viet Nam, but we didn't; we went ahead as if we were the "good guys" who wore the white hats and could not lose because God was on our side. Afghan Koran Translation Provokes Controversy When Ghaus Zalmai, a well-known journalist who was working as spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, lent his name and reputation to a new version of the Koran, he may have thought he was performing a service for his fellow Afghan Muslims. Instead, the book, “A Fluent Translation of the Holy Koran”, has unleashed a storm of public rage that has landed its publisher Zalmai in jail, sent the editor into hiding, and led a council of angry clerics to denounce the book as the work of an international Zionist conspiracy. The prosecutor says Zalmai now regrets his action. This could not be confirmed by IWPR, since the journalist has been held incommunicado on unspecified charges for over a month. Security Firms in Afghanistan: Part of the Problem? Former commanders, ex-special forces, demobilised militias – at times it seems like the streets of Kabul are crammed full of strongmen looking to capitalise on their most marketable skill – the ability and readiness to fight. Many have gravitated towards the new industry of private security firms, which guard banks, embassies, international organisations, and even some of the trendier restaurants in the capital. But the Afghan government is now cracking down on these heavily-armed and often unlicensed firms, saying that several have been implicated in major crimes including armed robbery, kidnap and murder. Some observers worry that the closure of security firms will make a bad situation even worse. The Afghan police cannot fill the gap, they insist, and turning thousands of armed and unemployed men loose on the streets will create an even more unstable environment. Afghanistan’s Creaking Court System The area around the Afghan Supreme Court in Kabul is teeming with people, both plaintiffs and defendants. Some have spent months, even years waiting for a resolution to their problems. Many have given bribes; many more have lost cases on lower courts because, they say, they could not afford to pay the judge. But one thing unites them all - their anger and dissatisfaction with the Afghan justice system. “In our courts, bribery is at such a level that anyone with money can buy a decision in his favour,” said Mohammad Zaki. “There is no justice.” Helmand Residents Turn On the Lights According to the deputy head of Helmand’s power department, Engineer Mohammad Nabi, the Kajaki dam now produces 20 megawatts of power, about half of which goes to Kandahar. The rest goes to Helmand, with half for the capital Lashkar Gah and the rest distributed around the province. This is woefully inadequate for the province’s needs, he added. “The Kajaki dam cannot produce more than 20 megawatts because the equipment is old and damaged,” said Nabi. “Lashkar Gah alone needs 25 megawatts.” The result is that many districts are left in the dark. “We can’t supply power to every corner of Helmand,” said Nabi. Enterprising residents of Nad Ali, a rural district adjacent to Lashkar Gah, have taken matters into their own hands, installing small turbine systems in irrigation canals to generate power for their communities. “The turbine has changed our lives,” said 35-year-old Mullah Atiqullah, a resident of Chan Jir, in Nad Ali. “We use it to run fans in the summer and lighting in the winter. Many residents also watch television.” A turbine costs 320,000 Pakistani rupees – about 5,200 US dollars - and is shared among 20 families. “This is progress,” said Atiqullah. “There are television antennas on the roof of every house and light bulbs in people’s windows.” He complained that the government has been quick to cash in by levying arbitrary taxes. Leaked aid map reveals Afghanistan no-go zones Almost half of Afghanistan is now too dangerous for aid workers to operate in, a leaked UN map seen by The Times shows. In the past two years most foreign and Afghan staff have withdrawn from the southern half of the country, abandoning or scaling back development projects in rural areas and confining themselves to the cities or the less risky north. The pullback compounds the problems of the Government in Kabul, which has struggled to extend its authority to the regions and provinces, which are increasingly lawless or Taleban controlled. Development has always been touted as a key factor in Western efforts to win over Afghans and bolster support for President Karzai but in the past six years little has been done on the ground in the critical south and east. The failure to help ordinary Afghans or to rebuild areas damaged by fighting in provinces such as Helmand has caused huge resentment and is exploited by Taleban propaganda. AFGHANISTAN: Preparations under way for possible natural disasters this winter A national disaster management commission, comprised of several government and non-government organisations (NGOs) in Afghanistan, has allocated US$2.5 million for possible disaster management operations during the winter months. In addition to this, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has agreed to pre-position about 22,000 metric tonnes of wheat in 18 vulnerable provinces before winter, the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Authority (ANDMA) said. “The allocated funds will be used for various purposes such as evacuation, aid delivery, road clearing, conducting rapid assessments, raising public awareness and improving coordination among aid agencies,” Abdul Matin Edrak, head of ANDMA, said in Kabul on 5 December. Afghan officials say this year they are better prepared to manage winter disasters than last year when flash floods and avalanches killed about 400 people, destroyed about 5,000 houses and affected over 45,000 families between December 2006 and May 2007, ANDMA’s statistics show. AFGHANISTAN: UN prepares for repatriation of over half a million refugees The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has asked for about US$100 million from donors for its Afghan operations in the coming two years, according to UNHCR Global Appeal 2008-2009. The UNHCR will need over $49 million in 2008 and over $50 million in 2009 to assist 540,000 Afghan refugees who are expected to return primarily from neighbouring Pakistan and Iran. “This 2008-2009 edition is the first Global Appeal to cover a two-year period. It corresponds to our new biennial budget cycle which, among other advantages, should help the predictability of funding,” Antonio Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement. The new funding appeal shows a slight decrease in UNHCR’s budget for its Afghan operations. The UNHCR has a budget of about $52 million for its refugee and internally displaced person (IDP) support activities in 2007, Nader Farhad, a UNHCR spokesman in Afghanistan said. RAF chiefs blame fuel errors for fatal crash For years the RAF had identified potentially fatal problems with its ageing fleet of Nimrod aircraft, originally designed to follow Soviet submarines over the North Atlantic and now stuffed with sophisticated electronic surveillance devices to watch or listen to the movements of the enemy on the ground. Yet the RAF board of inquiry into the crash of the Nimrod XV230 in southern Afghanistan on September 2 last year does not apportion blame. It was set up only to identify the likely cause of the crash - though it makes 33 separate recommendations. Instead it was left to the RAF's most senior officers, in unprecedented moves, to admit blame and identify a catalogue of failures in the way the planes were inspected and maintained. AFGHANISTAN: Hundreds flee fighting in Helmand Province Hundreds of people have left their homes in Musa Qala District, Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, after Afghan and international forces intensified their joint military operations to drive Taliban insurgents out of the district, according to local residents and provincial officials. "Hundreds of startled locals have fled to nearby Sangeen and Garamsir districts," said Ahmad Shah, a resident of Musa Qala. "Some people have also taken their families to Lashkargah [the provincial capital of Helmand]," another local resident said. Provincial officials told IRIN hundreds of Musa Qala residents had fled their homes fearing fighting, but they declined to be identified. Health care program for Afghan women is halving maternal, neonatal death rates Conflict-torn Afghanistan has one of the world's worst health records, but in certain provinces, infant and maternal mortality rates have dropped by more than half during the course of a Community Health Project being delivered by global humanitarian agency Church World Service. CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan staff will hold briefings in New York, December 3, 4 and 7, on the agency's maternal and neonatal program approach and success and on the current state of health overall among Afghans who are refugees in Pakistan and those returning to or still displaced within Afghanistan. The Afghanistan health program representatives will also meet with USAID, other NGOs and Capitol Hill lawmakers in Washington this week. 'Danger for Aid Workers Increasing in Afghanistan' Worsening security in Afghanistan is pushing up the need for humanitarian help while increasing risks for aid workers, 41 of whom have been killed this year, a European Commission aid official said. Growing conflict linked to a Taleban-led insurgency has also put more places out of bounds for humanitarian groups and the return of thousands of exiles is adding to the pressure, Esko Kentrschynskyj said late Wednesday. "It doesn't look very bright from a humanitarian point of view," said Kentrschynskyj, the head of European Commission Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO) unit for Asia and Central and South America.

2007-12-03T17:10:00.000-08:00

Photo: A boy warms his foot on a fire in Kabul December 3, 2007. REUTERS/Ahmad Masood (AFGHANISTAN)

Security Incidents on December 1, 2007

Four Taleban rebels were killed when their ammunition exploded during a wedding party they attended as special guests in a southern Afghan village, police said Saturday. Eight other Islamic rebels were injured in the blast in southern Zabul province late on Friday, provincial police chief Mohammad Yaqoub told AFP. It was not yet known what triggered the blast, he added.

Security Incidents on December 2, 2007

The local Taliban killed three people and injured five others in an attack on a cockfight fare at the Shene Ghundae village in Shabqadar tehsil's Sro Kaley area on Sunday.

Afghan and NATO-led troops battled with Taliban militants and called in airstrikes in a series of clashes in the country's south that left 40 insurgents dead, an official said Sunday.

Security Incidents on December 3, 2007

In an air strike in the Musa Qaleh district, the coalition forces destroyed a vehicle and killed all the five occupants, including one presumed to be a senior Taliban commander, the statement said.

Suicide bomber kills 4, wounds 6 in Afghanistan A suicide bomber killed four Afghans including two policemen and wounded six others in Afghanistan's western province of Nimroz on Monday.

Afghanistan's law enforcing agencies have nabbed a local leader of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province, National Security Directorate (NSD) said on Monday.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

AFGHANISTAN: Disabled people have tough time, lack education, jobs

Plagued by over two decades of war, poverty and underdevelopment, Afghanistan has about 800,000 people with disabilities out of an estimated total population of 24.5 million. Many of these are also illiterate, unemployed or lack access to health services and other opportunities. One in five households in Afghanistan has a disabled person, according to a 2005 survey conducted by Handicap International, an international non-governmental organisation campaigning on behalf of people living with disabilities. About 36 percent of disability in the country is physical, 26 percent sensorial, 20 percent epilepsy and 10 percent mental, the survey found. Over half of Afghanistan’s disabled population is under 19, say organisations helping people with disability. Over 72 percent of all disabled people over six have not received any education, Afghanistan’s National Disability Survey (NDS) said in 2005. “Many hurdles impede access to education for people with disability,” said Samiulhaq Sami, an adviser to the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Martyrs and Disabled. “Physical, attitudinal and financial barriers mostly deny education to disabled people,” he added. Most schools and educational centres lack facilities for disabled people and access to buildings is also a major problem for those with movement problems.

Afghans more critical of U.S efforts

Afghans are increasingly critical of U.S. military efforts in their country, while support for the Taliban is on the rise in the violence-plagued southwest, according to a poll released today. The survey — conducted for ABC News, the BBC and the German public TV station ARD — noted that Afghans overwhelmingly prefer the government of President Hamid Karzai to the Taliban. But they also believe that government should negotiate with the Taliban to end the war. The poll has found that in southwestern Afghanistan, support for NATO-led forces has plummeted to 45 per cent this year, from 83 per cent a year ago. According to the survey, the civilian casualties blamed on the international forces is a prime complaint. This year has been the most violent since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and insurgency-related violence has killed nearly 6,200 people — a record number, according to an AP tally of figures from Afghan and western officials. More than 800 civilians have died in insurgency attacks and military operations, causing a decline in support for foreign troops and the western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

Al-Qaeda stepping up activities in Afghanistan

The U.S. military is seeing early signs that al-Qaeda may be stepping up its activities in Afghanistan, a senior defence official revealed for the first time Monday as Secretary Robert Gates made his third trip to this country. Gates said he has not yet seen data on any uptick in al-Qaeda activity, but he said increasing levels of violence in the country are a concern and he plans to talk about it with other defence leaders from NATO nations operating in Afghanistan. “I'm not worried about a backslide as much as I am (about) how we continue the momentum going forward,” Gates told reporters in Djibouti on Monday just before he left for Kabul. “One of the clear concerns that we all have is that in the last two or three years there has been a continuing increase in the overall level of violence.” The senior defence official said the U.S. military is concerned and is looking for definitive signs of greater activity by al-Qaeda and foreign fighters, but the U.S. has not seen enough proof to draw any final conclusions. The official discussed the terrorist network on condition of anonymity because of the security concerns.

2007-11-30T21:51:00.001-08:00

Photo: A coffin, above, with one of the laborers killed late Monday by an airstrike that hit the camp of a construction company that had been contracted by the

U.S.

Rafiq Shirzad/Reuters

Security Incidents on November 29, 2007

The school principal, Fazel Mir, was shot to death Wednesday morning in Khost province, said Wazir Pacha, spokesman for the provincial police.

In Ghazni province, meanwhile, Taliban insurgents ambushed police Wednesday in Khogyani district, and the ensuing clash killed one policeman and four suspected militants, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman.

Also Wednesday, militants in Paktia province attacked trucks carrying supplies for foreign troops, killing one driver, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, spokesman for the provincial governor.

In neighboring Paktika province, a roadside bomb hit Afghan troops on Wednesday, leaving one soldier dead and three wounded, Darwesh said.

Afghan and foreign troops fought against Taliban militants and called in airstrikes in southern Afghanistan, leaving 30 fighters dead, an Afghan police chief said Thursday. The joint forces attacked militants hiding inside two compounds on Wednesday in the Zhari district of southern Kandahar province, said provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib. Troops detained 12 other militants, including group commanders fighting Afghan and foreign forces in the area, Saqib said. Five of the men detained were wounded during the clash.

Two Danish soldiers were killed Thursday in a gunbattle with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan, the Scandinavian country's military said. The soldiers were part of a Danish reconnaissance unit that came under fire in Gereshk Valley in Helmand Province, the Army Operational Command said. The two were evacuated by helicopter to a Danish camp where they were pronounced dead.

Security Incidents on November 30, 2007

34 Taliban killed in Afghan clashes

Taliban militants beheaded seven policemen after overrunning their checkpoints in southern Afghanistan on Friday, officials said.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

"A Crude War Of Revenge"

The United States is on its way to losing the war in Afghanistan. The eventual defeat will be political not military. Public sentiment is shifting in Europe. The people have had enough. They want to get out. When European troops withdrawal from Afghanistan; NATO will gradually unravel and the Transatlantic Alliance will collapse. That will be a disaster for America. The US will again be isolated by two great oceans. But not by choice. America's days as an empire will be over. That's why the US perseveres in Afghanistan even though there is nothing to gain. Pipelines corridors will continue to be blocked by enemy fighters for the foreseeable future. The guerrilla war will intensify. American fatalities will mount. Political opposition at home will grow. The Taliban can't be beaten. They've already taken over more than half the country and they are steadily advancing on the Capital. By next spring, there'll be fighting in the neighborhoods of Kabul, just like there is now in Baghdad. American troops will be barricaded in little Greenzones spread across the countryside. Karzai will be locked away in the Presidential Palace surrounded by American mercenaries.

Failure now approaches in Afghanistan

Winter approaches, and as many as 400,000 Afghans face starvation. The trouble is not an insufficient supply of food. There is no way to get food to those who need it. Attacks on aid workers and the hijacking of food convoys -- the United Nations' main feeding program says it has lost about 100,000 tons of food to attacks by insurgents and criminals so far this year -- have made it all but impossible to transport supplies along the main road connecting vast stretches of the country between Kandahar in the south and Herat in the west. Nothing exposes a hollow promise like the prospect of mass starvation. By now, six years after the United States and its Western allies launched military operations to avenge the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and free Afghanistan from the grip of the Taliban, humanitarian workers surely should not be forced to give up on feeding the desperate. But this is only one measure of our catastrophic failure.

Leave Afghanistan, urges Bin Laden

The al-Qaida leader, Osama bin Laden, called on European governments to end their military cooperation with the US in Afghanistan in a new audio message broadcast today. With his fifth public message this year, bin Laden sought to exploit tensions between European capitals and Washington over the ongoing Nato military campaign in Afghanistan. He reiterated that he was responsible for the September 11 attacks on the US, not the Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan at the time. "The American tide is ebbing," he said in a message addressed directly to the European public. "It is better for you to restrain your politicians who are thronging the steps of the White House." In a quick rebuttal to bin Laden's audio message, parts of which were carried on al-Jazeera television, the Afghan government said bin Laden had no right to interfere with its sovereignty. It also rejected his accusations that Afghan civilians were being killed by Nato troops, saying they were being killed by extremists. His message came as Poland is reconsidering its commitment of 1,200 troops to the Nato mission, following the election of a new government.

AFGHANISTAN: Red Crescent calls for closer cooperation with UN, donors

The growing humanitarian needs of Afghans must come ahead of political and strategic priorities and the UN and other international donors ought to “better recognise” the pivotal role of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) when dealing with humanitarian emergencies in Afghanistan, Fatima Gailani, president of the ARCS, told IRIN on 29 November. Lack of resources, funding and professional capacity has complicated ARCS’s ability to respond effectively to overwhelming humanitarian needs across the country. “Afghanistan’s humanitarian response capacity has remained very weak and vulnerable despite large amounts of aid money spent by various donors,” Gailani said. Established in the 1940s, the ARCS has about 37,000 volunteers country-wide and is involved in different humanitarian operations, including health services, landmine awareness, disaster response and relief activities. The ARCS acknowledges support and assistance from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the past 15 years, but criticises the UN for lack of “interest, coordination and support”.

Afghan agency rejects claims of prisoner abuse

Afghanistan's intelligence agency has rejected allegations that prisoners transferred to its custody by NATO nations are ill-treated and tortured. The agency said Wednesday it had looked into the charges in an Amnesty International report this month and found they were based on interviews with opponents of the government and on incorrect data. "This report is baseless and not based on accurate information," Afghanistan National Directorate of Security (ANDS) spokesman Sayed Ansari told reporters. London-based Amnesty said prisoners captured by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and transferred to Afghan custody faced whipping, beatings, exposure to extreme cold and food deprivation.

Bin Laden’s Call Ridiculous: Karzai

Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday called “ridiculous” a call attributed to Osama Bin Laden for Europe to break ranks with the United States and quit the fight against extremists in Afghanistan. In a statement attributed to the Al-Qaeda chief and aired Thursday, Bin Laden also said he was behind the 9/11 attacks — which led to the invasion of Afghanistan — and Afghans “had no knowledge whatsoever of these events.” The remarks were “ridiculous and contrary to Islamic culture and human values,” a statement from Karzai’s office said. “Osama Bin Laden under no name has the right to comment about Afghanistan and the sacrifices Afghans have given,” it said. By “imposing terrorism” on Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda chief was one of the reasons thousands of people had been killed and displaced in this country, the statement said. “The people of Afghanistan consider Bin Laden a criminal and the enemy of security and development of their country and put no value to his comments,” it said. They also know their “enemies and friends very well,” it said, and had solid ties with their international allies in efforts to rebuild the country.

Army Social Scientists Calm Afghanistan, Make Enemies at Home

Zenia Helbig was a little surprised when she got a call last March asking her to join a controversial U.S. Army program to embed social scientists into combat units. She was glad to hear from retired Colonel Steve Fondacaro, the chief of the Human Terrain Team program. But Helbig, then a University of Virginia graduate student, thought she was underqualified to join the project. The job description had called for a Ph.D. with Arabic language skills; Helbig was still working on her doctorate. And while she spoke five languages -- and read a sixth -- Arabic wasn't one of them. "Within five minutes, though, he offered me a position," she recalls. "I was confused." Over the course of the next nine months, Helbig was hired for -- and suddenly suspended from -- the Human Terrain Team, or HTT, program. She asked Congress to investigate her firing. And, now, on Thursday, she's joining up with the program's most bitter foes, to fight the project she once was flattered to be considered for.

Quote: At a demonstration by unemployed schoolteachers in Mazar-e-Sharif in mid-April, the mood of desperation was obvious. One protester who did not want to be named told IWPR he was quite prepared to join the Taleban. "If the government can’t employ us, I will have to join any group that will pay me so that I can bring in food for my children. If your children are hungry, you will blow yourself up in a suicide attack rather than hear them crying for food," he said.

2007-11-28T18:57:00.000-08:00

Photo: A bystander offers a rose to the Taleban. FROM: Images of Musa Qala Pictures giving a unique view of life in a Taleban-controlled town.

Security Incidents on November 27, 2007

A suicide car bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy in the Afghan capital Kabul killed two civilians on Tuesday, the latest attack to shake confidence in government efforts to uphold security. The target of Tuesday's attack was a two-car convoy of U.S. troops outside a Defence Ministry building in the centre of Kabul close to embassies, and offices of the United Nations and World Bank.

Three Canadian soldiers were injured Tuesday morning when their light armoured vehicle hit a suspected homemade bomb just outside Kandahar city. The improvised explosive device (IED) went off at about 10 a.m., 40 kilometres west of the provincial capital near the village of Sperwan Ghar in Panjwaii district.

A roadside bombing Tuesday struck a civilian bus in southern Afghan Kandahar province, killing four civilians, injuring five others.

Security Incidents on November 28, 2007

U.S.-led coalition troops killed 14 road construction workers in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan after receiving faulty intelligence, Afghan officials said Wednesday. The coalition said it was looking into the incident in Nuristan province, but did not immediately comment. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it has conducted airstrikes against Taliban fighters in the area, but did not say when. "ISAF was engaged in Nurgaram and Du Ab (districts), and in those places we used airstrikes against (Taliban)," ISAF spokesman Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco told a news conference.

The Taliban insurgents in an overnight attack on a police patrol have killed two policemen, injured another and taken away four others in western Afghan province of Farah, provincial governor said Wednesday. "The incident occurred in Bala Buluk district of Farah province Tuesday night as a group of policemen were patrolling in the area," Farah's governor Mohaidin Baloch told Xinhua via phone.

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REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Musa Qala: The Shape of Things to Come?

The Taleban who control this northern district are confident that they will extend their reach to the rest of Helmand over the coming winter. Late afternoon was sliding into evening in a corner of Musa Qala, and I was still watching dozens of military vehicles parade past me. Green, grey and white, they looked exactly like the Afghan government’s police and security vehicles. The major difference was that here it was the Taleban’s footsoldiers with fierce, frightening demeanours who sat behind the wheel. They wore dishevelled turbans, mostly black, and their feet dangled over the sides of the truck beds. In their hands they held Kalashnikovs, machine guns, even rocket launchers. One of the Taleban told me that they had captured most of the vehicles from the government. I saw their commander walking through town, unarmed, as if he did not want to attract attention. In this he was quite unlike the British soldiers in Helmand, whom you never see without weapons. He answered my questions readily, and even told me his name, Enqiadi. He allowed me to take his photograph, although he covered his face with his dark red scarf when he was in front of the camera. “Five districts of Helmand are totally under the Taleban,” he said. “The rest of them, except for Lashkar Gah, are also Taleban territory, except for the district centres, where the British and Afghan forces have small islands of control.”

Taleban Ghost Town

The atmosphere is subdued as many residents have left town and local business has declined. The hospital in central Musa Qala is padlocked, and the district government office has been completely demolished by Taleban militants. The bazaar is quiet, with none of its former bustle. Foreign air strikes have also done a lot of damage – many houses lie in ruins, and there are big holes in surrounding fields. Hajji Nazar Mohammad, an elder in the Musa Qala district, said many people had fled the district in fear. “More than 75 per cent of the residents have gone,” he said. “The only people left are those who couldn’t afford to go. We are in a very bad economic situation.” One shopkeeper, who did not want to be named, said that his business had fallen by 80 per cent. “I am lucky, though,” he said. “Most of the other shops have closed completely.” The shopkeeper seemed nervous, and kept saying he did not want the Taleban to see him talking to me. He was not the only one. A lot of people refused to talk out of fear of the insurgents. I was accompanied by an armed Taleban guard, who I think was recording my interviews. So no one was saying anything against the insurgents.

Winning Hearts and Minds

The Taleban have avoided the worst excesses of the past in a bid to win popular support. “We don’t want foreigners here! We do not want kafir [unbelievers]. Do you hear me?” I was not trying to interview this man, whose name was Abdul Raziq - he simply forced himself in front of the microphone. “All Muslims reject the current government!” he shouted. “But we watch the Taleban closely, too. If they do anything we don’t like, we will stand up to them.” Musa Qala has been a world apart ever since the Taleban took control of it in February. The government does not venture in, while the British troops deployed in Helmand province restrict themselves to air strikes on the perimeter of the district. The area was the scene of intense fighting between NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and the Taleban through the late summer and early autumn of 2006. In October that year, the British-led forces withdrew from the district after reaching an agreement with tribal elders designed to keep the Taleban out of the district centre. But that agreement broke down in early February 2007, after an ISAF air strike killed the brother of a powerful commander. The Taleban swept in and established their own regime, complete with district governor, police chief and Sharia courts. Reporters have stayed clear of the area since then. The Taleban’s attitude towards journalists whose reporting they dislike is too familiar for comfort.

Afghanistan cannabis crop up 40 percent

The fields of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan were free of opium poppies this year, a success touted often by Afghan and international officials. But one look at Mohammad Alam's fields uncovers an emerging drug problem. Ten-foot-tall cannabis plants flourish in Alam's fields. The crop — the source of both marijuana and hashish — can be just as profitable as opium but draws none of the scrutiny from Afghan officials bent on eradicating poppies. Cannabis cultivation rose 40 percent in Afghanistan this year, to 173,000 acres from 123,550 in 2006, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its 2007 opium survey. The crop is being grown in at least 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the survey released last month. The U.N. report singles out Balkh as a "leading example" of an opium-free province, saying other areas should follow "the model of this northern region where leadership, incentives and security have led farmers to turn their backs on opium."

AFGHANISTAN: Children increasingly affected by conflict

Razmi Khan, 12, was once the most outstanding student in his class, but is unable to go to school. He was badly wounded by a missile as he walked to a mosque in Nader Shah Kot District in the southeastern province of Khost on 17 November. He was taken to a local hospital where surgeons amputated his left leg to save his life. “I cannot walk to school with one leg,” Razmi told IRIN. The missile, which also wounded another child and four adults, was fired by Afghan and international forces during a joint military exercise, Gul Qasim Khan, the governor of Nader Shah Kot District, and Col Israr Khan of the Afghan army, said. Razmi Khan’s parents said army officers and provincial officials had sympathised with them, but there had been no compensation. As sympathies fade, Razmi Khan is gradually realising that as a disabled person he has to cope with many new difficulties: He cannot play football with his friends, ride his bicycle or go to mosque. In Baghlan Province where on 6 November a heavy explosion and a subsequent shootout killed 60 children and over 12 adults, many parents are grieving for their lost sons and daughters. “My sons had committed no sin, so why did they kill them,” whined Roqia, a bereaved mother of two schoolchildren killed in the incident. In Helmand Province a widow is mourning her 15-year-old son who was hanged by Taliban insurgents for having US dollars in his pocket. “A child’s first right is the right to life. This is being denied in Afghanistan on an ever-increasing scale,” the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in a Child Alert report in October 2007. Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) estimates that over 1,400 Afghan civilians have lost their lives and hundreds of others have been wounded in armed hostilities, aerial strikes, suicide attacks and improvised explosions in the past 11 months. Children are believed to be among the main victims.

NATO Airstrike Kills 14 Afghans

A NATO airstrike killed 14 laborers working for an Afghan road construction company that had been contracted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build a road in the mountainous province of Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan, officials said. The strike occurred late Monday night in the Norgram district of Nuristan when the Afghan workers of Amerifa Road Construction Company were sleeping in tents after a day’s work. “Fourteen of our mechanics and laborers were killed as they were asleep in their tents,” said Nurullah Jalali, the executive director of the construction company. “We just collected pieces of flesh from our tired workers and put them in 14 coffins.”

ANALYSIS-Helicopter crunch hobbles peace missions

In conflicts from Afghanistan to Africa, international efforts to secure peace are being hobbled by a chronic lack of the tool vital to all modern militaries -- helicopters. A shortage of top-end machines needed for tropical conditions plus a reluctance of countries to bear the costs of deploying them are being exacerbated by a procurement logjam that means a major renewal of Western fleets is years off. Recent appeals for helicopters by the United Nations, NATO and European Union mission commanders have faced a deafening silence, forcing planners to study second-best options such as "rent-a-chopper" deals with the private sector. "We should be better off when the new-generation helicopters arrive, but the procurement gap only starts closing in about two years," complained one NATO official. The shortage is hitting peacekeeping throughout the world.

Negligence led to deaths in big Afghan bomb-inquiry

Official negligence contributed to the death toll in Afghanistan's biggest suicide bombing, which killed 72 people, most of them schoolboys, this month, the interior minister said on Tuesday. A suicide bomber blew himself up on Nov. 6 as local schoolboys lined up to greet a group of opposition parliamentarians visiting a sugar factory in the town of Baghlan in the relatively peaceful north. Fifty-two schoolboys, six parliamentary deputies and five teachers were among the 72 killed. Opposition lawmakers staged a mass walk-out from parliament on Monday, accusing President Hamid Karzai's government of inaction against officials they accused of not doing enough to protect the visiting delegation and civilians in Baghlan. "Enquiries indicate a range of negligence and carelessness occurred in various related governmental levels," Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel told a news conference. "Those involved in negligence or carelessness will be sacked, replaced or prosecuted based on the extent of their guilt," he said. "We are hopeful that we will learn the names of those involved in negligence from judicial authorities soon."

The parliamentary walk-out was led by members of the National United Front, made up of many former warlords who fought the Taliban before U.S.-led forces helped them overthrow the hardline Islamist movement in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. The front has grown increasingly vocal in its criticism of Karzai on a range of issues, from his failure to tackle the country's worsening security situation, to official corruption and the alleged involvement of some officials in the drugs trade. A number of conspiracy theories have also emerged since the hardline Islamist Taliban, responsible for more than 140 suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, denied they carried out the Baghlan bombing.

CHRONOLOGY-Attacks in Afghan capital Kabul in 2007

Here are some major attacks in and around the capital Kabul since June this year.

June 17, 2007: A Taliban suicide bomber blows up a police bus killing 24 and wounding dozens.

Aug. 15: A roadside bomb kills three German embassy bodyguards just outside the capital.

Sept. 29: In the worst suicide bombing so far in Kabul, a suicide bomb attack on an army bus kills 28 Afghan troops and two civilians. The Taliban claim responsibility.

Oct. 2: At least 11 civilians and police are killed in a suicide bomb attack on a bus carrying Afghan police.

Oct. 6: A suicide car bomb killed five Afghan civilians and a U.S. soldier on a road near Kabul airport.

Nov 24: Suicide bomber kills nine civilians, six of them children, and an Italian soldier, at the opening of a new bridge on the outskirts of the capital.

Nov 27: Two civilians are killed by a suicide bomb targeting a U.S. military convoy outside a Defence Ministry building.

AFGHANISTAN: Teaching Counterinsurgency - Too Little, Too Late

The Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy is a work in progress -- the clamour of construction, the bulldozing of garbage and the sparse staff are all clear signs. Built on a former Canadian military base near the bullet-ridden palace of Afghanistan's former royal family, the COIN Academy, as it is known, is on the verge of acquiring a dining facility, a lecture hall and other services. "The academy is still in survival mode," U.S. army Maj. Luke Meyers, the academy's operations chief, told IPS. "We're trying to build this as fast as we can but it's taking time. We're six years behind really, to be honest. We're glad we've made this step at least." Following pressure from top American military officials, the COIN Academy opened in April nearly six years after the invasion of Afghanistan while a counterpart school in Iraq was established in 2005. Afghanistan's facility recently shifted to its new location on the outskirts of Kabul. The nature of the fight in Afghanistan is described as a counterinsurgency, the kind of conflict American soldiers have not faced since the war in Vietnam. This brand of warfare is defined as the combined "military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency," according to a manual on the subject issued by the U.S. military last year. Political power is the central issue in insurgencies and counterinsurgencies; each side wants civilians to accept its governance or authority as legitimate, the manual states. The document goes on to say that counterinsurgency is a complex form of warfare that seeks the population’s support by offering protection and services like water and medical care, among other things. The school aims to teach counterinsurgency practices to newly arrived Western trainers sent to embed with the Afghan security forces, as well as to coalition forces and to senior members of the Afghan military, police and intelligence services.

2007-11-26T20:17:00.001-08:00

Photo: An Afghan victim killed in a suicide bombing is transported in Paghman district of Kabul, Afghanistan on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007. A suicide bomber targeting Italian soldiers constructing a bridge instead killed six Afghans, including three children, Afghan officials said Saturday. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)

Security Incidents on November 24, 2007

A Taliban suicide attacker killed seven people, including three children and an Italian military engineer, when he blew himself up Saturday in a scenic Afghan town near Kabul, officials said. Three more Italians and nine Afghans, five of them children, were wounded in the attack in the town of Paghman, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Kabul, Italian and Afghan officials told AFP.

A soldier from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) died Saturday morning from injuries sustained in a vehicle-rollover Friday night in southern Afghan province of Wardak, said an ISAF statement on Saturday.

Gun battle between Taliban insurgents and Afghan police in Afghanistan's central Ghazni province has left a dozen persons including 11 insurgents dead, a local official said Saturday. "Taliban and police came in contact in Gilan district of Ghazni province Friday afternoon, 11 rebels and one policeman were killed," Mahboubullah, the district chief of Gilan told Xinhua. Two more policemen and four insurgents sustained injuries in the firefight that lasted for some two hours, he added.

A series of clashes in southern Afghanistan left 43 suspected Taliban militants dead on the same day that a roadside bomb killed two Canadian soldiers, officials said Saturday. http://snipurl.com/1u5i8

US soldiers mistakenly shot dead an Afghani policeman late Saturday.

Security Incidents on November 25, 2007

Nearly 80 Taliban Killed in Afghan Air Strikes: Official About 65 were killed in a single air assault late Saturday in eastern Paktia province on a "large group of Taliban," said Din Mohammad Darvish, a spokesman for the local administration. Four others were killed in a second assault targeting a vehicle carrying rebels in the same region of the province, Patan district, and four in a nearby area, he said. Another three were killed in an air strike near Gardez, capital of the restive province, he said.

A bomb hit a border police convoy Sunday in southern Afghanistan, killing two policemen and injuring a third, officials said. The roadside bomb struck the police convoy in the morning in Kandahar provinces's Spin Boldak district near the Pakistan border.

Security Incidents on November 26, 2007

A roadside bomb killed four civilians on the outskirts of Kabul Monday, a police official said. The bomb was planted on a dirt track in the Charasayab area of the capital and was apparently detonated by remote control, just as a car carrying four Afghan villagers passed by, all of whom were killed.

Four Afghan soldiers were killed as a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province Monday, spokesman of provincial administration Deen Mohammad Darwish said. "The Taliban rebels detonated a roadside bomb by remote control in Zarmat district today at noon, destroying a military vehicle and killing four soldiers on the spot," Darwish told Xinhua. Two more soldiers were injured in the incident, he added.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

The Taliban's northern front

While the attention of the Afghan government and the media is focused on major battles in the south of the country, the Taliban are making major headway in a northern region. Badghis, a north-western province wedged between Herat and Faryab, has been the scene of heavy fighting for the past two months, and the insurgents have occupied three of the province's seven districts. They have also established intelligence and operational networks in most district centers. This was the first of the north-western provinces to fall to the Taliban in 1997. Now the insurgents are looking to repeat their earlier success, using Badghis as a launch pad for operations in the provinces further east, which include Jowzjan, Balkh, Takhar and Badakhshan. In Faryab, directly to the north of Badghis, the Taliban have established a foothold in mountainous areas, and are trying to expand their networks there as well. The Taliban have launched several sorties in both provinces in the past two months and claim that the Bala Murghab, Ghormach and Qades districts of Badghis are largely in their hands.

Civilians killed in Australian attack on 'Taliban'

Two women and a child were killed during an Australian attack on an alleged Taliban compound of mud brick huts in which Australian commando Luke Worsley also died. On Friday afternoon, the Chief of the Defence Force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said he did not believe there had been any civilian deaths. However, the website of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) subsequently revealed the bodies of the three civilians had been found. It was not until after that, on Saturday morning, that the Australian Defence Force acknowledged that deaths of the women and child. A Defence spokesman said the cause of the deaths had not been established and maintained that the attack by the Australian Special Forces was based on intelligence of bomb making in the compound.

Too few development dollars are actually spent in Afghanistan

Six years after the fall of the Taliban, the reconstruction of Afghanistan is a booming business for the private sector, but much of the work is still going to big foreign firms, say Afghan officials and development workers. The building boom is no more evident than in Afghanistan's capital, where a five-star hotel, western-style mall and revamped U.S. Embassy have sprouted up in recent years. "Construction is one of the motors of the economy," said Afghan Economy Minister Mohammad Jalil Shams. "Four years ago, Kabul was nothing like it is now." Reconstruction is also moving forward in the more secure regions of the country, such as the areas around Herat in the west and Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. But much of the rebuilding is funded by foreign-aid agencies, which often award contracts to a select pool of multinational companies based outside Afghanistan. "The biggest amount, let's say about two-thirds or even three-quarters, is going through the foreign budgets," Mr. Shams explained in an interview. "They, of course, choose their contractors." Major donor nations, including Canada, spent about $1.36 billion in official development assistance to Afghanistan over a one-year period ending March 2006. But only $424 million, or about 31 per cent, had a "local impact," according to a study released this spring. Peace Dividend Trust, an Ottawa non-profit agency, conducted the study for the Afghan ministry of finance. Local impact is defined as the proportion of aid money spent locally on goods and services.

U.S. Notes Limited Progress in Afghan War

A White House assessment of the war in Afghanistan has concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met, even as U.S. and NATO forces have scored significant combat successes against resurgent Taliban fighters, according to U.S. officials. The evaluation this month by the National Security Council followed an in-depth review in late 2006 that laid out a series of projected improvements for this year, including progress in security, governance and the economy. But the latest assessment concluded that only "the kinetic piece" -- individual battles against Taliban fighters -- has shown substantial progress, while improvements in the other areas continue to lag, a senior administration official said. This judgment reflects sharp differences between U.S. military and intelligence officials on where the Afghan war is headed. Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban's unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating. The contrasting views echo repeated internal disagreements over the Iraq war: While the military finds success in a virtually unbroken line of tactical achievements, intelligence officials worry about a looming strategic failure.

Afghanistan: Fatal Military Quagmire

The American led western adventure in Afghanistan seems to be stumbling towards failure. With every passing day it appears that the Americans and their allies are stuck in a fatal military quagmire; their political and military weaknesses and limitations have been exposed by their inability to defeat an armed resistance which is intensifying daily. The western alliance has serious difficulty in harmonizing their military actions and unifying their political purpose. And the opposition to the war amongst the people of western countries involved in Afghanistan has been growing. All signs indicate that not only are the occupying powers unable to resolve the crises in their favour, but that their troubles are going to intensify in the coming years. The continuous brutalities of war and occupation, the broken promises, the corruption of the puppet regime, and people’s mounting miseries under the occupation have increased resentment towards the occupying forces and their puppet government in the country. This constant unrest and turbulence is spreading across the land, in cities and villages. Both the occupying authorities and the puppet regime realize the direness of the situation and have recognized that they are now unable to defeat their armed opposition militarily. This is why they are appealing to the insurgents for a negotiated end to the armed resistance. Some circles in the West--and also within Afghanistan--have shown interest and hope in current rumors of ongoing negotiations between the Taliban and the Karzai government. These negotiations however, lead nowhere. The Taliban have already rejected the possibility of negotiations and accommodations with the government unless there is a withdrawal of occupation forces. Furthermore, even if Karzai were to utilize his relations with certain elements within the Taliban and bring them under the umbrella of the puppet government, this would not end the conflict.

AFGHANISTAN: Kabul facing "unregulated" urbanisation

Gul Ahmad and his eight-member family live in a two-room shack in slums up on a hill in the north of Kabul city. Ahmad does not own a house. His monthly government salary is about US$60, half of which goes on rent. There is no electricity, drainage, tap water, school, clinic or other facility in the area. Kabul is the victim of a "rapid, unregulated and unequal" urbanisation, according to Yusuf Pashtun, the minister of urban development, and Pietro Calogero, a PhD researcher on urban development at the University of California. From an estimated 500,000 people in early 2001 Kabul's population has soared to over three million in 2007, according to the Afghan Central Statistics Office. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says over one million Afghan returnees from Pakistan and Iran have settled in Kabul. Tens of thousands of people have also flocked to the capital from across the country for various reasons, the Ministry of Urban Development said. However, the rapid population growth has not kept pace with service delivery. Only two percent of Kabul residents have regular access to electricity, while over half of them lack access to sanitation, said Mohammad Yasin Hellal, an official at the Kabul Municipality offices.

2007-11-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

Photo: Asadullah, of Baghlan, northern Afghanistan, holds his son Atiqulla, 3. Three older sons were among 70 schoolchildren killed Nov. 6 in a blast targeting visiting lawmakers that set off random shooting. Photo Credit: By Pamela Constable -- The Washington Post

Security Incidents on November 21, 2007

U.S.-led occupation forces and Afghan police killed 50 militants during an operation in the southern province of Uruzgan, the Afghan Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

A suicide attack outside the office of the governor of Nimroz, Afghanistan's southwestern province, has killed one of his adult sons and six of his bodyguards.

Security Incidents on November 22, 2007

An accidental blast occurred as some policemen were playing with explosion materials at a police compound of southern Afghan Zabul province on Thursday morning, killing a district police chief and his eight-year-old son, a spokesman for provincial administration said. Three policemen were also injured in the blast.

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside a police station in northeastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing one civilian and wounding 11, police said.

Security Incidents on November 23, 2007

AN AUSTRALIAN commando died in an attack on a bomb-making centre yesterday - the third soldier killed in Afghanistan in less than two months. The battle that claimed Private Worsley's life began early yesterday when Australian special forces attacked a collection of mud-brick houses where insurgents were allegedly involved in making roadside bombs about 10 kilometres from Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province.

Seven police officers beheaded in southern Afghanistan. Police officials in southern Afghanistan report Taliban militants have overrun police checkpoints outside a town near Kandahar, killing seven officers. A purported Taliban commander claims the officers were beheaded. At least six other Afghan police officers are missing. Today's attacks came just weeks after Afghan and foreign troops had freed the town from Taliban control.

The Taliban insurgents recaptured Gulistan district of western Afghan Farah province Friday, provincial governor Mohaidin Baloch said.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Afghanistan in danger of becoming a divided state

The Senlis Council on Wednesday called on NATO’s troop force size to be doubled to 80,000 after its new security assessment report based on field research during the last month revealed 54% of Afghanistan’s landmass now hosts a permanent Taliban presence. “The security situation has reached crisis proportions. The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, border areas, some district centres, and important road arteries” said Norine MacDonald QC, President and Lead Field Researcher of The Senlis Council. The disturbing conclusion is that, despite a universal desire to ‘succeed’ in Afghanistan, Afghanistan is in grave danger of becoming a divided state. The Taliban are the de facto governing authority in significant portions of territory in the south. Exploiting public frustration over poverty and inflammatory US-led counter narcotics policies, the Taliban are gaining increasing political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people. “It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears not to be whether the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen” said MacDonald. “Their stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever, and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a dramatic change in strategy before time runs out. Defeat in Afghanistan would be catastrophic to global security, and risks making NATO irrelevant.”

Stumbling into chaos: Afghanistan on the brink

The security situation in Afghanistan has reached crisis proportions. The Taliban's ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt; exclusive research undertaken by Senlis Afghanistan indicates that 54 per cent of Afghanistan’s landmass hosts a permanent Taliban presence, primarily in southern Afghanistan, and is subject to frequent hostile activity by the insurgency. The Taliban are the de facto governing authority in significant portions of territory in the south and east, and are starting to control parts of the local economy and key infrastructure such as roads and energy supply. The insurgency also exercises a significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change.

Afghanistan ‘falling into Taliban hands’

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into the group’s hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area. Despite the presence of tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid, the insurgents, driven out by the US invasion in 2001, now control “vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries,” the Senlis Council says in a report released today. On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a “significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people, who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change”.

Resurgent Taliban closing in on Kabul: report

The conflict in Afghanistan has reached "crisis proportions," with the resurgent Taliban present in more than half the country and closing in on Kabul, a report said on Wednesday. If NATO, the lead force operating in Afghanistan, is to have any impact against the insurgency, troop numbers will have to be doubled to at least 80,000, the report said. "The Taliban has shown itself to be a truly resurgent force," the Senlis Council, an independent think-tank with a permanent presence in Afghanistan, wrote in a study entitled "Stumbling into Chaos: Afghanistan on the brink." "Its ability to establish a presence throughout the country is now proven beyond doubt," it said. "The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centers, and important road arteries." Senlis said its research had established that the Taliban, driven out of Afghanistan by the U.S. invasion in late 2001, had rebuilt a permanent presence in 54 percent of the country and was finding it easy to recruit new followers. It was also increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside and suicide bombs, to powerful effect, and had built a stable network of financial support, funding its operations with the proceeds from Afghanistan's booming opium trade. "It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when," the report said. "Their oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever."

For some Afghan carpet weavers, opium use starts in the cradle

In a grubby courtyard outside a simple two-room house in northern Afghanistan, six women are working on a single large carpet. There are four or five dirty sheep hanging around, as well as a cow and a barking dog. There are a lot of children too: some of the older ones are helping with the arduous task of knotting the carpet; four of the small ones, aged between one month and one year, are sleeping peacefully nearby -- with the help of a little opium. "It's usual here to give opium to small children so they do not disturb us during our work," says 28-year-old Nazira, one of the weavers who have all pulled their burqas over their faces because unknown men are visiting. The women work all day making the carpets, which for most families in this area -- the Dawlat Abad district of Balkh province, near the border with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- are the main source of income. And they need to have their hands free of child-caring duties and distractions to complete the task which in this case will likely take around four months and earn the group about 600 dollars.

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: No sudden deportation of “undocumented” Afghans in Pakistan

Over 100,000 Afghans living and working in Pakistan without refugee cards will not be “unilaterally and hastily” deported to Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani official said at the end of a tripartite meeting of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan on 21 November in Kabul. Of the estimated 300,000 Afghans who could not get a refugee identity card through a Pakistan government registration process in late 2006, about 200,000 have already returned to Afghanistan, said Rauf Khan, chief commissioner for Afghan refugees in Islamabad, Pakistan. “The government of Pakistan considers undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan illegal aliens who are liable to be deported and sent back to their home country,” Rauf said. However, Pakistan’s Secretary of the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, Muhammad Jamil, who also attended the tripartite meeting, said undocumented Afghans would not be expelled without prior consultation with the Afghan authorities.

AFGHANISTAN: Revitalise transitional justice system - UN human rights commissioner

The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the international community involved in Afghanistan must recommit to the Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and Justice (APPRJ) - known as transitional justice - which is expected to address crimes committed in the past three decades in the war-torn country, said the UN high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour. At the end of her week-long visit to Afghanistan, Arbour told IRIN it was time to renew the already missed deadlines for APPRJ targets, set two years ago. “It is unthinkable to expect a full implementation of this whole document [transitional justice] within three years. It should be recommitted and renewed,” Arbour said. Backed by the UN and several other international actors, the government and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) set an ambitious three-year agenda for the implementation of transitional justice in late 2005. The APPRJ calls for the documentation of past crimes, the identification of alleged criminals, compensation to victim families, remembrance of all victims and prosecution of human rights violators. Almost two years later, however, the AIHRC says the transitional justice project has been a “complete failure” due to various problems - mainly lack of political commitment and support.

Afghan Slayings Stir Grief, Fury And Suspicion

Mohammed Asadullah, a high school teacher in this quiet northern town, was lining up his students to greet a group of visiting legislators from the capital when the bomb went off, hurling bodies into the air and sending up a cloud of thick, dark smoke. What happened next, he and other survivors recounted, was worse. "The bodyguards got nervous and started shooting. The police started firing, too. They even tried to shoot me," the teacher said Monday, angry tears coming to his eyes. He pointed to a charred, splintered pine tree where the bomb had detonated. "It was horrible. People were running and screaming, but it just went on. Five other teachers were killed by bullets, and so many students. They should all have been in class studying."

The horrific Nov. 6 incident outside the New Baghlan Sugar mill, which left 70 schoolchildren, six members of parliament and half a dozen other people dead, was initially described as Afghanistan's worst terrorist attack to date in two years of suicide bombings and other assaults by Taliban insurgents. It was also seen as an alarming sign that extremists had extended their reach into peaceful northern regions of the country. But the Taliban immediately denied responsibility for the bombing, and over the course of two weeks marked by emotional funerals and rising public anger, witnesses have emerged to lay blame on Afghan security forces who, for still unexplained reasons, retaliated with such sustained and wild barrages of gunfire that they killed many survivors of the blast.

Too few development dollars are actually spent in Afghanistan

More than half of Afghanistan 'under Taliban'

More than half of Afghanistan is back under Taliban control and the Nato force in the country needs to be doubled in size to cope with the resurgent group, a report by the Senlis Council think-tank says. A study by the group found that the Taliban, enriched by illicit profits from the country's record poppy harvest, had formed de-facto governments in swathes of the southern Pashtun belt. The Afghan government and its Nato allies strongly deny the Senlis version of what is taking place in the country and say the extent of alleged Taliban control – 54 per cent – is a major exaggeration. In particular, British troops in Helmand have, in recent months, recovered territory lost to the Islamist group. But senior defence sources say that a lack of frontline combat forces has meant that areas clawed back from the Taliban often cannot be held and have to be retaken after costly and fierce fighting. There is also an acknowledgement that the dangers on the ground have meant that aid efforts are being stymied. The Senlis Council made a name for itself by advocating that Afghan opium, which supplies 93 per cent of the world market, should be regulated and produced for medicinal purposes. The organisation had been regarded in the past as very much a fringe body with unrealistic policies. But it has recently begun to hold seminars with influential think-tanks such as the International institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which are attended by senior diplomats and military commanders. Last month, the European Parliament passed a motion urging the production of opium for medicine on an experimental basis by a sizeable majority.

2007-11-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

Photo: An Afghan vendor stands in front of his wares of drums and riddles as he waits for customers in the city of Herat, south west of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Nov. 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Fraidoon Pooyaa)

Security Incidents on November 18, 2007

"At least 100 Taliban militants have been killed and injured in the clean up operation in the Jalai district so far," provincial police chief Syed Aqa Saqib told Xinhua, adding "25 bodies of insurgents were buried in one grave in the Narghan village of Jalai."

Five policemen, who have been captured by Taliban insurgents two months ago, were found dead by hanging on a tree Saturday in Dihrawud district of southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, provincial police chief said on Sunday.

Security Incidents on November 19, 2007

At least six police officers are dead and 14 other people are wounded after a suicide bomber struck outside a governor's residence in Afghanistan. Officials say the bomber set off his explosives as people were on their way to work. The governor of Nimroz province says he was the target of the attack, and that his son was among those killed.

Security Incidents on November 20, 2007

Afghan and coalition troops killed a large group of Taliban fighters in a battle that involved several air strikes in southern Afghanistan Tuesday, the US-led force said. A "company-sized" group of Taliban guerrillas ambushed a combined Afghan and coalition patrol in the southern province of Uruzgan. It did not say if any civilians were killed.

Taliban insurgents have captured around 10 people allegedly belonging to a private security company in Garmser district of southern Afghan Helmand province, police said Tuesday. The incident occurred on Monday night and the people had been providing protection service for a foreign building company working on a road linking southern province Kandahar to western Herat, provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal told Xinhua.

As thirty-five more persons including 16 Taliban and seven soldiers were killed in fresh clashes between the security forces and militants thousands of people fled the troubled areas in Swat on Monday.

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REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

U.N. report: Afghan bodyguards shot children

An internal U.N. report obtained Monday said bodyguards protecting parliamentarians fired indiscriminately into a crowd after a suicide bombing and that children bore "the brunt of the onslaught." The report also said there was no evidence to show authorities had tried to identify those behind the shootings or bring them "to account for their crimes." The United Nations mission in Afghanistan said the report is one of many conflicting views inside its organization and has not been officially endorsed. The report by the U.N. Department of Safety and Security, obtained by The Associated Press, said it was not clear how many people died in the suicide bombing and how many died from subsequent gunfire after the Nov. 6 attack in Baghlan province. The report said that as many as two-thirds of the 77 killed and more than 100 wounded were hit by gunfire; however, some estimates said the number of people shot was much lower.

Losing Afghanistan, One Civilian at a Time

The road between the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad and the Pakistani border is one of the busiest in the country, congested with gaily painted trucks, battered taxis, buses packed to the rafters and Afghans riding bikes. One morning in early March, a suicide bomber plowed a Toyota packed with explosives into the middle of a U.S. convoy patrolling that road, killing himself and injuring a Marine. That was bad enough, but what may be the key to Afghanistan's future was what happened next. As pedestrians scattered in the resulting confusion and chaos, other Marines opened fire as their convoy sped away, shooting at vehicles and pedestrians over the course of some 10 miles, according to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. They left at least 12 civilians dead in their wake and injured dozens more. "They opened fire on everybody," one wounded bystander told a reporter, "the ones inside the vehicles and the ones on foot." A court of inquiry is scheduled to convene next month at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to determine whether the Marines acted improperly. Investigations by the U.S. military and the Afghan human rights commission have already concluded that the American convoy was not fired upon after the suicide attack.

The incident near Jalalabad is part of a disturbing larger pattern in Afghanistan. Last year was the worst year for civilian casualties since the fall of the country's cruel Taliban regime, and 2007 is shaping up to be even worse. The most alarming point: As of July, more civilians had died as a result of NATO, U.S. and Afghan government firepower than had died due to the Taliban. According to U.N. figures, 314 civilians were killed by international and Afghan government forces in the first six months of this year, while 279 civilians were killed by the insurgents. So why on Earth are the NATO and U.S. forces and their Afghan allies killing more civilians than the Taliban?

U.N. blames all sides for Afghan civilian deaths

United Nations Humans Rights envoy Louise Arbour criticized both Taliban insurgents and international troops in Afghanistan on Tuesday for killing civilians. There has been a steady escalation of violence in Afghanistan this year, and the United Nations estimates the number of security incidents has risen by 20 to 30 percent from last year. More than 200 civilians have been killed by Taliban suicide bombs this year, and overall some 1,200 civilians have died, about half in operations by Afghan and international troops. Afghanistan's biggest problems -- poverty, drug production, corruption and weak government -- are all linked to the lack of security due to the Taliban insurgency. "Some seem to think that human rights are a luxury that can be enjoyed only after security is ensured. But the major sources of insecurity in the country stem from human rights violations or the failure effectively to address the violations of the past," Arbour told a news conference in the capital, Kabul.

Afghan governor says suicide blast kills seven including son

A suicide attack outside the office of the governor of Afghanistan's southwestern Nimroz province on Monday killed one of his adult sons and six of his bodyguards, the governor told AFP. The blast happened at the gate of the provincial headquarters in Zaranj city soon after the governor entered. Nimroz is a relatively peaceful province sharing a long border with Iran. "Just as I got into my office today, there was a suicide attack outside the compound. Apparently I was the target of the suicide attacker," Governor Ghulam Dastageer told AFP. "Six of my bodyguards and my son were martyred in the suicide attack," he added. "Fourteen other people, including police and civilians, were wounded."

Helmand Buries Politician Killed in Suicide Blast

The wailing of mourners could be heard all through the ancient village of Qala-ye-Bost, where hundreds had gathered to pay their respects to the body of Engineer Abdul Matin, a local member of parliament killed by a massive suicide bomb in northern Afghanistan last week. Matin and five other members of the Afghan parliament were among dozens of people killed in the November 6 attack. The investigation is still ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that a suicide bomber blew himself up while the visiting politicians were meeting a group of local schoolchildren at Baghlan’s sugar factory. The final death toll may never be known, but officials put the number of dead at close to 60, with 150 injured, making this one of the bloodiest attacks since the fall of the Taleban in 2001. There is no shortage of suspects, but the Taleban, who often rush to take responsibility for incidents of this kind, denied involvement. Qari Yusuf, spokesman for the Taleban in southern Afghanistan, told IWPR that he condemned the attack and grieved for the victims.

Afghan boys suffer mental scars after suicide bomb

Afghan schoolboy Naqibullah fears closing his eyes. Each time he tries to go to sleep, he relives a suicide bombing that killed dozens of his classmates. "I dream about the attack. I see the wounded and dead bodies around me," said Naqibullah, 14, who was wounded in the blast two weeks ago in the northern Afghan town of Baghlan. The bomber blew himself up as boys from a high school lined up to greet a group of parliamentarians visiting a sugar factory. Survivors are suffering dangerous psychological scars, doctors say. Khalilullah Narmgoy, the head of the local hospital, said most of the children, while slowly recovering from their physical wounds, needed long-term psychological care. "Most of these children are suffering from depression," he said. "I, as a doctor, who was standing 15 meters (yards) from the attack, have been affected by it. I was shocked by it and now dream about dangerous things." The blast killed 72 people, including 52 schoolboys and five of their teachers. Six parliamentarians also died. "I panic badly. I dream about very dangerous things and wake up shouting," said Lotfullah, 14, who is also being treated for wounds in the Baghlan hospital.

Afghan boy dancers sexually abused by former warlords

They are known as "bacha bereesh," boys without beards, teenage boys who dress up as girls and dance for male patrons at parties in northern Afghanistan. It's an age old practice that has led to some of the boy dancers being turned into sex slaves by wealthy and powerful patrons, often former warlords, who dress the boys up as girls, shower them with gifts and keep them as "mistresses." Afghan police are battling to crackdown on the practice which has angered Islamic clerics who say those involved should be stoned for sodomy, forbidden under Islamic law. In a society where the sexes are strictly segregated, it is common for men to dance for other men at weddings in Afghanistan. But in northern Afghanistan, former warlords and mujahideen commanders have taken that a step further with competitions for their dancing boys. "Every boy tries to be the first. They are dressed in women's clothes, have bells on their feet and have artificial breasts," said Mohammad Yawar, a former mujahideen fighter against the Taliban and resident of the northern town of Pul-e Khumri.

Nobody guarding Afghanistan’s guards

The Afghan government and its international partners are struggling to bolster the country’s security forces, fighting the twin problems of boosting the numbers of the national army and trying to disband illegal armed groups. Yet, an unmonitored, unregulated and unauthorized force is on the streets, not just under the noses of authorities but also hired and legitimized by those working on building the security sector. As many as 28,000 armed personnel are hired by private security companies (PSCs), which have been operating as a lucrative business in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001, providing protection to foreigners and elite Afghans, guarding institutions, homes and individuals. The number of armed contractors is more than half the Afghan National Army, which is estimated at between 35,000 to 50,000, and could be larger if the numbers of “irregular” forces are added to the ranks of legal contractors.

Drones Will Replace Manned Aircraft Squadron in Afghanistan

Yet this is already clear: "As an attack platform, it allows me to do several things, he said. "Number one, I can take and airplane out and fly it for up to 20 hours. I can range the battlespace at more than three times the speed of the Predator. I can carry six munitions on the airplane. The beauty of it is," he continued, "that when the weapons are gone, you can keep that airplane up for a long time and use it for that persistent stare." The Reapers are controlled by operators from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

The Taleban’s Northern Front

While the attention of the Afghan government and the media is focused on major battles in the south of the country, the Taleban are making major headway in a northern region. Badghis, a north-western province wedged between Herat and Faryab, has been the scene of heavy fighting for the past two months, and the insurgents have occupied three of the province’s seven districts. They have also established intelligence and operational networks in most district centres. This was the first of the north-western provinces to fall to the Taleban in 1997. Now the insurgents are looking to repeat their earlier success, using Badghis as a launchpad for operations in the provinces further east, which include Jowzjan, Balkh, Takhar, and Badakhshan. In Faryab, directly to the north of Badghis, the Taleban have established a foothold in mountainous areas, and are trying to expand their networks there as well. The Taleban have launched several sorties in both provinces in the past two months and claim that the Bala Murghab, Ghormach and Qades districts of Badghis are largely in their hands.

AFGHANISTAN: Fifth least developed country in the world

Afghanistan has dropped a place in a UN global human development index, which ranks countries based on their citizens’ economic income, life expectancy and literacy rate, according to the country’s National Human Development Report (NHDR) for 2007. Afghanistan was ranked 174th out of 178 countries - ahead of only Burkina Faso, Mali, Sierra Leone and Niger. In Afghanistan’s first-ever human development report, which was released in 2004, the country was ranked 173rd and was widely expected to improve its human development indicators. Afghans live almost nine years less than people in other Least Developed Countries, the report’s findings show. “Life expectancy [in Afghanistan] has dropped from 44.5 years in 2003 to 43.1 years in 2005,” states the report, which was released on 18 November in Kabul. The report acknowledges Afghanistan’s steady progress in improving its health services and reducing child and maternal mortality figures (1,600 deaths per 100,000 births), but warns that over 30 Afghans still die from tuberculosis every day.

AFGHANISTAN: Conflict-affected displacement “major” humanitarian challenge - Afghan Red Crescent

Afghan civilians displaced by armed conflict in volatile parts of the country have become a “major” humanitarian challenge, the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) told IRIN on 20 November. Due to access restrictions there are no reliable statistics about the numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan, but in a report to the UN Security Council on 28 October the Secretary-General said about 44,000 Afghans were displaced as a result of fighting in the first half of 2007. “While this country does not have the luxury to prioritise one among several of its humanitarian problems, in general, conflict-affected displacement has become a major humanitarian challenge,” said Fatema Gailani, president of the ARCS. According to Gailani, thousands of civilians have been displaced in southern, southwestern and southeastern parts of the country because warring parties had allegedly breached international humanitarian law and not paid adequate heed to civilian protection. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says displacement of populations affected by armed conflict and other causes is a major humanitarian issue in the country. However, Salvatore Lombardo, head of the UNHCR in Afghanistan, said it was difficult to determine the magnitude of the problem.

AFGHANISTAN: Oxfam calls for aid to be more effective, transparent

Over US$15 billion of international aid money spent in Afghanistan in the past six years has not met the urgent humanitarian and development needs of the Afghan people because aid has either been insufficient or delivered ineffectively, a British charity organisation, Oxfam GB, said in a report. "Too much aid to Afghanistan is provided in ways that are ineffective or inefficient," said the report which was submitted to a committee of the House of Commons, in London, last week and made publicly available on 20 November. According to Oxfam, a big portion of the overall aid to Afghanistan "is absorbed by profits of companies and subcontractors, by non-Afghan resources and by high expatriate salaries and living costs". "Each full-time expatriate consultant costs up to half a million dollars a year," the report has found. The Oxfam report points to poor coordination among donors and a lack of transparency in aid spending which badly affects aid effectiveness. It also mentions weak implementing capacity, corruption and lack of resources in Afghan government institutions, exacerbating aid inefficiencies.

Afghanistan trailing badly on development: study

Afghanistan is fifth last on a global index of human development, according to a report released Sunday, despite billions of dollars in aid and help since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. The country's ranking on the Human Development Index -- a composite survey of education, longevity and economic performance -- is the lowest outside Africa, according to the Afghanistan Human Development Report 2007. The score was fractionally lower than that in the last such report, which was in 2004, but officials said this was more due to changes in data than a reflection of a real decline. Accurate statistics are difficult to find in Afghanistan, where even the size of the population is not clear. The report urged donors to fulfil aid commitments, adding that since 2006 they have contributed or pledged 10 billion dollars, "only half of what the government believes is needed to implement its development strategy." Afghanistan's position of 174th out of 178 placed it above only Niger (the lowest), Sierra Leone, Mali and Burkina Faso, and it was second to last on a separate ranking reflecting inequalities between men and women.

The Limits of Afghan Press Freedom

No reporters have been to Musa Qala since the district centre fell to the Taleban in February. It was a difficult decision for us to go there, but we had made contact with the Taleban spokesman, Qari Yusuf, and he told us it would be okay. We left Lashkar Gah around noon, and made a stop in Greshk, 30 kilomteres away. When we got there, my colleague made a call to our Taleban contact Taza Gul, who was going to be our guide. He took us to his house, about two km away from the centre of Greshk. We went by motorcycle. It was too far to walk because Taza Gul, who looked about 45, had an artificial leg. I think he probably lost it during the Jihad against the Soviets. I was very afraid as we got to the area. When we entered the house, I saw a television set in the corner of the room. Our host told us that this was a centre for controlling the media. The Taleban watch all of the broadcasts, and if they see something they don’t like, they send a warning to the reporter. They tell him that if they arrest him, they will not let him live.

2007-11-17T20:18:00.001-08:00

Photo: The body of an Afghan is transported after he was killed in a suicide attack which targeted a U.S. convoy in the Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007. A suicide bomber riding a bicycle targeted a U.S. military convoy in the Chaparhar district of Nangarhar province, killed one Afghan and wounded another one, the police chief of the Nangarhar province said. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Security Incidents on November 15, 2007

A military chopper of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Thursday made an emergency landing in Logar province, south of the Afghan capital Kabul, a statement of ISAF said. "An ISAF AH-64 Apache two-person attack helicopter made a precautionary landing in Logar province today," the statement said, adding that the helicopter had mechanical difficulties and the incident is not the result of enemy activity, it added.

Taliban insurgents killed a man teaching English courses in eastern Afghanistan, sparking a clash that left two suspected militants and two policemen dead, an official said Thursday. In eastern Paktia province, the Taliban on Wednesday killed an Afghan who was teaching English language classes, said Din Mohammad Darwesh, spokesman for the provincial governor.

In southern Helmand province, coalition forces were searching compounds Wednesday when a gunfight broke out between troops and militants holed up in several buildings and hiding among trees, the coalition said in a statement. The forces responded with gunfire and airstrikes that they said killed "several militants."

Security Incidents on November 16, 2007

Afghan and foreign forces clashed with Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan, leaving 25 suspected insurgents and two policemen dead, officials said Friday.

In southern Kandahar province, meanwhile, a roadside bomb hit a police patrol vehicle Friday, killing four policemen, said Zhari district chief Niaz Mohammad Serhadi.

Driver and conductor of an oil tanker, targeted by armed militants in central Afghanistan on Friday, have gone missing and are believed to be killed in the attack. Militants loyal to Hezbi Islami Party of former premier Gulduddin Hekmatyar claimed responsibility for the rocket attack on the fuel tanker. A militant commander Fazal Hadi said the vehicle, supplying fuel to foreign troops, was targeted in Kapisa province on Friday.

Canadian troops shot and killed an Afghan civilian and wounded another, the International Security Assistance Force and Canadian military said late Friday. "We deeply regret the loss of innocent civilian lives and a full investigation is being carried out," said Wing Cmdr.

Security Incidents on November 17, 2007

Militants kill 10 policemen, take away 19 others in W Afghanistan

Two Canadian Soldiers Killed, Three Wounded In Blast In Afghanistan

U.S.-led coalition forces killed 23 militants during weapons searches in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said on Saturday. Coalition forces searched compounds in the Garmser district of Helmand province looking for weapons. Another 11 suspects were also detained, it said.

A suicide bomber blew himself while targeting U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan, but no one else was hurt in the attack, the Jalalabad provincial spokesman said.

In the usually more peaceful north, armed gunmen loyal to a former warlord killed nine policemen and wounded another five in an ambush, the provincial police chief said on Saturday. "The police team was sent to the Shahrak district to disarm an irresponsible armed group posing a threat to the people," Shah Jahan Noori, the police chief of Ghor province.

In the west, five rockets landed at Herat airport overnight, the Herat border police chief Rahmatullah Safai said. "Initial reports indicate that no one was killed, but we don't know the extent of damage at the moment," he said.

A double wedding convoy travelling between Herat and Kandahar City was attacked Friday, killing the two grooms and one child. Gunmen opened fire on the three-vehicle convoy near the village of Howz-e-Madad in Zhari district at about 11 a.m. One man and one child were also wounded.

A roadside bomb in the south killed two NATO soldiers and their translator on Saturday, the alliance said in a statement. Three other NATO soldiers were wounded in the blast that hit their vehicle, the statement said. The nationalities of the NATO dead and wounded was not disclosed, nor the location of the bombing.

Afghan National Army backed by the NATO forces killed at least 20 "Taliban insurgents" in a fresh cleanup operation launched in southern Afghan province of Kandahar on Saturday, the police said.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Taliban fighters escalate attacks

Taliban militants have staged more roadside bomb and suicide attacks in Afghanistan this year, raising concerns that the insurgents are gaining strength and countering U.S. and NATO tactics. Through October, the number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), including car and suicide bombs, totaled 1,932, up from 1,739 for all last year, according to military statistics. There were 782 such attacks in 2005. The increased activity comes as security in Iraq improves. Afghanistan has seen its bloodiest year since the U.S. invasion in 2001. Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert at New York University, said the greater use of bombs shows the Taliban is gaining momentum. The militants have recently moved back into some areas of the country, particularly those where Afghanistan's lucrative opium crop is grown. The insurgents have shied away from more conventional attacks. When Taliban members have tried to fight U.S. and NATO forces directly, they have been vulnerable to the coalition's superior firepower and air attacks. "They've gone back to guerrilla warfare … because it works," Rubin said. The violence has translated into a higher death toll for coalition troops. At least 101 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this year, compared with 87 in all of 2006, according to statistics compiled by the Associated Press. NATO casualties have also increased.

Fingers on triggers, then split-second decisions

Facing ever-present and deadly threats from suicide bombers, Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan open fire almost weekly at Afghans getting too close to convoys or approaching checkpoints at high speed, according to the most complete public accounting to date of such incidents. The exhaustively compiled summary shows at least nine Afghans have been killed and 22 injured in more than two dozen shootings when Canadian soldiers fired on approaching individuals or vehicles since Canadian troops deployed to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar province in the spring of last year. Every so-called "escalation of force incident" is investigated by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, an independent military police unit with a mandate to investigate serious and sensitive matters. All Canadian soldiers involved in the 61 completed investigations have been cleared. Three shootings, including the killing last month of a motorcyclist and the wounding of his 12-year-old brother, remain under investigation. Another 11 completed investigations determined that Canadian soldiers weren't involved.

Afghan prisons: What Ottawa knew

The Harper government knew prison conditions were appalling long before The Globe and Mail published a series of stories last April detailing the abuse and torture of prisoners turned over by Canadian soldiers to Afghanistan's notorious secret police, documents released this week show. The heavily censored documents also show that at the same time as senior ministers were denying evidence of abuse, officials on the ground in Afghanistan were collecting first-hand accounts from prisoners of mistreatment. Although large sections of the more than 1,000 pages of documents and messages between Ottawa, Kabul and Kandahar remain blacked out, two disturbing pictures emerge from the pile. First, that despite working hard to create the impression of careful follow-up in monitoring of detainees, efforts have been hampered by a chaotic and unreliable Afghan system in which scores, perhaps hundreds, of detainees have vanished. Second, in the months prior to public allegations of abuse and torture, there was compelling evidence of terrible conditions in Afghan prisons. In addition to routine reports by diplomats citing widespread torture and abuse, Canadian officials were also delivering first-hand accounts showing how grim the prisons were.

Gunfire hit most of Afghan bomb victims

Up to two-thirds of the 77 people killed and 100 wounded in a suicide bombing last week were hit by bullets from visiting lawmakers' panicked bodyguards, who fired on a crowd of mostly schoolchildren for up to five minutes, a preliminary U.N. report says. Afghanistan's Interior Ministry says only a "small number" of the victims were hit by gunfire, but an Afghan official in Baghlan province told The Associated Press that bodyguards were "raining bullets" on the crowd. The suicide bomb contained ball bearings, the Interior Ministry said, which may have caused wounds that look like bullet holes. An Afghan doctor who treated patients after the Nov. 6 blast, meanwhile, told the AP that a high-ranking government official told him not to publicly reveal the number of gunfire victims, suggesting a possible government cover-up. Separate teams of U.N. investigators have uncovered conflicting information about the number of people hit by gunfire and are trying to reconcile the differences, according to two Western officials who have seen the internal reports. The two spoke to the AP on condition they not be identified talking about preliminary findings. But at least one of those reports — based on interviews with witnesses and medical authorities and a reconstruction of the bomb scene — says that of the roughly 77 people killed and 100 wounded, up to two-thirds were hit by the three to five minutes of gunfire the bodyguards fired into the crowd, one official said.

Report: Poppy growth up in Afghanistan

A top United Nations official says British forces have failed to reduce opium poppy production in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the United Nations' anti-narcotics unit, has called for a greater crackdown. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposes paying farmers to stop growing poppies, used to produce heroin and finance the Taliban, The Independent reported Saturday. While Brown wants to avoid alienating farmers who make a living from poppies, U.S. officials are pressing Britain to destroy the crops through aerial spraying, the British newspaper said. The task of poppy eradication has fallen to Britain because British soldiers are the part of the NATO force primarily assigned to Helmand Province, where most of Afghanistan's poppies are grown. In the past year, poppy growing in Afghanistan increased 17 percent -- now accounting for 93 percent of the world's opium total -- and heroin production rose by a third to 8,200 tons, Costa said in the United Nations report.

Polish NATO troops charged with murdering Afghan civilians

Military authorities charged six Polish soldiers with murdering civilians in Afghanistan during an August incident involving Polish troops from a NATO-led security force. The soldiers could face 12 years in prison if found guilty of their alleged role in shootings in a village in the eastern part of the country. Another soldier was charged with the lesser offence of opening fire on a civilian target, prosecutors said. All seven soldiers were arrested Tuesday and remain in custody. On Tuesday, the defence ministry said the arrests followed the soldiers' "violation of the standards of international law and notably the Hague and Geneva Conventions," which regulate the behaviour of the military in conflict zones. Poland currently has 1,200 troops serving with NATO's 36,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is battling a Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: Uneasy Over Pakistan's Emergency

A wary Afghanistan has been closely following events across the border in Pakistan where President Gen. Pervez Musharraf clamped an emergency on Nov. 3 citing rising militancy and "interference" by the judiciary. For two weeks, a defiant opposition has protested the clamp down on civil liberties and the abrogation of the Constitution. Hundreds of lawyers, civil society activists and journalists have been detained by military intelligence, and the orders for the arrests are "coming right from the top", according to Pakistan media reports. A ban on public gatherings means that those who participate risk being detained and beaten up. On Wednesday, cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, an outspoken critic of Musharraf, was arrested on the campus of Punjab University in Lahore where he was addressing a student protest. Ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto who threatened a ‘long march to Islamabad’ on Nov. 13 was put under house arrest for a week. Pakistan’s widely-watched, independent, Urdu-language news channels are off the air. The ban also extends to all Afghan channel telecasts from Pakistan. Gag orders have been lifted only on the English-language media, both print and TV, which do not threaten the authorities since they reach only a tiny elite. The government has amended the Army Act of 1952 to allow military courts to try civilians. With Musharraf both the president and army chief, there are fears that the country may be under ‘martial law’ once again. Turmoil in Pakistan has a direct impact on Afghanistan, Faruq Meranai, member of Parliament from Nangarhar province told the independent, Kabul-based newspaper Erada. "We are afraid that if the Pakistan military once again take power, they will interfere in our domestic affairs," he said bluntly.

2007-11-14T18:59:00.000-08:00

Photo: An Afghan girl peers from the window of her a bullet-ridden wall of a house in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2007. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Security Incidents on November 12, 2007

The Times of India is reporting the deaths of two NATO soldiers in the Bermal district, Paktika province eastern Afghanistan according to NATO. The soldiers died when an IED hit their vehicle on Monday, November 12. An Afghan interpreter was also killed and one other soldier was wounded.

At least 18 people are dead in southern Afghanistan in U.S.-coalition raids on suspected bomb-making compounds. The worst of the damage in Sunday's raids came from a single grenade lobbed at a building where militants were holed up. The building collapsed, killing several militants along with a woman and two children. Coalition troops had come under heavy fire.

Coalition kills 15 Afghan rebels, 3 civilians

In central Afghanistan, militants ambushed a police convoy Sunday, killing four officers and wounding two others.

Security Incidents on November 13, 2007

Two Nato soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed in a roadside bomb blast yesterday , as officials said 22 other people including three civilians were killed in separate attacks.

Security Incidents on November 14, 2007

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – A Coalition servicemember died here today of a non-combat related injury. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin. The incident is under investigation.

U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces clashed with militants in southern Afghanistan and called in airstrikes that killed dozens of insurgents, a spokesman said Wednesday. Insurgents attacked the joint force with small-arms and rocket-propelled grenades in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province on Tuesday, before fleeing into a civilian home, the coalition said. Dozens of militants were killed during the operation, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman. There were no reports of casualties among coalition and Afghan forces.

One ISAF soldier was killed in southern Afghanistan today when he was caught in an IED explosion during a routine patrol. A local interpreter was also injured and is being treated at an ISAF medical facility.

Iranian engineer kidnapped in Afghanistan-police

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REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Baghlan's shock - Survivors recall the horror of the deadly Afghan suicide blast

The lane leading to the Baghlan sugar factory is lined with trees. All of them have been painted white at the base, but one is now blackened. This is where a suicide bomber detonated explosives last week. In all, around 70 people died here. More than 100 people were injured. The bomb, laced with ball bearings, targeted a delegation of MPs, but most of the victims were schoolboys, there to welcome the visiting dignitaries. In the confusion after the blast, bodyguards working for the MPs opened fire. When we arrived in Baghlan, north of Kabul, survivors and the bereaved clustered round us in minutes, eager to tell their stories. Mahmad Jaweid, 15, was on crutches. He was one of the walking wounded - one of the lucky ones. He had been brought by his teacher to welcome the MPs. He ran away when he heard gunfire but was injured in the leg. Shafiqullah, 18, lost two of his brothers in the blast. One of them was 10, the other 11. After 30 years of conflict, Afghans have had to get used to violence. But this bombing shocked the country profoundly. Partly because of the high number of deaths, partly because so many of the dead were children. And partly because no-one has claimed responsibility. Many people blame what they call "the enemies of Afghanistan" - a phrase that can cover the Taleban, other insurgents or the factions led by various warlords.

Corruption rife in Afghanistan, president admits

Corruption among Afghan officials is rife and government must be reformed to help end 30 years of war, misery and oppression, President Hamid Karzai said n Tuesday in an unusually frank assessment of his country's woes. Large profits from Afghanistan's $3-billion opium crop, funds skimmed from aid and reconstruction contracts and bribes for services fuel official corruption, weaken public faith in the government and increase support for hardline Taliban insurgents. "We have seen a lot of misery in this country, but still we have not learned a lesson from our mistakes. The luxurious houses and buildings either belong to government staff or members of parliament," Karzai told a meeting of village elders in Kabul. The capital Kabul and other cities are currently undergoing a building boom with gaudy villas springing up in wealthier neighbourhoods while the poor live in mud huts with no running water or electricity. After Karzai spoke, an old man rose to his feet. "There is something I can't tell you, but if I don't tell you I will feel guilty inside," he told the president who urged him to speak his mind. "The government and cabinet members are sucking the blood of innocent people, we can't tolerate the corruption in every government office," he said.

Private security firms a problem in Afghanistan-study

Private security contractors in Afghanistan add to the sense of insecurity, are often confused with foreign troops, employ former militiamen and may have links to crime, said an independent Swiss study published on Monday. The number of private security companies has risen steadily since U.S.-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in 2001, with armed men guarding homes and offices in cities and supply convoys and construction projects in the countryside. The Afghan government has failed to introduce proper legislation or regulations to govern the private security companies, but the police have nevertheless begun a crackdown on those operating without a temporary licence. Some of the companies are Afghan-owned, while among the foreign-owned companies the main country of origin is the United States followed by Britian. The main problem, said Susanne Schmeidl, the author of the Swiss study, is that "nobody guards the guardians". Private security companies represent a new form of mercenary activity, a United Nations report said last week. The firms have come under increased scrutiny since a shooting in September in which guards working for the company Blackwater were accused of killing 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

Poland charges 7 in Afghan killings

Prosecutors charged six Polish soldiers Wednesday with murder and violating international law in the deaths of several civilians in an allegedly unprovoked attack in Afghanistan. A seventh soldier involved in the Aug. 16 attack on the Nangarkhel village faces lesser charges, said Karol Frankowski, a military prosecutor in the western city of Poznan. The criminal charges were the first brought against Polish soldiers in connection with military actions while serving in Afghanistan. Several soldiers who served in Iraq were found guilty of corruption while on duty. The group is accused of firing mortars and machine guns on the village in the eastern Afghan province of Paktika without "any simultaneous, direct threat," in violation of The Hague and Geneva conventions protecting civilians in areas of armed conflict, Frankowski said. Six civilians — including children — were killed and three women suffered wounds that resulted in amputated limbs, Frankowski said.

Transitional Justice An Uphill Battle in Afghanistan

“A Platform for Citizen Initiative in Truth and Justice” is the latest effort to nudge Afghanistan along the road to dealing with its vicious war years. Last week’s conference held in Kabul formed part of a year-long effort to raise awareness and encourage activism among civil society organizations and the community. The goal is enabling citizens to band together and advocate with one voice for justice. Yet in Afghanistan, transitional justice is an uphill battle.

Report: British troops encircling Musa Qala

A report in the British Telegraph newspaper, citing senior British military sources, said a column of 50 British armored vehicles have begun to encircle the Taliban viper’s nest, Musa Qala. The move comes nearly nine months after Taliban fighters seized the poppy-producing district from tribal elders aligned with British forces in Helmand province. Since then bloody clashes have erupted frequently, most notably since August, leaving hundreds of Taliban fighters dead.

Iraq and Afghanistan violated just war theory

On the eve of Remembrance Sunday, 11 November 2007, Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams described the Western-backed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a tragic mess which failed to conform to the principles of 'just war' theory and brought great suffering. The remarks came over the weekend as the head of the Church of England continued his visit to Norfolk. Dr Williams was speaking during a visit to Norwich Cathedral as part of a three-day tour of the region, reports the Norfolk Eastern Daily News. The archbishop said that while people should recognise and honour the bravery of soldiers at war, past and present, the Middle East conflicts fell short of one of the significant requirements of what is traditionally held to be a just war. He told an audience of 600 clergy and lay church leaders that: “One of the aspects of traditional just war theory is that you need to know what would count as a good end and how you would know when you have that and what to do then." Dr Williams continued: “I don't think we had that in place sadly. I don't think we knew what we would do next or what would count as our ending. And that is the tragedy.” Dr Williams also talked about how Christian pacifists can reconcile their beliefs with the reality of war and the church's development during some of the most turbulent times in history saying that for much of its early history it was involved in “damage limitation” exercises. “Granted there are going to be wars, how do you stop then being nightmares and a mere expression of naked power?" he asked.

A massacre in Afghanistan (May 8, 2007 – May 11, 2007)

In what must surely be labeled a massacre, some 50-80 civilians were killed in a string of small villages including Sarwan Qala and Sra Ghar. An occupation force convoy was attacked in the afternoon of May 8th. Later U.S. Special Forces called-in close in support. US/NATO war planes then bombed houses where they believed Taliban were hiding. Even the puppet governor of Helmand Province, Assadullh Wafa, admitted that 21 civilians had died in the bombing (a figure widely cited by the Associated Press which routinely and uncritically publishes accounts by the U.S. military and the Kabul client regime). Others put the deaths much higher. A resident of the bombed area, Mohammad Asif, said five homes in the village of Soro were bombed, killing 38 and injuring more than 20. "Foreign troops are killing Afghans every day, but our government has closed its eyes and does not see our casualties," local resident Haji Ibrahim said. Residents disputed that Taliban fighters were involved. "There were no Taliban in our area," Mohammad Rahim, a resident of Sangin, told Reuters by phone, adding he had seen 24 bodies in three houses. The village of Sarwan Qala was demolished.

Death by the light of a silvery moon

A revitalized Taliban stage daily operations in the Kunar Valley in Afghanistan, either with suicide bombers, guerrilla attacks or Russian-made rockets. Deep in their mountain hideaway, they tell Syed Saleem Shahzad why they have to wait for moonlit nights, and about the importance of donkeys in a struggle they increasingly believe they can win. NAWA PASS, Pakistan border with Afghanistan - Sitting with four key Taliban commanders deep in a labyrinth of lush green mountains, I could see the Sarkano district of the Kunar Valley in Afghanistan, which is the provincial hub of the American military and a base for the Afghan National Army and Afghan intelligence. Scores of guerrilla groups, each comprising a few dozen men, hide on the fringes of the Kunar Valley and launch daily operations into Kunar and Nooristan provinces, and with each passing day they receive new recruits and their attacks grow in intensity.

Military starts using drug dogs to search troops' bags in Afghanistan

Canadian military police have started using drug dogs to search troops' bags at Kandahar Air Field after being tipped about soldiers suspected of using heroin, hash and pot, say newly released documents. The documents, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, indicate there were at least five targeted and random searches of soldiers' belongings in June and July at Kandahar Air Field.

U.S. soldiers ambushed in Afghanistan

Village elders in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan are suspected of helping militants ambush U.S. soldiers. Elders in the Korengal Valley of Kunar Province are suspected of informing Taliban fighters of the schedule and location of U.S. troops operating in the area, ABC News reported Monday. The network has recorded exclusive footage of one of the attacks, shot by journalists embedded with the 2nd Platoon, Battle (B) Company of the 173rd Airborne. The footage was to air Monday night on ABC's "Nightline." The video shows the U.S. soldiers being ambushed twice after leaving meetings with village elders.

Amnesty Urges NATO to End Afghan Prisoner Transfers Amid Torture Fears

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International urged NATO-led forces in Afghanistan Tuesday to stop transferring prisoners to the Afghan authorities, saying it feared they could be tortured. In a new report, Amnesty said the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) could be exposing detainees to abuse, including whipping, beatings, exposure to extreme cold and food deprivation. It singled out Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) as a major offender and said the agency "currently poses a serious threat to those in its custody". Amnesty said Britain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway had signed "memorandums of understanding" and other accords on prisoner transfers with the Afghan authorities, and that Belgium, France, Germany and Sweden may do so too.

Six million Afghan schoolchildren to get landmine lessons

The government of Afghanistan and the UN Mine Action Center for Afghanistan (UNMACA) have launched an awareness campaign to educate more than six million schoolchildren countrywide about the risks of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO), the Ministry of Education (MoE) and UN told IRIN on 14 November. The country is replete with landmines and UXO, which kill and injure about 60 people, almost half of them children, every month, according to UNMACA. On 10 November, 125 trainers from 34 Afghan provinces started a three-day course in Kabul, the capital, covering a new educational method designed to boost public awareness, particularly schoolchildren’s knowledge, about landmines and other risky unexploded devices. “These 125 trainers will train teachers in their respective provinces across the country who will then share their lessons with other teachers and finally teachers will teach students in classrooms,” said Ahmad Jan Nawzadi, a UNMACA public information officer in Kabul. Officials expect that by the end of 2008 all schoolchildren in the country will have basic awareness about the risks of landmines and UXO. More than 17 million Afghans have been educated about landmines and UXO hazards in the past two decades, mine clearing agencies say. However, children and returning refugees are considered particularly vulnerable to the risks.

AFGHANISTAN: Insecurity stops food aid to a Daykundi district

A UN World Food Programme (WFP) convoy with 50 metric tonnes of mixed food aid for thousands of beneficiaries in Geeti district of Daykundi province, central-south Afghanistan, could not reach its final destination due to security concerns, WFP told IRIN. “A safe passage for the WFP food aid convoy to Geeti district was not available due to increased insecurity,” said Rikki Maliklali, WFP’s deputy representative in Afghanistan. WFP distributed some of its food aid in Daykundi’s provincial capital, Nili, after it became clear that the convoy - about five private trucks - could not wait indefinitely. The remaining aid has been sent to Waras district in neighbouring Bamyan province where it will be distributed through WFP’s ongoing projects, Maliklali added. Security concerns arose after Taliban insurgents infiltrated Kajran district in southern Daykundi in a bid to destabilise the province, which borders insurgency-torn southern Helmand, Afghanistan’s interior ministry confirmed. Afghan government forces launched a military operation on 11 November to drive out Taliban insurgents from Kajran. WFP has suffered unprecedented attacks on its food aid convoys in Afghanistan in the past 11 months.

Upwardly mobile - How cell phones are providing opportunities for Afghan women

The mobile phone has boosted the incomes of African women farmers and empowered poor Muslim women in Bangladesh. But can it also change women's lives in a conservative country where, only six years ago, a Taleban government confined women to the home? "Absolutely," insists Shainoor Khoja, who heads social programmes for Roshan, one of the biggest mobile telephone networks now operating in Afghanistan. But she admits it is still a "monumental task" to get women into the workforce. In a country with few landlines, nearly four million Afghans now have mobile telephones and the number keeps rising. It is big business and there are now four mobile phone companies in Afghanistan. All have social programmes including projects to distribute telephones free to women, especially in even more conservative areas outside Kabul. Suhaira, 27, is one of the success stories. Married at 14, and now mother to five children, she runs a fruit and vegetable stand in her Kabul neighbourhood. Inside her crowded shop, there is a phone box, essentially a pay-per-call mobile telephone for public use. "I wanted to be the first woman shopkeeper in Afghanistan," she declares as she serves customers wearing a black scarf that covers her head and half of her face. Her eyes shine with conviction. A sympathetic government official agreed to give her a licence. Roshan helped - through its programme to subsidise phone bills for women's businesses. And her husband gave her permission. That did not stop rumours circulating at the local mosque about her talking to men outside her family circle. "At the beginning people would come and warn my wife, 'We will kill you'," says her husband Meraj. "But the government of Hamid Karzai says women can work... we do not care what people say about us."

2007-11-11T19:46:00.000-08:00

Photo: Afghan demonstrators shout slogans during a protest in Jalalabad, the provincial capital of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov, 11, 2007. Over 1,000 university students of Nangarhar province demonstrated seeking the death penalty for a former journalist Mohammad Ghaws Zalmai, who is accused of insulting the Quran by misinterpreting the holy book. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Security Incidents on November 9, 2007

A district governor and his three bodyguards were killed in a Taliban attack while the US-led coalition troops claimed killing 'several Taliban' in the volatile southern zone of Afghanistan.

A British soldier was killed in a road accident in southern Afghanistan. It rolled off a bridge near the town of Sangin in Helmand province. Two others were injured in the accident.

One soldier of the NATO-led International Occupation Force was killed and another was injured when an improvised explosive device exploded in northern Afghanistan, it was announced Friday.

Security Incidents on November 10, 2007

Six U.S. soldiers, three Afghan troops killed in ambush

Security Incidents on November 11, 2007

In Helmand province, the suicide bomber detonated himself near the NATO convoy in the town of Gereshk. None of the soldiers was hurt, but three civilian bystanders were critically wounded, said Helmand police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal. [Other reports say five civilians were killed. – dancewater]

A service member with the U.S.-led coalition died of wounds suffered during a gun battle Saturday near the Tagab Valley of Kapisa province, 40 miles northeast of Kabul, the coalition said in a statement. It did not disclose the soldier's nationality.

Taliban militants also ambushed a police checkpoint near the city of Lashkar Gah in Helmand, leaving three policemen seriously wounded, Andiwal said.

In the eastern province of Khost, police patrolling on foot Saturday were hit by a land-mine blast that killed one officer and wounded two civilians, said Wazir Pacha

On Saturday, Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint near Qalat city in Zabul province. The ensuing gun battle left two policemen dead and one wounded, said provincial highway police commander Jailali Khan. Another policeman was missing, he said.

Unknown gunmen on motorbikes shot dead six pro-government tribal elders Sunday as they headed to a prayer service in western Afghanistan, a provincial police chief said. The gunmen opened fire on the elders as they were traveling to a mosque in Herat province, Juma Khan Adil told AFP.

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REPORTS

How to Help Afghanistan people

Afghanistan Pushes Reconciliation Effort

After nearly two years of increased bloodshed, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is reaching out to Taliban militants, who have been waging battle against his government, in a renewed push for a political settlement to a conflict that increasingly seems unwinnable militarily, analysts and diplomats say. Speaking of the need for national reconciliation, Karzai has invited insurgents to lay down their arms and talk, and even join his administration. His overtures have met with responses that range from contempt to cautious consideration by various elements within the Taliban, the radical Islamic movement that U.S.-led forces ousted from power in 2001. But observers say that those differences can be exploited and that the signs of flexibility, however tentative or fleeting, are encouraging. "There's more space than there's ever been for a solution to this other than endless conflict," said Adrian Edwards, a United Nations spokesman here in the Afghan capital. The push for dialogue comes after a summer of deadly militant attacks. The country was hit Tuesday by its most devastating suicide bombing yet, which killed as many as 73 people, including more than a dozen children and six lawmakers. The Taliban has denied responsibility.

External pressures probably play a part as well in the Afghan government's decision to engage with the insurgents. Meeting last month in the Netherlands, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization declined to significantly boost its commitment of 41,000 troops in Afghanistan, more than a third of whom are American. The decision elicited a harsh response from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. Britain and Canada, whose soldiers patrol the volatile, Taliban-ridden south, are under pressure at home to cut back or withdraw their troops. British officials, diplomats and military commanders have begun emphasizing the need for Afghanistan's problems to be "resolved politically" - through talks with some insurgents. The U.S. has reacted more cautiously, but has left the door open to selective negotiations. "It's very important to be precise about this," U.S. Ambassador William B. Wood said last month in an interview on Afghan television. "The United States is not opposing the invitation of the government of Afghanistan to talk to elements of the Taliban who are willing to come in and respect the constitution and respect the authority of the democratically elected government. . . . "We also, of course, agree with [Karzai] that this can have no effect on military operations, that this cannot include people who were associated with Al Qaeda."

British forces stretched to the limit by the fight against the Taliban

On a hillside outside Kabul, Warrant Officer Harising Gurung of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Gurkha Rifles, is putting Afghan officer candidates through their paces. "How do you show your men where to aim their fire?" he bellows, an interpreter echoing him. "That's right: you point your rifle at the target!" The men have been selected purely for their ability to read and write, and acceptable physical fitness. So early in their training there is no indication whether they are suited to lead soldiers into battle against the Taliban. The trainers accept that of each intake of 120 officer recruits, at least a sixth are unlikely to complete the 23-week course, either because they are rejected as unsuitable or they walk away. As we join WO1 Gurung, his commanding officer, Major Mark Dommett, learns that the first candidate has dropped out.

Afghan bomb victims buried as toll rises to 68

Families of children killed in Afghanistan's deadliest suicide bombing buried their relations yesterday, while witnesses said some of the victims may have been killed or wounded by guards who opened fire after the blast. The death toll from Tuesday's bombing rose to 68, most of whom were children. Six MPs were among the dead. President Hamid Karzai and dozens of other leaders watched a guard of honour carry the MPs' coffins at Kabul's main airport, after they were flown by helicopter from the blast site, 95 miles north of the capital. Two Afghans were arrested in connection with the attack, which came as a crowd welcomed a delegation of MPs to a sugar factory. The provincial police chief, General Abdul Rahman Sayed Khail, said the two had ordered women to leave the blast site before the bombing, raising officials' suspicions. A deputy education minister, Abdul Ghafor Ghazniwal, said students he had visited in Kabul hospitals told him that a conservative cleric had told female students to go home because they should not be out in public. Hundreds of mourners gathered at a mosque near the site of the bombing in the town of Baghlani Jadid before moving to a hilltop graveyard. Bodies were lined up, covered with colourful carpets, as men in turbans knelt beside them.

Fifty Nine Children Killed in Afghan Suicide Attack

A suicide attack in Afghanistan this week killed 59 children and five teachers, the education ministry said Friday, taking the death toll to 75 in the deadliest attack in the insurgency-hit country. Six lawmakers and five bodyguards were also killed in the blast on Tuesday in the northern province of Baghlan. "We have got 59 school children, aged from eight to 18, and five teachers killed in that blast," education ministry spokesman Zuhor Afghan said. The children were among a crowd of people who had gathered to welcome a visiting delegation of parliamentarians to a sugar factory outside the town of Pul-i-Khumri, north of Kabul. Officials said earlier Friday that 64 people had been killed in the attack. Afghan said that after the blast Education Minister Hanif Atmar had reissued a ban on children being assembled to welcome visitors to such functions. "The students were already banned from attending those kinds of ceremonies," Afghan said. "But after this attack, the minister has ordered again that no-one can force any student to participate in those kind of ceremonies any more," he said.

Afghanistan: Student Attendance Banned After Deaths

The government yesterday banned students from public ceremonies for politicians or dignitaries after a deadly suicide blast earlier in the week killed 59 schoolboys. Five teachers and six members of parliament also were killed in Tuesday's blast in relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan in an attack that has shaken public faith in the ability of the government and foreign troops in the country to provide security. The attacker blew himself up as schoolboys lined up to greet a visiting delegation of opposition parliamentary deputies in the town of Baghlan. "We have 64 martyrs, 59 of them are children and five of them are teachers," Education Ministry spokesman Zahoor Afghan said. "There are 96 wounded. Of those, three are teachers; the rest are students."

Afghan demonstrators demand death penalty for 'Koran abuse'

More than 1,000 university students demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan Sunday to demand the death penalty for an official accused of insulting the Koran, police and witnesses said. The attorney general's spokesman, former journalist Mohammad Ghaws Zalmai, was arrested at the Pakistan border a week ago trying to flee after being accused of misinterpreting the Muslim holy book in a new translation. "Death to Ghaws Zalmai!" shouted the angry mob in the eastern town of Jalalabad, an AFP reporter in the crowd said. "We want him hanged!" "He has insulted our religion and must be killed," the group said. The demonstrators blocked a main road linking the eastern town to the capital, Kabul, for several hours. Dozens of police officers were on hand to prevent violence. The conservative parliament last week banned Zalmai from leaving the country days after the distribution of about 6,000 copies of his Dari-language translation, called "Koran-i-Pak" or "clean Koran".

UK's New Afghanistan Plan: Pay Farmers to Ditch Opium

Gordon Brown is planning a radical scheme to subsidise farmers in Afghanistan to persuade them to stop producing heroin, as part of a wide-ranging drive to re-energise policy in the conflict the prime minister now regards as the front line in the fight against terrorism. The Foreign Office minister Lord Malloch-Brown has admitted that the rise in opium production in the country means Britain "cannot just muddle along in the middle" and must come up with more imaginative ideas on opium eradication. Ministers are looking at what Lord Malloch-Brown describes as a system of payments loosely along the lines of the common agricultural policy to woo the Afghan farmers off opium production. The government is conducting joint research on suitable economic incentives with the World Bank. British and allied forces are also looking at destroying drug factories inside Afghanistan, and a much better-targeted drive against the big traffickers responsible for 90% of the opium which reaches the west.

U.S. ponders future of spraying Afghan opium crops

A heated debate within the Bush administration over Afghanistan's surging opium trade could lead the United States to shelve a contentious plan to spray poppy crops with herbicide from the air, officials say. Aerial spraying, used by the United States to fight cocaine production in Latin America, is championed by counternarcotics officials in the White House and State Department as the most effective way to destroy poppies in Taliban-controlled areas and cut a key source of funding for the Islamist militants. But it has run into broad resistance from Afghan officials, the U.S. Congress and Defense Department, and European allies who fear it could backfire on efforts to win over the Afghan people, according to officials and experts involved in the discussions. Critics say spraying would give the Taliban a powerful propaganda tool among villagers devastated by a Soviet campaign that destroyed food crops with aerial defoliant. "Aerial spraying would likely have a serious detrimental effect on the counterinsurgency front," said Seth Jones of the RAND Corp, a global policy think tank based in California.

Photo Essay: Harvest Season in Helmand

Counter-narcotics officers are fighting a losing battle in Afghanistan, which last year supplied a record 93 per cent of the world’s opium, according the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. More than 50 per cent of Afghanistan’s opium was grown in the southern province of Helmand. Most of that opium is processed into heroin, feeding the habits of addicts worldwide.

AFGHANISTAN: Landslides and avalanches threaten Badakhshan locals

Over 1,000 poor people living on the steep slopes of a mountain in Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan are being urged by aid agencies and authorities to move as they are at risk of being killed in landslides and avalanches. A joint survey conducted by the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS), the UN and the provincial government found that seismic activity is creating widening gaps in the middle of Sia Shakh mountain in the Batash area of Faizabad city, the provincial capital of Badakhshan. Concerns are that this movement could dislodge large boulders which would cause severe damage to settlements below. "We have recommended that all residents should evacuate the area before winter," said Mohammad Othman Abuzar, president of the ARCS in Badakhshan. In winter, rain and snow typically blocks access to rural areas in Badakhshan’s Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges. In addition, heavy weather conditions would increase the probability of landslides and avalanches.

2007-11-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

Photo: An Afghan man (L) mourns over the bodies of his sons killed in Tuesday's suicide bombing, in the city of Baghlan, north of Kabul, November 7, 2007. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Security Incidents on November 7, 2007

A provincial councilor of Helmand, western Afghan province, was killed by insurgents on Tuesday evening, local official told Xinhua Wednesday. Haji Mohammad Anwar, governor of Helmand province, said that provincial councilor Haji Deen Mohammad was killed by some insurgents on his way home after praying in a mosque in Lashkar Gah city. "The insurgents escaped after attacked and no one has claimed responsibility for the incident," Anwar added.

Seven passengers were gunned down and three injured as militants attacked two buses in southern Afghan province of Zabul, Outlook quoted a statement released by the Defense Ministry as saying. The casualties came as the militants fired on a passenger coach in Pul-i-Amin area of Shah Joy district, the statement said, also on Tuesday, militants opened fire on another bus in Norak district of the province.

Meanwhile, in the Chaparhar district of eastern Nangarhar province, at least one policeman was killed and eight others injured as a remote-controlled bomb hit their vehicle, said Noor Agha Zwak, a government spokesman.

One civilian was killed by ISAF troops in Kabul when he did not heed warnings to stop advancing in his vehicle toward a foot patrol today.

Security Incidents on November 8, 2007

Meanwhile, Pushtun guerrillas fired two rockets at a Canadian base near Qandahar barely missing Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay and lightly injuring four Canadian troops.

One incident took place in Uruzgan province. Afghan and coalition troops were conducting a search in an area "where intelligence sources indicated Taliban and IED cells linked to several previous attacks on Afghan and coalition forces were operating." "Several armed militants" were killed in the operation and seven were detained. Military items such as ammunition vests and "a set of military-grade night vision goggles" were seized.

Another incident was in Zabul province, where troops were conducting an operation "to disrupt Taliban weapons and explosive material facilitators in the area." During the operation, a firefight occurred. Two militants were killed and 11 others were injured.

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How to Help Afghanistan people

Afghanistan to observe three days of mourning

Afghan President Hamid Karzai declared three days of mourning for victims of a suicide blast targeting a group of lawmakers and children, as the death toll on Wednesday rose to 60, making it the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Hundreds of mourners gathered at a mosque near the site of the bombing in the town of New Baghlan, 150 kilometres north of Kabul, before moving to a simple hilltop graveyard to bury the dead. “My son was supposed to finish school this year, but yesterday I had to peel off his blood-soaked clothes, and today I buried him,” said an elderly man who broke down in tears at one grave site. He didn't give his name. The numbers of the dead rose steadily throughout the day as officials collected information from village elders and families who buried their loved ones.

AFGHANISTAN: NGOs vulnerable to criminal violence and insurgency

Civilians working for NGOs in Afghanistan say their work is being constrained by insecurity as criminal groups and Taliban insurgents target aid workers. Ahmad Shah Shierzai quit his job as a doctor with a local NGO as soon as he was released by Taliban insurgents on 20 October in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan. He and two others, who had been working at a district medical facility on 16 October, were abducted outside Kandahar city by armed men linked to Taliban rebels. "We implored the Taliban that we are only health workers and that we only wanted to help destitute patients," he said. "They wanted to kill us because they said anyone working for the government of Hamid Karzai and foreign organisations deserved death," Shierzai added. Only mediation by tribal elders and a hefty sum paid by Shierzai's family led to his safe release, he told IRIN. Before letting him go, the Taliban forced him take an oath. "I swore that I would no longer work for the government and foreign NGOs," he said.

Q&A: "When I Leave My House, I'm Not Sure I'll Make It Back"

Joya gained international attention in December 2003 when, as an elected delegate to the Loya Jirga convened to ratify the Afghan Constitution, she spoke out publicly against what she termed the domination of warlords. In response, Sibghatullah Mujadidi, chief of the Loya Jirga, called her an "infidel" and "communist". Since then, she has survived four assassination attempts, and travels in Afghanistan under a burqa and with armed guards. Joya is currently director of the Organisation of Promoting Afghan Women's Capabilities. She sat down with Am Johal at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver.

IPS: What are your views of Canada's role in Kandahar and Afghanistan today? MJ: Canada has followed the U.S. and its so-called "war on terror". I'm here to talk about the reality. The main message of this for Canada, after the 9-11 tragedy, they followed the last six years in the footsteps of the U.S. position, which was a mockery of democracy, a mockery of the war on terror. They have replaced the fundamentalists of the Taliban with the fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance warlords and killers. We must fight against fundamentalists in our country. With the U.N., these countries must put pressure on Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia and those others who support the Taliban and Northern Alliance killers. This is my main message. The Canadian government should pressure the U.S. and other governments to support real democracy in Afghanistan rather than choose between these fundamentalists who make the situation worse.

IPS: What has changed since Canada's increased role in Afghanistan? MJ: It is shocking news, a catastrophic situation for women in our country. I moved back to Afghanistan to be a social activist on women's issues. Many women have been kidnapped, many are raped, according to official statements, there have been 250 cases of rape in the west of Afghanistan in the first six months of 2007. Every 28 minutes, an Afghani woman dies from childbirth. The conditions are worse than ever for women. Despite the billions of dollars that Afghanistan receives in aid, only 2 percent [of the people] have access to electricity. Today in Afghanistan, 60 percent are staying jobless. [But] the most pressing problem of our people is security.

AFGHANISTAN: Police Academy Duties Faze US Troops

Meeting police officers devoted to protecting their country has been a highlight of his tour, he conceded, adding that his team has had an impact on many Afghans it has come into contact with. But more than two-thirds into his deployment, Cheatham says the overall task differs from his initial expectations prior to departing his hometown of Greenville. Despite the progress U.S. forces have made in the country, particularly with the highly regarded Afghan army, the opinion of U.S. soldiers about the mission to train the police in Afghanistan varies -- as does troop morale. Following six years of war, some military personnel based here have grown cynical about the conflict, while others are too green to have witnessed anything stirring fear or pessimism. Cheatham, a 44-year-old postal worker hoping to pursue a career in information technology when he retires, believes troops charged to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban are soon disappointed to find a more humanitarian mission awaiting them. "I've always been combat arms, and I've trained to fight," he said. Mulling over the state of Afghan society, he added: "They need so much. They need too much." The U.S. is carrying out a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan that requires its forces gain the support of the local population through humanitarian assistance and building institutions like the security forces. Yet, these very police officers Cheatham is coaching spur some of his greatest frustration, he admitted. "Some of them are just basically useless and shouldn't be breathing the same air that we breathe," he said in an interview with IPS. "Some of these guys are uneducated. They don't care. They are corrupt" and enticed only by a monthly pay cheque, he said. His efforts to teach police trainees to "fight smart" sometimes prompts a complacent response from them, a reaction he admits may be due to the fact the country has been at war for nearly 30 years. He said he is merely trying to keep these fledgling forces alive. "I've seen more death in my three months here in Kandahar than I've seen in my whole life," he told IPS. "You just try not to take it home with you."

Death toll hits 60 in Afghan blast

The death toll from a suicide blast targeting a group of lawmakers and children rose to 60 on Wednesday, the deadliest attack in Afghanistan since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Hundreds of mourners gathered at a mosque near the site of the bombing in the town of New Baghlan, 95 miles north of Kabul, before moving to a simple hilltop graveyard to bury the dead. The attack happened Tuesday as the lawmakers were being greeted by children on a visit to a sugar factory in Afghanistan's normally peaceful north. "My son was supposed to finish school this year, but yesterday I had to peel off his blood-soaked clothes, and today I buried him," said an elderly man who broke down in tears on top of a grave site. He didn't give his name. Fifty-four people were buried in Baghlan province, said Mawlawi Sarajuddin, the head of the provincial council, while the bodies of six lawmakers were flown to Kabul.

Struggle to rein in Taliban in Afghanistan's south

2007-11-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

Photo: A wounded Afghan boy is seen at the hospital after a suicide attack in Baghlan province, north of Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2007. A bomb attack targeted a group of lawmakers in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing at least 28 people, including five parliamentarians, officials said. Death tolls varied widely in the confusion of the attack, which also wounded dozens of school children. The bomb blast went off outside a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan as the lawmakers were about to go inside. The blast struck school children, Afghan elders and government officials who had gathered to greet the visiting delegation of 18 lawmakers from the lower house, officials said. (AP Photo/Sameer Najafizada)

Security Incidents on November 5, 2007

Taliban insurgents have left the village of Khak-e Sefid in Farah province after looting and burning several buildings there on Sunday.

Taliban positions in Badghis province were hit by US air strikes and targeted by Afghan and NATO ground forces. The Taliban in the area said two fighters were killed and ten more wounded.

Afghan troops backed by US forces have destroyed six heroin labs in eastern Nangarhar province. No casualties reported.

Security Incidents on November 6, 2007

A bomb blast targeted a group of lawmakers touring a factory north of Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least 20 people, including six parliamentarians, a lawmaker said. The lawmakers were about to tour a sugar factory in the northern province of Baghlan when the blast went off. Six members of parliament were among at least 20 people killed, said Faizullah Zaki, a lawmaker from Jawzjan province.

A suicide bomber killed 90 people and wounded 50 on Tuesday in an attack on a group of visiting Afghan parliamentarians in the northern Afghan town of Baghlan, the director of the local hospital said. "The bodies of 90 people have been brought to the hospital so far and 50 people have been wounded," Baghlan hospital director Dr. Khalilullah told Reuters.

Three Afghan policemen were killed and five others sustained injures as a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province Tuesday. "It was 1 p.m. local time today when a roadside bomb planted by Taliban insurgents struck a police van in Chaparhar district, leaving three dead on the spot and wounding five others," spokesman of provincial government Noor Agha Zawak told Xinhua.

An air strike by NATO-led forces has killed dozens of Taliban insurgents in northwestern Afghanistan, the Afghan army said on Tuesday. Monday night's air strike, backed by Afghan and NATO ground forces, targeted Taliban positions in Badghis province, Defence Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said. He said a senior Taliban commander was among those killed. The Taliban in the area said two militant fighters were killed and 10 wounded in the operation.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay escaped a Taliban rocket attack this morning as a small base he was visiting came under fire from insurgents. Bodyguards for the Defence Minister removed him by helicopter shortly after two rockets landed around Forward Operating Base Wilson, a Canadian outpost about 20 kilometres west of Kandahar city. It's unclear how far Mr. MacKay was from the blasts, one of which inflicted minor injuries on four Canadian soldiers inside the base.

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Taliban capture third western Afghan district

Taliban insurgents have captured a third district in western Afghanistan, local officials said on Monday, defying Western assertions the rebels are unable to mount large military offensives. The hardline Islamist Taliban relaunched their insurgency two years ago to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject the 50,000 foreign troops, expanding their operations further from the mainly Pashtun south where they are strongest. Western forces say the Taliban's greater reliance this year on suicide and roadside bombs is a result of heavy battlefield casualties they and Afghan troops have inflicted on the rebels and the insurgents' inability to hold ground. But in the last week, the Taliban have captured three districts in the western province of Farah, bordering Iran, forcing lightly armed Afghan police to flee and defying Afghan and foreign forces to retake the lost ground. First, Taliban rebels captured the Farah district of Gulistan a week ago, then on Wednesday took nearby Bakwa. On Sunday, the insurgents seized Khak-e Sefid without a fight.

Struggle to rein in Taliban in Afghanistan's south

Afghans affected by an outbreak of Taliban fighting in a strategic district bordering the southern city of Kandahar have returned to their villages after a week of crisis sparked by the death of a tribal strongman. Local authorities said Sunday that life was returning to normal following successful operations by Afghan security forces and Canadian troops to dislodge Taliban fighters from the lush agricultural lands of Afghandab district. The insurgents were apparently intent on capitalizing on the death of Mullah Naqib, the former mujahideen warrior who led the Alokozai tribe of the district, north of Kandahar city. For years, Mullah Naqib had kept the Taliban out of a district that offers a perfect route for attacking Kandahar city, the spiritual home of the hardline Sunni movement from its emergence in 1996 through its removal from power by US-led forces in 2001. But up to 300 Taliban fighters entered the district last week, less than three weeks after Mullah Naqib's death created a political vacuum in one of southern Afghanistan's most important tribes. The fighters, who local sources say were all in their mid-20s, remained for two days and came within 15 miles of the provincial capital. They occupied and trashed Naqib's ancestral home before being expelled by more than 600 Afghan and international forces.

S Korea announces to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan

The South Korean Defense Ministry said on Monday that it will complete the withdrawal of all the 210 South Korean troops in Afghanistan by mid-December. "The soldiers will be withdrawn before the Dec. 19 presidential election," officials of the Defense Ministry told South Korea's Yonhap News Agency. The South Korean government pledged to pull out all its troops from the country earlier in return for the release of 23 South Koreans kidnapped by Taliban militants in July. South Korea deploys about 60 medics and 150 engineers in Afghanistan. Local media said South Korea is to complete the withdrawal of the troops on Dec. 14. Instead of the troops, Seoul will send 20 civilians and government officials to Afghanistan as part of a regional reconstruction team, local reports said.

MEDIA: Three Names the World Should Know

"I am staying in Afghanistan to prove that women are brave and strong," says Afghan journalist Farida Nekzad. Nekzad has been threatened with death even as she attended the funeral of Zakia Zaki, a female radio broadcaster murdered by gunmen as she slept with her eight-month-old son at her home near Kabul in June. "I was given asylum by some countries but I am not going to hide," declared Nekzad, the current editor in chief of the Pajhwok News Agency, the sole independent news agency in Afghanistan. "If I leave, the next woman journalist will become a target," she told IPS. Nekzad was in Toronto last Thursday to receive one of this year's three International Press Freedom Awards from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). CJFE promotes and defends free expression and press freedom and grants thousands of dollars to aid persecuted journalists in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Koran translation angers Afghans, publisher arrested

Afghan police have arrested a man accused of publishing an unofficial translation of the Koran that has sparked protests in parts of the country, newspapers said on Monday. The translation into Dari, one of Afghanistan's main languages, sparked an emergency debate in parliament and protests in at least two parts of the country as key passages were changed. Ghaus Zalmai, the publisher of the translation, was arrested on Sunday trying to cross the border into neighbouring Pakistan. Zalmai was also a spokesman for Afghanistan's attorney general. "This is a plot against the religion of Islam, and no one will ever accept the book as the holy Koran," daily Armaan newspaper quoted judge Abdul Salam Azimi as saying. "The Supreme court has ordered an investigation into this matter and to bring the culprits before the court," he said. Perceived insults to Islam, such as the cartoons of the prophet Mohammad or alleged violations of the Koran have sparked angry protests in Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN-IRAN: Tehran expels 8,000 Afghans

The government of Afghanistan has called on Iran to stop deporting thousands of Afghan citizens without work permits or refugee status, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told IRIN on 5 November. “Afghanistan is particularly vulnerable to any mass deportation during winter,” said Sultan Ahmad Baheen, a spokesman for the ministry, adding that the country lacked the capacity to integrate a large number of deportees. In April and May this year, Iranian authorities deported thousands of Afghans - a move that caused a humanitarian problem for ill-prepared Afghanistan. Iran slowed down the expulsions after the government of President Hamid Karzai, the UN and several other international organisations criticised the move and called for a more gradual deportation process. However, Afghan officials in western Herat province, bordering Iran, say the deportations have restarted in the past 10 days, with at least 500 Afghans being sent home daily.

……The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says there are more than 900,000 registered Afghan refugees in Iran. The government has given assurances it will not force Afghan refugees to return home, UNHCR has confirmed. However, the large numbers of Afghans who do not have refugee status and are considered illegal are not protected by UNHCR. Since 2002, about four million Afghans - three million from Pakistan and about 850,000 from Iran - have been repatriated to Afghanistan with UN help, according to UNHCR. Meanwhile, at least 35 people, allegedly with valid refugee identity cards, have also been deported to Herat in the past 10 days, provincial officials said. Salvatore Lombardo, head of UNHCR mission in Afghanistan, said the organisation was verifying these reports. Iran has reportedly ordered all foreigners, including thousands of Afghan refugees, to leave Sistan and Baluchestan province.

Afghanistan's Karzai orders end to torture

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told police Tuesday to stop torturing suspects, including those involved in a Taliban-led insurgency marked by acts of brutality. Speaking to more than 100 senior police officials in Kabul, Karzai said people were still being tortured despite improvements in his US-backed government's prison system. "Thank God our government is 1,000 times better than it was in the past, but... there are still cases where people are threatened, even tortured," Karzai said. "Our first task is to eliminate these tyrants, terrorists, but even if we capture such criminals, after they are captured we must treat them humanely. I repeat: respect humans and your acts must be bound to laws," he said. Canadian rights groups have repeatedly alleged that prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities by Canadian troops based in the south, where the Taliban's insurgency is the fiercest, are being tortured.

2007-11-04T22:13:00.001-08:00

Photo: A Dutch soldier passes a baby to the child's mother as soldiers search a house in a village in Baluchi pass in Uruzgan province November 1, 2007. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic (

AFGHANISTAN

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Security Incidents on November 3, 2007

A 21-year old Dutch soldier was killed by a bomb in southern Afghanistan and two others were wounded in the incident, the Dutch military said. The soldiers were on a patrol in the province of Uruzgan when an improvised device exploded. The wounded are in stable condition, the military said.

One Coalition and one Afghan National Army servicemember were killed around 5:30 p.m. today while conducting combat operations in northwest Uruzgan Province.

A Canadian soldier was wounded in an explosion Friday as he patrolled a district north of Kandahar City, where heavy fighting has been seen in recent days.

Suspected Taliban militants killed a women they accused of spying for the Afghan government and foreign troops in Ghazni province.

Two Afghans found beheaded in Rashidan district of Ghazni province. They were abducted several days ago.

Security Incidents on November 4, 2007

At least 25 Taliban reported killed Saturday in Afghanistan. This happened in Uruzgan province. "The bodies of the dead were left at the battlefield," it said, adding that a Taliban commander was seriously hurt.

A roadside bomb blast killed four Afghan police in Ghazni provinced. Two more were wounded in this attack.

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NEWSMAKER-Judges, militants bring out authoritarian in Musharraf

Until this year the greatest threat President Pervez Musharraf faced was from al Qaeda assassins who have tried at least three times to kill him. Having overthrown Sharif and co-opted the rump of his party, there was no way Musharraf was going to allow his return, and when Sharif tried to make a comeback in September he was sent back to Saudi Arabia, where he is still is. Bhutto, however, had engaged Musharraf in negotiations, and as the general's stock fell, her own leverage increased, to the point where he granted her protection from prosecution in old corruption cases to allow her to come back last month. The suicide attack that greeted Bhutto in Karachi, killing 139 supporters and members of her security team, shocked the country and the world. But members of Musharraf's own intelligence agencies have for months privately voiced fears the country is in danger of becoming like Iraq. Internal security has deteriorated markedly since July, when commandos stormed Islamabad's Red Mosque to crush a Taliban-style movement that sought to impose Islamic Sharia law. The same month, a much-criticised ceasefire with militants in Waziristan, a tribal region regarded as a hotbed of al Qaeda and Taliban support, broke down, unleashing a storm of violence. More than 800 people have been killed in militant-related violence in the last four months, half of them by suicide attackers that have largely targeted security forces. A proclamation on Saturday cited both the militant threat and troublesome judges to justify invoking emergency powers and suspending the constitution.

Death rate for Afghan kids drops

Six years after the Taliban's ouster, medical care in Afghanistan has improved such that nearly 90,000 children who would have died before age 5 in 2001 will survive this year, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Sunday. Saddled for years with one of the world's worst records on child health, Afghanistan has seen access to health care rise dramatically since the U.S.-led invasion. Thousands of health clinics have been built across the country, and the Afghan government and aid agencies have trained tens of thousands of doctors, vaccinators and health volunteers who now reach into some of the country's most remote areas. Access to health care for Afghans has jumped from 8 percent of the population in the 1990s to close to 85 percent today, thanks in large part to efforts by USAID, the World Bank and the European Commission. The under-5 child mortality rate in Afghanistan has declined from an estimated 257 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to about 191 per 1,000 in 2006, a 25-percent drop, the Ministry of Public Health said, relying on a new study from Johns Hopkins University. "This is certainly very positive news," said the U.N. spokesman in Afghanistan, Adrian Edwards. "To come from such low life expectancy to see this improvement does appear to be an indication that the work on the health sector here is beginning to pay off." President Hamid Karzai, surrounded by smiling Afghan children at a news conference in Kabul, thanked aid organizations and health workers for their work. He said 89,000 children will be saved each year because of the improved health care.

85 percent Afghans have access to health service, says health minister

Afghanistan's Minister for Public Health Syed Mohammad Amin Fatimi said Sunday that 85 percent of the country's population have access to health services. "Thank God that today 85 percent of the people of our country have access to health services while during Taliban regime it was unbelievable," Fatimi told journalists at a function held to thank the doctors and health servicemen. He added that the rate of child mortality in the post-Taliban nation has declined from an estimated 257 per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 191 per 1,000 in 2006. "The achievement in the health sector saves the lives of 89,000 infants and children under five each year compared to the rate during Taliban rule," the health minister said. However, Fatimi added that still Afghanistan is in need of continued international support to overcome problems in health sector. "It is a long way to go to provide access to basic health services for Afghans in remote areas," he stressed, adding " Continuing progress will be difficult without a firm commitment by the international community to increase and secure financing for the sector."

Armed northern militias complicate Afghan security

Much of the world's attention on Afghanistan is now focused on the country’s Pashtun-dominated south and east, where Taliban fighters are battling NATO troops and U.S.-led coalition forces. But there is a different kind of tension in northern Afghanistan. Illegal ethnic-Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara militias in the north appear to be using the threat of a resurgent Taliban as an excuse to hoard weapons and more forcefully protect their interests, such as ruling over land they have controlled since the Taliban’s collapse or defending drug export routes that are a major source of income. Experts say the entrenchment of the militias, who once fought together against the Taliban, reflects divisions and mistrust among regional commanders of different ethnicities which -- if left unchecked -- could exacerbate tensions in the country at a time when its security situation is already on a razor’s edge. "Obviously, what is happening in the north is really the growing Balkanization of the country," said Sam Zia-Zarifi, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch and field researcher in Afghanistan who has monitored programs by the United Nations and Afghan government to disarm the militias. "It's been an ongoing trend in Afghanistan for warlords who are ostensibly allied with the government to entrench themselves even more fully," Zia-Zarifi told RFE/RL. "A lot of them are now swollen with the narcotics trade -- profits from the sale of poppy and heroin. They have a lot of political clout because many of them have allies in the parliament, if they are not directly members of the parliament. And the next step is to openly flex their military muscle.”

Reconstruction: Enhancing Kabul’s sanitation needs

According to a 2004 World Health Organization report, over 2.6 billion people still lack access to basic sanitation, such as toilet facilities. That is roughly 40 percent of the world’s population. When Kabul’s population exploded, going from 1 million to a whopping 4.5 million over the last five years, the virtually nonexistent sewer system and inefficient ‘dry-pit’ latrine facilities used by Kabulis created a looming public health crisis. The central government turned to a regional sanitation juggernaut, Sulabh International, whose nearly forty-year commitment to global sanitation improvement has revolutionized the way developing nation’s process and discard human excrement. The Indian government funded the sanitation improvement program by giving nearly $1 million dollars (32.7 million Indian Rupees) for construction materials and labor costs. Following a successful public awareness campaign by Sulabh employees, a joint Indian-Afghan construction team went to work in July of 2006. The Sulabh toilets rely on an advanced twin-pit system that avoids the need for potentially leaky septic systems. Human excrement is refined by a biogas digester and converted into a usable fuel known as biogas, mostly a methane and carbon dioxide mixture. In fact, the toilet complexes can run their own lighting and heat stoves by using such biogas. The remaining liquid part that exits the biogas plant is rendered harmless after going through the Sulabh Effluent Treatment Technology (SET) treatment. The byproduct becomes colorless, odorless and pathogen free so it can then be used for agriculture/horticulture uses without any health risk.

AFGHANISTAN: Displaced families in Farah need urgent help

Hundreds if not thousands of recently displaced people in southwest Afghanistan are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance and protection, displaced families and provincial aid workers told IRIN on 4 November. Due to insecurity, there are no reliable figures on the exact number of people who have abandoned their in the Gulistan and Bakwa districts of Farah Province and sought temporary refuge in other parts of the isolated province. However, Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan UNAMA), said “about 500 families might have been displaced” as a result of fighting. Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, have acknowledged that Taliban insurgents have overrun at least two districts in Farah Province. Immediately after Afghan government forces lost control of Gulistan District on 2 November, insurgents reportedly executed several civilians accusing them of being government spies, the Afghanistan Interior Ministry (MoI) and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a joint statement on Sunday. “This is an intolerable outrage designed to terrorise the local population,” read the MoI-ISAF press release.

2007-11-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

Photo: Relatives surround the dead bodies of Afghans who were allegedly killed by U.S. and Afghan forces during an operation in Bati Kot district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, Nov. 1, 2007. A nighttime raid on the compound in eastern Afghanistan sparked a gunbattle that left three people dead, including two children, while six policemen were killed in clashes with the Taliban in the west, officials said Thursday. AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Security Incidents on November 1, 2007

Fifty Taliban killed in western Afghanistan: police Afghan forces claim they killed 50 Taliban in Farah province in the third day of fighting there. They also report that five Afghan soldiers and seven police have been killed so far.

A nighttime raid in eastern Afghanistan by U.S. and Afghan troops sparked a gunbattle that killed three people, including two children, and the military said Thursday it is investigating the deaths. They were fired upon late Wednesday in Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition. After the clash, a militant and two children were found dead inside the compound, Belcher said. A woman and another child were wounded, he said. A policeman also was wounded during the raid, said Ghafoor Khan, a spokesman for provincial police chief. Three other men from the house were detained by U.S. troops, Khan said.

Also Thursday, Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in Nad Ali district, in the southern Helmand province, killing five officers and wounding three others, said Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, the provincial police chief. There were no reports of militant casualties, but authorities recovered one of the vehicles used in the attack and an assault rifle, Andiwal said.

In western Farah province, six police officers were killed and two others wounded, and 14 Afghan army troops were missing after clashes with Taliban militants on Wednesday, said governor Muhaidin Baluch. A large number of Taliban have crossed into Farah from neighboring Helmand province and were still in control of Gulistan district, Baluch said.

Security Incidents on November 2, 2007

Twenty killed including two NATO force soldiers, three wounded in eastern Afghan attack. Officials in Afghanistan say insurgents ambushed NATO-led forces in the eastern part of the country leaving two alliance troops dead and three others wounded. They also say a coalition airstrike in the south killed 18 suspected militants on Friday.

Afghanistan: 'Key' Taliban-Allied Commander Killed by Afghan security forces and US troops in eastern Afghanistan.

Afghan Troops battle Taliban for fifth day in west of the country on Friday for the control of two districts.

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2 children die in US raid in Afghanistan

A nighttime raid in eastern Afghanistan by U.S. and Afghan troops sparked a gunbattle that killed three people, including two children, and the military said Thursday it was investigating the deaths. Civilian casualties have incited resentment and demonstrations against U.S. and NATO forces, though officials blame militants who use civilian homes as cover during clashes. President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with Western forces to do all they can to prevent such deaths. The latest civilian casualties came as U.S. and Afghan troops raided a compound suspected of harboring militants belonging to a suicide bombing network. They were fired on as they approached late Wednesday in Bati Kot district in Nangarhar province, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition. After the clash, a militant and two children were found dead inside the compound, Belcher said. A woman and another child were wounded, he said.

AFGHANISTAN: Training Cops Not To Be Robbers

In a mud-walled village on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Qalat, police checkpoint commander Abdul Rasool complains he is tired of his country's six-year war and longs for peace. Despite Rasool's appeal, he represents what the U.S. military thinks is wrong with Afghanistan's police, a force wracked by corruption that was long neglected as the army took front and centre in securing the nation's borders and fighting the insurgency. Standing nearby, U.S. army Capt. Dave Perry points out that trucks are being "destroyed" close to the checkpoint the Afghan commander supervises. Perry mentors the Afghan police and is the project officer for a checkpoint consolidation plan which aims to clean up police crime in southern Afghanistan's Zabul province. Rasool, a slight, sun-weathered man appearing older than his 27 years, seems oblivious to the veiled accusation. "Maybe the situation is getting bad because we have a lot of checkpoints now, so more Taliban come," he responded. And the Taliban have been known to turn up at any time. Minutes before IPS spoke with him, rattled Afghan police officers returned from a firefight with the Taliban to brief their commander at a nearby checkpoint on Highway 1, the province's main thoroughfare. The police are the insurgency's number-one target, according to U.S. military commanders.

Japan pulls out of Afghan mission

Government orders navy to end its mission in support of coalition forces after failing to secure opposition backing to renew the deployment before today's midnight deadline. Since 2001, Japan has provided about 126m gallons of fuel to US, British and other vessels operating in the Indian Ocean. The two Japanese ships on duty - the supply ship Tokiwa and the destroyer Kirisame - are expected back home in about three weeks. Opposition parties, which gained control of the upper house of Japan's parliament in July, said the mission did not have a UN mandate and possibly violated the country's pacifist constitution, which severely limits the military's overseas role.

AFGHANISTAN: Civilians flee as NATO-Afghan forces fight insurgents in Kandahar

Civilians are fleeing two districts in the southern province of Kandahar as NATO and Afghan forces battle Taliban insurgents who have moved into the area, according to local residents and provincial officials. “Hundreds of people have already swarmed into Kandahar city, leaving their homes and livelihoods in Arghandab and Shah Wali Kot districts,” Najib Barithi, provincial head of the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS), told IRIN from Kandahar city on 1 November 2007. Many displaced families have sought temporary refuge with relatives while others have set up tents around Kandahar city, Barithi added. Officials called an emergency meeting on 31 October to organise a humanitarian response after displaced families approached the ARCS office and other government bodies for assistance, said Ahmad Wali Karzai, chairman of the provincial council. A rapid assessment will be conducted in the coming days to determine urgent needs and help aid organisations to respond, officials said.

Taliban overrun another Afghan district

TALIBAN fighters have overrun a second district in western Afghanistan, a district governor said today, warning the rebels could be planning to sweep into his area. The police and administration heads of the strategic Bakwa district in Farah province had fled after days of attacks by scores of rebels, the official said, after the militants took the adjacent Gulistan district late on Monday. Taliban insurgents have previously overrun several districts in remote parts of Afghanistan, including Bakwa, but have been easily ejected by the international militaries here to aid the country's weak security forces. They have, however, held the district of Musa Qala, close to Gulistan, since February and the area is considered a Taliban base.

NATO General Sees Potential for Failure in Afghanistan

One of Britain's most outspoken military officers issued stark warnings about the potential for failure in Afghanistan at a forum hosted by the Canadian high commission Thursday. Lt.-Gen. David Richards, who commanded the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan from May, 2006 to February, 2007, said he remains optimistic that western allies will ultimately stabilize the war-ravaged country and keep it out of Taliban hands. But Mr. Richards said the military's poppy eradication campaign could backfire, NATO's efforts in the country lack focus, and there aren't nearly enough boots on the ground in Afghanistan's incendiary southern region, where Canadian, U.S., British and Dutch forces are concentrated.

Afghanistan Complains to Iran Over Death Penalty, Refugees

Afghanistan said Friday it had summoned Iran's representative here to complain about reports of Afghan minors being sentenced to death for drug smuggling and the forced expulsion of refugees. Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Kabir Farahi also raised concerns at the meeting on Thursday about claims that Afghan nationals were beaten up in Tehran, the foreign ministry said in a statement. It is not unusual in Iran for drug smugglers of Afghan origin to be executed in border provinces. An unconfirmed report late October cited an Afghan human rights group saying a 17-year-old may have been hanged for smuggling 1.5 kilograms (three pounds) of heroin. Farahi said "these children are being misused by drug smugglers and their conviction is contrary to human rights, international standards and the very good relations between two countries," according to the statement.

2007-10-31T23:24:00.000-07:00

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

AFGHANISTAN

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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.

Thanks whisker for many of the links above.

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.