Resistance to continue until US pullout: Omar

By Rahimullah Yusufzai

PESHAWAR: Taliban leader Mulla Muhammad Omar has said his men would continue to fight until the eviction of the US-led coalition forces from Afghanistan.

In a message to the Afghan people on the occasion of Eid-ul-Azha, a copy of which was delivered to The News in Peshawar, Mulla Omar advised the Taliban fighters to follow Islamic teachings while fighting the enemy and refrain from taking emotional and individual decisions on the battlefront.

Also, a Taliban spokesman, Dr Hanif said Mulla Omar had also rejected President Hamid Karzai’s latest offer of talks. On Sunday Karzai had invited the Taliban leader to contact his government to seek reconciliation. The Taliban spokesman said no talks were possible as long as the US-led foreign troops remained in Afghanistan.

"Talks are offered whenever the US military and the Afghan government suffer losses in Taliban attacks and there is need to raise the morale of their soldiers," Dr Hanif argued. He pointed out that the Americans were trying to pull out and put Nato forces in the frontlines in southern Afghanistan.

In his message, Mulla Omar said the US was the biggest enemy of Muslims. He stressed that Muslims must wage Jihad against the US to defend their homelands and civilisation. He criticised the Muslim rulers siding with the US in its "war on Muslims" and termed them traitors.

"These rulers claim to be Muslims but they assist non-Muslims to kill and harm Muslims. They have allowed CIA to establish spy centres in their countries," he alleged. Mulla Omar urged Muslims worldwide to support the Afghan fighters resisting the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Fri 13 Jan 2006

Foreign fighters flood into Afghanistan

TIM RIPLEY


HUNDREDS of foreign Islamic fighters are gathering in Afghanistan ahead of the deployment of 4,000 British troops to the country in the spring.

British intelligence sources have told The Scotsman Islamic radicals sympathetic to al-Qaeda see Afghanistan as their new frontline and are starting to shift the focus of their anti-western campaign from Iraq.


The fighters, including Jordanians, Yemenis, Egyptians and Gulf Arabs, stepped up their campaign two months ago with a series of suicide bombings against NATO peacekeepers, United States troops and Afghan government leaders.

"Attacks in Afghanistan are now running at more than 500 a month - it's getting as dangerous for westerners as Iraq in some places," said a British officer involved in planning the NATO peacekeeping mission in the south-west of the country.

Particularly worrying for British troops has been a spate of battles over the past month in the area where paratroopers of 16 Air Assault Brigade are due to deploy from April on peace-keeping and anti-drug duties. US special forces teams patrolling Helmand and Uruzgan provinces called in air support on five occasions over the past three weeks. RAF Harriers based in Khandahar joined in two of these incidents, in which large groups of insurgents openly battled with US troops and allied Afghan forces.

Teams of suicide bombers are reported to be active in Kabul and several other major towns, according to British sources. Groups of insurgents regularly mount raids from mountain hideouts against US patrols and units of the Afghan army. In rural areas, insurgents are becoming increasingly proficient in the use of improvised roadside bombs, many of which are similar to those that have taken such a heavy toll on coalition forces in Iraq.

The foreign fighters are making common cause with remnants of the Taleban regime hiding in southern Afghanistan and with local tribesmen who resent efforts by the Kabul regime, backed by the US and Britain, to clamp down on the drugs trade. Washington's decision to pull out 4,000 troops from south-west Afghanistan, ahead of the NATO deployment, has emboldened insurgents, who claim it is the start of a complete defeat of US troops who have patrolled the country since late 2001.

British intelligence officers say the drugs trade and the growing Afghan insurgency are inextricably linked with the dramatic increases in heroin exports, allowing pro-Taleban groups to buy in supplies of weapons and fund foreign fighters.

Worries over casualties and the cost of keeping thousands of troops in Afghanistan for at least two years has made several NATO nations balk at joining the mission in Afghanistan.

Although NATO agreed to back the expansion of the International Security Assistance Force last month, the Dutch parliament has still to agree to a request for 1,000 troops. So far, only Canada, Australia and Denmark have committed troops to join the UK-led NATO command in the south-west.

Yesterday, Francesc Vendrell, the European Union's special representative to Afghanistan, added his voice to the pressure on the Dutch to send troops.

"It is extremely important for the credibility of the EU that we should be willing to go to difficult areas," he said.



This article:

http://www.scotsman.com/?id=58262006

Afghanistan:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=444

Web links:

UN Afghan Assistance Mission
http://www.unama-afg.org/

AfghanNews.net
http://www.afghannews.net/

Amnesty International - Afghanistan
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/afg-summary-eng

Cursor: the US war in Afghanistan
http://www.cursor.org/stories/archivistan.htm

Revolutionary Ass'n of the Women of Afghanistan
http://www.rawa.org/

- Al-Qaeda Deputy Said Not Killed In Pakistan
http://www.spacewar.com/news/Al_Qaeda_Depu...n_Pakistan.html

Damadola, Pakistan (AFP) Jan 14, 2006 - Pakistani officials said Saturday that Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was likely not killed in a US air strike, as Islamabad protested to Washington the deaths of 18 villagers in the attack.

- Protesters Tear-Gassed After Airstrike Deaths In Pakistan
http://www.spacewar.com/news/Protesters_Te...n_Pakistan.html

===
Ex-Taliban Minister Killed in Afghanistan :

In the southern city of Kandahar, two men on a motorbike fatally shot Mohammed Khaksar, the former Taliban deputy interior minister, as he walked with two of his children, said Mohammed Jan Khan, a student who witnessed the shooting.
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/.../ap2449993.html

Massive protests over Zawahiri attack Indian Express
Islamic groups across Pakistan staged massive protests on Sunday condemning President Pervez Musharraf and the US for the deadly air strikes in a remote border village that were intended to target Al-Qaeda No 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri. Thousands of people chanting anti-US slogans took part in rallies in Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar. The country’s main Islamist alliance, Muttahida Majlis Amal, took out protest rallies in the port city of Karachi condemning the missile attack. Significantly, pro-Musharraf party and ally, the MQM, also took part in the rally. The marches were held in the backdrop of Musharraf’s appeal to his countrymen not to harbour foreign militants. “If we kept sheltering foreign terrorists here, our future will not be good,” Musharraf said in an address broadcast by state-run PTV. “We want Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to cancel his visit to the US as a protest,” deputy chief of Jamaat-e-Islami, Senator Prof Ghafoor told the rally. Aziz is scheduled to pay a week-long visit to the US from January 17. Meanwhile, reports from Washington said that FBI anticipates performing DNA tests on the victims of the airstrike. The tests to determine identities of the dead are expected to be conducted in the US, said a law enforcement official. Up to 11 militants were believed to be among the dead, according to unidentified Pakistani officials quoted in news reports. However, survivors of the attack in Damadola denied that militants were there. Pakistan condemned the strike and summoned US Ambassador Ryan Crocker to lodge its protest. Local tribesmen also rallied near the scene, chanting anti-American slogans. ‘‘Zawahiri was invited for the dinner, but we have no evidence he was present,’’ a senior intelligence official said. Al Arabiya television quoted a source it said had contact with Al-Qaeda saying Zawahiri was alive. The US government has issued a $25 million bounty for Zawahiri, considered a close associate of bin Laden.
Missile Attack Fuels Anti-American Sentiment in Pakistan Voice of America
Musharraf seen riding out uproar over US strike International Herald Tribune
Times Online - New York Times - Financial Times - Mail & Guardian Online - all 392 related »

Remember Afghanistan? Insurgents bring suicide terror to country :

A suicide bomber yesterday rode into town, killing at least 20 in the deadliest insurgent attack since the US invasion. More than 1,600 were killed in 2005, and the murder rate is rising. The rule of law has collapsed. The government is trapped in its own fortified compound in the capital.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article339090.ece

Bush senior hopes Pakistan still sees US as helper Khaleej Times
Former US President George Bush, in Pakistan as a UN earthquake relief envoy, said yesterday he hoped Pakistanis would continue to see Washington as a helper despite civilian deaths in an American airstrike. Bush was asked in Islamabad if he thought the deaths in Friday’s strike, which have dented some of the goodwill generated by the prominent US earthquake relief role, showed shortcomings in the US-led war on terrorism. “No I don’t,” the father of President George W. Bush, said, while adding it was for others involved in the war to comment. “I am here as a representative of the (UN) secretary-general to try to help with the relief and reconstruction effort. “I think the feeling generally is that the US has been trying to help the people of Pakistan and I hope that’s what prevails.”
Pakistan's Aziz Makes US Visit Strained by Air Raid Bloomberg
Pakistan: Terrorists Killed in US Strike Forbes
Arab News - Zaman Online - Ireland Online - ABC Online - all 124 related »

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Taliban say 'hundreds' of suicide attackers ready:

A Taliban commander said on Tuesday hundreds of his guerrillas were ready to launch suicide attacks across Afghanistan to drive out foreign forces.
http://tinyurl.com/8rbhc

===
U.S. envoy: Be ready for Taliban violence:

The British-led military force that will move soon into southern Afghanistan must be ready to fight militant Taliban insurgents, the U.S. envoy to NATO warned.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20060118-110954-4574r.htm

UK Deploys 3,300 Troops to Tackle Drugs in South Afghanistan Bloomberg
The UK will send 3,300 troops to southern Afghanistan, aiming to curb drug production and aid reconstruction in the Helmand region. "We cannot risk Afghanistan once again becoming a a sanctuary for terrorists,'' U.K. Defense Secretary John Reid told lawmakers today in the House of Commons. "We cannot go on accepting Afghan opium being the source of 90 percent of the heroin injected into the veins of our young people.'' Reid earlier briefed U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and fellow Cabinet members on the deployment. The aim of the mission is to "build on what we have done in Afghanistan and prevent a slide back to the Taliban,'' Blair's spokesman Tom Kelly told reporters today. Kelly said 90 percent of the heroin for sale in the U.K. comes from Afghanistan. U.S. and allied forces currently have more than 21,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, 1,100 of them British. The U.K. will also send more than 1,000 headquarters staff to lead the International Security Assistance Force. The total British deployment will peak at 5,700 before falling to 4,700 over June and July as engineering forces building bases in Helmand withdraw, Reid said.
Afghan troop levels to hit 5,700 BBC News
3,300 troops to be sent to Afghanistan Telegraph.co.uk
Financial Times - Reuters - Scotsman - Channel 4 News - all 142 related »

India aiding Afghanistan, despite Pakistani blockade
By Erica Lee Nelson
The Washington Times
Published January 26, 2006


NEW DELHI -- India has poured more than a half-billion dollars of foreign aid into Afghanistan in the past three years in an attempt to create a friendly and stable neighbor in a volatile part of the world.

The effort, which continues despite a Pakistani blockade of Indian goods bound for Afghanistan, touches all aspects of life -- biscuits for 1 million children, planes for the national airline, artificial limbs for thousands of land-mine victims, jeeps for the military, scholarships, energy, dams, telephone lines and even satellite downlinks.


India also has helped train those deprived of an education during the Taliban rule -- from diplomats to doctors to elevator operators. Indian engineers are even helping to design and build the new Afghan parliament building.

"We would like to see Afghanistan develop in our own image -- pluralistic, democratic, free from interference from its neighbors and prosperous," a senior official in New Delhi said.

But Indian officials say Pakistan is putting up obstacles to the effort.

The historic rivalry between India and Pakistan has complicated proposed energy pipelines from Afghanistan, which would have to run through Pakistan on the way to India.

Additionally, Pakistan usually refuses to let Indian aid pass through its borders to reach Afghanistan.

"There was much trade between India and Afghanistan before, but Pakistan is creating problems. They allow Afghan goods to go to India, but not Indian goods to come to Afghanistan," said Younus Momtaz, first secretary at the Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi.

Officially, Pakistan has said the blockade will not stop until steps are taken to resolve the long-standing dispute over Kashmir, a territory claimed by both India and Pakistan since they achieved independence in 1947.

However, some analysts think Pakistan is more worried about losing its dominant position in Afghan trade.

Since the fall of the Taliban, Pakistan's trade with Afghanistan has risen exponentially, from $192 million in 2001 to '02 to more than $1 billion in 2004 to '05.

Indian trade with Afghanistan, meanwhile, is estimated by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industryat $202 million for 2004 to '05. Total Indian aid to Afghanistan since 2003 is approaching $600 million.

In ancient times, Afghanistan traded easily with the Indian subcontinent. Merchants traveled on the Grand Trunk Road from the fertile plains of northern India, through Pakistan and onward to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Now, Indian aid and trading goods are unloaded at ports in Iran and trucked to Kabul over winding mountain roads.

Indian aid often takes a month to reach its destination -- and sometimes cannot get through at all. The same goods could be transported through Pakistan in about a week.

India's aid effort includes an $84 million joint project with Iran to build a 136-mile road from Iran's Chabahar and Bandar Abbas ports to Afghanistan. That will eliminate a detour of 900 miles and cut travel time substantially.

It is hoped that the road will also bring development to a relatively lawless region of southwestern Afghanistan, which has turned into a center of opium farming in recent years.

Travel in the region remains highly dangerous; one Indian worker on the project was kidnapped and killed in November.

India and Pakistan backed contending factions during Taliban rule in Afghanistan, with the rebel Northern Alliance being allowed to maintain an embassy in New Delhi.

Now, 10 movie theaters in Kabul screen India's Bollywood blockbusters throughout the day, and a Bollywood film is being made in the Afghan capital for the first time in more than a decade.

"We have a long relationship, we share our joys and sorrows," said Mr. Momtaz of the Afghan Embassy in New Delhi.

NATO treads cautiously into Afghan quagmire Washington Post
NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer will tell an international meeting on Afghanistan next week that the military alliance is willing to do more to help Afghans find an elusive peace. But while European NATO nations back that goal, they are equally determined not to see the alliance roped into U.S. counter-terrorism activities whose tactics they often reject, nor offer Washington a premature exit from the war it began. "Europe's leaders recognize that success in Afghanistan is crucial for NATO," said Jean-Yves Haine, research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. "But there is a view that NATO is being used as the cleaning lady for operations that went on before," he added. The United States did not involve the alliance in 2001 when it launched the invasion to oust Afghanistan's militant Islamic Taliban rulers. Still smarting from that snub, NATO entered the picture in 2003 by taking over the ISAF international peace force, raising its presence to 9,000 troops across Kabul, the north and west. Its decision last month to move into the south, a Taliban stronghold, around mid-2006 with a further 6,000 troops is the most ambitious yet, launching it on what could prove to be the most treacherous ground mission in the alliance's history. While the move allows the U.S. army, stretched by the Iraq war, to consider some troop cuts, it has also highlighted how transatlantic solidarity can only be stretched so far.
Reid visits Afghanistan-duty troops Scotsman
3,300 taskforce for Afghanistan Manchester Evening News
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Afghan Police Say Seven Insurgents Killed As Violence Continues :

Afghan police today said that seven neo-Taliban fighters were killed this week and five policemen wounded when the insurgents attacked a district police headquarters in southern Afghanistan.
http://tinyurl.com/c87fh

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Taliban kill two more Afghan policemen:

Two Afghan policemen were killed and as many wounded when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the southern Afghanistan on Friday.
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Lan...=en&DSNO=808796

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The next Afghan war :

The deployment of more British troops to Afghanistan underlines the seriousness of an escalating conflict.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/themes/articl...&articleId=3219

Court-martial convicts US soldier BBC News
A US court-martial in Afghanistan has found an American soldier guilty of mistreating two prisoners at a military base in Uruzgan province. James R Hayes was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to maltreat and two counts of maltreatment, a statement from the US military in Kabul said. His punishment includes four months in prison in Kuwait. Another soldier faces a court-martial over the same incident which took place last July. His trial is due to start on Monday. The US military says the detainees did not require medical attention. Human rights groups have often accused US forces of abusing Afghans held at US detention centres in the country.
US soldier hit detainees in Afghanistan, punished Reuters AlertNet
Kabul: US soldier convicted of punching detainees Jerusalem Post
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Xinhua - Gulf Times - ABC Asia Pacific - all 103 related »

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17992757-23109,00.html

US 'won't repeat Afghanistan mistake'
From: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in London
January 31, 2006
THE US vowed today to avoid its past mistake of neglecting Afghanistan, during high-level US-Afghan talks on the eve of an international donors conference for the central Asian country.

"We made the mistake once before of leaving (neglecting) Afghanistan," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Not only did Afghans pay the price of such a policy but also Americans who were attacked by the Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda terror network on September 11, 2001, she said.

"We're not going to make that mistake again", said Ms Rice, standing beside Mr Karzai.

The US and Afghan governments are determined to rid Afghanistan of "terrorism" and illegal drug production while promoting peaceful development with the help of a strong army and police, the top US diplomat said.

Ms Rice's meeting withMr Karzai compensates for her abbreviated participation in the conference, where she will appear tomorrow before heading back to Washington for President George W. Bush's annual State of the Union speech.


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The Afghan government and its international partners are to commit themselves tomorrow and Thursday to the "Afghanistan Compact", a five-year development plan for the destitute nation.
The document sets specific targets for bolstering security, improving governance, strengthening the rule of law and human rights, while boosting economic and social development.

The US government meanwhile is expected to announce a major financial contribution for the next fiscal year during the conference of representatives from 70 countries and organizations.

Washington has been Afghanistan's biggest donor - with nearly $US5 billion - since leading the war that toppled the Taliban four years ago but it now wants others to carry more of the "burden", US and European officials said.

During a visit yesterday to Denmark, Mr Karzai said Afghanistan will need international aid for five years, ten years or even longer if it is to bolster its security and rebuild its institutions.

Mr Karzai also called for more money to be put directly into the hands of the Afghan government, despite reluctance from donors amid charges of widespread corruption and incompetence.

In an article a week ago in the International Herald Tribune, three US-based central Asia analysts said the London meeting must make up for the funding shortfalls following donors conferences in Tokyo in 2002 and Berlin in 2004.

These conferences generated less than half of the $US28 billion ($37.39 billion) dollars that the Afghan government believes is required for reconstruction, they said.

"Afghanistan is being shortchanged," argued Karl Inderfurth, a former US assistant secretary of state for South Asia affairs and fellow Asia analysts Frederick Starr and Marvin Weinbaum.

The donors' conference comes as NATO prepares to raise its troop levels in Afghanistan from 11,000 to 18,500 over the next three years.

The expansion, which focuses mainly on deployments into southern Helmand province, where will Taliban fighters still lurk, will allow the United States to withdraw some of its 18,000 soldiers in Afghanistan.

It is a third phase of expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which has already deployed in Kabul and northwestern Afghanistan.

Mr Inderfurth and his co-authors said the conference should also make sure planned US troop reductions would not lead to a weaker military operation.

"International peacekeepers should adopt rules of engagement that will allow them to conduct aggressive counter-insurgency operations and provide the protection necessary to enable reconstruction," the article said.

Afghans Find Key Promises Unfulfilled
London Conference Offers World a Chance To Reassess, Recommit

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 31, 2006; A12



PAGHMAN, Afghanistan -- When pledges of foreign aid began pouring into Afghanistan after the collapse of Taliban rule in late 2001, Mohammed Latif Kokan was sure he would soon be rid of the artillery shell fragments that had lodged in his shoulder during the Soviet military occupation of the 1980s.

More than four years later, the shrapnel is still there; no physician in Afghanistan has the facilities or expertise to remove it. Likewise, Kokan said this week, few of the promises made then for rebuilding schools, hospitals and public works have materialized.

"When it gets cold, I feel the pain," said the grizzled truck driver, 50, who lives in this hillside village about 25 miles west of Kabul, the capital. "We had been very hopeful. But in the past four years, nothing has happened at all. Our leaders get the money, and they put it in their pockets."

As Afghan officials and representatives of more than 60 other nations gather Tuesday in London to forge a new compact for rebuilding Afghanistan over the next five years, they are expected to point to the progress that has begun to remake Afghanistan: new highways, disarmed militias, an elected president and parliament, and schools open to both boys and girls.

But they will also need to respond to criticism from people like Kokan, whose perception of a wide gap between promises and results is shared by many Afghans. Although billions of dollars have been spent, sentiment is growing that much of the aid has benefited officials and a small, wealthy elite, leaving scraps for the millions who remain in dire poverty.

More than a third of rural families lack enough food for at least part of the year. Life expectancy is only 45; infant and maternal mortality are as high as in the poorest African countries. And the female literacy rate -- below 20 percent nationwide, less than 1 percent in some provinces -- remains the world's lowest.

But there are reasons for optimism. The legal economy has grown by 85 percent since the extremist Taliban regime was forced from power. School enrollments have quadrupled to 6 million pupils, a third of whom are girls. Inflation has fallen, the currency is stable and urban commerce is booming. Warring factional militias have been replaced by a national army and police force.

"What has happened here the last few years is a major success story. But we're not under any illusion that it's in the bag," said Richard B. Norland, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. "We recognize fully that there are still major, major problems to be resolved. And it could slide backwards."

The two-day conference in London is a chance for the world to recommit to Afghanistan. Several senior international figures are expected to speak, including U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It will also be an opportunity to chart a road map for the country's future. In December, the seating of the new parliament successfully completed the plan, outlined at a 2001 conference in Bonn, for a U.N.-supervised transition to democracy.

While the Bonn accord was primarily a political document, the Afghanistan Compact slated for approval in London is much more focused on economic development. It will lay out specific benchmarks for growth in the next five years and will detail how international donors and the Afghan government should work together. A commission composed of Afghan and international officials will be created to make sure aid money is well spent.

One expected change is that Afghan officials will be given more control over the management and disbursement of aid funds. The World Bank reported last week that only 25 percent of aid to Afghanistan was flowing through the government, hindering its ability to budget and plan reconstruction.

At a breakfast with reporters in Kabul this month, President Hamid Karzai criticized aid organizations for wasting funds, saying that his government could manage them better and that too much was spent "on high salaries, on overhead charges, on luxury vehicles, on luxury houses and lots of other luxuries that Afghanistan cannot afford."

But the Afghan government has been criticized, too. Many Afghans say they believe corrupt officials are doling out the spoils of reconstruction -- from building contracts to highly paid office jobs -- to friends and relatives, while people without connections struggle to make ends meet and even skilled public employees such as teachers and doctors earn less than $40 a month.

"I don't have a home of my own," said Mohammed Ibrahim, 27, a porter in Logar City, about an hour's drive south of Kabul. "The governor distributed a lot of land, but he gave it to his own people. Not to the poor people who need it."

Ibrahim acknowledged that at least one thing has gotten better: The rocky dirt road that once ran between Logar and Kabul has been replaced by a smooth asphalt highway. In Paghman, too, a new blacktop path has helped spark business as it becomes easier for tourists to drive here and take in the picturesque mountain views.

Ishaq Nadiri, Karzai's senior economic adviser, said the new roads improve security by giving insurgents fewer places to hide. He said they also undermine Afghan poppy production -- which now supplies 87 percent of the world's opium and employs hundreds of thousands of people -- by making it easier for farmers to get such crops as melons or wheat to market.

Nadiri said a major focus of the London meeting will be eliminating the narco-economy and replacing it with legal crops that allow farmers to earn a decent living. Karzai and others have said recently that unless Afghanistan gets control of the drug problem, all redevelopment efforts here could be for naught.

"Development so far has been urban-centric, unfortunately. And that's exactly what we want to avoid," Nadiri said. "Afghanistan's economy has been and will be dependent on the growth of agriculture and our rural areas. That's where most of our poor live. That's where most of our people live. So we can make a big dent by changing the nature of our agriculture."

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Al-Zawahri Mocks Bush Over Terrorism War ABC New
Al-Zawahri Mocks Bush As 'Failure' in First Video Since Miscarried U.S. Airstrike in Pakistan. In a new video aired Monday, al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri mocked President Bush as a "failure" in the war on terror, called him a "butcher" for killing innocent Pakistanis in a miscarried airstrike and chastised the United States for rejecting Osama bin Laden's offer of a truce. Al-Zawahri, wearing white robes and a white turban and speaking in a forceful and angry voice, also threatened a new attack in the United States "God willing, on your own land." The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV a day before Bush delivers his State of the Union address, provided the first concrete evidence that al-Zawahri was still alive after the Jan. 13 airstrike in eastern Pakistan that targeted him but killed four other al-Qaida leaders and 13 villagers.

President Bush makes remarks to the media after meeting with his cabinet in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Jan. 30, 2006, in Washington. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
The message came on the heels of a Jan. 19 audiotape by bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader's first tape in more than a year. Bin Laden said his followers were preparing an attack in the United States and offered the Americans a conditional truce, though he did not spell out terms. A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the al-Zawahri video, which U.S. intelligence officials were analyzing. The counterterrorism official noted the video was disseminated quickly, demonstrating al-Zawahri's ability to get his message out even faster than bin Laden. That suggests the two are not hiding together and bin Laden may be in a more remote location than his deputy, the official said. "The al-Qaida leadership is clearly on the run and under a lot of pressure," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in response to the video. McClellan said the United States has brought many of the terrorist group's leaders to justice. "We continue to take the threat seriously and continue to pursue all those who seek to do us harm." The Homeland Security Department had no immediate plans to raise the nation's terror threat levels because of the Zawahri tape, said spokesman Russ Knocke. U.S. officials had said after the bin Laden tape that no intelligence indicated an imminent al-Qaida attack. On Monday, FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko said the bureau would ask agents around the country to review ongoing cases and tips in light of the latest video, especially with the State of the Union in Washington and the Super Bowl in Detroit this week. Al-Zawahri said in the video that he had a number of messages in the wake of the airstrike. In one message, he invited Bush to convert to Islam. "If you accept, you will become a brother in our faith and God will forgive you your sins," the Al-Jazeera news-reader quoted him as saying. The invitation was not in the excerpts aired by the Arab satellite station. He said the airstrike in Pakistan by an unmanned Predator craft targeted himself and four of his "brothers" in al-Qaida. Instead, he said, it killed 18 civilians "men, women, and children" and he called Bush "the butcher of Washington." "Bush, you are not only defeated and a liar, but, with God's help and might, a failure. You are a curse on your own nation and you have brought and will bring them only catastrophes and tragedies," he said. "Bush, do you know where I am? I am among the Muslim masses, enjoying God's blessing of their support, care, generosity and protection," al-Zawahri said. He said he had a message "to the American people, who are drowning in illusions. I tell you that Bush and his gang are shedding your blood and wasting your money in failed adventures." "The lion of Islam, Sheik Osama bin Laden, may God protect him, offered you a decent exit from your dilemma. But your leaders, who are keen to accumulate wealth, insist on throwing you into battle and killing your souls in Iraq and Afghanistan and God willing on your own land," he said. The airstrike hit a building in the eastern Pakistan village of Damadola, where U.S. intelligence believed al-Zawahri had been attending an Islamic holiday dinner. U.S. and Pakistani officials said the strike killed four al-Qaida leaders including a man believed to be al-Zawahri's son-in-law. Intelligence officials said later they believe al-Zawahri sent his aides in his place to the dinner. The deaths of the villagers in the strike sparked widespread anger in Pakistan. Al-Zawahri warned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to stop cooperation with the United States, saying "your time of judgment is approaching." No automatic weapons were visible in the video Monday, unlike past videos by the al-Qaida deputy in which a gun often appeared next to him. In the bottom left corner, the video had the logo in Arabic and English of Al-Sahab, an al-Qaida video production company that made some past videos by bin Laden and al-Zawahri. Al-Jazeera aired two short excerpts from the video. It was not immediately known how long the entire tape was. During the year of silence from bin Laden, al-Zawahri issued several video and audiotapes, including one claiming al-Qaida's responsibility for the July 7 London bombings. The last video from al-Zawahri came on Jan. 6, when he called the U.S. decision to withdraw some troops from Iraq a victory for the Islamic world. Mark Ensalaco, an international terrorism expert at the University of Dayton, Ohio, said the tape's release may have been timed for Bush's State of Union address. "Al-Qaida is very conscious of such things," he said. "Having bin Laden and al-Zawahri appear in quick succession in these tapes underscores the fact that they're alive and well and still plotting attacks," he said. Associated Press reporters Katherine Shrader and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
Zawahiri appears close to Al-Qaeda - official Independent Online
Al-Zawahri Mocks Bush Over Terrorism War Forbes
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US Pledges Another $1 Billion for Afghanistan
By Michael Drudge
London
31 January 2006
VOA

An international conference on Afghanistan has opened in London with the United States pledging another $1 billion in assistance for the war-ravaged country next year.

The London conference has brought together officials from about 70 counties and international institutions to support a five-year plan for Afghanistan's security and economic development.


Condoleezza Rice arrives on the first day of a two-day conference on Afghanistan at Lancaster House in London

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says there is much hard work still to be done in Afghanistan, and the United States will remain a strong partner.

"The United States is fully devoted to the long-term success of Afghanistan," she said. "For us, this is a strategic partnership. We have committed tens of thousands of our troops to help stabilize the country. We have sacrificed precious American lives. And now, in addition to our current commitment of nearly $6 billion, today, I am proud to announce that President Bush will ask our Congress for $1.1 billion in new assistance to support the Afghan people in the next year."

Other countries are making their own financial commitments to Afghanistan, including about $875 million from Britain. Russia says it is prepared to forgive $10 billion in Soviet-era debt.


British Prime Minister Tony Blair, left, and Afhgan President Hamid Karzai exchange a signed bilateral agreement on the future of Afghanistan, Jan. 31, 2006
Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he is grateful for the international community's support, but he cautions there is still a serious threat from narcotics trafficking and militants of the former Taleban regime.

"Terrorism no longer rules Afghanistan but it continues to be a threat to our people's security and welfare," he said. "It is not the security and independence of Afghanistan alone that is threatened by terrorism. This menace is the enemy of peace and humanity and is responsible for the massacre of innocent people across the world."

Mr. Karzai also warns that it could take 10 or 15 years to control opium production in Afghanistan, the source country for about 90 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe.

The Afghanistan Conference comes as the Western powers realign their forces in Afghanistan for missions of counter-insurgency and security force training.

The United States, which led the invasion of Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, plans to cut its forces this year from the current 19,000 to 16,500 troops. Meanwhile, NATO plans to increase its troop commitment from 9,000 now to 15,000 in the second half of this year.

U.S. forces have concentrated primarily on counter-insurgency operations, while NATO has provided training for Afghan soldiers and counter-narcotics police.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HB01Df02.html
Afghan opium: License to kill
By Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Editor's note: More than 60 delegations, mostly countries but also some multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, meet in London for two days this week to tackle development issues for Afghanistan. One of the more controversial topics to be tabled is how to deal with Afghanistan's opium fields, which last year produced about 4,200 tonnes of raw opium.

In June 1906, Charles Henry Brent, the first Protestant Episcopal Church bishop of the Philippines and a staunch opponent of the



opium trade, wrote to president Theodore Roosevelt to ask for the United States to call an international conference to enforce anti-opium measures in China.

The conference was held in Shanghai in 1909. One hundred years after Bishop Brent's letter, the global prohibition of opium and certain other drugs has largely failed, in spite of, or maybe because of, more than 30 years of the "war on drugs" launched in 1971 by the administration of US president Richard Nixon.

This is what was stressed at a conference on "Drug Production and State Stability" recently held in Paris, when Alfred McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin and author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, explained that, "after fighting five drug wars in 30 years at a cost of US$150 billion, Washington has presided over a [fivefold] increase" in the world illicit-opium supply, from 1,000 tonnes in 1970 to between 5,000 and 6,000 tonnes in the mid-2000s.

This was exemplified in late 2005 when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) confirmed that Afghanistan was still and by far the world's first producing country of illicit opium, despite alternative development efforts, eradication measures, and widely lauded achievements in democracy and state-building in the country.

Clearly, as has now been stated by many observers and analysts, the danger for Afghanistan is that a hastened suppression or eradication program will, in the absence of alternative livelihoods being widely promoted, damage the fragile rural economy, prove counterproductive in the mid-term, and impede sustainable solutions to the Afghan crisis.

Indeed, in a 2004 interview, Doris Buddenberg, the head of UNODC in Afghanistan, said, "Eradication usually does not bring about a sustainable reduction of poppy crop - it is a one-time, short-term effort. Also eradication usually pushes the prices up. As we have seen from the Taliban period, the one-year ban on opium-poppy cultivation increased prices enormously the following year and it became extremely attractive for farmers to cultivate poppy."

However, in December 2005, only a few weeks after having lauded "the largest decrease [of opium-poppy cultivation] ever recorded in a single year in any country", Buddenberg said there were "signs cultivation may increase next year in many areas, in part because of pressure on farmers to grow opium poppies and their own concerns about making a living", thus without clearly acknowledging that the so-called "success" in reducing opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2004-05 had already been and was still to be largely counterproductive.

In such a context, where both interdiction and development have failed to solve the "opium problem" in Afghanistan, because interdiction without development amounts to further deteriorating the livelihoods of opium farmers, and alternative development is far from having been implemented with adequate economic means and political determination, a rather new, but unrealistic, proposal has emerged: the licensing of Afghan opium for production of pharmaceutical morphine.

Described as "a truly winning solution" by many, the proposal of the Senlis Council, an "international drug-policy think-tank" based in Paris, consists of licensing Afghan opium for the production of legal medicines such as morphine and codeine as a way to respond to the urgent need to significantly reduce Afghanistan's illegal opium production and trade, but also as a way to overcome the "significant global shortage of opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine", a problem "felt most acutely in the developing world".

This proposal, however, is based on false or inexact premises, on at least two levels: regarding the world market on the one hand, and national and local opium-farming communities on the other hand.

Supply and demand of opioid analgesics
According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which is in charge of examining on a regular basis issues affecting the supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, the supply of such opiates has for years been "at levels well in excess of global demand".

In fact, as stocks continue to be more than sufficient to cover global demand for one year, the INCB even recommends reducing the production of opiate raw materials. Nevertheless, the INCB stresses that "the low consumption of opioid analgesics for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, especially in developing countries, continues to be a matter of great concern".

"In 2003, six countries together accounted for 79% of global consumption of morphine" while "developing countries, which represent about 80% of the world's population, accounted for only about 6%" of its global consumption. Thus, for the INCB, the urgency is more "to raise awareness of the necessity to assess the actual medical needs for opiates" in the world than to increase the production of legal medical morphine in countries such as Afghanistan.

This is easily understandable when one knows that most governments in the world did not respond to the INCB questionnaire on their medical needs and that information about half of the needs of the world's population was insufficient.

However, simply raising levels of morphine production, whether by licensing opium production in Afghanistan or by increasing the yields of current producers, is unlikely to increase the medical consumption of morphine and codeine in the world.

The recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) that morphine and codeine be used as analgesics are too often impeded by obstacles that are not, or not only, supply-related: concerns about drug addiction and drug diversion, restrictive national laws, insufficient import or manufacture, but also deficiencies in national health-care delivery systems, insufficient training, etc.

Of course, the demand for modern analgesics is also related to the importance of conventional or allopathic medicine with regard to local traditions and beliefs. In China for example, according to WHO, traditional herbal preparations account for 30-50% of the total medicinal consumption, while in Africa up to 80% of the population uses traditional medicine for primary health care.

Thus, obviously, the world's medical consumption of opiates is far from being directly dependent on supply and demand, and price contingencies, as was actually hinted by the Senlis Council itself when it stressed that "in 2002, 77% of the world's morphine was consumed by seven rich countries: [the] US, the UK, Italy, Australia, France, Spain and Japan", but that, according to official figures, "even in these countries only 24% of moderate to severe pain-relief need was being met".

The fact that medical consumption of opiates is low even in rich morphine-producing countries clearly shows that the consumption of opiate-based painkillers is determined by factors more complex than only those of the market.

Indian licit vs Afghan illicit opium production
As far as Afghanistan and its opium farmers are concerned now, the licensing of the illicit opium supply is very unlikely to help develop them economically.

First, it is important to understand that while legal opium-poppy cultivation is undertaken for pharmaceutical use by 12 countries (Australia, China, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, India, Japan, Slovakia, Spain, Macedonia, Turkey and the United Kingdom), only one of them, India, produces opium, the latex that bleeds, coagulates and is harvested from incised opium-poppy capsules. The 11 other actually grow opium poppies to harvest poppy straw and produce concentrate of poppy straw (CPS) in the context of a modern mechanized agriculture that resorts for the most part to combine harvesters on large tracts of cultivated land.

Conversely, because opium harvesting is a long and arduous manual process, it requires a numerous and, more than anything, cheap local workforce if the opium and morphine production process is to be economically viable. For that reason, and also because of international agreements derived from the role the opium economy played in its colonial past, opium is only legally produced in India.

Of course, since 12 countries already produce raw opium materials to make morphine, codeine and thebaine, and have significantly increased the concentration of alkaloids in opium-poppy plants, the INCB, pursuant to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, wishes to "to avoid the proliferation of supply sites" to prevent diversion of opium-poppy plants and seeds licitly produced to the illicit market.

Diversion from the licit to the illicit market occurs much more easily with opium than concentrate of poppy straw, as the Indian example shows us.

In India, legal opium producing occurs in selected tracts in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The Indian central government sets an opium minimum qualifying yield (MQY) according to the yields reported by farmers the previous years. During the 2004-05 crop year (8,770 licensed hectares), MQY of 58 kilograms per hectare in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and of 49kg in Uttar Pradesh had to be achieved by opium farmers to be eligible for the renewal of their license in 2005-06.

Cultivators are issued a license for growing poppies and the entire opium produced by all farmers is purchased by and only by the Central Bureau of Narcotics at a price fixed by the central government. The price paid to the farmers depends on the yields achieved, with farmers producing more opium getting paid a higher price per kilogram: in 2004-05, the minimum price paid per kilogram was Rs750 (US$17) for yields up to 44kg per hectare. The maximum price paid was Rs2,200 for yields above 100kg/ha. The average national yield was 56kg/ha and was paid at a price Rs1,150 per kilogram.

However, it is important to bear in mind that, to try to prevent diversion to the illicit market, in 2004-05 the maximum licensed area to be cultivated in opium poppies was 0.10 hectare. Therefore, the maximum income that Indian farmers can derive from legal opium production is limited by fixed prices and by limitation of areas cultivated by each of them.

With such low prices paid to Indian opium farmers, diversion to the illegal market, where opium can fetch prices as much as four to five times the minimum government price, clearly takes place; although there is no reliable estimate of such diversion.

The 2005 International Control Strategy Report of the US Department of State stresses that "in 2004, the government of India discovered and shut down six morphine base laboratories in India's opium-growing areas; four in Uttar Pradesh and two in Madhya Pradesh".

The fact that the central government raises the MQY and the official price paid to farmers is clearly not enough to keep some of them from diverting part of their harvest to the illegal market. It is worth noting that the CBN recently tightened its control on opium farming and against diversion, drastically lowering the number of hectares licensed (from 21,141 in 2003-04 to 8,771 in 2004-05) and the number of farmers licensed (from 105,697 in 2003-04 to 87,682 in 2004-05).

Shortcomings of opium licensing in Afghanistan
The proposal to license opium production in Afghanistan thus raises an important question: Would the prices paid to opium farmers be high enough to provide them with a sufficient income and to enable the development of the Afghan rural economy while, in the meantime, preventing opium diversion from the licit to the illicit market?

In Afghanistan, opium prices have varied greatly during the past decade, ranging from $23 to $350 per kilogram of fresh opium at harvest time. In 2005, the average farm-gate price of fresh opium at harvest time was $102 per kilogram (average yield: 39 kg/ha) and 309,000 families, or about 2 million persons (8.7% of the population) were involved in opium-poppy cultivation, itinerant workers not included.

Such prices, which are far from enriching Afghan opium farmers but simply allow them to cope with poverty, only need to be compared to those of India to realize that licit opium production in Afghanistan could not compete with illicit opium production, that most opium farmers would still have to give up opium production while the others would see their revenues plummet, and that, considering the limited writ and power of the Afghan authorities, diversion from the licit to the illicit market would be unavoidable and would reach much higher proportions than in India.

More important, licensing opium production in Afghanistan would not be better than eradication or alternative development at addressing the causes of the recourse to illegal opium production and would thus fail to fulfill the international community's objective: the suppression of illegal opium production. If crop substitution proved to be a failure in the past decades, why would the substitution of an illegal opium production for a legal opium production work better by reducing farmers' income and not addressing the structural factors causing illegal opium production?

It is crucial to understand that, contrary to what has often been denounced here and there, opium production is more a consequence of Afghanistan's lawlessness, instability and poverty than its cause. Opium production clearly proceeds from poverty and food insecurity, from Afghanistan to Myanmar and Laos, where it is a coping mechanism and livelihood strategy.

Opium production is a vital element in the livelihood strategies of part of the Afghan rural population, providing peasants not only with a source of income, but also with access to land and credit. More than opium production as such, it is therefore poverty and the shortcomings of the Afghan agrarian system that should be tackled.

It is alternative livelihoods that must be promoted, in a way that counter-narcotics objectives are mainstreamed into national development strategies and programs, if the causes of opium-poppy cultivation are to be addressed and illicit opium production eventually curtailed.

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique research fellow, and produces www.geopium.org.

(Copyright 2006 Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy.)

Pledges highlight Afghan reality BBC News
War-ravaged Afghanistan seems a world away from the plush, high-ceilinged rooms of Lancaster House in central London, where the conference on rebuilding the country has been taking place. Nearby, in one of the richest parts of one of the richest cities in the world, high-priced European cars drive past shops selling shoes at £140 ($250) a pair. That is more than most Afghans earn in a year. And why, some people watching the various delegations arriving asked, are countries like Brazil sending officials here? Yet what is happening in this magnificent building a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace is crucial to Afghanistan's future.
Afghanistan pledges progress in 5-year donor-aid deal International Herald Tribune
Rice: US will not abandon Afghanistan Aljazeera.net
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February 1, 2006
60 Nations Set 5-Year Goals to Aid Afghanistan
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, Jan. 31 — The Bush administration pledged Tuesday to seek Congressional approval for a further $1.1 billion in aid to help rebuild Afghanistan next year, roughly the same amount sought for 2006.

"The transformation of Afghanistan is remarkable but incomplete, and it is essential that we all increase our support for the Afghan people," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at an aid conference of more than 60 nations here.

The gathering agreed on what it called the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year blueprint to restore the country's security, build a functioning economy and counter the rapidly expanding narcotics trade.

The compact is intended as a successor to an agreement reached in 2001 after the overthrow of the radical Islamic Taliban government.

Since then, the United States has appropriated some $6 billion over the last three years. A sum of $1.1 billion, committed for the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, has not yet been disbursed.

According to official administration figures, other donors have pledged more than $9.5 billion for Afghanistan between 2001 and 2006, but only half of it has actually been handed over.

Along with its goals of cementing democracy and spurring economic growth, the Afghanistan Compact aims to eliminate illegal armed groups by 2007 and build a national army of 70,000 troops by 2010.

Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said the goals were "ambitious but they are achievable."

Prime Minister Tony Blair has promised to send 3,300 troops to Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan, later this year. Their mission will be to provide security, not to hunt down insurgents, according to the British government.

At the same time, President Bush has said the number of American troops in Afghanistan will be cut by 2,500, to 16,500, as a NATO deployment gathers strength.

The conference here follows months of mounting bloodshed in Afghanistan and concern about a narcotics trade that provides almost 90 percent of global opium and heroin.

Steven R. Weisman reported from Washington for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

Iraqi, Iranian and Pakistani 'terrorists' seized in Afghanistan Wed Feb 1, 4:48 AM ET

Counter-terrorism police have arrested an Iraqi, an Iranian and three Pakistanis allegedly planning attacks in insurgency-hit southern Afghanistan, the interior ministry said.

The men had entered Afghanistan's Nimroz province from neighbouring Iran, ministry spokesman Yousuf Stanizai said on Wednesday.

"They are all terrorists. They had crossed illegally into Nimroz from Iran and wanted to go to other provinces to carry out terrorist attacks," he told AFP.

"They all had documents proving their identities. The investigation is ongoing."

Stanizai said the Iraqi, whose name was not disclosed, was on his way to southern Kandahar province.

The province is a hotbed of an insurgency that erupted after the Taliban government was ousted in late 2001. It has suffered frequent suicide and car bomb attacks that officials often blame on foreigners allied with the Taliban.

Stanizai said the Iranian had initially claimed to be from Herat province in western Afghanistan but police later found Iranian identity cards with him identifying him as Qurban Ali.

The Pakistanis were identified as Gul Nazar, Mohammad Nawab and Alif Khan.

The governor of Nimroz, Ghulam Dastageer, confirmed the arrests but said only two Pakistanis had been caught. They were picked up between Friday and Monday in the provincial capital Zaranj, he told AFP.

Afghan officials widely blame a spate of suicide attacks -- a phenomenon that only emerged in the country after the collapse of the Taliban -- on foreign elements, especially from Pakistan.

Analysts have said the suicide blasts and car bombs suggest the insurgents have adopted Iraq-style tactics or are increasingly being influenced by Al-Qaeda, which was sheltered by the Taliban regime.

In the worst of at least 20 suicide attacks in the past four months, 22 people were killed on January 16 when an man on a motorcycle blew himself up in a crowd leaving a wrestling match in the town of Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan.

Afghan army and police and foreign troops helping to stabilise Afghanistan have previously been the prime targets of the militants.

The US military, which helped topple the extremist Taliban in late 2001, is leading a coalition of about 20,000 troops hunting remnants of the regime mainly in southern and eastern Afghanistan.

NATO forces are due to take over their duties in southern Afghanistan later this year.




Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/957...4ED2AA59771.htm

World pledges $10.5bn for Afghanistan
Wednesday 01 February 2006, 23:07 Makka Time, 20:07 GMT


Blair: Helping Afghanistan and Iraq is crucial to global security

Nearly 70 nations and international bodies have pledged $10.5 billion (€8.75bn) to help Afghanistan fight poverty, improve security and crack down on the drug trade.


Officials announced the figure on Wednesday at the close of a two-day conference on the troubled nation's future.

"We have laid the foundation for change," Kim Howells, the British foreign office minister, said in announcing the funding promises. "This money will provide the necessary basis for getting Afghanistan's work under way."

The pledges were intended to fund the goals set out in a five-year plan delegates signed on Tuesday for re-development in the country decimated by decades of war.

Dubbed the Afghanistan Compact, it covers poverty reduction, economic development, counter-narcotics efforts and security and promises aid to help Hamid Karzai's government achieve the targets.

Very thankful

"I am very thankful and I am very confident that with this kind of support ... we will eventually be able to establish a very democratic society in Afghanistan," said Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi, the country's finance minister.

Diplomats at the conference praised the progress Afghanistan has made since a US-led coalition toppled the Taliban government in 2001.

But after decades of war and the Taliban's puritanical rule, the country is still plagued by violence and extreme poverty and they acknowledged it has a long way to go.


Afghanistan is mired in extreme
poverty in addition to violence


Ameerah Haq, of the UN mission in Afghanistan, said it was now crucial that those building the country's future return home and put the new blueprint into action.

"The clock of the Afghanistan Compact is now ticking," she said.

The conference focused on Wednesday on boosting human rights and economic development.

Afghanistan pledged in the new plan to build a functioning justice system in all its provinces by 2010 and reduce the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 3% per year.

Howells said establishing the rule of law would be critical.

"Without this, reconstruction, economic growth, poverty reduction and counter-narcotics will continue to be hampered," Howells said. "It's very important that the protection of human rights becomes part of the mainstream of Afghan politics."

Combating drugs

Howells said $77 million (€64 million) of the money pledged would go to fight drug production and trafficking.

Afghanistan produces nearly 90% of the world's opium and heroin. "We need to stop this evil trade which affects us all," he said.


The nation produces nearly 90%
of the world's opium and heroin

Hedayat Amin Arsala, Afghanistan's commerce minister and a senior government adviser, said changing the country's political culture would be difficult.

"This is not a simple task," he said. "There is a whole generation of Afghans who have grown up seeing political causes advanced" through violence instead of democratic processes.

Delegates pledged to keep aid to Afghanistan flowing.

Tony Blair, the British prime minister, said that "at this moment when terrorism is fighting back in Afghanistan and in Iraq", helping both countries become stable was crucial to global security.

"Because when they were left in that failed state, they were a threat to the whole of the world," he told the House of Commons in his weekly question session.

Successor deal

The five-year blueprint that leaders signed at the conference is intended as a successor to the deal reached at a December 2001 meeting in Bonn, Germany, which established a political process for Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.

Afghanistan promised in the new compact to build a professional army and police force, shut down all armed militias by the end of 2007, and teach its officials about human rights.

It also vowed to provide electricity to 25% of rural homes and 65% of urban ones by 2010, repair roads and set up a system of land registration. It also said it would reduce infant and maternal mortality rates that are among the worst in the world by 20% and 15% respectively by 2010.


Agencies

Afghanistan maps out plan for peace Toronto Star
Afghanistan set out a plan yesterday to tackle problems from opium production to corruption and terrorism, as envoys from more than 60 nations pledged they would help the shattered nation along the road to peace and self-sufficiency. Dignitaries at the opening of a two-day conference on Afghanistan's future spoke proudly of the country's achievements since a U.S.-led coalition toppled the hardline Taliban regime in 2001. But they agreed that, with widespread poverty and violence flaring, it still had a long way to go. "From a nation held hostage by terrorism and by terrorists, Afghanistan today is a nascent democracy," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said. However, he said, "our optimism is necessarily tempered by the serious challenges ahead ... (including) terrorism, extreme violence, the illicit narcotics industry and the corruption it nurtures. ... We cannot be complacent." The five-year plan unveiled at the conference, dubbed the "Afghanistan Compact," laid out targets for President Hamid Karzai's government in areas including security, economic development and anti-narcotics efforts. They illustrated the scale of the task ahead and demonstrated how utterly ruined the Central Asian nation was by wars over two decades. Afghanistan promised to build a professional army and police force, shut down all armed militias by the end of 2007 and teach its officials about human rights. It vowed to provide electricity to 25 per cent of rural homes and 65 per cent of urban ones by 2010, repair roads and set up a system of land registration. It also said it would reduce infant and maternal mortality rates that are among the worst in the world by 20 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively, by 2010. Karzai said he would also focus on boosting economic growth to tackle widespread poverty.
Diplomats focus on Afghan rights, economy San Jose Mercury News
Afghan aid pledges rise to $10.5b BBC News
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British troops may face al-Qa'eda fighters sent from Iraq to Afghanistan
By Tom Coghlan in Kabul
(Filed: 03/02/2006)

Al-Qa'eda militants are moving from Iraq to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, officials said yesterday after the capture of several suspected foreign guerrillas.

Authorities in Nimroz province reported the arrest of four men, three Kashmiri Pakistanis and an Iraqi, in an ominous escalation of the threat to Nato forces.


Children chase a British Army vehicle on patrol in Kabul
The province borders Helmand where as many as 5,500 British troops will be deployed later in the year.

Now its governor has claimed that the Iraqi has admitted to being part of a group of fighters linked to al-Qa'eda and despatched from Iraq to fight western forces in Afghanistan.

If true, the disclosure would show how al-Qa'eda was fomenting unrest in the country its leadership was forced to flee after the September 2001 attacks.

There have been many previous claims by the government and US-led forces that Pakistani groups were involved in terrorism in Afghanistan. But links to Iraq have not been proven.

"There is a big group coming from Iraq," said the Nimroz governor, Ghulam Dusthaqir Azad.

"They're linked to al-Qa'eda and fought against US forces in Iraq. They have been ordered to come here. Many are suicide bombers."

His spokesman, Wahid Thairqwa, said the captured men were bound for Kandahar, the scene of a spate of recent suicide bomb attacks against western forces, one of which killed a senior Canadian diplomat.

The captured Iraqi was named by Afghan officials in Nimroz as Numan din Majid, 35, from Diyala province, west of Baghdad.

The governor also said an Arab from an undisclosed country was captured in the same area two months ago and told interrogators he was part of a group of 17 militants travelling individually from Iraq to Afghanistan.

"We handed him over to the anti-terrorism department and they have made several arrests based on information from him," said Mr Azad.

Five Bangladeshis arrested this week were also alleged by local officials to have links to the Taliban.

The desolate south-western provinces of Helmand, Nimroz and Farah have porous borders with Iran and Baluchistan in Pakistan. The area is infamous for lawlessness and smuggling.

British troops will arrive in Helmand to find no law enforcement at all along its southern border, according to western officials.

An 18-man patrol of Afghan police that strayed close to the border in October was ambushed and killed. Among the dead was the provincial police chief.

An apparent switch in Taliban tactics in the middle of last year has led to an increase in the use of "shaped charge" roadside bombs, remote control devices and suicide attacks, familiar to Iraqi insurgents but previously uncommon in Afghanistan.

However, US authorities have always insisted they have no evidence of a direct connection between the Iraqi insurgency and the Taliban.

Two Taliban commanders told Newsweek magazine last autumn that they had travelled across Iran to Iraq for tactical training and returned to give "new momentum and spirit" to their fighters.

Mohammed Daud, a Taliban commander from Ghazni, and Hamza Sangari, from Khost, described a clandestine network that allowed them to cross and re-cross Iran and infiltrate Iraq.

Training camps near the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, which are both hotbeds of insurgency, instructed them in techniques perfected in Iraq.

In October an intelligence report from Iraq alleged that two lieutenants of al-Qa'eda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had been sent to Afghanistan to help organise Taliban resistance.

One Western diplomat said that powerful C4 explosive, previously unknown in Afghanistan, had started to appear in bombings in eastern Afghanistan in the latter part of last year.

There have been more than 30 suicide bombings in the past four months. One yesterday in the eastern city of Khost killed five people.

Kabul`s Mission Impossible Monsters and Critics.com
The vote in the Dutch parliament Friday to send up to 1,400 of their troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan may help save the battered credibility of the alliance, but it faces something dreadfully close to Mission Impossible. The United States wants to withdraw some 4,000 troops from the Afghan mission. NATO, or at least its energetic new Dutch secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, wants to be seen as militarily useful so it has deployed its first mission outside the traditional European theater of operations. For the past two years, NATO has deployed some 9,000 troops in and around Kabul. The force includes some 2,000 Germans, about a thousand Turks, the same number of Canadians and just over 500 from Italy, Belgium, Spain and Britain, which is about to send some 3,200 more. The Canadians are being reinforced to about 2,200, and the overall NATO contingent should soon amount to over 15,000 troops, and moving into some of the dangerous regions that have hitherto be mainly manned by U.S. forces. The British are being deployed to Helmand province, a dangerous zone where the Taliban remains powerful, and which has seen 100 U.S. troops killed over the past 6 months -- an ominous figure, given that the 100th British soldier has just been killed in Iraq. In order to reinforce this NATO mission, the Dutch went through an agonizing public debate and a political row that brought up all the old European resentments about the Bush administration and the Iraq war, and for a while it threatened to sink the government. The government had to make all sorts of promises, like an insistence that no detained Afghan would be allowed to end up in the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to win the vote. And they pledged that the Dutch troops would be under strict Rules of Engagement that would let them fight back, but not initiate hostilities, nor fight alongside the U.S. forces on aggressive patrol missions.
Dutch parliament votes on NATO troops RTE.ie
More Dutch troops to Afghanistan Radio Netherlands
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Afghanistan Battles Continue ThreatsWatch.Org
The battles between the Taliban and Afghan Army and police units, backed by US forces, enters the third day in the troubled southeastern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Six Afghan policemen are killed in a roadside bombing near Kandahar as U.S. air forces conduct strikes in the Ghoraz region, where “close-air support was called to the scene of the attack. British Harriers, Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II and B-52 Stratofortress aircraft responded to the scene, attacking enemy positions and forcing them to flee into a nearby town.” The New York Times provides a summarized description of the battles, which began Thursday night, and resulted in chasing Taliban forces from Helmand into Kandahar. Three Taliban commanders and over thirty two Taliban are known to have been killed. The battle — the largest in Afghanistan in months — erupted Thursday night when about 200 Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol near the town of Sangin, then attacked reinforcements as they arrived. Coalition planes, including British Harriers and American A10 attack jets and B-52 bombers, joined the battle. In one attack on Friday night, a district administrator, Hajji Abdul Qudous, was killed and a policeman injured when militants fired a rocket into his offices in the district of Musa Qala, the deputy governor of Helmand Province, Mullah Amir Akhundzada, said. Hours later, in another attack on government office, this time in the Nauzad district, a government soldier and five militants were killed, he said. The rebels had escaped into the mountainous area of Ghorak in the neighboring province of Kandahar, he said. He said 18 Taliban fighters had been killed, including 2 commanders, Tor Akhtar and Haji Nasro. “The Taliban were served a heavy blow,” he said.
Assaults Kill 41 in Afghanistan, Pakistan Forbes
US and Afghan Forces Hunt Taliban in 2nd Day of Fighting New York Times
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Afghan police kill four in cartoon bloodshed Reuters
Afghan police killed four protesters on Tuesday in some of the worst violence to erupt over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which have provoked a deepening crisis between Europe and the Muslim World. British troops were ordered to the Afghan town of Maymana to restore order after crowds attacked a NATO base of Norwegian troops with guns and grenades and police opened fire bringing the protest death toll in the Middle East and Asia to nine. "The situation is still out of control, but we have established some kind of a show of force with F-16s," Norway's defense ministry said. Norway was the second country after Denmark to publish the cartoons, one of which depicts Mohammad wearing a turban resembling a bomb with a fizzing fuse. A wave of Muslim fury spread across the Middle East and Asia on Tuesday over the cartoons as leaders urged restraint and struggled to contain the protests which in recent days turned from peaceful to volatile and bloody. In Iran, which is locked in a nuclear stand-off with the West and which has cut trade ties with Denmark where the images were first published, a crowd pelted the Danish embassy in Tehran with petrol bombs and stones for a second day. After rioters set Danish missions ablaze in Syria and Lebanon at the weekend, the European Union presidency issued a strongly worded warning to 19 countries across the Middle East that they are obliged to protect EU missions.
How cartoons sparked violence Chicago Tribune
Muslim Cartoon Protests Turn Deadly CBS News
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February 7, 2006
NATO and Protesters Clash in Afghanistan Over Cartoons
By CARLOTTA GALL
and CHRISTINE HAUSER
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 7 — NATO troops in northern Afghanistan came under siege today in a second day of violent protests against the publication of satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in European newspapers and fired on demonstrators in an effort to repel them.

Three protesters were killed and 22 injured in the clash, which took place in the town of Maimana, in Faryab Province, local officials said. A contingent of British troops, also part of the NATO force, were sent as reinforcements from their base in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif to assist the Norwegian and Finnish troops that came under attack.

It is the first time NATO troops, who are in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate as the International Security Assistance Force to establish security and assist reconstruction, have been attacked in their base by a mob. Largely tolerated by the public, especially in the more peaceful northern part of the country, the peacekeeping force has been targeted in sporadic individual attacks from roadside bombs and suicide bombers, but not by large numbers of the public.

Three Afghan police officers who were trying to contain the crowd and five Norwegian soldiers belonging to the NATO peacekeeping force were also injured in the violence, they said. An additional 38 people were treated for the effects of tear gas.

Muslim anger continued to boil over elsewhere in Africa, Asia and the Middle East over the publication, initially in Danish newspapers, of the cartoons.

The fallout from the Muslim anger has been felt in the economy, with several countries boycotting Danish products. Iran told Denmark that it was cutting trade, and an Iranian newspaper said it would hold a contest to solicit cartoons on the Holocaust, testing Western resolve to claims of free speech.

"Does Western free speech allow working on issues like America and Israel's crimes or an incident like the Holocaust or is this freedom of speech only good for insulting the holy values of divine religions?" wrote the Iranian daily Hamshahri, according to the Reuters news agency.

In a news conference in Copenhagen today, Denmark's prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, called for calm. "Denmark is doing everything it can to have a positive and constructive dialogue with a series of governments in the Middle East," Mr. Rasmussen said, according to Agence France-Presse.

"But the situation is made more difficult by the fact that the conflict is spreading in the streets, and it will not be easy to resolve it from one day to the next."

Today, President Bush called Mr. Rasmussen, and "expressed support" after the recent violence, said the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan. In Tehran, protesters persisted in a second day of attacks on the Danish Embassy, with a mob hurling stones and petrol bombs at the building and prompting a request by Denmark for protection for its diplomats. The Norwegian embassy was also attacked.

Today's violence in Iran occurred even after authorities told the Iranian people not to attack diplomatic territory.

"Nevertheless, Western countries should atone for their mistake," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, according to Agence France-Presse.

In Africa, tens of thousands of Muslims gathered in Niger's capital in a peaceful demonstration to denounce the cartoons, as did about 5,000 in the northern city of Peshawar in Pakistan, Reuters reported.

Austria, which holds the rotating European Union presidency, called for protection for European citizens and for further acts of violence to be prevented.

Today's violence illustrated the extent to which Muslim anger over the cartoons that satirized the Prophet Muhammad have gained momentum.

On Monday, protesters turned out in Turkey, Indonesia, India, Thailand and even New Zealand, where newspapers recently reprinted the cartoons. A teenager died in Somalia on Monday when the police set off a stampede by firing into the air to disperse protesters. Thousands of students demonstrated in Cairo.

The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten originally published the 12 cartoons last September, and they were republished in European news media in the last week. At least one American newspaper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, has published the cartoons. Muslims picketed the newspaper offices on Monday in protest.

Carlotta Gall reported from Afghanistan for this article and Christine Hauser reported from New York.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

Suicide blast kills 13 in southern Afghanistan:

A suspected Taliban militant has blown himself up at the police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar, killing 13 people in the latest of a rash of suicide attacks, officials said.
http://www.bakutoday.net/afp/english/share...16.nee571og.php


Four killed as Afghan crowd attacks Norwegian base:

Afghan police opened fire on a mob trying to storm a NATO peacekeeping base housing Norwegian troops on Tuesday, killing four people as protests over cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Mohammad flared again.
http://tinyurl.com/aqq9x


2 Killed As Afghans Storm US Air Base :

Over 2,000 demonstrators stormed the US-led coalition's Bagram Airbase sparking a police firing in which two people died. Two others were killed in police firing in the central Afghan city of Mihtarlam.
http://www.godubai.com/gulftoday/article.a...64&Section=Main


One Killed As Norwegian troops fire on Afghans in cartoon protest:

A provincial governor in Afghanistan says NATO peacekeepers from Norway fired on hundreds of protesters outside their base, after demonstrators shot at them and tossed grenades.
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=4467333


U.S. soldier killed in firefight in Afghanistan :

One U.S. soldier was killed Monday when Taliban militants attacked the military vehicle belonging to a U.S. patrol in eastern Afghan province of Laghman, the U.S. military said in a press release.
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200602/0...207_240611.html


Swedish soldiers attacked in Afghanistan:

Soldiers in the Nordic peacekeeping force based in Meymaneh in Afghanistan have been attacked by hundreds of demonstrators armed with guns and hand grenades.
http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=3011&date=20060207

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HB08Df01.html
The Taliban's bloody foothold in Pakistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - By taking control of virtually all of Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area on the border with Afghanistan, the Taliban have gained a significant base from which to wage their resistance against US-led forces in Afghanistan. At the same time, the development solidifies the anti-US resistance groups in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, which will now fight under a single strategy.

The Taliban recently declared the establishment of an "Islamic state" in North Waziristan, and they now, through the brutal



elimination of the criminal elements who previously held sway, in effect rule in the rugged territory.

As a tribal area, North Waziristan has always enjoyed significant independence from Islamabad, and even on the occasions when the Pakistani army has ventured into the area to root out foreign fighters or Afghan resistance figures, it has received fierce opposition, and in effect been forced to back off.

The Taliban and their supporters plant roadside bombs on the routes used by the Pakistani paramilitary forces, and virtually every day one or two vehicles are blown up. This measure is aimed to keep the security forces away from the actual tribal areas of Waziristan. In short, the writ of the Pakistani political agent (the central government's representative) barely extends beyond Miramshah Bazaar and Wana Bazaar (the official headquarters). Everywhere else, the Taliban are calling the shots.

Asia Times Online has viewed a video disc released by the Taliban that illustrates their control in North Waziristan. The footage includes their bases, where thousands of youths are present, preparations for an attack into Afghanistan, and shots of criminals executed at a public rally staged by the Taliban.

The government of Pakistan has termed the executions "tyranny".

The video opens with pictures of the headless bodies of criminals strung up in Miramshah Bazaar, executed by the Taliban.

The next segment showcases the establishment of strong bases in which thousands of turban-clad youths can be seen with guns. Commanders scan the ranks and select a squad to launch a guerrilla attack on a US base in Khost province in Afghanistan. They put on headbands with the wording "There is no God but the one God; Mohammed is the messenger of God."

The fighters emerge from their base at night and head for Khost. After a 30-minute battle, flames can be seen rising from within the US base. The squad returns before dawn.

The video also includes the "official" announcement of the establishment of an Islamic state in Waziristan (which includes the tribal area of South Waziristan) and a declaration of the Taliban's rule in North Waziristan.

This development confirms an Asia Times Online article describing how al-Qaeda and its allies - in this case the Taliban - would establish bases from which to coordinate and strengthen its global war against the United States (Al-Qaeda goes back to base, November 4, 2005).

This announcement of an Islamic state is interpreted as a prelude to the Taliban's summer offensive, precisely at a time when Iran's nuclear dossier will be submitted to the United Nations Security Council, and both Europe and the US will be mounting pressure on Tehran to abandon its nuclear program.

The US and Iran being at loggerheads sits very well with al-Qaeda's plans to establish bases and a unified command system of anti-US resistance from Iraq to Afghanistan. Iran is at present the only missing link in this strategy.

Despite little love being lost between the Taliban and Iran, al- Qaeda's Egyptian camp has retained its traditional decades-old ties with the Iranian regime. The real ideologue of the Iranian revolution of 1979 was Dr Ali Shariati, who was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood's Syed Qutub. Similarly, the Islamic Jihad of Palestine officially claims its inspiration from the Shi'ite Iranian revolution, despite being a completely Sunni Islamic group.

Al-Qaeda's link with Iran, although at a very low level, could prove critical in the coming months. Should Iran find itself sanctioned, or even attacked by the US, few states would dare to support Tehran.

Al-Qaeda, however, would seize the opportunity, asking in return that it be given its desperately needed corridor through Iran to link Afghanistan and Pakistan with Iraq and the Arab world.

A silent revolution
The Taliban video disc, which is a mixture of Pashtu and Urdu, maintained that criminals had been calling the shots in North Waziristan. They routinely abducted children and sodomized them, and they charged protection money from shopkeepers, from transport operators, and even for marriage ceremonies. The gangs were headed by an Afghan, Hakeem Khan Zadran. They had various sanctuaries where drugs, women and alcohol were available.

The government, too, was claimed to have paid the criminals so that they would not interfere with official business.

But a turning point came last December. A group of Taliban fighters were heading to Khost to launch an operation in Afghanistan when they were stopped by some criminals demanding money for safe passage. The Taliban refused, and were allowed to pass. However, a few kilometers further down the road the criminals fired a rocket and blew up the vehicle. Four Taliban belonging to the Wazir tribe were killed.

The incident outraged local supporters of the Taliban, who converged near Miramshah and warned people to leave their homes if they lived near criminals. A raid was then conducted on one criminal sanctuary. In a fierce 15-minute gun battle, several gangsters were killed, some were seized and many fled.

Over the next three days, according to the video, the Taliban smoked out numerous criminals from their hideouts all over North Waziristan. Many were executed at mass rallies in Miramshah Bazaar.

The Taliban movement
In a similar manner, the Taliban emerged as a reformist movement against criminals and warlords in Zabul and Kandahar in Afghanistan about 16 years ago.

The Taliban have shown their muscles so powerfully in North Waziristan that Pakistani forces have just stepped away. It has now become a popular movement with the complete support of local tribes.

The Taliban have attracted thousands of foot soldiers from all over, including Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis, Afghans, Uzbeks and local tribals. North Waziristan is now their "Islamic state" and base from which to launch a summer offensive in Afghanistan.

According to Asia Times Online investigations, more than 100 suicide squads have been lined up for the summer assault. These squads have precise targets all over Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is also encouraged by the strong representation of Islamists in the new Afghan parliament as potential supporters.

The Taliban have already disseminated warnings to all the governors in the south and southeast of Afghanistan not to mobilize forces in search of the Taliban - or else they will face the music in the form of suicide attacks. (On Tuesday in the southern city of Kandahar, a suicide bomber attacked a guard post outside the police headquarters, killing 13 people and wounding 11.)

Local Taliban commanders such as Mullah Dadullah are already in the field to sway Afghan tribes in the Pashtun heartlands of Afghanistan to be prepared for the offensive.

Contacts in the Hizb-i-Islami Afghanistan - a major resistance group - in Kabul maintain that the long absence of commander Kashmir Khan had led many to believe that he had been arrested by US forces. However, he recently emerged from hiding and has become the main engine of the resistance in the Kunar Valley, where he is cultivating local tribes for support.

"If this military strategy is implemented it would have serious consequences for the allied forces in Afghanistan, especially at a time when they are mounting pressure on Iran," commented an intelligence analyst. "However, the Taliban made tall claims about winter suicide attacks, but barring a few events they failed to inflict major losses on allied forces."

That was before the Taliban secured a base in North Waziristan, though. This time around could see a very different outcome.

Next: The resistance route from southern to southeastern Afghanistan

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HB08Df02.html
Stoking the jihadi fires
By Syed Saleem Shahzad

KARACHI - In some parts of the Muslim world, anger over the publication of blasphemous cartoons might be cooled by burning a few diplomatic buildings or setting fire to Israeli flags or effigies of US President George W Bush. But in the region that starts on the Arabian Sea shores of the Pakistani port city of Karachi and ends in the landlocked areas of Afghanistan, passions will not be as easily tempered.

With the Taliban and al-Qaeda gearing for a summer offensive in Afghanistan, using Pakistan's tribal area of North Waziristan as a base, they want to increase their political mass support once they ramp up their activities on the guerrilla front.

At the same time, they are looking for fresh blood from the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Pakistani jihadi diehards to join their jihad.

Incidents such as the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in an unsavory light play right into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in fanning the already simmering embers of discontent among the masses.

On Monday, thousands of demonstrators gathered all over Afghanistan, from northern Takhar province to Kandahar in the south. Afghan security forces opened fire in some places, leaving at least four dead.

The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main US base in Afghanistan, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility, Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief, was quoted as saying. Two demonstrators were killed and five were injured, while eight police were also hurt, he said. No US troops were involved in the clashes, the military said.

Afghan police also fired on protesters in the central city of Mihtarlam after a man in the crowd shot at them and others threw stones and knives. Two protesters were killed, and three other people were wounded, including two police, officials said. The demonstrators burned tires and threw stones at government offices.

On Tuesday, in the southern city of Kandahar, a suicide bomber attacked a guard post outside the police headquarters, killing 13 people and wounding 11, officials said. The incident comes ahead of a major offensive - including suicide attacks - planned by the Taliban this summer.

"It is a critical situation and is likely to have a special impact on Afghanistan," said a newly elected member of the Afghan parliament, Sibghatullah Zaki, speaking to Asia Times Online by telephone from Kabul.

Zaki was elected from northern Takhar province and is ethnically Uzbek. He is also a top leader of the Jumbesh Milli Afghanistan led by General Abdul Rasheed Dostum. "On the one hand, the West is trying to fight with terror, and on the other hand this sort of action promotes terrorism," Zaki said.

Zaki said that those who published the cartoons were playing with the sentiments of 1.4 billion Muslims. "Our religion teaches us tolerance, and all prophets before Mohammed have a status in Islam. We believe that before the end of time Essa [Jesus] will re-emerge and Muslims will be part of his army. On the other hand, publication of blasphemous caricatures creates suspicion that the West does not respect Islam.

"There are 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. The majority of them condemn terrorism. There are few who believe in terror tactics. However, publication of such caricatures shows that they consider all Muslims as terrorists," Zaki said.

"I tell you, this will have a direct impact on Afghanistan's socio-political situation. There are already riots from north to south. In my province, Takhar, people attacked the offices of the governor and the mayor and ransacked everything. There [were] a huge demonstration and riots in Laghman. This indicates the direction in which the common Afghan thinks," Zaki said.

In Karachi, in a unanimous decision by all trade bodies, Pakistan's financial hub was closed on Tuesday in protest against the cartoons. The president of the Federation of Pakistani Chambers of Commerce and Industries has called for a boycott of Danish products, as the cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper.

Syed Saleem Shahzad is Bureau Chief, Pakistan Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing .)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

February 8, 2006
Afghanistan Hails Debt Cancellation
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:42 p.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan on Wednesday hailed decisions to cancel the impoverished country's debts to the United States, Russia and Germany, but the country likely will remain dependent on foreign aid as it recovers from decades of war.

Afghanistan owed $108 million to the United States and $44 million to Germany from loans before the 1979 Soviet invasion. Russia claimed it was owed about $10 billion from loans to a puppet communist government in the early 1990s.

''After 30 years of devastation, we are starting from nothing and any move such as this helps the reconstruction of Afghanistan,'' said Khaleeq Ahmed, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will forgive the entire debt, following a similar pledge from Russia on Monday and from Germany at a donors' conference last week.

Even with the loans forgiven, Afghanistan looks set to remain reliant on years of foreign aid. More than 90 percent of the government's $4.75 billion budget in 2005 was financed by international donors, and Karzai has said his government will need propping up for about a decade.

The International Monetary Fund's representative in Afghanistan, Joshua Charap, said that even by 2010, Afghan government revenues are expected to cover less than two-thirds of total expenditures.

Charap said the removal of the foreign debt would allow Kabul to ''normalize its credit rating,'' paving the way for new loans.

Nearly a third of government spending this fiscal year has been on its new army and police amid rising crime and the Taliban-led insurgency. The hard-line Islamic militia was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion.

More than 1,600 people have died in the past year as militants have stepped up attacks. About 20 suicide attacks have been reported across Afghanistan in the past four months.

''The government and people of Afghanistan are working diligently to build a sustainable market economy despite many challenges,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Tuesday.

The United States plans to give $1.1 billion in aid next year. There also are about 19,000 American troops in Afghanistan, but President Bush has said he plans to cut that force to 16,500 this year as a NATO force expands.

Russia said it would write off $10 billion it says is owed by Afghanistan if the country fulfills the requirements of a World Bank program aimed at reducing poverty and takes steps to develop economic and trade ties with creditor nations.

Karzai's government has not recognized the debt to Russia, which dates back to the Soviet era.

The Soviet Union had close ties with Afghanistan and invaded the country in 1979, installing a pro-Moscow Communist government. The decade-long occupation ended with a withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989 under relentless pressure by U.S.-backed anti-communist mujahedeen rebels.

The German announcement came at a conference last week in London where nearly 70 nations and international bodies pledged $10.5 billion to help Afghanistan fight poverty, improve security and crack down on the drug trade.

The nation is the source of nearly 90 percent of the world's opium and heroin.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

4 more killed in Afghan protest over prophet drawings:

Police killed four people Wednesday as Afghans enraged over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad marched on a U.S. military base in a volatile southern province, directing their anger not against Europe but America.
http://tinyurl.com/76evd


Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan :

Patience of many Afghans with the U.S. presence is wearing thin. We heard repeated accounts of aggressive tactics during raids on homes or shops, particularly by U.S. troops in the southern and eastern provinces, and of torture and ill-treatment in U.S. custody.
http://minutemanmedia.org/GOERING%20020608.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0802296_pf.html

Opportunists Make Use of Cartoon Protests
Individuals, Groups and Governments Vent Anger Over Issues Unrelated to Defense of Islam

By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 9, 2006; A14



KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb. 8 -- Like tens of thousands of protesters this week, the crowd that gathered Wednesday in the southern Afghan town of Qalat came to speak out against cartoons in European newspapers mocking the prophet Muhammad.

But the protest soon took a much different direction. Afghan demonstrators began chanting against the hiring of Pakistanis to do reconstruction work. Pakistanis in the crowd began chanting against the United States and tried to force their way into the local U.S. military base. When the crowd encountered Afghan security forces, a suspected Taliban member fired a weapon. Afghan police returned fire. By the time the smoke cleared, at least three protesters were dead and more than a dozen people were injured.

"They forgot all about the cartoons," said Gulab Shah Alikheil, the regional governor's spokesman.

Furor over the caricatures of Islam's most revered figure may have triggered the wave of recent demonstrations among Muslims worldwide. But as the protests escalate, they are morphing into an opportunity for individuals, groups and governments to push agendas that often have little or nothing to do with defending Islam. Rallies ostensibly held for religious reasons have become chances to vent economic frustrations, settle local scores or gain political leverage.

"We have condemned the cartoons and said those responsible should be brought to justice," said Mulwi Sayed Imam Mutawali, deputy head of a religious council in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. "But there are some enemies of Afghanistan that want to take advantage of this issue. They just want to advance their own aims."

Mutawali said his council initially supported the protests but has decided to demand they stop because they have been hijacked by people with ulterior motives. At least 10 people have been killed in Afghan protests over the past three days.

"There's a sincere feeling of being wounded" by the cartoons, said Paul Fishstein, director of the nonprofit Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. "But there's also the chance for certain forces to make mischief, to take advantage of a situation where people are upset."

The list of suspected ringleaders using the controversy to their own benefit here is a long one, from al Qaeda and the Taliban to local militia commanders and former governors. All are believed to have something to gain by steering otherwise peaceful protests into melees.

"Ordinary Afghan citizens who are protesting do not walk around with hand grenades in their pockets," said a U.S. military spokesman, Col. James Yonts, referring to a protest Tuesday in which demonstrators lobbed grenades into a NATO base. "That leads us to believe there is something else behind this."

Afghanistan is not the only place where motives are in question.

The autocratic Syrian government was widely believed to be behind protests Saturday that resulted in the burning of the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. In Lebanon, where the Danish Embassy burned a day later and Christian landmarks were targeted in violence, local news organizations reported that Syrian agents had protesters bused in to help stir up t