Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Conference seeks cash and progress for Afghanistan
Donor states, military powers and regional players will be seeking a more effective strategy for Afghanistan's development and security as well as pledging funds at a conference in Paris on Thursday.
Afghanistan will ask the ministers and other delegates from around 65 countries to fund a $50 billion five-year development plan, for which donors will demand that Kabul do more to fight corruption in what is one of the world's poorest states.
Two years after a similar meeting in London outlined an international effort to promote security, good governance and development, envoys will assess "remaining challenges" in Afghanistan, which still suffers daily violence more than six years after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban government.
Last year alone, an insurgency by a rejuvenated Taliban accounted for some 6,000 deaths.
"No one anticipated the levels of violence that we see today. That's probably one of the best reasons for reviewing the London compact -- the basic assumptions in the compact did not hold true when they were written," said one official who briefed reporters. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Applying Iraq’s Lessons in an Afghan Village
United States marines pushed the Taliban out of this village and the surrounding district in southern Helmand Province so quickly in recent weeks that they called the operation a “catastrophic success.”
Yet, NATO troops had conducted similar operations here in 2006 and 2007, and the Taliban had returned soon after they left. The marines, drawing on lessons from Iraq, say they know what to do to keep the Taliban at bay if they are given the time.
“There is definitely someone thinking out there,” said Capt. John Moder, commander of Company C of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, speaking of the Taliban. “That’s why we need these people to be at least neutral to us,” he said, gesturing to the farmers who have been slowly filtering back to harvest their fields.
Originally sent to Garmser District on a three-day operation to open a road, the marines have been here a month and are likely to stay longer. The extension of the operation reflects the evolving tactics of the counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan, building on the knowledge accumulated in recent years in Anbar Province in Iraq. (NY Times)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Afghan aid ineffective, inefficient: watchdog
Billions of dollars of aid to Afghanistan have not been spent effectively and the Afghan government and international agencies must be held to account or more will be wasted, an independent watchdog said on Monday.
Afghanistan is to ask donors in Paris this week to fund a $50-billion five-year development plan, testing international commitment to the country which is still among the world's poorest and suffers daily violence more than six years after U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban government.
Of the $25 billion in aid to Afghanistan from 2001 until now, only some $15 billion has been spent, aid agencies say.
But for every $100 spent, sometimes only $20 actually reaches Afghan recipients, said the Kabul-based internationally funded Integrity Watch Afghanistan (IWA).
Between 15 to 30 percent of aid money is spent on security for aid agencies, the IWA report said, and 85 percent of products, services and human resources used by agencies are imported and provide few jobs for Afghan workers. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Officials hope 'strong government' will halt opium production in Afghanistan
Global food price rises may push some Afghan farmers to plant wheat instead of opium but officials say any real switch will only come from government pressure as poppies are still more profitable. This year's worldwide jump in prices has hit impoverished Afghanistan hard, with wheat - the country's dietary staple food - doubling in some areas and reports of people eating grass to survive.
Opium, of which Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of world supply, is planted at roughly the same time as wheat, at the end of the year.
The recent hikes were too late to influence the last sowing season, and agencies working to slash opium production are looking to the next planting period, around October-November, to see if farmers will make the switch.
Loren Stoddard from the US Agency for International Development is hopeful.
"The food security crisis, while it is going to hurt people, is going to make the point to everyone in Afghanistan that poppy is not such a great business," he said in an interview.
"You can't eat it ... it's a hard lesson this year," said Stoddard, the group's director of alternative development and agriculture in Afghanistan. (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan
Friday, June 6, 2008
Pakistan tries to assure Afghans over Taliban talks
Pakistan's foreign minister sought on Friday to allay Afghanistan's concerns that peace talks with Pakistani Taliban would lead to more militant attacks on the Afghan side of the border.
"We will not engage with terrorists, we will not compromise with terrorists. And those who would take up arms and guns are neither your friends nor our friends," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a joint news conference in Kabul.
The United States and NATO commanders share doubts about Pakistan's proposed peace pact with Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, based in South Waziristan.
NATO says Taliban attacks have jumped up along the border areas since the start of talks in recent weeks.
The Pakistan army carried out an operation in January to bottle up Baitullah Mehsud's forces in their mountain fastness, after the country had reeled from a wave of suicide attacks in the previous six months.
Pakistan's new government, sworn in at the end of March, followed up by negotiating with elders of the Mehsud tribe in a bid to bring the Taliban leader to heel. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Afghanistan puts off first census until 2010
Afghanistan has postponed by two years its first full census amid security concerns and fears it could be made controversial by a simultaneous voter-registration drive, the country's statistics authority said Wednesday. President Hamid Karzai and his cabinet agreed on Monday to postpone the count, previously scheduled for August, until 2010, Central Statistics Office chief Abdul Rahman Ghafoori told reporters.
The census could become "politicized" if it is held at the same time people are being registered for the parliamentary and presidential elections due in late 2009, he said.
"If we do the census at the same time, people may get confused that the census is also part of the politics and due to that they may give wrong answers to our questions," he said. "To avoid that, we have to wait till that finishes up and then we'll start, after the parliamentary and presidential elections."
A statement from the Central Statistics Office said another factor that could threaten the accuracy and impartiality of the census was the deterioration of security in many areas of the country. There were also not enough qualified enumerators available, it added. (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
US general takes over NATO command in Afghanistan; 2 soldiers killed
The U.S. general who led American troops into Iraq took command Tuesday of the 40-nation NATO-led campaign in Afghanistan.
Army Gen. David D. McKiernan took charge of the 51,000-member International Security Assistance Force from Gen. Dan McNeill, who will retire from the U.S. Army after 40 years.
Addressing a change of command ceremony Tuesday, McKiernan said he was "honored to walk alongside our Afghan brothers."
"While today marks a transition in commanders, the mission must continue without missing a beat," he said, listing security, reconstruction and development as the types of support that Afghanistan deserves. "Insurgents, foreign fighters, criminals and others who stand in the way of that mission will be dealt with."
In the latest violence, three ISAF soldiers were killed in attacks, including two in eastern Afghanistan, where most of the forces are American. About 15 others - insurgents and Afghan police - also died in violence. (AP)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, U.S.
A struggle between war and peace
Since 2006 in Afghanistan, coalition forces battling the Taliban-led insurgency have alternated between all-out offensives and ceasefire deals. Similarly in Pakistan, the authorities have chopped and changed between peace accords and military action against militants in the tribal areas.
This vicious - and unproductive - cycle in the South Asian "war on terror" theater can be expected to continue unless the major players drop the idea of piece-meal peace agreements and adopt a broad and consistent policy of grand reconciliation.
In the latest "peace' phase, Islamabad agreed a ceasefire this month with the Taliban in the tribal areas along the Durand Line that separates Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The ink on this accord had hardly dried than Ghairat Bahir was released last week from the United States Bagram air base near Kabul.
Ghairat Bahir is the son-in-law of veteran mujahid Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and a top leader of the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (HIA). He was arrested by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Islamabad in 2002 on American pressure when he was making desperate moves to activate the HIA's jihadi network in favor of the Taliban. He was handed over to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and kept in various secret locations before being moved to Bagram. He was recently sent to Pul-i-Charki jail in Kabul after apparently agreeing to cooperate with the administration of President Hamid Karzai. (Asia Times)
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Scores of Taliban killed in operation: Afghan govt
Scores of Taliban militants were killed last week in an operation involving Afghan and foreign troops in Afghanistan, the interior ministry said on Sunday.
The operation occurred in the Bala Boluk and Bakwa districts of western Farah province which lies near the border with Iran, the ministry said in a statement, adding the districts were under the control of the government.
"It is worth mentioning that the operation lasted for three days, as a result of which more than 100 enemies of Afghanistan's peace and stability were killed," it said.
An interior ministry official said there were no casualties among Afghan forces and the U.S.-led troops during the operation.
He did not know if air support was involved.
The government release on the Taliban deaths comes amid other reports from the area about civilian casualties during the operation, but the ministry official said he had no information about these reports.
The Taliban could not be contacted immediately for comment. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban, U.S.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Afghan journalist freed from Iranian custody
An Afghan editor and supporter of women's rights in Islam has been freed after 86 days in detention in Iran, but is not allowed to leave the country, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Friday. Intelligence agents picked up Ali Muhaqiq Nasab from his home in the town of Qumm, about 150 kilometers from Tehran, on March 4 on unspecified charges. He was released on Thursday, the media group said in a statement. Nasab told RSF that he had been accused of "suspicious relations with foreign embassies," it said. However his interrogation at an Intelligence Ministry prison was mainly about his journalistic activities and articles published in his magazine Haqoq-e-Zan (Women's Rights), the statement cited him as saying. "He has been released conditionally and is not allowed to leave the country. We urge the authorities to drop the charges against him," the media rights group said. Nasab was in jail for 86 days, 81 of which were in solitary confinement, it said. He had gone to Iran after being freed from jail in Afghanistan, where he was arrested in October 2005 for blasphemy after publishing articles that questioned harsh penalties for adultery and conversion to another religion. He was sentenced to two years in jail but freed on appeal almost three months later, although he was forced to close down his magazine. (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan, Free Media, Free Speech, Iran
Friday, May 30, 2008
Afghanistan seeks to revive farming sector addicted to opium
Afghanistan will ask international donors next month for $4 billion to revive its agricultural sector, but it could be a hard sell with another massive crop of opium expected this year.
Despite the sharply rising price of grain, foreign-funded efforts to promote legal alternatives to the narcotic have largely failed.
Farmers still make much more from growing poppy, the raw material for heroin, which flourishes amid Afghanistan's Taliban insurgency and rampant lawlessness. Half of the country's production comes from Helmand province, a stronghold of insurgents.
Roughly one out of every seven farmers in this predominantly rural nation of 32 million people grow opium. Giving them alternatives is part of Afghanistan's plan to invest $4 billion over the next five years in its outdated agricultural sector.
It will present the plan at a conference of international donors in Paris on June 12 - a key plank of its $50 billion appeal to fund development in the war-ravaged country. (AP)
Labels: Afghanistan
Afghan town recaptured by security forces
Afghan security forces along with U.S.-led coalition forces regained control of a district centre in the province of Ghazni after the Taliban had captured it overnight, provincial governor, Shir Khosti told Reuters.
"The word I have got a few minutes ago is that they (Taliban) have been pushed back," he said.
Asked if Afghan and coalition forces were now in charge of the district centre, Khosti replied: "Yes".
Taliban insurgents had seized the remote Afghan town overnight, patrolling the streets for some hours before withdrawing ahead of a government operation to retake it on Friday, residents and officials said.
Ghazni province where the attack took place is only a two-hour drive south from the capital, Kabul, and while not as unstable as provinces such as Kandahar or Helmand, the villages around the historic city of Ghazni have seen an upsurge of Taliban activity in the past two years. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban, U.S.
Mr Market combats the Taliban
In one of the most important developments since the war in Afghanistan began in late 2001, opium production has declined in the country. Over 20 of the country's 34 provinces will be opium-free this year according to a report by the United Nations that has now been corroborated by Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister, General Khodaidad.
Among the provinces with remaining opium cultivation, the Taliban-dominated Helmand province ranks high, but even here it is being seen that the humble wheat crop has replaced poppy. Some newspapers that sent reporters to Helmand province, over the course of April and May this year, have independently verified this assertion. A European television program on the subject was among the most-forwarded news items on the Internet last week.
Interestingly, it is not the efforts of the Afghan government alone that have caused the reduction in opium production but something much more mundane, namely the increased price of wheat, that has pushed up production of the grain in many parts of the country. Therein lies a tale of so-called market manipulation that actually goes back to one of the central points about rural poverty alleviation in the region, namely the strength of economics. (Asia Times)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Suicides in Army increase by 13%
In a tragic new marker of the rising cost of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army's suicide rate has jumped significantly, according to a report released yesterday at the Pentagon.
As soldiers and families coped with repeated combat tours and long separations, the Army said that 115 soldiers took their own lives in 2007, a rate of about 17 per 100,000 soldiers. The Army said the suicide rate among a comparable civilian population is 19.5 suicides per 100,000.
But broader Defense Department studies show that suicides among all military personnel in Iraq, including Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps personnel, occur at a rate of about 24 per 100,000, significantly above the civilian rate.
The new figures released by the Army show a 13 percent increase in suicides over 2006, when 102 soldiers took their own lives.
"War is hard on soldiers, and it can be even harder on families," said Army Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, assistant Army surgeon general. "The Army is committed to taking care of every soldier, regardless of medical illness, injury or psychological diagnosis," she told reporters. (Baltimore Sun)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
NATO urges more Afghan effort on opium trade
NATO's commander in Afghanistan urged the government on Thursday to step up its fight against the opium trade, which is increasingly fuelling the insurgency.
"The Afghan government must stand up and say, 'Much of our country is defined by the illegal narcotics business and we are no longer going to stand for it'," U.S. General Dan McNeill said.
"The Afghans must, in my view, prosecute their strategy better," he told reporters in a news conference broadcast to NATO headquarters in Brussels.
McNeill said it was no coincidence the bulk of the Afghan opium trade was in the south where NATO troops are facing the worst violence.
"In portions of those five (southern) provinces, the insurgency is illegal narcotics, and illegal narcotics is the insurgency," said McNeill, who will hand over command of the NATO-led force in June after 16 months in charge.
Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's opium production and there was a record harvest in 2007. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Britain defense sec endorses talks with Taliban
Britain's Defense Minister Des Browne endorsed peace talks between Pakistan and Taliban militants on Wednesday despite concerns from Afghanistan that the talks will allow the Taliban to regroup and launch more attacks.
Browne said Britain supported any moves that would encourage militants to put down their weapons and stop violence, and said Pakistan and Afghanistan needed to work together on problems with their border, much of which is controlled by Taliban insurgents.
He said reconciliation should be a part of any strategy, although it was clear some militants had no intention of putting down their weapons.
"But you can't kill your way out of these sorts of campaigns," Browne told journalists at Australia's National Press Club on Wednesday.
Faced with a wave of suicide attacks, Pakistan has begun talks with Taliban militants who control much of the country's 2,700 km (1,670 miles) mountain border with Afghanistan. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban, U.K.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Thirteen police and 11 civilians killed in Afghanistan
Eleven civilians and 13 policemen were killed in a series of blasts and Taliban attacks in Afghanistan on Tuesday, officials said.
Nine police were killed in Taliban attacks in Shor Abak district of southern Kandahar, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib told Reuters.
"The Taliban killed five police in an attack on their post and the other four were killed when we sent in reinforcements later," he said.
Three children were killed by a blast while playing near a police station outside Kandahar city, he said, adding the explosion occurred as a Taliban militant was planting the device under a bridge.
Earlier in the day, one woman, a child and six men were killed when a blast hit a bus in Del Aram district of western Farah province, deputy provincial governor Mohammad Younus Rasuli said.
The blast occurred on a road where Afghan and foreign troops have come under similar attacks and ambushes by Taliban insurgents in recent months, he told Reuters. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Monday, May 26, 2008
Taliban vow to fight on in Afghanistan
The Taliban will fight on till the last foreign soldier is driven out of Afghanistan, but their door is always open to talks with other Afghan opposition groups, the Islamist movement said on Monday.
The offer comes days after Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president and mujahideen chief, now opposition leader, said the Taliban had shown a desire for political dialogue and called for serious efforts to establish talks with the Islamist rebels.
The Taliban "will fight till the withdrawal of the last crusading-invader, but the door for talks, understanding and negotiations will always be open for the all the mujahideen," the Taliban said in a statement on its website.
But, the Taliban said, the mujahideen should join the insurgency and help fight to drive out foreign forces.
Rabbani and other former leaders of the mujahideen forces which fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, then each other in the 1990s, now dominate the opposition in parliament. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Suicide blast hits NATO convoy in Afghan south
A suicide car bomber struck a NATO convoy near an alliance base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Sunday, killing one local civilian, witnesses and a police officer said.
Three NATO soldiers were wounded in the blast, a spokesman for the force said.
NATO soldiers cordoned off the site of the attack which happened near the house of the ousted Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. It was being used as a base for the alliance.
Minutes after the attack, explosives attached to a bicycle went off in another part of the city, but caused no casualties.
Violence has surged in Afghanistan since 2006, the bloodiest period since the Taliban's removal from power in 2001. More than 12,000 people have been killed during this period. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO
Afghanistan Adds Hunger to Its Worries
By 7 a.m., the bakers of Sang Tarashi Street have been hard at work for hours, shaping globs of dough, slapping them into a hot clay oven and flipping them out at just the right second. A stack of fresh flat bread called naan sits invitingly by the window, and the familiar morning smell wafts into the street.
But the scene outside the window has a desperate feel. Customers ask for half their normal breakfast purchases. A carpenter counts out the equivalent of 40 cents and buys two naans, far too little to feed his family of seven. A gaunt man in a threadbare tunic hovers nearby, looking ashamed, until the bakery owner notices him and tosses him a piece.
"When the price goes up, your stomach has to shrink," said the man, a handcart hauler named Abdul Karim. "I used to be able to buy a sack of flour, and my wife could bake for us, but now it is far too expensive. I have to rely on this baker's kindness so my children can eat. I do my best for them and work hard all day, but it is not enough anymore."
As the global food crisis deepens, bringing inflation and shortages to many countries, Afghanistan -- already facing a protracted drought, entrenched rural poverty and an ongoing conflict with Islamist insurgents -- finds itself battling the added threat of hunger. (Washington Post)
Labels: Afghanistan, Food
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Many Afghans outraged at US decision on Marines
Afghan officials expressed outrage Saturday at a decision by the U.S. military not to charge U.S. Marines involved in a shooting spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead in 2007.
Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, made the decision Friday not to bring charges after reviewing the findings of a special tribunal that heard more than three weeks of testimony in January at Camp Lejuene.
"I am very angry," said Kubra Aman, a senator from Nangarhar. "This is too much. They are killing people. First, they say it is a mistake, and after that they let them go without charges."
Afghan witnesses and a report by Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission concluded that a unit of Marine special operations troops opened fire along a 10-mile stretch of road, killing up to 19 civilians and wounding 50 other people.
Helland, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, decided not to bring charges against Maj. Fred C. Galvin, commander of the 120-person special operations company, and Capt. Vincent J. Noble, a platoon leader, the Marines said. (AP)
Labels: Afghanistan, U.S.
Aid groups set for Paris talks on Afghan reconstruction
France on Saturday hosts a conference of some 40 humanitarian organizations who hope to shift the world's focus from fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan to helping the country rebuild. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner will open the one-day meeting held ahead of a donors' conference in Paris on June 12 to be attended by 80 countries and international organizations.
Delegates at the conference - including ACBAR, the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief made up of some 94 relief organizations - will set priorities for development projects and make proposals to be presented to donors.
Seven years after the Taliban were driven out of Kabul by US forces and their allies, half of Afghanistan's population struggles with food shortages, according to Peggy Pascal from Solidarites, which helps war victims.
An ACBAR report released in March charged that western countries had delivered only $15 billion out of the $25 billion they had promised, undermining prospects for peace and development in the country. About 40 percent of aid returns to donor nations as corporate profits and high consultant costs, it found. (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan
Friday, May 23, 2008
Senate Passes $165 Billion Measure to Pay for Wars
The Senate yesterday approved $165 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan well into the next presidency, but in a break with President Bush and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, it also approved billions of dollars in domestic spending that includes a generous expansion of veterans' education benefits.
The war funding measure, which passed 70 to 26, will be twinned with the domestic spending package and sent to the House for final approval after Congress's Memorial Day recess. Senators stripped the package of all language that mandated troop withdrawals and sought to govern the conduct of the Iraq war, which had been in a previous version approved by the House.
But the separate domestic spending package served notice to the White House that in an election year, lawmakers from both parties will demand coupling Iraq war funds with priorities at home. In total, the bill would cost more than $250 billion over 10 years, including $51 billion for the veterans' education benefits alone. (Washington Post)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.
Deaths after Afghan Quran protest
A Lithuanian soldier and two Afghan civilians have been killed in a shooting incident at a protest over a US soldier's shooting of a Quran in Iraq, officials say.
The shooting on Thursday began when about 2,000 demonstrators armed with sticks tried to storm a Lithuanian-commanded Nato base in Chaghcharan, in Ghor province, police said.
Police blamed the gunfire on fighters but a local legislator said the shots were fired by security forces.
Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said the locals were killed by police.
One Isaf soldier was killed and another wounded, General Carlos Branco, an Isaf spokesman, told the AFP news agency.
Lithuania's defence ministry confirmed that the soldier was one of about 260 Lithuanian troops in Isaf.
The soldier is the first member of the Lithuanian force to be killed in Afghanistan, the ministry said without giving further details. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO
Afghan troops ready for bulk of fight: U.S. general
The Afghan army could by early next year be leading the vast majority of military operations against enemy insurgents in the country, the U.S. soldier in charge of training them said on Thursday.
Major General Robert W. Cone said Afghan authorities aimed to have 80,000 trained personnel ready by early 2009, compared to just over 57,000 now, as part of an effort to share more of the burden of fighting with NATO countries.
Asked what that meant for Afghan forces' ability to lead operations against Taliban and other insurgents, Cone told a news conference at NATO headquarters:
"I would say leadership certainly of most operations and probably, depending on their readiness, tending towards virtually all operations.
"That will lift a significant amount of the burden from ISAF forces," he said of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which commanders currently say numbers around 50,000.
Cone, who leads the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan (CSTC-A) training effort, said Afghan troops had led around half of 180 joint operations with international forces in the early months of this year. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban, U.S.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
US allies lengthen Afghan tours
The Netherlands and Britain are to increase the length of their command rotations in southern Afghanistan from nine months to 12 months, according to a Pentagon spokesman.
The commitment by the two Nato-member countries to lengthen their tours comes after concerns that short stints are hampering military operations against the Taliban.
The agreement will take effect when Canada hands over command of the south to the Netherlands in November, Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said.
He said the deal sets the command rotations through 2010, when the US assumes command in the south.
"We believe that this new arrangement - and our allies as well, because they have agreed to it - will provide greater predictability, continuity, stability in this volatile important region of Afghanistan," Morrell said. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Netherlands, U.K.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Afghan govt says to decide how long NATO troops stay
The Afghan government will decide when foreign troops will leave the country, the foreign minister said on Tuesday, but added they would be needed until Afghan security forces could stand on their own feet.
"Whenever ... the Afghan security forces and its national army acquire the ability to defend this water and soil against international terrorism and foreign interventions, there will be no need for the presence of international military forces in Afghanistan," Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told a news conference.
"And the government of Afghanistan itself will specify as to when and who needs to be (here) or go," Spanta replied when asked by a reporter whether the government had set any time frame for the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country.
Currently some 60,000 foreign troops led by NATO and the U.S. military are stationed in Afghanistan where the al Qaeda-backed Taliban movement has made a comeback since 2006.
And the number of Western-trained and funded Afghan security forces fighting against the militants stands at nearly 150,000. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO
Monday, May 19, 2008
Nearly 40,000 troops to be deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan
The Pentagon has alerted nearly 40,000 active duty and National Guard soldiers that they will be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan starting this fall, in a sign that it expects hard fighting to continue on both fronts in what Pentagon officials call "the long war."
The Pentagon suggested that the troops will deploy for not more than 12 months rather than the 15-month rotations that have become the rule in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The units will deploy beginning in late fall and will continue through the end of the year, Army officials said.
They are replacements for units slated to rotate home from the war. There are 155,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 33,000 in Afghanistan now. (AP)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.
Afghans skeptical that security's getting better
The Taliban in Afghanistan are getting weaker, the U.S. ambassador tells local councilors in the eastern city of Ghazni, but he is met by a wall of shaking heads and tutting noises; 'no, no', some reply.
While Afghan government and international forces point to some success in restricting Taliban guerrilla attacks across the south and east, suicide bombs -- 140 last year -- roadside bombs, kidnappings and threats have created an atmosphere of fear.
"We don't want food, we don't want schools, we want security!" said one woman council member.
"Ok, let me ask you," replied U.S. ambassador William Wood. "Are the Taliban weaker now?"
"No," the councilors said, shaking their heads.
"But are these Taliban or criminals?" Wood asked.
"Taliban," they replied. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Under wraps, prostitution rife in north Afghanistan
When 19-year-old Fatima returned to her home in northern Afghanistan after years as a refugee in Iran, she struggled desperately to earn a living.
She briefly found work with an NGO, before being let go, and then spent two months learning how to weave carpets, before the factory shut down and she was again out on the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Determined to support her mother, two sisters and young brother, she turned to a profession that has long been practiced the world over but remains deeply suppressed in conservative Afghanistan -- prostitution.
"I had no other way but prostitution," says the pretty teenager, dressed in tight blue jeans with a black veil pulled loosely over her head.
"I get up early in the morning and wander around the city," she said, at first reluctant to discuss her work. "My customers stop me and give me a lift and then we talk about the price," she explains, her face coated in make-up.
Sometimes charging $50 a time, her work is illegal and would bring shame on her family if discovered, but it provides a lifeline she otherwise could not have imagined. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Nato helicopter hit in Afghanistan
Taliban fighters have fired a rocket hitting a Nato helicopter in which the governor of a key southern Afghan province was travelling, officials said.
They said no one was injured, but a series of clashes, air attacks and bomb blasts elsewhere in the country killed 10 fighters and four civilians on Saturday.
Ghulab Mangal, the governor of Helmand, and a delegation of British officials were about to land in the provincial town of Musa Qala when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the CH-47 Chinook helicopter, Mangal told the Associated Press.
The grenade "hit the tail end" of the chopper, said Major Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force.
"There was a minor damage to shaft and the rear blade," O'Donnell said.
"The helicopter landed under control" at a nearby Nato base. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban
Afghan journalist appeals death sentence
An Afghan journalism student sentenced to death for insulting Islam denied the charges before an appeals court Sunday, saying he only confessed to questioning the religion's treatment of women because he was tortured.
During an hour-long hearing, a judge read aloud a transcript of the Jan. 22 proceedings against 24-year-old Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh at the primary court in northern Balkh province.
It was the first time the public and the media heard full details from the closed-door trial, which highlights the influence of conservative religious attitudes in post-Taliban Afghanistan's still-nascent justice system.
Kambakhsh was studying journalism at Balkh University in Mazar-i-Sharif and writing for local newspapers when he was arrested Oct. 27.
The transcript said Kambakhsh disrupted classes at the university by asking questions about women's rights under Islam. It also said he distributed an article about the subject and wrote an additional three paragraphs for the piece.
The only people with him in the courtroom in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif were three judges, a court scribe and the prosecutor. Kambakhsh said he had no defense lawyer, and only three minutes to defend himself. (AP)
Labels: Afghanistan
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Afghanistan violence claims lives
A series of clashes, air strikes and bomb blasts have killed 10 fighters and four civilians in Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials.
In one incident, a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Paktia left three civilians dead, Ghamai Mohammadi, an Afghan government spokesman, said on Saturday.
A second bomb exploded as a police vehicle passed by in Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan, killing a 10-year-old boy and injuring another civilian, Mohammad Nabi, a police officer, said.
In the western Farah province, Afghan and foreign soldiers bombed a Taliban hideout where two hostages were being held, killing eight fighters, Jalander Shah, an Afghan army commander, said.
Both hostages were freed during Friday's operation, he said. (Al Jazeera)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Taliban release Pakistan envoy after fighters freed
Taliban militants freed a kidnapped Pakistani ambassador on Saturday after the release of more than 40 Taliban fighters in recent days, a senior security official said.
Pakistan's envoy to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was abducted on February 11 while traveling from the northwestern city of Peshawar to the Afghan border, on his way back to Kabul.
Azizuddin was held by fighters loyal to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, in neighboring South Waziristan, said the security official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official said more than 40 Taliban fighters held captive by the authorities had been released over the past few days.
Pakistan's most senior Interior Ministry official earlier denied that the envoy was released as a result of any prisoner swap and said there had been some kind of action.
Azizuddin said he was unaware of any clash between the militants and security forces. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taliban
Friday, May 16, 2008
US army detains 500 minors in Iraq: report
Around 500 minors are currently detained by the US army in Iraq, as well as nearly a dozen juveniles in Afghanistan, a US civil liberties group revealed on Wednesday.
"Since 2002, the United States has held approximately 2,500 individuals under the age of 18 at the time of their capture ... in Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan," said a US government report for the UN children's agency, made public by the American Civil Liberties Union.
"As of April 2008, US forces held approximately 500 juveniles" in Iraq, where "all detainees, regardless of age, are held by US forces as imperative threats to security at the request of the sovereign Iraqi government and pursuant to a UN Security Council Resolution," the report said.
Pentagon spokesman Jeffrey Gordon confirmed the report was true but gave no further comment.
The number of minors in US detention in Iraq rose as high as 800 in 2007.
In addition, around 10 minors are currently held in US custody in Afghanistan's Bagram prison, and are considered"enemy combatants." (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S.
Afghan death squads 'acting on foreign orders'
Secret Afghan death squads are acting on the orders of foreign spies and killing civilians inside Afghanistan with impunity, a senior UN envoy has claimed. Professor Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on illegal killings, said "foreign intelligence agencies" had used illegal groups of heavily armed Afghans in raids against suspected insurgents.
He said the attacks were beyond the legitimate military chains of command, and they were "completely unacceptable" and "outside the law".
At the end of a 12-day fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, Professor Alston said: "There have been a large number of raids for which no state or military appears to take responsibility. I have spoken with a large number of people in relation to the operation of foreign intelligence units. I don't want to name them but they are at the most senior level of the relevant places. These forces operate with what appears to be impunity."
Professor Alston said he knew of at least three recent raids. In one, two brothers were killed by troops operating out of an American Special Forces base in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan. Afghan government officials admitted neither was linked to the Taliban, but no army has claimed responsibility for the raid.
Another group, known as Shaheen, operates out of Nangahar, in eastern Afghanistan, where US forces are in charge, Professor Alston said. "Essentially, they are companies of Afghans but with a handful, at most, of international people directing them. I'm not aware that they fall under any command." (Independent)
Labels: Afghanistan
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Afghanistan: What hope is there for the lost children of the bazaar?
On Chicken Street, under the serene azure sky, it is almost possible to imagine that the last 30 years never happened. Kabul's craft market is open for business, its rows of glass-fronted, two-storey shops replete with the iconic wares of the hippy trail, that in the 1960s and 1970s found their way off this street and around the world. There are Afghan coats here, and hookahs. There are majestic kaftans here, and lapis lazuli jewels. There is brassware, and china, carved wood and turquoise pottery.
And there are rugs, of course, Afghan rugs, hand-knotted from the finest wool, gleaming in the perfection of the skill of their making, seductive in the symmetry of their ancient patterns. These rugs, piled high, bloody passionate red, inky solemn blue, creamy tender white, once adorned the floors of the most chic of the radicals who flocked here to buy. Why would they not? Afghan rugs, it is common knowledge, are among the finest in the world. For Afghans, ownership of such rugs is a symbol of status, and of wealth. The rugs are an important symbol of Afghanistan's nationhood, maybe even, in material and in cultural terms, the country's most iconic symbol of all.
The weird thing about this market though, is that it is almost too good to be true. The range and the quality of the artefacts is far greater than that found in most tourist markets in most countries. In part, this cornucopia simply reflects the wealth and diversity of Afghanistan's venerable ethnic culture, comprising more than 20 distinct groups. In the main, though, this plenty has piled up here because few tourists have come to pick it over for three decades now. The traders wait, with heroic patience, for customers to turn up and browse. But they are few and far between. Afghanistan – who doesn't know? – is one of the most dangerous countries on this earth. War has hollowed out this nation so thoroughly that even the rugs, one or two of them, have stories of violence to tell. (Independent)
Labels: Afghanistan
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Afghan governor says 150 rebels killed in past week
International and Afghan troops forged ahead with an offensive against the Taliban near the Pakistan border on Tuesday, with a governor insisting 150 rebels had been killed in the past week. US Marines and British troops under NATO command launched a significant new operation two weeks ago in Garmser district in southern Helmand Province, a key battleground for a Taliban-led insurgency and an opium-producing center. Soldiers in a separate US-led coalition have also reported several engagements in the area in the past week. They said Tuesday they had killed a dozen rebels in Garmser on Monday.
The international forces helping Afghanistan fight an insurgency led by the Al-Qaeda-backed Taliban normally do not issue death tolls. But Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal said Tuesday that 150 rebels, most of whom he said were Al-Qaeda-linked Arab and Pakistani fighters, had been killed in Garmser in the past week.
"In the past seven, eight days, we have killed about 150 insurgents, most of them foreign fighters," he said, citing "intelligence."
"We have intelligence reports that more than 500 enemy fighters, most of them foreign terrorists, are in the district," he said. "The operation will continue until the district is cleared of these destructive elements." (AFP)
Labels: Afghanistan, NATO, Taliban, U.S.
Thousands displaced by fighting in Afghan south: U.N
Thousands of people have fled their homes as a result of fighting between U.S.-led forces and Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan this month, a U.N. official said on Tuesday.
In the latest incident in Garmsir district in the southern province of Helmand, coalition forces killed around a dozen militants on Monday in a joint air and ground operation, the U.S. army said on Tuesday.
"The information that I have...is that some 1,200 families have become displaced from that district (Garmsir) because of the recent fighting," said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the U.N. agency for refugees in Afghanistan, citing government estimates.
Of the 1,200 families, 900 have ended up in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, while the rest have gone to Registan district, Farhad said. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Refugees, Taliban, U.N., U.S.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Taliban deliver silent death threats after midnight
Afghans call them 'night letters' -- notes scattered or pushed under doorways by Taliban militants in the dead of night, threatening villagers' lives if they cooperate with foreign forces and the government.
The threats have picked up in recent weeks in areas across southeastern Afghanistan, U.S. officers and Afghans say, as the Taliban intensify their activities along the Pakistan border and in mountainous communities inland towards Kabul.
The notes are often poorly written but the message is clear -- have nothing to do with the foreign troops or serve in the government they back, otherwise, your business will be destroyed, your livestock snatched or your throat cut.
At least six people have had either throats slit or were beheaded by the militants for allegedly acting as spies for the foreign forces only in recent weeks in various parts of southeastern Afghanistan, according to officials and the Taliban. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Friday, May 9, 2008
Iran woos Farsi-speaking nations
There are many interrelated reasons why the United States policy of isolating Iran has failed, one being the prominent regional role played by Tehran that simultaneously relies on a net of bilateral, trilateral and multilateral arrangements. These are on the rise, irrespective of the nuclear standoff, sanctions and threats of military action against Iran.
One initiative in particular that Iran is genuinely interested in, and hopeful about its prospects, deals with trilateral cooperation among the three Farsi-speaking nations of Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Such a union, if formed in the (intermediate) future, will definitely enhance Iran's regional status and create new linkages between Iran and Central Asia and beyond.
Forged by the common bonds of culture and language, this trilateral cooperation was recently given a "big jump", to quote Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who attended a meeting with his counterparts, Khan Zarih and Rangin Dadfar Sepanta, in Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, in March. The three men issued a lengthy joint communique, consisting of a prelude and 12 clauses that emphasized the need to expand economic, trade, transportation, energy and cultural exchanges among the three countries, as well as enhancing cooperation against the common threats, such as terrorism, extremism, drug trafficking, organized crime and any "new threats". (Asia Times)
Labels: Afghanistan, Iran
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Taliban governor killed in raid: Afghan ministry
Afghan police killed the self-styled governor and provincial police chief of Taliban insurgents in the western province of Ghor on Thursday, the interior ministry said.
The police raid killed Mullah Sarajuddin identified as Taliban's governor for Ghor and the police chief named only as Mawlavi, along with five other militants while planning to carry out a "sabotage" plan, the ministry said.
There were no casualties among the police, it said in a statement, terming the reported Taliban deaths as a major achievement.
The Taliban who lead an insurgency against the government and foreign troops, could not be contacted for comment immediately
Separately on Thursday, a suicide car bomber targeted a convoy carrying foreign soldiers on the western outskirts of Kabul, but missed, and instead three civilians were wounded in the attack, a police official said.
Violence has been at its worst level in Afghanistan since 2006, the bloodiest period since the removal of the al Qaeda-backed Taliban in 2001. (Reuters)
Labels: Afghanistan, Taliban
Afghan army far from fighting fit
Over the past few years, the Afghan N