Suicide attack on Afghan market
A suicide bomber has killed 10 civilians and injured more than 30 in a town in the south-east of Afghanistan.
The bomber fixed explosives to his body and detonated them in a crowded market.
Correspondents say there has been a dramatic increase in the number of suicide attacks and bombings in the country in the past few days.
On Saturday, three German soldiers were among nine people killed in a suicide bomb attack in the relatively peaceful north of the country, in Kunduz.
'US convoy'
In the latest attack, the bomber blew himself up in a crowded market in Gardez, provincial capital of Paktia province, just 100km from Kabul.
The local governor said the bomber appeared to be of Arab or Chechen appearance and had deliberately targeted people in the market.
Reports quoting witnesses said the blast occurred shortly after a US convoy had passed through the city.
The BBC's Alastair Leithead, in Herat, western Afghanistan, says it is the second time in just a few days Paktia province has been hit.
Afghanistan has experienced a huge increase in the number of roadside bombs and suicide attacks in the last week, our correspondent says.
Civilians, Afghan security forces and international troops have been killed and injured in different parts of the country.
There has been much talk about a spring offensive by the Taleban, who have claimed responsibility for many of the bomb blasts.
It may be that the insurgent tactics similar to those being used in Iraq may increase further in the coming months, our correspondent adds.
The TimesMay 19, 2007
Afghan soldiers mass on border, ready and willing to take on old foe
Anthony Loyd in Ghumruk, eastern Afghanistan
In the late-morning lull that followed the thump of shellfire and chatter of machineguns, the preparations for a small war seemed to be unfolding in the orchards and paddy fields beneath the towering Spingar mountain range.
Scores of heavily armed Afghan troops and fighters from special border police units - determined, professional and evidently spoiling for a fight - gathered around their senior officers for orders. Artillery men waited beside their 122mm field guns hidden among the mulberry groves. And in nearby village bazaars tribesmen clustered around their elders, asking for weapons of their own so that they could join the fray.
Yet the enemy was not the Taleban, nor an infiltrating column of al-Qaeda fighters. Instead, in the remote border district of 'Ali Kheyl in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan security forces have found themselves pitted against an older and bigger enemy: Pakistan.
Clashes between the two neighbours - two of the West's biggest allies in the War on Terror - began here last Sunday morning when Pakistani forces fired on an Afghan post at Toorgawe, a strategic point on the border. The fighting is the most serious of its kind for years.
Since Sunday evening there has been a build-up of forces in the contested zone as hundreds of regular Afghan soldiers from the 203rd "Thunder" Corps, who had been fighting the Taleban, have deployed to the area to reinforce the beleaguered border police, bringing with them heavy artillery sent up from Kabul. "We can't wait any more," Brigadier Sanaoull Haq, a staff officer in the corps, said. "Now if anything further happens we will reply in kind."
Each side accuses the other of initiating the bombardments, which so far have left 13 Afghans dead and 51 wounded. Foreign diplomats in Kabul fear that the situation, which has united Afghan nationalist sentiment across every ethnic divide, may escalate. It threatens to wreck any semblance of security cooperation between the countries, to the detriment of Nato's struggle with the Taleban.
Tension has been growing for months along the 1,615-mile (2,600km) border shared by the two nations. Afghanistan has consistently accused the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, of equipping and training Taleban fighters in camps inside Pakistan, then allowing them to cross into Afghanistan.
Pakistan has recently started building a security fence in selected areas of the border, ostensibly to halt the flow of insurgents. This, in turn, has provoked more Afghan wrath.
The Kabul Government does not recognise the border, drawn up by the British in 1893. Named the Durand line after Sir Mortimer Durand, then Foreign Secretary of the British Indian Government, the demarcation was intended to divide warlike Pashtun tribes antipathetic to British influence. Now Afghanistan sees the security fence as the de facto consolidation of a border dividing them from tribal areas in Pakistan that they claim as their own.
"The Durand line is a suffocating imposition under which we suffer," said General Abdur Rahman, the chief of Afghanistan's border police, as he briefed his men at Ghumruk, a customs post near the contested section of frontier, on Thursday. Seven of his men have been killed since the fighting started, yet he insisted that his orders so far were only to defend Afghan territory.
"We have donated our men's blood to keep even a single foot of Pakistan from stepping inside our border," he added. "But our orders from the Interior Ministry are to hold our positions, avoid trouble, and not fire unless fired upon."
There was no security fence being built by Pakistan at Toorgawe. Instead, the Afghans say that their police in the post were attacked without warning simply because of its desirable strategic location.
"Wherever they see one of our border positions on a high pass they try to influence it," said Brigadier Haq. "Since the Mujahidin times the Pakistanis have thought our country is their own. Then the Taleban came and still the Pakistanis could put up border posts wherever they wanted.
"Now we have a central government and an army of our own and the Pakistanis are angry. They can't tolerate us or our border." In the initial absence of regular troops hundreds of Pashtun tribesmen from local villages rushed to support the Afghan border police during the attacks on Sunday.
"We were carrying rifles, axes and swords," said Nawruz, one of the tribesmen who participated. "I took 15 men with me from my village. We got into a trench and started firing back at the Pakistani militia. One of my friends died beside me, killed by a Pakistani mortar round."
On Monday a joint Afghan-American delegation flew across the border for talks with Pakistani officers aimed at producing a ceasefire. The meeting was held in a schoolhouse in Teri Mangel, a small town in the Kurram tribal area of Pakistan. Yet after the negotiations concluded the delegation was fired upon. An American soldier was killed and four others wounded.
Though Nato and Pakistan, keen to play down the incident, say the attack was the work of a single rogue member of a Pakistani militia, two Afghan delegates present as part of the delegation who were separately interviewed byThe Times, Governor Rahmatullah Rahman and Colonel Shamsur, say they were fired on by up to a dozen uniformed Pakistani militiamen.
"There were two groups of Pakistani militia shooting at us," said Governor Rahmatullah. "One group was placed among rocks and it fired at the delegation as it drove from the school to be picked up by a helicopter. The other group fired at the delegation's security guards in the school's courtyard. The attackers were in uniform. I saw at least ten."
Despite this attack, a border ceasefire held until Thursday, when renewed artillery exchanges began in the morning and lasted until midday. Though both the Pakistani militia in Kurram and the Afghans in 'Ali Kheyl are Pashtuns of the same Zazi tribe, their kinship seems to be no barrier to the desire to fight one another.
"When it is a question of territory or land even if it is your own brother you don't care," said Malik Khir Gul Khan, one of the Afghan tribal elders.
"Under our code of Pashtun-wali if your brother takes your house or land then you have to kill him or die trying."
So far Nato and American-led coalition forces have kept their forces away from the area of fighting, though Captain Aziz, an Afghan army commander at Ghumruk, said on Thursday that he had seen an eight-man team of American troops move forward to observe the clashes until they, too, were shelled and withdrew.
Afghanistan's 46,000-strong army is in no position to take on the military might of Pakistan, besides which diplomatic pressure on both countries makes it extremely unlikely that the scope of fighting will spread between regular forces. However, the fighting has sparked antiPakistani sentiment among the Afghan border tribes at a time when the fortunes of every foreign player trying to stabilise Afghanistan are dependent on the two neighbours cooperating.
"Only this morning I have had tribal elders offer me 400 men to fight the Pakistanis," said Captain Aziz. "I have to keep ordering them to stay in their villages. Man, woman and child, in this area they are all ready to give their blood in a fight with Pakistan."
Musharraf says exiled rivals cannot return before poll
President Musharraf of Pakistan has vowed to prevent the return of the exiled former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif before the general election this year.
"Nobody is returning before elections," he told Pakistani television, ending speculation that he might engineer a deal with Ms Bhutto to help to quash growing political unrest.
Ms Bhutto left in 1998 to escape corruption charges. Mr Sharif went into exile in 2000 after being toppled by General Musharraf in a bloodless coup. Ms Bhutto's party called the statement the "dying kicks of a vanquished dictator".
Nato 'should share Afghan burden'
All members of the Nato alliance should share the "burden" of fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan, US President George W Bush has said.
Speaking at his Texas ranch with Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Mr Bush also said Nato must transform to meet modern-day threats.
Nato commands more than 35,000 troops battling Taleban rebels in Afghanistan.
More than 4,000 people were killed last year in fighting between militants and international-led forces.
Mr Bush is meeting Mr de Hoop Scheffer to discuss US plans for a missile defence shield in Europe and progress on the future status of the UN-administered Kosovo, as well as issues in Afghanistan.
'Moral difference'
The president said he understood that Nato's effort in Afghanistan would require "more than military action".
"We support a long-term comprehensive strategy to help strengthen Afghanistan's democratic institutions and help create the economic opportunity that will help this young democracy survive and thrive," he said.
But he stressed that Nato members should be more prepared to commit troops to the battle in Afghanistan.
Mr de Hoop Scheffer said that every effort was being made to avoid civilian casualties as Nato forces confronted the Taleban.
He lamented recent civilian deaths because of Nato air strikes, but insisted the organisation was "not in the same moral category" as the Taleban, who Mr Bush said frequently use civilians as human shields.
U.S.: Poppy profits fuel Taliban
POSTED: 4:52 a.m. EDT, May 22, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Profits from Afghanistan's thriving poppy fields are increasingly flowing to Taliban fighters, leading U.S. and NATO officials to conclude that the counterinsurgency mission must now include stepped-up anti-drug efforts.
This year's heroin-producing poppy crop will at least match last year's record haul and could exceed it by up to 20 percent, officials say, meaning more money to fuel the Taliban's violent insurgency.
"It's wrong to say that you can do one thing and not the other," Ronald Neumann, who recently stepped down as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said of the link between anti-drug and anti-terrorism efforts. "You have to deal with both at the same time."
Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, and a significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.
Drug control has not been part of the official mandate of international forces in Afghanistan. But there is a growing push for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, to play a more active role in sharing intelligence and detecting drug convoys and heroin labs, said Daan Everts, NATO's senior civilian official in Afghanistan.
There is "increasing international interest in seeing a more assertive supportive role in ISAF in the counternarcotics strategy implementation," he said before quickly adding that it would not include eradication.
International forces also might provide support for operations targeting senior drug traffickers, Neumann said.
Military commanders who viewed drugs as a minor irritant in 2002, when poppy production was much lower, have reassessed the importance of the vast fields of red and white poppies their soldiers drive past in security convoys, said a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn't want to be seen as criticizing the military.
It's too early to say definitively what this year's crop will be. But another Western official with knowledge of the drug trade said it could exceed last year's record 407,000 acres by as much as 20 percent. The official declined to give his name because of the nature of his work.
Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for counter-narcotics, said that estimate is likely accurate. "The problem is a lack of security, a lack of governance, the Taliban, druglords, warlords and corruption," said Khodaidad, who goes by one name. "It's a bad list with very bad results."
Thomas Schweich, a senior State Department official, said he has briefed NATO ambassadors and Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO general in Afghanistan, on the need for increased military cooperation on the drug front.
There is a growing recognition that "counternarcotics and counterterrorism are effectively the same thing," said Schweich, the U.S.-based coordinator for counternarcotics and judicial reform in Afghanistan. "I think everybody recognizes that with the Taliban receiving funding from narcotics, much more so than in the past, that there has to be a coordinated effort."
While poppy production is falling in north and central Afghanistan, where security is stronger, that decline is expected to be overwhelmed by a surge in production in the southern province of Helmand, the most violent region.
Helmand is expected to account for more than 50 percent of Afghanistan's poppy crop for the first time, meaning the province by itself would be the world's largest opium-producing region.
"The amount of production in Helmand has undone successes in other parts of the country," Neumann said. "What you see is that where you have a reasonable level of peace and a little bit of government, you can start to make progress against the poppy. Where you are in the middle of the insurgency, it's much harder."
The United States would like to see Afghanistan undertake ground-based spraying of poppy fields with herbicides. The new U.S. ambassador here, William Wood, oversaw U.S.-backed coca field eradication efforts in Colombia as ambassador there.
But some Afghan Cabinet members have expressed reservations about the impact on legitimate crops or livestock. President Hamid Karzai at first agreed to allow spraying last year before changing his mind, according to the Western official familiar with the drug trade.
Khodaidad said the Afghan government may permit ground-based spraying next year and is even considering aerial spraying. Afghan officials have not talked publicly about aerial spraying before, out of fear of public opposition.
"We have left the option open," he said. Any decision to start ground-based or aerial spraying would have to come from Karzai, Western officials say.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Most, if not all of this is going to heroin production. Kill the farmers crops and you make the farmers your enemy (as if we have not made enough enemies already). Allow them to grow their crops and you contribute to the heroin problem we and the rest of the world faces.
Afghans doubt NATO, struggle to feed families: survey. 29/05/2007. ABC News Online
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1935800.htm]
Last Update: Tuesday, May 29, 2007. 6:17am (AEST)
Afghans doubt NATO, struggle to feed families: survey
Half of 17,000 men surveyed in April in southern Afghanistan say they believe the Taliban will triumph against NATO forces, an international think tank says.
Eighty per cent of respondents also say they are preoccupied with trying to feed their families in the war-torn nation, the poll by The Senlis Council says.
The Taliban's "very clever propaganda" tells young Afghan men that NATO does not care about them, and is only concerned about waging their own war, Norine MacDonald, founder and lead field researcher for the group says.
She says Afghans are worse off now than under Taliban rule.
"The Afghan people, five years after the international community has come to Afghanistan, despite our best intentions, are suffering," she said.
Southern Afghanistan is facing serious food shortages which could play into the hands of the country's hard-line former leaders the Taliban, she says.
In a critical report, the think tank says the situation is "undermining military efforts" in Afghanistan.
Growing civilian injuries caused by NATO-Taliban fighting, and a US-led poppy eradication program have also heightened local villagers' frustration with NATO forces.
The poppy eradication program must be halted until farmers have a
chance to grow alternative legal crops, it says.
Ms MacDonald urged NATO countries to try a poppy-for-medicine pilot program in one village and expand it.
Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world's opium, most of which is used in Europe, Russia, China, Iran and Central Asia often as heroin.
The organisation, an international policy group with offices in London, Paris, Brussels and Kabul, based its research on testimony from Afghans.
It also had videos showing injured civilians with poor health care and dozens of refugee camps in the Kandahar province where Afghans line up for food scraps.- AFP
Afghans' anger over US bombings
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Afghanistan
Each time the old woman breathed out you could hear a small groan of pain as she sat, her head in one hand, her other shoulder shattered by shrapnel and fixed in a coarse plaster.
Her son Mohammad and his wife Khwara sat next to her - they were mourning the death of their 18-year-old son and her brother.
Both were among 57 killed - almost half of them women and children - when American forces bombed their village in Shindand, western Afghanistan, and destroyed 100 homes.
"The bombardments were going on day and night," said Mohammad Zarif Achakzai, who had to flee their mud house in the Zerkoh Valley.
"Those who tried to get out somewhere safe were being bombed. They didn't care if it was women, children or old men."
We have no reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were injured or killed out in Shindand
Brig Gen Joseph Votel
Khwara explained how it started: "Americans came to the village without consulting any elders," she said.
"They just came into to the women's part of the house, so we women went to the elders, and we told them if you don't stop this, we women will stand against them."
Remembering what happened she began to get angry: "Death to America," she shouted. "Death to the America that killed my son."
Bombardments
The US special forces were in the valley looking for an arms cache. Shindand is not under Taleban control, but intelligence reports suggest some locals may have been gun-running for them.
Even under the Russians we haven't witnessed bombardments like it before
Baryaly Noorzai
Baryaly Noorzai was knocked out by a bomb, while he and his wife and child were fleeing their home.
He described how it was only after the villagers were angered by culturally insensitive house searches that they picked up guns and took on the American military machine.
"When the Americans came the people started fighting them back, and then the planes came and started bombing us.
"Even under the Russians we haven't witnessed bombardments like it before."
The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) investigated the accounts and identified that at least 25 of those killed in Shindand were women and children.
But the commander of US operations for Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Brig Gen Joseph Votel, denied these reports.
"We have no reports that confirm to us that non-combatants were injured or killed out in Shindand," he said, justifying the use of 2,000lb bombs against mud houses.
"If there are insurgents that are effectively engaging our forces and they happen to be coming from a building we would make every use we can of technology we have, and precision weapons, to eliminate the threat and minimise the effects of collateral damage."
Foreign troops are like powerful drugs that cure a disease but have side effects as well
President Karzai
Cultural taboo
And there have been a large number of civilians killed recently - more than 70 in three months according to the AIHRC commissioner, Nader Naderi.
"In all of these incidents it was the coalition forces or their special forces that were involved rather than NATO," he said.
He explained how much of a cultural taboo it is entering homes, or women's rooms, uninvited.
"If something like that happens then the honour of the family and of that man would be under question.
"It makes those men - who are very, very conservative - very upset and very angry, and they would be ready to do whatever they can do to stop it or to prevent it or to regain their honour that was lost."
There are two missions in Afghanistan: Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which has 37,000 troops from 37 countries, including America, which is helping the Afghan government bring security, development and better governance.
But there is also the US-led coalition under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom - a counter-terrorism mission outside Nato's mandate which involves mainly special forces.
They have been blamed for shootings and bombings and tension between the two missions is increasing.
'Side effects'
One of the buildings damaged by the bombs in the Zerkoh Valley was a school, built just a few months earlier by Italian Nato troops.
President Karzai held a shura, or traditional gathering, in Shindand district to try and calm angry emotions after the bombing which had led to rioting in the streets.
"We know that the presence of foreign troops some times makes problems, but imagine if these troops were not in Afghanistan?" he asked in response to accusatory heckling from the crowd.
"Don't you think there will be a government in every street? Won't we go back to years of hunger, devastation and miseries? Foreign troops are like powerful drugs that cure a disease but have side effects as well."
For now Afghanistan needs, and largely welcomes, the presence of the international forces, but with every civilian killed, the divide widens.
Since the time of Peter the Great, in the early 18th century, Russia has been interested in developing a direct trading link with India. This means the need for a friendly or puppet regime in Afghanistan. The idea of Russian influence in this region (the only neighbouring territory with easy access to Britain's Indian empire) inevitably rings alarm bells in London.
In December 1838 a British army is assembled in India for an Afghan campaign. By April 1839, after a difficult advance under constant harassment from tribal guerrillas, the city of Kandahar is captured. Here Britain's chosen puppet ruler, Shah Shuja, is crowned in a mosque. Four months later Kabul is taken and Shah Shuja is crowned again.
By the end of 1840 the rightful amir, Dost Mohammed, is a prisoner of the British. He and his family are sent into exile into India. But the British garrisons in Afghan towns find it increasingly difficult to control proud tribesmen, up in arms at this foreign intrusion in their affairs.
In January 1842 the British garrison of some 4500 troops withdraws from Kabul, leaving Shah Shuja to his fate (he is soon assassinated). Most of the retreating British and Indian soldiers are also killed during their attempt to regain the safety of India.
Taliban uses weapons made in China, Iran
By Philip Smucker
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published June 5, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Sophisticated new weapons, including Chinese anti-aircraft missiles as well as items made in Iran, are reaching Taliban forces in Afghanistan, according to government officials and other sources.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said during a visit to Kabul yesterday that there was no evidence as yet that Tehran government officials are involved in shipping weapons to the country for use against U.S. and NATO forces.
He did not comment on the appearance in the country of Chinese anti-aircraft weapons, evidence of which was provided to The Washington Times yesterday.
A set of photographs was provided depicting Taliban insurgents showing off new supplies of Chinese-made HN-5 shoulder-fired missiles.
The weapons, similar in design to Russian Strela-2 missiles and in use with China's People's Liberation Army since the early 1990s, are limited in range, speed and altitude, but effective against helicopters and low-flying airplanes.
It is not clear who provided the missiles, since they have been in use for years as far away as Bolivia. Small numbers of them have been in Afghanistan at least since 2002 when U.S. forces discovered a hidden cache.
A Taliban "weapons expert" who provided photos of the latest missiles said the Taliban fighters were "elated" to have more of them, which they consider an important answer to U.S. air power.
He did not say how the weapons got to Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, where a U.S. helicopter went down last week, killing seven soldiers.
The Taliban claimed to have shot down the Chinook, while NATO authorities have said only that they are investigating. An unidentified U.S. military official was quoted saying the chopper was brought down by a lucky shot from a rocket-propelled grenade.
"There have been indications over the past few months of weapons coming in from Iran," he said. "We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling, or exactly what's behind it."
He added that some of the weapons may have been supplied to criminals involved in Afghanistan's booming drug trade.
Mr. Karzai was doubtful about official Tehran involvement, saying, "Iran and Afghanistan have never been as friendly as they are today."
Mr. Gates did not identify the types of Iranian weapons found in Afghanistan, but NATO authorities recently announced the discovery of an armor-piercing roadside bomb in the capital.
The United States has long complained about the same kind of Iranian weapons being used against U.S. troops in Iraq.
Mr. Gates' visit took place as Afghan civilians and Westerners working outside the military and NATO say expectations about what the U.S. and NATO can achieve here have plummeted.
"One of the problems is that the U.S. and its allies raised expectations so high when they came here," said Rory Stewart, an author on Afghanistan and a former British diplomat in Iraq.
"By talking so much about democracy and propping up warlords without delivering serious progress, we have managed to discredit a lot of our basic notions in the eyes of the Afghans."
Corruption in Mr. Karzai's government is corroding faith in the alliance as well as in Afghan security forces, Afghans say. Many question how Western governments and their Afghan partners have managed to spend billions of dollars on development assistance with only limited results.
Saad Mohseni, the Afghan-Australian director of Moby Capital Partners, a leading private media group, said there is "a lot of confusion about what NATO is doing and will do in the future."
"I mean, NATO is not a cohesive force. Some NATO troops refuse to fight at night; some NATO troops refuse to fight at all, and these caveats make it very difficult for NATO to have a consistent policy right across the country."
A senior NATO source rejected that criticism, saying NATO forces apply appropriate force when and where necessary.
"The robustness of NATO's fighting in the south of the country, where the British, Canadians and Americans are fighting, would be totally inappropriate in the north," he said.
"One of the problems is that the U.S. and its allies raised expectations so high when they came here," said Rory Stewart, an author on Afghanistan and a former British diplomat in Iraq.
"By talking so much about democracy and propping up warlords without delivering serious progress, we have managed to discredit a lot of our basic notions in the eyes of the Afghans."
Corruption in Mr. Karzai's government is corroding faith in the alliance as well as in Afghan security forces, Afghans say. Many question how Western governments and their Afghan partners have managed to spend billions of dollars on development assistance with only limited results.
(what many afghanis have said often)
The point is no one really knows how much movement there is between Afghanistan and Pakistan, just as no one really knows how vast the drug trade is - or the scale of smuggling goods. The concept of border control at Spin Boldak and over the line in Chaman is like the frontier itself: a bit theoretical.
"This is one of the busiest border-crossing sites in Afghanistan, yet it produces virtually no revenue, from the customs standpoint, for the national government," said Brigadier-General Tim Grant, commander of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. "There's something fundamentally wrong there."
Canadian troops have been charged by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force with turning things around along the 100-kilometre border of Kandahar province. Their concern isn't so much the opium or contraband as it is the Taliban menace coming from Pakistan.
In early May, a reconnaissance squadron from the Royal Canadian Dragoons, based in Petawawa, Ont., moved into a sprawling French Foreign Legion-style fort six kilometres from the border town of Spin Boldak. The squadron's task is to get to know the local leaders, to instill more professionalism among Afghan security forces, and to discover the various routes by which people cross the border without acknowledging any authorities.
The aim of Operation Satyr Nix is to disrupt the flow of Taliban supporters looking to kill Canadian troops in the areas west of Kandahar city, about 85 km away. Until now, the porous border has allowed the Taliban to cross with impunity. It has given them an easy bolt hole in Pakistan (where ISAF troops can't follow) and the ability to bring back new recruits from Pakistan's Islamic religious schools.
"They have a place where they can go to when things don't go well - where they can regroup, they can rearm, they can rest and then they can come and fight us another day," said the squadron's commander, Major Steve Graham.
Taking away that sanctuary is a huge challenge. For a start, there is no agreement about where the border should be. The 1,500-kilometre line on the map was traced more than a century ago by a British civil servant, Sir Mortimer Durand, and it has been loathed and ignored by both sides ever since.
Afghans believe the authority for the line expired on its 100th anniversary in 1993. Pakistan showed its respect for the line by moving its border-crossing at Chaman, 1.6 km into Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. It built a towering Friendship Gate; Afghans blocked it with sandbags and walked around it.
"It's a line drawn through the desert, and the local people here don't respect it," shrugged Major Graham. "They just go back and forth."Canadian officials rule out the construction of the sort of fences seen in Israel and along the U.S.-Mexico border. For a start, they say, a barrier would hurt people who live and work on opposites sides of the Durand Line and it would require an enormous monitoring force, they say.
Representatives from Pakistan, Afghanistan and ISAF have been holding talks about the border, but they are beset by generations of distrust. After one meeting in early May, held to discuss previous skirmishes between border guards, a man reportedly wearing a Pakistani uniform opened fire as the meeting adjourned and killed a U.S. officer.
There is some urgency to the task of creating a real border. There are more than two million Afghan refugees living in camps in Pakistan, and the job of repatriating them is getting under way. The United Nations is closing four camps this year, which will displace 220,000 people, and Pakistan is making noise about closing others early.
The Canadians won't have any choice about who returns to Afghanistan. That's okay with Major Graham "as long as they're not coming in with weapons."
Top Afghan law officer assaulted
Afghanistan's most senior law officer says bodyguards of a top army general physically attacked him while travelling north of the capital, Kabul.
Attorney-General Abdul Jabar Sabet - one of President Hamid Karzai's closest aides - told the BBC that he needed hospital treatment after the attack.
The general, Deen Mohammad Jurat, says he and his men were only acting in self-defence.
Mr Sabet has a reputation for sacking officials suspected of corruption.
The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says that the attorney-general's campaign against corruption has earned him many enemies.
Mr Sabet said the attackers wanted to kidnap him. He said the incident happened as he was investigating the cause of a road block.
But Gen Jurat says that it was his driver and body guards who were attacked first by the attorney-general's men, and it was they who opened fire first.
The general, who used to work at the interior ministry, told the BBC that he was travelling with his family and just six bodyguards, when Mr Sabet stopped his car at a road block, and then slapped his driver's face.
The general said that it was Mr Sabet's 40 security staff who fired first before others broke up the fight.
Mr Sabet said that the assault on him - in which rifle butts were used - was pre-planned and was carried out because the general was angered that some of his officials had been arrested on suspicion of corruption.
'Target list'
"This morning I was leaving for Parwan province for a picnic along with the mayor of Kabul, the deputy governor of Parwan, and Members of Parliament," Mr Sabet told a press conference after the attack.
"The road was blocked so I got out to check what it was.
"As I got out (the general) came and asked me what I was doing: I told him that I am trying to clear the road.
"I didn't have any bodyguards on me, so he started attacking me along with his bodyguards of around 40 armed men.
"It was a pre-planned plot. He sent his man to the place where (he knew) I was going.
"My vehicle had four bullets in it afterwards, while the vehicle belonging to the head of criminal police, Gen Ali Shah Paktiwals, had nine bullets in it.
"I have arrested people who (the general) wanted to be freed. He too was on my target list, this is why he attacked me."
Gen Jurat is now serving as a top interior ministry general providing security for some American companies.
US strike 'kills Afghan police'
Seven Afghan policemen have been killed by US forces in a "friendly fire" incident in the eastern province of Nangarhar, Afghan officials say.
The US military says US and Afghan forces retaliated after coming under fire. It did not confirm the deaths of the policemen.
Elsewhere Nato says its soldiers killed three civilians in Kunar province.
The International Committee for the Red Cross says the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating.
In a report marking 20 years of its work in Afghanistan, the ICRC said life for ordinary people in Afghanistan was getting worse.
"It's really had a heavy price in terms of the population, both in terms of wounded and in terms of killed and people displaced so it's a very worrying situation," the ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Kraehenbuhl, said.
'Brutal'
Local Afghan police insist that US-led forces opened fire on them first in the friendly fire incident at a security post in Nangarhar province on Monday night.
I'm very angry. We are here to protect the Afghan government and help serve the Afghan government
Khan Mohammad
Afghan police officer
Speaking to the BBC, a senior police officer, Nasir Ahmad Safi, described the incident as "brutal".
"Last night the Americans attacked our police post in the district and then they asked for air support. They attacked us from ground and air," he said.
That account is disputed by US-led forces who were on an anti-Taleban operation.
"En route to the location the forces were suddenly ambushed from both sides with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms and returned fire and called in air support and broke contact," spokesman Major Chris Belcher said, the AFP news agency reports.
"Following the engagement, the identity of the assailants was called into question. Further details will be released as they become available."
In the capital, Kabul, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai, Karim Rahimi, supported the American account in what he called a "tragic accident".
"The police checkpoint in the area thought that they were the enemy, so police opened fire on the coalition, and then the coalition thought that the enemies were firing on them, so they returned fire back," Mr Rahimi said, according to the Associated Press news agency.
In the south, meanwhile, Nato says one of its soldiers was killed and two others wounded in an explosion. It did not say what caused the blast.
Civilian incidents
Separately, in Kunar province, also in the east, Nato-led international forces in Afghanistan said three civilians were killed at a checkpoint on Monday.
Officials said an oncoming vehicle failed to respond either to gestures telling it to stop or a warning shot into the ground.
For many months now there has been a steady succession of incidents involving civilians at checkpoints of the Nato-led multinational force (Isaf), says the BBC's Charles Haviland, in Kabul.
Large numbers of civilians have been killed in an upsurge in violence in Afghanistan in the past two years.
Most have died at the hands of Taleban and allied insurgents, but the deaths caused by the US-led anti-insurgency coalition and Isaf are a highly sensitive matter, our correspondent says.
Afghan officials say more than 50 civilians died in April in joint US-Afghan bombing operations in the west of the country.
China arming terrorists
New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.
Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.
The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.
According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.
The weapons were described as "late-model" arms that have not been seen in the field before and were not left over from Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq.
U.S. Army specialists suspect the weapons were transferred within the past three months.
The Bush administration has been trying to hide or downplay the intelligence reports to protect its pro-business policies toward China, and to continue to claim that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism. U.S. officials have openly criticized Iran for the arms transfers but so far there has been no mention that China is a main supplier.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that the flow of Iranian arms to Afghanistan is "fairly substantial" and that it is likely taking place with the help of the Iranian government.
Defense officials are upset that Chinese weapons are being used to kill Americans. "Americans are being killed by Chinese-supplied weapons, with the full knowledge and understanding of Beijing where these weapons are going," one official said.
The arms shipments show that the idea that China is helping the United States in the war on terrorism is "utter nonsense," the official said.
John Tkacik, a former State Department official now with the Heritage Foundation, said the Chinese arms influx "continues 10 years of willful blindness in both Republican and Democrat administrations to China's contribution to severe instability in the Middle East and South Asia."
Mr. Tkacik said the administration should be candid with the American people about China's arms shipments, including Beijing's provision of man-portable air-defense missiles through Iran and Syria to warring factions in Lebanon and Gaza.
Apologists for China within the government said the intelligence reports were not concrete proof of Chinese and Iranian government complicity.
Pentagon spokesmen declined to comment. A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy did not return telephone calls seeking comment.
Iran boat threat
Iran is adding Chinese-made small boats armed with anti-ship cruise missiles to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy that can be used in attacks on shipping in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI).
"Iran still states that the [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps navy] will employ swarming tactics in a conflict," ONI analyst Robert Althage said in an e-mail, noting that the paramilitary organization "continues to add boats armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, such as the FL-10, to its inventory."
China began supplying Iran over the past several years with small, high-speed C-14 catamarans armed with the optically guided FL-10 anti-ship cruise missiles.
Mr. Althage said in response to questions posed by Bloomberg News that recent exercises by the Iranians did not show any new capabilities and that the maneuvers appeared designed "for publicity."
Currently, Iran operates three Russian-made Kilo submarines but has not yet mined waterways, the ONI analyst stated.
A 2004 ONI report said the Iranian IRGC navy has more than 1,000 small boats ranging in length from 17 to 60 feet, and many are concentrated near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, where a large majority of the world's oil passes.
The boats can be used in attacks against shipping and include infantry weapons, unguided barrage rockets, recoilless guns, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
North Korea watch
U.S. intelligence agencies think North Korea is continuing development of nuclear weapons, as well as working on "miniaturization" of weapons for missile warheads, according to a senior Bush administration official.
Since the February nuclear accord reached in Beijing, North Korea has continued work on weapons, said a senior Bush administration official involved in North Korean affairs.
"There are no indications that they are not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, to include the weaponization and miniaturization," the official said.
U.S. intelligence officials think North Korea, which received equipment through the covert Pakistani nuclear-supplier network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, obtained Chinese documents on designing a small warhead, the key to developing a nuclear weapon small enough for missile warheads.
The Chinese-language warhead design documents were first uncovered in Libya, which gave up its nuclear program in 2003.
Three recent missile tests in North Korea over the past several weeks were anti-ship cruise missiles fired during exercises that were not unusual for North Korean military forces at this time of year, the official said.
"Those who are looking at the six-party process and where we are today with [the Banco Delta Asia funds transfer] are very disappointed," the senior official said. "This doesn't build confidence. This is a time that is very tense and we want to go to implementing the 13 February agreement. So even though this is a normal exercises, I think there is an element of disappointment that North Korea would move in that direction."
North Korea has shown no signs of preparing of another underground nuclear test but "they could have a nuclear test at any time with minimal or no warning," the official said.
The October test was a "nuclear event" but the blast caused by the test was smaller than North Korea had hoped, the official said.
c Bill Gertz covers the Pentagon. He can be reached at 202/636-3274 or at bgertz @washingtontimes.com.
New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
Can the war in Afghanistan be won?
The BBC begins a week of in-depth coverage of Afghanistan by asking its World Affairs editor, John Simpson, to consider if the Afghan government and the West can win the war against the Taleban.
The Taleban have new confidence and new tactics, and their campaign against the government and its Nato backers has been increasingly successful since the beginning of this year.
In the east of the country, around Jalalabad, suicide bombings have become such frequent occurrences that the road from there to Kabul is now known as "the Baghdad road".
I have been coming to Jalalabad since 1989, but for the first time in my experience we needed a police escort to drive around there. In the countryside near the town, they urged us not to get out of our vehicle when we stopped, despite the intense heat.
"There are spies everywhere," the police explained.
The police themselves are a major target for the Taleban and al-Qaeda guerrillas who operate here now.
Outside the main police headquarters in the town, a senior policeman ran out and ordered us to stop filming in case our presence attracted the attentions of a suicide bomber.
There have been several attacks there, and an unexploded rocket is still lodged in a tree in front of the building.
Terror tactics
Until the end of last year, Jalalabad was relatively quiet. Now it is becoming a battleground.
Along part of the length of the so-called "Baghdad Road", local people point out the places where American soldiers fired at passers-by a few weeks ago, after an attempted suicide bombing.
The soldiers claimed they had come under small-arms fire from the side of the road.
The local authorities later apologised and paid compensation for the deaths.
So far neither Nato nor the government of President Karzai seems to know how to counter the resurgent Taleban
As a result of this and other incidents in this part of the country, Nato and US troops are often regarded with dislike and distrust.
The Taleban's tactics are designed to make people feel there is no safety anywhere.
Last week, just north of Kabul in an area which has always been a stronghold of support for the government and for the Northern Alliance which swept the Taleban from power in November 2001, the Taleban staged a fierce and concerted attack on a pro-government village.
Just south of Kabul, in Logar province, two schools have been attacked in the past few days, and schoolgirls murdered or injured. The Taleban are particularly opposed to the education of women.
At the hospital where one of the schoolteachers and her pupils were being treated, they begged us not to film them for fear of the consequences.
And the capital itself experienced on Sunday its worst bombing since the fall of the Taleban in 2005, when more than 30 people were killed in an attack on a police bus.
Uncertain future
For several years after the Taleban were chased out of power, they seemed to be finished. Girls went back to the schools which the Taleban had closed down, women's groups started up and women appeared on television as newsreaders.
Now a new campaign of murder against prominent women has begun.
With Nato troops mostly tied up in the southern part of the country, the Afghan police and army are finding it harder to operate elsewhere. New recruits, new weapons and new tactics are coming in to help the Taleban from outside.
Especially from Iraq. Al-Qaeda, the Taleban's close ally, is redirecting some of its forces here.
The new al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan, Mustafa bin Yazid, has himself had combat experience in Iraq, and is thought to be behind the new tactic of suicide-bombing; something that was relatively rare in Afghanistan until recently.
But the Taleban are not winning all the battles. I spoke to a senior Taleban figure who has just defected to the government in Kabul after falling out with the overall Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.
He maintained that many Taleban leaders like himself are hostile to al-Qaeda, and are looking for some third way between the government with its Nato allies and the foreign extremists led by bin Yazid.
But he agreed the Taleban were proving increasingly successful against the government, and confirmed that their strategy was to surround Kabul and eventually capture it.
While Nato forces are in the country, that will not happen. But so far neither Nato nor the government of President Karzai seems to know how to counter the resurgent Taleban.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6756125.stm
Published: 2007/06/17 23:04:25 GMT
Some doubt U.S. claims Iran arming Taliban
Published: June 14, 2007
WASHINGTON, June 14 (UPI) -- Some analysts question U.S. reports that Iran is arming the Taliban, saying Tehran has other allies there and the weapons are available on the open market.
Wednesday in Paris, U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns made the most definitive statement yet by a senior official that Iran was supplying the Taliban in Afghanistan with weapons including small arms and shaped charges, which make roadside bombs effective even against armored vehicles.
"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this," Burns said on CNN television. He also ruled out the possibility that the supplies might be coming from rogue states or freelance elements in Tehran.
"It's certainly coming from the government of Iran. It's coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government."
But some analysts remain skeptical about the reports, which have previously emerged sourced to unnamed U.S. or coalition officials in Afghanistan.
Prof. Barnett Rubin of New York University, one of the leading U.S. experts on Afghanistan, told Harper's Magazine No Comment blog that any assistance the Taliban might be getting from the Iranians pales into insignificance beside the support they receive from Pakistan -- a major U.S. ally.
"True, some intelligence states that (the) Iranians may have supplied (the) Taliban with low-level, (and a) small amount of training. On the other hand, the Taliban openly train, recruit, rest, and raise funds in Pakistan ... and the media seems to be essentially oblivious to that."
"The Iranians say you can buy any weapons in the Pakistani tribal territories, including theirs," continued Rubin.
Rubin and others also point out that the Taliban ruthlessly suppressed Afghan Shiites, who were co-religionists of the Iranians, when they were in power -- and that Iran was one of the first foreign countries to support the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. That support that continues today, even as the alliance is now part of President Hamid Karzai's internationally backed government in Kabul.
Shaun Waterman, UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Pakistan's soldiers 'huddling in their bases'
16 June 2007
The Pakistani army is paralysed by the growing Taliban threat and some retired officers are covertly aiding the militants, according to a former CIA officer.
Soldiers posted to Waziristan, a tribal area that hosts an estimated 2 000 al-Qaeda fighters, are "huddling in their bases, doing nothing", said Art Keller, a CIA case officer who was posted to Pakistan last year.
"Their approach was to pretend that nothing was wrong because any other approach would reveal that they were unwilling and unable to do anything about Talibanisation," said Keller, who has visited Waziristan.
The Pakistani military insists it is doing its best. President Pervez Musharraf has repeatedly referred to the 80 000 soldiers posted to the tribal areas, about 700 of whom have been killed in action.
But Keller said that behind the scenes, the fight is riven by divisions among the officers.
"There are the moderates who fear Talibanisation, the professional jihadis who want to embrace the Taliban again, and the middle group who aren't too fond of the Taliban but resent doing anything under pressure from the US out of sheer bloody-minded stubbornness," he said. "Because of [that], the Pakistani military remains paralysed."
Keller alleged that retired army officers, including the former spy chief Hamid Gul, are secretly supporting the Taliban. "To the degree that they aren't arrested or forced to cease and desist, they are tacitly tolerated," he said.
General Gul, who has faced similar accusations before, said on Friday night: "I morally support the movement to end the American occupation of Afghanistan. But there is no physical dimension to it, no hidden agenda."
Sensitive time
Keller's comments come at a sensitive time in United States-Pakistani relations. Since 2001, Washington has given Pakistan $10-billion in exchange for counter-terrorism cooperation. But although hundreds of al-Qaeda figures have been arrested, Osama bin Laden remains at liberty and Taliban attacks on Afghanistan have soared.
On Thursday, the US Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Boucher, visited Quetta, the capital of the western province of Baluchistan where Nato officials say the Taliban has headquarters. The chief minister of Baluchistan, Jam Muhammad Yousaf, told him that "Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden are not [here]", according to a government statement.
Uzbek, Arab, Chechen and Somali militants are sheltering in Waziristan, to the north of Baluchistan. The majority Uzbeks are concentrated around Mir Ali in north Waziristan, where they have allied with local fighters -- self-styled "Pakistani Taliban" -- to coordinate attacks inside Afghanistan.
Musharraf's efforts to stem the violence through a controversial peace deal with the militants have failed, and in recent months "Talibanisation" has spread north out of the tribal belt and into North-West Frontier province, with attacks on music shops, barbers and government officials.
But Keller said American efforts to catch the ringleaders are being thwarted by Pakistani rules restricting CIA agents to heavily guarded military camps.
"Limited freedom of movement and limited freedom to directly engage locals were, and remain, the biggest obstacles to success," he said. Critics say the CIA has also inflamed the situation through secretive attacks by Predator aeroplanes on al-Qaeda targets that have killed dozens of civilians.
Last year, the CIA revived efforts to hunt Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Keller doubted they are in Waziristan. "I don't think the two top guys are there, but some roads leading to them run through there," he said.
Excessive pressure from Washington is also hampering the chase, he added. Spies need peace and quiet to "spin webs and wait for the flies to come", he said. "Such a manhunt is chess, not checkers." -- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
