UK 'in Afghanistan for decades'
The UK presence in Afghanistan will need to remain for decades to help rebuild the country, British ambassador Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has said.
"The task of standing up a government of Afghanistan that is sustainable is going to take a very long time," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
He added that the Afghan people wanted the UK presence to help resist the Taleban and develop the country.
Extra diplomatic staff are being deployed to Afghanistan this year.
"The message we are getting, the message I had only last week down in Helmand from the people of the villages there, was, 'Please protect us from the Taleban,'" said Sir Sherard.
.
"Their worry isn't about us staying, it's about us going; about us not finishing the job of standing up the police, standing up the security forces, standing up the judicial system, putting schools and hospitals in place."
He added: "They remember the Taleban - they have had a test-drive of Taleban rule and if there is one thing they are clear about it's that they do not want to return to the dark days of medieval Taleban rule."
'Huge commitment'
The BBC learned in January that the government planned to send as many as 35 extra diplomatic staff to Afghanistan.
The priorities would be to combat corruption, help build government institutions in the south and to tackle the production of opium, the Foreign Office said.
The number of UK troops in Afghanistan is also being boosted to about 7,700 this year. They will be mainly based in the volatile Helmand province, where they have been fighting the Taleban.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson said the British embassy in Kabul was likely to become the UK's biggest anywhere.
"It's a huge commitment," he said.
"The fact that Sir Sherard is here as ambassador is itself a sign of the Foreign Office's determination to upgrade its whole representation in Afghanistan.
"He's a big hitter in the diplomatic service."
Sir Sherard said: "We are going to win this, but it's going to take time. It's a marathon rather than a sprint - we should be thinking in terms of decades."
'Troops stretched'
Meanwhile, a soldier serving in Afghanistan has complained that forces are fighting the Taleban without enough men or equipment, making them vulnerable to attack.
The 23-year-old told BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight of a number of missions which had gone dangerously wrong.
In one instance, 16 men were sent to clear an enemy compound holding as many as 100 Taleban fighters, but their trucks failed to operate in the rough terrain.
They then had to carry heavy packs in 50C heat without enough water before being ambushed. They had no back up.
The Ministry of Defence has admitted the armed forces are stretched and says it hopes troop reductions in Iraq, Bosnia and Northern Ireland will ease the situation.
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It appears Afghanistan is becoming a bad habit for England.
Three Afghan Wars and now this?
)If a person is described as a glutton for punishment, they happilyaccept jobs and tasks that most people would try to get out of. A glutton is a person who eats a lot.
Nato to investigate Afghan deaths
Nato's secretary general has called for an investigation into the killings of 25 civilians in an air strike in the Afghan province of Helmand.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said civilian deaths were "always a mistake".
The Nato-led force (Isaf) said it was checking reports that it had killed a small number of civilians as it responded to a Taleban attack.
President Hamid Karzai told the BBC this week that civilian deaths caused by foreign forces would have to stop.
If not, Mr Karzai warned that Afghans might turn against countries with a military presence in Afghanistan, but added that people were still grateful for that involvement.
(HE DOESN"T REALLY BELIEVE THAT , DOES HE ? hbg)
'Innocent victims'
Speaking in Quebec City, Canada, Mr de Hoop Scheffer said no Nato, coalition or Afghan soldier would knowingly take aim at a civilian, and accused the Taleban of using civilians as human shields.
(I WONDER IF MR DE HOOP SCHEFFER REALIZES THAT THE AIRPLANE PILOTS LIKELY HAVE NO IDEA WHO IS AT THE RECEIVING END OF THE BOMBS BEING DROPPED ? hbg)
"Each innocent civilian victim is one too many," he said. "Unfortunately it happens."
"It's important to avoid these mistakes because we must keep the support of the large majority of the Afghan population."
Speaking to the BBC's correspondent in southern Afghanistan, people from the village of De Adam Khan, near the town of Gereshk in Helmand, said heavy bombings of the area had resulted in the civilian deaths.
They said nine women and three children were among the 25 killed.
The accounts were backed by the provincial police chief, Mohammed Husain Andiwal, who said about 20 Taleban were also killed in the strike.
Mr Andiwal said Taleban fighters attacked Nato forces first but alleged that foreign forces had launched air strikes without consulting with their Afghan counterparts.
Isaf said its forces were attacked on Thursday night near Gereshk and responded with small arms fire and an air strike.
It said that up to 30 insurgents were believed to have occupied a compound and that most of them were subsequently killed.
In the neighbouring province of Uruzgan, Isaf has said that days of fighting appeared to have caused civilian deaths, some of which might have come from air strikes against Taleban insurgents.
Worst year
There are two international missions in Afghanistan: Isaf, with 37,000 troops from 37 countries including the US. Its aim is to help the Afghan government bring security, development and better governance.
The US-led coalition - under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom - is a counter-terrorism mission that involves mainly special forces.
The south of the country has this year seen the worst violence since the Taleban were ousted from power in 2001 by US-led troops.
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Published: 2007/06/22 18:28:38 GMT
It seems strange to plan and carry out operations that gain ground, only to pull back straightaway, but British forces say they do not have the troops to completely secure such vast areas - and never could have
Cat and mouse games in Afghanistan
BBC Kabul correspondent Alastair Leithead comes face-to-face with the human cost of the guerrilla war in Afghanistan, embedded with British troops in Garmsir on Operation Bataka.
In the darkness I tried to find somewhere soft to lie down inside the open-air mud compound.
We were with British forces overnight on Operation Bataka in Garmsir, Helmand province, and the compound had for the last few months been in Taleban control.
I found a place and, still sweating in my body armour and with a big pack stuffed with water, rations and broadcast equipment, I settled down to catch some sleep before the men moved on.
The ground was unusually soft and comfortable but there was a strong, very unpleasant yet familiar smell.
It was the smell of a decomposing human body.
First contact
The Taleban had fought from here for months - even in the darkness there was evidence of where bombs and artillery shells had struck.
I moved to somewhere a little harder and somehow, despite the tension and anticipation, the heat and the insects, fell into a deep sleep that lasted until first light - and first contact.
It seems strange to plan and carry out operations that gain ground, only to pull back straightaway, but British forces say they do not have the troops to completely secure such vast areas - and never could have
Burying their dead is very important to the Taleban, and under fire from such high-tech opponents this would have been the perfect place for an improvised graveyard, as well as a bed for the night.
It was not to be my last encounter on this mission with the human cost of this guerrilla war.
The operation had begun at sunset on Thursday - a day later than planned - with more than 500 British troops and about 200 from the Afghan National Army.
Garmsir town centre is deserted, its shops looted and metal shutters flapping in the wind that also keeps the Afghan flag flying over what has been the frontline against the Taleban in this area for more than six months.
The small British bases at either end had been hammered day and night for months by the insurgents, using the network of irrigation channels and compounds to navigate the ground unseen until their attack.
The operation was designed to change all that - to push through into Taleban ground and to build a large bridge across the canal - to allow British troops to move into the no-man's land with relative ease in armoured vehicles.
Machine-gun fire
Artillery shells barraging Taleban positions marked the beginning of the operation and with darkness we crossed the canal with British forces and gradually moved through to the compound that we would stay in until daylight.
And it was the sound of heavy machine-gun fire that began the day, as the British infantry troops moved forward one compound at a time.
Explosive charges created a route through as those further forward turned every corner expecting to see a Taleban fighter waiting for them.
Other units were responsible for different areas, all attempting to push the Taleban back on different fronts.
Apache attack helicopters hovered menacingly overhead, occasionally firing their distinctive and eerie high-powered canons at targets on the ground.
There was the threat of booby-traps so engineers worked carefully to move through the compounds.
We went through one doorway with the troops and saw the body of a Taleban fighter.
He had been shot a number of times - his and two other weapons were nearby. One frontline soldier said his compatriots had fled without their guns as the British troops moved forward.
Guerrilla warfare
The ground force then pulled back as the artillery shells, mortar bombs and helicopter fire continued to rain down on the area - considered by the UK commanders to be free of civilians.
And there was little sign of normal life amid the bombed-out houses and courtyards.
We headed back to the bridge - built in less than six hours by the Royal Engineers while I had been looking for somewhere to sleep.
It seems strange to plan and carry out such operations that gain ground, only to pull back straightaway, but British forces say they do not have the troops to completely secure such vast areas - and they never could have.
It's the tactic of guerrilla war - a game of cat and mouse between British and Taleban forces on the frontline in Helmand province and as I write, back in the main base, the shelling and mortaring continues.
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Published: 2007/06/22 13:16:31 GMT
Karzai angry over West's tactics
Nato and US-led troops are failing to co-ordinate with their Afghan allies and thereby causing civilian deaths, President Hamid Karzai has said.
He criticised his Western allies' "extreme" use of force and said they should act as his government asked.
"Innocent people are becoming victims of reckless operations" because the troops had ignored Afghan advice for years, Mr Karzai told reporters.
He was speaking after a week in which up to 90 Afghan civilians were killed.
More civilians have been killed this year as a result of foreign military action than have been killed by insurgents, correspondents say.
Separately, rockets fired by coalition forces in Afghanistan killed at least nine Pakistani civilians, the Pakistan military said on Saturday.
Coalition forces were fighting militants in Afghanistan close to the Pakistan border when a few rockets came across the frontier, hitting a house.
Pakistan is demanding an explanation, a spokesman said.
Nato said about 60 militants in Afghanistan had been killed in the offensive.
'Indiscriminate'
Mr Karzai was speaking a day after the head of Nato called for an investigation into an air strike in the Afghan province of Helmand in which 25 civilians were killed.
The importance of not killing civilians cannot be overestimated
BBC's Alastair Leithead
The Afghan leader said foreign bombardment had also killed 62 civilians in the province of Uruzgan.
"You don't fight a terrorist by firing a field gun 37km (24 miles) away into a target. That's definitely, surely bound to cause civilian casualties," he said.
The south of the country has seen the worst violence since the Taleban were ousted from power in 2001 by US-led troops.
Accusing international forces of consistently failing to co-ordinate with their Afghan colleagues, Mr Karzai said that, in future, every military operation should be co-ordinated directly with his government, in accordance with written plans he said already existed.
"As you are aware over the past several days, as result of indiscriminate and imprecise operations of Nato and coalition forces, our people suffered casualties," Mr Karzai told reporters in Kabul, looking visibly angry.
"We are thankful for their help to Afghanistan. But that does not mean that Afghan lives have no value. Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such," he said.
'One too many'
There are two international missions in Afghanistan.
One is the Nato-led Isaf, with 37,000 troops from 37 countries including the US.
Its aim is to help the Afghan government bring security, development and better governance.
The US-led coalition - under the banner of Operation Enduring Freedom - is a counter-terrorism mission that involves mainly special forces.
Both have recently been involved in heavy clashes with insurgents.
Speaking in Quebec City, Canada, on Friday Nato's secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said no Nato, coalition or Afghan soldier would knowingly take aim at a civilian, and accused the Taleban of using civilians as human shields.
"Each innocent civilian victim is one too many," he said. "Unfortunately it happens."
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Published: 2007/06/23 15:42:24 GMT
Afghan ambassador says Canada has not monitored prisoners
Juliet O'Neill
CanWest News Service
Saturday, April 28, 2007
OTTAWA - Urging an end to the "political circus" over Afghan detainees, Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada says no Canadians, including corrections officers, have monitored treatment of prisoners turned over by Canadian military forces.
However, Ambassador Omar Samad said in a Global National interview that Canadian officials will soon have "unrestricted access" to prisons under an agreement currently being worked out with Canada in the wake of political uproar over alleged torture of detainees.
Samad contradicted assertions by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day that Corrections Canada officers have been monitoring prisoner treatment - an assertion Day repeated in the Commons Friday, saying they are there "to see if there are cases of torture."
Samad said Corrections Canada officers have for many months, under their mandate to help build Afghan police capacity, had access to some prisons in Afghanistan and may have come across prisoners.
"It doesn't mean those were detention centres of people who were arrested by Canadian forces," Samad said. "So if this has created confusion, I think that we all need to take a step back and define what we're talking about and to bring some clarity to this instead of turning it into a political circus."
"From the Afghan point of view, it's clear there was no followup or monitoring of detainees caught by Canadian forces turned over to Afghans, especially to the NDS (National Directorate of Security) that took place prior to this current time."
Day came under fire in the Commons earlier, with opposition MPs saying the corrections officers, sent in February to help prison reconstruction efforts, have no mandate to monitor prisoners or enforce a Canada-Afghanistan prisoner transfer agreement.
The minister had trumpeted their role Thursday after three days of confusion and contradiction about alleged abuse of prisoners turned over by Canadian troops, access to Afghan prisons and enforcement of a Canada-Afghan prisoner transfer agreement under which the Afghan human rights commission was to monitor prisoner treatment.
Day had said Thursday that corrections staff had made 15 visits to Afghan jails. But his spokeswoman, Melissa Leclerc, had said later they have no mandate to monitor prisoner treatment.
On Friday, Day told the Commons "they are there to support the Afghan officers by training them in the work that they do in the prisons and also to ensure, to see if there are cases of torture."
After question period, deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor should be "put out of his misery" after five days of contradictions and confusion on the Afghan detainee affair.
And former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler told reporters that Canadians must be trained specifically to recognize torture and abuse if they are going to be part of a systematic monitoring system.
"You can't have a drive-by inquiry by some corrections officials who may in fact not even know that it's part of their mandate to monitor the detainees and to understand if there have been situations of torture and inhumane treatment," Cotler said.
Samad said Afghanistan will investigate "if there really have been abuses," and he said cooler heads should prevail "instead of making this more and more confusing for everyone."
He added his issue is not how Canadian politicians have handled the controversy. "My issue is how Afghanistan and my country and my government and my people are portrayed and seen through this political debate that is taking place, which in many cases is not accurate."
He said Afghanistan wants to correct any mistakes that have been made, any abuse that has taken place.
"We are serious about our obligations under international law and Afghan laws," he said.
Record opium crop in southern Afghanistan
· Region set to become world's biggest supplier
· Cocaine consumption up in Europe, says UN report
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday June 27, 2007
The Guardian
Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, where some 7,000 British troops are based, is on the verge of becoming the world's biggest drugs supplier, cultivating more opium than entire countries such as Burma, Morocco, or even Colombia, the UN warned yesterday.
The region was largely responsible for a huge increase last year in Afghanistan's opium poppy harvest, the origin of most of the heroin on the streets of Britain and mainland Europe. And Helmand's poppy harvest is expected to increase again this year, according to the latest annual report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
"Curing Helmand of its drug and insurgency cancer will rid the world of the most dangerous source of its most dangerous narcotic and go a long way to bring security to the region," said Antonio Maria Costa, the UN agency's executive director.
The report will not be welcome reading for the British government. Five years ago, Tony Blair said Britain would take responsibility for overseeing Afghanistan's anti-narcotics programme. Last year, Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, said an increase in the opium harvest planted before British troops arrived in Helmand was one thing, a further rise this year - now predicted by UN and British officials - would be quite another.
"Drugs and the insurgency are intrinsically linked," a British official admitted yesterday. British military commanders, meanwhile, warn that attempts to eradicate the poppy crop without providing alternative incomes will simply increase hostility to foreign troops and increase support for the Taliban.
A US proposal to spray the poppy crop was vetoed by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
British officials say their priority is to attack the drug traffickers and their laboratories before embarking on a long-term programme to provide Afghans with alternative crops to farm. However, the UN report says that even removing the top Afghan drug lords may not have any effect on cross-border trade with dealers in Pakistan, Iran, and to the north of the country.
A dramatic 49% increase last year to a record opium poppy harvest in the country led to a new record in the world production of opium, the UN says. Afghanistan accounts for 92% of global illict opium production. The total export value of the country's opium harvest is estimated by the UN to amount to more than $3bn (£1.5bn), almost half the size of the country's entire gross domestic product. More than 12% of Afghanistan's population of 23 million is involved in opium poppy cultivation.
There are about 11 million heroin addicts in the world, of which 3.3 million are in Europe, according to the UN report. It says the rise in Afghanistan's opium cultivation in 2006 offset the sixth successive year of decline in opium cultivation in south-east Asia.
The report says that coca cultivation is falling in South America and cocaine consumption is declining in the US. However, consumption is rising in Europe, particularly in Britain, Italy and Spain, the main entry point for cocaine in Europe.
The report also suggests that overall drug abuse is being contained, with total production, trafficking, and consumption, of illicit drugs largely stabilised. Drug seizures have continued to increase, though it adds that traffickers are establishing new routes, exploiting Africa in particular.
"This threat needs to be addressed quickly to stamp out organised crime, money laundering and corruption and to prevent the spread of drug use that could cause havoc across a continent already plagued by many other tragedies," Mr Costa said.
Cannabis, grown in 172 countries, often in small plots by users themselves, continues to account for the vast majority of illegal drug use and is consumed by about 160 million people, the report says.
Amphetamine-type stimulants - including ecstasy - remain the second-most widely consumed group of substances, it says. Over the 2005-2006 period, some 25 million people are estimated to have used amphetamines at least once in the previous 12 months, about the same as a year earlier.
At a glance
· A 49% increase in opium production in Afghanistan has seen a new record in the world production
· Afghanistan accounts for 92% of global illict opium production.
· Of the 11m heroin addicts in the world, 3.3m of them in Europe
· Cannabis is consumed by 160m people worldwide
· Over the 2005-2006 period, 25m people are estimated to have used amphetamines at least once in the previous 12 months
· More than 12% of Afghanistan's population is involved in poppy cultivation.
Efforts 'to save' Pakistan deal
The Pakistani government says it is negotiating with tribal elders in the region near the Afghan border to save a peace deal with local people.
Local leaders said they were abrogating the agreement after thousands of extra troops were deployed there.
A surge in violence in North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) has left more than 60 people dead in three days.
The foreign ministry says that the agreement has not ended, and that talks with tribal elders are ongoing.
Complaints
Officials told the AFP news agency that a government representative met elders in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, to find out the status of the pact after the reported statement by Taleban commanders that they were scrapping it.
"We are trying to engage them in a bid to keep the accord intact," the governor of North West Frontier Province and the architect of the deal, Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, was quoted as telling The News daily.
Local sources told AFP that the talks covered complaints by tribesmen that troops have taken up positions at checkpoints which were abandoned under the deal, and about unpaid compensation for previous military operations.
Under the September deal - which was strongly criticised by the US and Afghanistan - the militants pledged to stop cross-border attacks in war-torn Afghanistan and hunt down foreign insurgents hiding in lawless mountain areas.
However, some pro-Taleban militants have denied that any further talks are taking place.
Thousands of people are reported to have fled the tense tribal region of North Waziristan when news of the breakdown of the peace treaty became widely known.
Meanwhile the NWFP Chief Minister, Akram Durrani, on Monday summoned a meeting of key clerics, tribal elders and lawmakers to discuss the security situation.
President George W Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, backed President Pervez Musharraf's move to send more troops to the region.
Militant Islamists have called for a holy war to avenge the storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad last week.
In an interview with CNN, Mr Hadley said, "He [President Musharraf] has a safe haven problem in an area of his country where Pakistan's central government has really not been present for decades or even generations."
On Sunday, pro-Taleban militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region announced they were scrapping their truce with the Musharraf government amid growing tension in the area.
Last September's truce had ended two years of clashes and was aimed at stopping cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.
In a statement issued in Miranshah town on Sunday, the militants accused the government of breaking the agreement.
It came as Pakistan deployed more troops in the area, fearing "holy war" after the storming of the militant Red Mosque last week left 102 dead.
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General Rick Hillier seemed to contradict Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor's optimistic predication that the Afghans would be taking on most of the front-line combat by next spring in Kandahar province, where Canada's powerful battle group is waging a tough counter-insurgency war against the Taliban.
"It's going to take a long while," Gen. Hillier told CTV's Question Period, referring to the training of the Afghan National Army. "We've just started the process." He also said it would be a "significant challenge'' for the ANA to be ready in the time frame proposed by Mr. O'Connor only a week ago on the same program.
Ujjal Dosanjh, the Liberal foreign affairs critic, said inconsistent statements between the Defence Minister and the country's top soldier create confusion for the international community and at home, where Canada's position on its mission in Afghanistan needs to be clear.
Meanwhile, in Kandahar, the general running all of Canada's overseas deployments said defeating the Taliban and rebuilding Afghanistan won't be done by February, 2009, adding that if Canadians don't remain to complete the job, then some other nation will have to do it. Already, NATO is struggling to find nations willing to contribute to the mission - especially if it involves sending troops to the war-torn southern half of the country.
"Whether we accomplish it ourselves or it's accomplished by others doesn't matter a whole lot in the greater scheme of things,'' Lieutenant-General Michel Gauthier, commander of all Canadian expeditionary forces overseas, said Sunday.
Gen. Gauthier, who knows Afghanistan well, is soldiering on in the full knowledge that a political debate is raging over whether Canada's commitment to Afghanistan should be extended beyond February, 2009. Mounting casualties, rising disquiet at home and sagging public support for Canada's first sustained combat in half a century hangs like a cloud over the mission's future.
Last week, Mr. O'Connor seemed to be putting a positive political gloss - and a hurry-up timetable - on shifting the combat burden to the Afghan National Army.
"We will continue to withdraw, train them, put more emphasis on training, and at, some stage, basically be in reserve," he said.
It's a stand that's seen as an attempt to soften opposition to the war in Afghanistan, which is particularly strong in Quebec.
But Gen. Hillier made it clear that Canada's soldiers will remain in the thick of the fighting. "We are in the fight. There are direct combat actions required to keep the Taliban from stopping the progress in southern Afghanistan and tearing the country further apart," he said.
In Kandahar, as one battle group heads home and another - based on Quebec's famed Vandoos, the Royal 22nd Regiment - is arriving, Gen. Gauthier rejected the notion that Afghanistan in general, and Kandahar province, the Taliban's original heartland, would be safe, secure and thriving by the end of the Harper government's commitment.
"I don't think anybody believes the job is going to be done by February, '09," Gen. Gauthier said.
"From an international community perspective, no one is under any illusions that Afghanistan will be self-sustaining and self-sufficient by February, '09," he said from the Canadian headquarters at the sprawling NATO base at Kandahar Airfield.
But nor is Gen. Gauthier planning for a Canadian role in Kandahar beyond the troops who will arrive next summer and leave at about the time the current commitment ends.
The high command is working on plans "for the group that will be deploying in August, '08 - we have no plans beyond that right now," he said.
"Trying to anticipate where we might be in February, '09, would be a waste of time," he said, adding that in the international community there's no specific expectation that Canadians will do "everything that needs to be done,'' to achieve the long-term objectives of security and rebuilding in Kandahar.
Taleban to dominate Bush-Karzai talks
By Jonathan Beale
BBC News, Washington
According to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Afghanistan - not Iraq - is the front line in the "battle" - not war - against international terrorism.
This is not a view entirely shared by US President George W Bush.
But the meeting at Camp David with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai shows that Afghanistan's future is still a cause of concern for America's commander-in-chief.
Almost six years after the US-led invasion, the country's progress from the shadow of the Taleban to stable democracy is still painfully slow.
Taleban demand
The kidnapping of a large group of South Korean Christian aid workers by the Taleban has added a sense of urgency to what have been billed as "informal talks".
The rebels are demanding the release of Taleban prisoners.
A senior state department official said that "all pressures" needed to be applied to seek the hostages' release - hinting at the possibility of a military response. But in reality that seems very unlikely.
No doubt Mr Bush wants to press Hamid Karzai to stand firm against such threats from the Taleban.
The US was highly critical of a prisoner exchange in March that freed not just an Italian hostage - but a senior Taleban commander.
Publicly the Bush administration sees this latest move by the Taleban as evidence that it is being pushed from all sides - resorting to kidnapping, terror and extortion because it can no longer mount a major military offensive.
The hope is that such tactics will alienate extremists from the local population.
There is little evidence to suggest, however, that the Taleban are close to collapse.
Growing strains
The battle against the Taleban is one of the main issues at hand.
There is no doubting that coalition forces are confronting the enemy.
But according to the UN, at least 600 Afghan civilians have also been killed this year in insurgency-related violence - many have been the casualties of coalition firepower.
It has caused a strain in the past between President Karzai and Mr Bush.
Afghanistan's president has criticised the coalition for not doing enough to protect civilians, and has also called for more control of military operations.
There are strains too with America's other "partner" in its "war on terror" - Pakistan.
Mr Karzai has accused Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf of not doing enough to stem the flow of fighters across his border.
In return General Musharraf says that it is Afghanistan's government that cannot control its own territory.
(sounds just like the major political parties in most western nations blaming each for any and all trouble in their countries ! hbg)
'Financial surge'
President Bush will want to play down these differences as he needs both countries' support.
"There should be no mistake of our commitment to a successful democracy in Afghanistan," said White House spokesman Tony Snow ahead of the meeting.
This year the US is spending $10bn (£5bn) to help the country get back on track.
Most of that money is being spent on a "financial surge" to help build up Afghanistan's own security forces.
But next year Mr Karzai can only count on getting half that money. President Bush is now looking for results.
For President Karzai that means tackling corruption and taking on local warlords and militias to assert his government's authority.
It also means getting to grips with poppy cultivation. Even US officials admit that opium production is likely to be high next year.
(the farmers and their families want to eat ! arms aren't enough ! hbg)
So even though - in public - the two leaders will seek to emphasise progress being made, much of their discussions will focus on the same thorny issues that have beset Mr Karzai since he first took power.
There is also a new threat that is ringing alarm bells in Washington: Iran's rising influence.
US officials recently accusing Tehran of supplying the Taleban with weapons to attack coalition forces.
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Leaders vow 'an end to Taleban'
US President George Bush and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, have vowed to put an end to the Taleban in Afghanistan.
Quote:After two days of talks in the United States, President Karzai said the Taleban were a defeated force which no longer endangered his government.
(i thought karzai was accusing pakistan of aiding this "defeated force" ?)
They said they would not bargain with the Taleban over 21 South Korean hostages being held in Afghanistan.
Two South Koreans from the abducted Christian group have been killed by the Taleban, who demand a prisoner swap.
A US presidential spokesman said there would be no "quid pro quo" over the captives - 18 of them women - who were seized on 19 July from a bus in Ghazni.
Following talks at Camp David, Maryland, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said: "Both leaders agreed that in negotiations for the release, there should be no quid pro quo for the hostages.
"The Taleban are brutal and should not be emboldened by this."
A man who claims to speak for the Taleban had earlier told the BBC that the hostages' fate was in the two leaders' hands.
He also said the Taleban would continue its kidnapping policy whether or not there was an exchange.
In Seoul, a South Korean presidential spokesman said the government wanted to "work separately" from the Bush-Karzai summit to resolve the issue of the captive Christian aid workers.
About 100 protesters rallied near the US embassy in Seoul on Monday and handed in a letter addressed to Mr Bush.
At Camp David, Mr Bush and Mr Karzai presented a united front in their joint news conference and insisted progress was being made in Afghanistan.
President Bush said five million children - a third of them girls - were now going to school.
Iran criticism
President Karzai said 85,000 children aged under five were alive thanks to healthcare improvements made since the Taleban regime was toppled in 2001.
But Mr Bush said he did not agree with remarks Mr Karzai made in an interview with CNN last Sunday, in which he said the Iranians were helping, rather than hindering, Afghanistan.
The US president said Tehran was "not a force for good" and vowed that the US would continue efforts to isolate it.
"I believe it is in the interests of all of us that we have an Iran that tries to stabilise not destabilise, an Iran that gives up its weapons ambitions and therefore we are working to that end," he said.
Praising his Afghan ally, Mr Bush said: "There is still work to be done, don't get me wrong. But progress is being made, Mr President, and we're proud of you."
Afghan security was the key issue in the leaders' two-day meeting, as well as the booming trade in illegal drugs, a resurgent Taleban and civilian killings.
Mr Karzai insisted the Taleban were not a long-term threat.
He said: "They're not posing any threat to the institutions of Afghanistan.
"It's a force that's defeated. It's a force that is frustrated. It's a force that is acting in cowardice by killing children going to school."
Mr Karzai said he had broached the subject of the growing number of civilians killed in US and Nato military operations in Afghanistan with the US leader.
He said: "He is as much concerned as I am, as the Afghan people are. I was very happy with that conversation."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6933063.stm
Published: 2007/08/06 23:46:37 GMT
Afghan jirga mulls Taleban threat
Delegates at a key Afghan peace summit have expressed widely differing views on how to curb the threat of the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
An Afghan MP said militants hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas should be thrown out as "uninvited guests".
But a Pakistani delegate said Western troops in Afghanistan should be replaced by an Islamic force.
There are 700 tribal leaders from both countries attending the three-day peace "jirga" in Afghanistan's capital Kabul.
'Uninvited guests'
The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says heated debates behind closed doors are expected at the jirga for the next two days among delegates on how to fight the insurgency and ensure security in the region.
"The fact that some terrorists are in the Pakistani tribal belt, no-one can deny that," Afghan MP Sardar Mohammad Rehman Ogholi said at the meeting.
"It is also clear that they are uninvited guests," he said, and added that they should be asked to leave.
"If they did not, Pakistan will grab them by one hand and Afghanistan by the other and we will together throw them away."
Pakistani tribal elder and former MP, Malik Fazel Manaan Mohmand, said removing Western troops should be a jihad similar to the one that forced out the Soviet forces.
"There is no need for the Nato forces. Bring Islamic countries' troops," he said.
Opening the "peace jirga" on Thursday, President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan must work with Pakistan to defeat Islamic militants.
He told Afghan and Pakistani delegates of their "common destiny".
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who was to attend, had pulled out citing other commitments.
But Mr Karzai was upbeat. "I am confident, I believe... if both Afghanistan and Pakistan put their hands together, we will eliminate in one day oppression against both nations," he said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who came to the meeting instead of President Musharraf, said: "I will be frank - Afghanistan is not yet at peace within itself. The objective of national reconciliation remains elusive."
Afghan officials often accuse Pakistan of harbouring Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters, but Islamabad has strongly denied the charge, pointing out that it has arrested several senior militant leaders and is battling its own Taleban threat in its tribal areas.
However, tribal elders from Waziristan, the Pakistani region from which much of the instability stems, refused to attend.
Supporters of the Taleban have said talks that do not include them could be futile.
'Blasphemous' balls anger Afghans
By Alastair Leithead
BBC News, Kabul
A demonstration has been held in south- east Afghanistan accusing US troops of insulting Islam after they distributed footballs bearing the name of Allah.
The balls showed the Saudi Arabian flag which features the Koranic declaration of faith.
The US military said the idea had been to give something for Afghan children to enjoy and they did not realise it would cause offence.
The footballs were dropped from a helicopter in Khost province.
Some displayed flags from countries all over the world, including Saudi Arabia, which features the shahada, one of the five pillars of Islam - the declaration of faith.
The words, which include the name of Allah, are revered, and Muslims are very sensitive about where and how they can be used.
Saudi Arabia has complained to the World Cup's ruling body in the past about the use of its flag on footballs.
Mullahs in Afghanistan criticised the US forces for their insensitivity, and around 100 people held a demonstration in Khost.
Afghan MP Mirwais Yasini said: "To have a verse of the Koran on something you kick with your foot would be an insult in any Muslim country around the world."
A spokeswoman for the US forces in Afghanistan said they made "significant efforts to work with local leaders, mullahs and elders to respect their culture" and distributing the footballs was an effort to give a gift the Afghan children would enjoy.
"Unfortunately," she added, "there was something on those footballs we didn't immediately understand to be offensive and we regret that as we do not want to offend."
Inside an Afghan opium market
By Bilal Sarwary
BBC News, Shaddle Bazaar, eastern Afghanistan
Travelling on Afghanistan's main Jalalabad to Torkham road, you eventually arrive at Shaddle Bazaar, a market of around 30 shops in the eastern province of Nangarhar, on the border with Pakistan.
At first glance, it looks like any other normal market offering everyday goods.
But in reality, this is one of Afghanistan's biggest opium markets.
Farmers from Nangarhar and other adjacent provinces bring opium to Shaddle to sell. Much of it comes from Nangarhar and Helmand - two of Afghanistan's biggest opium-producing provinces.
Mud hut shop
Thousands of kilos of opium are bought and sold every day.
Sitting inside the shop tension between the drug dealers is visible - for a few minutes there is hot dispute and shouting over prices and the quality of the opium before the transaction is completed.
There are big scales in the shop, and the assistant weighs the opium on it - Gul Mohammad is busy counting out Pakistani rupees to pay for the opium he has bought from one of his customers.
In his mud hut shop he buys hundreds of kilos of opium every day and the smell of it is everywhere.
Outside his shop vehicles come and go - green tea is served constantly for the visitors.
But you do not have to study what is going on too closely to notice the unusual - a man carries a big bag full of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis.
The dealers all carry pistols which they say is for their own protection.
Customers enter the shop bringing opium packed secretly, which they refer to by its nickname as maal. They are constantly on the look-out for government informers.
I am repeatedly asked not to take pictures of anyone's face, nor should I name anyone. The names of those involved in the drugs trade in this piece have been made up to protect their identity.
"We could get killed or arrested," says one of the few people in the shop willing to talk to me.
Europe bound
Some villagers, like 18-year-old Abdullah Jan, have to walk for hours before reaching Shaddle. The tiredness on his face explains it all - if he is stopped by government agents or bandits he would lose money that feeds his family for the entire year.
"I left at four in the morning and got here after four hours. I have brought 10kg of opium from my fields to sell."
After a hard bargain with Gul Mohammad Khan, the opium dealer, he is getting the equivalent of $1,400 - more than he can get for any other crop. He is one of hundreds of people who travel to Shaddle bazaar to sell and buy opium.
From here the opium is taken to the nearby mountains and villages in the border areas to heroin labs set up by local drug dealers, where it is processed into heroin.
Eventually, it will hit the streets of Europe.
The market first began to sell opium openly under the Taleban regime after they permitted the cultivation of poppies.
After the fall of the Taleban in 2001, the market has been raided several times but it has re-opened again and again.
In recent months, Afghanistan's elite anti-drug force has raided the bazaar with the help of foreign forces in the country - they made arrests and seized opium and heroin in large quantities. But they did not succeed in closing down the bazaar indefinitely.
Last year, Afghanistan's poppy production reached record levels.
The US state department's annual report on narcotics said the flourishing drugs trade was undermining the fight against the Taleban.
Powerful mafia
It warned of a possible increase in heroin overdoses in Europe and the Middle East as a result.
Poppy production rose 25% in 2006, a figure US Assistant Secretary of State Ann Patterson described as alarming. Four years after the US and its British allies began combating poppy production, Afghanistan still accounts for 90% of the world's opium trade.
The US has recently given the Afghan government more than $10bn in assistance, but most of the money will be spent on security rather than encouraging alternative sources of income.
For 45-year-old Gul Mohammad Khan being a opium trader is his way of surviving.
"If we had roads, clinics, factories and if there were job opportunities I would not do what I am doing now," he said.
For the past 10 years Mr Mohammad has seen many regimes and local officials come and go. His shop has been raided many times but he has never been arrested.
Inside, I am shown various qualities of opium and other raw material that are used to make heroin. Current prices are anywhere from 10,000 Afghanis ($201) for a kilo of dry opium - that is the best quality - to around 5,500 Afghanis ($110) for wet opium.
Target traffickers
According to officials, the mafia is powerful and strong.
"They are so strong that we sometimes find ourselves outnumbered fighting them," says Gen Daud Daud, the deputy minister of interior in charge of counter narcotics.
"In these mountains of Achin district and other border villages they have everything from heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and of course better vehicles and more money than we do."
Haji Deen Gul - who is selling 20kg of opium - is critical of the Afghan government and the international community for targeting the farmers. Instead he wants the traffickers to be targeted.
"They should target the ones who are selling the heroin to Western countries. I sell my opium to feed my family and from my heroin they can even make medicine. When I have water and roads provided to me, I will stop growing poppies."
Before I leave Gul Mohammad Khan's shop, he tells me selling opium is not ideally the trade he wants to be in.
"I don't want my children to be in this trade and I hope that some day the world will help us. Only then can we stop the opium trade."
Names of those mentioned in the article have been changed to protect their identities.
Like Sisyphus, the Greek mythological figure condemned to push a boulder up a hill every day only to see it roll right back down, Canadian soldiers here are trapped in a loop that has the fourth iteration of troops battling for the exactly the same ground their predecessors in southern Afghanistan fought to take.
"We essentially have to start from scratch, you know," Brigadier-General Guy Laroche told The Globe and Mail this week in an interview at the main coalition base at Kandahar Air Field.
"Everything we have done in that regard is not a waste of time, but close to it, I would say."
Gen. Laroche, the new commander of Canada's Task Force Afghanistan, wasn't being critical in any way of the regiments that came here before him - and whose tours were conducted at a frenetic, in some cases combat-heavy, pace that this rotation of soldiers has yet to experience - but rather stating the obvious.
Canadians have been fighting and dying for the same pieces of ground in the same two volatile areas - the lush plains of the notorious Zhari and Panjwai districts that border the Arghandab River - just west of the provincial capital since February, 2006.
The pattern is always the same: The Canadians invariably win the military battle, send the Taliban and the various warlords and drug criminals who are their natural allies on the run, hand over to the fledgling Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and then find most of their hard-fought gains are lost in the fetid stew of corruption, ineptitude and tribal quarrels that remains the norm in this part of the country.
In a region of Afghanistan that one senior Canadian officer describes as "Babylon with cellphones," the best they can hope for is that the bubbles of security in each district, which contract with each fighting season and expand again with winter-wrought peace, nonetheless emerge a little bigger each time.
Yet if that appears to have happened to some degree - there are villages that last year were empty because of heavy fighting that are thriving again - on another level ground that was won by Canadians, sometimes several times, is now overrun, in most cases by gangsters and tribal leaders.
All this works to undermine the already eroding authority of the Afghan national government in the south and is to the ultimate benefit of the Taliban, who are able to move more freely when lawless disarray is the status quo.
As recently as this spring, for example, Canadians had a rudimentary forward operating base at a place they called Gundy Ghar in Zhari district. Reporters then embedded with the troops filed stories datelined from the little base.
Yet about 10 days ago, the Vandoos had to fight to get Gundy Ghar back, and in the process lost two soldiers, Master Corporal Christian Duchesne and Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier, to a roadside bomb.
And in a few hours just last December, soldiers of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Canadian Regiment, and British engineers threw up a spanking new checkpoint in Zhari, complete with a small barracks for the Afghan National Police officers who would purportedly man it, and a proper byway for conducting vehicle searches.
But Gen. Laroche confirmed anecdotal reports from locals and others interviewed by The Globe that here, as in other parts of the district, "there's nothing else, there's nothing left in that area."
With commandeered checkpoints sometimes used by gangs to extort unofficial taxes, it means life for ordinary Afghans trying to go about their business or move goods to market is that much harder.
The Vandoos have the time to be patient, Gen. Laroche said, whereas in the past, Canadians had been so in demand in other parts of the troubled south that they had to quickly hand off to the fragile Afghan forces.
For instance, the first Canadian battle group, here from February to August last year, was three times called by higher headquarters into neighbouring Helmand province to help beleaguered British forces, taking the bulk of soldiers away from Zhari-Panjwai.
That group, led by the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, was also charged with getting Dutch troops safely into their operating area, Uruzgan province, without losing any soldiers - another diversion from the Canadian area of operations.
But then and now, the weakest link in Canadian operations here remains the same - the ANP - and is rooted in decisions made hundreds of kilometres away in Kabul or, in some cases, even in other countries.
While the Afghan army has been stood up in a few short years with what is universally agreed was remarkable effectiveness - though of course it is still growing, with a second kandak, or battalion, slated to be on the ground with Canadian mentors - and is generally well regarded by Afghans themselves, the national police force is as troubled and ineffective as ever.
Underpaid compared to army officers, under-trained, under-equipped and killed in the ongoing insurgency at such an astonishing rate that there are fears in some quarters they are being used as cannon fodder, the ANP has suffered both as a result of international lack of co-ordination and the corruption endemic to the Afghan Ministry of the Interior.
With Germany as the lead actor in the training of the ANP from 2002 to this year, largely through the Kabul Police Academy, which trains officers, and the United States as the major donor of funds and focused on regional training centres for ordinary patrolmen, two clashing visions of just what kind of police force the ANP should be have emerged.
A new report from the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU), an independent research agency based in Kabul, says these duelling visions are "seriously undermining police reform."
The Germans, through the German Police Program Office, see the ANP emerging as a civilian law-and-order police force, while the U.S. plan has been to create an ANP that can function as a security force with a major role in battling the insurgency in the southern provinces.
Entitled Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police, the report was written by Andrew Wilder, research director for politics and policy at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University in Boston, and the founder of the AREU.
According to the AREU report, released in July this year, Italy, which took the international lead on justice reform, has also badly dropped the ball, with the result that there is still "no functioning justice system" such that when police actually make an arrest, with few prosecutors and judges available, there is nowhere to go with the case.
The result has been what another report, prepared last fall for the U.S. departments of State and Defence, calls the "bribe and release" program, whereby people who are arrested simply purchase their freedom on the spot.
Among the examples cited in the AREU report:
- At least 70 per cent of police recruits can't read or write, which obviously severely limits the effectiveness of their training, however good it may be, and casts doubt on their understanding of the rule of law. The real number may be much higher; the report says that of those graduating from one regional training centre last year, only seven of 887 students were literate.
- As of April this year, the ANP has an approved strength of 82,000. But the on-paper number of police officers is far greater than the number of those estimated to be actually working. An audit done at one station in Zabul province last fall showed that while there were 776 police on the station's books, there were only 271 on the job. Police are being killed at a staggering rate. Where in 2002, nine were killed in action, 627 were killed last year. In a 52-day period in Kandahar alone last winter, 41 ANP were killed. According to the Interior Ministry, 200 ANP were killed fighting the Taliban from March to June this year. Some estimates say 24 ANP are killed for every Afghan soldier who is killed in action, prompting one unidentified Canadian police trainer to say they are being used as "the canary in the coal mine" in the fight against the Taliban.
- The ANP consists of a handful of forces, including the border police, the Afghan Auxiliary National Police (created on a short-term basis to help fight last year's insurgency and built upon the country's history of tribal militias, the ANAP is criticized harshly in the report), and several others. But even by these admittedly low standards, the Afghanistan Highway Police were deemed so corrupt and so ineffective that the unit was actually disbanded halfway through last year.
- The Interior Ministry, responsible for district administration in Afghanistan's 34 provinces, the police and the counternarcotics fight, has long been considered one of "the most corrupt ministries" in the Kabul government, the report says.
But the most serious kind of corruption is that linked to the poppy trade, "extremely damaging to state-building efforts because it involves the capture of parts of the state apparatus." The report cites numerous complaints of senior officials accepting huge bribes in exchange for appointing individuals to strategic positions, such as police chiefs in drug-producing provinces.
The only answer, the report says, is long recognized and long overdue: Foreign countries must make their donor aid conditional on comprehensive ministry reform.
With billions of international dollars flowing into Afghanistan and the world paying attention, the report says, likely never again will there be such an opportunity to reform the police. If the opportunity is squandered, "there is a strong possibility that the ANP will continue to be a source of insecurity, rather than security."
The price paid by Canadians has not been in vain, says Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Hope, who led the Patricias here on the first rotation. "The absolute best that we foreigners can hope for is that our hard soldiering efforts keep the tactical and operational initiative on our side, or at least out of the enemy's hands, until the ANSF forces are strong enough to take over our role.
"This is completely doable, well within our capacity," he said in a recent e-mail, "provided we are willing to stay the course for a number of years."
But until then, in at least two districts of Kandahar, it means that Canadians, like Sisyphus, are doomed to push the same rock up the same hill.
