History > 2006 > USA > Wars > Afghanistan (V-VI)

The Taliban retreated to Pakistan
after American forces drove them out of Afghanistan.
They now train fighters in camps across the lawless region.

Mohammad Zubair/Associated Press

    Taliban and Allies Tighten Grip in North of Pakistan        NYT        11.12.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/asia/11pakistan.html

Taliban Chief Vows to Drive Out Troops

December 29, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:26 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Omar pledged to drive foreign troops out of Afghanistan in a statement released Friday, as NATO and Afghan forces killed more than 12 of his fighters in the volatile south.

The purported message from Omar, the authenticity of which could not be immediately confirmed, urged the Taliban to ''sacrifice'' their lives and ''never submit or accept defeat.''

''I am confident that blood of innocent people and mujahedeen will yield results,'' said the statement, timed for the Muslim religious festival of Eid al-Adha. ''The enemy will have to quit the region with humiliation and disgrace.''

''Afghans have a history of expelling their enemies as no enemy and invader has quit Afghanistan willingly,'' it said.

The message, sent in Pashto language with an accompanying English translation, was received by The Associated Press in Pakistan in an e-mail from Taliban spokesman Mohammed Hanif.

Statements from the Taliban leader -- whose whereabouts are a mystery -- are periodically issued through Hanif, who claims to speak for the hardline militia.

The latest message comes amid stepped-up attacks this year by the Taliban, particularly in southern Afghanistan, where they have been waging fierce battles with Western and Afghan forces.

About 4,000 people, mostly militants, have died in 2006, the bloodiest period in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001.

Suspected Taliban militants attacked a police post late Thursday using machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, said Khost provincial police commander Mohammad Ayub. The ensuing battle lasted more than an hour.

NATO forces called in a helicopter to attack the Taliban, Ayub said, adding that after the clash ended, the bodies of more than 10 militants were recovered.

NATO spokesman Maj. Dominic Whyte said there were no injuries among NATO troops. Ayub said there were also no casualties among Afghan forces.

Also Thursday, suspected Taliban militants attacked a police checkpoint in southern Helmand province, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhail. Police returned fire and two Taliban were killed in a 20-minute gun battle, he said. No police were injured.

In the statement, the Taliban leader accused foreign forces of ''ruthless bombing'' that had killed and displaced thousands of Afghans including women and children.

''It has now become a permanent cruel practice and barbaric habit of our enemy. We must stand by the people to fight against the enemy and to take revenge of their blood,'' it said.

Hundreds of civilians have died in this year's fighting, some in U.S. and NATO bombing of suspected Taliban hide-outs, others caught in Taliban suicide attacks.

Omar went into hiding after a U.S.-led invasion toppled his Taliban regime in Afghanistan five years ago. Afghan officials say he is hiding in the Pakistani city of Quetta, while Pakistan says he is in Afghanistan.

    Taliban Chief Vows to Drive Out Troops, NYT, 29.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Taliban confirm top commander killed in U.S. strike

Wed Dec 27, 2006 2:30 AM ET
Reuters



CHAMAN, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Taliban commander confirmed on Wednesday that the rebels' military chief in southern Afghanistan had been killed in a U.S. air strike on December 19, adding his death was a blow for the Islamist movement.

The U.S. military said last week Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, who had close links to Osama bin Laden, had been killed in an air strike in Helmand province -- a claim rejected by a Taliban commander and spokesman at the time.

But a senior Taliban commander who declined to be identified confirmed Osmani had been killed.

"He has died. We got this information on the day of the strike but our leadership ordered us not to disclose it," the commander, speaking by telephone, told a Reuters reporter in the Pakistani border town of Chaman.

"He was not only an experienced military commander but also good in making financial transactions for us. He had good contacts," he said, without elaborating.

"His death will have some bad impact on our movement for some time," he added.

Osmani was the most senior Taliban leader to be killed since the hard-line Islamists were ousted from power in late 2001, weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had anointed Osmani as his heir in 2001.

Osmani commanded Taliban operations in six provinces in its southern heartland, including Helmand and Kandahar where foreign troops, mainly British and Canadian, have suffered their worst casualties this year.

Osmani was also close to bin Laden and helped coordinate relations with al Qaeda and other militant groups.

    Taliban confirm top commander killed in U.S. strike, R, 27.12.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-12-27T072946Z_01_ISL152258_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN-TALIBAN.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-9

 

This undated photo, handed out by the U.S military showing Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani,
a top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden.

AP/Dept. of Defense

 Senior Taliban leader killed in U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, military says        UT        23.12.2006
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-23-taliban-leader_x.htm 

 

Senior Taliban leader killed in U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, military says

Updated 12/23/2006 3:13 PM ET
AP
USA Today

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A top Taliban military commander described as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar was killed in an airstrike this week close to the border with Pakistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. A Taliban spokesman denied the claim.

Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was killed Tuesday by a U.S. airstrike while traveling by vehicle in a deserted area in the southern province of Helmand, the U.S. military said. Two associates also were killed, it said.

There was no immediate confirmation from Afghan officials or visual proof offered to support the claim. A U.S. spokesman said "various sources" were used to confirm Osmani's identity.

Osmani, regarded as one of three top associates of Omar, is the highest-ranking Taliban leader the coalition has claimed to have killed or captured since U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime in late 2001 for hosting bin Laden.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Tom Collins described Osmani's death as a "big loss" for the ultraconservative militia.

"There's no doubt that it will have an immediate impact on their ability to conduct attacks," Collins said. "But the Taliban is fairly adaptive. They'll put somebody else in that position and we'll go after that person, too."

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, denied that Osmani had been killed, saying the airstrike instead killed Mullah Abdul Zahir, a group commander, and three other Taliban fighters.

"I confirm that Osmani is alive and is in Afghanistan," Ahmadi told The Associated Press by phone from an undisclosed location.

Collins said officials waited four days to announce the news in part so that they could be sure it was Osmani who was killed.

"The vehicle was completely destroyed, there was nothing to recognize," Collins said. "But we have various intelligence assets that we monitor, that we look at very closely, and of course we work with the intelligence agencies of the Afghan government and through those sources we are sure that he is dead."

Osmani, the Taliban's chief military commander in southern Afghanistan, played a "central role in facilitating terrorist operations" including roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings, the U.S. said.

Ahmed Rashid, a leading author on Islamic militancy, said the death was a "major blow" to the Taliban.

"It's the first casualty among the top Taliban leadership in the past five years, which makes the strike very significant," he said.

It also comes ahead of what is expected to be a major Taliban offensive in the south in February or March, and Osmani may have been preparing for that when he was killed in Helmand, Rashid said.

The Taliban militia has stepped up attacks this year, particularly in southern Afghanistan, and waged fierce battles with Western and Afghan forces. About 4,000 people have died in the violence, raising fears for the country's future and experiment with democracy after a quarter century of war.

The whereabouts of Omar, the Taliban's reclusive leader with a $10 million reward on his head, remain a mystery.

Collins said Osmani was part of a group of "co-equals" at the top of the Taliban leadership chain just under Omar and was also in charge of the Taliban's finances.

He was regarded as highly ideological and was instrumental in some of the excesses of the Taliban rule such as the destruction of the ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan and the trial of Christian aid workers in 2001, Rashid said.

Collins said Osmani had been "utilizing both sides" of the Afghan-Pakistan border, and that the U.S. military had been tracking him "for a while."

"When the time was right, and we thought we had a good chance of hitting him without causing any harm to civilians, we struck," he said.

Although the U.S. said Osmani was an associate of bin Laden, Omar and Afghan insurgent leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Collins said he didn't know the last time Osmani had contact with any of the three.

During the Taliban regime, Osmani was the corps commander of Kandahar, the militia's seat of power.

More recently, he was regarded as one of the top three Taliban leaders under Omar, along with another senior military commander in the south and southeastern regions, Mullah Dadullah, and influential policymaker Mullah Obaidullah.

In June, a man claiming to be Osmani — his face was concealed by a black turban — gave an interview to a Pakistani television network in which he said Omar and bin Laden were alive and well. He claimed to be receiving instructions from Omar.

    Senior Taliban leader killed in U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan, military says, UT, 23.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-23-taliban-leader_x.htm

Op-Ed Contributor

One War We Can Still Win

December 13, 2006
The New York Times
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Washington

NO one can return from visiting the front in Afghanistan without realizing there is a very real risk that the United States and NATO will lose their war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the other Islamist movements fighting the Afghan government.

Declassified intelligence made available during my recent trip there showed that major Al Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network and Hezb-i-Islami sanctuaries exist in Pakistan, and that the areas they operate in within Afghanistan have increased fourfold over the last year.

Indeed, a great many unhappy trends have picked up speed lately: United States intelligence experts in Afghanistan report that suicide attacks rose from 18 in the first 11 months of 2005 to 116 in the first 11 months of 2006. Direct fire attacks went up from 1,347 to 3,824 during the same period, improvised explosive devices from 530 to 1,297 and other attacks from 269 to 479. The number of attacks on Afghan forces increased from 713 to 2,892, attacks on coalition forces from 919 to 2,496 and attacks on Afghan government officials are 2.5 times what they were.

Only the extensive use of American precision air power and intelligence assets has allowed the United States to win this year’s battles in the east. In the south, Britain has been unable to prevent a major increase in the Taliban’s presence.

The challenges in Afghanistan, however, are very different from those in Iraq. Popular support for the United States and NATO teams has been strong and can be rebuilt. The teams have created core programs for strengthening governance, the economy and the Afghan military and police forces, and with sufficient resources the programs can succeed. The present United States aid efforts are largely sound and well managed, and they can make immediate and effective use of more money.

The Islamist threat is weak, but it is growing in strength — political as well as military. The Afghan government will take years to become effective, reduce corruption to acceptable levels and replace a narcotics-based economy. As one Afghan deputy minister put it to me during my trip: “Now we are all corrupt. Until we change and serve the people, we will fail.”

No matter what the outside world does, Afghans, the United States team and NATO representatives all agree that change will take time. The present central government is at least two or three years away from providing the presence and services Afghans desperately need. The United States’ and NATO’s focus on democracy and the political process in Kabul — rather than on the quality of governance and on services — has left many areas angry and open to hostile influence. Afghanistan is going to need large amounts of military and economic aid, much of it managed from the outside in ways that ensure it actually gets to Afghans, particularly in the areas where the threat is greatest.

This means the United States needs to make major increases in its economic aid, as do its NATO allies. These increases need to be made immediately if new projects and meaningful actions are to begin in the field by the end of winter, when the Islamists typically launch new offensives.

At least such programs are cheap by the standards of aid to Iraq. The projects needed are simple ones that Afghans can largely carry out themselves. People need roads and water, and to a lesser degree schools and medical services. They need emergency aid to meet local needs and win hearts and minds.

The maps of actual and proposed projects make it clear that while progress is real, it covers only a small part of the country. Even a short visit to some of the districts in the southeast, near the border with Pakistan, suggests that most areas have not seen any progress. Drought adds to the problem, much of the old irrigation system has collapsed, and roads are little more than paths. The central government cannot offer hope, and local officials and the police cannot compete with drug loans and income.

The United States has grossly underfinanced such economic aid efforts and left far too much of the country without visible aid activity. State Department plans call for a $2.3 billion program, but unless at least $1.1 billion comes immediately, aid will lag far behind need next year.

Additionally, a generous five-year aid plan from both the United States and its NATO allies is needed for continuity and effectiveness. The United States is carrying far too much of the burden, and NATO allies, particularly France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are falling short: major aid increases are needed from each.

And United States military forces are too small to do the job. Competing demands in Iraq have led to a military climate where American troops plan for what they can get, not what they need. The 10th Mountain Division, which is responsible for eastern Afghanistan, has asked for one more infantry brigade. This badly understates need, even if new Polish forces help in the east. The United States must be able to hold and build as well as win — it needs at least two more infantry battalions, and increases in Special Forces. These increases are tiny by comparison with American forces in Iraq, but they can make all the difference.

The NATO allies must provide stronger and better-equipped forces that will join the fight and go where they are most needed. The British fight well but have only 50 to 75 percent of the forces they need. Canadians, Danes, Estonians, Dutch and Romanians are in the fight. The Poles lack adequate equipment but are willing to fight. France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Turkey are not allowed to fight because of political constraints and rules of engagement. Only French Special Forces have played any role in combat and they depart in January. NATO must exercise effective central command; it cannot win with politically constrained forces, and it must pressure the stand-aside countries to join the fight.

Finally, the United States and NATO have repeated the same mistakes that were made in Iraq in developing effective Afghan Army and police forces, rushing unready forces into combat. The manning of key Afghan army battalions is sometimes below 25 percent and the police units are often unpaid. Corruption and pay problems are still endemic, equipment and facilities inadequate. Overall financing has been about 20 percent of the real-world requirement, and talks with Afghan and NATO officials made it brutally clear that the Germans wasted years trying to create a conventional police force rather than the mix of paramilitary and local police forces Afghanistan really needs.

The good news is that there is a new realism in the United States and NATO effort. The planning, training and much of the necessary base has been built up during the last year. There are effective plans in place, along with the NATO and American staffs to help put them into effect.

The bad news is the same crippling lack of resources that affect every part of the United States and NATO efforts also affect the development of the Afghan Army and police.

It was obvious during a visit to one older Afghan Army battalion that it had less than a quarter of its authorized manpower, and only one man in five was expected to re-enlist. At one police unit, although policemen were supposed to be paid quarterly, they were sometimes not paid at all, leaving them no choice but to extort a living. (In one case, the officer in charge of pay didn’t even fill out forms because he had been passed over for promotion because of his ethnicity.)

The United States team has made an urgent request for $5.9 billion in extra money this fiscal year, which probably underestimates immediate need and in any event must be followed by an integrated long-term economic aid plan. There is no time for the administration and Congress to quibble or play budget games. And, once again, the NATO countries must make major increases in aid as well.

In Iraq, the failure of the United States and the allies to honestly assess problems in the field, be realistic about needs, create effective long-term aid and force-development plans, and emphasize governance over services may well have brought defeat. The United States and its allies cannot afford to lose two wars. If they do not act now, they will.

Anthony H. Cordesman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    One War We Can Still Win, NYT, 13.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/opinion/13cordesman.1.html

Taliban and Allies Tighten Grip in North of Pakistan

December 11, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and ISMAIL KHAN

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Islamic militants are using a recent peace deal with the government to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan, vastly expanding their training of suicide bombers and other recruits and fortifying alliances with Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, diplomats and intelligence officials from several nations say. The result, they say, is virtually a Taliban mini-state.

The militants, the officials say, are openly flouting the terms of the September accord in North Waziristan, under which they agreed to end cross-border help for the Taliban insurgency that revived in Afghanistan with new force this year.

The area is becoming a magnet for an influx of foreign fighters, who not only challenge government authority in the area, but are even wresting control from local tribes and spreading their influence to neighboring areas, according to several American and NATO officials and Pakistani and Afghan intelligence officials.

This year more than 100 local leaders, government sympathizers or accused “American spies” have been killed, several of them in beheadings, as the militants have used a reign of terror to impose what President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan calls a creeping “Talibanization.” Last year, at least 100 others were also killed.

While the tribes once offered refuge to the militants when they retreated to the area in 2002 after the American invasion of Afghanistan, that welcome is waning as the killings have generated new tensions and added to the region’s volatility.

“They are taking territory,” said one Western ambassador in Pakistan. “They are becoming much more aggressive in Pakistan.”

“It is the lesson from Afghanistan in the ’90s,” he added. “Ungoverned spaces are a problem. The whole tribal area is a problem.”

The links among the various groups date to the 1980s, when Arabs, Pakistanis and other Muslims joined Afghans in their fight to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, using a network of training camps and religious schools set up by the Pakistani intelligence agency and financed by the C.I.A. and Saudi Arabia.

The training continued with Pakistani and Qaeda support through the 1990s, and then moved into Afghanistan under the Taliban. It was during this time that Pakistanis became drawn into militancy in big numbers, fighting alongside the Taliban and hundreds of foreign fighters against the northern tribes of Afghanistan. Today the history of the region has come full circle.

Since retreating from Afghanistan in 2002 under American military attacks, the Taliban and foreign fighters have again been using the tribal areas to organize themselves — now training their sights on the 40,000 American and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

After failing to gain control of the areas in military campaigns, the government cut peace deals in South Waziristan in 2004 and 2005, and then in North Waziristan on Sept. 5. Since the September accord, NATO officials say cross-border attacks by Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and their foreign allies have increased.

In recent weeks, Pakistani intelligence officials said the number of foreign fighters in the tribal areas was far higher than the official estimate of 500, perhaps as high as 2,000 today.

These fighters include Afghans and seasoned Taliban leaders, Uzbek and other Central Asian militants, and what intelligence officials estimate to be 80 to 90 Arab terrorist operatives and fugitives, possibly including the Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

The tightening web of alliances among these groups in a remote, mountainous area increasingly beyond state authority is potentially disastrous for efforts to combat terrorism as far away as Europe and the United States, intelligence officials warn.

They and Western diplomats say it also portends an even bloodier year for Afghanistan in 2007, with the winter expected to serve as what one official described as a “breeding season” to multiply ranks.

“I expect next year to be quite bloody,” the United States ambassador in Afghanistan, Ronald Neumann, said in a recent interview. “My sense is the Taliban wants to come back and fight. I don’t expect the Taliban to win, but everyone needs to understand that we are in for a fight.”

Foreign Influence

One of the clearest measures of the dangers of this local cross-fertilization is the suicide bombings. Diplomats with knowledge of the area’s Pashtun tribes say they have little doubt the tactic emerged from the influence of Al Qaeda, since such attacks were unknown in Pakistan or Afghanistan before 2001.

This year suicide attacks have become a regular feature of the Afghan war and have also appeared for the first time in Pakistan, including two in this frontier province in recent weeks, indicating a growing threat to Pakistan’s security.

In recent weeks, Afghan officials say they have uncovered alarming signs of large-scale indoctrination and preparation of suicide bombers in the tribal areas, and the Pakistani minister of the interior, Aftab Khan Sherpao, publicly acknowledged for the first time that training of suicide bombers was occurring in the tribal areas.

The Afghan intelligence service said last week in a statement that it had captured an Afghan suicide bomber wearing a vest filled with explosives. The man reportedly said he had been given the task by the head of a religious school in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur, and that 500 to 600 students there were being prepared to fight jihad and be suicide bombers.

The bomber said that the former head of Pakistani intelligence, Gen. Hamid Gul, was financing and supporting the project, according to the statement, though the claim is impossible to verify. Pakistani intelligence agencies have long nurtured militants in the tribal areas to pressure the rival government in Afghanistan, though the government claims to have ceased its support.

So numerous are the recruits that a tribal leader in southern Afghanistan, who did not want to be named because of the threat of suicide bombers, relayed an account of how one would-be suicide bomber was sent home and told to wait his turn because there were many in line ahead of him.

American military officials say they believe much of the training in Waziristan is taking place under the aegis of men like Jalaluddin Haqqani, once one of the most formidable commanders of the anti-Soviet mujahedeen forces who joined the Taliban in the 1990s.

He has had a close relationship with Arab fighters since the 1980s, when Waziristan was his rear base for fighting the Soviet occupation. Arab fighters had joined him there in the struggle, among them Mr. bin Laden.

Mr. Haqqani later became the Taliban’s minister of tribal affairs and was the main protector for the foreign fighters on their exodus from Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He and his son, Sirajuddin Haqqani, remain the most important local partners for Al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Mr. Haqqani bases himself in North Waziristan and has a host of other Taliban and foreign commanders, in particular Uzbeks, who are loyal to him, United States military officials say.

Money continues to flow in from religious supporters at home and in the Persian Gulf, as well as from a range of illicit activities like a lucrative opium trade, smuggling and even kidnapping, said diplomats, United Nations analysts and local journalists.

“There are clearly very substantial training facilities that are still operating in Waziristan, both north and south, and other parts of FATA and Baluchistan,” said a diplomat in Kabul, referring to the region by the acronym for its formal name, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

“Even more worrying is the continued presence of the Taliban and Haqqani leadership networks,” the diplomat said, dismayed at what he characterized as Pakistani passivity in breaking up the networks.

“They haven’t been addressed at all on the Pakistani side,” he added. “They haven’t been pursued.”

The diplomat also singled out Saddique Noor, a Pakistani militant commander in his mid-40s who he said was training suicide bombers in Waziristan and sending them into Afghanistan. Mr. Noor fought in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban in the 1990s and is a determined opponent of the American and NATO presence in Afghanistan.

Another commander, Beitullah Mehsud, about 40 and also from the region, is now probably the strongest Pakistani Taliban commander and may also be dispatching suicide bombers. He also fought in Afghanistan under the Taliban and claims to have 15,000 fighters under him now.

Both men are loyal to Mr. Haqqani, whom Western diplomats consider one of the most dangerous Taliban commanders because of his links to Al Qaeda and his strong local standing.

The other, for the same reason, is Mullah Dadullah, a ruthless Taliban commander from southern Afghanistan, who has emerged as the main figure in the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban.

The one-legged Dadullah — he lost a leg in fighting — has a flamboyant if cruel reputation. He narrowly escaped capture in northern Afghanistan in 2001, often gives boastful interviews to news agencies, and is known to have personally ordered the killings of aid workers. His latest announcement, made in a phone call to Reuters, was that the Taliban had infiltrated suicide bombers into every Afghan city.

He is widely thought to be based in or around the southern Pakistani town of Quetta but is reported to be constantly on the move. He visited various areas of southern Afghanistan this year and has traveled to Waziristan repeatedly, in particular as the tribes of North Waziristan negotiated their Sept. 5 peace deal with the government, which he sanctioned, according to local reporters and intelligence officials.

Push for Order

The increasingly urgent question for Pakistani, Afghan, American and NATO officials is what can be done to bring the region under control. The Pakistani government’s latest attempt was the Sept. 5 peace accord in North Waziristan.

Under the deal, both the government and militants agreed to cease attacks, and the militants agreed to end cross-border help for the Afghan insurgency, the killings of tribal leaders and accused government sympathizers, and to cease the “Talibanization” of the area.

Taliban commanders sanctioned the deals, arguing that the militants should concentrate their efforts on the foreign armies in Afghanistan and not waste their energies on clashing with the Pakistani military, journalists working in Waziristan say.

Critics say that the agreement is fatally flawed since it lacks any means of enforcement, and that it has actually empowered the militants. In a report to be released on Dec. 11, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization, brands it as a policy of appeasement.

The government has taken down checkpoints, released detainees, returned confiscated weapons and vehicles and issued an amnesty. But the militants have increased their activities, benefiting from the truce with the Pakistani military, the groups said.

“From the start the agreement was not good because there are too many concessions and no clauses that are binding,” said Brig. Mahmood Shah, who served as secretary of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas until 2005. “This agreement is not going to work, and if it is working, it is working against the government interest.”

Afrasiab Khattak, a local politician and spokesman for the Awami National Party in Peshawar, also criticized the agreement. The militants rather than the traditional tribal leaders have the power now, he said.

“They have imposed a new elite in Waziristan,” he said. “More than 200 tribal chiefs have been killed, and not a single culprit brought to justice.”

Still, Javed Iqbal, the newly appointed Pakistani secretary of the tribal areas, defended the North Waziristan accord as an effort to return to the traditional way of running the tribal areas, through the tribal chiefs. That system, employed by the British and Pakistani rulers alike, was eroded during the military campaigns of the last few years.

“We have tried the coercive tactic, we did not achieve much,” he said in an interview in Peshawar. “So what do you do? Engage.”

He said the government had let down the tribal elders in Waziristan who had wanted dialogue with the government, but were murdered one after another by the militants. But the big turnout of some 500 to 600 tribal elders at a meeting in Miramshah in North Waziristan in November was encouraging, he said, and showed that the tribes wanted to engage. “We are back in business,” he said.

Loss of Control

Some Pakistani officials admit they have made a serious mistake in allowing the militants so much leeway, but only if they will not be quoted publicly.

Afghan and Pakistani Taliban leadership networks run training camps in various parts of the 500-mile length of the tribal areas, from Baluchistan in the south to the hub of North and South Waziristan, and farther north to Bajaur, said a Western diplomat in Kabul.

A diplomat who visited Wana, the capital of South Waziristan, said the government had almost no control over either of the Waziristans.

“They are absolutely not running the show in North Waziristan, and it runs the risk of becoming like South Waziristan,” he said. “In South Waziristan the government does not even pretend to have a remit that runs outside of its compounds.”

The fundamentalists’ influence is seeping outward, with propaganda being spread on private radio stations, and through a widening network of religious schools and the distribution of CDs and DVDs. It can now be felt in neighboring tribal departments and the settled areas of the North-West Frontier Province. In recent months, Pakistani newspapers have reported incidents of music and barber shops being closed, television sets burned and girls’ schools threatened.

The militants are more powerful than the military and the local tribal police, kill with impunity and shield criminals and fugitives. Local journalists say people blame the militants for a rising tide of kidnappings, killings, robberies and even rapes.

The brutality of some foreign militants has led to rising discontent among their Pakistani hosts, many of whom are also armed and militant, making the region increasingly volatile and uncontrollable.

“Initially, it was sympathy,” one Pakistani intelligence official said. “Then came the money, but it was soon followed by fear. Now, fear is overriding the other two factors, sympathy and money.”

For now, however, the Taliban commanders and the Pakistani militants under them remain unswervingly loyal to jihad in Afghanistan and, despite the tensions, still enjoy local support for the cause, officials and local journalists say.

The failed government military campaigns of recent years, which are seen as dictated by the United States, have further radicalized the local population, many in the region say.

As a potential indicator of local support, the families of two suicide bombers sent to Afghanistan from Waziristan gained renown in the community, according to a local journalist.

“The people support the militants because they are from their own tribe, they are family,” said the journalist, who asked not to be named out of fear of the militants.

Morale is high among the resurgent Taliban after their revival in Afghanistan this year, one Pakistani security official said. That will lead to still more recruitment and better organization and planning in the year ahead.

Fighting traditionally dies down in winter because of the inhospitable conditions in the mountains.

But the new fighting season in the spring will be even bloodier, a Western diplomat in Kabul said. “We have to assume that things will be bad again,” he said, “because none of the underlying causes are being addressed.”

David Rohde contributed reporting to this story from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Taliban and Allies Tighten Grip in North of Pakistan, NYT, 11.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/asia/11pakistan.html?hp&ex=1165899600&en=d40c9f7513e01a59&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Troops under investigation for Kandahar shooting spree

Fury in Afghan city after targeted British convoy kills civilians

Saturday December 9, 2006
Guardian
Declan Walsh in Kandahar

British military authorities are investigating allegations that Royal Marines shot indiscriminately on Afghan bystanders following a suicide bombing last weekend.

At least two people died and five were wounded by shots fired from a supply convoy that raced through Kandahar after coming under attack. The incident has sparked widespread public anger in the southern city, where recent suicide bombs have frayed nerves and shortened tempers among Nato forces.

Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a spokesman for Nato regional command in Kandahar, described the reports as "disconcerting" and promised a thorough investigation by Royal Military police. "If people are found to have acted outside the rules of engagement, they will be held to account for their actions," he said.

But Lieutenant Colonel Andy Price, spokesman for the UK taskforce in Helmand, said the troops acted within their rules of engagement. "I can categorically state that we did not indiscriminately open fire," he said.

The extent of the allegations has only emerged in Guardian interviews with medics, witnesses, local journalists and western officials in Kandahar.

The suicide bomber struck at about 11am last Sunday as the British convoy passed on its way to Camp Bastion in Helmand. The blast flung an open-topped vehicle near the rear of the convoy on to a central reservation. Three Afghan labourers were killed, witnesses said, and three British soldiers suffered life-threatening injuries. The convoy security detail moved the wounded into two vehicles and started towards an evacuation point. Seconds later gunfire erupted.

Abdul Wali, 26, a baker, was cowering inside when he heard the first bullets. Stepping into the street, he saw a taxi driver with apparent bullet wounds being pulled from his car. "The British were shooting and shouting 'Go! Go! Go!'" he said yesterday. "They were scared and they were taking their revenge."

The British convoy pressed towards the city centre. At the busy Martyrs Square junction Abdul Rahim stopped his motorcycle to let it pass. More gunfire rang out, sparking panic. Bystanders dived into shops for cover, he said. Abdul Rahim tried to push his motorcycle back but it was too late. The first bullet passed through his upper back. The second pierced his side and lodged near his spinal cord. Grimacing with pain, the 35-year-old spoke softly from his bed at Kandahar hospital. "The British say they came to bring peace to our country. What kind of peace is this?" he said.

Noor Khan, a reporter for Associated Press, who was sitting in his car nearby, feared he would also be shot. "They aimed their guns straight at me. I immediately raised my hands," he said.

The convoy pushed towards the Helmand road. But as they left the city the British soldiers allegedly opened fire again, more than five miles from the suicide attack site, on a taxi carrying three men. "The taxi was trying to park along the road. The driver and one passenger were wounded," said Rahmatullah, 19, a security guard, who witnessed it.

At Kandahar hospital the third man in the car, Dost Muhammad, said: "Our driver reduced his speed and tried to stop on the side of the road. The British passed by very close and started firing."

Colonel Price said the Marines believed they were under threat from a possible secondary attack. Bullet marks on two vehicles in the convoy indicated possible hostile fire from Taliban marksmen, he said. He said the British soldiers fired more than 300 warning flares as the Marines raced through the city carrying their wounded. But civilian cars drove up one-way streets and blocked their escape.

"It's very regrettable that civilians got hurt. But the Taliban detonated a bomb that killed innocent people on a busy street. That is not our fault," he said.

Gunfire and secondary attacks do not usually follow suicide bombings in Afghan towns. Suicide bombers have struck six times in the past 12 days.

In the latest attack, a bomber killed one Afghan and wounded nine, including a six-year-old girl, but a Canadian convoy nearby escaped unscathed. The driver said the fleeing Canadians had shot the boy. But the British incident stirred the most emotion. Mourners at funerals on Tuesday spoke of a jihad against British soldiers. On Thursday the deputy commander of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, Col Tim Bevis, spoke on local television to explain the events.

"The foreigners should leave," declared Fida Muhammad. "Some say they are our enemy. I agree," he said. But others said the alternative - a return to Taliban rule or internecine bloodshed - was a worse prospect. "At the bottom of their hearts they don't want the coalition to leave," said Noor Khan.

    Troops under investigation for Kandahar shooting spree, G, 9.12.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1968064,00.html

Inquiry into death of marine in Afghanistan

Saturday December 9, 2006
Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor


An investigation has been launched into the death of a Royal Marine in Afghanistan amid reports that he was killed by friendly fire. Jonathan Wigley, 21, was fatally wounded this week during fierce fighting against the Taliban in the south of the country. Another marine, who has not been named, was seriously injured.
A British soldier was reported yesterday as saying: "I saw it. It was the A-10. I was 5ft away. We called in a strike on the next trench. Then I saw it swooping toward us. I will never forget that noise. It was horrible."

Low-flying American A-10 aircraft were engaged in fatal friendly-fire incidents involving British troops during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and in the first Gulf war in 1991.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said yesterday: "This is a very difficult time for Marine Wigley's family and our thoughts are very much with them as they deal with their loss. We are committed to establishing the facts surrounding his death and his family will be updated throughout. As the matter is now subject to a thorough investigation and a board of inquiry, we cannot comment further until this has been completed."

Defence sources told the Guardian there was a "real possibility" that Marine Wigley was killed by friendly fire. One said: "It looks like it."

Marine Wigley, from Zulu Company 45 Commando, had been taking part in an operation to drive Taliban fighters out of Garmsir, in Helmand province. The marines were only able to pull out after 10 hours of fighting and with the help of Afghan forces.

The investigation is expected to take several months.

    Inquiry into death of marine in Afghanistan, G, 9.12.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1968100,00.html

Drug Addiction on Rise With Afghan Kids

December 6, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:07 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Farida's son inherited her drug addiction in the womb, and drank her opium-laced breast milk. And when he cried and fussed, she calmed him with specks of opium diluted in tea.

This is the hidden face of addiction in Afghanistan -- parents spreading drug use in the confines of their homes. All four of Farida's children got high from her husband's secondhand heroin smoke and from the opium she fed them.

She blames a neighbor at the refugee camp where they lived in Pakistan for introducing her husband to drugs. Her husband later advised her to take opium for her cough and aches.

''My husband was on the wrong path, and I followed him because he is my companion,'' the 28-year-old woman said, nursing her skinny youngest son, 2-year-old Amir Shah. ''I didn't know it was bad.''

Afghanistan is the world's leading producer of opium and heroin, exporting drugs to Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. But the scale of domestic drug abuse has only recently become apparent.

The first nationwide survey on drug use, conducted last year by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics and U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, found nearly 1 million addicts in this nation of about 30 million people, including 60,000 children under age 15.

Drugs of choice range from hashish, opium and heroin to pharmaceutical medicines. An estimated 5,000 children are addicted to opiates, and the remainder take cough syrup and other drugs, the survey found. The actual numbers are probably much higher, especially for children and women, the report said.

''When one person starts using drugs, the whole family is addicted,'' says Dr. Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat drug rehabilitation center where Farida received treatment.

The Ministry of Counter Narcotics has opened clinics and drug centers, but addiction is on the rise in the impoverished war-ravaged country as drug production has spiraled, making narcotics of increasing purity more available.

Opium production rose 49 percent this year to 6,700 tons -- enough to make about 670 tons of heroin. That's more than 90 percent of the world's supply and more than the world's addicts consume in a year.

''When the poppy cultivation increases, the number of addicts also increases,'' said Gen. Khodaidad, deputy minister for policy and coordination in the Ministry of Counter Narcotics. ''The addicts -- the 920,000 people -- this number is increasing day by day.''

Along the snowy footpath to Farida's one-room house in Kabul, a social worker pointed out several women -- opium addicts treated since the Nejat center opened in 2002 after the ouster of the Taliban regime.

Because there has been little drug education in Afghanistan, many people appear ignorant of the risks of addicting children and the social problems it brings.

Farida, who like many Afghans has only one name, recounted how she and her husband sold their belongings to pay for drugs. One day, her uncle had to fend off a rich man who came to her house to buy her sons.

''He said, 'I have six daughters, but I have no sons. Why do you need sons? You are a drug addict,''' recalled Farida. She spoke in her tiny home built of mud and straw, where her children huddled around a portable gas stove, warming their dusty feet and hands.

With help from the Nejat center, Farida said she and her children weaned themselves off opium in a month, using an over-the-counter analgesic for pain and vitamins to build strength. She said she and her children have not used drugs for about a year and a half.

Elsewhere in Kabul, Maraban Shah and his 6-year-old son, Said Amidullah, were at the newly opened Zendagi-e-Nawin -- or New Life -- rehabilitation home, recovering from opium addictions picked up in their remote village in Badakhshan province.

The boy was born addicted and was prone to crying, his father said.

''My wife would give him opium behind my back, and he would sleep... If he didn't get it, he would yell and throw a tantrum,'' Maraban Shah said, sitting with his son on their bed in the rehabilitation home. ''One of our relatives taught her to do that -- they gave her bad advice.''

The mother remains in Badakhshan, addicted to opium. The boy is now chubby and healthy, with rosy cheeks from the winter chill. He sat quietly listening to his father, only interrupting once to say: ''Let's bring mommy here for treatment.''

    Drug Addiction on Rise With Afghan Kids, NYT, 6.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Opium-Children.html

From Ruins of Afghan Buddhas, a History Grows

December 6, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan — The empty niches that once held Bamiyan’s colossal Buddhas now gape in the rock face — a silent cry at the terrible destruction wrought on this fabled valley and its 1,500-year-old treasures, once the largest standing Buddha statues in the world.

It was in March 2001, when the Taliban and their sponsors in Al Qaeda were at the zenith of their power in Afghanistan, that militiamen, acting on an edict to take down the “gods of the infidels,” laid explosives at the base and the shoulders of the two Buddhas and blew them to pieces. To the outraged outside world, the act encapsulated the horrors of the Islamic fundamentalist government. Even Genghis Khan, who laid waste to this valley’s towns and population in the 13th century, had left the Buddhas standing.

Five years after the Taliban were ousted from power, Bamiyan’s Buddhist relics are once again the focus of debate: Is it possible to restore the great Buddhas? And, if so, can the extraordinary investment that would be required be justified in a country crippled by poverty and a continued Taliban insurgency in the south and that is, after all, overwhelmingly Muslim?

This valley about 140 miles northwest of Kabul, where in the sixth century tens of thousands of pilgrims flocked to worship at its temples and monasteries and meditate in its rock caves, is attracting new international attention.

In 2003, the United Nations designated the Bamiyan ruins a World Heritage site, but also listed them as endangered, because of their fragile condition, vulnerability to looters and pressures from a post-Taliban boom in construction and tourism. Intensive efforts have been under way to stabilize what remains of the cliff sculptures and murals.

Meanwhile, archaeologists have been taking advantage of the greatly increased access that became possible once the statues were gone to make new discoveries — and to pursue ancient tales of a third giant Buddha, possibly buried between the two that were destroyed.

“The history of Bamiyan is beginning to be revealed, in a concrete sense, for the first time through both works of conservation and excavations of archaeological remains,” said Kasaku Maeda, a Japanese historian who has studied Bamiyan for more than 40 years.


Unesco has been overseeing a program of emergency repairs to the niches over the last few years, drawing teams of archaeologists and conservationists from all over the world. “The site is in danger,” said Masanori Nagaoka, a cultural program specialist at Unesco’s Kabul office.

Gedeone Tonoli, a tunnel engineer from Italy, has been overseeing the most urgent task: securing the cracking cliff face. One morning two Italian mountain climbers swung on ropes at the top of the niche that held the eastern Buddha, which, at an astounding 125 feet tall, was the smaller of the two. Wire netting covered the back wall of the niche, which still occasionally rattles with falling rocks and stones. A great scar marks the inner left wall where the explosion tore away the side of the niche, threatening the whole cliff.

The right side of the niche, however, has been stable for two years, anchored with steel rods and tons of concrete pumped into the fissures. Tiny glass slides are taped to the rock, and sensors linked to a computer keep track of every tremble in the cliff face. Before, Mr. Tonoli said, “you could see the sky here and birds were flying in.”

At the base of what, at 180 feet, had been the larger Buddha, workers were still shoveling away at rubble left from the explosions. German restorers from the International Council on Monuments and Sites have spent two years carefully sorting through the debris from both Buddhas, lifting out the largest sections by crane — some weigh 70, even 90 tons — and placing them under cover, because the soft stone disintegrates in rain or snow. The smaller fragments and mounds of dust are carefully piled up at the side.

Reports that the Taliban had taken away 40 truckloads of the stone from the statues to sell were not true, said Edmund Melzl, a restorer. “From the volume we think we have everything,” he said. Yet only 60 percent of that volume is stone, he added. The rest crumbled to dust in the explosions.

A continuing paradox is that the destruction of the Buddhas has in a way aided archaeologists in their investigations. For example, carbon dating of fragments of the plaster surface of the Buddhas was able to pinpoint the construction of the smaller one to 507, and the larger one to 554. Previous estimates had varied over 200 years.

The Buddhas were only roughly carved in the rock, which was then covered in a mud plaster mixed with straw and horsehair molded to depict the folds of their robes and then painted in bright colors. Workers have recovered nearly 3,000 pieces of the surface plaster, some with traces of paint, as well as the wooden pegs and rope that were laid across the bodies to hold the plaster to the statue. The dryness of Afghanistan’s climate and the depth of the niches helped protect the statues and preserve the wood and rope.

The larger Buddha was painted carmine red and the smaller one was multicolored, Mr. Melzl said.

The most exciting find, he added, was a reliquary containing three clay beads, a leaf, clay seals and parts of a Buddhist text written on bark. The reliquary is thought to have been placed on the chest of the larger Buddha and plastered over at the time of construction.

The fragments have been carefully stored while the main task continues: to gather all the rubble so that the Afghan government and experts can decide what to do with it. There have been calls to rebuild the Buddhas, mostly from Afghans who feel that restored statues would provide a greater tourist attraction, and a righting of wrongs. Unesco has warned that for Bamiyan to retain its status as a World Heritage site there must be no new building, only preservation. Yet the alternative of displaying 200 tons of recovered material in a museum does not seem feasible, said Michael Petzet, president of the International Council on Monuments and Sites.

The one restoration approach considered acceptable by Unesco and other experts is anastylosis, often used for Greek and Roman temples, in which the original pieces are reassembled and held together with a minimum of new material. Michael Urbat, a geologist from the University of Cologne, has analyzed pieces of the larger Buddha and from the rock strata has been able to work out what part of the vast statue they came from.

But reassembling pieces that can weigh up to 90 tons would be extremely difficult; Afghanistan does not even have a crane strong enough to hoist them, Mr. Melzl said. The reconstruction project, which the governor of Bamiyan Province has estimated would cost $50 million, would probably also become a political issue in this impoverished Muslim country, where more than 10 percent of the population remains in need of food aid.

Nevertheless, the provincial governor, Habiba Sarabi, favors rebuilding the Buddhas using anastylosis, and said she would propose that the central government make a formal request to Unesco. Professor Maeda said he supports the idea of reassembling one of the Buddhas and leaving the other destroyed as a testament to the crime.

The government also approved the proposal of the Japanese artist Hiro Yamagata to mount a $64 million sound-and-laser show starting in 2009 that would project Buddha images at Bamiyan, powered by hundreds of windmills that would also supply electricity to surrounding residents.

Meanwhile, simply preserving what remains is daunting. Once the niches, grottos and caves were covered with murals, but 80 percent were obliterated by the Taliban, Professor Maeda said. Art thieves also did damage, using ropes to climb into caves 100 feet up on the cliff face and hacking away priceless medallions depicting seated Buddhas. One of them made its way to Tokyo, where an art dealer, suspecting its illicit provenance, showed it to Professor Maeda, who has managed to retrieve more than 40 stolen artifacts.

“One day I hope we will return them to Afghanistan,” he said.

He continues to scour the caves, and finds small joys amid the destruction. One cave that he first discovered during his first trip here, in 1964, so blackened by soot from camp fires that the Taliban and looters passed it by, has revealed fine paintings of tiny animals — a lion and a wild boar, a monkey, an ox and a griffin — rare in Buddhist art, but characteristic of Bamiyan, which combines Indian, Iranian and Gandharan influences.

While the focus now is on conservation, experts know there is more to discover. At least two teams of archaeologists are engaged in a discreet race to discover a third colossal Buddha that may have once lain between the two standing Buddhas.

The Chinese monk Xuan Zang visited Bamiyan in 632 and described not only the two big standing Buddhas, but also a temple some distance from the royal palace that housed a reclining Buddha about 1,000 feet long. Most experts believe it lay above ground and was long ago destroyed.

But two archaeologists, Zemaryalai Tarzi of Afghanistan and Kazuya Yamauchi of Japan, are busy digging in the hope of finding its foundations. Mr. Tarzi, who excavated a Buddhist monastery this year, may have also found the wall of the royal citadel that could lead the way to the third Buddha. He plans to return next year to continue digging.

    From Ruins of Afghan Buddhas, a History Grows, NYT, 6.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/world/asia/06budd.html?hp&ex=1165467600&en=f26ef06c90cbaebf&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Editorial

Losing the Good War

December 5, 2006
The New York Times

Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war — and the war America was winning. But because of the Bush administration’s inattention and mismanagement, even the good war is going wrong.

The latest grim news is that after years of effort — and more than $1 billion spent — Afghanistan’s American-trained police force is unable to perform even routine law enforcement work. According to an article in yesterday’s Times, investigators for the Pentagon and the State Department found that the training program’s managers did not even know how many police officers were serving, while thousands of trucks and other American-purchased police equipment have simply disappeared.

The failure to provide local security — or even a semblance of impartial justice — helps explain why so many Afghans have lost confidence in the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai, and why a growing number are again turning to the Taliban for protection. The failure to stand up an effective police force also helps explain why opium cultivation rose by nearly 60 percent this year.

Creating even the most basic government institutions was always going to be difficult in a country as poor as Afghanistan. According to one expert, 70 percent or more of the recruits in the police training program are illiterate — not surprising in a country with a male literacy rate of only 43 percent. But the State Department and Pentagon compounded these problems, handing off the bulk of the police training work to an expensive private contractor and then failing to vigilantly monitor the program. We have seen that time and again in Iraq, where experts say the police training is at least as flawed.

There are many culprits for Afghanistan’s many problems. Mr. Karzai needs to do a lot more to curb the corruption that is rife among his political appointees. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan needs to do a lot more to stanch the torrent of Taliban fighters crossing his border into Afghanistan. NATO members need to send more troops to Afghanistan — with far fewer restrictions on how they fight.

As for fixing the police training program, there is little hope of that without also reforming the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, and is mired in both incompetence and corruption. Washington has sent some advisers to help clean up the ministry, but the effort is moving far too slowly. And the United States and its allies need to send a lot more police advisers to walk the beat with the newly graduated recruits, who get just a few months of classroom training. That is standard practice for training effective police forces, but it has not been tried in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bush’s decision to rush off to invade Iraq meant that Afghanistan would be shortchanged when it came to resources and to policy makers’ priority lists. The cost of that inattention can be seen in the failing Afghan police force. It can also be seen in the Taliban’s growing strength, the mounting death toll of Afghan civilians and NATO troops, and the unraveling of the Karzai government. So much for winning the good war.

    Losing the Good War, NYT, 5.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/opinion/05tue1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Afghan District Makes Own Deal With the Taliban

December 2, 2006
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 29 — After a series of bruising battles between British troops and Taliban fighters, the Afghan government struck a peace deal with tribal elders in Helmand Province, arranging for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of both sides from one southern district. A month later, the ripples are still being felt in the capital and beyond.

The accord, reached with virtually no public consultation and mediated by the local governor, has brought some welcome peace for residents of the district, Musa Qala, and a reprieve for British troops, who had been under siege by the Taliban in a compound there for three months.

But it has sharply divided former government officials, legislators and ordinary Afghans.

Some say the agreement points the way forward in bringing peace to war-torn parts of the country. Others warn that it sets a dangerous precedent and represents a capitulation to the Taliban and a potential reversal of five years of American policy to build a strong central government. They say the accord gives up too much power to local leaders, who initiated it and are helping to enforce it.

“The Musa Qala project has sent two messages: one, recognition for the enemy, and two, military defeat,” said Mustafa Qazemi, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament and a former resistance fighter with the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban for seven years.

“This is a model for the destruction of the country,” he said, “and it is just a defeat for NATO, just a defeat.”

As part of the deal, the district has been allowed to choose its own officials and police officers, something one member of Parliament warned would open a Pandora’s box as more districts clamored for the right to do the same.

Some compare the deal to agreements that Pakistan has struck with leaders in its tribal areas along the Afghan border, which have given those territories more autonomy and, critics say, empowered the Taliban who have taken sanctuary there and allowed them to regroup.

“It is the calm before the storm,” one senior Afghan military officer said of the accord.

Even President Hamid Karzai, who sanctioned the deal, has admitted to mixed feelings. “There are some suspicions in society about this,” he said in a recent radio interview with Radio Free Europe.

“I trust everything these elders say,” Mr. Karzai said, but he added that two recent episodes in the area — of killing and intimidation — gave pause and needed investigation.

For their part, foreign military officials and diplomats expressed cautious optimism, saying the accord had at least opened a debate over the virtues of such deals and time is needed to see if it will work. “If it works, and so far it appears to work, it could be a pointer to similar understandings elsewhere,” said one diplomat, who would speak on the topic only if not identified.

The governor of Helmand, Mohammad Daud, brokered the deal and defended it strongly as a vital exercise to unite the Pashtun tribes in the area and strengthen their leaders so they could reject the Taliban militants.

Appointed at the beginning of the year, Mr. Daud has struggled to win over the people and control the lawlessness of his province, which is the largest opium-producing region as well as a Taliban stronghold.

Some 5,000 British soldiers deployed in the province this year as part of an expanding NATO presence have come under repeated attack. Civilians have suffered scores of casualties across the south as NATO troops have often resorted to airstrikes, even on residential areas, to defeat the insurgents.

It was the civilians of Musa Qala who made the first bid for peace, Mr. Daud explained.

“They made a council of elders and came to us saying, ‘We want to make the Taliban leave Musa Qala,’ ” he said in a telephone interview from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. “At first we did not accept their request, and we waited to see how strong the elders were.”

But the governor and the British forces soon demanded a cease-fire, and when it held for more than a month, they negotiated a withdrawal of British troops from the district, as well as the Afghan police who had been fighting alongside them. The Taliban then also withdrew.

Eventually the governor agreed on a 15-point accord with the elders, who pledged to support the government and the Afghan flag, keep schools open, allow development and reconstruction, and work to ensure the security and stability of the region. That included trying to limit the arming of people who do not belong to the government, namely the Taliban insurgents.

They drew up a list of local candidates for the posts of district chief and police chief, from which the governor appointed the new officials. They also chose 60 local people to serve as police officers in the district, sending the first 20 to the provincial capital for 20 days of basic training, according to provincial officials.

One energetic supporter of the deal is Abdul Ali Seraj, a nephew of King Amanullah, who ruled in the 1920s, and leader of the Coalition for National Dialogue With the Tribes of Afghanistan, which is working to bring peace through the tribal structures.

“Musa Qala is the way to do it,” Mr. Seraj said. “Sixty days since the agreement, and there has not been a shot fired.”

The agreement has been welcomed by residents of Musa Qala, who said in interviews by telephone or in neighboring Kandahar Province that people were rebuilding their houses and shops and planting winter crops, including the ubiquitous poppy, the source of opium.

The onset of the lucrative poppy planting season may have been one of the incentives behind their desire for peace, diplomats and government officials admitted.

Elders and residents of the area say the accord has brought calm, at least for now. “There is no Taliban authority there,” said Haji Shah Agha, 55, who led 50 members of the Musa Qala elders’ council to Kabul recently to counter criticism that the district was in the hands of the Taliban.

“The Taliban stopped fighting because we convinced them that fighting would not be to our benefit,” he said. “We told the Taliban, ‘Fighting will kill our women and children, and they are your women and children as well.’ ”

What the Taliban gained was the withdrawal of the British forces without having to risk further fighting. Meantime, the Taliban presence remains strong in the province, so much so that road travel to Musa Qala for a foreign journalist is not advised by United Nations security officials. While residents are happy with the peace, they do not deny that the militants who were fighting British forces all summer have neither disbanded nor been disarmed.

According to a local shopkeeper, Haji Bismillah, 40, who owns a pharmacy in the center of Musa Qala, the Taliban have pulled back to their villages and often come into town, but without their weapons.

“The Taliban are not allowed to enter the bazaar with their weapons,” he said in a telephone interview. “If they resist with guns, the tribal elders will disarm them,” he said.

He said the elders had temporarily given the Taliban “some kind of permission to arrest thieves and drug addicts and put them in their own prison,” since the elders did not yet have a police force of their own.

The district’s newly appointed police chief, Haji Malang, said the Taliban and the police had agreed not to encroach on each other’s territory. “They have their place which we cannot enter, and we have our place and they must not come in,” he said in a telephone interview this week.

Some residents said the deal would benefit the Taliban. “This is a very good chance for the Taliban,” said Abdul Bari, 33, a farmer who accompanied a sick relative to a hospital in neighboring Kandahar province.

“The people now view the Taliban as a force, since without the Taliban, the government could not bring peace in the regions.” he said. “It is not sure how this agreement will work, but maybe the Taliban will get more strength and then move against the elders.”

Opponents of the agreement warned that the elders were merely doing the bidding of the Taliban and would never be strong enough to face down Taliban commanders.

“The Taliban reappeared by the power of the gun, and the only way to defeat them is fighting, not dealing,” said Haji Aadil Khan, 47, a former police chief from Gereshk, another district of Helmand.

One event that has alarmed all sides was the killing and beheading of Haji Ahmad Shah, the former chief of a neighboring district, who returned to his home after the agreement was signed. Beheading is a tactic favored by some Taliban groups, and his friends say it is a clear sign that the Taliban are in control of the area. Elders of Musa Qala said that Mr. Shah had personal enemies and that they were behind the killing.

The governor, Mr. Daud, and the elders said a number of the opponents to the agreement were former militia leaders who did not want peace. “The people of Musa Qala took a step for peace with this agreement,” said the chief elder, Haji Shah Agha. “The Taliban are sitting calmly in their houses.”

Another elder, Amini, who uses only one name, said: “For four months we had fighting in Musa Qala and now we have peace. What is wrong with it, if we have peace?”

    Afghan District Makes Own Deal With the Taliban, NYT, 2.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/world/asia/02afghan.html?hp&ex=1165122000&en=9f1cbff64133a7eb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Ore. unveils Afghan-Iraqi war memorial

Posted 11/12/2006 5:35 AM ET
AP
USA Today

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — An Afghan-Iraqi war memorial that has drawn criticism for its design and its timing was unveiled Saturday before a crowd of veterans and slain troops' relatives.

There was little hint of the controversy at the ceremony, which capped a two-year effort by a family whose son died in Iraq to raise private donations for the memorial.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski called the memorial "a place of prayer, contemplation and reflection ... a place where we can remember the brave hearts that we lost."

The monument at the Capitol Mall features a large fountain and a bronze statue of a kneeling soldier with an outstretched hand. It includes a granite wall inscribed with the names of 74 soldiers or Marines with Oregon ties who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Some have questioned whether a memorial is appropriate while the fighting is still underway.

"It seems a little premature," said John Theodore, 74, a Korean War veteran, who said he nevertheless came to the ceremony to show respect for the state's fallen soldiers.

Many in attendance praised the new monument and its timing.

"It's a healing place," said Betsy Jeffries, 23, whose husband, Joseph, a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. "It's been more than two years since my husband died. For me, that's a long enough wait."

Some state lawmakers who voted for the memorial now believe its approval process was flawed. And several architects have said the 40-foot-wide fountain could upstage other memorials at the Mall.

Jim Willis, head of the Oregon Department of Veterans' Affairs, said the controversy reflects the public's feelings about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

"People are conflicted about the war," Willis said. "And there are some people who are still coming to grips with the loss of a loved one, and they are not ready for a memorial like this."

    Ore. unveils Afghan-Iraqi war memorial, UT, 12.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-12-oregon-memorial_x.htm

U.S. surprised by strength of Taliban fightback

Thu Nov 9, 2006 7:39 AM ET
Reuters
By Terry Friel

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents have fought back against Afghan government and Western forces with surprising intensity this year, strengthened by drug money and the ability to shelter in Pakistan, a top U.S. official said on Thursday.

Assistant Secretary of State for Central and South Asian Affairs Richard Boucher said efforts to extend the rule of President Hamid Karzai's government deeper into the provinces had run into tougher-than-expected resistance.

"As this extension of government goes out, we are challenging those people and they are challenging us back," he told reporters at the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Kabul.

"I think we have all been surprised by the intensity of the violence this year. It has a number of factors: part of it is drug money linking up with the insurgency. Part of it these people have the ability to operate in and out of Pakistan.

"But we need to deal with it."

More than 3,100 people, about a third of them civilians, have died this year, the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's strict Islamist government in 2001.

PAKISTAN ACCUSED OF BACKING TALIBAN

Some senior Afghan officials accuse Pakistan of continuing to back its former protege with money, training and other assistance, a charge Islamabad denies.

Afghan intelligence officials say they have presented solid evidence to the United States. However Washington says there is no official Pakistani support for the Taliban, but that more needs to be done to stop the group and other militants and criminal gangs moving freely across the rugged border.

Boucher said Pakistan was using military, economic and other measures to prevent the Taliban using its territory as "a place of refuge or of support".

In September, the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban militants signed a truce in the lawless Waziristan tribal area to end fighting between rebels and government forces and attacks into Afghanistan.

But NATO and U.S. officials say cross-border attacks have jumped dramatically since the deal.

Boucher's visit came as NATO forces killed up to 22 Taliban in an air strike in Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace and a rugged desert province bordering Pakistan's strife-torn Baluchistan region.

The clash happened on Wednesday in an area near the provincial capital that was the scene of a major two-week NATO offensive in September that killed hundreds of Taliban.

District police chief Ghulam Rasool said at least six more guerrillas were killed in another battle in the area on Thursday.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force completed its takeover of security nationwide from a U.S.-led coalition in October. As part of that, it has pushed more troops into the volatile south.

NATO and U.S. commanders say this has led to an upsurge in fighting this year.

But many analysts say the Taliban's resurgence has been fueled by record opium crops and growing frustration and anger at a lack of reconstruction, development and jobs.

    U.S. surprised by strength of Taliban fightback, R, 9.11.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-11-09T123859Z_01_SP74146_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-worldNews-5