History > 2007 > USA > War > Afghanistan (II)

Afghan Police

Find Body of 2nd South Korean

July 31, 2007
The New York Times
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, July 31 — Shocked by the killing of a second South Korean hostage in Afghanistan and weary of the 13-day-old crisis, South Korea today urged the United States and Afghan governments to show ”flexibility” over Taliban demands to exchange the remaining 21 Christian aid workers from South Korea for imprisoned militants.

The government appeal — coupled with a growing frustration among South Koreans over what they perceive as a lack of cooperation from the United States in resolving the crisis — came hours after the Afghan police found the bullet-ridden body of a second South Korean hostage slain by the Taliban.

A purported Taliban spokesman said the man was killed on Monday because the Afghan government had not released the Taliban prisoners. The South Korean government identified the victim as Shim Sung Min, a 29-year-old former information technology worker.

”The government is well aware of how the international community deals with these kinds of abduction cases,” Cheon Ho Seon, a spokesman for President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea, said in a statement today. “But it also believes that it would be worthwhile to use flexibility in the cause of saving the precious lives of those still in captivity, and is appealing to the international community to do so.”

Ever since the Taliban kidnapped the 23 South Korean aid workers on July 19, Mr. Roh’s government has been caught between two uncompromising forces. The Taliban has been insisting on a hostage-and-prisoner swap, while the American-backed Afghan government counters that bowing to the militants’ demands will only lead to more kidnappings.

“We shouldn’t encourage kidnapping by actually accepting their demands,” Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told reporters today, according to Reuters.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who describes himself as a Taliban spokesman, said that the militants would kill more hostages if the Afghanistan government does not release prisoners by noon on Wednesday.

“It might be a man or a woman,” he told The Associated Press. “It might be one. It might be two, four. It might be all of them.” He said the Taliban had killed the second South Korean hostage because “the Kabul and Korean governments are lying and cheating.”

“We cannot contain our anger at this merciless killing and strongly condemn this,” said Cho Hee Yong, a spokesman for the South Korean foreign ministry.

But the South Korean government also expressed frustration over the deadlock in negotiations. The Taliban “demand is not within the power of the Korean government because it doesn’t have any effective means to influence decisions of the Afghan government,” said Mr. Cheon, the presidential spokesman.

“The Korean government strongly condemns and urges an immediate end to these heinous acts of killing innocent people in order to press for demands that it can’t meet,” he said.

Grief, anger and a growing sense of helplessness gripped South Koreans today after the government confirmed that the body of the bespectacled man dumped on a clover field beside a road in southern Afghanistan was that of Mr. Shim, who had volunteered for a South Korean church group’s aid mission to the war-torn country.

The body of the group’s leader, Bae Hyung Kyu, who had also been shot to death, was found last Wednesday.

“We appeal for support from the people of the United States and around the world for resolving this crisis as early as possible,” Kim Kyong Ja, the mother of one of the South Korean captives, said today, reading a statement from the family while grieving relatives standing behind her fought back tears.

“Especially, the families want the United States to disregard political interests and give more active support to save the 21 innocent lives,” she said. “We sustain ourselves through this ordeal anxiety with a belief that they can return home alive,” she said. “So please help us.”

Mr. Shim’s father, Shim Chin Pyo, told reporters of his son: “He had a good heart and did a lot of volunteer work. My son also wanted to help the poor and disabled.”

The Taliban kidnapped the 23 South Koreans, most of whom are women and in their 20s and 30s, while they were on a bus traveling from Kabul to the southern city of Kandahar on July 19.

They were the largest group of foreign hostages taken prisoner in Afghanistan since the American-led invasion in 2001.

The South Korean appeal for flexibility came ahead of a meeting scheduled for Sunday between Mr. Karzai and President Bush at Camp David.

Mr. Karzai was severely criticized by the United States and European governments after he approved a deal in March in which five Taliban fighters were freed in exchange for the release of an Italian journalist. He called the trade a one-time deal.

Paik Jin Hyun, an associate dean at the Graduate School of International Studies of Seoul National University, said that if the hostage crisis did not conclude satisfactorily, anti-American groups in South Korea might use it to promote anti-American sentiments in the country.

Today, the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, a major civic group based in Seoul, issued a statement accusing Washington of watching the hostage crisis “as if it were a fire across the river.”

“As everyone knows, the Taliban’s demand is something the U.S. government can help resolve, not the Afghan or South Korean government,” it said. “The South Korean government, citing its alliance with the United States, dispatched troops for the U.S. war against terrorism,” it added. “Now why can’t it use the spirit of the alliance to help persuade the U.S. administration and save its own people?”

Afghan Police Find Body of 2nd South Korean, NYT, 31.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/world/asia/31cnd-hostage.html

General Faces Demotion in Tillman Case

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:13 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Army Secretary Peter Geren is expected to recommend that a retired three-star general be demoted for his role in providing misleading information about the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman, military officials say, in what would be a stinging and rare rebuke.

Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger, who headed Army special operations, is one of six high-ranking Army officers expected to get official reprimands for making critical errors in reporting the circumstances of Tillman's friendly-fire shooting in Afghanistan in April 2004.

The officials requested anonymity because the punishments under consideration by Geren have not been made public. The Army said that no final decisions have been made, and that once they are and the Tillman family and Congress have been notified, there will be an announcement sometime next week.

Geren also is considering issuing a letter of censure to Kensinger, who is receiving the harshest punishment of those involved in what has become a three-year controversy that triggered more than half a dozen investigations. Five other officers, including three generals, are expected to be issued less severe letters criticizing their actions.

Army officials opted not to impose harsher punishments, which could have included additional demotions, dishonorable discharges or even jail time. One senior officer, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, escaped punishment.

Tillman's death received worldwide attention because he had walked away from a huge contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Tillman's mother, Mary, said the impending punishments were inadequate.

''I'm not satisfied with any of it,'' she said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

She rejected the Pentagon's characterization of the officers' offenses as ''errors'' in reporting Tillman's death, when several officers have said they had made conscious decisions not to tell Tillman's family that friendly fire was suspected.

Geren's pending decisions come four months after two investigative reports found that Army officers provided misleading and inaccurate information about Tillman's death. A central issue in the case has been why the Army waited about five weeks after it suspected the former NFL star's death was caused by friendly fire before telling his family.

The probes found that nine officers -- including four generals -- were at fault in providing the bad information and should be held accountable. But the reports determined that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the actual shooting, and that there was no deliberate cover-up.

Geren then tapped Gen. William Wallace to review the probes and recommend disciplinary actions. Wallace disagreed with initial findings against McChrystal, according to the military officials.

But Wallace also surprised Army officials by singling out a 10th officer for rebuke -- one who had not been blamed in the earlier reports.

Brig. Gen. Gina Farrisee, who is director of military personnel management at the Pentagon, is expected to receive a letter of punishment for her involvement in the oversight of the awarding of Tillman's Silver Star.

Two others who were blamed in earlier reports are also expected to receive letters of admonishment: Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, who led one of the early Army investigations into the matter, and now-Brig. Gen. James C. Nixon, who was Tillman's regimental commander.

Jones, now retired from the Army, was faulted for failing to address several issues in his probe, leading to speculation that Army officials were concealing information about Tillman's death.

Nixon was criticized for failing to ensure that Tillman's family was told.

It is no surprise that Kensinger, 60, is targeted for the most severe punishment. An investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general found ''compelling evidence that Kensinger learned of suspected fratricide well before the memorial service and provided misleading testimony'' on that issue. That misrepresentation, the report said, could constitute a ''false official statement,'' a violation of the Military Code of Justice.

Farrisee's rebuke is tied to the Army recommendations that Tillman receive the Silver Star. The investigations found that Army officials were aware that Tillman was likely killed by friendly fire even as they were moving ahead with the medal that was awarded for heroism in the face of the enemy.

If Geren does recommend to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Kensinger lose a star and be demoted to major general, that would trigger a decrease in his retirement pension and benefits.

The letters of rebuke for the others could also be crippling blows. They can include letters of concern, reprimand or censure, with escalating degrees of gravity.

''For officers generally, a reprimand is a devastating career injury,'' said Eugene Fidell, a lawyer who specializes in military cases and teaches at American University's Washington College of Law. ''It can trigger an effort to throw the person out of the military, it can trigger a reduction in pay grade when the time comes to retire, it can prevent a future promotion, and it can gum up a promotion that has already been decided.''

For a one-star general, Fidell said, it could mean they are likely to never get a second star. And, he said, a lower level officer, such as a captain, ''would have to dig out of a deep hole to continue his or her career. Letters of reprimand are truly bad news.''

Associated Press reporter Scott Lindlaw contributed to this story from Sacramento, Calif.

    General Faces Demotion in Tillman Case, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tillman-Punishment.html

Taliban Kill Hostage;

Dozens of Militants Die in Battle

July 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A top South Korean envoy headed to Afghanistan on Thursday, scrambling to save 22 of his country's citizens held captive by Taliban kidnappers after the militants killed one hostage.

However, a local police chief said that the negotiations with the captors were difficult because their demands were unclear.

''One says let's exchange them for my relative, the others say let's release the women and yet another wants a deal for money,'' said Khwaja Mohammad Sidiqi, a local police chief in Qarabagh. ''They have got problems among themselves.''

On Wednesday, authorities found the bullet-riddled body of 42-year-old Bae Hyung-kyu in Qarabagh district of Ghazni province, where the South Koreans were abducted July 19.

The victim was found with 10 bullet holes in his head, chest and stomach, said Abdul Rahman, a police officer. Another Afghan police official, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation, said militants told him the hostage was sick and couldn't walk and was therefore shot.

The kidnappers ''will be held accountable for taking the life of a Korean citizen,'' Baek Jong-chun, South Korea's chief presidential secretary for security affairs, said in a statement, before departing for Afghanistan to consult with top Afghan officials on how to secure the release of the remaining captives.

After conflicting reports Wednesday from Western and Afghan officials that possibly eight of the other hostages had been released, South Korean presidential spokesman Chun Ho-sun said the 22 were still believed held but were not suffering from health problems.

Chun said South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun had spoken with his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai, but did not disclose the contents of their discussion.

Ghazni police chief Ali Shah Ahmadzai said that the Afghan negotiators were speaking with the Taliban over the phone, in a hope of securing the hostages release.

''We will not use force against the militants to free the hostages,'' he said. ''The best way in this case is dialogue.''

Ahmadzai said he was hopeful about reaching ''some sort of deal for the release of six up to eight people'' later Thursday, without giving an explanation for his optimism.

Chun said that both governments were cooperating and that an Afghan official had told South Korea earlier Thursday that Kabul intended to negotiate with the Taliban. He said Seoul was aware of the Taliban's current demands but declined to specify them.

Seoul also repeated its call that no rescue mission be launched that could endanger the captives further.

''We oppose military operations and there won't be military operations that we do not consent to,'' Chun said.

Marajudin Pathan, the governor of Ghazni province, said militants have given a list of eight Taliban prisoners who they want released in exchange for eight Koreans.

An Afghan official involved in the negotiations earlier said a large sum of money would be paid to free eight of the hostages. The official also spoke on condition he not be identified, citing the matter's sensitivity. No other officials would confirm this account.

Foreign governments are suspected to have paid for the release of hostages in Afghanistan in the past, but have either kept it quiet or denied it outright. The Taliban at one point demanded that 23 jailed militants be freed in exchange for the Koreans.

The South Koreans, including 18 women, were kidnapped while on a bus trip through Ghazni province on the Kabul-Kandahar highway, Afghanistan's main thoroughfare.

South Korea has banned its citizens from traveling to Afghanistan in the wake of the kidnappings. Seoul also asked Kabul not to issue visas to South Koreans and to block their entry into the country.

Because of a recent spike in kidnappings of foreigners -- including an attempt against a Danish citizen Wednesday -- Afghan police announced that foreigners were no longer allowed to leave the Afghan capital without their permission.

The South Korean church that the abductees attend has said it will suspend at least some of its volunteer work in Afghanistan. It also stressed that the Koreans abducted were not involved in any Christian missionary work, saying they provided only medical and other volunteer aid to distressed people in the war-ravaged country.

Two Germans were also kidnapped last week. One was found dead and the other apparently remains captive. A Danish reporter of Afghan origin escaped a kidnap attempt in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, the Danish Foreign Ministry said.

Associated Press Writer Kwang-tae Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

    Taliban Kill Hostage; Dozens of Militants Die in Battle, NYT, 26.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

10 Taliban Killed in Afghan Clash

July 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- NATO-led and Afghan troops clashed with Taliban militants in southern Afghanistan on Friday, leaving 10 suspected militants dead, an Afghan army officer said.

A NATO and Afghan army soldier were wounded in a second straight day of clashes in the Gereshk district of Helmand province. On Thursday, 20 other suspected militants were killed in fighting with NATO and Afghan forces, said Maj. Gen. Muhiddin Ghori of the Afghan National Army. He did not release the nationality of the wounded NATO soldier.

In the southern Zabul province, militants attacked a police patrol on the main highway to Kabul, wounding two officers Thursday, said Ghulam Jailani, a highway police commander in Zabul.

Violence has spiked in Afghanistan in the last six weeks. More than 3,200 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence this year, according a count by The Associated Press based on numbers from Afghan and Western officials.

    10 Taliban Killed in Afghan Clash, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans

July 10, 2007
The New York Times
By BARRY BEARAK

QALAI SAYEDAN, Afghanistan, July 9 — With their teacher absent, 10 students were allowed to leave school early. These were the girls the gunmen saw first, 10 easy targets walking hand-in-hand through the blue metal gate and on to the winding dirt road.

The staccato of machine-gun fire pelted through the stillness. A 13-year-old named Shukria was hit in the arm and the back, and then teetered into the soft brown of an adjacent wheat field. Zarmina, her 12-year-old sister, ran to her side, listening to the wounded girl’s precious breath and trying to help her stand.

But Shukria was too heavy to lift, and the two gunmen, sitting astride a single motorbike, sped closer.

As Zarmina scurried away, the men took a more studied aim at those they already had shot, killing Shukria with bullets to her stomach and heart. Then the attackers seemed to succumb to the frenzy they had begun, forsaking the motorbike and fleeing on foot in a panic, two bobbing heads — one tucked into a helmet, the other swaddled by a handkerchief — vanishing amid the earthen color of the wheat.

Six students were shot here on the afternoon of June 12, two of them fatally. The Qalai Sayedan School — considered among the very best in the central Afghan province of Logar — reopened only last weekend, but even with Kalashnikov-toting guards at the gate, only a quarter of the 1,600 students have dared to return.

Shootings, beheadings, burnings and bombings: these are all tools of intimidation used by the Taliban and others to shut down hundreds of Afghanistan’s public schools. To take aim at education is to make war on the government.

Parents are left with peculiar choices. “It is better for my children to be alive even if it means they must be illiterate,” said Sayed Rasul, a father who had decided to keep his two daughters at home for a day.

Afghanistan surely has made some progress toward development, but most often the nation seems astride some pitiable rocking horse, with each lurch forward inevitably reversed by the backward spring of harsh reality.

The schools are one vivid example. The Ministry of Education claims that 6.2 million children are now enrolled, or about half the school-age population. And while statistics in Afghanistan can be unreliably confected, there is no doubt that attendance has multiplied far beyond that of any earlier time, with uniformed children now teeming through the streets each day, flooding classrooms in two and three shifts.

A third of these students are girls, a marvel itself. Historically, girls’ education has been undervalued in Afghan culture. Girls and women were forbidden from school altogether during the Taliban rule.

But after 30 years of war, this is a country without normal times to reclaim; in so many ways, Afghanistan must start from scratch. The accelerating demand for education is mocked by the limited supply. More than half the schools have no buildings, according to the Ministry of Education; classes are commonly held in tents or beneath trees or in the brutal, sun-soaked openness.

Only 20 percent of the teachers are even minimally qualified. Texts are outdated; hundreds of titles need to be written, and millions of books need to be printed. And then there is the violence. In the southern provinces where the Taliban are most aggressively combating American and NATO troops, education has virtually come to a halt in large swaths of the contested regions. In other areas, attacks against schools are sporadic, unpredictable and perplexing.

By the ministry’s estimate, there have been 444 attacks since last August. Some of these were simple thefts. Some were instances of tents put to the torch. Some were audacious murders under the noon sun.

“By attacking schools, the terrorists want to make the point of their own existence,” said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, the minister of education.

Western-educated and notably energetic, Mr. Atmar is the nation’s fifth education minister in five and a half years, but only the first to command the solid enthusiasm of international donors. Much of the government is awash in corruption and cronyism. But Mr. Atmar comes to the job after a much-praised showing as the minister of rural redevelopment.

He has laid out an ambitious five-year plan for school construction, teacher training and a modernized curriculum. He is also championing a parallel track of madrasas, or religious schools; students would focus on Islamic studies while also pursuing science, math and the arts. “This society needs faith-based education, and we will be happy to provide it without teaching violence and the abuse of human rights,” Mr. Atmar said.

To succeed, the minister must prove a magnet for foreign cash. And donors have not been unusually generous when it comes to schools. Since the fall of the Taliban, the United States Agency for International Development has devoted only 5 percent of its Afghanistan budget to education, compared with 30 percent for roads and 14 percent for power.

Virtually every Afghan school is a sketchbook of extraordinary destitution. “I have 68 girls sitting in this tent,” said Nafisa Wardak, a first-grade teacher at the Deh Araban Qaragha School in Kabul. “We’re hot. The tent is full of flies. The wind blows sand and garbage everywhere. If a child gets sick, where can I send her?”

The nation’s overwhelming need for walled classrooms makes the killings in Qalai Sayedan all the more tragic. The school welcomed boys through grade 6 and girls through grade 12. It was terribly overcrowded, with the 1,600 students, attending in two shifts, stuffed into 12 classrooms and a corridor.

But the building itself was exactly that: two stories of concrete with a roof of galvanized steel, and not a collection of weather-molested tents. Two years ago, Qalai Sayedan was named the top school in the province. Its principal, Bibi Gul, was saluted for excellence and rewarded with a trip to America.

But last month’s attack on the school caused parents to wonder if the school’s stalwart reputation had not itself become a source of provocation. Qalai Sayedan is 40 miles south of Kabul, and while a dozen other schools in Logar Province have been attacked, none has been as regularly, or malignly, singled out. Three years ago, Qalai Sayedan was struck by rockets during the night. A year ago, explosives tore off a corner of the building.

In the embassies of the West, and even within the Education Ministry in Kabul, the Taliban are commonly discussed as a monolithic adversary. But to the villagers here, with the lives of their children at risk, it is too simplistic to assume the attacks were merely part of some broad campaign of terror.

People see the government’s enemies as a varied lot with assorted grievances, assorted tribal connections and assorted masters. Villagers ask, has anyone at the school provided great offense? Is the school believed to be un-Islamic?

At the village mosque, many men blame Ms. Gul, the principal. “She should not have gone to America without the consultation of the community,” said Sayed Abdul Sami, the uncle of Saadia, the other slain student. “And she went to America without a mahram, a male relative to accompany her, and this is considered improper in Islam.”

Sayed Enayatullah Hashimi, a white-bearded elder, said the school had flaunted its success too openly. “The governor paid it a visit,” he said disparagingly. “He brought with him 20 bodyguards, and these men went all over the school — even among the older girls.”

Education is the fast track to modernity. And modernity is held with suspicion.

Off the main highway, 100 yards up the winding dirt road and through the blue metal gate, sits the school. It was built four years ago by the German government.

On Monday, Ms. Gul greeted hundreds of children as they fidgeted in the morning light: “Dear boys and brave girls, thank you for coming. The enemy has done its evil deeds, but we will never allow the doors of this school to close again.”

These would be among her final moments as their principal. She had already resigned. “My heart is crying,” she said privately. “But I must leave because of everything that people say. They say I received letters warning about the attacks. But that isn’t so. And people say I am a foreigner because I went to the United States without a mahram. We were 12 people. I’m 42 years old. I don’t need to travel with a mahram.”

In the village, she wears a burqa, enveloped head to toe in lavender fabric. This is a conservative place. For some, the very idea of girls attending school into their teens is a breach of tradition.

Shukria, the slain 13-year-old, was considered a polite girl who reverently studied the Koran. Saadia, the other student killed, was remarkable in that she was married and 25. She had refused to let age discourage her from finishing an education interrupted by the Taliban years. She was about to graduate.

A new sign now sits atop the steel roof. The Qalai Sayedan School has been renamed the Martyred Saadia School. Another place will be called Martyred Shukria.

For three days now, students have been asked to return to class. Each morning, more of them appear. Older girls and women are quite clearly the most reluctant to return.

Shukria’s home is only a short walk from the school. Nafiza, the girl’s mother, was still too scalded with grief to mutter more than a few words. Shukria’s uncle, Shir Agha, took on the role of family spokesman.

“We have a saying that if you go to school, you can find yourself, and if you can find yourself, you can find God,” he said proudly. “But for a child to attend school, there must be security. Who supplies that security?”

Zarmina, the 12-year-old who had seen her sister killed, was called into the room. She was not ready to return to school, she said. Even the sound of a motorbike now made her hide. But surely the fear would subside, her uncle reassured her. She must remember that she loves school, that she loves to read, that she loves to scribble words on paper.

Someday, she would surely resume her studies, he told her.

But the heartbroken girl could not yet imagine this. “Never,” she said.

    As War Enters Classrooms, Fear Grips Afghans, NYT, 10.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/world/asia/10afghan.html?hp

100 Militants Killed in Afghan Fighting

July 7, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:14 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Fierce fighting broke out around Afghanistan on Friday, with battles in three separate regions killing more than 100 militants, part of a cycle of rapidly rising violence five years into the U.S.-led effort to defeat the Taliban.

The governor of northeastern Kunar province said villagers were claiming that airstrikes had killed dozens of civilians, though he said he could not confirm the report.

The fighting -- in the south, west and northeast -- continues a trend of sharply rising bloodshed the last five weeks, among the deadliest periods here since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

More than 1,000 people were killed in insurgency-related violence in June alone, including 700 militants and 200 civilians. More than 3,100 people have been killed in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count based on information from Western and Afghan officials. Around 4,000 people died in violence last year.

U.S.-led coalition and NATO spokesmen on Friday emphasized that ground commanders had evaluated the terrain to prevent civilians casualties, though Kunar Gov. Shalizai Dedar said villagers had reported that 10 civilians were killed in an initial airstrike, and that a second strike killed about 30 people who were trying to bury the dead.

Dedar said he could not confirm the reports of civilian deaths but that he was not rejecting their validity either. He said around 60 militants died in the battle.

U.S. and NATO officials say Taliban militants threaten villagers into claiming that attacks killed civilians.

''There were some number of insurgents that were killed. We have no reason to believe that any civilians were killed at this time,'' said NATO spokesman Maj. John Thomas. He said soldiers called in airstrikes on ''positively identified enemy firing positions'' in a remote area.

Civilian deaths have been a growing problem for international forces here, threatening to derail support for the Western mission. President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly implored forces to take care to prevent such deaths.

Both a U.N. and the AP count of civilian deaths this year show that U.S. and NATO forces have caused more civilian deaths this year than Taliban fighters have.

Meanwhile, a roadside blast struck a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan, wounding four alliance soldiers Saturday.

The NATO convoy was attacked west of Kandahar city, and the four wounded soldiers were medically evacuated to a nearby military hospital, said Maj. John Thomas, a NATO spokesman.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, said that the convoy was struck by a suicide bomber.

An AP reporter at the site of the blast said that those wounded were Canadian soldiers.

In the country's east, two NATO soldiers died and several others were wounded during an operation Thursday, the alliance said.

The alliance did not release the soldiers' nationalities or the location where the clash and the bombing took place. Most foreign troops in the east are American.

The latest NATO casualties raised the number of foreign soldiers killed this year to at least 105.

In the south, militants attacked two police vehicles with gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades overnight, and U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces responded with artillery fire and airstrikes in what the coalition described as a ''sparsely populated area'' in Uruzgan province.

Gen. Zahir Azimi said 33 Taliban fighters were killed. The coalition reported ''no indications'' of civilian casualties and said no coalition or Afghan forces were killed or wounded.

And in Farah, a western province bordering Iran that has seen little violence until this year, insurgents attacked an Afghan security patrol from fortified positions, wounding five Afghan soldiers, the coalition said.

Afghan and coalition forces, using gunfire and airstrikes, killed ''over 30'' insurgents, it said. The coalition also said a ground commander ''carefully evaluated risk of collateral damage'' before firing.

''It is important to note that many targets were not bombed or fired on due to (Afghan) and coalition force precautions against causing collateral damage,'' said Maj. Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman.

    100 Militants Killed in Afghan Fighting, NYT, 7.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

General: US Is Avoiding Afghan Deaths

June 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:59 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Despite rising civilian deaths in Afghanistan's counter-terror war -- and rising criticism -- a U.S. general suggested Tuesday that coalition commanders do not need to change the way they operate.

''We think the procedures that we have in place are good,'' Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel told a Pentagon press conference. ''They work, they help us minimize the effects'' on civilians, he said.

A count by the United Nations and an umbrella organization of Afghan and international aid groups shows that in the first five months of this year, the number of civilians killed by international forces was roughly equal to the number killed by insurgents. An Associated Press count for 2007 based on figures from Afghan and international officials found that while militants killed 178 civilians in attacks through June 23, Western forces killed 203.

Speaking by videoconference from Bagram, Votel said the assertion that coalition forces are killing more civilians is ''absolutely not true,'' and that those deaths caused by insurgent forces are ''significantly greater.''

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly pleaded with foreign troops to exercise caution and work more closely with Afghan forces, who might be able to minimize civilian casualties because of their knowledge of the terrain. On Saturday, he denounced the Taliban for killing civilians but directed most of his anger at foreign forces for being careless and viewing Afghan lives as ''cheap.''

Karzai said Saturday that in the previous 10 days more than 90 civilians have been killed in U.S. or NATO operations. He did not say how many had been killed by the Taliban.

The U.S. and NATO say they don't have civilian casualty figures.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said it is difficult to know which side caused casualties in an engagement where civilians also are present.

Votel, commander for NATO troops operating in eastern Afghanistan, defended what he said are ''extensive measures'' taken to minimize harm to civilians.

He described them this way:

-- With every operation, commanders look closely at the area involved and identify areas where civilian population may be affected.

-- In areas where there will be some civilians, they use a ''collateral damage estimate process'' to see where collateral damage may occur, then try to figure out how to mitigate it.

-- Whenever possible, they work with local government leaders to let them know troops are in the areas so they can communicate that to the population.

Although troops use ''an accepted U.S. and ... NATO process,'' there is ''a very low tolerance'' for collateral damage in Afghanistan, Votel said.

''And so, in most of those cases, we choose to use other methods -- we will try to go work with local Afghan authorities to help us identify those persons that we're interested in'' rather than going in and using force, he said.

''Increasingly...we are partnered with Afghan forces,'' Votel said.

Asked if any new procedures are being used in light of the most recent civilian deaths, Votel said: ''No, there's no particularly new procedures that we are using right now.''

He said ''dozens and dozens and perhaps hundreds of other operations'' are done across his command area that are in and around civilian populations ''with no negative collateral effects on the people.''

    General: US Is Avoiding Afghan Deaths, NYT, 26.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Afghanistan.html

U.S., NATO See Surge in Afghan Deaths

June 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:00 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- U.S.-led coalition and NATO forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have killed at least 203 civilians so far this year -- surpassing the 178 civilians killed in militant attacks, according to an Associated Press tally.

Insurgency attacks and military operations have surged in recent weeks, and in the past 10 days, more than 90 civilians have been killed by airstrikes and artillery fire targeting Taliban insurgents, said President Hamid Karzai.

On Sunday, another civilian may have been killed when British troops opened fire in a populated area after their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb, officials and witnesses said.

Separate figures from the U.N. and an umbrella organization of Afghan and international aid groups show that the numbers of civilians killed by international forces is approximately equal to those killed by insurgents.

After a seething speech by Karzai on Saturday -- in which he accused NATO and U.S. forces of viewing Afghan lives as ''cheap'' -- NATO conceded that it had to ''do better.'' Coalition spokesman Maj. Chris Belcher suggested that some civilians reportedly killed by foreign forces may in fact have been killed by insurgents.

''One of the problems is sometimes determining who exactly caused the casualties. It's not always clear if a civilian casualty is caused by an extremist or coalition forces,'' Belcher said.

Accurate figures for civilian death tolls are hard to come by in Afghanistan, where militants often wear civilian dress and seek shelter in villagers' homes. Furthermore, after a quarter of a century of civil war and conflict, it is not unusual for Afghans to have weapons in their homes.

Much of the violence takes place in remote areas that are too far or too dangerous for independent observers or journalists to reach for verification of the reports.

The AP count of civilian casualties is based on reports from Afghan and foreign officials and witnesses through Saturday. Of the 399 civilian deaths so far this year, 18 civilians were killed in crossfire between Taliban militants and foreign forces.

The U.S. and NATO did not have civilian casualty figures. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has counted 213 civilians killed by insurgents in the first five months of this year -- compared to 207 killed by Afghan and international forces.

ACBAR -- the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief -- has counted 230 civilians killed in U.S. and NATO operations, basing their figure on reports from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, Afghan NGO Security Office and the U.N.

The number of civilians killed in militant attacks was approximately the same as those killed by foreign forces according to ACBAR's latest figures from about a month ago, said Anja de Beer, director of ACBAR.

''The international forces are here to support the Afghan government, the purpose is to get a better and safer life for the Afghan people,'' de Beer said. ''If in doing so, they're causing more civilian deaths than the people they're fighting against, that doesn't look very good, to put it mildly.''

Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, blamed the insurgents for hiding in areas populated by civilians, who are then killed during attacks against militants, but he said ''that does not absolve ISAF of the responsibility of doing all it can to minimize civilian casualties.''

On Saturday, Karzai accused NATO and U.S.-led troops of carelessly killing scores of Afghan civilians and warned that the fight against resurgent Taliban militants could fail unless foreign forces show more restraint.

''Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such,'' Karzai said angrily.

The mounting toll is sapping the authority of the Western-backed Afghan president, who has pleaded repeatedly with U.S. and NATO commanders to consult Afghan authorities during operations and show more restraint.

Karzai also denounced the Taliban for killing civilians, but directed most of his anger at foreign forces.

In one of the recent incidents lamented by Karzai, police said NATO airstrikes killed 25 civilians along with 20 militants who fired on alliance and Afghan troops from a walled compound in the southern province of Helmand.

On Sunday, Helmand provincial police chief Mohammad Hussain said British gunfire killed one man after the troops were attacked, but it was not clear if the victim was a civilian or a militant involved in the attack.

Raz Mohammad Sayed, director of a local hospital, said one man was killed, and another man was wounded by British gunfire. He referred to both victims as ''civilians.''

NATO blames the insurgents for hiding among civilians, and insisted that troops had the right to defend themselves.

''If someone's firing at me, he's a combatant,'' Thomas said.

Another NATO spokesman, Nicholas Lunt, said, ''We need to do better than we have been doing so far. But unlike the Taliban, we do not set out to cause civilian casualties, and that is a critical difference.''

In Helmand's Langar village, Afghan and coalition troops clashed with insurgents and called in airstrikes Saturday, killing more than a dozen militants, one coalition soldier and an Afghan soldier, the coalition said.

Other violence around Afghanistan Sunday killed three policemen and wounded six. Roadside bombs killed three soldiers and wounded five, officials said.

Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

    U.S., NATO See Surge in Afghan Deaths, NYT, 24.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Civilian-Deaths.html

Police: 25 Afghan Civilians Killed

June 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:57 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Suspected Taliban militants attacked police posts in southern Afghanistan, sparking clashes and NATO airstrikes that left 25 civilians dead, a senior police officer said Friday.

The militants attacked police and used civilian houses for cover in Gereshk district of Helmand province late Thursday, said Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, provincial police chief.

NATO responded by calling in airstrikes, which killed 20 suspected militants, but also 25 civilians, including nine women, three babies and the mullah of a local mosque, he said.

NATO said the aircraft struck after insurgents attacked troops from its International Security Assistance Force nine miles northeast of Gereshk town.

''A compound was assessed to have been occupied by up to 30 insurgent fighters, most of whom were killed in the engagement,'' a NATO statement said.

''We are concerned about reports that some civilians may have lost their lives during this attack,'' said Lt. Col. Mike Smith, an ISAF spokesman.

This is a breaking news update. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Suspected Taliban militants attacked police posts in southern Afghanistan, sparking clashes and NATO airstrikes that left 25 civilians dead, a senior police officer said Friday.

The militants attacked police and used civilian houses for cover in Gereshk district of Helmand province late Thursday, said Mohammad Hussein Andiwal, provincial police chief.

NATO responded by calling in airstrikes, which killed 20 suspected militants, but also 25 civilians, including nine women, three babies and the mullah of a local mosque, he said.

    Police: 25 Afghan Civilians Killed, NYT, 22.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Mine Kills NATO Soldier in Afghanistan

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A land mine explosion killed a NATO soldier and wounded four more Thursday in eastern Afghanistan, where fighting between U.S.-led troops and suspected Taliban left eight militants and a policeman dead, officials said.

Violence is surging in Afghanistan as both militants and foreign troops step up their struggle over the fate of Afghanistan's five-year-old Western-backed government.

NATO said two of the soldiers hit in the mine blast were taken to a hospital, where one of them died. Three others were treated at the scene for minor injuries, the alliance said.

The nationality of the troops was not released, although most of the NATO soldiers in the east are American.

Troops from the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan army, meanwhile, launched an operation against ''an important group of enemies'' in Paktika province late Wednesday, said Gov. Mohammad Ekram Akhpelwak.

Eight suspected militants were killed and seven others were detained for questioning, the Interior Ministry said. One police officer was also killed.

Coalition officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The latest NATO death brings the number of foreign troops killed this year to 90. Three Canadian troops died Wednesday when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle in Kandahar province.

In all, more than 2,400 people -- most of them militants -- have died in fighting this year, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials.

Lt. Col. Maria Carl, spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said Wednesday that Afghanistan was in the midst of the ''fighting season,'' but insisted that recent suicide bombings and other attacks were ''militarily insignificant.''

    Mine Kills NATO Soldier in Afghanistan, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

U.N. Halts Afghan Food Deliveries

June 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:25 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.N. World Food Program has halted aid deliveries in Afghanistan's most volatile provinces after 85 of its trucks were attacked, set ablaze or looted in the last year by Taliban insurgents and thieves, an official said Thursday.

The agency suspended shipments from Pakistan through the violence-plagued south and west about four weeks ago, said Richard Corsino, WFP's director in Afghanistan.

''The biggest thing we're concerned about is if we can't resume, and we can't meet our obligations,'' Corsino said in an interview with The Associated Press in the Afghan capital.

He said he expected WFP to run out of food for its programs in the next few weeks in the seven southern and western provinces where shipments have been halted.

WFP does not believe people will starve or migrate because of the halted food deliveries, but they may be forced to sell their possessions to get by, Corsino said.

''The people we're trying to reach with this food are 'food insecure' or vulnerable people. It makes what is already a difficult life that much more difficult,'' he said.

WFP lost about 600 tons of wheat and cooking oil worth $400,000 in 25 incidents since June 2006, including 13 in the past three months, compared with no incidents in the first half of 2006, Corsino said.

Last year was Afghanistan's deadliest since the U.S.-led coalition swept the Taliban from power in 2001, with 4,000 people killed in fighting and attacks, most of them militants. Violence usually surges in the spring.

Corsino said that in one incident, a Taliban leader signed a paper and jotted down his satellite phone number for the truck driver before looting a shipment.

''People regard our food as a gift to the country, and it's not owned by anyone,'' Corsino said, describing the looters' mentality. He said his staff called the satellite phone number, and the man on the line identified himself as a Taliban member and acknowledged carrying out the heist.

In another case, it was clear that the trucker had colluded in the theft, Corsino said.

The shipments are made in unmarked, contracted trucks, but are still hit by thieves more frequently than commercial goods, Corsino said.

Sometimes the food shows up in markets at knockdown prices, while in one case goods stolen from Ghazni province were distributed in neighboring Paktia in a ''Robin Hood'' act of philanthropic banditry, Corsino said.

Other robbers were less benign.

Attackers killed two police who were escorting a shipment in western Farah province, but the 13 trucks and remaining guards managed to escape. Several times trucks have been set on fire with the food still inside, Corsino said.

    U.N. Halts Afghan Food Deliveries, NYT, 21.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Food.html

Aid Groups Decry Afghan Civilian Deaths

June 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:01 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Goodwill toward foreign forces is eroding across Afghanistan because airstrikes and botched raids by U.S. and NATO troops have killed at least 230 civilians this year, an umbrella group for aid agencies said Tuesday.

The complaint followed reports of dozens of civilian deaths in recent days during fierce fighting sparked by a Taliban offensive in Uruzgan, a key southern province. Insurgents also pushed Afghan police out of a remote district in neighboring Kandahar province.

Noncombatant casualties the past several days -- whether caused by foreign troops or the Taliban -- have fed public anger toward President Hamid Karzai's government and the foreign soldiers supporting it. Karzai has pleaded repeatedly for international forces to coordinate more closely with Afghan authorities to protect civilians in battle zones.

U.S. and NATO commanders say their forces do all they can to avoid civilian casualties.

A group representing 94 foreign and Afghan aid agencies, including Oxfam, Save the Children and CARE International, laid much of the blame for civilian deaths on U.S. actions, contending indiscriminate use of force is causing the death of innocents.

''Such operations have frequently been by carried out by forces or agencies outside NATO command, often American forces in Operation Enduring Freedom, and sometimes in conjunction with Afghan forces,'' the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief said in a statement.

The aid group said international and Afghan forces were responsible for the deaths of at least 230 civilians this year, including 60 women and children. Among them, it said, were nine people killed in a ''botched house raid,'' dozens in airstrikes and 14 ''for simply driving or walking too close to international military personnel or vehicles.''

''Initial goodwill towards the international military presence in 2002 has substantially diminished in many parts of the country,'' the statement said. ''Excessive use of force and abusive raids and searches are undermining support not just for foreign and Afghan militaries but those involved in humanitarian and development work.''

Afghan officials reported dozens of civilians killed in the Chora district of Uruzgan province, where hundreds of Taliban fighters assaulted police posts Saturday, drawing a counterattack by NATO troops and fighter jets. Fighting continued Tuesday.

''It has been a contested area for some number of months,'' said a NATO spokesman, Maj. John Thomas. ''(The Taliban) are making an effort right now to establish control in that area.''

Thomas said he could not say how many insurgents were fighting NATO troops in Uruzgan.

Late Monday, Taliban fighters overran Miya Nishin district in Kandahar province, provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai said. An operation was planned to retake the area, he said.

The insurgent push appeared to be the biggest Taliban offensive of the year and marked a change in tactics. Militants had relied largely on suicide and roadside bombings this year as NATO troops ramped up operations to root them out.

Violence has swelled in recent weeks, pushing the year's death toll to about 2,400, many of them insurgents, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western military and Afghan officials.

Precise casualty figures in Chora were not available, though two Afghan officials said more than 100 people had been killed, including at least 16 policemen. A Dutch soldier also died.

Thomas said he doubted Afghan officials could tell the difference between civilians and militants, suggesting some of the wounded who claimed to be civilians were insurgents.

A case of disputed identities occurred in Kandahar city, where foreign troops raided a housing complex late Monday, killing one man and detaining 10 people, witnesses and relatives said.

The U.S.-led coalition said the operation was ''against a Taliban target, and initial reports indicate that one enemy was killed.'' At the scene, Bacha Khan said his brother was killed, but insisted he was a tailor with no links to the Taliban.

------

Associated Press writer Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

    Aid Groups Decry Afghan Civilian Deaths, NYT, 19.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

7 Afghan Children Killed in U.S.-Led Airstrike

June 18, 2007
The New York Times
By BARRY BEARAK and ABDUL WAHEED WAFA

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 18 — Seven children were killed during an airstrike by the American-led coalition against a religious compound thought to be an Al Qaeda sanctuary in remote eastern Afghanistan, the coalition reported today.

The death of the children, tragic enough by itself, may well add to the growing anger many Afghans feel about civilian casualties from American and NATO military operations. More than 130 civilians have been killed in such airstrikes and shootings in just the last six months, according to Afghan officials.

“We are truly sorry for the innocent lives lost in this attack,” Maj. Chris Belcher of the United States Army said of Sunday’s raid against several structures, including a school and mosque, in Paktika Province, near the border with Pakistan. “We had surveillance on the compound all day and saw no indications there were children inside the building.”

There are more than 50,000 foreign troops operating in Afghanistan, the bulk of them American. One NATO soldier and two Afghan policemen died today during heavy fighting that killed “a large number of enemy extremist fighters” in Uruzgan Province in the south of the country, according to a NATO news release.

But while such workmanlike statements about mortal combat and skirmishes are fairly standard in Afghanistan, reports about battlefield regrets are highly unusual. More commonly, the military responds to allegations of civilian casualties rather than announcing them.

Still, the coalition placed the ultimate burden for the children’s deaths on terrorists, saying that “Al Qaeda operatives” had hidden among innocents.

“Witness statements taken early this morning clearly put the blame on the suspected terrorists, saying that if the children attempted to go outside they were beaten and pushed away from the door,” the coalition said in a news release, adding that seven “militants” had also died in the raid.

The religious compound is in a mountainous district named Yahya Khail. Many here in Kabul attempted unsuccessfully to get an independent account of what transpired.

Whatever the facts, Khalid Farouqi, a member of the Afghan Parliament from Paktika, was angry at the coalition. “Mostly, these type of incidents happen because the international forces do not coordinate with the Afghan authorities,” he said. “Then they say they are sorry. That may be acceptable once, but not when it is done repeatedly.”

The coalition contends that such coordination did occur and that Afghan forces took part in the operation.

“The coalition goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian casualties,” said William Wood, the United States ambassador to Afghanistan. “Unfortunately, when the Taliban is using civilians in this tactical way, instances of civilian casualties, just like instances of casualties from friendly fire, cannot be completely avoided.”

Civilian casualties, especially those caused by errant bombings, have been an issue here since the American-led coalition forces came to Afghanistan in 2001. As the Taliban have grown in strength during the past year, the war-weary Afghan populace feels caught in a crossfire, vulnerable to both coalition air raids and insurgent suicide attacks. On Sunday, a suicide bomber set off his explosives on a bus, killing at least 24.

C.J. Chivers and Taimoor Shah contributed reporting.

    7 Afghan Children Killed in U.S.-Led Airstrike, NYT, 18.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/world/asia/18cnd-afghan.html?hp

Major Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan

June 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:27 a.m. ET
The New York Times

Some of the deadliest insurgent attacks in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led offensive began on Oct. 7, 2001:

June 17, 2007 -- A bomb rips through a bus carrying police instructors in Kabul, killing 35 people.

May 20, 2007 -- A suicide bomber detonates himself in a crowded market in the eastern city of Gardez, killing 14.

May 19, 2007 -- A suicide bomber detonates himself next to German soldiers in Kunduz, killing three soldiers and seven civilians.

Feb. 27, 2007 -- A suicide bomber detonates himself outside the main U.S. base at Bagram Air Field, killing 23 people, during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Sept. 30, 2006 -- A suicide bomber outside the gates of the Interior Ministry in Kabul kills 12 people.

Sept. 26, 2006 -- A suicide bomber on foot kills 18 outside compound of Helmand provincial governor in town of Lashkar Gah.

Sept. 8, 2006 -- Car bomber rams U.S. convoy in Kabul, killing 16, including two American soldiers.

Aug. 28, 2006 -- 21 civilians killed by suicide bomber targeting an ex-police chief in Lashkar Gah.

Aug. 3, 2006 -- 21 civilians killed in a suicide car bombing near Canadian military vehicles in town market in Kandahar province.

Jan. 16, 2006 -- A man with explosives strapped to his body drives a motorbike into a crowd watching a wrestling match in Kandahar province and kills 21 people.

Jan. 5, 2006 -- A militant blows himself up in a town in central Uruzgan province during a supposedly secret visit by the U.S. ambassador, killing 10 Afghans.

June 1, 2005 -- A suspected al-Qaida fighter detonates explosives strapped to his body in a mosque in Kandahar city, killing 20 worshippers.

Aug. 13, 2003 -- An explosion tears apart a bus in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 15 civilians.

Sept. 5, 2002 -- 30 people killed and 167 wounded in a Kabul car bombing.

    Major Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan, NYT, 17.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Violence-Glance.html

Bus Bombing Kills at Least 35 in Afghan Capital

June 17, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:55 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An enormous bomb ripped through a police academy bus at Kabul's busiest transportation hub Sunday, killing at least 35 people in the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

The thunderous explosion -- which sheared the metal sidings and roof off the bus, leaving only a charred skeleton -- represented a leap in scale from previous Taliban or al-Qaida bombings here, raising the specter of an increase in Iraq-style attacks in Afghanistan.

At least 35 people were killed, including 22 policemen, said Ahmed Zia Aftali, head of Kabul's military hospital. At least 35 others were wounded, hospital officials said. A victim said the bus had been filled with police instructors.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said a Taliban suicide bomber named Mullah Asim Abdul Rahman caused the blast. Rahman, 23, was from Kabul province, said Ahmadi, who called an Associated Press reporter by satellite phone from an undisclosed location. His claim could not be verified.

If confirmed, it would be the fifth suicide attack in Afghanistan in three days.

Unidentifiable body parts littered the blast site 30 yards away. Hundreds of police and investigators -- with some pulling bodies from the wreckage -- ordered civilians to leave the area, an outdoor bus station normally teeming with people.

At a nearby hospital, a large blue plastic trash can overflowed with the bloodied shoes and sandals of victims.

''Never in my life have I heard such a sound,'' said Ali Jawad, a 48-year-old selling phone cards nearby. ''A big fireball followed. I saw blood and a decapitated man thrown out of the bus. Wounded people were shouting, 'Help me, help me,' and women and children were shouting and running in different directions.''

Jawad said the blast shocked him into forgetting about his 12-year-old son selling lottery cards nearby.

''I lay under the shadow of a tree when my son came over and asked if I was OK. It was such a shock that I even forgot that my son was there,'' he said.

At least one person on the bus survived the 8:10 a.m. attack. Nasir Ahmad, 22, was sitting in the back of the bus when the blast went off. He said the bus had been filled with police instructors.

''There were between 30 to 40 police instructors in the bus,'' Ahmad said from a hospital bed where he was recovering from wounds to his face and hands.

Despite the Taliban claim, officials were trying to determine if the explosion, which went off in the front of the bus, was caused by a suicide attacker or a bomb that had been planted.

A civilian bus also damaged in the blast was driving just in front of the police vehicle when the blast went off, and a police officer at the scene said the bus' position likely prevented other civilian casualties.

Fazel Rahim, a doctor from a nearby hospital, said more than 35 wounded were being treated inside the building.

''Most of the wounded are in serious condition,'' said Rahim, whose hands and white coat were covered in blood.

Afghan government officials, police and army soldiers are commonly targeted by insurgents trying to bring down the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

A police and army force that can provide security around the country on its own is essential to the U.S. and NATO strategy of handing over security responsibilities to the Afghan government one day, allowing Western forces to leave.

Buses carrying Afghan police and army soldiers have been targeted before.

In May, a remote-control bomb hit an Afghan army bus in Kabul, killing the driver and wounding 29 people. In October, a bomb placed on a bicycle exploded as a police bus went by in Kabul, wounding 11. Last July, a remote-controlled bomb blew up near an Afghan army bus in downtown Kabul, wounding 39 people on board.

At least 307 Afghan police, army or intelligence personnel have been killed in violence so far this year through June 15, according to an AP tally of figures from the U.S., U.N., NATO and Afghan authorities.

Sunday's attack is the deadliest by insurgents since the fall of the Taliban. In September 2002, 30 people were killed and 167 wounded in a Kabul car bombing. Last September, a suicide bomb attack left 16 dead, including two American soldiers, close to the U.S. embassy in the capital.

Asadullah, a health worker at Jamhuriat hospital who only goes by one name, said two Pakistani, two Japanese and one Korean national were among those wounded Sunday.

A Pakistani and a Japanese were filming the area before the explosion, so intelligence agents took them for questioning, said Asadullah.

The two wounded Japanese were aid workers passing through the traffic circle, said Koji Miyazaki, a Japanese aid worker in Kabul from the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan.

Associated Press reporters Noor Khan in Kandahar and Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

    Bus Bombing Kills at Least 35 in Afghan Capital, NYT, 17.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Violence.html?hp

Suicide Bomber Kills 4 Bystanders in Afghanistan

June 16, 2007
The New York Times
By BARRY BEARAK

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 16 — A suicide bomber driving a taxi set off his explosives near a convoy of American civilian contractors and accompanying soldiers here this morning, killing himself and four bystanders but only wounding one of his intended targets, the Kabul police said.

Within hours, American soldiers fired into a crowd of Afghans near the scene of the blast, accidentally killing one man and wounding another, according to a United States military spokesman, Col. David Accetta. “It was an unfortunate incident and we are investigating the cause of the accidental discharge of a weapon,” Colonel Accetta said.

Witnesses said the shooting victim was a truck driver named Aziz. “I had just sold him three Pepsis and a phone card and he was sitting on this bench inserting the card into his cell phone,” said a shopkeeper, Farhad Sherzad.

American soldiers firing into crowds have been a recurrent narrative of late in Afghanistan, as have civilian casualties in suicide attacks. This was only the fifth suicide bombing this year in heavily patrolled Kabul but more than 50 others have tormented the nation in a campaign of terror for which the Taliban have claimed responsibility. A similar explosion killed 10 people, including five children and a Dutch soldier, in the southern province of Uruzgan on Friday.

“The suicide bombers hate Americans but they end up killing ordinary people,” said Rahmatullah, an anguished man selling lumber along busy Company Road in western Kabul, where today’s explosion occurred about 8:30.

The torso of the bomber was lying nearby in front of a carpenter’s stall, having landed beside a barrel of water and a woodpile about 50 feet from where he triggered his device. His right arm and left leg were the only appendages still attached to his decapitated body, which had been covered with a thin black cloth.

The blast had left a segment of the road scooped of its asphalt. Twisted auto parts were spit in every direction. Another dead man, Muhammad Yaseen, lay beside a mangled minibus. He had been a passenger in the vehicle, paying the equivalent of 60 cents only a moment before at a bustling terminal.

The driver of the minibus, Muhammad Arif, found it hard to believe the good fortune of his own survival. He was not only unhurt but unsoiled, the creases still crisp in his well-pressed blue shirt. Mr. Yaseen had been but a few feet behind him in a seat now soaked with blood. “God surely saved me,” said the dazed driver.

One of the other victims of the explosion was a day laborer named Mustaffah who had been pushing a wheelbarrow filled with firewood. Bystanders congregated around his remains, wondering why mortal fate had selected him and not them.

“We all heard the blast and everything shook,” said Abdul Ghafor, a carpenter. “I’m fine, as you see. But my friends, just a few feet away, were injured.”

The warm months have not brought the forceful Taliban military offensive that had been predicted by United States and NATO commanders. But suicide attacks, rare in Afghanistan a mere two years ago, have since created enough fear among the general populace to cause thousands to flee for neighboring Pakistan or Iran.

    Suicide Bomber Kills 4 Bystanders in Afghanistan, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/world/asia/16cnd-afghan.html?hp

Afghan Bomber Kills 10, Including 5 Children

June 16, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 15 (AP) — A suicide car bomber who apparently intended to strike a NATO convoy on Friday in southern Afghanistan killed 10 people, including five children and a Dutch soldier, during a fresh wave of violence that also left more than 24 militants dead, officials said.

In the east, another soldier from the American-led coalition was killed in a battle early Friday.

The car bombing was in Tirin Kot in Uruzgan Province, said the Dutch defense minister, Eimert van Middelkoop.

Four Afghan men were also killed, said Gen. Abdul Qasem Khan, the provincial police chief.

Three Dutch soldiers and seven Afghan civilians, including two women, were wounded when the bomber detonated the bomb near a Dutch armored car in Tirin Kot, officials said.

About 2,000 Dutch troops are involved in a reconstruction mission in southern Afghanistan. It was the second time a Dutch soldier was killed here, and the seventh Dutch death, since the mission began in August. Three died in air accidents, one in an armored car crash and another in what was apparently a suicide.

There have been warnings to civilians from people who say they are speaking for the Taliban to stay away from military convoys, but suicide bombings commonly kill or wound far more civilians than the intended military targets.

Violence has risen sharply in Afghanistan in recent weeks. More than 2,300 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year, based on figures from the United States, the United Nations, NATO and Afghan officials.

Much of it has been focused on Helmand Province, in the south, where Afghan troops and a patrol of soldiers from the American-led coalition were attacked by militants near the Sangin district on Thursday. The troops fired back and called in airstrikes, a statement from the coalition said. “More than two dozen enemy fighters were estimated killed during the nine-hour battle, and there are no reports of Afghan civilian injuries,” the statement said.

In neighboring Zabul Province, coalition and Afghan troops “killed a few militants” and detained three others on Friday in a raid on a compound in the Shahjoy district, the coalition said. During a brief firefight at the compound, two civilians were caught in the crossfire. One teenager died of gunshot wounds and another boy was wounded.

In eastern Afghanistan, a coalition service member was killed in a clash in Paktika Province on Friday, the coalition said. The soldier’s nationality was not released, but most troops in the east are American.

In Belgium, the NATO allies agreed to deploy more trainers with the Afghan Army, hoping to build it up so it can eventually replace the 50,000 international troops here.

But the offer fell short of requirements, and NATO’s top diplomat joined Afghanistan’s defense minister in urging a greater commitment from allied governments.

At a meeting of NATO defense ministers, France offered to form 3 of the 50 training teams that NATO commanders are seeking, with 50 experts in each. Italy, Canada, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia also stepped forward. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary general, said those offers would bring the total of training teams to almost 30.

    Afghan Bomber Kills 10, Including 5 Children, NYT, 16.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/world/asia/16afghan.html

33 Militants Killed in Afghanistan

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:29 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan troops killed 33 Taliban militants, including several commanders, in three operations in the country's volatile south, officials said Thursday.

Twenty militants were killed in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province on Wednesday, while eight were wounded, the Interior Ministry said. It said two commanders were among the dead.

The U.S.-led coalition said that coalition forces and Afghan army soldiers battled militants in Shah Wali Kot on Wednesday, killing ''several'' enemy fighters. It was not clear if it was the same operation mentioned by the Interior Ministry.

In the nearby district of Zhari, six Taliban fighters were killed, including one commander, the Interior Ministry said. It said no police were hurt or killed in the operations.

In southern Ghazni province, seven Taliban were killed and four others detained by police Wednesday, said Mohammad Kazim Alayar, province's deputy governor. The authorities recovered the bodies of the dead Taliban, he said.

Violence has spiked around Afghanistan in recent weeks. More than 2,300 people have died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan this year, according to an Associated Press count based on U.S., NATO, U.N. and Afghan officials.

The Ministry of Defense said a suicide attacker detonated his bomb near an Afghan army brigade commander in Gereshk district of Helmand province. The suicide attacker died but no one else was wounded, said Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the ministry spokesman.

In the western province of Farah, two Afghans doing repair work on police vehicles were killed by Taliban militants, said Bayralai Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

Elsewhere, U.S.-led coalition and Afghan troops killed a suspected militant and detained three others in a raid on a compound in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said.

The troops were searching the compound suspected of housing Taliban and foreign fighters in Mata Khan district in Paktika province, the statement said.

''The forces killed the adult male when he attempted to engage them during a search of the location,'' the statement said.

During the search, troops discovered weapons and a video camera. Three people were also detained and would be questioned over ''their involvement in militant activities,'' statement said.

    33 Militants Killed in Afghanistan, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Violence.html

Afghan Minister Dismisses U.S. Claims

June 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:41 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Afghanistan's defense minister on Thursday dismissed claims by a top U.S. State Department official that there was ''irrefutable evidence'' that the Iranian government was providing arms to Taliban rebels.

''Actually, throughout, we have had good relations with Iran and we believe that the security and stability of Afghanistan are also in the interests of Iran,'' Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said in Paris that Tehran was directly supplying weapons to the Taliban. He told CNN there was ''irrefutable evidence'' that arms shipments were coming from Iran's government.

The State Department later appeared to step back from Burns' assertion, but stressed that the United States has proof that weapons from Iran were reaching Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Tehran has denied the accusations. Wardak, who is attending a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Brussels, also played down suggestions that Iranian authorities were sending arms shipments to the Taliban.

''There has been evidence of weapons, but it is difficult to link it to Iran,'' Wardak said. ''It is possible that (they) might be from al-Qaida, from the drug mafia or from other sources.''

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is attending the Brussels meeting, also mentioned the alleged weapons transfers from Iran.

''The irony is the Afghan government and the Iranian government have pretty good relationships,'' Gates told reporters. Gates, who was in Afghanistan last week, said Afghan President Hamid Karzai talked to him about the good relationship the two countries have.

Gates speculated that Tehran may be ''trying to play both sides of the street, hedge their bets, or what their motives are other than causing trouble for us.''

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, Wardak said he would appeal to the defense ministers of NATO and allied countries to provide greater assistance in the training of Afghan security forces.

He said the establishment of an effective Afghan air force was a top priority because air support would enable the army to conduct independent operations without having to rely so heavily on the international forces.

It currently operates a handful of Czech-built L-39 jet trainers, together with some old Soviet Mi-17 helicopters and Antonov An-26 twin-engine transports.

''We have all agreed that the only sustainable way to secure Afghanistan is to enable the Afghans themselves to defend the country as they have done for thousands of years. Based on that I would like to have further acceleration of the Afghan national security forces both in numbers and capabilities,'' Wardak said.

    Afghan Minister Dismisses U.S. Claims, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Taliban.html

Iran May Know of Weapons for Taliban, Gates Contends

June 14, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany, June 13 — The flow of illicit weapons from Iran to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has reached such large quantities that it suggests that the shipments are taking place with the knowledge of the government in Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday.

Mr. Gates said he had seen new intelligence analysis over the past couple of weeks “that makes it pretty clear there’s a fairly substantial flow of weapons” from Iran across its border to assist insurgents in Afghanistan.

Commenting on potential Iranian government involvement in the arms flow, Mr. Gates said, “I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities that we’re seeing, it is difficult to believe that it’s associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it’s taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government.”

Mr. Gates is the highest-ranking member of the Bush administration to give voice to its suspicions that Iran is arming Taliban insurgents who have attacked forces of the Afghan government as well as American and other coalition troops.

Given the failings of American intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq, any new analysis of purportedly hostile behavior by adversaries may be greeted with skepticism, especially on Capitol Hill. But Mr. Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave a measured assessment of the arms smuggling and did not specifically declare direct sponsorship by the Iranian government. He did not offer any evidence to back up his remarks.

Going further than the defense secretary, R. Nicholas Burns, an under secretary of state, told CNN on Wednesday that there was “irrefutable evidence” that the shipments were “coming from the government of Iran.”

“It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government,” he said, as quoted by news agencies.

Mr. Gates, speaking with reporters at the large American air base here, noted that “the irony is, the Afghan government and the Iranian government have pretty good relationships.” The defense secretary cited a conversation with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, who spoke with him during a recent visit “about the importance of good relationships with Iran.”

Asked to analyze Iranian motives, Mr. Gates responded, “Whether Iran is trying to play both sides of the street, hedge their bets — what their motives are, other than causing trouble for us, I don’t know.”

Mr. Gates declined to describe in detail the recent intelligence analysis, but said the new information came from “the weapons themselves and the explosives and so on that have been seized.” The Iranian weapons found smuggled into Afghanistan are of a wide variety, he added.

There are more than 26,000 American troops in Afghanistan, about 14,000 of them serving in the NATO-led security and assistance force, which numbers over 36,000; 12,000 more American troops are conducting separate counterterrorism and training missions.

Mr. Gates was in Germany visiting American forces while en route to Brussels for a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Thursday. The NATO session is expected to include debate on how to remedy shortages in alliance commitments for Afghanistan and how to resolve disputes with Russia over missile defenses.

    Iran May Know of Weapons for Taliban, Gates Contends, NYT, 14.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/world/middleeast/14gates.html

Killings prompt call for protection of Afghan women

Wed Jun 13, 2007 11:00AM EDT
Reuters
By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - The killings of two female journalists and two school girls in Afghanistan prompted a government ministry on Wednesday to call on authorities to provide security for women in schools and at their workplace.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killings in the past fortnight, but women have often been the victims of attacks by ultra-conservative forces, not just the Taliban.

"It seems a wave of hostility against women has renewed recently and the targets... have been educated women or school students," the Women's Affairs Ministry said in a statement.

It called on the government to provide security for women and girls at the workplace and in the classroom.

On Tuesday, two girls were shot dead outside their school just south of Kabul.

In the past two weeks a female journalist was shot in the capital, and a colleague was killed on its northern outskirts.

On Wednesday, people in the southeastern province of Paktia, close to where the students were killed, received warnings against sending their children to schools, and civil employees against working with the government, the interior ministry said.

"Enemies of Culture and Learning gave a warning to noble people of Paktia... to stop sending their children to school and (that) civil workers and teachers should quit their jobs," the ministry said.

Afghan government officials usually use the term "Enemies of Afghanistan" to describe Taliban and their al Qaeda allies.

Defying the warning, Paktia residents staged a protest several hours long, the ministry said.

The Taliban movement, which banned women from most outdoor work and barred females from education when it was in power, has already distanced itself from the students' killings, but could not be reached immediately for comment about the warning in Paktia.

The Afghan education minister had said on Tuesday he was concerned about further attacks on school girls.

Although the situation of women has improved since the days when the Taliban ruled the country, they still face hardships in Afghanistan's male-dominated, tribal society.

While more women and girls have been able to go to school and get jobs since the Taliban were ousted in 2001, they still face threats, either from family members or from factional forces, even in areas where the Taliban have no influence.

One of the journalists killed had been an outspoken critic of some factional commanders.

Last month, the country's lower house of parliament expelled a woman lawmaker who had described the assembly as worse than a stable.

Malalai Joya, 28-year-old women's rights activist, won her parliamentary seat in 2005 elections, and had been an outspoken critic of some mujahideen (holy warrior) leaders and commanders.

Twenty-five percent of seats in the Afghan parliament are reserved for women. There are 68 women among the 248 members of parliament.

    Killings prompt call for protection of Afghan women, R, 13.6.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSISL9592920070613

US Prisoner Leaves Afghanistan

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:42 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An American imprisoned in Afghanistan for running a private jail for terror suspects has left the Afghan prison where he was held for almost three years and departed the country, the warden said Wednesday.

Jack Idema, a former Green Beret, was pardoned by President Hamid Karzai in late March as part of a general amnesty. Rahim Ahmadzai, Idema's Afghan lawyer, said the American left the prison outside Kabul on June 2 and flew out of Afghanistan. He did not know Idema's destination.

Shamir, the warden of Policharki prison where Idema was held, said Idema had wanted to stay in Afghanistan but couldn't for legal reasons. Shamir, who like many Afghans goes by one name, said he transported Idema and his dog, Nina, to the Kabul airport for the flight out.

''He wanted to stay in Afghanistan, but there was no way for him to stay,'' Shamir said.

Edward P. Birsner, the consul at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said in court documents filed in Washington this week that Idema had left for ''an unknown destination.''

The documents were filed in a case in which Idema accused the FBI and State Department of ordering his torture and manipulating the Afghan judicial system.

Idema was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Kabul court in September 2004 on charges of entering Afghanistan illegally, making illegal arrests, establishing a private jail and torturing their captives.

Two other Americans were also convicted. Brent Bennet was sentenced to 10 years but was released in September. Freelance cameraman Edward Caraballo was sentenced to eight years; he was released in April 2006.

Some of the Afghans Idema imprisoned claimed they were beaten and their heads held under water. However, Idema says he never mistreated prisoners and the prosecution offered scant evidence at his sometimes chaotic Kabul trial.

Idema, who has maintained that his activities in Afghanistan were sanctioned by the U.S. government, claims to have fought with the Northern Alliance forces that toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001. He was featured in a book about the Afghan war called ''Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for bin Laden.''

The U.S. military acknowledges accepting prisoners from Idema in Afghanistan in 2004 and the separate NATO-led force there helped him with raids near Kabul.

However, the military soon denounced him as an imposter and he was arrested only a few months after entering the country.

Idema, who served three years in U.S jail for fraud in the 1980s, told The Associated Press by cell phone from Policharki last month that he had stayed in prison even after being freed because he risked arrest by Afghan intelligence agents. He said that departing would harm his chances of recovering documents, tapes and computer files that show his alleged relationship with U.S. officials.

A U.S. federal judge in April said the United States had to respond to a lawsuit by Idema alleging that the State Department and FBI illegally kept him imprisoned, directed his torture and destroyed evidence. Idema said he has audio recordings and documents to back up his claims.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul responded by saying that since Idema had been freed by Karzai, his claims no longer had merit.

The U.S. has said it secured Idema a passport and helped him with travel information for him and the dog he adopted.

Associated Press reporter Matt Apuzzo in Washington contributed to this report.

    US Prisoner Leaves Afghanistan, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-US-Prisoner.html

U.S.: NATO Has Intercepted Iranian Arms

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:30 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PARIS (AP) -- NATO has intercepted Iranian weapons shipments to Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, providing evidence Iran is violating international law to aid a group it once considered a bitter enemy, a senior U.S. diplomat said Wednesday.

''There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this,'' Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said on CNN. ''It's certainly coming from the government of Iran. It's coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.''

Speaking separately to The Associated Press, Burns said NATO must act to stop the shipments. The Iran-Afghanistan frontier is ''a very long border. But the Iranians need to know that we are there and that we're going to oppose this.''

''It's a very serious question,'' he said, adding that Iran is in ''outright violation'' of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Burns did not give details on the scope of the alleged Iranian shipments, although he appeared to indicate that they were limited. ''I don't think it's made a substantial difference in the greater theater of the war,'' he said.

''It is not going to turn the tide against us, but it is very troublesome, it is illegal under international law ... and the Iranians need to stop it,'' Burns told the AP.

Burns, who was holding talks in Paris, first accused Iran on Tuesday of transferring weapons to the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan -- the most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official.

In Afghanistan last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iranian weapons were falling into the hands of anti-government Taliban fighters, but he stopped short of blaming Tehran.

Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments alleged that the Islamic government in Tehran is also secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.

In an AP interview Monday, U.S. Army Gen. Dan McNeill said Taliban fighters are showing signs of better training, using combat techniques comparable to ''an advanced Western military'' in ambushes of U.S. Special Forces soldiers.

''In Afghanistan it is clear that the Taliban is receiving support, including arms from ... elements of the Iranian regime,'' British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote in the May 31 edition of the Economist.

Iran, which is also in a dispute with the West over its nuclear program, denies the Taliban accusation, calling it part of a broad anti-Iranian campaign. Tehran says it makes no sense that a Shiite-led government like itself would help the fundamentalist Sunni movement of the Taliban.

Burns acknowledged that it was ''curious'' that Iran would aid the Taliban.

''It's quite surprising,'' he told CNN. ''The Iranians had said that they were the mortal enemies of the Taliban in 2001 and '02.''

On the nuclear issue, Burns claimed that sanctions already leveled against Iran were being felt and reiterated the threat of more if the country refuses to suspend uranium enrichment -- which the West fears could be meant for the production of nuclear weapons.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday dismissed the possibility that a third set of Security Council sanctions would harm Iran.

Burns disagreed.

''I think most people would say that the Iranians are experiencing considerable economic difficulties because of the financial sanctions that have been taken outside the Council and because of Security Council sanctions,'' he told CNN.

While diplomatic solutions are preferable, ''they will get sanctions if they choose confrontation,'' Burns said. ''All of us want to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons power. That's the policy of the entire world.''

    U.S.: NATO Has Intercepted Iranian Arms, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Iran-Taliban.html

Gates Wants More Trainers in Afghanistan

June 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:30 a.m. ET
The New York Times

STUTTGART, Germany (AP) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates, still frustrated with NATO's commitment in Afghanistan, will press allies in meetings this week to provide significantly more trainers for the Afghan National Army and police.

Senior U.S. officials en route to Germany with Gates on Wednesday laid out the secretary's expectations for the two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers that will begin Thursday in Brussels. In the nearly six months since the NATO leaders met and promised to fill troop and equipment needs for the Afghan war, there have been only incremental increases.

The U.S. officials said Gates will ''make a pitch'' for countries to send more trainers in an effort to get the Afghan government better able to control its own security.

The officials, who requested anonymity so they could preview the secretary's plans for the session, said coalition forces in Afghanistan still need up to four battalions -- or as many as 3,000 combat troops, along with about an equal amount of trainers. Gates has said he would like some NATO and non-NATO nations to contribute some of the training forces.

In addition, NATO allies are also trying to put together training teams that can be embedded with Afghan units. And those also have been slow to come together.

In February and again in April, Gates exhorted NATO allies to bolster their troop commitments in Afghanistan so the alliance could launch its own offensive against the Taliban, and pre-empt what has been an annual spring increase in insurgent attacks.

That offensive was launched, with the aid of additional U.S. troops. And, during a visit to Afghanistan early this month, Gates said the NATO push was making progress. But he also warned that Iranian weapons -- which have been responsible for widespread violence and U.S. troop casualties in Iraq -- are now increasingly showing up in Afghanistan.

For months, Gates has expressed concern about possible reversals in Afghanistan, which still lacks a self-sustaining military and suffers from the unmet expectations of building an effective central government.

In particular, NATO officials said they have found armor-piercing roadside bombs -- known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs -- in Kabul.

The struggle to pressure NATO countries to live up to their commitments has also prompted Gates to question whether the alliance should continue to mount a 25,000-troop response force.

The NATO response force has been developed as quick reaction troops who could respond to emergencies in the region. But Gates is questioning whether that is an appropriate way to use the hard-to-muster military resources, considering that the allies are having so much trouble coming up with the forces for an ongoing war.

The U.S. currently has 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, including some 14,000 in the NATO-led force.

Another issue likely to come up during the meeting is the ongoing controversy over the U.S. proposal to site missile defense radars and interceptors in eastern Europe. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a recent meeting with President Bush offered up an alternative, that would allow joint use of a radar station in Azerbaijan.

Russia has strenuously opposed U.S. plans to put the missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Gates is expected to meet with the Russian defense minister. And one senior defense official said that while they don't believe the session will provide a great deal of detail on the Russian counterproposal, ''we would be very receptive to any clarification the Russians would have.''

----

On the Net:

Defense Department: http://www.defenselink.mil 

    Gates Wants More Trainers in Afghanistan, NYT, 13.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Gates.html

Gates Cautious About Gains in Afghanistan

June 4, 2007
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI

KABUL, Afghanistan, June 3 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here in the Afghan capital on Sunday, expressing guarded optimism about the progress of the military campaign against a resurgent Taliban.

Evidence is mounting that Taliban fighters are using sophisticated new weaponry, possibly smuggled into the country from Iran. The Taliban have also stepped up the number of suicide attacks aimed at destabilizing Afghanistan’s still fragile government.

Still, American officials say they believe that NATO forces have inflicted significant losses on the Taliban and add that the pace of combat operations and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan — while slow — remains steady.

“I think actually things are slowly, cautiously headed in the right direction,” Mr. Gates told reporters aboard his plane on Sunday. “I’m concerned to keep it moving that way.”

Mr. Gates, who will meet with Afghan government officials and American and NATO commanders on Monday, said one goal for the trip was to ensure that combat operations in Afghanistan were closely coordinated with development and reconstruction efforts carried out by dozens of foreign governments and nongovernmental organizations.

Defense Department officials say they believe that NATO combat operations since the beginning of the year have managed to thwart the Taliban’s much anticipated springtime offensive, preventing Taliban fighters from surrounding and isolating the southern city of Kandahar.

But instead of massing in large numbers against Western forces, the Taliban in recent months have begun a campaign of suicide attacks and roadside bombs — tactics that have been used with deadly effect by Iraqi insurgents.

A total of 75 allied troops died in Afghanistan in the first five months of this year, including 38 Americans, compared with 53 allied troops in the same period a year ago, including 37 Americans. Three more allied deaths have been reported in June, including one American, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks military and civilian casualties.

American military officials in Afghanistan have also said that they have discovered a type of armor-piercing explosive that has killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq, but until recently had never been found inside Afghanistan.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Singapore on Sunday that the sophisticated bombs, called explosively formed projectiles, were evidence that the Taliban were “adapting and learning.”

Bush administration officials have for months accused Iranian operatives of giving the armor-piercing bombs to Shiite militias in Iraq, but say they have yet to find direct evidence that such weapons shipments have the explicit endorsement of the highest levels of Iran’s government.

American intelligence officials say they believe that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard called the Quds Force is making similar arms shipments into Afghanistan to support the Taliban. But they say it is not clear whether the government in Tehran is approving shipments.

The prospect of Iran, a Shiite country, directly aiding the Sunni Taliban is particularly worrying to American officials, because it would demonstrate that Iran was ignoring sectarian considerations in order to undermine American efforts throughout the region.

One senior Defense Department official said Sunday that it was difficult to determine Iran’s overall strategy in Afghanistan, and whether Tehran was covertly supporting the Taliban to undermine the government of President Hamid Karzai.

“They portray themselves as supporters of the Karzai government,” the official said, but “it remains to be seen whether they’re basically trying to play both sides.”

    Gates Cautious About Gains in Afghanistan, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/world/asia/04gates.html

U.S., Afghan Forces Clash With Taliban

May 30, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:39 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces clashed with Taliban militants Wednesday in eastern Afghanistan, leaving six suspected insurgents dead and one wounded, the coalition said.

Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry spokesman rejected the Taliban's call for international Red Cross workers and independent journalists to investigate civilian casualties caused by the insurgency.

''In most cases the civilian deaths or casualties are the result of suicide attacks and bomb explosions,'' Zemeri Bashary said. ''So I think sending a delegation ... for the investigation of civilian casualties from the legal side is not right. It doesn't have any meaning and it is baseless.''

On Tuesday, Taliban leader Mullah Omar said on the group's Web site that the militant group is ''concerned'' about civilian casualties. Omar called for an independent body to investigate them, saying the group should be guaranteed safe passage from Taliban fighters and from U.S. and NATO troops.

Civilian casualties have been on ongoing issue in Afghanistan, sparking demonstrations and a demand from President Hamid Karzai that they stop. Three incidents involving U.S. Special Forces since March left 90 civilians dead, according to numbers from Afghan, U.N. and U.S. officials.

U.S. and NATO officials point out that suicide and roadside bomb attacks from the Taliban kill far more civilians than international or Afghan forces.

Coalition and Afghan forces, acting on intelligence reports, were conducting a raid early Wednesday on a compound suspected of housing Taliban fighters near the eastern city of Jalalabad when they came under fire, the coalition said in a statement.

A brief gunbattle killed six militants and wounded another, it said, adding that no civilians or coalition forces were wounded. Four militants were detained for questioning, the statement said.

Also Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed four policemen and wounded another in the southern province of Uruzgan, provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Qassim Khan said.

And in Kabul, between 200 and 300 demonstrators -- many of them women -- gathered in front of the offices of the United Nations, holding posters and banners and chanting slogans calling for female lawmaker Malalai Joya to be reinstated to her parliament seat.

Lawmakers voted out Joya this month over comments she made comparing parliamentarians to animals. Lawmakers said Joya violated a parliament rule that bars them from criticizing one another.

Joya has repeatedly referred to members of parliament as criminals, warlords and drug lords. Many former commanders involved in factional fighting in the 1980s and 1990s now hold positions in parliament or the administration.

A U.N. spokesman, Aleem Siddique, said the protesters gave the U.N. a petition calling for Joya to be reinstated. The U.N., he said, was not taking sides in the debate but wanted the rule of law and due process to be followed.

Joya, 29, has said she was suspended until the end of parliament's session in 2010, but is waiting for the Supreme Court to make a final decision as to whether her ouster is valid.

    U.S., Afghan Forces Clash With Taliban, NYT, 30.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

2004 Crash in Afghanistan Highlights Gaps in U.S. Control Over Flights

May 28, 2007
The New York Times
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, May 27 — Carrying three soldiers and two pallets of mortar shells through the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, the twin-engine turboprop was on a military mission.

But Flight BW61 from Bagram Air base was technically an air taxi, according to civilian safety officials. That distinction may have contributed to a Nov. 27, 2004, crash that killed everyone on board — and may put at risk thousands of military passengers and thousands of tons of cargo every year by contractors in war zones.

Neither military nor Federal Aviation Administration safety rules were enforced on the flight, which was operated by a subsidiary of Blackwater USA. Standard safeguards — high-altitude oxygen masks and at least one pilot experienced with the terrain — were not observed. And there was no dispatcher to send an alert that the plane was missing, which delayed rescuers’ arrival and possibly compounded the tragedy.

The three-man crew and two of the passengers died on impact, a military investigation found. But a third passenger apparently lived for at least eight hours, long enough to climb out of the plane, smoke a cigarette and unroll two sleeping bags before dying of internal injuries.

The safety lapses emerged in investigations by the military and the National Transportation Safety Board, and in a lawsuit filed by families of the crash victims against Blackwater, which is seeking to have the suit thrown out in federal court.

With two American-flag carriers and three foreign companies performing contract work for the military in Afghanistan, other flights could also be in peril because of gaps in regulation. Though the N.T.S.B. recommended in December that the military and the Federal Aviation Administration coordinate on oversight of flights operated by military contractors, the F.A.A. responded earlier this year that it would not give a progress report for six months.

The Pentagon, though, said Blackwater would begin auditing its own flights in Afghanistan and reporting the results to the government. While the F.A.A. does not fly on the planes in Afghanistan, the Defense Department said government quality-assurance personnel “randomly fly” on them.

Even though Flight BW61 was operating in Afghanistan, the F.A.A. had jurisdiction over it because the agency considered it an American air taxi. The plane, a Spanish-made CASA 212, was operated by Presidential Airways, the Blackwater unit that won a $35 million contract in September 2004 from the Air Mobility Command at the Pentagon. The Pentagon needed small planes to carry cargo and passengers at high altitudes into the rough landing strips typical in Afghanistan.

Families of the victims say that if it had been a military flight, it might not have crashed. The crew’s unfamiliarity with the route is clear from the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder.

“I hope I’m goin’ up the right valley,” said the captain, Noel B. English, according to the transcript. “We’ll see where this leads.”

Mr. English, 37, was an experienced pilot who had done extensive mountain flying in Alaska in the same type of airplane, according to investigators. The co-pilot, Loren D. Hammer, 35, also had substantial experience, and had flown the CASA in smoke-jumping operations.

But they had been in Afghanistan only 13 days. Common military and civilian practice is to pair a pilot who is new to an area with a veteran, experts said. Eventually, the two men flew into a box canyon, essentially a dead end bordered by mountains. Despite excellent daylight weather, they waited too long to begin climbing, which would have allowed them to fly over the mountains, or make a U-turn.

The captain at one point said he did not want to go up to 14,000 feet in the unpressurized plane, but later, with terrain rising, he said, “If we have to go to fourteen for just a second, it won’t be too bad.”

Less than two minutes before impact, evidently still trying to climb, he said urgently: “Come on baby, come on baby, you can make it.” A mechanic, flying in the cockpit and assisting with navigation, said, “You guys are gonna make this, right?”

“Yeah, I’m hopin’,” the captain said.

“Hope we don’t have a downdraft comin’ over that, dude,” the mechanic added, evidently referring to a nearby mountain peak. Such downdrafts are common in the mountains, experts say. “Got a way out?” he asked. “You need to make a decision.”

Seconds later, the plane slammed into the mountain.

Robert F. Spohrer, a lawyer for the families of the dead passengers, argued that if the flight had been operated by the military, better safeguards would have been imposed.

“This was infinitely worse than any armed forces flight would have been,” he said. “It would have had triple redundancy, with checklists,” he said. “In the military, you plan your flight and fly your plan. These guys did neither.”

The flight did not follow some civilian rules, either. The N.T.S.B., for example, concluded that the pilots were not wearing oxygen masks, as air taxi operators are required to do in unpressurized cabins at that altitude.

And no one on the ground tracked the plane from takeoff to landing, as federal civilian safety rules require. The Defense Department has a system for tracking its own planes, and even in areas with poor radio communication, the military takes notice immediately if a flight is overdue.

But no search was begun for Flight BW61 until the plane was overdue for its return to Bagram, about seven hours after the crash; rescue forces spent the first five hours looking in the wrong place. They did not reach the site until the third day, by which time Specialist Harley D. Miller, 21, of Spokane, Wash., had died of his injuries.

The safety lapses have frustrated families of the victims. “It was in the middle of a gray zone,” said Col. Jeanette McMahon, the widow of one of the passengers, Lt. Col. Mike McMahon. Colonel McMahon, like her late husband, is a helicopter pilot.

Blackwater declined to comment for this article. But the company argued to the N.T.S.B. that the safety board had no jurisdiction to investigate the crash because it was a military flight. The safety board did not send anyone to Afghanistan, the company pointed out, but relied on facts gathered by the military search and rescue team. And the military had so botched the fact-gathering phase that no reliable inquiry was possible, Blackwater said.

The company is expected to appeal to the safety board for a reconsideration of its findings.

After the safety board panel recommended that the F.A.A. and the Defense Department coordinate their oversight of such flights, the F.A.A. responded in language as close to arch as the bureaucracy gets. “It is not our practice to send inspectors into areas of military hostilities to conduct en route inspections,” the F.A.A. said in February. “We do not believe that the risk to our personnel can be justified as necessary for the effective accomplishment of our safety mission.”

    2004 Crash in Afghanistan Highlights Gaps in U.S. Control Over Flights, NYT, 28.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/washington/28crash.html

Bush Presses Allies on Afghanistan

May 21, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:01 p.m. ET
The New York Times

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- President Bush said Monday he will press U.S. allies to do more to share the burden and the risks in fighting in Afghanistan as casualties rise with a resurgent Taliban.

''In order for NATO to be effective it has to transform itself into an organization that actually meets the threats that free nations face,'' Bush said as he stood alongside NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

De Hoop agreed, saying, ''Afghanistan is still one of the front lines in our fight against terrorism.''

Bush is banking on NATO support to help quell the violence in Afghanistan. Afghanistan's surging violence, NATO's role in Kosovo and U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe all on Monday's agenda.

''I pledged to the secretary general we'll work with our NATO allies to convince them that they must share more of the burden and must all share the risks in meeting our goal,'' Bush said.

''We also appreciate the fact that Afghanistan requires more than military action. We support a long-term comprehensive strategy to help strengthen Afghanistan's democratic institutions and help create the economic opportunity that will help this young democracy survive and thrive,'' he added.

In Afghanistan, more than 1,600 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to U.S., NATO and Afghan figures. The mounting civilian death toll has fueled distrust of international forces and U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai.

''That front line should not become a fault line,'' de Hoop Scheffer said, adding, ''I know it's tough from time to time.''

Bush said he and the NATO chief also talked about further NATO expansion and missile defense, particularly the importance of reassuring Russian President Vladimir Putin that his country has nothing to fear from a system to intercept and destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

''I will continue to reach out to Russia,'' Bush said. He said it was central for the Russians to ''understand that this missile shield is not directed at them, but, in fact, directed at other nations that could conceivably affect the peace of Europe.''

Both the president and the NATO chief decried the loss of civilian life in Afghanistan.

But, said de Hoop Scheffer, ''We are not in the same moral category as our opponents -- as the Taliban in Afghanistan. We don't behead people. We don't burn schools. We don't kill teachers. We don't plant roadside bombs. We don't send in suicide bombers.''

Said Bush: ''The Taliban likes to surround themselves with innocent civilians. They don't mind using human shields because they devalue human life....We do not have sympathy for the tactics of the Taliban.''

    Bush Presses Allies on Afghanistan, NYT, 21.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghanistan War

May 16, 2007
The New York Times
By JAMES RISEN

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a walled compound outside Kabul, two members of Colombia’s counternarcotics police force are trying to teach raw Afghan recruits how to wage close-quarters combat.

Using wooden mock AK-47 assault rifles, Lt. John Castañeda and Cpl. John Orejuela demonstrate commando tactics to about 20 new members of what is intended to be an elite Afghan drug strike force. The recruits — who American officials say lack even basic law enforcement skills — watch wide-eyed.

“This is kindergarten,” said Vincent Balbo, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration chief in Kabul, whose office is overseeing the training. “It’s Narcotics 101.” Another D.E.A. agent added: “We are at a stage now of telling these recruits, ‘This is a handgun, this is a bullet.’ ”

It is a measure of this country’s virulent opium trade, which has helped revive the Taliban while corroding the credibility of the Afghan government, that American officials hope that Afghanistan’s drug problem will someday be only as bad as that of Colombia.

While the Latin American nation remains the world’s cocaine capital and is still plagued by drug-related violence, American officials argue that decades of American counternarcotics efforts there have at least helped stabilize the country.

“I wanted the Colombians to come here to give the Afghans something to aspire to,” Mr. Balbo said. “To instill the fact that they have been doing this for years, and it has worked.”

To fight a Taliban insurgency flush with drug money for recruits and weapons, the Bush administration recognizes that it must also combat the drug trafficking it had largely ignored for years. But plans to clear poppy fields and pursue major drug figures have been frustrated by corruption in the Afghan government, and derided by critics as belated half-measures or missteps not likely to have much impact.

“There may have been things one could have done earlier on, but at this stage, I think there are relatively limited good options,” said James F. Dobbins, a former State Department official who served as the administration’s special representative on Afghanistan.

Poppy growing is endemic in the countryside, and Afghanistan now produces 92 percent of the world’s opium. But until recently, American officials acknowledge, fighting drugs was considered a distraction from fighting terrorists.

The State Department and Pentagon repeatedly clashed over drug policy, according to current and former officials who were interviewed. Pentagon leaders refused to bomb drug laboratories and often balked at helping other agencies and the Afghan government destroy poppy fields, disrupt opium shipments or capture major traffickers, the officials say.

Some of the officials declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military leaders also played down or dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban, the officials say.

And the C.I.A. and military turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords or political figures they had installed in power, Afghan and American officials say.

Not so long ago, Afghanistan was trumpeted as a success, a country freed from tyranny and Al Qaeda. But as the Taliban’s grip continues to tighten, threatening Afghanistan’s future and the fight against terrorism, Americans and Afghans are increasingly asking what went wrong. To that, some American officials say that failing to disrupt the drug trade was a critical strategic mistake.

“This is the Afghan equivalent of failing to deal with looting in Baghdad,” said Andre D. Hollis, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics. “If you are not dealing with those who are threatened by security and who undermine security, namely drug traffickers, all your other grandiose plans will come to naught.”

Administration officials say they had believed they could eliminate the insurgency first, then tackle the drug trade. “Now people recognize that it’s all related, and it’s one issue,” said Thomas Schweich, the State Department’s coordinator for counternarcotics in Afghanistan. “It’s no longer just a drug problem. It is an economic problem, a political problem and a security problem.”

More American Help

To step up efforts, last fall President Bush privately prodded President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to curb opium production, then vowed publicly in February to provide more help.

While the D.E.A. has imported Colombian trainers in Kabul, United States Justice Department officials are helping build from scratch an Afghan judicial system to deal with drug cases. State Department officials, meanwhile, have helped found the Afghan Eradication Force to wipe out opium poppy crops. The American military is providing logistical support for D.E.A. raids and eradication.

The symbolic heart of the Bush administration’s efforts is a construction site amid tin shanties and junkyards near the Kabul International Airport: a new $8 million Counternarcotics Justice Center. After its scheduled opening in July, the center will be a one-stop shop for drug cases, with two courts, offices for 70 prosecutors and investigators and jail cells for 56 suspects.

But while new Afghan drug prosecutors are charging hundreds of messengers and truck drivers with drug offenses, major dealers, often with ties both to government officials and the Taliban, operate virtually at will.

An American counternarcotics official in Washington said a classified list late last year developed by several United States agencies identified more than 30 important Afghan drug suspects, including at least five government officials. But they are unlikely to be actively sought anytime soon, several American officials caution.

In part, that is because the Afghan drug prosecutors are eager, but their legal skills are weak. “You look at the indictments, and it looks like a sixth grader wrote it,” said Rob Lunnen, a Salt Lake City federal prosecutor assisting the Afghan drug task force.

Another American prosecutor said, “If we try to go after deputy ministerial or ministerial level corruption cases, then you are not going to have a system that can handle it, and they would just get released.”

The few times that influential drug figures have been investigated, the resistance has been intense. In January, for example, the D.E.A. and the Afghan national police arrested two drug suspects in remote Kunduz Province, only to find themselves hauled before the provincial governor as a crowd gathered outside. The drug team had to leave their suspects in custody in Kunduz.

“It’s happened several times that there will be a raid, and a mayor is involved, and nothing happens,” Mr. Lunnen complained. “Every day we feel frustrated.” He added that the Karzai government did not adequately support the Afghan drug task force because it was viewed “as a creation of the West.”

Failing to charge major traffickers feeds Afghans’ skepticism about American intentions, said counternarcotics officials, lawmakers and experts on Afghanistan.

“To Afghans, our counternarcotics policy looks like a policy of rewarding rich traffickers and punishing poor farmers,” Barnett R. Rubin, a New York University professor and an expert on Afghanistan, told a Senate panel in March.

Many Afghans are hostile to opium eradication, saying it deprives farmers of their livelihoods. Mr. Rubin and others say that destroying crops drives villagers into the arms of the Taliban. But the United States has not embraced large-scale aid and employment programs that might deter farmers from planting poppies. Instead, the antidrug teams venture out into the countryside, where some have been killed by suicide bombers and Taliban forces allied with drug lords.

Fearing a backlash from the populace, the Afghan government has rejected American proposals for chemical spraying, permitting only manual eradication. That requires hundreds of men with sticks and tractors — often surrounded by American contractors for protection — to knock down poppy bulbs by hand. It is agonizingly slow and largely ineffective.

So far this year, about 20,000 acres have been destroyed, just a fraction of the record 407,000 acres planted with opium poppy, according to the United Nations. The crop is expected to yield more than 6,500 tons of opium, exceeding global demand. The export value — about $3.1 billion — is equivalent to about half of the legal Afghan economy.

Like the law enforcement efforts, the eradication program is rife with corruption. Farmers know they must offer bribes to avoid having their crops destroyed, American and Afghan drug officials said. It is often only those who lack money or political connections whose fields are singled out.

“I would go out to an eradication site, and we would be driven past miles and miles of poppy fields, and the Afghans would say, ‘You can’t do that field,’ because it belongs to such and such a commander, ‘You can’t do that field, you can’t do this field,’ ” recalled one American counternarcotics official. “Finally, we would arrive at one field where we could set up for eradication, and you had to wonder, why had they chosen this one?”

Gen. Sayed Kamal Sadat, chief of the Afghan national drug counterforce, acknowledges that many officials are for sale.

Opium Used as Currency

“We have security chiefs, police chiefs, who traffic in drugs,” he added. “Traffickers give money to governors to allow cultivation in their areas. So far, I haven’t seen any governor or security commander willing to crack down.” Drug production is now greatest where the Taliban is strongest. In Helmand Province, which the insurgents mostly control, opium is so abundant that blocks of it serve as local currency.

Farmers growing poppies in Taliban-controlled areas pay a tax to the insurgents, who then hire “day fighters.” For their part, drug traffickers pay the Taliban for security. Smugglers who take opium and heroin out of Afghanistan bring weapons and bombs back for the insurgents, officials say.

In Nimruz Province, in southwest Afghanistan, the Taliban demanded that traffickers provide $4,000 a month and a Toyota Land Cruiser to support 10-man fighting units, according to United Nations officials. An Afghan official said Taliban forces were given five Land Cruisers for attacking the Afghan border police so traffickers could move drugs more easily.

The Bush administration was reluctant to take on the drug issue even from the start of the war. Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, military and intelligence analysts turned over to the Pentagon a list of targets linked to Al Qaeda — and its Taliban hosts — inside Afghanistan. It included military targets, as well as drug labs and warehouses, where the Taliban was believed to have stockpiled opium after banning poppy cultivation in 2001.

Destroying the government’s principal source of revenue would help put the Taliban out of business, the analysts figured.

But when the air campaign over Afghanistan began, top military officials removed all drug-related targets, according to one analyst who attended meetings where the bombing raids were discussed.

After the Taliban collapsed in late 2001, farmers began to plant opium across the countryside.

Some warlords and commanders that the C.I.A. and military helped put in power — including tribal figures who had been in exile in Pakistan and others in the American-backed Northern Alliance — quickly began to enrich themselves through drug trafficking, several American officials say.

“At the time of our intervention, there wasn’t an active drug trade going on,” said Mr. Dobbins, the former State Department official. “But some of the people we supported became involved and active as the drug trade took hold.” American officials say that the postwar chaos left them with no choice but to work with militia leaders involved in drug dealing.

“You’ve got to consider the time and the context,” said Craig Chretien, a counternarcotics official at the United States Embassy in Kabul. “D.E.A. wasn’t here. There was no investigative arm to look into any of their activities of these people after whatever cooperation they gave the C.I.A.”

Some Afghans do not share that view. “The C.I.A. should have moved swiftly against those people,” said the Afghan attorney general, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, arguing that ignoring the drug dealing encouraged lawlessness.

Later, though, American officials in several agencies urged taking steps to curb opium cultivation and trafficking, and grew frustrated when nothing happened.

Mr. Rumsfeld opposed any military involvement in counternarcotics operations, several American officials say. Aside from concerns about stirring up resentment by peasants or alienating Afghan officials, the Pentagon viewed fighting drugs as a dangerous diversion from fighting terrorism.

And with a war in Iraq already quietly under discussion, Mr. Rumsfeld and his commanders did not want to commit more forces to Afghanistan.

The Pentagon also argued that countering drugs had always been a law enforcement mission, not a military one. But in war-ravaged Afghanistan, without the assistance of American troops, it was virtually impossible for other agencies to work effectively.

Seizing an Opportunity

The Pentagon’s own counternarcotics office, though, was eager to take on the fight. Soon after the American-led invasion, Mr. Hollis, the former counternarcotics official, raised the matter with top military officials.

“The commanders said we don’t do drugs, we’re just killing terrorists,” Mr. Hollis recalled. “That showed a lack of understanding of the threat. I cared about going after the drug routes. If you could smuggle drugs, you could smuggle weapons and terrorists. It concerned me that if we didn’t go after the drug trade then, we would lose a golden opportunity.”

Later, when Mr. Hollis asked the Defense Intelligence Agency to assess the link between drugs and the Taliban, the agency refused to do so, he said. It was not until the fall of 2004, when both the United Nations and the C.I.A. issued stunning estimates of Afghan opium cultivation, that the White House expressed alarm about the issue.

That November, President Bush met for the first time with his top advisers to discuss the drug strategy. Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, pushed for aggressive measures that had been used in Colombia — aerial spraying, promoting alternative crops, singling out drug labs and disrupting drug shipments.

Mr. Bush seemed willing to adopt the measures, saying he did not want to “waste another American life on a “narco-state,” recalled Bobby Charles, a former State Department counternarcotics official who attended the session. But the president later backed off after lobbying by Mr. Rumsfeld and Zalmay Khalilzad, then the American ambassador in Kabul, according to Mr. Charles.

A spokesman for Mr. Khalilzad, now the American ambassador to the United Nations, said he did not want to discuss his recommendations to the president. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Rumsfeld’s decisions, as did a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld.

D.E.A. officials were also thwarted in their attempts to stem drug corruption. In 2005, D.E.A. agents and their Afghan counterparts found nine tons of opium in the office of Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, the governor of Helmand Province.

But the counternarcotics team was blocked from taking any action against the governor, who had close ties to American and British military, intelligence and diplomatic officials. Mr. Akhundzada, in a recent interview, said he was just storing opium that had been seized as contraband. Eventually, he was forced aside, though he now serves in the Afghan Senate.

The Taliban offensive in the spring of 2006 finally forced military officials and civilian Pentagon officials to drop their opposition to fighting drugs. The resignation of Mr. Rumsfeld, along with prodding by some House Republicans, also contributed to what Mr. Chretien, the counternarcotics official, described as a “sea change” in attitude among defense officials.

In Kabul, the D.E.A. is trying to move ahead, if only in small steps, like training the Afghan drug force. “The Colombians are here to instill the heart of the lion,” said Mr. Balbo, the D.E.A. official. But even that appears daunting.

Recruits for the 125-member National Interdiction Unit lined up in sweatsuits one day in March. Supposedly a handpicked elite, they were a ragtag group as they stretched for their morning jog. Some were young, but many were older and out of shape. During the day, they had trouble keeping up with the Colombians.

“They aren’t used to working long hours, “ said Lieutenant Castañeda, the Colombian counternarcotics officer. Trying to be diplomatic, he added: “I understand that there are cultural challenges that we have to deal with. They have a lot to learn.”

Mr. Balbo counseled patience. Drug wars are long, he said, and there are no quick solutions.

“This is going to take 20 or 30 years,” he said. “D.E.A. has been in Thailand for 40 years. Here, we’re in year two.”

    Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghanistan War, NYT, 16.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/world/asia/16drugs.html?hp

U.S. Soldier Shot to Death in Pakistan

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:26 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Militants opened fire Monday on a convoy carrying U.S. and Pakistani military officials near the Afghan frontier, killing one American and one Pakistani soldier, the Pakistani army spokesman said.

At least two Americans and two Pakistani soldiers and were wounded.

Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said ''miscreants'' -- usually a byword used by Pakistani officials to describe Islamic militants -- fired at the convoy carrying military officials who attended a meeting in the northwestern town of Teri Mangal.

Afghan military officials also attended the talks to discuss recent fighting between Afghan and Pakistani forces that the government in Kabul says has killed at least 13 people inside Afghanistan -- inflaming already poor relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said it could confirm ISAF casualties but not the exact number of injured or killed.

Maj. William Mitchell, a spokesman at the U.S. military base in Bagram, Afghanistan, said officials were trying to verify conflicting reports of violence.

Rahmatullah Rahmat, governor of the Afghan border province of Paktia, said that he, U.S. military advisors and Afghan army leaders traveled by helicopter to Pakistan for the meeting.

He said that after the meeting finished, gunmen opened fire on the group as they were heading toward their helicopters. Rahmat reported two American dead and two wounded.

He said that American soldiers returned fire.

Arshad said that Pakistan has ordered a high-level inquiry into the incident. He denied initial reports from Afghanistan that a Pakistani soldier had opened fire on the American troops.

He had no details on the conditions of the wounded soldiers or their identities. He said the Americans had been shifted to Afghanistan for treatment.

''The latest information that I have got is that one Pakistani soldier died of his wounds, and one American soldier died of his wounds,'' Arshad said.

''Efforts are being made to determine from where the firing came from and who carried it out. The area has been cordoned (off),'' he said.

Islamic militants, including supporters of the Taliban and al-Qaida, are active in the lawless border region.

    U.S. Soldier Shot to Death in Pakistan, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Pakistan-US-Shooting.html

Taliban Leader Omar Says Jihad Continues

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:28 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- The Taliban leader Mullah Omar said the killing of the group's top field commander ''won't create problems'' for the hardline militia, a spokesman said Monday.

Qari Yousef Ahmadi, who claims to speak for the Taliban, told The Associated Press that Omar and other top Taliban leaders offered condolences to Mullah Dadullah's family over the killing by the U.S.-led coalition -- the first Taliban confirmation of Dadullah's killing.

Ahmadi read a statement attributed to Omar insisting that Dadullah's death ''won't create problems for the Taliban's jihad'' and that militants will continue attacks against ''occupying countries.''

Dadullah, a one-legged militant who orchestrated Taliban suicide attacks and beheadings, died of gunshot wounds after a U.S.-led operation over the weekend in the southern province of Helmand. Analysts called the killing the most significant Taliban loss since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Ahmadi said Omar and his council of top Taliban leaders decided against naming an immediate replacement for Dadullah.

''Mullah Dadullah was the commander of all the fighting groups. Now all of the mujahedeen will carry on his same type of jihad. They will carry out attacks just as Mullah Dadullah did in his life,'' Ahmadi quoted Omar as saying.

Ahmadi spoke by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Dadullah was the second top-tier Taliban field commander to die in six months, after a U.S. airstrike killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani in southern Afghanistan in December.

    Taliban Leader Omar Says Jihad Continues, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Commander-Killed.html

Key Taliban Leader Is Killed in Afghanistan in Joint Operation

May 14, 2007
The New York Times
By TAIMOOR SHAH and CARLOTTA GALL

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, May 13 — The man who probably was the Taliban’s foremost operational commander, Mullah Dadullah, was killed in a joint operation by Afghan security forces, American forces and NATO troops in Helmand Province, Governor Asadullah Khaled of the neighboring Kandahar Province said Sunday.

Mullah Dadullah’s body was displayed for journalists on Sunday morning in this southern Afghan city. The NATO force in Afghanistan confirmed his death in a statement issued in Kabul, saying that American troops had led the operation. There were various reports of the actual circumstances and day of the death.

Mullah Dadullah was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, close to the leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, and with links to Al Qaeda, and was probably the most important operational commander.

While the exact number of Taliban fighters or the command structure are not known, military officials say he organized fighters, weapons, supplies and finances across much of southern and southeastern Afghanistan, the centers of the Taliban insurgency. He had been sighted in various places in the last nine months to a year, apparently moving into and out of southern Afghanistan from Pakistan border regions.

His death would cause a “significant blow to the Taliban’s command and control,” said Maj. Chris Belcher, an American military spokesman at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, the capital. He added that Mullah Dadullah “was a military leader, primarily in charge of the effort to recapture the city of Kandahar,” once the Taliban’s stronghold.

The Taliban insurgency swelled in 2006 in an effort to deter NATO troops as they arrived to take over command of southern Afghanistan. Last year the Taliban made a strong effort to gain control of the city of Kandahar, or at least the surrounding area. This year fighting has centered on Helmand Province.

In the last year Mullah Dadullah was known to be traveling in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the Afghan border, and in particular North and South Waziristan, a Pakistan intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of intelligence work. Taliban militants and foreign Qaeda allies have created a virtual Taliban ministate in that area.

Mullah Dadullah is also thought to be responsible for ordering numerous assassinations of clerics, government officials and health and education workers, as well as kidnappings and beheadings, including of foreigners. The intelligence officials said he was responsible for training and sending scores of suicide bombers to Afghanistan. The bombs have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans and dozens of foreigners in the last year and a half.

Military and intelligence officials said his death would be a serious blow to the Taliban, since he had orchestrated many of the insurgents’ operations. Mullah Dadullah is the third member of the 10-member leadership council of the Taliban to be killed in the last six months.

Mullah Dadullah “will most certainly be replaced in time, but the insurgency has received a serious blow,” NATO said in a news release.

Governor Khaled said, “This is a huge loss for the Taliban; it will certainly weaken their activities.” He led journalists to see the body, on the veranda of the governor’s palace. Mullah Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing left leg and thick black beard. He was wounded in the head and left eye and his face and chest were bloodied.

Military officials said they were keeping information about the circumstances of his death to a minimum so as not to jeopardize continuing intelligence operations.

Mullah Dadullah was tracked by a “robust” intelligence operation and had left the sanctuary of a neighboring country just days before and entered Afghanistan, said Maj. John Thomas, a NATO spokesman.

Major Belcher said Mullah Dadullah was killed in the Garmser district of Helmand, on the route in from Pakistan, south of the town of Lashkar Gah. Taliban fighters have moved frequently across the border, and the southern part of Helmand is a vital supply route for Taliban militants fighting in Helmand.

One official in the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter, said the operation in which Mullah Dadullah was killed was a helicopter-borne assault by American troops who were dropped in and engaged him and his men in a firefight. The bodies were later given to the Afghans, he said.

The operation began Friday night, based on intelligence, and the American forces knew Mullah Dadullah was at the location. “It was swift and short commando operation,” the official said. Either Mullah Dadullah had been lured to a meeting or someone had betrayed him, he said.

Major Belcher said he was killed by small-arms fire.

The Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said at a news conference that the Taliban commander was found among 11 bodies of Taliban fighters at the end of heavy fighting in Sarwan Qala in northeastern Helmand, an area where fighting this week killed at least 21 civilians. Residents reported a far higher death toll at the time.

Mullah Dadullah was a member of the nomadic Kuchi tribe, who move across Afghanistan with the seasons with their camels, sheep and goats. Villagers in one of the most remote areas of Afghanistan, Char Chine in Oruzgan Province, said he used to pitch his tent on a hill there. A longtime fighter and senior commander of the Taliban, he fought on the front lines as the Taliban seized control of much of the country in the 1990s.

Human rights groups have said he was responsible for killing numerous civilians during a campaign in the mid-90s in the central Afghanistan province of Bamian, peopled mostly by Shiite Muslims who were resisting the Taliban advance.

In 2001, he was fighting in northern Afghanistan and became trapped with thousands of Taliban fighters in the city of Kunduz when the United States began its campaign against the Taliban government. He agreed to surrender, along with the senior Taliban military commander in the north, Mullah Fazel, and drove out to meet with the Northern Alliance commander, Abdul Rashid Dostum in December 2001 in Mazar-i-Sharif.

But while Mullah Fazel arranged the surrender of thousands of other foreign and Afghan fighters, Mullah Dadullah escaped. He later told the BBC that he had paid a large amount of money to a Northern Alliance commander and escaped into the mountains, crossing the length of Afghanistan to reach the Taliban heartland in southern Afghanistan.

He is thought to have taken refuge in Pakistan for the next few years, and as the Taliban re-emerged as a fighting force in 2005 he began to give interviews to selected journalists, including television interviews, and released propaganda videos vowing to send waves of suicide bombers and fighters into Afghanistan to overthrow the government.

There had been reports over the years that he had been captured, but they turned out to be unfounded.

The Kandahar governor said people could now live more peacefully with Mullah Dadullah gone. “The people have now been rescued from the cruelty of this wild butcher,” he told the journalists.

Bin Laden Alive, Afghan Rebel Says

DUBAI, May 13 (Reuters) — An anti-American Afghan rebel leader said in a video broadcast Sunday that he had information that Osama bin Laden was alive but keeping a low profile by not issuing statements.

“Based on information I have, I believe Osama is alive,” said Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose forces operate in southeastern Afghanistan near Pakistan, in the undated video broadcast on Al Arabiya television. His remarks were dubbed into Arabic.

Mr. Hekmatyar said he believed “that it is wise that no statements or tapes are issued even after a long while.”

Mr. Hekmatyar, a former Afghan prime minister, is on an American wanted list and leads an insurgency separate from the Taliban movement. He said in January that fighters loyal to his group had helped Mr. bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, escape an American effort to capture them in eastern Afghanistan in late 2001.

Taimoor Shah reported from Kandahar, and Carlotta Gall from Kabul, Afghanistan.

    Key Taliban Leader Is Killed in Afghanistan in Joint Operation, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/world/asia/14afghan.html

Officials: Taliban Commander Killed

May 13, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:32 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's most prominent military commander, was killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan with Afghan and NATO troops, officials said Sunday.

Dadullah, a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was killed Saturday in the southern province of Helmand, said Said Ansari, the spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence service.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force did not confirm the death.

''It certainly is an issue that we're tracking,'' said spokesman Maj. John Thomas. ''But it's not our issue, it's an Afghan issue.''

Dadullah would be one of the highest-ranking Taliban leaders to be killed since the fall of the hardline regime following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and his death would represent a major victory for the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO troops.

Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid said Dadullah, who had only one leg, died during an operation by U.S.-led coalition, NATO and Afghan troops.

''Mullah Dadullah was the backbone of the Taliban,'' Khalid said. ''He was a brutal and cruel commander who killed and beheaded Afghan civilians.''

Khalid showed Dadullah's body to reporters at a news conference in the governor's compound. An Associated Press reporter said the body, which was lying on a bed and dressed in a traditional Afghan robe, had no left leg and three bullet wounds: one to the back of the head and two to the stomach.

The AP reporter said the body appeared to be Dadullah's based on his appearance in TV interviews and Taliban propaganda videos.

But Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, denied that the Taliban commander had been killed.

''Mullah Dadullah is alive,'' Ahmadi told AP by satellite phone. He did not give further details.

A second intelligence service official said Dadullah was killed near the Sangin and Nahri Sarraj districts of Helmand province, which have seen heavy fighting involving British and Afghan troops and U.S. Special Forces. The official was not authorized to give his name.

In December, a U.S. airstrike near the Pakistan border killed another top Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani. Dadullah, Osmani and policy-maker Mullah Obaidullah had been considered to be Omar's top three leaders.

Dadullah, who comes from the southern province of Uruzgan, lost a leg fighting against the Soviet army that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s. He emerged as a Taliban commander during its fight against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan during the 1990s, helping the hardline militia to capture the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Since the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, Dadullah emerged as probably the militant group's most prominent and feared commander. He often featured in videos and media interviews, and earlier this year predicted a massive militant spring offensive that has failed to materialize.

In an interview shown on Al-Jazeera on April 25, Dadullah claimed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was behind the February attack outside a U.S. military base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney -- although the U.S. military this month claimed a Libyan al-Qaida operative, Abu Laith al-Libi, not bin Laden, was behind it.

Dadullah insisted bin Laden was alive and well. ''Thank God he is alive. We get updated information about him. Thank God he planned operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan,'' he told Al-Jazeera in excerpts that were translated into Arabic.

The interview was not the first time in recent months that Dadullah has said bin Laden is alive. On March 1, London television Channel 4 aired an interview in which he said the al-Qaida leader was in contact with Taliban officers. The station did not say when the tape was made.

    Officials: Taliban Commander Killed, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Commander-Killed.html

Top Taliban Commander Is Killed in Clash

May 13, 2007
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Sunday, May 13 — Afghan government officials showed the body of Mullah Dadullah, the top operational commander for the Taliban insurgency, to reporters here Sunday morning, saying he had been killed in a joint operation of Afghan and coalition forces.

Mr. Dadullah, an amputee, was recognizable in part from his missing leg and black beard. He had been shot in the head and in the stomach.

He was one of the most wanted Taliban leaders, responsible for numerous assassinations, beheadings and terrorist campaigns, and was thought to be behind many of the suicide bombings that have killed or wounded hundreds of Afghans in the last year and a half.

He was seen as probably the most important operational commander, organizing groups of fighters, weapons supplies and finances across much of the south and southeast of Afghanistan.

    Top Taliban Commander Is Killed in Clash, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/world/asia/13taliban.html?hp

Civilian Deaths Undermine War on Taliban

May 13, 2007
The New York Times
By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID E. SANGER

ZERKOH, Afghanistan, May 9 — Scores of civilian deaths over the past months from heavy American and allied reliance on airstrikes to battle Taliban insurgents are threatening popular support for the Afghan government and creating severe strains within the NATO alliance.

Afghan, American and other foreign officials say they worry about the political toll the civilian deaths are exacting on President Hamid Karzai, who last week issued another harsh condemnation of the American and NATO tactics, and even of the entire international effort here.

What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war. Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

The civilian deaths are also exposing tensions between American commanders and commanders from other NATO countries, who have never fully agreed on the strategy to fight the war here, in a country where there are no clear battle lines between civilians and Taliban insurgents.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, military commanders and diplomats alike fear that divisions within the coalition and the loss of support among Afghans could undermine what until now was considered a successful spring, one in which NATO launched a broad offensive but the Taliban did not.

“There is absolutely no question that the will and support of the Afghan people is vitally important to what we do here,” Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the American commander of the International Security Assistance Force, said in an interview. “We are their guests, they are the hosts. We have to be mindful of their culture, we have to operate in the context of their culture, and we have to take every possible precaution to not cause undue risk to those around us, and to their property.”

But American officials say that they have been forced to use air power more intensively as they have spread their reach throughout Afghanistan, raiding Taliban strongholds that had gone untouched for six years. One senior NATO official said that “without air, we’d need hundreds of thousands of troops” in the country. They also contend that the key to reducing casualties is training more Afghan Army soldiers and police officers.

The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials — and suggested just how badly things could go astray in an unfamiliar land where cultural misunderstandings quickly turn violent.

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned. “If they come again, we will stand against them, and we will raise the whole area against them,” he warned. Or in the words of one foreign official in Afghanistan, the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more.

On Tuesday, barely 24 hours after American officials apologized publicly to President Karzai for a previous incident in which 19 civilians were shot by marines in eastern Afghanistan, reports surfaced of at least 21 civilians killed in an airstrike in Helmand Province, though residents reached by phone said the toll could be as high as 80.

While NATO is now in overall command of the military operations in the country, many of the most serious episodes of civilian deaths have involved United States counterterrorism and Special Operations forces that operate separately from the NATO command.

NATO, which now has 35,000 soldiers in the country, has emphasized its concern about keeping civilian casualties to a minimum. Yet NATO, too, has been responsible for civilian casualties over the past year, as it has relied on air power to compensate for a shortage of troops, an American military official who has served in Afghanistan said in a recent interview.

The subject of civilian casualties was the source of intense discussion on Wednesday in Brussels when the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, met with the North Atlantic Council, the top representatives of the coalition. But the conversation was less about how to reduce casualties, according to participants, than about how to explain them to European governments, who say their troops are there for reconstruction, not hunting the Taliban or terrorists.

“The Europeans are worried about a lack of clarity about who is responsible for the counterterror mission,” said one participant in the debate. “They are worried that if NATO appears responsible for these casualties, it will result in a loss of support” for keeping forces in Afghanistan.

But it is not only the Americans whose practices are being questioned. NATO soldiers have frequently fired on civilians on the roads, often because the Afghans drive too close to military convoys or checkpoints.

The public mood hardened against foreign forces in the southern city of Kandahar after British troops fired on civilians while driving through the streets after a suicide bombing last year, and Canadian soldiers have repeatedly killed and wounded civilians while on patrol in civilian areas.

Air Power and Popular Anger

The reliance on air power has led to a string of prominent episodes recently involving the deaths of large numbers of civilians, who often cannot escape, caught between NATO forces and the Taliban and its sympathizers.

Since the beginning of March at least 132 civilians have been killed in at least six bombings or shootings, according to officials. The actual number of civilians killed is probably higher, since the areas of heaviest fighting, like the southern province of Helmand, are too unsafe for travel and many deaths go unreported and cannot be verified.

“You have a bag of capital — that is the good will of the people — and you want to spend that as slow as you could,” said the American military official. “We are spending it at a fearsome rate.”

The issue of civilian casualties has dogged United States-led coalition forces from the beginning of their intervention here in 2001. But as the Taliban surged in strength in 2006, civilians have been caught in the middle more than before, and at a time when Afghans have grown weary of the fighting, said Dr. Sima Samar, director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

“If we still have civilian casualties, it can be used by the opposition groups to the government to encourage the people against the government and against the international community,” Dr. Samar said at a recent news conference. “That’s why we are concerned, and we ask the international community and the Afghan government to be very, very careful.”

Now in Afghanistan, calls are growing for more political control over military operations.

This week Afghan’s upper house of Parliament recommended that the government start peace talks with the Taliban, and that foreign forces cease all offensive operations. While the chances of passage as worded are unlikely, the proposal was one measure of the rising popular anger.

The episode here in this valley in Shindand district in late April showed just how changeable the attitudes toward foreign troops can be.

The ethnic Pashtuns who live in the Zerkoh Valley are from a fiercely independent tribe, surrounded by local enemies, and with a record of fighting all comers. Still, NATO and United States soldiers were a common — even friendly — sight in this valley in western Afghanistan. They came and talked to the tribal leaders, built schools and culverts, and had plans for a new bridge.

A senior Bush administration official said American Special Forces units were conducting an operation in the valley in late April. After the Taliban pinned them down in a firefight, the airstrike was necessary, the military official said. “It was the only way to extract our guys,” the official said.

“If your mortars are not getting you out, you call in close air support and that will be less precise,” said one senior American official who follows the action in Afghanistan closely. “We know that the Taliban hide in villages. The job that we have not done as well is making it clear to European publics that it’s the Taliban who are exploiting the civilians.”

A Complicated Environment

But the Americans had stepped into a complicated political environment. In interviews, villagers, who had cooperated with NATO before, blamed local rivals for planting false information with the Americans, to encourage the Americans to attack Zerkoh.

After the Special Forces units started raiding homes, the villagers were so angered, they said, they fought the Americans themselves. They insisted that no Taliban were here, an area that has been mostly calm.

“NATO was coming regularly, and the Afghan Army and police, and we were cooperating with them,” said Muhammad Alef, 35, a farmer who was tending to his wounded cousin in the provincial hospital in the city of Herat.

“But when the Americans came without permission, and they came more than once and disturbed the people,” he said. “They searched the houses, and the second time they arrested people, and the third time the people got angry and fought them.”

The American forces searched the tribal chief’s house and arrested two of his staff members, the villagers said. One, a watchman named only Bahadullah, 45, said he had been handcuffed, covered with a hood and taken to the nearby American base at Shindand.

He said he had been strung up by his feet for what seemed like an hour and a half as American soldiers swung him about. When he was let down the soldiers kicked and beat him, he said. In an interview this week, he said he was still passing blood and in pain from the beatings.

A United States military spokesman at Bagram air base north of Kabul, Maj. Chris Belcher, denied in an e-mail message that Afghan or American Special Forces units had entered the villages or detained anyone.

The American forces did not find any weapons caches in the Shindand area, either, he said. They were attacked with small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar shells, he said.

A senior American military official who has looked at what happened in Zerkoh said that some compounds were bombed but added that the troops were receiving fire from them.

But a villager, Abdul Waheed, said the Americans had searched his family compound and found no weapons and certainly must have seen the women and children. Two days later they bombed the compound, killing six children, he said.

“The Americans should leave Afghanistan because this is my own home,” he said. “I am sitting here and they come and just order a bomb to drop.”

Whether there was firing from the compound or not, the military official said tactics needed to be reviewed. “We just have to go over each one of these, one by one, and say even if this was within the rules, is this what we want to do next time,” the official said.

Villagers said the first fighting broke out on April 27, as they had gathered at the bazaar in the central village of Parmakan. Two old men, Adel Shah, 80, who was walking home with some meat and sugar for his family, and Sarwar, 80, who was harvesting poppies, were shot dead by the Americans, said Abdul Zaher, Mr. Shah’s son.

A Village Under Fire

That night, the first airstrikes were carried out, mainly on Bakhtabad, the village at the entrance to the valley, residents said. On April 29, the Americans returned, positioning their armored vehicles outside Parmakan.

Villagers said they thought the Americans were going to raid houses again, and the men gathered to fight. Husi, 35, lives in a house near the school and on the edge of the village. She was alone with her 10 children, and when the shooting started they cowered at the entrance of their walled home, she said.

Then suddenly a plane bombed the five-room house. “When they bombed I just ran,” she recalled as she held her 1-year-old boy. Women and children were pouring out of the village to the river to cross it to safety, she said.

In the panic as they fled, Husi was separated from three of her children, Amina, 8, Tote, 5, and Fazli, 3, who are still missing.

“We ran with bare feet, we left our shoes,” said Sara, a relative and the mother of seven, whose house was also bombed. “I was running and they were shooting at us from the plane,” she said.

Two uncles and two cousins were killed when the house was bombed, she said. “We have nothing, it’s all finished,” she said.

The river was chest-high at the time, and a number of women and children were swept away. Fifty-seven people died over all, including 17 children under 10, 10 women and 14 old men, Hajji Daulat Khan said. Eight people are still missing, including a 21-year-old man, and Husi’s three children.

The bombing of the village so outraged people that they continued fighting the Americans even after the airstrikes. American and Afghan military officials admitted that they had been surprised at the ferocity of the response, and said that at one point American soldiers had been forced to call in the Afghan Army.

“We are not saying that the foreigners should leave or stay, we are just saying they should not do this,” said a farmer, Fateh Muhammad, 55, gesturing with his scythe at an enormous bomb crater and his neighbor’s collapsed house. He showed the place where two of his neighbors had been killed in a field nearby.

The airstrikes damaged about 100 homes and a new school built by Italian troops.

“This is a big mistake the Americans are making,” said Nasrullah Khan, a younger brother of the tribal chief, Hajji Daulat Khan. “If the Americans are here for peace, this is not the way.”

Carlotta Gall reported from Zerkoh, and David E. Sanger from Brussels. Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Zerkoh, and Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul.

    Civilian Deaths Undermine War on Taliban, NYT, 13.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/world/asia/13AFGHAN.html?hp

U.S. military confirms Afghan civilian casualties

Fri May 11, 2007
3:38AM EDT
Reuters
By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S.-led coalition confirmed there were civilian casualties during fighting with Taliban guerrillas in southern Afghanistan, after witnesses said an air strike killed more than 40 villagers there earlier this week.

"There are confirmed reports of civilian casualties; however, it is unknown at this time how many..." the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement received on Friday.

Coalition forces treated up to 20 villagers wounded during a 16-hour battle that also involved Afghan army troops in Sangin district of Helmand province on Tuesday, the statement said.

One boy died of his wounds after being evacuated by coalition troops, it said.

Afghan and coalition forces estimate a significant number of Taliban, including a high ranking militant commander, were killed in the battle, the statement added.

Provincial governor Assadullah Wafa said earlier this week that 21 civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike carried out by Western forces and he had no reports of Taliban casualties.

Witnesses put the civilian death toll at more than 40 and say the Taliban were not there.

Western forces mounted a large operation against Taliban fighters in Sangin in recent weeks. The district is also a centre of opium production.

Even prior to the latest casualties, scores of civilians have been killed by Western forces in the last two weeks.

With anger already rising among Afghans over the mounting toll, Sangin's residents have called on President Hamid Karzai to come and see for himself how they have suffered.

Karzai has repeatedly urged foreign troops to avoid civilian casualties while hunting militants, to stop searching people's houses, and to coordinate attacks with his government.

Last week, Karzai said the patience of Afghans was running out. On Tuesday, a U.S. military commander apologized for the deaths of 19 civilians, killed by U.S. troops in eastern Afghanistan in March.

    U.S. military confirms Afghan civilian casualties, R, 11.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSISL1280220070511

US-led raid kills 40 civilians in Afghanistan: witnesses

Thu May 10, 2007
5:08AM EDT
Reuters
By Saeed Ali Achakzai

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan (Reuters) - At least 40 civilians were killed in an air strike in Afghanistan by foreign forces, witnesses said on Thursday, but the U.S.-led coalition said only rebels were hit and it knew of no other casualties.

The deaths on Tuesday in the southern province of Helmand, if confirmed, would raise the civilian toll at the hands of foreign troops to 110 in the past two weeks.

"Foreign troops are killing Afghans every day, but our government has closed its eyes and does not see our casualties," local resident Haji Ibrahim said.

Helmand governor, Assadullah Wafa, said earlier 21 civilians, including women and children, were killed in Tuesday's air strike in Sangin district -- a major opium-growing area and the scene of a large anti-Taliban operation by foreign troops.

The U.S.-led coalition said its troops and Afghan soldiers on patrol in the area had come under fire on Tuesday and there were no reported injuries to any civilians.

"During the 16-hour battle, Afghan National Army and coalition forces fought through three separate enemy ambush sites while dozens of Taliban fighters ... reinforced enemy positions," the coalition said in a statement.

It estimated 200 Taliban fighters were involved in the clash, in which one coalition soldier died, and said the air strikes destroyed three rebel compounds and an underground tunnel network.

Governor Wafa said the Taliban hid in civilian homes during the air strike and that they must take responsibility for the deaths.

Residents disputed that Taliban fighters were involved. "There were no Taliban in our area," Mohammad Rahim, a resident of Sangin, told Reuters by phone, adding he had seen 24 bodies in three houses.

One resident said President Hamid Karzai should travel to Sangin and see for himself the civilian casualties.

Civilian deaths are a growing issue for Karzai who is also under pressure over the country's slow economic recovery and rampant corruption since the Taliban's overthrow in 2001.

Karzai has repeatedly urged the troops to avoid civilian casualties while hunting militants, to stop searching people's houses and to coordinate attacks with his government.

Last week, Karzai said the patience of Afghans was running out over civilian killings by foreign troops.

Irate Afghans in the east and west, the scenes of last month's operations by coalition forces, have protested against civilian casualties reported by Afghan officials, and demanded the withdrawal of foreign forces and Karzai's resignation.

A U.S. military commander on Tuesday apologized for the deaths of 19 civilians in the east. They were killed by U.S. troops early last month.

    US-led raid kills 40 civilians in Afghanistan: witnesses, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSISL30500820070510

Airstrike Kills 21 Civilians, Afghan Official Says

May 9, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:31 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Airstrikes called in by U.S. Special Forces soldiers fighting with insurgents in southern Afghanistan killed at least 21 civilians, officials said Wednesday. One coalition soldier was also killed.

Helmand provincial Gov. Assadullah Wafa said Taliban fighters sought shelter in villagers' homes during the fighting in the Sangin district Tuesday evening, and that subsequent airstrikes killed 21 civilians, including several women and children.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly said more must be done to prevent civilian casualties during military operations. He warned last week, after reports that 51 civilians were killed in the west, that Afghanistan ''can no longer accept civilian casualties they way they occur.''

The U.S.-led coalition said militants fired guns, rocket propelled grenades and mortars at U.S. Special Forces and Afghan soldiers on patrol 15 miles north of Sangin.

Maj. William Mitchell, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said troops killed a ''significant'' number of militants.

''We don't have any report of civilian casualties. There are enemy casualties -- I think the number is significant,'' Mitchell said without releasing an exact figure.

A resident of the area, Mohammad Asif, said five homes in the village of Soro were bombed during the battle, killing 38 people and wounding more than 20. He said Western troops and Afghan forces had blocked people from entering the area.

Death tolls in remote battle sites in Afghanistan are impossible to verify. Taliban fighters often seek shelter in Afghan homes, leading to civilian casualties, and it is often difficult to determine if people killed in such airstrikes were militants or civilians.

The battle left one coalition soldier dead, the U.S. military said. The military did not release the soldier's nationality, but it was likely an American Special Forces soldier.

Sangin, a militant hotbed in the heart of Afghanistan's biggest opium poppy region, has been the site of heavy fighting in recent weeks.

The soldier's death brings to 48 the number of NATO or coalition soldiers who have died in Afghanistan this year.

The report of civilian casualties comes less than a week after Afghan officials said that 51 civilians were killed in the western province of Herat.

It also comes one day after the U.S. military apologized and paid compensation to the families of 19 people killed and 50 wounded by U.S. Marines Special Forces who fired indiscriminately on civilians after being hit by a suicide attack in eastern Afghanistan in March.

Afghanistan's upper house of parliament on Tuesday passed a bill calling for a halt to all international military operations unless coordinated with the Afghan government, action seen as a rebuke of the international mission here.

    Airstrike Kills 21 Civilians, Afghan Official Says, NYT, 9.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Violence.html?hp

U.S. Pays and Apologizes to Kin of Afghans Killed

May 9, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, May 8 — An Army commander apologized and paid compensation on Tuesday to families of Afghan civilians killed by marines after a suicide attack in March, in the first formal acknowledgment by the American authorities that the killings were unjustified.

Col. John Nicholson, an Army brigade commander in eastern Afghanistan, met Tuesday with the families of the 19 Afghans killed and 50 wounded when a Marine Special Operations unit opened fire on a crowded stretch of road near Jalalabad after a suicide bomber in a vehicle rammed their convoy.

“I stand before you today, deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry that Americans have killed and wounded innocent Afghan people,” Colonel Nicholson said, recounting to reporters the words he had used in the meetings. In a videoconference to reporters at the Pentagon, he added, “We made official apologies on the part of the U.S. government” and paid $2,000 for each death.

The incident is already the subject of a criminal investigation by the Pentagon. But the decision to issue a public apology now reflects the military’s growing concern that recent civilian casualties have led to widespread ill will among Afghans and could jeopardize military operations.

“Any time we’re responsible for the loss of innocent life, we understand that that hurts our ability to accomplish the mission,” Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Tuesday.

The American military considers offering payments to relatives of victims vital in allaying anger among civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the military regularly makes payments when it kills noncombatants.

Such payments are sometimes accompanied by statements saying that the military is not acknowledging that its soldiers acted improperly. But in this case, Colonel Nicholson went further than usual in acknowledging that the civilians were “innocent Afghans.”

“This is a terrible, terrible mistake, and my nation grieves with you for your loss and suffering,” he said in his statement to the families. “We humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness.”

The company commander and the senior enlisted member from the unit involved in the incident were relieved of duty last month. With six other marines involved, they were returned to Camp Lejeune, N.C., until the investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigation Service is completed, said Maj. Cliff W. Gilmore, a spokesman for the Marine Special Operations Command.

Criminal charges could be brought against at least five marines involved, a Marine official has said.

Anger among Afghans at American tactics has seemed to intensify since the March 4 incident. After an incident this month in western Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai warned at a news conference that continuing civilian casualties would not be tolerated.

Afghan officials assert that, in the May incident, dozens of civilians were killed after a joint American and Afghan Army patrol was ambushed near Shindand and called in airstrikes. About 40 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 50 were wounded in the attacks, officials from Herat Province have told reporters.

The American military last weekend said more than 10 Taliban commanders had been among those killed in the fighting around Shindand, though it did not identify them. But the command has also said that it is investigating with Afghan officials reports that civilians were among the casualties.

Hundreds of Afghans protested after the killings involving member of the marines in March. In response, Maj. Gen. Francis H. Kearney III of the Army, the commander of Special Operations troops in the Middle East and Central Asia, ordered the unit out of Afghanistan after concluding that the killings had damaged the unit’s ability to be effective.

Colonel Nicholson said the Army made extensive efforts to find anyone who might have been wounded on the crowded highway or relatives, including those not from the area.

    U.S. Pays and Apologizes to Kin of Afghans Killed, NYT, 9.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/world/asia/09afghan.html?hp

Two U.S. soldiers shot dead at Afghan prison

Mon May 7, 2007
10:59AM EDT
Reuters
By Rodney Joyce

KABUL (Reuters) - A rogue Afghan soldier shot dead two U.S. soldiers at the high-security Pul-i-Charkhi prison on the eastern outskirts of Kabul, the U.S. military said.

The Taliban said it was behind the shooting, saying the attacker was one of its fighters who had infiltrated the Afghan army.

The soldier shot at vehicles leaving the prison on Sunday, and was then shot by other Afghan soldiers at the jail, U.S. coalition forces said in a statement.

It said two American soldiers were wounded in the attack while the Taliban said six were killed.

"A large number of our Taliban mujahid (holy warriors) have infiltrated the U.S.-puppet Afghan government to find good targets," Taliban commander Mullah Hayatallah Khan told Reuters by satellite phone from an undisclosed location.

"It was our mujahid and we plan more attacks."

The dead soldiers were military trainers working with Afghans at Pul-i-Charkhi prison, which is being upgraded by U.S. forces to house suspected Taliban prisoners being returned from U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Guantanamo in Cuba.

"We're helping build the facility and we're helping to train the guard force," U.S. military spokesman Major Sheldon Smith said.

The first 12 U.S.-held Taliban were returned to Afghan authorities last month, to be held in a newly refurbished wing.

Pul-i-Charkhi has been notorious since the 1970s when a hardline communist regime threw large numbers of military rivals, clergy and other political prisoners into the jail, with executions held daily.

Since 2001, Taliban prisoners captured by Afghan forces have staged at least two revolts at the prison and several have escaped.

The prison also holds Jonathan "Jack" Idema, an American jailed in 2004 for running a private jail and illegally detaining and torturing people in a freelance hunt for Osama bin Laden. Two others convicted in that case have been released.

In other violence on Monday, a rocket blast outside a house in Kabul killed a young man and wounded five people, including two children, witnesses said.

(Additional reporting by Saeed Ali Achakzai in Spin Baldock)

    Two U.S. soldiers shot dead at Afghan prison, R, 7.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSSP21600420070507

Afghans Say U.S. Bombing Killed 42 Civilians

May 3, 2007
The New York Times
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 2 — Aerial bombing of a valley in western Afghanistan several days ago by the American military killed at least 42 civilians, including women and children, and wounded 50 more, an Afghan government investigation found Wednesday. A provincial council member who visited the site independently put the figure at 50 civilians killed.

President Hamid Karzai said at a news conference in Kabul that the Afghan people could no longer tolerate such casualties. “Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties,” he said. “It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore.”

There have been several episodes recently in which civilians have been killed and foreign forces have been accused of indiscriminate or excessive force. That has prompted Afghan officials to warn that the good will of the Afghan people toward the government and the foreign military presence is wearing thin.

The government delegation reported that three villages were bombed last week in the Zerkoh Valley, 30 miles south of the western city of Herat, and 100 houses were destroyed and 1,600 people were now homeless, Farzana Ahmadi, a spokeswoman for the governor of Herat Province, said by telephone.

“The report says that some women and children were drowned in the river, and it was maybe in the heat of the moment that the children and people wanted to escape and jumped into the water,” she said. “This all happened just because of a lack of coordination between international forces and our forces.”

A provincial council member from Herat, Naik Muhammad Eshaq, who went to the area independently, said he had visited the three bombing sites and produced a list of 50 people who had died, including infants and other children under age 10. People were still digging bodies out of the rubble of their mud-walled homes on Tuesday afternoon, he said.

American Special Operations forces conducted raids in the area on Friday and Sunday, and on both occasions they called in airstrikes when they encountered armed resistance, the military said. It said in a statement that it had killed 136 Taliban fighters, including some who were trying to flee across the river.

In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Jeremy Martin, said, “We’re aware of the allegations, but we don’t have any information through operational channels to confirm the latest incident.” He added, “We take all measures possible to limit civilian casualties.”

Villagers held protests over the bombing in the nearby district town of Shindand on Monday and set fire to government offices.

Ms. Ahmadi, the Herat spokeswoman, said all 42 dead counted by the government delegation were civilians. She said the government was continuing its investigation to see if enemy fighters had also been killed.

Mr. Eshaq, the council member, said villagers were adamant that there had been no Taliban fighters in the area. “I could not find any military men,” he said.

Mr. Karzai accused American and NATO forces of failing to coordinate with the Afghan authorities.

“I have worked personally in the past four years, almost on a monthly and weekly basis, with the international community to bring some sort of coordination and cooperation to such raids on homes and on villages,” he said. “Unfortunately that cooperation and coordination, as we tried it, has not given us the results that we want, so we are not happy about that and we can no longer accept the civilian casualties the way they are occurring.

“We are very sorry when the international coalition force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured,” he said. “It pains us. But Afghans are human beings, too.”

Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, and Carlotta Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan. David S. Cloud contributed reporting from Washington.

    Afghans Say U.S. Bombing Killed 42 Civilians, NYT, 3.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp

Irate Afghans protest again over civilian deaths

Wed May 2, 2007
1:57AM EDT
Reuters

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghans protested for a fourth day on Wednesday over the killing of civilians by U.S.-led coalition forces hunting Taliban, adding to pressure on Western-backed President Hamid Karzai amid rising violence.

Some 2,000 university students chanted anti-U.S. and anti-Karzai slogans in the eastern province of Nangahar, where up to six civilians died on Sunday.

Protests have also been seen in Herat province, near the Iranian border in the west, where the police chief said 30 civilians had been killed in recent days by U.S.-led forces.

The students blocked the main highway between the capital, Kabul, to Pakistan, to protest the second killing of civilians by Western troops in Nangahar in less than two months.

Scores of police were stationed to control the crowd.

Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for Karzai and the foreign troops in the face of an upsurge in attacks by the Taliban in what is seen as a crunch year for all sides in the conflict.

Scores of civilians have died, most due to suicide bombings and other attacks by the Taliban, but a significant number also due to action by foreign forces.

Karzai has repeatedly urged Western troops to exercise caution to avoid civilian casualties, but protestors say he is ineffective and should go.

In Herat, protests erupted over the weekend after U.S. officials said more than 130 Taliban had been killed in several days of ground and air attacks.

Provincial authorities rejected the coalition figure and police chief Sayed Shafiq Fazli said 30 civilians were among the dead.

Neighbors of the dead in Nangarhar and officials said those killed on Sunday were civilians, including three women.

The U.S. military said four Taliban fighters were killed and a woman and a teenage girl died after being caught in crossfire.

The deaths in Nangarhar follow the killing in early March of nearly a dozen civilians by U.S. Marines, who opened fire after their convoy was attacked by a suicide car-bomber.

More than 4,000 people, including 1,000 civilians, died last year in the worst fighting since the Taliban were ousted in 2001.

    Irate Afghans protest again over civilian deaths, R, 2.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSISL14736120070502

Lawmakers Open Hearing on Tillman and Lynch

April 24, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pat Tillman's brother accused the military Tuesday of ''intentional falsehoods'' and ''deliberate and careful misrepresentations'' in portraying the football star's death in Afghanistan as the result of heroic engagement with the enemy instead of friendly fire.

''We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public,'' Kevin Tillman told a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. ''Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide,'' he said.

''Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster in a month of political disasters ... so the truth needed to be suppressed,'' said Tillman, who was in a convoy behind his brother when the incident happened three years ago but didn't see it.

He said the Tillman family has sought for years to get at the truth about Pat Tillman's death.

''We have now concluded that our efforts are being actively thwarted by powers that are more interested in protecting a narrative than getting at the truth and seeing justice is served,'' he said.

Tillman was killed on April 22, 2004, after his Army Ranger comrades were ambushed in eastern Afghanistan. Rangers in a convoy trailing Tillman's group had just emerged from a canyon where they had been fired upon. They saw Tillman and mistakenly fired on him.

Committee chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., contended that the federal government invented ''sensational details and stories'' about the death of Pat Tillman and the rescue of Jessica Lynch from Iraq.

''The government violated its most basic responsibility,'' said Waxman.

    Lawmakers Open Hearing on Tillman and Lynch, NYT, 24.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tillman-Friendly-Fire.html

Army’s Documents Detail Secrecy in Tillman Case

April 21, 2007
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Within hours of Cpl. Pat Tillman’s death, the Army was engaged in an information lockdown. Phone and Internet connections were cut off at a base in Afghanistan. Guards were posted on a wounded platoon mate of his. A captain ordered a noncommissioned officer to burn Corporal Tillman’s uniform.

Army investigative documents reviewed by The Associated Press describe how the military tried to seal off information about Corporal Tillman’s death from all but a few soldiers. Officers quietly passed their suspicion — that he had been killed by American fire — up the chain of command to the highest ranks of the military, but the truth did not reach his family for five weeks.

The clampdown, and misinformation issued by the military, lie at the heart of a growing Congressional investigation. “We want to find out how this happened,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday. “Was it the result of incompetence, miscommunication or a deliberate strategy?”

The issue is also central to punishments that the Army is weighing against nine officers, including four generals, faulted in the latest Pentagon report on the case of Corporal Tillman, the football star turned Ranger fighting in Afghanistan.

It is well known by now that the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death, on April 22, 2004, were kept from his family and the American public. The Army maintained that he had been cut down in an enemy ambush, though many soldiers soon learned that he had been mistakenly killed by his own comrades. The newly reviewed documents — nearly 1,100 pages released last month at the conclusion of an inquiry by the Army Criminal Investigation Command — reveal the mechanics of the information containment.

For example, the day after Corporal Tillman died, Specialist Jade Lane lay in a hospital bed in Afghanistan, recovering from gunshot wounds inflicted by the same Rangers who had shot at Corporal Tillman. Amid his shock and grief, Specialist Lane noticed that guards were posted on him.

“I thought it was strange,” he told the Army investigators. Later, he said, he learned the reason for the guards. The news media were sniffing around, and his superiors “did not want anyone talking to us.”

The day of the fatal mix-up, a soldier at Camp Salerno, an Army forward operating base near Khowst, Afghanistan, heard the dreaded call come across the radio: “K.I.A’s.” There were two killed in action: one allied Afghan fighter and one Army Ranger, identified only by his code name.

The soldier checked a roster and discovered that the fallen American was Corporal Tillman. Had he wanted to share the news outside the tactical operations center, doing so would have been difficult. “The phones and Internet had been cut off, to prevent anyone from talking about the incident,” he told investigators.

Several Army officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan told The A.P. that pulling the plug on base phones and e-mail was routine after a soldier died. The practice is meant to ensure that the family is notified through official channels, said Maj. Todd Breasseale, an Army officer who was chief spokesman for ground forces in Iraq until last August.

Elsewhere at Camp Salerno, a staff sergeant was in his tent when a captain walked in later and told him to burn Corporal Tillman’s bloody clothing. “He wanted me alone to burn what was in the bag to prevent security violations, leaks and rumors,” the staff sergeant testified. Corporal Tillman’s uniform, socks, gloves and body armor were placed in a 55-gallon drum and burned.

But the truth was quickly becoming evident to a small group of soldiers with direct access to evidence. Two other sergeants, who examined Corporal Tillman’s vest, noticed that the bullet holes appeared to be from 5.56-millimeter rounds — signature American ammunition.

Brig. Gen. James C. Nixon, who at the time was a colonel and Corporal Tillman’s regimental commander, ordered an investigation into the killing but directed that the information gathered be shared with as few people as possible until the results were final, the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, found in a separate inquiry also completed last month.

General Nixon, who is now director of operations at the Center for Special Operations at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, told Mr. Gimble’s investigators that he had not been aware of all regulations governing such a case and that his missteps had been unintentional.

    Army’s Documents Detail Secrecy in Tillman Case, NYT, 21.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/21/us/21tillman.html

Killings of Afghan Civilians Recall Haditha

April 20, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

After it became clear last year that several marines had killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, following an attack on their convoy of Humvees, the Marine Corps, which had initially played down the massacre, began an offensive of a different kind.

Last May, Gen. Michael W. Hagee, the commandant of the Marine Corps at the time, went to Iraq to express deep concern to his marines and to reinforce what he called the “core values” that required them to respond to danger with thoughtful precision.

But almost a year later, marines killed at least 10 civilians in Afghanistan in an episode that bore some striking similarities to the Haditha killings and suggested that the lesson had not taken, even in a platoon of combat veterans wearing the badge of the elite new Marine Corps Special Operations forces.

Marine Corps officials said the unit, whose members undergo at least four months of specialized military training, did not receive specific values training addressing the lessons of Haditha. The actions of the 30 marines on patrol in Afghanistan appeared to contradict many of the edicts General Hagee had implored the marines to remember.

“We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful,” General Hagee declared in a series of talks he gave at Marine bases around the world. “We must regulate force and violence,” he added. “We protect the noncombatants we find on the battlefield.”

A preliminary military investigation found that the marines killed at least 10 civilians and wounded dozens along a stretch of road near Jalalabad on March 4, and no evidence that they were being fired upon.

The killings illustrate the difficulty American forces have encountered in fighting an enemy who often wears no uniform, uses civilians for cover and understands the limits of the American military’s strict rules of engagement.

But they also show how hard it can be for officers to control the actions of heavily armed troops in the heat of battle.

As the marines did in Haditha, those on patrol in Afghanistan began shooting at civilians in reaction to an attack, in this case a suicide bomber who drove into their convoy as it traveled to Jalalabad from Torkham and detonated his explosives, said Lt. Col. Lou Leto, a spokesman for Army Maj. Gen. Frank Kearney, the commander of all American Special Operations forces in the region.

“When the marines recovered from the blast, they thought they were taking fire, so they returned fire,” Colonel Leto said Wednesday, paraphrasing findings of the inquiry, in which the marines and civilian witnesses had been interviewed.

As the convoy sped away, several marines shot at people near the side of the road, in cars on the shoulders or working in fields nearby, Colonel Leto said. As they did in Haditha, the marines near Jalalabad overreacted to the initial attack, the investigation suggests, firing at unarmed civilians who happened to be nearby.

“The evidence that we found was that they just weren’t fighters,” Colonel Leto said. “They saw people in the fields. They thought these people were carrying weapons, but they could have been tools.”

Colonel Leto said by telephone from the United Arab Emirates that the marines had fired on several cars. “Some cars they thought were taking aggressive actions, another was not following directions,” he said. “You can imagine, you are hit with a pretty good blast, the air gets sucked out of you, you have to make judgment calls real quick.”

The military report found that the marines had killed 10 people, including an elderly man and a young woman, and wounded 33 others. But a report by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said the marines had killed 12 people and wounded 35.

As in Haditha, many of the civilians killed in Afghanistan were women and children, a detailed report by the human rights group said.

General Kearney ordered the entire company, the first Special Forces unit sent into battle since the Marines Special Operations command was formed 14 months ago, to leave Afghanistan at the beginning of April, Colonel Leto said. He also referred the matter to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

The platoon involved in the ambush and subsequent killings was responsible for gathering intelligence in the field and capturing or killing enemy fighters, said Maj. Cliff Gilmore, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command. The marines were drawn from a Marine Force Reconnaissance unit and have an average of seven years of military experience and more than 15 months of combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan. Colonel Leto said, “They were still new on the scene.” He declined to say how many marines had fired or possibly killed civilians but, without elaborating, he said marines being questioned have been “separated” from the unit.

All marines get instructions on the laws of armed conflict, the Geneva Conventions and the rules of engagement, which require positive identification of hostile intent before shooting. But General Kearney’s month-long investigation seems to indicate that those rules were violated by an elite unit, military officers said.

“You do ask, ‘How did this happen?’ ” said an officer familiar with the inquiry, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And it’s a fair question.”

    Killings of Afghan Civilians Recall Haditha, NYT, 20.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/world/asia/20abuse.html?hp

Expected Afghan Rebel Foray May Be Late, General Warns

April 18, 2007
The New York Times
By C. J. CHIVERS

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 17 — An anticipated spring offensive by insurgents in Afghanistan has not materialized on a large scale, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said Tuesday, but he warned that violence in the country could still reach the levels of last year and that poppy production would continue to increase.

The commander, Gen. Dan K. McNeill of the United States Army, also said he expected insurgents to shift tactics toward using more suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices. That prediction was consistent with recent events; several bombings have occurred in Afghanistan in the last week, aimed at the police and the United Nations.

Still, General McNeill’s remarks, after weeks of rising temperatures and skirmishes with the insurgents, reflected a sense among many Western military officers that the Taliban and their tribal allies had not conducted guerrilla operations on the scale the insurgents had predicted.

He suggested that insurgents had not been able to meet their expectations because of military operations by the International Security Assistance Force, the 36,000-member NATO-led force under his command.

For several weeks, thousands of its troops have been involved in a security operation called Operation Achilles in southern Afghanistan.

“We heard the much-ballyhooed spring offensive that the insurgents were going to make, and if there is an offensive — I am confident, I say and believe — we were first out of the block,” he said, in an interview at his headquarters here. “What we did in effect was launch a spoiling attack.”

But he cautioned against complacency, and left open the possibility that insurgent activity might increase after the poppy harvest, which is just beginning in several areas. It typically runs through late spring, depending on the region. Many Afghan men are involved in poppy cultivation and are not available to fight until after the harvest.

General McNeill spoke a day after another senior American officer, Maj. Gen. Robert E. Durbin, offered details of the planned infusion of money and equipment meant to make the indigenous forces more effective.

The United States spent about $2 billion from 2002 to 2006 on Afghanistan’s security forces, according to the unit General Durbin commands, the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, which equips and acts as mentors for the Afghan army and police. This fiscal year, the United States plans to spend $3.4 billion, part of the effort to contain and eventually defeat the insurgents.

General Durbin, an Army officer, said in an interview that if the latest budget proposals were approved, the United States would spend $5.9 billion next fiscal year.

In addition to expanding training, the money would arm Afghan forces as they have not been armed since the Taliban were chased from power in 2001. By late 2008, he said, Afghanistan’s forces would have more than 100 helicopters and 2,000 to 3,000 armored Humvees, vehicles like those used to protect American soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs.

He said Afghan forces would have larger artillery pieces and “scores” of fixed-wing aircraft to bring intensified firepower against the insurgents, who operate in much of southern and eastern Afghanistan. “We have what I would call a very sound and effective program,” he said.

The two generals also said that the Afghan Army was performing well, but that the national police forces, which have had less money and training from international donors, needed more improvement.

Although General McNeill spoke with a degree of confidence about the initial spring campaign, he made clear that the insurgency remained potent and could be changing tactics. In recent days, for example, bombings have occurred in Kandahar, Khost and Kunduz.

He also spoke of difficulties beyond NATO’s immediate reach, including Taliban staging and training areas outside Afghanistan.

“Our strategy is not about killing insurgents,” he said. “It’s about defeating the insurgent strategy. It’s about separating the insurgents from the people. How effective can it be if there are sanctuaries for the insurgents that lie just out of reach of this country?”

He declined to cite any nation for permitting sanctuaries, but many insurgents travel freely in Pashtun areas of Pakistan. He also declined to predict when the insurgency would be defeated. But, in discussing counterinsurgency tactics generally, he uttered one word, “Patience.”

He swept aside the darker assessments of United States involvement in Afghanistan, saying that this year counterinsurgency efforts have had success.

“Those who tell me, ‘Too little, too late,’ I’m just simply not buying that, and especially if they try to denigrate the American effort here,” he said. “Because America has put much into the country, in the way of human capital as well as money, to help get this country back on its feet.”

    Expected Afghan Rebel Foray May Be Late, General Warns, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/asia/18afghan.html

U.S. Says Iranian Arms

Seized in Afghanistan

April 18, 2007
The New York Times
By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, April 17 — A shipment of Iranian-made weapons bound for the Taliban was recently captured by allied forces in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s top officer said Tuesday.

It was the first time that a senior American official had asserted that Iranian-made weapons were being supplied to the Taliban. But Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said it was not clear if the Iranian government had authorized the shipment.

“We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran,” General Pace told reporters. “It’s not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible.”

The shipment involved mortars and plastic explosives and was seized within the past month near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Markings on the plastic explosive material indicated that it was produced in Iran, General Pace said.

American military commanders in Baghdad have repeatedly asserted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran has provided components for powerful roadside bombs and other weapons to militants in Iraq. Iran has denied those allegations.

Iran has played a complicated role in Afghanistan. When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, Iran was a bitter foe. When the Taliban-controlled forces seized the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1997, a group of Iranian diplomats there were executed.

Iran provided support to the Northern Alliance, which sought to overthrow the Taliban. It also cooperated with the United States in picking the current Afghan leader, President Hamid Karzai.

But as relations between Iran and the United States have become more confrontational, some intelligence reports have indicated that the Revolutionary Guards might arm the Taliban in order to weaken and tie down the American military in Afghanistan.

Bush administration officials have repeatedly argued that Iran has been seeking to become the dominant power in the Middle East. Some experts, however, assert that the Iranian strategy may be defensive.

“The overall Iranian role has been to work closely with us to bring Karzai into power,” said Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York University. “However, the Iranians believe the No. 1 threat is an American attack to overthrow their government. They may do anything it takes to make the United States and its allies uncomfortable there.”

Asked how he thought the United States should respond to the purported Iranian support for militant groups opposed to American interests, General Pace said it should take military actions against Iranian-sponsored networks.

“I think we should continue to be aggressive inside of Iraq, and aggressive inside of Afghanistan, in attacking any element that’s attacking U.S. and coalition forces, regardless of where they come from,” General Pace said. He also said that the United States and other nations should use diplomacy with the Iranian government “to address Iranian interference.”

While General Pace did not say exactly when the Iranian-made arms in Afghanistan were seized or which forces captured the shipment, one American official said the episode occurred within the past week or so.

The Bush administration has charged that Iran has been supplying lethal support to Shiite militants in Iraq. Five Iranians who were captured in an American raid in January in the northern Iraqi town of Erbil are still in American custody. Iran has demanded their release, insisting that they are diplomats and not intelligence or military operatives.

According to American intelligence officials, the support to militant groups in Iraq is so systematic that it could not be carried out without the knowledge of some senior Iranian officials. “Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of I.R.G.C. operations, the intelligence community assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran,” a senior intelligence official said this year. The Quds Force is an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

General Pace has been much more cautious about asserting involvement by senior Iranian officials.

“We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” General Pace said Tuesday. “And we know that the Quds Force works for the I.R.G.C.”

“We then surmise from that one or two things,” he said. “Either the leadership of the country knows what their armed forces are doing, or that they don’t know. And in either case that’s a problem.”

    U.S. Says Iranian Arms Seized in Afghanistan, NYT, 18.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/world/middleeast/18military.html?hp

U.S. Is Extending Tours of Army

April 12, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, April 11 — The military announced Wednesday that most active duty Army units now in Iraq and Afghanistan and those sent in the future would serve 15-month tours, three months longer than the standard one-year tour.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who announced the change at a news conference at the Pentagon, said that the only other way to maintain force levels would have been to allow many soldiers less than a year at home between combat tours.

Mr. Gates said the problem was evident even before President Bush ordered an increase in troops for Iraq this year. Officials said the change became inevitable as the numbers of extra troops that were needed — and, most likely, the time the extra forces would have to stay — increased.

“This policy is a difficult but necessary interim step,” he said. “Our forces are stretched, there’s no question about that.”

Democrats in Congress and outside military experts said the prolonged combat assignments risked damage to morale, possibly undermining recruiting and retention efforts. Tens of thousands of soldiers are facing their third tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and casualties have continued to mount inexorably.

“This new policy will be an additional burden to an already overstretched Army,” said Representative Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “I think this will have a chilling effect on recruiting, retention, and readiness.”

Among soldiers in the field and their families, speaking in interviews and in postings on the Internet, reactions to the announcement varied — some of them stoical, some distraught, some grim and some sardonic. Mr. Gates said no decision had been made about how long beyond August to extend reinforcements in Iraq. The total force is around 145,000 and is building toward around 160,000 by early summer. Active-duty Army troops currently total around 79,000 in Iraq and around 18,000 in Afghanistan, along with an additional 7,000 soldiers in Kuwait, who would also be covered by the new policy. The tours of Marine units, which typically are shorter and more frequent, are not being extended; nor are the tours of brigades whose time has already been extended under previous changes to their orders.

Army National Guard or Army Reserves are supposed to be mobilized for no more than a year at a time, including nine months in Iraq or Afghanistan, under a policy announced by Mr. Gates in January.

By ordering longer tours for all other Army units, the Pentagon will be able to maintain the current force levels for another year and still give soldiers a full year to rest, retrain and re-equip before having to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan, Mr. Gates said.

The new policy calls for soldiers to receive a minimum of one year at home between tours, he said.

Word of the extensions reached the American military command post in Juwayba, Iraq, in a rural area east of Ramadi, overnight when a sergeant spotted it while surfing the Internet. It was greeted with a mixture of anger and resignation among the few soldiers who were still awake. “We’re just laughing,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, the executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. He was chuckling nervously, his frustration palpable. “It’s so unbelievable, it’s humorous.”

The soldiers crowded around the outpost’s few computers, sending e-mail messages to their families and parsing Mr. Gates’s words in the hope of finding possible loopholes that would exclude them from the extension. The unit was scheduled to return to its base in Germany in June. The extension meant it would probably have to stay here until September.

“I’m fixing to lose my girlfriend,” one soldier grumbled.

Though the tours of some Army units have been extended beyond 12 months in recent years as troop levels have fluctuated, those extensions were always done on an ad-hoc basis. Mr. Gates said the 15-month tours for all active-duty units would be a more equitable and predictable approach.

Early in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon’s goal was for active-duty troops to spend two years at home for every year deployed. Eventually, Mr. Gates said, the Army would like to return to that pattern. That will have to await either a reduction in overall force levels or an increase in the size of the military, which has been set in motion but will take years to accomplish.

William L. Nash, a retired Army major general now at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that keeping units in Iraq longer might help counterinsurgency operations, by allowing troops more time to become familiar with areas where they were operating.

But he said that a soldier on his third tour who spent 18 months in Iraq would have spent more time in a combat zone than many did during World War II. Though recruiting and retention numbers generally have been strong, he predicted that many soldiers would decide to end their military careers, either before or after their next tours in Iraq.

“It has to have an impact on retention,” General Nash said. “I don’t know how much, whether it’s 2 percent or 20 percent, but it will have an impact.”

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democrat from Delaware and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, noted that the Army was facing problems keeping junior and midcareer officers.

In a statement, he said: “Recent graduates of West Point are choosing to leave active-duty service at the highest rate in more than three decades. This administration’s policies are literally driving out some of our best young officers. Instead of escalating the war with no end in sight, we have to start bringing it to a responsible conclusion.”

The decision to prolong rotations comes at the same time as Congress and the White House are in a sustained fight over Democrats’ efforts to set a deadline for beginning troop withdrawals from Iraq, a confrontation that showed no signs of easing on Wednesday. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said Democrats would not back away from their insistence that a withdrawal date be included in the Iraq spending bill being sorted out between the House and the Senate.

Mr. Reid and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, invited the president to the Capitol on Friday to meet with Democrats and Republicans on the Iraq spending bill. Their invitation came a day after the president asked Congressional leaders to come to the White House next week, which was greeted with a cool response by Democrats.

Mr. Reid said the president was detached from the realities on the ground in Iraq.

“The president is as isolated, I believe, on the Iraq issue as Richard Nixon was when he was hunkered down in the White House,” Mr. Reid said Wednesday.

Kirk Semple contributed reporting from Juwayba, Iraq, and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

U.S. Is Extending Tours of Army, NYT, 12.4.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/world/middleeast/12military.html?hp