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

'Taliban Surrounded' in Kandahar Fight

October 31, 2007
Filed at 7:15 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

ARGHANDAB, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan, U.S. and Canadian troops have surrounded a pocket of some 250 Taliban fighters who have commandeered people's homes in villages just outside Afghanistan's major southern city, officials said Wednesday.

Hundreds of Afghans -- their cars and tractors piled high with personal possessions -- were fleeing the battleground about 15 miles north of Kandahar city.

The provincial police chief said the combined forces have killed some 50 Taliban in three days of fighting. Three police and one Afghan soldier have also died, Sayed Agha Saqib said.

''The people are fleeing because the Taliban are taking over civilian homes,'' Saqib said. ''There have been no airstrikes. We are trying our best to attack those areas where there are no civilians, only Taliban.''

Saqib said 16 suspected Taliban have been arrested during the operation.

The fighters moved into the Arghandab district of Kandahar province this week, about two weeks after the death of a powerful tribal leader, Mullah Naqib, who had kept the Taliban militants out of his region.

''He was a good influence for his tribe. He was supporting the government,'' Saqib said. ''After he died the Taliban were thinking they would go to Arghandab and cause trouble for Kandahar city. But now they're surrounded and they're in big trouble. We are capturing and killing them and I don't think it will cause any problem for Kandahar.''

Still, hundreds of Afghan villagers were fleeing the area in the middle of harvest season, leaving pomegranate crops at a prime picking time.

Haji Karimullah Khan piled his three children into the front seat of a pickup truck and put three female relatives in the back beside household goods and clothes. He was driving to Kandahar city to stay with relatives.

''The Taliban came into our village and they told us to leave,'' Khan said. ''We just packed up our necessities and left. Our pomegranate orchard and home we left behind.''

Violence in Afghanistan this year is the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban militant movement from power in the country. More than 5,300 people have died this year due to insurgency-related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

'Taliban Surrounded' in Kandahar Fight, NYT, 31.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Taliban Fighters Move in Near Kandahar

for First Time Since 2001

October 31, 2007
The New York Times
By TAIMOOR SHAH

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 30 — Several hundred Taliban fighters have moved into a strategic area just outside the southern city of Kandahar in recent days and clashed with Afghan and NATO forces, according to Canadian and Afghan officials.

The fighting, which began Tuesday, is the first time large numbers of Taliban have been able to enter the area just north of the city since 2001. Control of the area, known as the Arghandab district, would allow the Taliban to directly threaten Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city.

Whether the Taliban were looking to establish permanent control over the area or were simply carrying out raids was unclear on Tuesday night. But Canadian military officials said Afghan and NATO forces had begun a “large operation” to drive out the Taliban.

Reports of casualties could not be immediately confirmed. The provincial police chief said 20 Taliban had been killed; the Taliban said they killed two foreign and three Afghan soldiers. Each side denied the other’s claims. “We’re conducting operations in and around Arghandab in response to increased Taliban fighter numbers,” said Lt. Commander Pierre Babinsky. “We dedicated a lot of resources to this.”

Residents said hundreds of people were fleeing the district because of fears of a major battle. Cars and trucks loaded with families from the area have streamed into Kandahar over the last two days, sparking fear among city residents.

“The people are leaving the village because they are afraid of fighting and bombardment,” said Agha Muhammad, a 43-year-old farmer who fled Arghandab on Tuesday. “Today, many families have left their houses.”

Sarah Chayes, an American journalist and aid worker who has lived in Kandahar since 2001, said a powerful pro-government leader in the district, Mullah Naqibullah, died of a heart attack two weeks ago. Over the last several years, Mullah Naqibullah survived multiple attempts by the Taliban to kill him, she said, and was “the bulwark” that blocked the hard-line Islamic group from entering Kandahar from the north.

But in a sign of the weakness of President Hamid Karzai’s government in the area, joyous Taliban fighters seized control of Mullah Naqibullah’s home village in Arghandab within two weeks of his death.

“That two weeks later they were in there on roofs dancing — and inside his house — is devastating psychologically,” Ms. Chayes said. “It’s like a psychological operation on the part of the Taliban, and I think it’s a very effective one.”

David Rohde contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

    Taliban Fighters Move in Near Kandahar for First Time Since 2001, NYT, 31.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/world/asia/31afghan.html

Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

October 30, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”

In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.

In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.

Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.

The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.

Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.

But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.

At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.

Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.

“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”

Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.

“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”

In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.

Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.

“That makes our situation terribly complicated,” Mr. Atmar said. “Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence.”

Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.

Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.

“First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam,” he said in Russian. “I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus.”

But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. “Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion,” he said, when asked about the allegations against him. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.

He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about “the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature.” He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking “guide” in the airport.

After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.

Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.

[In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]

Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.

Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.

“I didn’t have any specific teacher,” he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. “There were local people who knew the Koran.”

A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.

In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. “I was close to the border,” he said. “I thought I would go explore the country.”

In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.

“They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade,” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “The next day, they brought some kind of weapons.”

Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.

“They are saying, ‘You are the man who was making the vests,’ ” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine.”

    Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban, NYT, 30.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/world/asia/30afghan.html?hp

Afghan Battle Leaves Taliban Dead

October 29, 2007
Filed at 6:46 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A six-hour battle in southern Afghanistan left over 50 Taliban fighters killed or wounded, while a suicide bomber targeting a police patrol ended in the deaths of three civilians and an officer, officials said Monday.

Also in the south, a roadside bomb against a U.S.-led coalition convoy killed one soldier and wounded another, a coalition statement said. In the east, coalition forces raided a compound suspected of housing al-Qaida facilitators, killing several militants on Sunday, a coalition statement said.,

NATO-led troops and Afghan army soldiers launched an attack in Baluch village in Uruzgan province during a gathering of local Taliban on Sunday, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief.

''More than 50 enemies were killed or wounded'' and 13 others detained during the joint operation, a statement from Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said.

Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said that ''several dozen militants were killed'' in the clash.

''This was a well-led and well-coordinated engagement, with the Afghan National Army and ISAF working in conjunction with each other,'' Anthony said.

Two policemen and an Afghan soldier were also wounded, Jumat said.

It was impossible to immediately verify the death counts.

The clash follows a large-scale engagement in neighboring Helmand province, where some 80 militants were killed during a weekend operation conducted by U.S. Special Forces.

In Helmand's capital of Lashkar Gah, meanwhile, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to a taxi stand Monday, killing three civilians and wounding five other people, including a policeman, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

The bomber, who appears to have been a teenager, was also killed in the blast. Andiwal said the target of the attack was a nearby police patrol.

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. More than 5,300 people have died this year due to insurgency related violence, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

In the country's east, U.S.-led coalition forces raided a compound suspected of housing al-Qaida facilitators, killing several militants on Sunday, a coalition statement said.

The troops fired at the militants as they fled the compound in Asadabad district, in Kunar province, the statement said.

''Coalition forces engaged the militants outside the compound area with small-arms fire and accurate conventional munitions as well as engaging the hostile militants inside the compound with small-arms,'' the statement said. ''Several armed militants were killed during the engagements.''

Five suspected militants were also detained during the operation.

The coalition did not provide any further details on the men's alleged links to al-Qaida.

    Afghan Battle Leaves Taliban Dead, NYT, 29.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html?hp

Afghan Ex-Militia Leaders Hoard Arms

October 28, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 27 — Many former militia commanders and residents in northern Afghanistan have been hoarding illegal weapons in violation of the country’s disarmament laws, giving the excuse that they face a spreading Taliban insurgency from the south that government forces alone are too frail to stop, Afghan and Western officials say.

After years of moderate success for government disarmament programs, rumors of widespread defiance in the north have arisen recently among government officials and intelligence agencies in Kabul and elsewhere. Although there is little hard evidence that commanders are greatly enlarging their arsenals, officials say, some have been thwarting government programs, refusing to disarm and possibly even remobilizing militias.

The talk of rearming underscores a deepening north-south ethnic divide that some diplomats and Afghan officials privately worry could lead the way toward a shift of power back to warlords — and toward a countrywide armed conflict — if left unchecked. And the situation poses a major challenge for President Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from the south, whose administration has failed to win the confidence of many non-Pashtun leaders and northerners.

Prices on the weapons black market in the north have skyrocketed as residents, governed by suspicion and foreboding, have kept their firearms, driving down the supply.

“There is an environment of mistrust” in the government, Brig. Gen. Abdulmanan Abed, a Defense Ministry official who works with the government’s demilitarization program, said in an interview this month in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province. “There is a fear of the return of the Taliban.”

A prominent political leader from the north, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it this way: “The Taliban are coming toward us. What should we do? Who will defend us? Who will protect us? This is in the minds of the people in the north.”

Col. Mats Danielsson, the Swedish commander of a 450-man military unit helping to provide security in four northern provinces, said the Karzai administration and its international allies must find a way to roll back the Taliban threat and reassure northerners.

“We have to keep the window of opportunity open, but I feel that the window is closing,” he said.

The Taliban insurgency is strongest in southern and eastern Afghanistan. And while it has been able to bedevil Afghan and international troops in some other regions of the country, before this year its reach rarely stretched into the northern provinces.

But government officials report an increase in Taliban activity in the north this year, particularly in the northwest. The number of Taliban attacks on Afghan and international security forces in Balkh and the other relatively peaceful provinces of north-central Afghanistan has risen from last year, the authorities say.

Residents here in Balkh Province and elsewhere in north-central Afghanistan say they are beginning to feel encircled.

“The Taliban is trying to start up its old networks here,” Colonel Danielsson said in an interview in early October at his headquarters in Mazar-i-Sharif. “We have to figure out how to stop this influence.”

Afghan and Western officials also say that in addition to an increase in Taliban activity, there has been an escalation in crime and, in some areas, tensions among rival northern political factions. These officials say it is often difficult to determine who is to blame for specific violent acts.

The most apparent signs of rearming, officials say, are in Faryab Province, in the northwest, where commanders have organized an armed militia to fend off a growing Taliban presence in neighboring Badghis Province that has gone largely unchecked by Afghan and international security forces.

Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said in a recent interview in Kabul that he had received unconfirmed intelligence reports that small shipments of weapons had been smuggled across the border “from one or two countries to the north” and delivered “to receivers in some of the northern provinces.” But he declined to provide further details.

Afghan government officials also say that in certain northern districts, militia commanders have evaded government weapons inspectors by breaking down their stockpiles of illegal firearms and redistributing them throughout their communities, making them harder to find.

Afghan and Western officials say that weapons are hidden everywhere: in grain silos and closets, in mountain caves and in holes in the ground.

And though the government’s demobilization programs have gone some way toward dismantling many of the hundreds of illegal militias, and have removed nearly all the heavy weapons from those factions, former warlords still hold considerable sway.

“They have the power of a phone call to put hundreds, or thousands, in arms,” Colonel Danielsson said. “There are a lot of weapons up here.”

All the weapons in Afghanistan were supposed to be in the government’s hands by now, all the private militias were to be a thing of the past.

After the Taliban fell in 2001 and fighting erupted among rival warlords, the Afghan government began the first of two disarmament and demobilization programs that were principally intended to dismantle warlords’ militias and other illegal armed groups. In three decades of war, weapons had poured across the borders and authority was often established by the rule of the gun.

The programs, which are voluntary, have dismantled at least 274 paramilitary organizations, reintegrated about 62,000 militia members into civilian life and recovered more than 84,000 weapons, including thousands of heavy arms that had fallen under the control of regional warlords. Afghan and NATO forces have confiscated and destroyed many other weapons, officials said. But Afghan and international officials acknowledge that hundreds of illegal armed groups still operate in Afghanistan. And hundreds of thousands — maybe millions — of weapons remain in private hands, although they are mostly small arms rather than heavy weapons, the officials say.

Of the weapons that have been collected, they say, at least 40 percent were not functional.

“There is at least one weapon in each house,” said General Abed, who was an officer in the anti-Taliban mujahedeen. Government officials note that the demilitarization programs were not intended to collect arms and were instead focused on disbanding armed groups.

“I think it will take many, many years” to disarm the population, said Hameed Quraishi, manager of the government’s demilitarization program in the north. “It doesn’t matter how hard you try. It’s the level of confidence the people have in the government.”

But the talk about rearming is not entirely military. It also appears to be a means of pressing the Karzai government, which many northern leaders have accused of favoring the south, a region mostly populated by members of his Pashtun ethnicity.

“We selected Karzai to unify the country,” said a prominent politician from the north and former member of the Northern Alliance, which fought the Taliban. “But people who joined him have pushed him to being a Pashtun leader, not a national leader.”

Disproportionate amounts of aid money and weapons have flowed to the south to prop up the regional leadership and battle the Taliban. As part of this effort, the government has been trying to build an auxiliary police force among southern Pashtun tribes to confront the insurgency.

Many northern leaders say that they have been shortchanged in the distribution of development aid and worry about the militarization of the south as they are being asked to disarm.

“Northern commanders are saying: ‘We can’t disarm. This guy is trying to unite all Pashtuns. We have to defend ourselves!’ ” a European diplomat said in Kabul.

General McNeill doubts some of the northern claims. “There’s no question that there’s a hell of a lot of political posturing in the northern sectors,” he said. “Where they think they’re ignored in the reconstruction process, there often is a report: ‘They’re here! The Taliban! They got us surrounded!’ ”

In interviews, northern Afghan leaders said that in spite of their concerns about the central government, they were standing by Mr. Karzai. And most of them denied that any stockpiling of weapons was occurring.

“If we take up arms, it means the democratic process is defeated,” said Sayed Mustafa Kazemi, spokesman for the National Front, a political coalition mainly composed of non-Pashtun leaders from the north. “We want this government to survive its entire term because we don’t want the process to be defeated.”

    Afghan Ex-Militia Leaders Hoard Arms, NYT, 28.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/world/asia/28weapons.html

Afghan Leader: Cut Back on Airstrikes

October 26, 2007
Filed at 1:11 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai is calling for the U.S. and NATO to cut back on airstrikes in the battle against Taliban and al-Qaida militants, saying too many civilians have been killed.

Karzai said that six years after the U.S.-led invasion the Afghan people ''cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power.''

''The United States and the coalition forces are not (killing civilians) deliberately. The United States is here to help the Afghan people,'' Karzai told the U.S. news program ''60 Minutes'' for a story scheduled to air Sunday night.

Asked if he wants the use of airstrikes curtailed, Karzai replies, ''Absolutely. Oh, yes, in clear words and I want to repeat that, (there are) alternatives to the use of air force.''

At least 700 civilians have died because of insurgency-related violence this year, and about half of those deaths were caused by U.S. or NATO military action, often because of airstrikes hitting civilian homes, according to an Associated Press tally based on numbers from Afghan and Western officials.

The use of airpower is key to the U.S. and NATO fight against insurgents because of Afghanistan's mountainous terrain and the sheer size of the country. U.S. and NATO officials say Taliban fighters frequently attack their soldiers from civilian homes that the insurgents have commandeered.

But such deaths incite resentment against U.S. forces and have sparked several anti-U.S. and anti-NATO demonstrations this year. Karzai has pleaded repeatedly with Western forces to do all they can to prevent such deaths, and he broke down in tears during a public speech earlier this year after recounting the deaths of Afghan children from airstrikes.

Lt. Col. David Accetta, a spokesman for the U.S. military, said he was not aware of any formal request by the Afghan government for the U.S. to curtail the use of air power.

Air power ''is part of the way that a modern military force conducts operations,'' he said. ''We take every precaution possible to mitigate the potential for collateral damage and non-combatant casualties.''

Maj. Charles Anthony, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said he was also not aware of any request to cut back the use of air assets. He said procedures were in place to ''ensure that we absolutely minimize the risk to civilians.''

Violence in Afghanistan this year has been the deadliest since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. More than 5,200 people have died because of insurgency-related violence, according to the AP count.

    Afghan Leader: Cut Back on Airstrikes, NYT, 26.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghan-Airstrikes.html

Trillion-dollar war:
Afghanistan and Iraq set to cost more than Vietnam and Korea
 

Published: 24 October 2007
The Independent
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
 

President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.

There are also disturbing signs that Mr Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46bn (£22.5bn) emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 "stealth" bomber.

By wrapping his request in the flag of patriotism, the President has made it very difficult even for an anti-war Congress to refuse the money. He was accompanied by the family of a dead US marine when he made the request for funds on Monday.

The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has attacked the President's priorities saying: "For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year."

"The President is happy to put the military spending on the national credit card," said Steve Kosiak, a vice-president of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, military policy research institute, who said that the $1trn figure will soon be passed.

The full amount requested for this fiscal year is now $196.4bn. The US is on course to spend a total of $806bn fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than on any war it has fought since the Second World War. With interest payments this tops $1trn.

Despite their expense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are less of an economic burden (at 4.2 per cent of GDP) than earlier wars. The 1990-91 Gulf War cost $88bn, the Korean War cost $456bn (12.2 per cent of GDP) and the Vietnam War, $518bn (9.4 per cent of GDP). By comparison the Second World War cost more than 40 per cent of GDP.

Mr Kosiak also points out that the military is using the cover of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to get funding for all sorts of projects. The upgrade of the stealth bomber is one of those projects.

The Pentagon wants to upgrade its fleet of stealth bombers so that they can deliver 30-tonne, satellite-guided bombs. The planes would be based on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia where hangars are being specially upgraded. These "bunker-buster" bombs are six times bigger than anything used by the air force and designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction facilities underground. Diego Garcia is also much closer to Iran than Missouri, where the bombers are based.

This weekend Vice-President Dick Cheney stepped up the rhetoric, warning of "serious consequences" if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium and said the US would not permit it to get nuclear weapons. Iran denies that the enrichment is linked to a nuclear weapons programme and says it is entirely peaceful.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday would not be drawn on Mr Cheney's remarks.

Mr Bush's request for an extra $46bn in funds by Christmas has angered Congress, but it is expected to be approved.

This year's request for extra military spending is already the largest since 11 September 2001 and rising fast.

The lion's share of the money Mr Bush has asked for is for the Pentagon. Some has also been earmarked for UN peacekeeping in Darfur, emergency food aid in Africa and sending oil to North Korea as part of a deal to end its nuclear weapons programme.

* The US State Department has been harshly criticised for failing to oversee the private security companies it relies on in Iraq.

An internal review found poor supervision and accountability for companies such as Blackwater USA as well as DynCorp.

An audit of DynCorp says its record keeping is so poor that the State Department cannot account for $1.2bn (£590m) it paid the company since 2004 to train Iraqi police officers.

    Trillion-dollar war: Afghanistan and Iraq set to cost more than Vietnam and Korea, I, 24.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3090340.ece

Iraq and Afghanistan wars may total $2.4 trillion



23 October 2007
USA Today
By Ken Dilanian

WASHINGTON — The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate scheduled for release today.

A previous CBO estimate put the wars' costs at more than $1.6 trillion. This one adds $705 billion in interest, taking into account that the conflicts are being funded with borrowed money.

The new estimate also includes President Bush's request Monday for another $46 billion in war funding, said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., budget committee chairman, who provided the CBO's new numbers to USA TODAY.

Assuming that Iraq accounts for about 80% of that total, the Iraq war would cost $1.9 trillion, including $564 million in interest, said Thomas Kahn, Spratt's staff director. The committee holds a hearing on war costs this morning.

"The number is so big, it boggles the mind," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill.

Sean Kevelighan, a spokesman for the White House budget office, said, "Congress should stop playing politics with our troops by trying to artificially inflate war funding levels." He declined to provide a White House estimate.

The CBO estimates assume that 75,000 troops will remain in both countries through 2017, including roughly 50,000 in Iraq. That is a "very speculative" projection, though it's not entirely unreasonable, said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the non-partisan Lexington Institute.

As of Sept. 30, the two wars have cost $604 billion, the CBO says. Adjusted for inflation, that is higher than the costs of the Korea and Vietnam conflicts, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Defense spending during those two wars accounted for a far larger share of the American economy.

In the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion.

    Iraq and Afghanistan wars may total $2.4 trillion, UT, 23.10.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2007-10-23-wacosts_N.htm

Bush Wants $46 Billion More for Wars

October 22, 2007
Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush will ask Congress for another $46 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and finance other national security needs, The Associated Press has learned.

The figure, which Bush was expected to announce later Monday at the White House, brings to $196.4 billion the total requested by the administration for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere for the budget year that started Oct. 1. It includes $189.3 billion for the Defense Department, $6.9 billion for the State Department and $200 million for other agencies.

The figures were disclosed by congressional officials briefed on the request and who spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

To date, Congress has already provided more than $455 billion for the Iraq war, with stepped-up military operations running about $12 billion a month. The war has claimed the lives of more than 3,830 members of the U.S. military and more than 73,000 Iraqi civilians.

The White House originally asked for $141.7 billion for the Pentagon to prosecute the Iraq and Afghanistan missions and asked for $5.3 billion more in July. The latest request includes $42.3 billion more for the Pentagon -- already revealed in summary last month -- and is accompanied by a modified State Department request bringing that agency's total for the 2008 budget year to almost $7 billion.

The State Department is requesting $550 million to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, $375 million for the West Bank and Gaza and $239 million for diplomatic costs in Iraq.

Top House lawmakers have already announced that they do not plan to act on Bush's request until next year, though they anticipate providing interim funds when completing a separate defense funding bill this fall.

Congress already has approved more than $5 billion for new vehicles whose V-shaped undercarriages provide much better protection against mines and roadside bombs. It's likely that Congress will quickly grant $11 billion more to deliver more than 7,000 of the vehicles.

The delays in submitting the remaining war funding request were in part due to unease among congressional Republicans about receiving it during the veto override battle involving a popular bill reauthorizing a children's health insurance program.

The request also includes $724 million for U.N. peacekeeping efforts in the war-torn Darfur region in Sudan, $106 million in fuel oil or comparable assistance to North Korea as a reward for the rogue nation's promises to cease its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Another $350 million would go to fight famine in Africa.

------

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report in Washington.

    Bush Wants $46 Billion More for Wars, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush-War-Spending.html

Family of SEAL to Get Medal of Honor

October 22, 2007
Filed at 12:55 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The first Medal of Honor awarded for combat in Afghanistan will be presented to the family of a Navy SEAL from Long Island, who gave his life to make a radio call for help for his team.

President Bush was to present the nation's highest military honor for valor on Monday to the family of Lt. Michael Murphy of Patchogue, N.Y.

''There's a lot of awards in the military, but when you see a Medal of Honor, you know whatever they went through is pretty horrible. You don't congratulate anyone when you see it,'' said Marcus Luttrell, the lone member of Murphy's team to survive the firefight with the Taliban.

Murphy, Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist in the Afghan mountains on June 28, 2005, when their mission was compromised after they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence.

An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs.

Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.

Still under fire, Murphy provided his unit's location and the size of the enemy force. At one point he was shot in the back, causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in.

He then returned to his cover position with his men and continued the battle. A U.S. helicopter sent to rescue the men was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing all 16 aboard.

By the end of the two-hour gunfight, Murphy and two of his comrades were also dead. An estimated 35 Taliban were also killed. Luttrell was blown over a ridge and knocked unconscious. He escaped, and was protected by local villagers for several days before he was rescued.

''We look at these guys and say, 'What heroes,''' said Murphy's father, Dan Murphy. ''These guys look at themselves and say, 'I'm just doing my job.' That's an understatement, but that's the way they view it, and that was Michael's whole life.''

Murphy, who died before his 30th birthday, is the fourth Navy SEAL to earn the award and the first since the Vietnam War. Two Medals of Honor have been awarded posthumously in the Iraq war: to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, who was killed in 2004 after covering a grenade with his helmet, and to Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, who was killed in 2003 after holding off Iraqi forces with a machine gun before he was killed at the Baghdad airport.

Murphy's heroics have been widely recognized on Long Island, where he graduated in 1994 from Patchogue-Medford High School.

To his fellow SEALs, he was known as ''Murph,'' but as a child, his parents nicknamed him ''The Protector,'' because of his strong moral compass. After the 2001 terror attacks, that compass eventually led him to Afghanistan, where he wore a patch of the New York City Fire Department on his uniform.

''He took his deployment personally. He was going after, and his team was going after, the men who planned, plotted against and attacked not only the United States, but the city he loved, New York,'' said his father. ''He knew what he was fighting for.''

    Family of SEAL to Get Medal of Honor, NYT, 22.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Medal-of-Honor.html

Afghan Suicide Bomber Kills Own Family

October 15, 2007
Filed at 1:14 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A mother who tried to stop her son from carrying out a suicide bomb attack triggered an explosion in the family's home in southern Afghanistan that killed the would-be bomber, his mother and three siblings, police said Monday.

The would-be bomber had been studying at a madrassa, or religious school, in Pakistan, and when he returned to his home in Uruzgan province over the weekend announced that he planned to carry out a suicide attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary said.

Surviving family members told police that the suicide vest exploded during a struggle between the mother and her son, said Juma Gul Himat, Uruzgan's police chief. The man's brother and two sisters were also killed.

Family members said the would-be bomber gave his family $3,600 before telling them he intended to carry out the attack, Himat said.

Bashary said the explosion happened on Sunday, but Himat said it occurred on Monday morning. It was not clear why the two accounts differed.

In a second accidental explosion, another would-be bomber killed himself Friday in Paktika province when he tried to take off the bomb vest he was wearing and it exploded, Bashary said. The man told authorities he had been instructed by his handlers in Pakistan to launch a suicide attack, but changed his mind when he saw people praying in a mosque.

The U.S. military, meanwhile, said it had looked into allegations that soldiers had desecrated the Quran during a raid on a home in the eastern province of Kunar and found no evidence of wrongdoing. The allegations had outraged villagers, who met with the governor, provincial leaders and U.S. military commanders on Sunday.

Kunar deputy provincial governor Noor Mohammad Khan said American soldiers raided the home of Mullah Zarbaz on Saturday, arresting him and three others. Villagers claimed that soldiers ripped, knifed and burned a Quran during the raid, allegations that led to an angry demonstration, Khan said.

But Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, which oversees Special Forces soldiers who usually carry out nighttime raids, said the allegations had been investigated and were found to be baseless.

''We looked into it. There was no desecration of the Quran or any religious symbol by U.S. forces,'' Belcher said. ''Had a soldier desecrated it, we would take action.''

In the latest violence, Taliban militants ambushed a NATO patrol in central Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving about a dozen soldiers wounded, a NATO official said. The troops called for an airstrike on the militants in Wardak province, but there were no reports of casualties, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

The official did not identify the nationality of the wounded troops. Most of the troops in Wardak province, which borders the capital of Kabul, are Turkish.

In an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp., President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan has suffered ''the law of unintended consequences'' because of the war in Iraq.

''We did suffer by movements of people, by movements of extremist ideology, by transfer of knowledge by extremists to one another,'' Karzai said in the interview, which was broadcast Monday. ''There is no doubt that al-Qaida is linked all across the world.''

Karzai said he knew ''with confidence'' that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mullah Omar were not in Afghanistan. But he said he did not have ''precise information'' on where they were. Afghan officials say the two are hiding in Pakistan.

------

Associated Press Writer Noor Khan contributed to this report.

    Afghan Suicide Bomber Kills Own Family, NYT, 15.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Marines to Look at Afghanistan Shooting

October 11, 2007
Filed at 12:44 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. (AP) -- An official court of inquiry will investigate a shooting in Afghanistan involving a Marines special operations company in which several civilians were killed, the Marine Corps said Thursday.

The step is a preliminary one and is not a criminal proceeding, and no charges have been filed against the Marines in the March shooting. Conflicting reports have cited between 10 and 19 fatalities and several dozen civilians wounded.

Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission said the shooting occurred along a 10-mile stretch of road after a minivan laden with explosives rammed a military convoy in Nangahar province.

Injured Afghans said the Marines -- part of the 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion -- fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and civilian cars as they sped away. Eight members of the company were brought back to Camp Lejeune and the rest of the company was ordered out of Afghanistan while military officials investigated.

Lt. Gen. James Mattis, the top Marine officer in the U.S. Central Command, ordered the inquiry after reviewing evidence that has been collected so far, the Corps said in a statement.

Mattis will decide whether charges should be filed after receiving a report from the court, which will include at least three senior officers with combat experience. No date for the inquiry has been set.

In May, a U.S. commander in Afghanistan said he was ''deeply ashamed'' by the killings and said the military made condolence payments of about $2,000 for each death.

    Marines to Look at Afghanistan Shooting, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Afghan-Marines-Shooting.html

Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq

October 11, 2007
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the Army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command.

The suggestion was raised in a session last week convened by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and regional war-fighting commanders. While still under review, its supporters, including some in the Army, argue that a realignment could allow the Army and Marines each to operate more efficiently in sustaining troop levels for two wars that have put a strain on their forces.

As described by officials who had been briefed on the closed-door discussion, the idea represents the first tangible new thinking to emerge since the White House last month endorsed a plan to begin gradual troop withdrawals from Iraq, but also signals that American forces likely will be in Iraq for years to come.

At the moment, there are no major Marine units among the 26,000 or so American forces in Afghanistan. In Iraq there are about 25,000 marines among the 160,000 American troops there.

It is not clear exactly how many of the marines in Iraq would be moved over. But the plan would require a major reshuffling, and it would make marines the dominant American force in Afghanistan, in a war that has broader public support than the one in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have not spoken publicly about the Marine concept, and aides to both officials said no formal proposal had been presented by the Marines. But the idea has been the focus of intense discussions between senior Marine Corps officers and other officials within the Defense Department.

It is not clear whether the Army would support the idea. But some officials sympathetic to the Army said that such a realignment would help ease some pressure on the Army, by allowing it to shift forces from Afghanistan into Iraq, and by simplifying planning for future troop rotations.

The Marine proposal could also face resistance from the Air Force, whose current role in providing combat aircraft for Afghanistan could be squeezed if the overall mission was handed to the Marines. Unlike the Army, the Marines would bring a significant force of combat aircraft to that conflict.

Whether the Marine proposal takes hold, the most delicate counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, including the hunt for forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, would remain the job of a military task force that draws on Army, Navy and Air Force Special Operations units.

Military officials say the Marine proposal is also an early indication of jockeying among the four armed services for a place in combat missions in years to come. “At the end of the day, this could be decided by parochialism, and making sure each service does not lose equity, as much as on how best to manage the risk of force levels for Iraq and Afghanistan,” said one Pentagon planner.

Tensions over how to divide future budgets have begun to resurface across the military because of apprehension that Congressional support for large increases in defense spending seen since the Sept. 11 attacks will diminish, leaving the services to compete for money.

Those traditional turf battles have subsided somewhat given the overwhelming demands of waging two simultaneous wars — and because Pentagon budgets reached new heights.

Last week, the Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior officials briefed on the Marine Corps concept said the new idea went beyond simply drawing clearer lines about who was in charge of providing combat personnel, war-fighting equipment and supplies to the two war zones.

They said it would allow the Marines to carry out the Afghan mission in a way the Army cannot, by deploying as an integrated Marine Corps task force that included combat aircraft as well as infantry and armored vehicles, while the Army must rely on the Air Force.

The Marine Corps concept was raised last week during a Defense Senior Leadership Conference convened by Mr. Gates just hours after Admiral Mullen was sworn in as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

During that session, the idea of assigning the Afghan mission to the Marines was described by Gen. James T. Conway, the Marine Corps commandant. Details of the discussion were provided by military officers and Pentagon civilian officials briefed on the session and who requested anonymity to summarize portions of the private talks.

The Marine Corps has recently played the leading combat role in Anbar Province, the restive Sunni area west of Baghdad.

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the senior Army officer in Iraq, and his No. 2 commander, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, also of the Army, have described Anbar Province as a significant success story, with local tribal leaders joining the fight against terrorists.

Both generals strongly hint that if the security situation in Anbar holds steady, then reductions of American forces can be expected in the province, which could free up Marine units to move elsewhere.

In recent years, the emphasis by the Pentagon has been on joint operations that blur the lines between the military services, but there is also considerable precedent for geographic divisions in their duties. For much of the Vietnam War, responsibility was divided region by region between the Army and the Marines. As described by military planners, the Marine proposal would allow Marine units moved to Afghanistan to take over the tasks now performed by an Army headquarters unit and two brigade combat teams operating in eastern Afghanistan.

That would ease the strain on the Army and allow it to focus on managing overall troop numbers for Iraq, as well as movements of forces inside the country as required by commanders to meet emerging threats.

The American military prides itself on the ability to go to war as a “joint force,” with all of the armed services intermixed on the battlefield — vastly different from past wars when more primitive communications required separate ground units to fight within narrowly defined lanes to make sure they did not cross into the fire of friendly forces.

The Marine Corps is designed to fight with other services — it is based overseas aboard Navy ships and is intertwined with the Army in Iraq. At the same time, the Marines also are designed to be an agile, “expeditionary” force on call for quick deployment, and thus can go to war with everything needed to carry out the mission — troops, armor, attack jets and supplies.

General Petraeus is due to report back to Congress by March on his troop requirements beyond the summer. His request for forces will be analyzed by the military’s Central Command, which oversees combat missions across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and by the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. All troop deployment orders must be approved by Mr. Gates, with the separate armed services then assigned to supply specific numbers of troops and equipment.

Marines train to fight in what is called a Marine Air-Ground Task Force. That term refers to a Marine deployment that arrives in a combat zone complete with its own headquarters, infantry combat troops, armored and transport vehicles and attack jets for close-air support, as well as logistics and support personnel.

“This is not about trading one ground war for another,” said one Pentagon official briefed on the Marine concept. “It is about the nature of the fight in Afghanistan, and figuring out whether the Afghan mission lends itself more readily to the integrated MAGTF deployment than even Iraq.”

    Marines Press to Remove Their Forces From Iraq, NYT, 11.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/washington/11military.html?hp

Afghanistan Executes 15 Prisoners

October 8, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:02 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan executed 15 inmates by gunfire at its main prison outside Kabul, carrying out the death penalty for the first time in more than three years, the chief of prisons said Monday.

The mass execution took place Sunday evening according to Afghan law, which calls for condemned prisoners to be shot to death, said Abdul Salam Ismat.

Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban used to carry out executions in public, many of them at the war-shattered Kabul stadium, but the practice stopped after the regime was ousted from power by the U.S.-led coalition in late 2001.

The killings are the country's first state-sanctioned executions since April 2004. Amnesty International said after the 2004 execution that President Hamid Karzai had assured the group there would be a moratorium on the death penalty.

Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, refused comment Monday, saying there would be an announcement on state TV Monday evening. Last week, Hamidzada told The Associated Press that Karzai ''takes extreme care in execution cases.''

''He has been holding on to these cases because he wants to make sure that the justice is served and the due process is complete. He personally does not like executions, but Afghan law asks for it, and he will obey the laws,'' he said.

The mass executions are likely to complicate the relationships some NATO countries with military forces here have with Afghanistan. International troops often take militants prisoner and later hand them over to the Afghan government, but some countries will not be allowed to do that if Afghanistan is known to carry out capital punishment.

In violence Monday, 16 militants fighting under a wanted Uzbek warlord with a $200,000 bounty on his head were killed in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan.

Separately, an Afghan child who apparently walked onto a NATO training site was killed, officials said Monday.

A roadside bomb killed a soldier in the NATO-led force in Uruzgan province, said Maj. Charles Anthony, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force. Australian and Dutch troops make up the majority of troops in Uruzgan.

Also in Uruzgan, two Dutch Apache helicopters were hit by enemy fire Monday, the Dutch Defense Ministry said in a statement. Both landed safely and their crews were not injured. The helicopters supporting to ground troops when they were hit in the rotor blades. Dutch forces based in Tirin Kot have five Apache helicopters.

    Afghanistan Executes 15 Prisoners, NYT, 8.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Kabul Blast Kills American Soldier

October 7, 2007
The New York Times
By KIRK SEMPLE

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 6 — A suicide car bomber detonated his payload next to an American military convoy on the main road leading to the Kabul airport early Saturday, killing one American serviceman and four civilians, American and Afghan officials said.

The attack, which came on the sixth anniversary of the American-led invasion in 2001, destroyed the soldier’s vehicle and wounded numerous people, officials and witnesses said.

“I heard a very big blast and I threw myself to the ground,” said Jamal, 22, who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name. “I then saw the vehicle in the air and it came down and hit another car.” One of the victims was a civilian riding a bike, he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in a telephone interview that the insurgency was responsible for the bombing.

It was the third suicide attack in Kabul in eight days. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for those earlier attacks, which struck Afghan security forces and killed at least 42.

In the southern province of Oruzgan, Taliban fighters attacked a road construction crew working on the main highway that connects the area to Kandahar Province to the south, said Sayed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief. The fighters killed five security guards and burned six vehicles, then kidnapped 10 workers, he said.

On Friday, a detachment of Afghan and international troops on a raid in the eastern province of Paktika were attacked by Taliban fighters, the American military command said in a statement. Several Taliban fighters were killed in the ensuing firefight, but so were several civilians, including a woman, a child and several men, the statement said.

The military said it would investigate the deaths, but it accused militants of using civilians as protective cover.

Britain’s Defense Ministry announced the death of Maj. Alexis Roberts, the highest ranking British officer killed in Afghanistan since operations began in 2001, according to news agency reports. Major Roberts was Prince William’s former platoon commander at Sandhurst military academy, the reports said.

Arif Afzalzada contributed from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

    Kabul Blast Kills American Soldier, NYT, 7.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/asia/07afghan.html?hp

US Offers $200, 000 to Catch Taliban

October 1, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:53 a.m. ET
The New York Times

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S. military has launched a new ''Most Wanted'' campaign offering rewards of up to $200,000 for information leading to the capture of 12 Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.

Posters and billboards are being put up around eastern Afghanistan with the names and pictures of the 12, with reward amounts ranging from $20,000 to $200,000.

''We're trying to get more visibility on these guys like the FBI did with the mob,'' said Lt. Col. Rob Pollack, a U.S. officer at the main American base in Bagram. ''They operate the same way the mob did, they stay in hiding.''

The list does not include internationally known names who already have large price tags on their heads like al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden -- who has evaded U.S. capture since 2001 despite a $25 million bounty -- or Taliban leader Mullah Omar with a $10 million reward.

Instead the list is filled with local insurgent cell leaders responsible for roadside and suicide bomb attacks.

''We want the people in that area to know who this guy is and know he's a bad guy, and when they spot him to turn that guy in,'' said Maj. Chris Belcher, a U.S. spokesman.

The program, in the works for weeks, comes despite peace overtures from President Hamid Karzai, who on Sunday said he would be willing to meet with Omar if it would help bring peace.

The posters and billboards will be put up by Afghan soldiers and police in areas where the military suspects the men are operating, said Belcher. Some on the list are also suspected to operate in Pakistan's tribal regions, where the U.S. military does not have the authority to operate.

The U.S. says it has killed around 50 mostly mid-level insurgent leaders over the past year, a strategy the military is continuing to push with the Most Wanted rewards program.

The highest-ranking leader killed this year was Mullah Dadullah Lang, a one-legged militant who orchestrated a rash of Taliban suicide attacks and beheadings. He died of gunshot wounds in a U.S.-led coalition operation in Helmand in May.

''You disrupt the network when you take out the leadership. It has an effect,'' said Belcher. ''Those mid and high-level leaders are coordinating the action across Afghanistan. By taking them out there's at least a temporary disruption in the ability of the subordinates to continue coordinated operations.''

Among the 12 men on the Most Wanted list, the U.S. is offering the $200,000 reward for five of them, including:

-- Abu Laith al-Libi: An al-Qaida training camp leader who has appeared in many Internet videos and who the U.S. says was likely behind the February bombing at the U.S. base at Bagram during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney.

-- Saraj Haqqani: Son of longtime warlord Jalalludin Haqqani and believed to have connections with al-Qaida.

-- Tahir Yuldash: The leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and an al-Qaida operational commander.

Pollack said the U.S. is offering up to $10,000 to Afghans who turn in any foreign fighter, such as militants from Arab countries or Chechnya, Turkey, or Uzbekistan. The U.S. has also been paying money to Afghans who tell authorities about roadside bombs that have been planted.

''This is not necessarily a new program, we're just putting a lot more energy into it now,'' Pollack said.

    US Offers $200, 000 to Catch Taliban, NYT, 1.10.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Army Bus Blast in Kabul Kills 30

September 29, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:18 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber wearing an Afghan army uniform set off a huge explosion Saturday while trying to board a military bus in the capital, killing 30 people, most of them soldiers, officials said. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

The blast, which also injured 30 people, ripped off the roof of the bus and tore out its sides, leaving a charred hull of burnt metal. It was reminiscent of the deadliest insurgent attack in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 -- when a bomber boarded a police academy bus at Kabul's busiest transportation hub in June and killed 35 people.

Dozens of civilians and police officers searched for bodies. Police and soldiers climbed trees to retrieve some body parts. Nearby businesses also were damaged.

''For 10 or 15 seconds, it was like an atom bomb -- fire, smoke and dust everywhere,'' said Mohammad Azim, a police officer who witnessed the explosion.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said 30 people were killed -- 28 soldiers and two civilians. The Health Ministry said another 30 were wounded.

''It was a terrible tragedy, no doubt an act of extreme cowardice,'' Karzai said. ''Whoever did this was against people, against humanity, definitely against Islam. A man who calls himself Muslim will not blow up innocent people in the middle of Ramadan,'' the Muslim holy month.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed the militant group was responsible for the blast in a text message to The Associated Press. Mujahid said the bomber was a Kabul resident named Azizullah.

The bus had stopped in front of a movie theater to pick up soldiers when a bomber wearing a military uniform tried to board around 6:45 a.m. local time, army spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.

''Typically there are people checking the IDs of soldiers who want to board the bus,'' Azimi said. ''While they were checking the IDs the bomber tried to get on the bus and blew himself up there.''

Kabul's police chief, Gen. Mohammad Aslam Hasas, said Afghan forces shouldn't let strangers get close to them at bus stops.

''They know who should be on the bus,'' Hasas said. ''Whenever they see a stranger's face, they should prevent them from getting close.''

The theater, a restaurant and a pharmacy were among several shops that were badly damaged. A woman who lives nearby was woken up by the explosion, which shattered her bedroom window, cutting her feet. The blast's force sprayed a chunk of scalp onto a nearby rooftop.

Sulahdin, an army officer at the scene who goes by one name, said about 50 people were on the bus. Adbul Karim, a witness, said several people in the back of the vehicle survived.

Taliban attacks typically target international and Afghan military and police, though civilians are often killed or wounded as well. The Taliban have launched more than 100 suicide attacks this year, a record pace.

More than 4,500 people have been killed in insurgency-related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count based on figures from Western and Afghan officials.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross has established contact with the armed group that kidnapped four of its workers but no progress has been made, officials said Friday.

The four ICRC employees -- a national from Myanmar, one from Macedonia and two from Afghanistan -- were seized Wednesday in the central province of Ghazni while trying to secure the release of a German captive.

''We have established contact with all parties concerned with the aim of resolving this situation as quickly as possibly,'' said Graziella Leite, an ICRC spokeswoman in Afghanistan.

------

Associated Press reporters Rahim Faiez and Alisa Tang contributed to this report.

    Army Bus Blast in Kabul Kills 30, NYT, 29.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Bush, Karzai Review Afghan Security

September 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:01 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- President Bush said Wednesday that Afghanistan is becoming a safer, more stable country, thanks to the efforts of President Hamid Karzai.

''Mr. President, you have strong friends here,'' Bush told Karzai after they met for about an hour at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel here. ''I expect progress and you expect progress and I appreciate the report you have given me today.''

The two leaders made no direct mention of Afghanistan's soaring drug trade, the unsuccessful search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden or the resurgence of the Taliban. Karzai said the liberation of Afghanistan is often overlooked these days.

''I don't know if you feel it in the United States but we feel it immensely in Afghanistan,'' Karzai said. ''Afghanistan has indeed made progress,'' he said, citing improvements in basic services such as roads and education.

Afghan opium poppy cultivation has hit a record high this year, fueled by Taliban militants and corrupt officials in Karzai's government, a U.N. report found last month. The country produces nearly all the world's opium, and Taliban insurgents are profiting.

Also, Afghanistan remains in a fight for basic security, a constant threat to its growth as a new democracy. Karzai is pledging to work hard on peace talks with the Taliban to draw the insurgents and their supporters ''back to the fold,'' as he put it this week.

The United States has more than 20,000 troops in Afghanistan. Aides say it is natural for Bush to meet Karzai to review progress, but no single issue prompted their sit-down.

Bush, in New York for the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly, made only brief mention of the war in Afghanistan during his speech to world leaders Tuesday. He said the people of Afghanistan -- and Iraq and Lebanon -- were in a deadly fight for survival.

''Every civilized nation has a responsibility to stand with them,'' Bush said.

Bush also was to pivot to his domestic agenda Wednesday before wrapping up three days in New York.

He planned to tout new national test scores as evidence that the No Child Left Behind Act, his signature education law, is working and deserving of renewal by Congress.

Those new national test results, released Tuesday, show elementary and middle schoolers posted solid gains in math. The students made more modest improvements in reading, however.

Bush scheduled a meeting with Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City's school system, which has won the nation's top prize for urban districts. The district garnered the honor chiefly for reducing achievements gaps among poor and minority kids, a key educational goal for Bush.

The president intends to miss no chance to talk up the No Child Left Behind law, which is up for renewal in Congress. Many lawmakers say it is too narrow and punitive.

Before leaving town, Bush was to speak at a private fundraiser for the Republican National Committee. Back in Washington, more international diplomacy awaited.

The president was hosting a two-day climate meeting, starting Thursday, of major industrialized nations, the United Nations and a few developing countries.

Bush tried to emphasize throughout his meetings in New York that his efforts on climate change were in support of -- not in competition with -- a U.N. conference in December in Indonesia. That later session will be a time of negotiations on a new international climate agreement.

On the sidelines of the U.N. meeting, Bush pressed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday to move on stalled measures deemed critical to political reconciliation. Much-delayed action, such as a national oil law, have bogged down in the Iraqi parliament amid factional bickering, which, in turn, has only deepened frustration among U.S. lawmakers.

    Bush, Karzai Review Afghan Security, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bush.html

Pentagon Seeks $190 Billion for Wars

September 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates will ask Congress Wednesday to approve nearly $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008, increasing initial projections by more than a third.

In remarks prepared for a Senate hearing, Gates says the extra money is necessary to buy vehicles that can protect troops against roadside bombs, refurbish equipment worn down by combat and consolidate U.S. bases in Iraq. A copy of the remarks was obtained by The Associated Press.

In that prepared testimony, Gates said, ''I know that Iraq and other difficult choices America faces in the war on terror will continue to be a source of friction within the Congress, between the Congress and the president and in the wider public debate.''

''Considering this, I would like to close with a word about something I know we can all agree on -- the honor, courage and great sense of duty we have witnessed in our troops since September 11th,'' his testimony said.

In February, Bush requested $141.7 billion for the wars; officials said at the time the figure was only a rough estimate and could climb. In July, the Defense Department asked Congress for another $5.3 billion to buy 1,500 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles.

Gates says another $42 billion is needed to cover additional requirements. The extra money includes:

-- $11 billion to field another 7,000 MRAP vehicles in addition to the 8,000 already planned;

-- $9 billion to reconstitute equipment and technology;

-- $6 billion for training and equipment of troops;

-- $1 billion to improve U.S. facilities in the region and consolidate bases in Iraq; and

-- $1 billion to train and equip Iraqi security forces.

    Pentagon Seeks $190 Billion for Wars, NYT, 26.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-US-Iraq.html

Hearing in Killing of Afghan Puts Army War Effort on Trial

September 20, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL VON ZIELBAUER

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 19 — At the close of a two-day hearing on charges that Special Forces soldiers murdered an Afghan man near his home last October, it is increasingly evident that the Army is also examining itself and how it is fighting the war in Afghanistan.

A Special Forces colonel presiding over the hearing must determine whether sufficient evidence exists to recommend courts-martial for the two soldiers accused of killing the man, Nawab Buntangyar, who had been identified as an “enemy combatant,” while he walked unarmed outside his home near the Pakistan border.

But the focus of the hearing frequently shifted from the soldiers’ actions and toward the Army’s decision to bring charges against them. It also shifted to the effect on the Afghan people of Special Forces soldiers being allowed to kill some Afghan fighters more or less on sight.

From the beginning of the proceeding, Col. Kevin A. Christie, the presiding officer, seemed pressed to figure out why a military lawyer pursued murder charges after an Army investigation cleared the two soldiers of wrongdoing when they killed Mr. Buntangyar, who as a designated enemy combatant was subject to attack under the Special Forces’ classified rules of engagement.

In questions to several witnesses, Colonel Christie indicated that the Army was aware of the risks of trying to win the tactical battle in Afghanistan by aggressively pursuing the enemy in an unconventional war, as balanced against the potential expense of losing the larger strategic battle for the hearts and minds of Afghan civilians.

The decision by the general in charge of Special Forces to allow limited public access to the hearing was itself a sign of the Army’s desire to be seen as reflective and open to scrutiny, specialists in military justice said.

In an exchange that reflected the underlying issues of concern to the Special Forces command here, Colonel Christie asked Maj. Matthew McHale, the company commander in charge of the assault team that included the two accused soldiers, about the repercussions of how his men had killed Mr. Buntangyar.

Mr. Buntangyar was killed on Oct. 13, 2006, when Master Sgt. Troy Anderson, acting on orders from Capt. Dave Staffel, shot him in the face from a distance of about 100 feet. The order to shoot came after Afghan Border Police officers had surrounded Mr. Buntangyar’s home, exchanged a friendly greeting with him and asked him twice to confirm his identity. Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson were charged with premeditated murder in June, two months after an Army investigation determined Mr. Buntangyar’s “enemy combatant” status justified killing him.

“Would you tell your teams to do things that had limited tactical effects if they had potential strategic negative effects?” Colonel Christie asked Major McHale.

The major said assault teams continually weigh the two goals during missions.

The colonel asked if he thought the “strategic effect” of shooting a man whom the Afghan police had essentially lured out of his home “adds to the credibility of the police,” an institution that the American military is desperate to make independent and trustworthy in the eyes of local residents.

Major McHale conceded that the killing could undermine the public perception of the police. But, he added, they were unreliable and often sloppy. At the home, the police had to gesture to communicate with Special Forces soldiers because the police had accidentally locked their radios and car keys in their vehicles.

    Hearing in Killing of Afghan Puts Army War Effort on Trial, NYT, 20.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/us/20abuse.html

Taliban Accused of Using Kids As Shields

September 19, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:05 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The U.S.-led coalition accused the Taliban of using children as human shields during a battle in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, while NATO said it was investigating a shipment of weapons intercepted near the border with Iran this month.

The fighting in Uruzgan province began when more than 20 insurgents armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol Wednesday morning, the coalition said in a statement.

As a coalition aircraft prepared to bomb the site, ''coalition forces as well as the aircraft identified several insurgents in one compound using children as human shields,'' it said. Ground forces and the aircraft withheld fire to avoid injuring the children. It was impossible to independently verify the coalition allegations.

The troops fought Taliban trying to flee the compound, and more than a dozen suspected militants were killed, the coalition said. There were no reports of casualties to troops or civilians.

International forces have come under heavy criticism for causing civilian casualties during airstrikes on suspected militant locations. President Hamid Karzai has pleaded with foreign troops to coordinate more closely with their Afghan counterparts to prevent villagers from being hurt, and the number of civilian casualties has dropped recently.

Also Wednesday, a NATO spokesman said the coalition was investigating a weapons shipment recently intercepted by troops in Farah province near the Iranian border.

''Although we know that it came from the geographic area of Iran, there is no definitive indication that it came from the Iranian government. We're still evaluating what is contained in that shipment,'' spokesman Maj. Charles Anthony said.

A Washington Post report Sunday said the shipment seized Sept. 6 was being sent to the Taliban and included armor-piercing bombs similar to those that have been used in against foreign troops in Iraq. International troops intercepted two other shipments said to be from Iran earlier in the year.

NATO's top general in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill, has said there is no evidence linking the Iranian government to the shipments.

Last month, President Bush accused Iran of playing a destabilizing role in Afghanistan. But Karzai has said Iran's role is helpful.

During a visit to Kabul last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he has ''serious doubts'' that his country is supplying weapons to Taliban insurgents. He called Afghanistan a ''brotherly nation'' whose stability is paramount for the region.

Karzai met with several former warlords-turned-politicians Wednesday and they agreed the government should hold peace talks with the Taliban, the president's office said.

NATO's top civilian envoy to Afghanistan, Daan Everts, said the alliance was ''very interested'' in seeing peace negotiations come to fruition and there appeared to be ''growing interest'' on the part of the Taliban and fighters from the militant group Hezb-i-Islami.

The possibility of peace talks gained momentum earlier this month when Karzai reiterated his long-held position that the government is willing to engage the Taliban diplomatically. But the Taliban leadership has set conditions the West is unlikely to accept -- that U.S. and NATO forces first leave the country and that Shariah, a harshly conservative brand of Islamic law, must prevail in Afghanistan.

About 2,500 Afghan and NATO troops launched a new military operation Wednesday in Afghanistan's most violent southern province. The operation is in the Gereshk region of Helmand province, the site of the fiercest battles this year and the world's largest opium-producing region.

Insurgency-related violence has killed more than 4,500 people this year, including 3,100 militants and 600 civilians, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Western and Afghan officials.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul warned Americans that suicide bomb attacks were expected to increase during the holy month of Ramadan.

In the latest violence, a suicide bomber in Kabul blew himself up on the road leading to the U.S. air base in Bagram, the Interior Ministry said. No one else was hurt.

In southern Zabul province, Taliban militants killed three security guards protecting a construction project in Qalat, said Gulab Shah Alikhail, spokesman for the governor.

------

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

    Taliban Accused of Using Kids As Shields, NYT, 19.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Green Berets Face Hearing on Killing of Suspect in Afghan Village

September 18, 2007
The New York Times
By PAUL von ZIELBAUER

FORT BRAGG, N.C., Sept. 17 — From his position about 100 yards away, Master Sgt. Troy Anderson had a clear shot at the Afghan man standing outside a residential compound in a village near the Pakistan border last October. When Capt. Dave Staffel, the Special Forces officer in charge, gave the order to shoot, Sergeant Anderson fired a bullet into the man’s head, killing him.

In June, Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson were charged with premeditated murder. On Tuesday, in a rare public examination of the rules that govern the actions of Special Operations troops in Afghanistan, a military hearing will convene at Fort Bragg to weigh the evidence against the two men, both Green Berets.

The case revolves around differing interpretations of the kind of force that the Special Forces team that hunted and killed the man, Nawab Buntangyar, were allowed to use once they found him, apparently unarmed.

To the Special Forces soldiers and their 12-man detachment, the shooting, near the village of Ster Kalay, was a textbook example of a classified mission completed in accordance with the American rules of engagement. They said those rules allowed the killing of Mr. Buntangyar, whom the American Special Operations Command here has called an “enemy combatant.”

Mr. Buntangyar had organized suicide and roadside bomb attacks, Captain Staffel’s lawyer said.

But to the two-star general in charge of the Special Operations forces in Afghanistan at the time, Frank H. Kearney, who has since become a three-star general, the episode appeared to be an unauthorized, illegal killing. In June, after two military investigations, General Kearney moved to have murder charges brought against Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson — respectively, the junior commissioned and senior noncommissioned officers of Operational Detachment Alpha 374, Third Battalion, Third Special Forces Group.

The soldiers’ cases also highlight the level of scrutiny that General Kearney, who also ordered swift investigations into an elite Marine unit accused of killing Afghan civilians last March, has given to the actions of some of the most specialized and independent American troops fighting Taliban and insurgent forces along the border with Pakistan.

Mark Waple, a civilian lawyer representing Captain Staffel, said the charges against his client and Sergeant Anderson carry a whiff of “military politics.” In an interview, Mr. Waple said that General Kearney proceeded with murder charges against the two soldiers even after an investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded in April that the shooting had been “justifiable homicide.”

A spokesman for Special Forces Command at Fort Bragg declined to comment on the shooting or the murder charges. Lt. Col. Lou Leto, the spokesman for General Kearney’s previous command, where the murder charges originated, also did not comment. General Kearney was promoted in July to lieutenant general and became deputy commander of Special Operations, where a spokesman declined to discuss the case.

On Oct. 13, 2006, when Captain Staffel learned that Mr. Buntangyar could be found in a home near the village where his detachment was guarding a medical convoy, he ordered a seven-man team to investigate the tip.

Driving toward Ster Kalay in two government vans, the Americans called the Afghan national police and border patrol officers to assist them, Mr. Waple said. Mr. Buntangyar had already been “vetted as a target” by American commanders, as an enemy combatant who could be legally killed once he was positively identified, Mr. Waple said.

After the Afghan police called Mr. Buntangyar outside and twice asked him to identify himself, they signaled, using a prearranged hand gesture, to Sergeant Anderson, concealed with a rifle about 100 yards away, Mr. Waple said.

From a vehicle a few hundred yards farther away, Captain Staffel radioed Sergeant Anderson, Mr. Waple said. “If you have a clear shot,” he told the sergeant, “take it.”

Confirming the order, Sergeant Anderson fired once, killing Mr. Buntangyar. The American team drove to the village center to explain to the local residents, “This is who we are, this is what we just did and this is why we did it,” Mr. Waple said.

The highest-ranking witness called to testify at the soldiers’ hearing Tuesday will be General Kearney, though it is unclear whether he will comply with the request.

Also scheduled to testify is Sgt. First Class Scott R. Haarer, a paralegal on General Kearney’s staff last October who, as part of the military justice procedure, signed the forms that charged Captain Staffel and Sergeant Anderson with murder.

In a notarized statement, Sergeant Haarer told defense lawyers last week that he would not have accused the soldiers of any crime if he had known that the Criminal Investigation Command had determined that the shooting was justified.

Bomber Strikes Afghan Police

NAD ALI, Afghanistan, Sept. 17 — A suicide bomber wrapped in explosives walked into a crowded government building in the Nad Ali district of Afghanistan’s Helmand Province on Monday and blew himself up, killing at least seven people, four of them police officers, said Muhammad Hussain Andiwal, the chief of the provincial police. Six people were wounded.

Afghan and Western forces in Helmand have been fighting a resurgent Taliban and trying to contend with booming opium production.

    Green Berets Face Hearing on Killing of Suspect in Afghan Village, NYT, 18.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/us/18hearing.html

Afghan Suicide Blast Kills 28, Wounds 60

September 10, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:29 p.m. ET
The New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- A suicide bomber on a motorized rickshaw detonated explosives Monday in a marketplace in southern Afghanistan, killing 28 people in one of the deadliest bombings since the fall of the Taliban. Children selling chewing gum and cigarettes were among the victims of the blast.

The attacker was apparently targeting a police commander when he detonated his bomb near a taxi stand around 6:30 p.m. in the town of Gereshk in Helmand province, the world's largest poppy-growing region and site of the country's worst violence this year.

Gereshk district chief Abdul Manaf Khan said 28 people were killed, including 13 police and 15 civilians. The provincial chief of public health, Enayatullah Ghafari, said the hospital recorded 26 deaths and 60 wounded, though he said some of the dead probably weren't brought to the hospital and the death toll was likely higher.

NATO said 13 people were taken to a NATO-Afghan base for treatment and 45 people to the Gereshk hospital.

Taliban militants have set off a record number of suicide blasts this year -- more than 100 through the end of August -- but few are as deadly as the Helmand attack. The Taliban typically aim their attacks at international and Afghan military and police forces.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the attacker was driving a motorized rickshaw -- a small engine-powered cart commonly used as a taxi in southern Afghanistan.

Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said a local police commander who survived the attack appeared to have been the target. A Taliban spokesman couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

A shopkeeper, Abibullah Khan, whose 16-year-old son was wounded, said young children who walk the market selling cigarettes and chewing gum were among the blast's victims. He said more than a dozen shops were damaged.

''I saw a lot of people wounded and killed on the ground,'' Khan said by telephone from the hospital in the nearby town of Lashkar Gah. ''It's a very crowded area. At this time of night many villagers are in Gereshk's big market.''

The attack appeared to be the second-deadliest bombing in Afghanistan this year and the third-deadliest since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001. In June, 35 people were killed in a bomb attack on a police bus in Kabul, while in September 2002, 30 people were killed and 167 wounded in a Kabul car bombing.

Afghanistan has seen a spike in violence this year, especially in the south. More than 4,200 people, mostly militants, have died in insurgency-related violence in 2007, according to an AP count based on figures from Afghan and Western officials.

Earlier in the day, a spokesman for the militant group said the Taliban would consider negotiating with the Afghan government, but said no direct offer has been made by President Hamid Karzai's administration.

''If Karzai and his government ask directly for negotiations, the Taliban would consider that offer,'' Qari Yousef Ahmadi said by phone from an unknown location.

Ahmadi's comments come a day after Karzai reiterated an offer to negotiate with the hard-line Islamic fundamentalists, but added, the fighters ''don't have an address'' or a telephone number. ''Who do we talk to?'' Karzai asked.

Ahmadi, however, said the militants were easy to contact if government officials wanted to talk. He noted that South Korean officials flew into the country and quickly contacted the Taliban for negotiations over the fate of South Korean hostages last month.

''Whenever the Afghan government wants to hold negotiations, the Taliban is in Afghanistan,'' he said.

Meanwhile, 10 of 13 employees for a U.N.-funded land mine-clearing agency who were kidnapped in eastern Afghanistan last week were released Monday, said Paktia provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai. The three remaining captives were expected to be released soon, Alizai said.

Kefayatullah Eblagh, the head of Afghan Technical Consultants, the mine-clearing agency, said he didn't think Taliban militants were behind the abductions, suggesting a criminal group seeking ransom money carried out the kidnappings.

Elsewhere, militants ambushed and killed four police officers from the northwest province of Faryab who were traveling to neighboring Badghis province to help repel an attack on a government center, said Faryab provincial police chief Gen. Khalil Zayia.

    Afghan Suicide Blast Kills 28, Wounds 60, NYT, 10.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt

September 2, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than they did last summer.

The Panjwai and Zhare districts, in particular, highlight the changing nature of the fight in the south. The military operation there in September 2006 was the largest conventional battle in the country since 2002. But this year, the Taliban are avoiding set battles with NATO and instead are attacking the police and stepping up their use of roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices or I.E.D.’s.

“It’s very seldom that we have direct engagement with the Taliban,” said Brig. Gen. Guy Laroche, the commander of Canadian forces leading the NATO effort in Kandahar. “What they’re going to use is I.E.D.’s.”

The Taliban also wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.

“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”

NATO and American military officials have declined to release exact Taliban attack statistics, and collecting accurate information is difficult, particularly in rural Afghanistan. According to an internal United Nations tally, insurgents set off 516 improvised explosive devices in 2007. Another 402 improvised explosive devices were discovered before detonation.

Reported security incidents, a broad category that includes bombings, firefights and intimidation, are up from roughly 500 a month last year to 600 a month this year, a 20 percent increase, according to the United Nations.

The rising attacks are taking a heavy toll. At least 2,500 to 3,000 people have died in insurgency-related violence so far this year, a quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations tally, a 20 percent increase over 2006.

NATO and American casualty rates are up by about 20 percent this year, to 161, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Afghan police continue to be devastated by Taliban bombings and guerrilla strikes, with 379 killed so far this year, compared with 257 for all of last year.

Yet the Taliban have been unable to take large towns this year and have carried out 102 suicide bombings, roughly the same number as last year, according to the United Nations. A conventional Taliban spring offensive was predicted by many but never materialized, and Western officials say that raids by NATO and American Special Operations forces have killed dozens of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders this year.

Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said the Taliban’s leadership was in “disarray” and had not been able to carry out the attacks it had hoped this year and would be even weaker next year.

“This has been a shaping year,” he said. “I think next year will be a decisive year.”

Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials. The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas. Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.

Recent visits to three southern provinces revealed territorial divisions that largely resembled those of last year. In Kandahar and Helmand, the government has a strong presence in about half of each province, the local police said. And in Oruzgan Province, where Dutch NATO forces focus more on development programs than on combat, the government controls the provincial capital, several district centers and little of the countryside.

The seesaw nature of the conflict is evident here in Kandahar, where the local governor cites a slight drop in suicide bombings in the provincial capital as a sign of progress. But police officials and villagers bitterly complain that Canadian forces abandoned Panjwai and Zhare.

Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August, he said.

The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen policemen were killed.

“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to collect our dead.”

General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops then arrived as quickly as they could.

Canadian forces are now establishing joint checkpoints in Panjwai and Zhare where Canadian troops, Afghan Army soldiers and police officers will all be present, he said. And Canadian forces recently retook a checkpoint in Zhare.

General Laroche and General Champoux said it was vital to train Afghan police forces who could secure areas after NATO and Afghan soldiers cleared them, and to find strong, honest local leaders to administer them.

“The most important part is holding it,” General Champoux said. “We’re most effective when we’re holding it with Afghans.”

The Panjwai police chief, Bismillah Jan, said Taliban attacks on the local police began intensifying four months ago. Deploying far more roadside bombs than last year, the Taliban have destroyed 11 police vehicles and killed several dozen policemen.

Today, Mr. Jan has 64 policemen — each with one month of training — and five functional vehicles to defend the district from several hundred Taliban fighters. He said that his men could make forays into Taliban areas but that they could not hold terrain.

“We can go there, but we cannot control it,” he said.

In separate interviews, half a dozen tribal elders from Panjwai described the Taliban attacks on police posts and other new tactics. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the insurgents.

After moving though the area in large groups last summer, the Taliban now operate in bands of no more than 20. Instead of sleeping in freshly dug bunkers and trenches, they sleep in mosques and houses, apparently to avoid NATO airstrikes, or, in the event of an attack, to increase the likelihood of civilian casualties, villagers said.

“Last year, they had their own trenches and their own places,” one elder said. “Now, they are very close to the houses and families. Their tactics changed.”

Another elder said: “They are very rude. First, they ask you for food. Then, they search you 20 times.”

Officials in Helmand and Oruzgan Provinces described dynamics similar to those in Kandahar. Security improved somewhat in provincial capitals this summer, they said, but rural areas remain no man’s lands dominated by criminal gangs and the Taliban.

In Helmand, where 7,000 British troops are based, residents credited the new police chief, Muhammad Hussain Andiwall, with improving security somewhat in the provincial capital. But opium cultivation and lawlessness are flourishing in the countryside.

Last month, the mayor of Gereshk, Helmand’s second-largest town, was kidnapped as he drove through a stretch of desert separating the town from the provincial capital. When Mr. Andiwall drove to the scene to try to find him, a roadside bomb exploded as his vehicle passed, killing four civilians.

After the mayor’s family paid a ransom to local criminals they freed him.

In Oruzgan, Dost Muhammad Dostiyar, the counternarcotics chief, said people were waiting to see if the government and Dutch forces could reassert themselves.

“One of the big reasons the people have distanced themselves from the government is that the government only has control of the capital,” he said. “The rural areas are totally under the control of the militants.”

Afghan officials in all three southern provinces said the Taliban had evolved as a movement as well. Taking advantage of popular frustration with government corruption, the Taliban have broadened from a close-knit, ideologically driven movement to an amalgam of loosely affiliated groups fighting the government.

Across the south, the term “Taliban” now encompasses a shifting array of tribes, groups, criminals, opportunists and people discontented with the government. In private, some Western officials say a political approach to more moderate insurgents is needed. Elders from Panjwai blamed the United States and President Hamid Karzai for not including more southern tribes in the government formed after the fall of the Taliban.

“When the Americans came, they didn’t contact the right people,” one elder said. “They empowered two or three tribes and they pushed away others.”

Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan, said there was disorientation among insurgent groups. The Taliban have lost much of their senior leadership, he said, and other insurgent groups are not gaining popular support. At the same time, Pakistan is showing signs of cracking down on Taliban leaders there. All of these factors, present an opportunity for the Afghan government and NATO forces, he said.

“The Taliban are vulnerable in many ways,” he said. “Enormous achievements haven’t yet been made, but there has been progress.”

    Afghan Police Are Set Back as Taliban Adapt, NYT, 2.9.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/world/asia/02taliban.html?hp

3pm update

US kills 100 'insurgents' in Afghanistan battle

Wednesday August 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Mark Tran and agencies

The US today said its forces had killed more than 100 suspected insurgents after a convoy was ambushed in the southern province of Kandahar.

"Coalition aircraft destroyed the reinforced enemy emplacements and sniper positions, as well as two trucks used to reinforce and re-supply the insurgent force," a US military statement said.

There were no civilian casualties, the US added, but one Afghan soldier was killed and three wounded.

Three other soldiers were injured. Their nationality was not disclosed, but most of foreign troops in the area are American.

The Taliban is particularly strong in Kandahar, where the movement had its roots.

The number of insurgents killed could not be independently verified but, if confirmed, would represent the highest Taliban death toll for many weeks.

Elsewhere, a suicide bomber blew himself up next to an Afghan army patrol in a market in Paktika province, killing two soldiers and four shoppers, a local official said. Ten other people were wounded.

Violence in Afghanistan has surged over the past 19 months - the bloodiest period since US-led troops overthrew the Taliban government in 2001.

Nine western soldiers, most of them American, have been killed in Taliban attacks in several parts of Afghanistan over recent days.

In other developments, Taliban militants released 12 South Korean hostages - the first of 19 captives scheduled to be freed under a deal between the insurgents and the South Korean government.

Three women were first handed to tribal leaders, who took them to an agreed location where officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross collected them.

They arrived in the central Afghan village of Qala-E-Kazi in a single car, their heads covered with green shawls, and were quickly taken to an undisclosed location.

In Seoul, the South Korean foreign ministry said the three - identified as Ahn Hye-jin, Lee Jung-ran and Han Ji-young - did not appear to have any health problems.

Later, four women and a man were also released.

To win the release of the church workers, South Korea said it would withdraw its 200 troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year and prevent South Korean Christian missionaries from working there.

The Taliban apparently backed down on earlier demands for a prisoner exchange.

Taliban fighters originally kidnapped 23 hostages as they travelled by bus from Kabul to Kandahar on July 19. In late July, the militants executed two male hostages, and released two women earlier this month.

The insurgents have said they will free all the hostages, who they are holding in different locations, over the next few days. Mullah Basheer, a Taliban commander, said up to seven other hostages would "possibly" be released later today.

    US kills 100 'insurgents' in Afghanistan battle, NYT, 29.8.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2158201,00.html

Faster, deadlier pilotless plane bound for Afghanistan

27.8.2007
USA Today
By Tom Vanden Brook

CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — The Air Force this fall will deploy a new generation of pilotless airplane with the bombing power of an F-16 to help stop the stubborn Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The Reaper is an upgraded version of the Predator, which has become one of the military's most sought-after planes since it first appeared in Afghanistan in 2001. The Reaper can fly three times as fast as a Predator and carry eight times more weaponry, such as Hellfire missiles, the Air Force said.

The Reaper's greater range and speed make it better suited than the Predator to Afghanistan with its vast, rugged terrain. The Reaper will also be deployed to Iraq. Its speed and arms will let it track and kill moving targets able to elude a Predator, said Brig. Gen. James Poss, director of intelligence for Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va.

Air Force officials cite the June 2006 killing of al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was tracked by a Predator but ultimately killed by bombs dropped by an F-16. The Reaper "is ideal for that type of target," said Lt. Col. Gregory Christ, director of staff at Creech.

Despite the Predator's success, field commanders wanted a faster, more lethal alternative, said Col. Charles Bartlett, leader of the Air Force's unmanned aircraft task force.

Such demand has prompted the Air Force to rush to train operators and crews. In 2003, the Air Force trained fewer than 40 Predator operators. In 2008, that will soar to 160. It has trained 10 Reaper operators this year, and expects to train 19 more in 2008.

The Reaper squadron will start small and has only four aircraft, said Maj. David Small, an Air Force spokesman. It will ultimately have 20 planes, he said.

Most Reapers, like Predators, are flown from bases in the United States, such as Creech, which is about an hour north of the Las Vegas strip.

The Reaper carries about the same payload as the F-16 but can stay aloft as much as eight times longer than the F-16, which must refuel about every two hours.

"You've got a lot of ammo circling overhead on call for short-notice strikes," said John Pike, director of the military think tank, Globalsecurity. "It seems like a good idea."

Demand for Predator flights has exploded. This year, Predator flight hours are expected to exceed 70,000 hours, more than triple the total in 2003.

Combat pilots say they miss the feel of flying but say remote-control aircraft are here to stay.

"This is the future," said Chad Miner, chief of weapons and tactics at Creech, a Predator trainer and an F-16 pilot. "I would love to … jump in an F-16 and go. But I'm a more valuable asset to the military doing this. It's not the sexiest answer, but it's true."

    Faster, deadlier pilotless plane bound for Afghanistan, UT, 27.8.2007, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-08-27-reaper-afghanistan_N.htm

Report: 18 Afghan Civilians Killed

August 27, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:24 a.m. ET
The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Witnesses said Sunday that clashes between coalition troops and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan left at least 18 civilians dead. NATO officials, however, said no noncombatants were killed.

The alleged civilian deaths occurred in the southern Helmand province. Coalition and Afghan troops clashed late Saturday with militants near the Taliban-controlled town of Musa Qala.

A spokeswoman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Monday that credible intelligence suggested the claims were fabricated as part of a propaganda war against the Afghan government and international forces.

''The insurgents continue to follow their pattern of falsely reporting civilian casualties,'' Capt. Vanessa R. Bowman said.

But Haji Abdul Manan Agha, the tribal leader from the area, said two homes were bombed by coalition forces late Saturday. ''In one home 18 people attending an engagement party were killed, including women, children and men,'' he said.

In the second house, eight Taliban were killed, he said. More than 30 people were wounded in both strikes, Agha said.

Mohammad Gul, a taxi driver who brought six wounded to a nearby hospital, also said that 18 civilians were killed in the clash.

Mohammad Nabi, whose relatives were among the wounded, said dozens of people were killed. ''If the Taliban shoot at NATO or American convoys, than NATO and Americans come back and bomb all of the area,'' Nabi said. ''And when we bring our casualties to the hospital then they say they are Taliban,'' he said.

The claims could not be independently verified due to remoteness of the area where the clash took place.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly deplored civilian deaths caused by NATO or U.S. military action, saying more must be done to prevent such casualties. But military officials have begun saying that some reports are nothing but information warfare by the Taliban.

Coalition and Afghan government officials have said that it is easy for Taliban fighters to falsely claim that civilians were killed by Western or Afghan military action and that militants are forcing locals to lie to journalists.

Meanwhile, unidentified assailants shot and killed a soldier from the 37-nation strong security assistance force during a foot patrol in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said in a statement. It did not identify the nationality of the dead solider.

Along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, 12 Taliban fighters were killed by artillery fire after insurgents attacked a military post with rockets and mortars, officials said.

Coalition and Afghan troops in eastern Paktika province were attacked by insurgents who used Pakistan's territory to fire rockets and mortar rounds toward a coalition observation post Saturday, a coalition statement said.

Pakistani authorities gave permission for the troops to return fire, it said.

''Coalition counter-fire batteries destroyed the six confirmed insurgent firing sites, three on each side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border,'' the statement said, adding 12 Taliban were killed.

Insurgents move back and forth through the porous border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Afghan authorities have accused Pakistan in the past of not doing enough to prevent the movement of militants across the border to attack Afghan and foreign troops in the country.

Pakistan denies the charge and says it has deployed tens of thousands of the troops along the volatile frontier to stem the flow of militants.

Violence in Afghanistan has risen sharply during the last two months. This year more than 3,800 people -- most of them militants -- have died, according to an Associated Press tally of casualty figures provided by Western and Afghan officials.

Associated Press writers Noor Khan in Kandahar and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

    Report: 18 Afghan Civilians Killed, NYT, 27.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

Taliban Push Poppy Production to a Record Again

August 26, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID ROHDE

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 25 — Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to spark renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been dogged by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.”

Mr. Wood said the current American programs for eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained “a possibility.” Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban.

While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials briefed on the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies.

Although common farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers’ fields from eradication, according to American officials. They also receive a cut of the trade from traffickers they protect.

In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before, and about 16 metric tons of chemicals used in heroin production have been confiscated this year.

The Western officials briefed on the report said countrywide production had increased from 2006 to 2007, but they did not know the final United Nations figure. They estimated a countrywide increase of 10 to 30 percent.

The new survey showed positive signs as well, officials said.

The sharp drop in poppy production in the north is likely to make this year’s countrywide increase smaller than the growth in 2006. Last year, a 160 percent increase in Helmand’s opium crop fueled a 50 percent nationwide increase. Afghanistan produced a record 6,100 metric tons of opium poppies last year, 92 percent of the world’s supply. Here in Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.

Poppy prices that are 10 times higher than those for legal crops have so warped the local economy that some farmhands refused to take jobs harvesting legal crops this year, local farmers said. And farmers dismiss the threat of eradication, arguing that so many local officials are involved in the poppy trade that a significant clearing of crops will never be done.

American and British officials say they have a long-term strategy to curb poppy production modeled after successful, decade-long efforts in Pakistan and Thailand. About 7,000 British troops are gradually extending the government’s authority in some areas, they said. And the United States Agency for International Development is mounting a $250 million alternative livelihoods program in southern Afghanistan, most of it in Helmand.

Loren Stoddard, director of the aid agency’s agriculture program in Afghanistan, cited American-financed agricultural fairs, the introduction of high-paying legal crops and the planned construction of a new industrial park and airport as evidence that alternatives were being created.

Mr. Stoddard, who helped Wal-Mart move into Central America in his previous posting, predicted that poppy production had become so prolific in Helmand that the opium market was flooded and prices were beginning to drop.

“It seems likely they’ll have a rough year this year,” he said, referring to Helmand’s poppy farmers. “Labor prices are up and poppy prices are down. I think they’re going to be looking for new things.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Stoddard and Rory Donohoe, the director of USAID’s Alternative Livelihoods program in southern Afghanistan, attended the first “Helmand Agricultural Festival.” The $100,000 American-financed gathering in Lashkar Gah was an odd cross between a Midwestern county fair and a Central Asian bazaar, designed to show Afghans an alternative to poppies.

Under a scorching sun, thousands of Afghan men meandered among booths describing fish farms, the dairy business and drip-irrigation systems. A generator, cow and goat were raffled off. Wizened elders sat on carpets and sipped green tea.

Some wealthy farmers seemed genuinely interested. Others seemed keen to attend what they saw as a picnic.

When Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe arrived, they walked through the festival surrounded by a three-man British and Australian security team armed with assault rifles.

“Who won the cow? Who won the cow?” shouted Mr. Stoddard, 38, a burly former food broker from Provo, Utah. “Was it a girl or a guy?”

After Afghans began dancing to traditional drum and flute music, Mr. Donohoe, 29, from San Francisco, briefly joined them.

Afghans gave the fair mixed reviews. Haji Abdul Gafar, 28, a wealthy land-owner, expressed interest in some of the new ideas.

Saber Gul, a 40-year-old laborer, said he was too poor to take advantage. “For those who have livestock and land, they can,” he said. “For us, the poor people, there is nothing.”

Local officials said all the development programs would fail without improved security.

Assadullah Wafa, Helmand’s governor, said his own police were too weak to take and hold territory, and he praised British military attempts to extend his authority. Mr. Wafa said four of Helmand’s 13 districts were under Taliban control. Other officials put the number at six.

Mr. Wafa, who eradicated one-quarter of the acres of the governor in neighboring Kandahar Province, called for Western countries to decrease the demand for heroin.

“In the international legal system, both the growing and consuming are against the law,” he said. “The world is focusing on the production side, not the buying side.”

The day after the agricultural fair, Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe gave a tour of a $300,000 American project to clear a Soviet airbase on the outskirts of town and turn it into an industrial park and civilian airport.

Standing near rusting Soviet fuel tanks, the two men described how pomegranates, a delicacy in Helmand for centuries, would be flown out to burgeoning markets in India and Dubai. Animal feed would be produced from a local mill, marble cut and polished for construction.

“Once we get this air cargo thing going,” Mr. Stoddard said, “it will open up the whole south.”

That afternoon, they showed off a pilot program for growing chili peppers on contract for a company in Dubai. “These kinds of partnerships with private companies are what we want here,” Mr. Donohoe said. “We’ll let the market drive it.”

As the Americans toured the farm, they were guarded by five Afghans and five guards from the British security firm. The farm itself had received guards after local villagers began sneaking in at night and stealing produce. Twenty-four hours a day, 24 Afghan men with assault rifles staff six guard posts that ring the farm, safeguarding chili peppers and other produce.

“Some people would say that security is so bad that you can’t do anything,” Mr. Donohoe said. “But we do it.”

Mr. Wafa, though, said the effort remained too small and was “low quality.”

“There is a proverb in Afghanistan,” he said. “By one flower we cannot mark spring.”

    Taliban Push Poppy Production to a Record Again, NYT, 26.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26heroin.html?hp

Retired General Is Censured Over Tillman Case

August 1, 2007
The New York Times
By NEIL A. LEWIS

WASHINGTON, July 31 — The Army moved on Tuesday to stanch the furor over the mishandling of the friendly fire death of Cpl. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan by censuring a retired three-star general for errors and deceptions and apologizing profusely to the Tillman family and the public for “mistakes, misjudgments and a failure of leadership.”

Army Secretary Pete Geren outlined the results and recommendations of the seventh and what he said he expected would be the Army’s final investigation of the death of Corporal Tillman, an N.F.L. player-turned-soldier, and its aftermath. The report asserted that there was no cover-up of the manner of his death, which officials decided was a battlefield accident and not a murder.

The report, by Gen. William S. Wallace, said Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr. had failed to follow procedures requiring him to notify the Tillman family and top officials about the investigation into the possibility of friendly fire and then lied to two sets of investigators about when he knew that Corporal Tillman’s death was caused by shots fired by fellow Army Rangers.

Mr. Geren agreed with the report’s recommendation that General Kensinger be censured and that a review board consider reducing him in rank to a two-star general.

Mr. Geren said that General Kensinger, who was head of special operations for the Army in 2004, provided a report to the acting secretary of the Army “that he knew to be false, which was his own sworn testimony,” and that he failed to show leadership.

“General Kensinger was the captain of that ship, and his ship ran aground,” Mr. Geren said.

Pat Tillman became a storybook figure when he decided to forsake a multimillion-dollar career in the National Football League, where he had been a star defensive back for the Arizona Cardinals, to enlist in the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

After his death in a remote canyon near the village of Magar, the Army announced that he was killed in combat by Afghan militants, although many officers knew that he had been a casualty of American fire. The military waited nearly five weeks before telling Corporal Tillman’s family that enemy fire did not kill him.

In addition to the actions against General Kensinger, the Army issued “memorandums of concern” to two brigadier generals, one retired and one active, and to three lower-ranking officers.

Another memorandum of concern was sent to a third brigadier general who was not directly involved in the reporting chain about Corporal Tillman’s death, but who failed to forward a report with a medical examiner’s concerns about the bullet wounds. Because the medical report suggested that the wounds might have been inflicted at close range, investigators questioned members of Corporal Tillman’s unit as to whether he might have been resented enough for someone to try to kill him.

Although Mr. Geren said he hoped the latest actions would put to rest the suspicions and resentment surrounding the case, that is not likely.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has scheduled a hearing on Wednesday on Corporal Tillman’s death. Mr. Waxman has called several top military officials as witnesses, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, although it is unclear who will appear.

Mr. Waxman has said the White House, citing executive privilege, improperly withheld some information from the committee.

Mr. Tillman’s family has been withering in its criticism of the military. His mother, Mary Tillman, offered a pre-emptive dismissal of the disciplinary actions on Tuesday, telling a columnist for The Arizona Republic in Phoenix that reports of the possible demotion of General Kensinger and other actions would be “a complete donkey show.”

Ms. Tillman said she continued to believe there was some sort of cover-up.

Mr. Geren’s contrition over how the episode was handled was unreserved and direct. He said there were “errors and failures of leadership that confused and misinformed the American people and compounded the grief suffered by the Tillman family.”

He said the mistakes “also created in the mind of many a perception that the Army intended to deceive the public and the Tillman family about the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death,” adding, “Many have come to believe that the Army manipulated that tragedy to serve ends other than the pursuit of truth.”

That appeared to be a reference to the fact that Corporal Tillman was awarded the Silver Star before it was widely known that his death was a result of American fire. The Wallace report recommended that the citation for the Silver Star be modified to reflect that it was awarded for his actions “of gallantry up to the point he died by friendly fire.”

Mr. Geren said Corporal Tillman’s actions before his death in going to the aid of other Rangers “saved the life of the man next to him and possibly others.”

“The Army did not make Pat Tillman a hero,” he said. “His actions made Pat Tillman a hero.”

In documents released on Tuesday, General Kensinger wrote a reply to the censure, arguing that he had given truthful answers to both inquiries although his memory could have been faulty.

“For over 35 years, I have tried to do the right thing,” he wrote, and “would never sully the reputation of the Army or Officer Corps.”

His demotion would mean a reduction in retirement pay from $9,400 a month to $8,500.

    Retired General Is Censured Over Tillman Case, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/us/01tillman.html?hp

Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps and Idols

August 1, 2007
The New York Times
By BARRY BEARAK

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 25 — Seven years ago, during a very different time in a very different Afghanistan, a medical student named Daoud Sediqi was bicycling from campus when he was stopped by the Taliban’s whip-wielding religious police. The young man immediately felt an avalanche of regret, for he was in violation of at least two laws.

One obvious offense was the length of his hair. While the ruling Taliban insisted that men sprout untrimmed beards, they were otherwise opposed to scruffiness and the student had allowed his locks to grow shaggy. His other transgression was more serious. If his captors searched his possessions, they would find a CD with an X-rated movie.

“Fortunately, they didn’t look; my only punishment was to have my head shaved because of my long hair,” recalled Mr. Sediqi, now at age 26 one of this nation’s best-known men, someone sprung from a new wellspring of fame — not a warlord or a mullah, but a television celebrity, the host of “Afghan Star,” this nation’s “American Idol.”

Since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, Afghanistan has been developing in fits and starts. Among the unchanging circumstances that still leave people fitful: continuing war, inept leaders, corrupt police officers and woeful living conditions. According to the government’s latest surveys, only 43 percent of all households have nonleaking windows and roofs, 31 percent have safe drinking water and 7 percent have sanitary toilets.

But television is off to a phenomenal start, with Afghans now engrossed, for better or worse, in much of the same escapist fare that seduces the rest of the world: soap operas that pit the unbearably conniving against the implausibly virtuous, chefs preparing meals that most people would never eat in kitchens they could never afford, talk show hosts wheedling secrets from those too shameless to keep their troubles to themselves.

The latest national survey, which dates from 2005, shows that 19 percent of Afghan households own a television, a remarkable total considering not only that owning a TV was a crime under the Taliban but that a mere 14 percent of the population has access to public electricity. In a study this year of Afghanistan’s five most urban provinces, two-thirds of all people said they watched TV every day or almost every day.

“Maybe Afghanistan is not so different from other places,” said Muhammad Qaseem Akhgar, a prominent social analyst and newspaper editor. “People watch television because there is nothing else to do.”

Reading is certainly less an option; only 28 percent of the population is literate. “Where else can one find amusement?” Mr. Akhgar asked.

Each night, people in Kabul obey the beckoning of prime time much as they might otherwise answer the call to prayer. “As you can see, there is truth on the television, because all over the world the mother-in-law is always provoking a fight,” said Muhammad Farid, a man sitting in a run-down restaurant beside the Pul-i-Khishti Mosque, his attention fixed on an Indian soap opera that had been dubbed into Dari.

Women, whose public outings are constrained by custom, most often watch their favorite shows at home. Men, on the other hand, are free to make TV a communal ritual. In one restaurant after another, with deft fingers dipping into mounds of steaming rice, patrons sit cross-legged on carpeted platforms, their eyes fixed on a television set perched near the ceiling. Profound metaphysical questions hover in the dim light: Will Prerna find happiness with Mr. Bajaj, who is after all not the father of her child?

“These are problems that teach you about life,” said Sayed Agha, who sells fresh vegetables from a pushcart by day and views warmed-over melodramas by night.

What to watch is rarely contested. At 7:30, the dial is turned to Tolo TV for “Prerna,” a soap opera colloquially known by the name of its female protagonist. At 8, the channel is switched for “The Thief of Baghdad.” At 8:30, it is back to Tolo for the intrafamily and extramarital warfare waged on “Tulsi,” the nickname for a show whose title literally means “Because the Mother-in-Law Was Once the Daughter-in-Law.”

Kabul has eight local television stations, including one feebly operated by the government. “The key time slots are from 6 to 9 p.m. because that’s when people switch on their generators for electrical power,” said Saad Mohseni, who runs Tolo, the channel that dominates the market in most of the country. “People love the soap operas.”

“We’ve just bought the rights to ‘24,’ the American show,” he said. “We had some concerns. Most of the bad guys are Muslims, but we did focus groups and it turns out most people didn’t care about that so long as the villains weren’t Afghans.”

Mr. Mohseni, a former investment banker, and his three siblings started Tolo TV (Tolo means “dawn” in Dari) in 2004, assisted by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development. After living most of their adult lives in exile in Australia, the Mohsenis returned to post-Taliban Kabul looking for investment opportunities and discovered a nearly prehistoric television wilderness ready for settlement. A used color TV cost only $75.

But what did they want to watch? Afghan tastes had not been allowed to gestate over decades, passing from Milton Berle to Johnny Carson to Bart Simpson. Everything would be brand-new. “We let ourselves be guided by what we liked,” Mr. Mohseni said.

For the most part, that means that Tolo has harvested the hackneyed from television’s vast international landscape. True-crime shows introduce Afghans to the sensationalism of their own pederasts and serial killers. Reality shows pluck everyday people off the streets and transform them with spiffed-up wardrobes. Quiz shows reward the knowledgeable: how many pounds of mushrooms did Afghanistan export last year? A contestant who answers correctly earns a free gallon of cooking oil.

Some foreign shows, like those featuring disasters and police chases, are so nonverbal that Tolo is able to rebroadcast them without translation. Other formats require only slight retooling.

Mr. Sediqi is about to begin his third season with “Afghan Star.” He has never seen “American Idol” and said he had never heard of his American counterpart, Ryan Seacrest. Nevertheless, he ably manages to introduce the competing vocalists and coax the audience to vote for their favorites via cellphone.

“I must tell you that I am having very good fun,” Mr. Sediqi said, employing his limited English. He is one of several young stars at Tolo whose hipness is exotic enough to seem almost extraterrestrial to an average Afghan. Older men who prefer soap operas to singing competitions are likely to want to give Mr. Sediqi a good thrashing. “People in the countryside and the mosques say that the show is ruining society,” Mr. Sediqi admitted.

Tolo has drawn a huge audience while testing the bounds of certain taboos. Zaid Mohseni, Saad’s younger brother, said: “When we first put a man and woman on the air together, we had complaints: this isn’t legal, this isn’t Islamic, blah, blah, blah. Then the criticism softened. It was O.K. as long as they don’t talk to each other. Finally, it softened more: O.K., they can talk as long as they don’t laugh.”

The bounds are pushed but not broken. A live talk show called “Woman” is co-moderated by a psychiatrist, Dr. Muhammad Yasin Babrak. While female callers are frank in their laments, the therapist limits himself to being Dear Abby to the lovelorn rather than Dr. Ruth to the sexually frustrated. “I won’t talk about incest or homosexuality,” he said.

Music videos, primarily imports from India, are broadcast regularly. With a nod to Afghan tradition, the bare arms and midriffs of female dancers are obscured with a milky strip of electronic camouflage. And yet, sporting events are somehow deemed less erotic. Maria Sharapova was shown at Wimbledon with the full flesh of her limbs unconcealed.

Whatever the constraints, some observers consider TV a portal to promiscuity. “Forty million people are living with H.I.V.-AIDS, and television is finally helping Afghanistan contribute to those figures,” the Ayatollah Asif Mohseni said with sarcasm.

He is an elderly white-bearded man, and while he is not related to the family who runs Tolo TV, he, too, has entered the television business, starting a station more inclined to showcase Islamic chanting. “We have an economy that is in ruins,” Ayatollah Mohseni said. “Do you think rubbish Indian serials with half-naked people are the answer?”

But the strongest complaints against Tolo have come from politicians, including members of the government. Tolo’s news coverage, while increasingly professional, is very often unflattering and even irreverent. Members of Parliament have been shown asleep at their desks or in overheated debate throwing water bottles. One lawmaker was photographed picking his nose and then guiltily cleaning his finger.

In April, when Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabet thought he had been quoted out of context, he sent policemen to Tolo’s headquarters to arrest the news staff. The ensuing contretemps had to be mediated by the United Nations mission in Kabul.

“It has been quite odd,” said Saad Mohseni, Tolo’s chief. “This is Afghanistan, a young democracy, and we don’t have problems with the drug dealers or the Taliban or even the local populace. Our problems are all with the government, either because of red tape or attempted censorship or someone with a vested interest trying to extract money.”

He paused for effect.

“With democracy comes television. It’s hard for some people to get used to.”

Amid War, Passion for TV Chefs, Soaps and Idols, NYT, 1.8.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/world/asia/01afghan.html