# The Sandbox and Areas Reports Thread (October 2006)



## The Bread Guy (1 Oct 2006)

News only - commentary elsewhere, please.  Thanks for helping this "news only" thread system work!


*Canadian soldier killed Friday in Afghanistan identified as Pte. Josh Klukie *
Lauren La Rose, Canadian Press, 1 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/060930/n093061A.html

The identity of a soldier from Thunder Bay killed in Afghanistan was revealed yesterday at the end of one of the deadliest months in decades for Canadian troops.  Pte. Josh Klukie was on foot patrol Friday when he stepped on an insurgent's explosive booby trap in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar City. A military official said Friday the explosive was big enough to be an anti-tank mine.  Klukie was the 10th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan in September, and the 37th since 2002. His death came the same day funerals were held in Canada for three soldiers killed Sept. 18 by a suicide bomber.  A woman answering the phone at the Klukie family home in Thunder Bay said yesterday that the family had no comment.  Officials were trying to organize a news conference where a family spokesperson would likely speak to the media . . . .


*Canadian soldiers in N.B. learn hard lessons preparing for Afghanistan*
Kevin Bissett, Canadian Press, 1 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c27776cf-bdde-4c75-a71d-b19b0d2471c1&k=99379

CFB GAGETOWN, N.B. (CP) - Canadian soldiers training Saturday at a New Brunswick military base showed they still have a lot to learn before leaving Canadian soil to serve in Afghanistan in February.  Officials complained it took too long to co-ordinate the soldiers and get them into place during a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, but Maj. Chris Barr of Wainwright, Alta., said he expected as much. "We gotta walk before we run, and that's what this exercise is all about," he said as more than 900 Canadian soldiers completed a battle scenario on the base's sprawling training grounds in central New Brunswick. Barr said the group will soon fly to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright, which aims to replicate what the soldiers will face in Afghanistan. "And they have to run when they're there, because it's a very realistic environment," he said . . . .


*Canada bolsters Afghan mission*
Casualty ID'd. Top soldier promises more infantry troops, upgraded vehicles
Renata D'Aliesio, CanWest-Global, 1 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=a3ebdae3-5f8e-4af0-8004-31fdc406c6c2&k=67716

In the face of increasing threats from explosive devices in Afghanistan, the Canadian military is working on upgrades for its mainstay armoured vehicle, Canada's top soldier told troops yesterday.  A host of changes are being designed to boost the LAV III's ability to withstand ambushes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), General Rick Hillier said during an afternoon stop to speak with troops stationed on Ma'sum Ghar Mountain in Panjwaii District of southern Afghanistan.  *He also told soldiers that a plan has been hatched to significantly bolster the number of combat troops in Canada.  The plan would see more recruits being trained as infantry soldiers, even if they requested other assignments.* But an immediate concern to the troops in Afghanistan are the IEDs and their effect on the light-armoured vehicles.  "We've got an entire series of upgrades dealing with the LAVs," Hillier said.  Those upgrades cannot be revealed under operational security rules for journalists embedded with the military.  "We have a real weight restriction here about what we can put on," he said. "It's a good vehicle, we are going to (put in) place some lessons we have learned here, and improve it even further." . . . .


*British troops in secret truce with the Taliban*
Michael Smith, Times Online (UK), 1 Oct 06
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2383232,00.html

BRITISH troops battling the Taliban are to withdraw from one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan after agreeing a secret deal with the local people.  Over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attack defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight have been killed there.  It has now been agreed the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops.  Although soldiers on the ground may welcome the agreement, it is likely to raise new questions about troop deployment . . . .


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## GAP (1 Oct 2006)

*Again, this thread is for posting news ONLY - commentary welcome on OTHER threads, please. 
Thanks for your help!*


*Articles found 1 October 2006*

Josh Klukie becomes latest casualty of war from region
By CHEN CHEKKI Oct 1, 2006, 00:02 
http://66.244.236.251/article_8933.php

The Thunder Bay region lost an “amazing” man and soldier in Afghanistan on Friday, a person who trained hard for his mission while remaining dutiful to his widowed mother, say friends and neighbours.
Canadian Forces member, Pte. Josh Klukie, 23, became the third Thunder Bay-area casualty in the war in Afghanistan this year, killed while on a foot patrol in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar City by an insurgent’s explosive booby trap that was big enough to be an anti-tank mine, The Canadian Press reported Saturday.
The Shuniah resident became Canada’s 37th soldier to die in the war since 2002, the media service said. Departing some time in August, Klukie was supposed to return in February.
Klukie, who graduated from Hillcrest High School, was known for having a tight circle of friends, athleticism and enthusiasm for military life, said his Thunder Bay friend, Craig Loverin.
Loverin, a reservist who served in Afghanistan in 2004, said Klukie always wanted to serve on an overseas mission and Afghanistan turned out to be his first tour.
“He gave his life for what he loved doing,” said Loverin, who belongs to the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment in Thunder Bay. “He was a great guy and a good soldier. He will be missed, that’s for sure.”
Loverin, 25, said Klukie joined the army in 2004 and has spent most of the last few years with First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, at CFB Petawawa, Ont. He completed all his training there.
He returned for about a month to live with his mother Carol in their family home along the picturesque, lake-fronted Cedar Bay Road in the Township of Shuniah, just northeast of Thunder Bay, in about July.
Described as a “goal-oriented” guy by Loverin, Klukie was seen training for his Afghanistan mission by running along the road, wearing his uniform and a 40-kilogram pack. 
“He was ready for the action, I guess,” Loverin said.
Loverin knew Klukie through Klukie’s older brother Dan, as the group maintained close ties in Thunder Bay. Josh also leaves behind another older brother named Dave, who lives in Western Canada. Both are staying to comfort mother Carol, whose husband died about six or seven years ago.
Many cars could be seen parked in front of the residence Saturday. The family also received a call of condolence from National Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor. Canada’s government says it is sending troops to Afghanistan to stabilize and rebuild the nation.
Loverin said he remembers how sportsman Klukie came over to his home in Thunder Bay to play paintball, and his “extremely good” athleticism in high school and how he enjoyed basketball and weightlifting.
Klukie, believed by Loverin to be the only member of his immediate family to serve in the army, won army medals for his physical prowess, even placing tops in a fitness course at Petawawa.
The man was always “approachable” and “respectful toward everyone,” Loverin said.
“He was really kind,” he said.
A nearby neighbour of the Klukie family, who asked to remain anonymous, said the “amazing” Klukie helped his widowed mother Carol.
They said Carol and her husband were in the process of planning a retirement home on Cedar Bay Road, just before the husband’s death, so Carol had to build it on her own.
“Oh that poor lady, to lose her husband, and now to lose her son,” the close neighbour said with a sombre sigh. “. . . They shouldn’t allow Thunder Bay boys to go (to Afghanistan) any more. The city has had enough.”
Brian Buday, another nearby neighbour on the quiet 17-home tree-lined street, said Klukie was a “really nice” and honest guy.
The family was assigned Jim Davis from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment as its military assisting officer to cope with the ordeal. Davis said the family, known to be an already private bunch, wishes to remain left alone by the media until a family spokesman makes a statement some time next week.
“(Carol) is a strong woman and she’s managing,” Davis said.
Klukie was the second Thunder-Bay area friend of Loverin to die in Afghanistan and the third from the region this year.
Loverin also knew Cpl. Anthony Boneca, who was a reservist killed during a firefight the morning of July 9 outside Kandahar.
Regular forces member Pte. Robert Costall was killed in Afghanistan in March, leaving behind a wife and toddler-aged son, among other family members.
Meanwhile, Cpl. Kory Ozerkevich, was shot through the right shoulder during a firefight in June. He survived. 
More on link



Betrayed: How we have failed our troops in Afghanistan  
By Francis Elliott, Marie Woolf and Raymond Whitaker Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1777868.ece

Britain's most senior military chiefs warned John Reid not to commit UK troops to "a war on two fronts" in Iraq and Afghanistan more than 18 months ago, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. 

Despite clear advice that a "significant" withdrawal of troops from Iraq was needed before a new mission, Mr Reid went ahead with the Afghan deployment after coming under pressure from Tony Blair. The advice, prepared by military planners and endorsed by the Chiefs of the Defence Staff, was given to Mr Reid on his arrival as Secretary of State for Defence in May last year. Despite the warnings, he went ahead with the deployment in January.

Mr Reid was accused last night of having taken "a gamble" by the Conservative spokesman on foreign affairs as the political and military fall-out from the conflict continues to grow. The present Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, has been forced to deny persistent reports that military chiefs are pressing for significant withdrawals from Iraq in order to shore up the Afghanistan operation.

On the eve of the fifth anniversary of the war this Saturday, stark new evidence of the suffering being endured by British troops on the ground emerged in a series of leaked emails published in The Mail on Sunday. They amount to a harrowing account of terrified soldiers tormented by heat and sandflies engaged in brutal combat with Taliban fighters. One soldier wrote: "You see the Taliban cutting around on dirtbikes, their weapons in one hand, their kids in the other. They think we will not shoot them. There have been some terrible incidents. It is horrible to kill a kid, nothing could prepare you for it."
More on link

Blood & guts: At the front with the poor bloody infantry  
tell a terrifyng story. By Raymond Whitaker Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1777869.ece

This is the war they do not want you to see: but while the media are kept from the action, emails and videophone images from the troops 

"We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West." Those are the words, not of a beleaguered British squaddie, but of a Canadian officer in a unit sent to help rescue our troops in the lawless Afghan province of Helmand. His account, emailed to family and friends back in Canada, is the most detailed to emerge from what commanders have called the most desperate fighting British troops have seen since the Korean War. 

"A British company from 3 Para had been isolated and surrounded by Taliban in... Sangin district centre," the officer relates. "They had lost four soldiers and were being attacked three to five times a day. They were running out of food and were down to boiling river water." An attempt to air-drop supplies had failed, with the supplies landing in a Taliban stronghold, so the Canadians were ordered to conduct an immediate emergency resupply operation with their light armoured vehicles (LAVs).

"When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us; this was not a friendly place," the officer reports. "We pushed into the district centre, and during the last few hundred metres we began receiving mortar fire." By the time they reached the British position, the Canadian convoy had to stay overnight. "We were attacked with small arms RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and mortars three times that night. I still can't believe the Brits have spent over a month living there under these conditions."
More on link

Above & beyond: Tales of courage under fire  
By Jonathan Owen Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777867.ece

One VC already, five more in the pipeline; 132 honours in Afghanistan so far: more than the Falklands or the first Gulf War. These are some of their stories.

George Cross 

Awarded to Cpl Mark Wright

The George Cross ranks with the Victoria Cross as the nation's highest award for gallantry and is awarded "for acts of the greatest heroism or of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger". Since its inception in 1940, the George Cross has been awarded posthumously to 84 recipients and to 71 living people.

He had wanted to be a soldier for as long as anyone could remember, but 27-year-old Mark Wright's promising army career was to be tragically cut short. It happened on 6 September when a foot patrol of about half a dozen soldiers searching for a suspected Taliban position in Afghanistan's Helmand province walked into a minefield.

Without any thought for his own safety, Cpl Wright ran to the aid of two soldiers injured by exploding mines. After helping to treat their wounds and calling for a helicopter to winch them to safety, he himself fell victim to a landmine and died before he could be taken to hospital.

It is understood he is to be posthumously awarded the George Cross, with Britain's military commander in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler, having hailed his "act of exceptional bravery".

Cpl Wright was born in 1979. He lived in Edinburgh with his fiancée Gillian, whom he was planning to marry this year. He joined the Army in January 1999, passing the selection tests to join the Parachute Regiment a few months later.

By the age of 23, he had completed three tours of Northern Ireland and in 2003 was sent, along with the 3rd Battalion, to Iraq, where he served with distinction. In May this year Cpl Wright was sent to Helmand, where he provided mortar support for his fellow soldiers. Senior officers said his "accurate and timely fire control" saved many lives and was "instrumental in fending off Taliban attacks".

His commanding officer, Lt-Col Stuart Tootal, said: "Cpl Wright died attempting to save the life of a fellow paratrooper... His actions were typical of the type of man Cpl Wright was. Quietly determined... he possessed exceptionally high moral and physical courage." The Secretary of State for Defence, Des Browne, has also paid tribute: "His selfless commitment and professionalism are an example to us all."
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Sarah Sands: Soldiers are not like us. They are better  
The Mother's View: Soldiers are cheerful, fearless. Doubts are only voiced in diaries 
Published: 01 October 2006 
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1777741.ece

During a recent parents' evening at an academic London school, a mother put up her hand. She was alarmed that her son had suddenly expressed an interest in joining the armed forces. Had the school encouraged this in some subversive way and had any other parents had similar experiences? Imagine substituting the word "doctor" or "lawyer" for armed forces and you see how far removed we have become from "our boys". A couple of generations ago, many families had a connection with the Army; now few do. 

We may glimpse soldiers rumbling past in Land Rovers or avoid them on late-night trains to Aldershot. We sentimentalise them for risking their lives but are squeamish about battle victories. We use them as ballast for our dinner party conversations about the war in Iraq but do not imagine them as husbands, or sons or brothers.
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Sandy Gall: Unlike Iraq, the Afghan war is winnable  
The Strategy: 'Most Afghans do not want the Taliban back in power' 
Published: 01 October 2006 
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1777732.ece

A report that senior generals are pressing the Government to withdraw British troops from Iraq in order to beef up our commitment in Afghanistan underlines how desperately we need more soldiers there. But with the Americans against any British withdrawal from Iraq, and most European allies too chicken to fight in the south, we are piggy in the middle. 

Hence the dire forecasts of failure now so commonplace. Worryingly, they are based not so much on pub punditry as on the flow of angry emails from officers in the thick of fighting in Helmand Province and other parts of the south. RAF close air support had been "utterly, utterly useless", according to Major Jamie Loden of 3 Para in a leaked email about the battle for opium town Sangin. A female Harrier pilot "couldn't identify the target", he wrote, fired two phosphorus rockets that just missed the British compound and then strafed their perimeter, "missing the enemy by 200 metres". Another British officer who criticised the RAF's performance said the American A10 pilots had been, by comparison, first-class.

This is ironic, since the American Air Force has been much criticised for repeated incidents of "friendly fire". In one notorious case, elders driving to Kabul for President Karzai's inauguration were mistaken for a Taliban convoy and shot to pieces. Dozens were killed or wounded. Most of these incidents have occurred in the Pushtun south and east, the Taliban heartland, and have done enormous damage to Karzai who, although a Pushtun, is often accused of being an American stooge.

And yet he has won two elections for the presidency with no challenger in sight and, until about a year ago, the country seemed on the road to relative peace and prosperity. So what has gone wrong? In a word, Iraq. Having bombed the Taliban out of power in 2001, less than two years later the Americans were diverting men, money and attention to Iraq. The switch has proved costly. Reconstruction, which was just beginning, stalled. There seemed to be no money or will to keep the wheels turning.
More on link

A bloody choice: Iraq or Afghanistan? Britain must choose  
If it does not, according to MoD documents leaked last week, we risk failure in both. Raymond Whitaker on a bloody dilemma 
Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777826.ece

At the beginning of October 2001,only weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world stood on the brink of war in Afghanistan. Five years ago this Saturday, the first bombs fell. 

With all that has happened since, it is hard to remember how much of a plunge into the unknown this first clash in the "war on terror" felt at the time. But the regime folded in less than six weeks. By mid-November, American and British troops were in Kabul; by Christmas an interim government was in place under Hamid Karzai.

After the horror of 11 September, it seemed 2001 was ending on a hopeful note, with billions of dollars being pledged in aid to rebuild the country and scores of nations offering peacekeeping troops. The world acknowledged that it had turned its back on Afghanistan after the collapse of communism, but Tony Blair promised that it would not happen again. So why is it that we have lost more British troops in Afghanistan in the past few weeks than in the preceding four years? Why are poorly-supplied British contingents fighting a full-scale war in the south, when we were told earlier this year that they were being deployed on a reconstruction mission? With a suicide bombing in Kabul claiming at least 12 lives yesterday, it is clear that security cannot be guaranteed even in the capital.
More on link

The Squaddie v the GI: Have our troops got what it takes to do the job?  
The war has stretched the Army to the limit. But it need not envy its US ally, discovers Cole Moreton 
Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777840.ece

The troops are exhausted. They need reinforcements. Tanks are broken and there is not enough money to repair them. Fighting is fierce, morale low. 

These sound like the complaints of British soldiers in Afghanistan - only last week an officer there declared he was quitting in disgust after his men were forced to borrow bullets from the Canadians during a battle. His own gun had started falling apart in the heat. But this weekend the loudest complaints are not from the British.

It is the US army that is in revolt. General Peter Schoomaker, its leader, is refusing to submit a budget to the Pentagon because he says his troops need billions of extra dollars to go on doing what is expected of them. The news has shocked British squaddies who are used to seeing the Americans as better equipped, better supported and better paid. If even the Yanks are in trouble, what hope can the Brits have?
More on link

The sacrifice: We count the dead. But not the injured  
Soldiers in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed than those in Iraq, new research shows. But the true cost isn't counted in bodybags alone. By Marie Woolf and Sophie Goodchild 
Published: 01 October 2006 
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article1777839.ece

Soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are six times more likely to be killed in combat than their fellow soldiers in Iraq, new research shows. 

The startling fatality rate, in a paper by a leading statistician, will place fresh pressure on the Government over its mission in Afghanistan as well as raising fresh questions about overstretch of UK troops.

The findings come as opposition politicians accused the Ministry of Defence of covering up the full extent of casualties in Afghanistan by refusing to publish any casualty statistics for troops treated for injuries in the field.

Professor Sheila Bird, vice president of the Royal Statistical Society, has found that death rates among UK and Canadian troops involved in "major combat" in Helmand province are six times higher than those of UK troops involved in combat in Iraq.
More on link

300 militants killed in Operation Mountain Fury in Afghanistan  
October 01, 2006 
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/01/eng20061001_307979.html

About 300 insurgents have been killed in Operation Mountain Fury in eastern and central Afghanistan, a coalition forces spokesman told Xinhua on Saturday. 

"Yes, I can confirm that some 300 militants have been killed jointly by Afghan and the U.S.-led coalition forces in the operation," said Lt. Marcelo Calero. 

He said the operation is ongoing, and that there is no timetable for ending yet. 

The joint forces would continue to fight anti-government militants and facilitate reconstruction in the region, he added. 

About 7,000 coalition forces and Afghan troops and policemen launched Operation Mountain Fury on Sept. 16 to wipe out Taliban militants in Logar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika and Paktia provinces in eastern and central Afghanistan. 

However, a purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi rejected the claiming, saying only 41 Taliban militants were killed in the past three months, according to local reports. 

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of violence since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001. 

Over 2,400 persons, mostly Taliban rebels, have been killed in this Central Asian country in the past nine months. 

Source: Xinhua
End

American who served time for running private jail in Afghanistan leaves country
By Associated Press Saturday, September 30, 2006 - Updated: 03:41 PM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=160081&format=text

KABUL, Afghanistan - An American was released from an Afghan prison and flown out of the country Saturday after serving more than two years for running a private prison as part of a freelance hunt for terrorists, officials said. 

     Court documents filed Friday in Washington, D.C., show that U.S. officials planned to secure Brent Bennett a passport and a ticket out of the country, and an Associated Press reporter saw a man identified as Bennett board a plane for Dubai late Saturday. 

     It was not clear if Bennett, 29, was free or in the custody of U.S. officials. He was held in a private room at the airport and journalists were prevented from talking to him. 

     Bennett, former U.S. soldier Jack Keith Idema, and Edward Caraballo were arrested in July 2004 and convicted of running a private prison in Kabul after Afghan security forces raided a house and discovered eight Afghan men who said they had been abused. Idema told the AP by phone from his prison cell Saturday that there had never been any evidence the Afghans were abused. 

     Abdul Qayum, the commander of the Policharki prison where Bennett had been jailed, said the American was in good spirits when he left Saturday. 

     An Afghan airport official showed an AP reporter a copy of the passport of the man boarding the plane in the name of Brent L. Bennett. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. 

     Idema, who is serving a five-year sentence, also told the AP that Bennett was being flown out of the country on Saturday. He said Bennett had been forcibly removed from his cell earlier in the week during a night of violence at the prison that included a fire being set in a cell block and gunfire from guards. 

     No U.S. officials in Afghanistan would comment on Bennett’s case, and an American lawyer filing paperwork on his behalf said he didn’t know if Bennett was free or in U.S. custody. When Bennett boarded the plane he was not wearing any restraints. 

     “We don’t know if he was forcibly put on the plane or not because they probably knew people would be watching,” lawyer John Tiffany said by phone from the United States. 

     Edward P. Birsner, the consul at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, said in Friday’s court filing that the “Embassy has no intentions of taking Mr. Bennett into custody.” 

     A spokesman for the embassy declined to comment on the case Saturday. 
More on link

New video shows 9/11 hijackers in Afghanistan
Sat Sep 30, 2006 8:03 PM ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-01T000303Z_01_L30863066_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-HIJACKERS.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C1-topNews-1

LONDON (Reuters) - A new video tape has emerged which shows two of the September 11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, at a hideout of Osama bin Laden's in Afghanistan, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

The paper said it had obtained a copy of the video through "a previously tested channel", without giving details.

It said U.S. and al Qaeda sources had verified the authenticity of the tape, which it said would be available on its Web site www.timesonline.co.uk/sundaytimes from noon (1100 GMT) on Sunday.

The paper said the video showed Egyptian-born Atta alongside another of the hijackers, Lebanese Ziad Jarrah.

Jarrah piloted United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

The two men are seen laughing and joking and then apparently reading their wills to camera. There is no sound on the tape and lip-readers have failed to decipher their words, the paper said.
More on link

Soldiers learn lessons training for Afghanistan
Updated Sat. Sep. 30 2006 11:28 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060930/soldiers_training_060930/20060930?hub=Canada

CFB GAGETOWN, N.B. -- Canadian soldiers training Saturday at a New Brunswick military base showed they still have a lot to learn before leaving Canadian soil to serve in Afghanistan in February. 

Officials complained it took too long to co-ordinate the soldiers and get them into place during a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, but Maj. Chris Barr of Wainwright, Alta., said he expected as much. 

"We gotta walk before we run, and that's what this exercise is all about," he said as more than 900 Canadian soldiers completed a battle scenario on the base's sprawling training grounds in central New Brunswick. 

Barr said the group will soon fly to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright, which aims to replicate what the soldiers will face in Afghanistan. 

"And they have to run when they're there, because it's a very realistic environment," he said. 

During Saturday's exercise, the soldiers were tasked to rescue members of the Afghan National Army who had been ambushed by the Taliban. 

The exercise included gunfire, explosions, LAV-3 vehicles, a jet and helicopters. 

"It went pretty well," said Capt. Andrew Gimby, a 32-year-old soldier from Oakville, Ont. 
More on link

Defence Secretary denies commanders want Iraq troops in Afghanistan
Nato chief defends Afghan plans 
Sunday October 01, 2006 (0029 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155774

LONDON: Defence Secretary Des Browne has denied that senior military commanders have urged the government to switch troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. 
Browne scotched a newspaper report Friday claiming that officers wanted to see a swift drop in the 7,500 soldiers in Iraq to help the 5,000 troops battling resurgent Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. 

The Guardian said that commanders wanted an "early and significant cut" to soldier numbers in Iraq, where British forces patrol the south of the country around the second city of Basra. 

"There is a group within the Ministry of Defence pushing hard to get troops out of Iraq to get more into Afghanistan," an unidentified defence source told the daily. 

However, Browne told BBC radio: "It is not true that senior military officers have been pressing the government to withdraw British troops from Iraq, that`s not the case. "My view, and military commanders share this view, is that we have a vital job to do in Iraq. We have a responsibility to the Iraqi people. "There is no division between us and military commanders about what we are doing at the moment". 
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Afghanistan mulls herbicide in drug war
Saturday, September 30, 2006 · Last updated 4:47 p.m. PT  JIM KRANE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1104AP_Afghan_Poppy_War.html

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.

But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops - even with airborne crop-dusters - if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.

"This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008 season, we will consider it," said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's poppy belt.

This year Nangahar was a success. Poppy cultivation stayed low amid a boom that saw Afghanistan produce 82 percent of the world's opium, providing for 90 percent of its heroin, according to U.S. and United Nations figures.
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NATO poised to lead U.S. troops in Afghanistan
Updated Sun. Oct. 1 2006 7:29 AM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061001/nato_afghansitan_061001/20061001?hub=TopStories

KABUL, Afghanistan -- America's direct control of military operations in Afghanistan will dwindle to a single air base within days as the NATO alliance assumes a nationwide command that places 12,000 more U.S. troops under its authority, a spokesman for the alliance said Sunday. 

The expansion will consolidate military command under top NATO leader British Lt. Gen. David Richards and phase out the role of U.S. Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, whose troops will be transferred to NATO, said Mark Laity, an alliance spokesman in Kabul. 

Of 40,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, only 8,000 U.S. troops will function outside NATO control: those tracking al-Qaida terrorists or involved in air operations, Laity said. The overall level of American forces will remain around 20,000. 
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Rumsfeld: 'Change is hard for people'
POSTED: 0001 GMT (0801 HKT), September 30, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/09/30/rumsfeld.transcript/index.html

CNN) -- Here is a transcript of Frank Sesno's full interview with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld:

SESNO: I'd like to start though on sort of a bigger, picture question if I could. An awful lot of people familiar with the Middle East with its people and its cultures are worried now, that we're seeing a deepening secular divide across the region, a rise in the influence of Iran. 

Groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that are really flexing their muscles, growth of terrorism potentially and increasing hostility towards the United States.

What does Donald Rumsfeld see when he looks out that window?

RUMSFELD: Well, you certainly see all of those things. They, they in fact are occurring. We do see a situation in the Middle East where you, you see every day on television, manifestations of a divide of differences.

Certainly, what is taking place in, in Israel and has been taking place in Israel and Lebanon is, is worrisome.

On the other hand we've seen these things over many, many years. I was Middle East envoy for President Reagan back in the mid 80's, early 80's, 1980's, and it was a difficult then as well. After 241 Marines were killed in the barracks there, in Lebanon.

But these things tend to come and go and the fact that the, there are differences within the Muslim faith are, is a reality.
More on link


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## The Bread Guy (1 Oct 2006)

News only - commentary elsewhere, please.  Thanks for helping this "news only" thread system work!


*Canadian soldier killed Friday in Afghanistan identified as Pte. Josh Klukie *
Lauren La Rose, Canadian Press, 1 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/060930/n093061A.html

The identity of a soldier from Thunder Bay killed in Afghanistan was revealed yesterday at the end of one of the deadliest months in decades for Canadian troops.  Pte. Josh Klukie was on foot patrol Friday when he stepped on an insurgent's explosive booby trap in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar City. A military official said Friday the explosive was big enough to be an anti-tank mine.  Klukie was the 10th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan in September, and the 37th since 2002. His death came the same day funerals were held in Canada for three soldiers killed Sept. 18 by a suicide bomber.  A woman answering the phone at the Klukie family home in Thunder Bay said yesterday that the family had no comment.  Officials were trying to organize a news conference where a family spokesperson would likely speak to the media . . . .


*Canadian soldiers in N.B. learn hard lessons preparing for Afghanistan*
Kevin Bissett, Canadian Press, 1 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c27776cf-bdde-4c75-a71d-b19b0d2471c1&k=99379

CFB GAGETOWN, N.B. (CP) - Canadian soldiers training Saturday at a New Brunswick military base showed they still have a lot to learn before leaving Canadian soil to serve in Afghanistan in February.  Officials complained it took too long to co-ordinate the soldiers and get them into place during a training exercise at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown, but Maj. Chris Barr of Wainwright, Alta., said he expected as much. "We gotta walk before we run, and that's what this exercise is all about," he said as more than 900 Canadian soldiers completed a battle scenario on the base's sprawling training grounds in central New Brunswick. Barr said the group will soon fly to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright, which aims to replicate what the soldiers will face in Afghanistan. "And they have to run when they're there, because it's a very realistic environment," he said . . . .


*Canada bolsters Afghan mission*
Casualty ID'd. Top soldier promises more infantry troops, upgraded vehicles
Renata D'Aliesio, CanWest-Global, 1 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=a3ebdae3-5f8e-4af0-8004-31fdc406c6c2&k=67716

In the face of increasing threats from explosive devices in Afghanistan, the Canadian military is working on upgrades for its mainstay armoured vehicle, Canada's top soldier told troops yesterday.  A host of changes are being designed to boost the LAV III's ability to withstand ambushes and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), General Rick Hillier said during an afternoon stop to speak with troops stationed on Ma'sum Ghar Mountain in Panjwaii District of southern Afghanistan.  *He also told soldiers that a plan has been hatched to significantly bolster the number of combat troops in Canada.  The plan would see more recruits being trained as infantry soldiers, even if they requested other assignments.* But an immediate concern to the troops in Afghanistan are the IEDs and their effect on the light-armoured vehicles.  "We've got an entire series of upgrades dealing with the LAVs," Hillier said.  Those upgrades cannot be revealed under operational security rules for journalists embedded with the military.  "We have a real weight restriction here about what we can put on," he said. "It's a good vehicle, we are going to (put in) place some lessons we have learned here, and improve it even further." . . . .


*British troops in secret truce with the Taliban*
Michael Smith, Times Online (UK), 1 Oct 06
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2383232,00.html

BRITISH troops battling the Taliban are to withdraw from one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan after agreeing a secret deal with the local people.  Over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attack defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight have been killed there.  It has now been agreed the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops.  Although soldiers on the ground may welcome the agreement, it is likely to raise new questions about troop deployment . . . .


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## GAP (1 Oct 2006)

*More Articles found 1 October 2006*


Vets weigh in on sending `our boys' to Afghanistan
For some Legionnaires, fighting the Taliban is a clear obligation. Others struggle to understand a fight far different from World War II
Oct. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM KENNETH KIDD
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159616113709&call_pageid=968332188492


Don Cameron, still a jolt of energy after 86 years on the planet, is jerking his head back over his shoulder, toward a young woman just behind him. "That's my granddaughter," he says from his table near the bar. "It's dinner time here. It's pork chops today, English style."

The room is, on this Friday, abuzz with close to 100 people, all mingling in the basement of Royal Canadian Legion Branch 101, an Etobicoke venue hard on the border with Mississauga.

Like most legion halls, the place is vastly bigger on the inside than you'd imagine from the sidewalk — a series of large, wood-panelled rooms lined with memorabilia and tributes. There are portraits of the Queen, a lithograph commemorating the Battle of Ypres, paintings of old warships and, just beyond the regulation-size snooker tables, a floor-to-ceiling trophy case attesting to decades of snooker and darts championships.
More on link

The story of C Company
Sep. 30, 2006. 05:44 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159566611565&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

PANJWAII DISTRICT, Afghanistan—One must turn back time several generations to find Canadian soldiers in the state that Charlie Company finds itself today. Not since the Korean War has a single Canadian combat unit been so cut to pieces so quickly.

Either of the two events that rocked their world in the dust-caked hills of southern Afghanistan one month ago might qualify as the worst day of their lives. That they came back-to-back — one disastrous morning followed by another even worse — is a matter of almost incomprehensibly bad fortune.

The epic double-whammy — a perfect Taliban ambush of unprecedented intensity, followed one day later by a devastating burst of "friendly fire" from a U.S. Air Force A-10 Warthog — reduced Charlie to a status of "combat ineffective." They were the ones to fire the opening shots of Operation Medusa. But even as the massive Canada-led assault was gathering steam they were finished.
More on link

Charlie Company: The rest of the story
Oct. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159654214788&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

In yesterday's paper, the conclusion to Mitch Potter's interview with Capt. Ryan Carey in Panjwaii district was missing due to a production problem. Here is what was left out of the Oakville native's remarks on the situation Canadian soldiers face in Afghanistan.

"We still think everyone approaching us wants to kill us. We have no choice but to plan for a fight right till we leave."

But Carey, 35, like the rest of Charlie Company's newly ascended leadership, doesn't see more troops as the answer. Not more foreign troops, in any event.

"More Canadians? Is that not just like giving candy to the Taliban? I think what we need is more ANA soldiers. At the end of the day it is the Afghans, with lots of backing for reconstruction, who are going to turn this thing. Not the people who point the weapons."
More on link

O'Connor welcomes expanded NATO role
Opens door to 12,000 extra troops, he says Bush praises Canadian campaign on Taliban
Sep. 30, 2006. 11:48 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159566611374&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

OTTAWA—NATO's move to take command of peacekeeping across Afghanistan opens the door for up to 12,000 American troops to act as reinforcements for embattled Canadian troops facing insurgents around Kandahar, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says.

"It's good news," O'Connor said in an interview from Portoroz, Slovenia, where he was attending a two-day meeting of NATO defence ministers that ended yesterday.

During that meeting, the ministers agreed to extend NATO's operation into eastern Afghanistan, taking over command of some 12,000 Americans now operating in the region. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force already has just over 20,000 troops from 37 countries operating in the capital Kabul and the north, west and south.

O'Connor cheered NATO's expanded role, saying it now gives Canada greater ability to tap into U.S. troops and equipment for their Kandahar mission.

"It means the 10,000 to 12,000 U.S. troops that are in the eastern zone are available to help us in the south," he said. 

It also means that some of the 2,300 Canadian troops could be dispatched into eastern Afghanistan to help with outbreaks of violence there.
More on link

Al Qaeda No. 2: Bush a liar, 'spiller of Muslim blood'
POSTED: 0031 GMT (0831 HKT), September 29, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/09/29/zawahiri.tape/index.html

(CNN) -- Calling President Bush "the murderer and spiller of Muslim blood," al Qaeda's top deputy released a videotape Friday accusing the U.S. president of being a "deceitful charlatan" who has lied to the American people. 

Ayman al-Zawahiri also blasts the Bush administration for holding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged 9/11 conspirator, in a secret prison and alleging that Mohammed gave interrogators "valuable information which has helped the crusaders to kill and arrest a number of al Qaeda." 

"I ask this lying failure, who are the leaders of al Qaeda whose killing or capture was facilitated by the information extracted from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?" al-Zawahiri asks. "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, may Allah free him, has hurt you thousands of times more than you have hurt him."

On another portion of the tape, which appears to have been recorded at a different time and location, the terror leader addresses recent controversial remarks by Pope Benedict XVI and the situation in Darfur, Sudan. (Watch al-Zawahiri rail against Bush and the pope -- 1:33 )
More on link

Bush: Critics buy into terrorists' propaganda
POSTED: 1850 GMT (0250 HKT), September 29, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/29/bush.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush asserted Friday that critics who claim the Iraq war has made America less safe embrace "the enemy's propaganda." He acknowledged setbacks in Afghanistan against a Taliban resurgence but predicted eventual victory.

"You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism," he told a receptive military audience. "If that ever becomes the mind-set of the policymakers in Washington, it means we'll go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked -- and then respond."

It was the latest in Bush's series of speeches defending his Iraq and anti-terrorism policies against heightened attacks from Democrats, who now are citing a government intelligence assessment to bolster their criticism. The classified National Intelligence Estimate, parts of which Bush declassified earlier this week, suggests the Iraq war has helped recruit more terrorists.

"Some have selectively quoted from this document to make the case that by fighting the terrorists -- by fighting them in Iraq -- we are making our people less secure here at home," Bush told the Reserve Officers Association. "This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them."

With just over five weeks left before congressional elections, Democrats were quick to react. "President Bush's election-year attacks are the product of a desperate White House with no credibility left with the American people," said Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

"It was yet another example of how he is in denial over what is happening in the war on terror," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California.
More on link

Iran to stretch ironstone exploration into Afghanistan  
http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=388171

TEHRAN, Oct. 1 (MNA) – Iran Industries and Mines Ministry is prepared to extend its exploration activities to the ironstone mine in Herat region of Afghanistan, chairman of the Industries and Mines Committee at Majlis told the Persian service of IRNA on Sunday. 

Geologically, Herat mine is the extension of Sangan Ironstone Mine in South Khorasan Province of Iran and the exploration projects in Iranian side could also be directed towards the Afghan part, Mohammadreza Sajjadian continued, stipulating that the talks between Iranian Embassy in Kabul and officials there have reached a consensus on this venture.

“The final decision rests with Afghan government and the approval is expected to be announced soon,” he said. 

The ironstone factory in Sangan is anticipated to increase Iran’s steel production to 28 million tons per annum as envisaged in the Fourth Plan (2005-2010). The plant is at the moment capable of producing 2.6 million tons of concentrates and ironstone agglomerate annually.
More on link


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## MarkOttawa (1 Oct 2006)

General frets about home front: Canadian commander worries that we 'are our own worst critics.'
Oct. 1, 2006. 10:56 AM, MITCH POTTER, MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1159654214783&call_pageid=970599119419



> It is the Canadian public and not the Taliban that is the greatest threat to peace and prosperity in Afghanistan, Canada's top military man on the ground told the Star.
> 
> In one of his most pointed political statements to date, Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, commander of NATO's eight-nation effort to put down southern Afghanistan's increasingly visible insurgency, said the weakest link in the mission is Canadians' tendency to seize on negatives and worry them to death.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## The Bread Guy (1 Oct 2006)

Shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act - http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33409


*Fallen soldier coming home*
Canadian Press, via Toronto Star, 1 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159712646101&call_pageid=968332188492

Josh Klukie wore the single chevron of a private in Canada’s infantry, but he inspired reverent tones Sunday from the captains and corporals who led him. 
Klukie, 23, died Friday when he stepped on a powerful explosive booby trap — an anti-tank mine packed with other explosives and a hair-trigger. 

Klukie was destined for military greatness, his platoon mates testified Sunday, minutes after sending his remains on the voyage back to Canada. 

“It’s easy to be good at this job but it’s extremely rare that guys are great at it,” said Cpl. Mike Blois of Exeter, Ont. 

“He was that rare guy who is very great at this job.” 

Klukie’s unit of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, was on patrol Friday in the Panjwaii area where Canadians won a fierce battle against Taliban insurgents earlier this month. 

The patrol by Alpha section, Four platoon, moved onto a dusty road. Several soldiers passed over the hidden trap before Klukie set it off. 

Insurgents tampered with the mine so even a light footstep would trigger it instead of the weight of an armoured vehicle. 

Klukie was thrown several metres, with pieces of his equipment flying in all directions. 

Blois found his friend with the help of an American medic. Klukie was alive but clearly in shock. 

“He was breathing, his eyes were moving, he recognized me as soon as I got there,” Blois said. “He looked right at me but he couldn’t talk.” 

Blois and the medic applied tourniquets to Klukie’s bleeding limbs. 

“I was looking at him, trying to encourage him, but there wasn’t anything I could do,” Blois said. 

After a few minutes, Klukie stopped breathing and his heart stopped. Blois tried to resuscitate him. 

“I started getting on his heart. I think I broke every rib in his body,” Blois said. “He didn’t suffer, he didn’t feel anything, he wasn’t crying in pain. He was just there, and in shock.” 

Klukie was among the fittest soldiers in his platoon and a sensitive soul, who was usually the first to recognize when someone was troubled. 

“He was a paramedic before he joined the army,” said Pte. Wes Whitfield of Markham, Ont. 

``I guess it was just in his nature to pick up on things like that.” 

Klukie studied Afghanistan and took careful notes on what he learned. He was as likely to pick up a history book as the men’s magazines popular with soldiers. 

“I think 1RCR (the battalion) was just a stepping stone for him,” said Whitfield, who started his military career with Klukie three years ago and became his fire team partner on missions. “A lot of us feel he had a lot of potential to go to (special forces) in the future.” 

One commander said Klukie was destined to do great things. 

“He was the one-in-a-hundred who had a very good future and wanted to do it for life,” said Capt. Piers Pappin, the head of Klukie’s Four Platoon. 

Pappin said Klukie had doubts about his military career going into the Afghanistan mission. Klukie wasn’t sure how he would handle deaths and injuries to his friends. 

September’s Operation Medusa, where Canadians scored a conclusive victory over the Taliban, changed that. Four soldiers were killed and more than 40 injured, but Klukie decided he could handle the suffering around him. 

“A week ago, he came to me and started the paperwork for re-enlistment and he told me this is what he wanted to do for the rest of his life,” Pappin said. 

“It was good for me to hear, because he was one of those soldiers who was going places, for sure.” 

Pappin said most of his platoon will likely make a pilgrimage to Thunder Bay, Ont., to visit Klukie’s family and grave when their tour of duty ends. 

Klukie is the 37th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002.


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## The Bread Guy (1 Oct 2006)

*Analysis: Taming the Afghan badlands*
Jason Motlagh, United Press International (US), 29 Sept 06
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20060929-104407-3888r.htm

Behind the scenes of a forgotten war, international security forces are plying the rugged Afghan backcountry with aid and infrastructural projects in a broad campaign to win over deprived masses prone to the advances of Taliban insurgents.  While NATO troops battle a Taliban comeback in the south of the country that saw more than 800 militants killed over the summer, U.S. Army Maj. Don Johnson handed out gold-tipped shovels. Local government officials, village elders and religious clerics gathered at a groundbreaking ceremony for a new asphalt road slated to consolidate a hardscrabble valley ringed by razor-sharp peaks where the Taliban are known to hide out . . . . 


*Analysis: Karzai over optimistic*
Jacob Russell, United Press International, 29 Sept 06
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20060929-013551-2556r.htm

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, handpicked by Bush in December 2001, painted an optimistic picture of Afghanistan in five years in a speech at a Washington think tank, raising the eyebrows of several critics.  Karzai, speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said the way forward is to remove the need for groups, organizations, and all state entities relying on religious radicalism as instruments of policy.  "He was even induced to give Bush political support on Iraq," said Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar-in-residence at the Middle East Institute who was just in Pakistan earlier in the week . . . .


*Arrested in Afghanistan: Abdullah, 25, an Iranian jihadist 'rejected by the Taliban' *  
Declan Walsh, The Guardian (UK), 2 Oct 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1885371,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

Knock-kneed with fear, the young prisoner perched on the edge of his chair in the windowless Afghan intelligence office. Eyes bloodshot and hands trembling, he blurted out his story.  Abdullah had reached the end of a pitifully short career as a Taliban fighter. He had been arrested hours earlier, just 10 days after signing up to the insurgency. But the 25-year-old with a soft face and a neat beard had something unusual that aroused the intelligence agents' curiosity.  "I come from Iran," he said in a quavering voice, wringing his hands nervously. "They told me the Americans had invaded Afghanistan and I should go and fight jihad. But I was cheated. Now I am very sorry that I ever left." . . . .


*Afghanistan Mulls Herbicide In Drug War*
Associated Press, via KYW.com, 1 Oct 06
http://cbs3.com/topstories/topstories_story_274200758.html

With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.  Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.  But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops — even with airborne crop-dusters — if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop . . . .


*Musharraf Says Retired ISI Men May Be Helping Taleban*
Agence France Presse, via Arabpress.com, 2 Oct 06
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=87530&d=2&m=10&y=2006

Pakistan’s intelligence service has played no role in propping up the renegade Taleban fighters in Afghanistan, President Pervez Musharraf told US television, although he said he is investigating possible support to the rebels from retired Pakistani intelligence officials.  Asked whether Islamabad’s Inter-Services Intelligence has been helping the ousted Taleban, Musharraf, speaking on NBC television’s “Meet the Press” program, answered with an emphatic “no.” “Nobody in the ISI has,” he said . . . .


*EXCLUSIVE: SHOT IN THE HEAD TWICE ..BUT HERO KEPT ON FIRING*
Rupert Hamer, Sunday Mirror (UK), 1 Oct 06
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17849232%26method=full%26siteid=62484%26headline=exclusive%2d%2dshot%2din%2dthe%2dhead%2dtwice%2d%2d%2dbut%2dhero%2dkept%2don%2dfiring-name_page.html

A HERO soldier carried on battling against the Taliban in Afghanistan despite being shot TWICE in the head.  Gurkha rifleman Nabin Rai, 23, who is being put forward for a bravery medal, was hit in the eye as he fired his machine-gun at insurgents who were trying to overrun his base.  A bullet then smashed into his helmet, knocking him to the ground, but stayed at his post - and carried on shooting.  His courageous stand came as his base in Nowzad in Afghanistan's lawless Helmand Province was surrounded by Taliban. In a 10-day battle Nabin and 30 of his comrades fought off wave after wave of attacks - with the Taliban getting within 20 metres of their camp . . . .


*U.S. military arrests former Afghan commander *  
Xinhua (China), 1 Oct 06
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/01/content_5162553.htm

The U.S.-led coalition forces in cooperation with Afghan National Army have taken into custody a former Jihadi or resistance commander in the northern Faryab province, a local newspaper reported Sunday.  "Coalition forces in conjunction with Afghan troops detained Qadir Sarhozi from Gurziwan district of Faryab province on unknown reasons," Daily Afghanistan said.  It did not say the exact date of the arrest of the former commander . . . .


*American who served time for running private jail in Afghanistan leaves country*
Associated Press, via Boston Herald, 30 Sept 06
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=160081&srvc=news

An American was released from an Afghan prison and flown out of the country Saturday after serving more than two years for running a private prison as part of a freelance hunt for terrorists, officials said.  Court documents filed Friday in Washington, D.C., show that U.S. officials planned to secure Brent Bennett a passport and a ticket out of the country, and an Associated Press reporter saw a man identified as Bennett board a plane for Dubai late Saturday.  It was not clear if Bennett, 29, was free or in the custody of U.S. officials. He was held in a private room at the airport and journalists were prevented from talking to him . . . .


*Taliban Making a Bloody Comeback*
www.iran-daily.com, 2 Oct 06
http://www.iran-daily.com/1385/2675/html/dotcoms.htm#s177630

The media missed the real story regarding the (US) National Intelligence Estimate of the global terror threat. It’s not what’s in the declassified executive summary of the report--Iraq, which was unavoidable--it’s what’s absent from it--Afghanistan, where the Taliban are making a frightening and bloody comeback . . . .


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## The Bread Guy (2 Oct 2006)

*The sad smile of a dying soldier *  
After watching Pte. Josh Klukie die, the members of 4 Platoon, Bravo Company, vow to finish their ugly little war  
Graeme Smith, Globe & Mail, 2 Oct 06
Permalink - http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/99507

On the evening they said goodbye to Private Josh Klukie, there was clarity in the eyes of the men who fought beside him.  They watched his casket hoisted into a cargo plane in the warm afternoon light, snapped to attention and marched off the tarmac to prepare for another mission.  Two days earlier, the soldiers of 4 Platoon, part of Bravo Company, a unit of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, had seen their friend thrown across a field by a huge explosion. They heard the 23-year-old draw his last breath, and saw his sad smile before he died.  After saying farewell yesterday, the soldiers knew what they wanted. They felt a need to get back into those fields and keep fighting. And when they finish with this ugly war on the other side of the world, they intend to visit Pte. Klukie's grave in Northern Ontario to talk with his mother about the day he died.  "It will be very healing for his family to meet the soldiers he served with and hear about the conditions of his last day," said Captain Piers Pappin, the platoon commander . . . . 


*Tory stance on mission vexes military*
Commanders frustrated by government's lack of support, defence insiders say; Hillier reportedly told meeting that opponents had `open field' to criticize
Murray Brewster, Canadian Press, via Toronto Star, 2 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159740908831&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

The Conservative government's inability last summer to clearly articulate and defend Canada's mission in Afghanistan was a source of great frustration among the country's top military commanders, Defence Department sources say.  The vexation was vented at a Sept. 6 meeting involving senior federal officials and Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier.  At the meeting, called to discuss the dispatch of reinforcements including tanks to help in the battle for Panjwai, Hillier reportedly said that critics of the war had enjoyed an "open field" to "degrade public support for the mission," said a source who asked not to be named . . . .


*Free up troops, O'Connor urges*
Rules keep many NATO soldiers away from combat; Easing restrictions will end shortage, minister says
Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, 2 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159740908983&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

The shortage of troops in Afghanistan would be solved if many NATO nations removed the tight restrictions that keep many of the soldiers from seeing combat, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor says.  While the 26-member alliance has just expanded its operations to include all of Afghanistan, just a handful of countries, including Canada, are on the front lines confronting the insurgency.  But behind the united front of a military alliance engaged in its most ambitious operation ever lies a complex web of rules that keep some countries far from the action . . . .


*Canada fair to prisoners: Red Cross*
John Ward, Canadian Press, via Toronto Star, 2 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159740908826&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

The head of the International Red Cross says he's satisfied that Canadian troops in Afghanistan are following all the rules when they take prisoners.  Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a recent interview he has no concerns about the Canadians.  Last spring, some Canadian soldiers worried Afghan authorities might mistreat or even kill prisoners handed over to them.  Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said at the time Canadians would give the prisoners the benefits of the Geneva Conventions. While they would not have the formal status of prisoners of war, they would still be entitled to humane treatment . . . .



*Canadians see Afghanistan as lost cause: poll*
Canadian Press, via CTV Online, 1 Oct 06
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061001/afghanistan_poll_061001/20061001?hub=Canada

A clear majority of Canadians consider the mission in Afghanistan a lost cause, according to an extensive survey that hints at deep public skepticism about the war on terror.  Decima Research polled more than 2,000 Canadians last month just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped up his efforts to promote the mission.  Fifty-nine per cent of respondents agreed Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win," while just 34 per cent disagreed with that statement.  An even larger majority said they would never fight in Afghanistan themselves under any circumstances - not even if they were forced to in some military draft . . . .


*Hillier: Canadians still support Afghan mission*
CBC Online, 2 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2006/10/01/hillier-afghanistan.html

Support for the Afghan mission hasn't waned, despite a deadly September in which 10 Canadian soldiers have been killed, Canada's chief of defence staff said Monday at the end of his visit to Afghanistan.  "I think they believe that we have a responsibility as the rich and luxurious and caring nation that we are to help in other places around the world where the populations don't have any of those benefits or advantages or rights," Gen. Rick Hillier told reporters at Kandahar air base before boarding a plane to return to Canada.  A recent poll by Decima Research suggested 59 per cent of Canadians consider the mission in Afghanistan a lost cause. . . .


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## MarkOttawa (2 Oct 2006)

Germany Approves Afghanistan Mandate Despite Concerns
Deutsche Welle, Sept, 28
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2188183,00.html



> Germany's mission as part of the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan will be extended by a year after lawmakers approved a renewed application for the Bundeswehr's mandate.
> 
> After a debate in the Bundestag Thursday [Oct. 28], German lawmakers agreed to extend the Bundeswehr's mission in Afghanistan by another year despite increasing unease surrounding the safety of the troops, the deteriorating security situation and the potential overstretch of the German military.
> 
> ...



Defense Ministry Admits German Planes in Action in Afghanistan
Deutsche Welle, Sept. 30
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2190341,00.html



> A defense ministry source has revealed that German military aircraft are seeing action in the volatile southern region of Afghanistan. The report comes days after German help in the south was officially ruled out...
> 
> _Der Spiegel_ said German Transall transport aircraft and helicopters had made some 60 flights this year into the south, ferrying allied soldiers and evacuating wounded...
> 
> The weekly said the operation, hitherto kept secret, was largely aimed at deflecting pressure on Berlin to switch forces to the south from the more peaceful north, where it has some 2,750 troops deployed...



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## GAP (2 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 2 October 2006*

Military fine tuning troop replacement
LES PERREAUX Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061002.whillier1002/BNStory/Front

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — The Canadian military will refine the way troops are replaced in the Afghan mission to avoid troop shortages and exhaustion, General Rick Hillier said Monday.

The chief of defence staff said the army needs to streamline the replacement process for troops who are hurt and killed to shorten the time from the current 21 to 30 days.

“Our replacements coming from Canada have been slow coming in,” Gen. Hillier told reporters at Kandahar Airfield as he completed a visit with troops.

“We're going to accelerate that program and have them here in a week.”
More on link

Hamilton Soldier Hurt But Survives Attack In Afghanistan
Oct, 01 2006 - 11:40 AM
http://www.900chml.com/news/news_local.cfm?cat=7428109912&rem=48830&red=80110923aPBIny&wids=410&gi=1&gm=news_local.cfm

HAMILTON (AM900 CHML) - A Hamilton soldier has been injured in Afghanistan.
There now confirmation that Corporal James Miller was the soldier who suffered deafness in his left ear and a possible concussion as a result of an attack on Friday.

It the same attack that took the life of Private Josh Klukie of Thunder Bay, who was killed when he stepped on an buried explosive device.

The 23-year-old's flag-draped casket was loaded onto a military airbus in Afghanistan on Sunday morning.

Klukie is the 37th Canadian soldier to die in the war-torn country since 2002. 
End

Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Tribal Dimension
by Swaraaj Chauhan
http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1159725516.shtml

"As the Afghan war goes increasingly badly for the Western powers, President Hamid Karzai keeps blaming President Parvez Musharraf for allowing Taliban to operate inside Pakistan and launch cross-border attacks on Afghanistan. Musharraf fired back that Karzai was a figurehead who had no control of his country. Both accusations are true", says Eric Margolis In Toronto Sun.

"Tribal politics lie at the heart of their dispute. The 30 million Pashtuns (or Pathans), the world’s largest tribal society, are divided between Afghanistan and Pakistan by an artificial border, the Durand Line, drawn by divide-and-conquer British imperialists.

"Pashtuns account for 50-60% of Afghanistan’s 30 million people. The Taliban is an organic part of the Pashtun people. The Western powers and Karzai are not just fighting “Taliban terrorists,” but a coalition of Pashtun tribes and other allied nationalist movements. In effect, most of the Pashtun people.

"The other half of the divided Pashtuns live just across the Durand Line in Pakistan, comprising 15-20% of its population. Pashtuns occupy many senior posts in Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. Pashtuns, including anti-Western resistance fighters, never accepted and simply ignore the artificial border bifurcating their tribal homeland.
More on link


How Pakistan became an ally  
By ERIC MARGOLIS
http://torsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2006/10/01/pf-1929875.html

While interviewing Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf after the 1999 military coup that brought him to power, I was struck both by his plain-spoken honesty — and doubts that this rather eccentric general-turned-politician would survive. Running turbulent, unstable Pakistan is one of the world’s toughest, most dangerous jobs. 

I felt at the time Musharraf was not in the same league as his predecessors, Zia ul-Haq and Benazir Bhutto, both of whom I knew well and respected. 

But seven years and two assassination attempts later, Musharraf still runs Pakistan, and still talks like a soldier. 

During last week’s U.S. media blitz to promote his new book, In the Line of Fire, Musharraf claimed that soon after 9/11, U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, that the U.S. would “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age” if it did not immediately turn against the Taliban in Aghansitan and allow the U.S. to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan. 

Musharraf’s claim provoked an uproar in the U.S. Armitage denied threatening war on Pakistan. But a reader, Prof. John Yardley, reminded me that in my 2002 book, War at the Top of the World, I revealed the same U.S. threat to bomb Pakistan. 
More on link

Draft on the anvil to reduce number of ministries  
Sunday October 01, 2006 (0029 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155778

KABUL: Head of the commission for Justice and Judicial Affairs in the lower house of parliament Muhammad Hussain Alami Balkhi has said that a draft had been prepared to reduce the number of ministries and presidential advisors. 
At present, there are 25 ministers and some 40 presidential advisors. The ministers have recently obtained vote of confidence from the parliament under the Constitution. 

Balkhi said they had discussed the issue with deputy finance minister and two other senior government officials, who were invited to the lower house for consultation. 

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, he said they had prepared a draft for reducing the number of ministries, advisors and consultative boards. It will be presented in the general session of the lower house for approval. 

The draft had recommended dissolution of six ministries, with which the number would be reduced to 19, said the commission`s chief. 

Although Balkhi would not say as which ministries are to be axed, Ataullah Ludin, member of the commission, told this scribe the ministries for Urban Development, Public Works and Border and Refugees` Affairs would either be dissolved or their status would be reduced to departments. 
End

Ghani vows to streamline UN expenditures  
Sunday October 01, 2006 (0029 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155776

KABUL: The Afghan candidate to succeed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan vowed he would try fixing the organization`s troubled management department if he was selected to the slot. 
Ashraf Ghani, the former Afghan finance minister, is the latest of seven candidates to enter the race. He said transparency at the UN must be a priority and audits could be used for this purpose. 

"Its damaged culture can be fixed it must be fixed," Ghani told an audience at the Asia Society in Manhattan the other day, regarding criticism that the management department is ineffective and destroyed by corruption. 

"It must disclose every dollar of its expenditure to the citizens of the world. It cannot hide behind secrecy, because its only the sunshine of public scrutiny that can bring about the required system of checks and balances," he said. 
More on link

Schools deserted as teachers opt for farming  
Sunday October 01, 2006 (0029 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155777

PUL-I-KHUMRI: Small salaries in the suburbs of the northern Baghlan province have compelled teachers to shun sacred profession of teaching and adopt farming to attain square meals. The change has halted academic process in the province. 
The students complained of the long absences of the teachers that had terribly affected their lessons. However, officials in the Provincial Education Department say both teachers and students take part in cultivation and harvesting season that hamper the entire education system. Ghulam Safdar, a student of class ninth, said:" Our Physics teacher is absent for many days, he is busy with sowing rice in his fields." 
More on link

Layton mulls trip to Afghanistan
Ian Bailey CanWest News Service Sunday, October 01, 2006
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=b7349ee8-226f-4c64-8b65-9f07ce673740

VANCOUVER -- Federal NDP Leader Jack Layton, who wants Canada to pull its troops from Afghanistan, says he wants to visit the war-torn country to get a sense of the situation there.

But Layton told The Province during a trip to Vancouver that he does not need to have been to Afghanistan to be a credible critic of Canada's role there.

"I don't think credibility on the question of whether the mission is working depends on whether a person has the opportunity to be there," Layton said.

"If that was the case, then most Canadians would have to be absent themselves for the debate, and I don't accept that proposition."

Two of four federal party leaders in the House of Commons have been to Afghanistan where 2,200 Canadian soldiers are posted.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been. Bill Graham, interim leader for the Liberals, went twice while foreign affairs and defence minister in the former Liberal government.
More on link

Hundreds of Taliban died in battle for school on hill
Renata D'Aliesio CanWest News Service; Calgary Herald Monday, October 02, 2006
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=c38c2da6-1cc0-4c16-9328-bcbdb8c14067&k=86560

SPERVAN, Afghanistan - Names plaster the cement walls of a school built on a hill.

Hundreds of names, room by room, that mark the Taliban's presence.

This school, which Canadian soldiers and the Afghan National Army now guard, was a training centre for Taliban fighters. Its graduates are listed on the walls.

''The Taliban had completely taken it over,''said an official with special forces who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''They were using it as their living quarters and a training area.''

The unexpected battle that unfolded out of this school a few weeks ago in Spervan has never before been told.

While Canadians were leading the charge into Pashmuhl last month, special forces and Afghan soldiers were taking on a surprisingly strong Taliban forces on the hill.

The fallout has created a treacherous environment for Canadian troops. The few locals who have returned to Spervan and nearby Siah Choy are mostly hostile. The insurgents, meanwhile, are regrouping nearby.

''We know they are there,'' said Major Steve Brown, commander of Charles Company, 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment from Petawawa, Ont.

''We suspect they are re-arming and regrouping for further operations. We don't know what or when that will be.''

Since the combat aspect of Operation Medussa ended on Sept. 14, Canadian soldiers have been the target of suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Two attacks have proven deadly.

On Sept 18, four Canadian soldiers three with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantryfrom Shilo, Man. and a medic based in Petawawa were killed by a suicide bomber on a bicycle.

And on Friday, a soldier with the RCRs died when he stepped on a pressure plate connected to an anti-tank mine.

A ramp ceremony for Pte. Josh Klukie was held at Kandahar airfield onSunday.
More on link

Moosehead to send beer to soldiers in Afghanistan
Updated Sun. Oct. 1 2006 11:41 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061001/afghan_moosehead_061001/20061001?hub=TopStories

SAINT JOHN, N.B. -- Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan will soon be able to battle the heat of the southern Afghan desert with some beer from the largest Canadian-owned brewery. 

Moosehead Breweries, based in Saint John, N.B., is sending more than 1,700 cans of its Moosehead Lager to Canadian troops stationed in Kandahar, after some of them specifically requested the suds. 

Moosehead spokesman Joel Levesque said the beer would be shipped to Afghanistan from Canadian Forces Base Trenton in three rounds, with the first leaving in the next week. Another shipment will leave at the end of October, and a third will be sent in November. 

The beer will be tapped on special occasions only - and 
More on link

Waziristan deal: UK follows suit in Afghanistan  
By Rauf Klasra
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=3382

LONDON: Following the pattern of the Pakistan Army-Taliban deal in Waziristan last month, the battling British and Taliban have for the first time struck a similar “peace deal” of their own in Afghanistan, giving a ray of hope of similar “arrangements” to find some sustainable solution to the five-year old conflict.

Under the agreed deal reported by Sunday Times, both the British troops and Taliban fighters would withdraw from one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan after local people stood as guarantors to the peace arrangements. 

Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of the British taskforce, flew into Musa Qala 18 days ago, guarded only by his military police close-protection team, to attend a Shura, or council of town elders, to negotiate a withdrawal.

After the Waziristan deal between Pakistan Army and the Taliban bordering Afghanistan last month, this is for the first time that the British troops have entered into a similar deal which has left the British media guessing.

Defence analysts, however, fear that the Taliban were ready to strike such “peace deals” at this moment only to regroup and restart their attacks on foreign troops in summer next year. Sunday Times reported that over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attacks defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight of its soldiers have been killed over there.

The newspaper said it has now been agreed that the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of the four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops. 
More on link


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## tomahawk6 (2 Oct 2006)

NATO convoy hit by bomb in Kabul. Three personnel injured.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061002/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber blew himself up next to a 
NATO convoy in Kabul on Monday, wounding three soldiers and three civilians, officials said.

The bomber was on foot and jumped in front of a NATO military convoy in eastern Kabul, said Ali Shah Paktiawal, a senior police official.

The blast comes days after another suicide bomber killed 12 persons and wounded over 40 outside the Afghan Interior Ministry in the capital.

"I saw an American four wheel drive entering Kabul and suddenly a guy who was standing next to a pump station ran toward the vehicle and detonated himself," said Sayid Rahman, 22, an eyewitness. "That vehicle was damaged and they managed to flee from the area," Rahman said.

Three NATO-led troops received "minor injuries" and were evacuated to a nearby military hospital, said Maj. Luke Knittig, a NATO-led force spokesman. He would not disclose the nationalities of the soldiers injured.

Three other civilians were injured, Paktiawal said.

The attack occurred on the road frequently used by troops in the capital and the body of the bomber lay alongside two unexploded hand-grenades, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.

On Sunday, a two-hour long clash between insurgents and police in the eastern Paktika province left two militants dead and four wounded, said Sayid Jamal, the governor's spokesman.

The bodies of those killed were turned over to the village elders while those wounded were being questioned by police, Jamal said.

Separately, a hand-grenade was thrown at a mosque in neighboring Nangahar province late Sunday, wounding seven people who were praying, said Ghafor Khan, spokesman for the provincial police chief.

Five persons were detained for questioning as authorities try to establish a motive for the attack, Khan said.


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## The Bread Guy (2 Oct 2006)

*Pakistan reaches into Afghanistan*
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online (Hong Kong), 3 Oct 06
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HJ03Df02.html

The Taliban-led rebellion in April marking the beginning of the spring offensive against Kabul, oriented with Iraq's skillful urban guerrilla war, has been so strong that there is even talk in Kabul of the Taliban returning "any time soon".  While the Taliban obviously take all the credit for the stiff fight they are giving foreign forces in the country, an underlying feature of the resistance can't be ignored: neighboring countries, especially Pakistan, never have, and never will, sit idly by to allow events to take their natural course . . . .


*Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win *  
M K Bhadrakumar, Asia Times Online (Hong Kong), 30 Sept 06
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI30Df01.html

The four-month-old Republic of Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea received its first foreign dignitary on Monday when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld arrived at its capital, Podgorica. Unknowingly, the tiny country of rugged mountains and great beauty in the Balkans with a population of 630,000 was being catapulted into the cockpit of 21st-century geopolitics.   Rumsfeld's mission was to request the inexperienced leadership in Podgorica to dispatch a military contingent to form part of the coalition of the willing in the "war on terror". Rumsfeld promised that in return, the US would help train Montenegro's fledgling army to standards of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).   However, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic could not make any commitments. Rumsfeld's proposal came at an awkward moment for the leadership in Podgorica, which had just scrapped the draft and was scaling down its 4,000-strong army to about 2,500.  This bizarre diplomatic exchange between the most awesome military power on Earth and the newest member of the "international community" brings home the paradoxes of the "war on terror" on the eve of its fifth anniversary. Three ministerial-level meetings of NATO have taken place within the space of the past month alone, specifically with the intent of ascertaining how troop strength in Afghanistan can be augmented . . . .


*Afghan politics - one chicken dinner at a time *  
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 3 Oct 06
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1003/p04s01-wosc.htm

Bold, full of hope, and with a healthy fear for their speck-on-a-map villages, the Afghan elders arrived at this US firebase recently for a change-of-guard ceremony.  Expected to be a gracious host - but with little suitable food and after being caught off-guard by the elders who had arrived one day in advance - US Army Capt. Dennis Sugrue invited the handful of weathered men to join him for lunch on cushions on the floor.  The air was thick with concerned expectation. The US officers hoped to win these elders as allies against a growing insurgency with promises of development projects and friendship. And there has been some progress: a growing number of project requests, and even help finding insurgent locations.  But would there be enough food, when the lids were removed, to honor the Afghan guests? Or would the two Army captains find themselves embarrassed by a meager offering? . . . .


*Where the fight is only half the battle *  
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, 2 Oct 06
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/02/news/afghan.php

NATO forces scored one of their biggest victories here in September, flushing out an area that had been swarming with Taliban insurgents in ferocious fighting. But almost immediately, a new and more difficult battle began - for support of the local people.  Villagers trickling back to their homes broke into an argument over who was to blame for the destruction, NATO or the Taliban.  "My house was bombarded and my grape store destroyed," said Haji Bilal Jan, 48, a farmer from the upper part of Pashmul. "The coalition forces are cruel, without reason. There were no Taliban in our house. Why did they bombard the house?"  Another man, 45, who used the sole name Neamatullah, stopped to listen and countered: "Why did you let the Taliban come to your village? You brought them to your village."  The battle here was a long-awaited success for forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in a year in which the Taliban have revived with surprising strength. But in Afghanistan, much as in Iraq, fighting insurgents is not just about winning the battle, but also about securing the peace . . . . 


*Musharraf U-turn on Taliban*
Isambard Wilkinson, The Telegraph (UK), 3 Oct 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/03/wpak03.xml

Retired Pakistani intelligence officers could be running the Taliban insurgency against coalition forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan's president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, has said.  He made the admission to an American television channel at the weekend — the first time he had broken from his usual policy of denying any Pakistani hand in the rebellion against American, British and other forces.  Asked on NBC television if his Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) was involved in helping Taliban fighters, he said that retired rogue officers might be involved . . . .


*Paras almost retreated under Taliban assault *  
Tom Coghlan, The Telegraph (UK), 2 Oct 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/02/wtroops02.xml

British forces in southern Afghanistan came within hours of retreating from a key base because they suffered a critical shortage of helicopters, the task force commander has disclosed.  In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph Brig Ed Butler said Taliban fire was so heavy and accurate at Musa Qala, a key forward base in northern Helmand, that Army helicopters faced a serious risk of being hit.     
He said the loss of such crucial equipment — together with the political impact of a large loss of life — meant he came close to ordering his soldiers to abandon the base . . . .


*British troops were 36 hours from Taliban retreat*
Daily Mail (UK), 2 Oct 06
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=408019&in_page_id=1770

A critical shortage of equipment almost forced the collapse of British forces against the Taliban, it emerged today.  Soldiers in southern Afghanistan came within hours of retreating from a key base because they were unable to get back-up from helicopters. The revelation from task force commander Brigadier Ed Butler is the latest indication of the intensity of the fighting.  Last week it was reported that half a dozen soldiers are in line to receive Victoria Crosses for bravery in Afghanistan . . . . 


*Taleban resurgence is bad news for India *  
The Penninsula (Qatar), 3 Oct 06
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=India&month=October2006&file=World_News2006100341231.xml

 A resurgent Taleban in Afghanistan and increasing casualties for NATO forces are making Afghanistan a security nightmare for India, impacting directly on New Delhi’s stakes in the region.  Five years after the ouster of the Pakistan-backed Taleban regime in Kabul was greeted here with undisguised glee, the Indian establishment is now viewing the changing scenario in Afghanistan with alarm.  India, which has vital stakes in a “stable, democratic and prosperous Afghanistan” as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently put it, is worried about the re-groping of the Taleban militia, with its linkages to Al Qaeda and terrorist outfits targeting Jammu and Kashmir . . . .


----------



## The Bread Guy (3 Oct 2006)

*Military fine tunes troop replacement in Afghanistan, says Cda's top soldier *  
Les Perrault, Canadian Press, 2 Oct 06
http://www.cp.org/premium/ONLINE/member/elxn_en/061002/p100201A.html

The Canadian military will refine the way troops are replaced in the Afghan mission to avoid troop shortages and exhaustion, Gen. Rick Hillier said Monday. The chief of defence staff said the army needs to streamline the replacement process for troops who are hurt and killed to shorten the time from the current 21 to 30 days. "Our replacements coming from Canada have been slow coming in," Hillier told reporters at Kandahar Airfield as he completed a visit with troops.  "We're going to accelerate that program and have them here in a week."  Hillier says he also wants to shift recruits and troops in other trades into infantry on a voluntary basis.  "We need to make sure we have infantry to do the job," Hillier said.  "We want to ensure to the extent possible, and it won't be 100 per cent, that folks coming on this mission will be folks coming here for the first time."  . . . .


*War tour would aid morale analyst*
Defence minister would be wasting time, McDonough says
Chris Lambie, Halifax Chronicle Herald, 3 Oct 06
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Metro/532035.html

Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor should go on a cross-Canada speaking tour to boost flagging support for the mission in Afghanistan, says a local military analyst.  A recent poll indicates a clear majority of Canadians consider the mission to be a lost cause. Fifty-nine per cent of more than 2,000 people polled by Decima Research agreed that Canadians are dying for a cause we cannot win.  "If the government simply gathers its tent around it and becomes silent, those numbers will increase," said Alex Morrison of Dalhousie University’s Centre for Foreign Policy Studies . . . .  "The military is feeling a bit lonely; I think it’s feeling a bit abandoned by the government," he said.  "Certainly over the past few months, government statements in support of the military have not been as strong and as frequent as they were up to about the beginning of the summer."  Mr. O’Connor could not be reached for comment . . . . Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps magazine, doesn’t believe a tour by the defence minister would change public opinion on Afghanistan.  "I don’t think it’s going to work," Mr. Taylor said . . . .  Sending Mr. O’Connor across the country to justify the war in Afghanistan would be the "worst possible" response to decreased public support for the mission, said Halifax MP Alexa McDonough . . . .


*Canadians see Afghanistan as lost cause: poll*
Canadian Press, via CTV Online, 1 Oct 06
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061001/afghanistan_poll_061001/20061001?hub=Canada

A clear majority of Canadians consider the mission in Afghanistan a lost cause, according to an extensive survey that hints at deep public skepticism about the war on terror.  Decima Research polled more than 2,000 Canadians last month just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped up his efforts to promote the mission.  Fifty-nine per cent of respondents agreed Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win," while just 34 per cent disagreed with that statement.  An even larger majority said they would never fight in Afghanistan themselves under any circumstances - not even if they were forced to in some military draft.  The online survey of 2,038 people was conducted Sept. 8-18 and is considered accurate to within 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20 . . . .


*Hillier: Canadians still support Afghan mission*
CBC Online, 2 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2006/10/01/hillier-afghanistan.html

Support for the Afghan mission hasn't waned, despite a deadly September in which 10 Canadian soldiers have been killed, Canada's chief of defence staff said Monday at the end of his visit to Afghanistan.  "I think they believe that we have a responsibility as the rich and luxurious and caring nation that we are to help in other places around the world where the populations don't have any of those benefits or advantages or rights," Gen. Rick Hillier told reporters at Kandahar air base before boarding a plane to return to Canada . . . .


*MacKay dismisses poll indicating Canada's Afghan mission lost cause *  
Keith Doucette, Canadian Press, 2 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/061002/n1002169A.html

Canada's foreign affairs minister has dismissed a new poll that suggests a solid majority of Canadians consider the military's mission in Afghanistan a lost cause.  The Decima Research survey, published Monday, showed that 59 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win." "You know, polls are like flags - they change in the wind," Peter MacKay told reporters in Halifax late Monday.  "What I'm most impressed with is that Canadians have supported our troops. How they have demonstrated the deep understanding of the commitment, the sacrifice, made by the men and women of the Canadian Forces."  MacKay said Canada must "do our part" with the other NATO countries involved in the fighting. "We are clearly doing so in Afghanistan and other regions of the world."  . . . .


*EDITORIAL: A distressing poll*
Edmonton Sun, 3 Oct 06
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Commentary/2006/10/03/1941783.html

It distressed us to read yesterday that 59% of Canadians, when polled by Decima Research, agreed that Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan "are dying for a cause we cannot win."  Freedom is not worth fighting for? Democracy is not worth dying for? These are no longer causes for which Canadians should expect any sacrifice of their soldiers?  And does this mean that Canadians believe standing up to terrorists is also a futile cause?  If so, then we might as well shut down all the extra airport security and stop foiling terrorist attacks before they happen by having police monitor and infiltrate terrorist cells. Heck, let's invite the Taliban to form the government in this country, so that our women can be denied education and human rights, too, just like they were in Afghanistan . . . . 


*Taliban in south 'practically defeated'*
ITN News (UK), 2 Oct 06
http://www.itn.co.uk/news/index_7cded401487dce946753c91e7f22153a.html

A senior British commander has said the Taliban has been "practically defeated" in parts of southern Afghanistan.  Brigadier Ed Butler, Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, called the conditions his troops had been fighting in "austere" but said there were signs of optimism.  He said: "We would acknowledge it has been pretty bloody and conditions are austere but what has been under-estimated by the Taliban is the sheer resilience, resolve and courage of the British Armed Forces.  "It is important to note that we have practically defeated the Taliban in northern Helmand for this year.  "People are turning towards institutions of government for the first time in 30 years and reconstruction and development projects have already started . . . .


*Lawmakers urge NATO to boost Afghanistan troops*
Reuters (UK), 3 Oct 06
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-03T090736Z_01_L03605392_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AFGHAN-NATO-TROOPS.xml

NATO must send more troops to south Afghanistan to kickstart reconstruction which has been hampered by an upsurge in violence there, lawmakers from alliance nations urged on Tuesday.  "More boots on the ground are needed in the southern part of Afghanistan to provide sufficient stability for sustained reconstruction," said the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, a grouping of parliamentarians from across the alliance.  "The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent months. The increasing cost in human lives ... demonstrates that this war is not yet won," it said in a statement, adding that "a failed Afghanistan will also be a failed NATO".  The NATO Parliamentary Assembly describes itself as a forum for building public and parliamentary support for NATO. Its recommendations to the alliance are not formally binding . . . .

*DECLARATION ON NATO’S RIGA SUMMIT *  
NATO Parliamentary Assembly web page, 29 Sept 06
http://www.nato-pa.int/Default.asp?SHORTCUT=1007

(. . . .)

The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent months.  The increasing cost in human lives - and here we would wish to pay homage to the combatants who have fallen for the freedom of Afghanistan - demonstrates that this war is not yet won.  NATO's commitment to Afghanistan constitutes a test of its ability to face the challenges of the new security order.  In view of NATO's commitment to extend security throughout the country and the challenges it faces as it expands its mission, member countries must decide to redouble their efforts to provide the assets required to achieve this goal. NATO should also redouble its efforts to build trust with the Afghan people and agree on common policies towards the political and reconstruction efforts in the country. More 'boots on the ground' are needed in the southern part of Afghanistan to provide sufficient stability for sustained reconstruction.  The Alliance's leaders must stress the need for member states to demonstrate the flexibility and commitment to provide the manpower and material needed for this mission. More synergy among international organizations is needed. A failed Afghanistan will also be a failed NATO.

(. . . . )


----------



## GAP (3 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 3 October 2006*

Suicide bomber hits NATO convoy near Kandahar
Associated Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061003.wafghanattack1003/BNStory/International/home

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber on a motorbike attacked a Canadian military convoy in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, but no troops were injured, officials said.

One military vehicle was engulfed in flames after the bomber rammed into the convoy in western Kandahar city, said Major Daryl Morrell, a NATO-led force spokesman.

The bomber was killed in the blast, but no alliance troops were hurt, Major Morrell said.

Insurgents have increasingly used suicide bombers in their campaign against foreign and Afghan government troops throughout the country this year.
More on link

Soldiers survive suicide bomb
Mighty Nyala vehicle helps prevent deaths G-Wagon seen as chink in Canada's armour 
Sep. 28, 2006. 06:28 AM MITCH POTTER
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159393811489&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

KANDAHAR—The freshly bombed Nyala limped into Camp Nathan Smith yesterday with smoke still billowing from its stricken hulk. And out from its doors spilled four Canadian soldiers, shaken but otherwise intact.

On this day at least, Canadian Forces soldiers survived their brush with death at the hands of a suicide bomber. The bomber, who detonated his vehicle against a military convoy in downtown Kandahar, killed only himself and wounded one Afghan bystander.

The moment belonged to the heavily armoured RG-31 Nyala, a South African-built vehicle that is among a fleet of 50 that Canada has deployed in southern Afghanistan to help ride out the deadly insurgency that's cost the lives of 20 Canadian soldiers in the last three months.

"There was no reaction time. I saw the car veer toward us and I just grasped the wheel with both hands and pumped on the accelerator," said the Nyala's driver, Cpl. Scott Rhoads, 26, of Stratford, Ont. 
More on link

Report: Frist says Afghan war can't be won militarily
Senate leader says his comments about bringing Taliban into government were taken out of context.
By Tom Regan  | csmonitor.com October 3, 2006 at 12:00 p.m.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1003/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu

US Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R) of Tennessee said Monday that the war against the Taliban can "never" be won militarily and that it was time to include "people who call themselves Taliban" in the Afghan government.

The Associated Press reports that Mr. Frist said he had learned from military reports that the Taliban were "too numerous and had too much popular support" to be defeated in a military campaign.

"You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government," he said during a visit to a military base in the Taliban stronghold of Qalat. "And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful."

Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since US-led forces ousted the fundamentalist Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Sen. Mel Martinez (R) of Florida, who was traveling in Afghanistan with Frist, said that negotiations with the Taliban were not "out of the question." But he added that he thought Taliban fighters who did not want to be a part of the political process would have to be defeated militarily.

A few hours later, however, Frist released a statement on the Volunteer Political Action Committee website, saying that his comments had been taken out of context.

First of all, let me make something clear: The Taliban is a murderous band of terrorists who've oppressed the people of Afghanistan with their hateful ideology long enough. America's overthrow of the Taliban and support for responsible, democratic governance in Afghanistan is a great accomplishment that should not and will not be reversed.

Having discussed the situation with commanders on the ground, I believe that we cannot stabilize Afghanistan purely through military means. Our counter-insurgency strategy must win hearts and minds and persuade moderate Islamists potentially sympathetic to the Taliban to accept the legitimacy of the Afghan national government and democratic political processes.

National reconciliation is a necessary and an urgent priority ... but America will never negotiate with terrorists or support their entry into Afghanistan's government.

Ed Morrissey of the conservative blog Captain's Quarters writes that he feels someone confused "Taliban" with "Taliban supporters" and "whether that was Frist or the reporter will probably remain a point of contention between the two." But he also says that the Frist incident does bring up an important point about "the end game" in Afghanistan.

If we want a representative democracy in Afghanistan, it will probably be heavily influenced by the Pashtuns, who have a strong Islamist bent. They did, after all, push the Taliban into power. At some point, we have to find a way to convince these Islamists to buy into democracy, and we have to be willing to allow that democracy to develop its own laws and customs. Otherwise, we will have to prop up a strongman who can keep the Pashtuns oppressed, which will create an even greater Islamist impulse in Afghanistan.
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AFGHANISTAN: Over 300 schools closed in south
02 Oct 2006 14:07:06 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/f730f2bc93d54d5f012deef9c29f8664.htm

LASHKAR GAH, 2 October (IRIN) - Schools in southern Afghanistan are closing in large numbers due to pressure and intimidation from the resurgent Taliban movement, leading to an education crisis in the volatile region, officials say. 

Almost 150 educational institutes have closed in Kandahar province alone, according to the education ministry. Regionally more than 50 schools have been attacked this year.

"Some 145 schools are currently closed in Kandahar and more than 70,000 students, including boys and girls, are deprived of education," said Mahbobullah Khan, an official from Kandahar's education department.

Marzia, who was studying at the girl's high school in Laskhkar Gah, provincial capital of Helmand province, gave up her studies in mid-September after her father made her leave school due to fear of attack.

"My father told me to stop attending school because he feared that one day our school could be targeted by bombs or even by suicide attackers," the 15-year-old said.

She's one of thousands of students deprived of education due to fear of attacks in the volatile south where insurgents have stepped up attacks on government institutions, aid workers and foreign and local troops.

The threat is real enough as Marzia's teacher explained: "I have received several warnings during the past two months including letters and even phone calls threatening me to stop working in the school, otherwise I will be killed," Jamila Niazi, head of Lashkar Gah girls' high school, told IRIN.

The extremist Taliban movement, which first emerged from southern Afghanistan, banned girls from attending schools and universities and stopped women from working in government institutions during their five-year rule. The fundamentalist organisation was ousted by a US-led coalition in late 2001 but has re-emerged to threaten the government of President Hamid Karzai. 
More on link


Iran Assists Afghanistan With Population Statistics  
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8507110440

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) – Iran and Afghanistan statistical centers have signed a MoU in Tehran concerning population statistics. 

According to this MoU, Iran will assist Afghanistan to perform the plan that foresees counting of the population and the number of housing units available in that country in 2007. 

According to our correspondent quoting Iran's statistical center's public relations office, based on this MoU, Iran's statistical center shall provide the Afghan experts with the required training courses. 

In the MoU signed by the Iranian and Afghan sides, mention has also been made of the training of the demographers and experts of Afghanistan's statistics office in such grounds as census questionnaires formatting, data processing, recounting, commissioning, running and establishment of the LAN local web and web management
More on link

US soldiers killed in Afghanistan   
03/10/2006 - 7:45:15 AM
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breaking/story.asp?j=162016040&p=y6zxy66zx&n=162016649&x=


Two US and one Afghan soldier were killed in fighting in eastern Afghanistan, US military officials said today.

Three US soldiers were also wounded in last night’s “fighting with enemy combatants in the Pech District of Kunar Province,” a military statement said.

The wounded troops were flown to a hospital and were in stabile condition, the statement said.

“The soldiers were operating as part of a combat patrol that made contact with enemy extremists. The unit engaged the insurgents with small arms and artillery fire,” it said.
More on link

In Afghanistan, US troops tackle aid projects and skepticism  
Tuesday October 03, 2006 (0130 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155960

MIRDISH VILLAGE: The white-bearded Afghan police chief is not pleased with his village "force" of 15 rag-tag cops. They have no radios, just two AK-47 assault rifles, and a single pistol with 9mm ammunition that jams. 
Afghan officials have also not paid police salaries for months in this remote eastern Afghanistan province of Nuristan on the Pakistan border. An officer is said to be collecting funds now - the proverbial "check is in the mail" - but the delay is hampering US plans to start police training this week. 

"Of course it`s a good idea to train," chief Nur Mohamed tells the US Military Police platoon leader, as they meet under a rock overhang. "The day they pay us, we will be there." 

Money talks in Afghanistan, particularly in this undeveloped region. Whether training local police or getting tips on insurgent positions, success for US forces depends on fulfilling promises of aid and reconstruction. That`s the logic behind a new fight-and-build strategy that arms the US military with millions of dollars to spend on projects to convince Afghans, one village at a time, of the benefits of opposing Taliban-led militants. 

But obstacles abound here. In the wilds of Nuristan, sheer rock cliffs and mountain run-off rivers leave few options for roads. US Army convoys have been attacked nearly every time they set out in recent weeks. The terrain not only makes ambushes easier but also frustrates logistics, like getting money and supplies flowing to Mr. Mohamed`s police. 

Mohamed tells the MP that his unit only patrols a few hundred yards down the road to the graveyard - "where you were ambushed the other day." 
More on link

U.S. forces fighting back with new approach in Afghanistan
By Jonathan S. Landay Oct. 02, 2006 McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15662671.htm

MOQOR, Afghanistan - Raz Mohammad, the newly installed police chief in this town of adobe compounds, ramshackle shops and rickety stalls, needed help, and he needed it quickly. 

The Taliban had torched part of his headquarters the previous week, killed his civilian boss a day earlier, and now they were gunning for him. Fifteen of Mohammad's 20 officers had bolted. Then there was the fact that the local militia chief he was replacing commanded 30 well-armed fighters and probably was in cahoots with the Taliban. 

"I can't sleep at night. ... I'm afraid he will stab me in the back," said the lanky 25-year cop. "My immediate needs are razor wire and sandbags so we can build defensive positions. I don't have communications equipment. I'm lacking ammunition and weapons. I have nothing in my hands to resist enemy attacks." 

Nodding and sipping tea, Army Lt. Col. Frank Sturek promised help. He'd send razor wire and 1,000 sandbags right away. And a U.S. platoon to secure Moqor's administrative compound until Afghan forces arrived. The local militia boss would be removed as quickly as possible. 
More on link

U.S./Afghanistan: Detainees Still In Legal Limbo Despite New Law  
By Ron Synovitz
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/5AA6E022-0237-4CA9-B313-522374B6E0BF.html

PRAGUE, October 3, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. President George W. Bush is expected to sign legislation soon allowing the U.S. military to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without filing formal charges.


The bill, passed by Congress in late September, also allows for trial before a military commission instead of a civilian court in instances where U.S. officials choose to bring charges against an "enemy combatant."

Under the U.S. Constitution, the government is required in civilian courts to explain why a suspected criminal is being held -- and to give them access to lawyers. People accused of crimes also have the right to a speedy and public jury trial.
  
But the legislation approved last week says non-U.S. citizens held by the U.S. military as "enemy combatants" do not have those rights.
  
The plan originated in the White House and is known as the "Hamdan" legislation after a Yemeni national and former driver for Osama bin Laden who has challenged his treatment.
  
Bush signaled his support for the bill on September 28 by praising its passage in Congress.
More on link

UK warned failure in Afghanistan would be catastrophic London
Oct. 3, IRNA UK Tories-Afghanistan 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-239/0610030220190552.htm

The opposition Conservative Party warned the British government that there were three major reasons why the beleaguered UK-led Nato forces had to succeed in Afghanistan. 

"Firstly, NATO's reputation and cohesion are on the line. Failure would embolden all those who threaten our security," shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said. 

Speaking at his party's annual conference in Bournemouth, southern England, Fox said the next reason was that if Afghanistan becomes a failed state again, "it will once more become a breeding ground for Al-Qaeda and we have seen in London, New York and Madrid." "But the third reason is that we must not abandon the people of Afghanistan themselves who have endured so much in recent decades," he said. 

"Let me be blunt with you. The price of success in Afghanistan may be high but the cost of failure would be catastrophic," the shadow defence secretary warned delegates at the conference. 

Earlier in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, he blamed the current woes suffered by troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere on the government's "ad hoc foreign policy" and short-term political interests. 

"Our troops are overstretched, we are spending a low proportion of our GDP on defence and our defence policy seems to be decided on the basis of an ad hoc foreign policy rather than a properly thought-out view of Britain's strategic interests," Fox said. 
End

War wounded 'need military wards'   
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5403996.stm

UK troops in NHS hospitals should be treated in separate wings even if it requires public wards to be shut down, the shadow defence secretary has said. 
Liam Fox said it was a "disgrace" to treat them alongside civilian patients. 

A relative of a paratrooper wounded in Afghanistan had reportedly said the soldier had been threatened by a Muslim visitor on an NHS ward in Birmingham. 

But the Ministry of Defence has said it has no evidence of the soldier being threatened at the Selly Oak Hospital. 

Dr Fox said: "It is a betrayal of our troops having them treated in mixed and open wards. 
More on link


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## MarkOttawa (3 Oct 2006)

Canadian soldiers are not enough
Unless Hamid Karzai cracks down on his government's corruption, the people will keep making room for Taliban, says author and Kandahar businesswoman SARAH CHAYES
_Globe and Mail_, Oct. 3
http://www.theglobeandmail.com//servlet/story/RTGAM.20061003.wcoafghan03/BNStory/specialComment/home



> ...The situation in Kandahar has grown immeasurably worse. But the proof is not in the murder of a public official, an event that has become commonplace, it is to be seen in the pall of fear that has descended on the city, paralyzing it. Now villagers are afraid to accept the development assistance that was supposed to turn the country around. They are afraid to teach in schools or to send their daughters.
> 
> Above all, the change in conditions is to be seen in the battles between Taliban and Afghan forces, backed by Canadian troops, on the very outskirts of town. The first one took place in April. Now some 10,000 displaced families crowd the houses of friends and relatives or hastily erected tents in Kandahar proper, lacking the bare necessities. Now the members of my co-operative spend the first part of every day digesting whatever horror one of them saw the night before: the suicide bombing down the hill from his house, the gunfight for the district headquarters that he watched from his roof through the pre-dawn hours...
> 
> ...



I saw Ms. Chayes interviewed on Newsworld (last Sunday I think).  She seemed to surprise the interviewer by frimly stating that Canadian troops needed to stay and expressing her deep thanks for their efforts.

PBS's Taliban documentary is essential viewing
JOHN DOYLE, _Globe and Mail_, Oct. 3 (full text not online)



> ...
> *Frontline: Return of the Taliban* (PBS, 9 p.m.) is not about Canada's role in Afghanistan. But Canadian troops do feature in this startling and unsettling documentary report...
> 
> ...Certainly for Canadians, this Frontline is essential viewing.
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (3 Oct 2006)

*CBC Version*

Two Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Renata D’Aliesio, CanWest News Service Published: Tuesday, October 03, 2006    
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=dd8fba75-cea8-4fd3-bedf-56c9980aa056

 PANJWAII DISTRICT, Afghanistan -- Two Canadian soldiers were killed Tuesday in southern Afghanistan as they worked to clear a route for a future road construction project, the deputy commander of Task Force Afghanistan reported.

Corp. Robert Thomas James Mitchell and a second unnamed soldier were killed in the attack ,Col. Fred Lewis said in a statement.

Five other soldiers were injured in the attack where insurgents used mortars and perhaps rocket propelled grenades.

The injured were evacuated to the Kandahar Airfield hospital for treatment and further evaluation. 

Earlier Tuesday, Canadian troops faced attacks by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle and by a growing Taliban presence near Spervan.

In the earlier incidents, no soldier was injured but three children were wounded when a motorcycle exploded amid a military convoy headed to Kandahar. The attacked happened around 2:20 p.m. roughly six kilometres from the southern Afghanistan city. The resupply convoy was travelling to the Kandahar Airfield Base from Panjwaii District, said Lt. Sue Stefko.

The explosion destroyed a G-Wagon, engulfing it in flames.

Taliban fighters also struck back at Afghan National army soldiers who were pushing west on foot from Siah Choy. Canadian soldiers were offering support in a light armoured vehicle stationed by the head of the Arghanbab River.

The Taliban had formed a one kilometre firing line, which prompted the Canadian and Afghan soldiers to retreat.

The Siah Choy and Spervan area in southern Panjwaii District has experienced a resurgence in Taliban activity since the combat phase of Operation Medusa ended on Sept. 14.

Spervan had been the scene of a major fight last month between the Taliban and a group of Afghan and special forces soldiers. The Taliban had taken over a school on a hill, using it as a training centre for hundreds of fighters.

A total of 39 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in Afghanistan since 2002, either in accidents or fights with the Taliban
End

*CTV Version*

Two Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Updated Tue. Oct. 3 2006 6:53 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060813/afghanistan_attack_061003/20061003?hub=TopStories

Two Canadian soldiers were killed and another five injured during a clash with insurgents in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan Tuesday, Canadian military officials confirmed. 
 More on link

CTV Newsnet: Col. Fred Lewis on the attack 7:01  
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate?tf=/ctv/mar/video/new_player.html&cf=ctv/mar/ctv.cfg&hub=TopStories&video_link_high=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/10/03/ctvvideologger3_159871188_1159914948_500kbps.wmv&video_link_low=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/10/03/ctvvideologger3_159871187_1159914140_218kbps.wmv&clip_start=00:04:14.92&clip_end=00:07:01.42&clip_caption=CTV Newsnet: Col. Fred Lewis on the attack&clip_id=ctvnews.20061003.00164000-00164965-clip1&subhub=video&no_ads=&sortdate=20060813&slug=afghanistan_attack_061003&archive=CTVNews

CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman at the Kandahar base 3:58  

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/HTMLTemplate?tf=/ctv/mar/video/new_player.html&cf=ctv/mar/ctv.cfg&hub=TopStories&video_link_high=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/10/03/ctvvideologger3_159871144_1159871498_500kbps.wmv&video_link_low=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/10/03/ctvvideologger3_159871143_1159870691_218kbps.wmv&clip_start=00:01:25.91&clip_end=00:03:58.23&clip_caption=CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman at the Kandahar base&clip_id=ctvnews.20061003.00164000-00164839-clip1&subhub=video&no_ads=&sortdate=20060813&slug=afghanistan_attack_061003&archive=CTVNews


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## tomahawk6 (3 Oct 2006)

CENTAF releases airpower summary for Oct. 3

10/3/2006 - SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- U.S. Central Command Air Forces officials have released the airpower summary for Oct. 3. 

In Afghanistan Oct. 2, Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, a B-1B Lancer and French M-2000 Mirages provided close-air support for coalition troops in contact with Taliban extremists near Gilan. The A-10s expended cannon rounds on enemy positions. 

Air Force A-10s provided close-air support for coalition troops in contact with Taliban extremists near Bar Kanday. 

The following close-air support requests supported NATO forces operating as the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, in Afghanistan. 

Royal Air Force GR-7 Harriers and U.S. Navy F/A-18 Hornets provided close-air support to ISAF troops in contact with enemy forces near Now Zad.  A GR-7 expended an enhanced Paveway II munition and the F/A-18s expended guided bomb unit-12s on enemy positions. 

Navy F/A-18s provided close-air support to ISAF troops in contact with enemy forces near Kuchnay Darvishan. The F/A-18s expended a GBU-12 on an enemy position. 

In total, coalition aircraft flew 47 close-air-support missions in support of OEF or ISAF. These missions included support to coalition, Afghan and ISAF troops, reconstruction activities and route patrols. 

Additionally, seven Air Force and Royal Air Force intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, aircraft flew missions in support of operations in Afghanistan.

In Iraq, an Air Force Predator conducted a strike against anti-Iraqi forces near Ramadi. The Predator expended a Hellfire missile on the enemy target. 

Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Baqubah, Samarra and Basrah. 

Marine F/A-18s provided close-air support to troops in contact with anti-Iraqi forces near Al Iskandariyah. 

In total, coalition aircraft flew 39 close-air-support missions for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These missions included support to coalition troops, infrastructure protection, reconstruction activities and operations to deter and disrupt terrorist activities. 

Additionally, 14 Air Force, Navy and Army ISR aircraft flew missions in support of operations in Iraq. 

Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster IIIs provided intra-theater heavy airlift support, helping sustain operations throughout Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa. More than 140 airlift sorties were flown; more than 300 tons of cargo was delivered, and more than 2,840 passengers were transported. This included about 11,200 pounds of troop re-supply air-dropped in eastern Afghanistan. 

Coalition C-130 crews from Australia, Canada and Japan flew in support of OIF or OEF. 

On Oct. 1, Air Force, Royal Air Force, French and Singaporean tankers flew 38 sorties and off-loaded more than 2.3 million pounds of fuel.


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## The Bread Guy (3 Oct 2006)

*Nato names Afghan expansion date *  
BBC Online, 3 Oct 06
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5401626.stm

The Nato alliance is to assume control of military operations across the whole of Afghanistan from Thursday onwards.  On 5 October it will take command of most US troops in the east . . . .


*NATO-ISAF countrywide mission expansion*
ISAF Media Advisory #2006-MA71,  3 Oct 06
http://www.jfcbs.nato.int/ISAF/Update/Press_Releases/mediaadvisory/2006/Media_advisory_03Oct06_71.htm?tsfsg=c58cbbf72a7e8cef4ec3695dba256bb6

Media are invited to report on the formal ceremony at Headquarters ISAF on Thursday 5 October, marking expansion of the NATO-ISAF mission into the east and countrywide.  Top Afghan, NATO and Coalition leadership will meet the press in a photo opportunity and conference after the ceremony.  Seating in the conference facility is limited to forty and will be reserved in order of ISAF-registered media confirming attendance by 11:30 a.m. tomorrow . . . .


*Bomber attacks Canadian convoy, no injuries*
CBC Online, 3 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/03/nato-suicide.html

A suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a Canadian military convoy in Afghanistan on Tuesday, but no soldiers were injured.  The bomber slammed his motorcycle into the second vehicle in a Canadian convoy as it entered western Kandahar City from the outskirts, witnesses told CBC News . . . .


*CF Taurus ARV Arrives in K'Har*
CF Combat Camera web page, 3 Oct 06
http://www.combatcamera.forces.gc.ca/netpub/server.np?find&catalog=photos&template=detail_e.np&field=itemid&op=matches&value=16741&site=combatcamera

A CanadianTaurus, Armored Recovery Vehicle (ARV), makes it's way across the tarmac at the Kandahar Air Field after delivery on a C-17 Transport Aircraft (back ground). Weighing in at nearly 100,000lbs the ARV will be used by the Electrical Machanical Engineers (EME) to recover Leopard Tanks and other disabled vehicles in the field which have bogged down or require maintenance due to mechanical failure . . . .


Army chiefs want heavy armour to foil the Taliban
Neil Tweedie, Telegraph (UK), 4 Oct 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/04/nafghan04.xml

Senior Army officers are recommending heavy armour be sent to Afghanistan following concern that the Taliban is planning to replace "human wave" attacks with a much more lethal campaign involving suicide car bombers and roadside explosives.  Heavily protected Warrior infantry fighting vehicles and possibly Challenger II tanks are expected to be deployed in the British sector in the south of the country from March next year.  The decision represents an escalation in the military commitment in Helmand province . . . .


*We need more, newer helicopters, say stressed pilots*
Tom Coghlan, Telegraph (UK), 4 Oct 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/04/nafghan104.xml

The acute shortage of Chinook helicopters available to British forces in Helmand is pushing pilots flying antiquated machines to the limits of their endurance in the face of increasingly determined efforts by Taliban insurgents to shoot them down.  "I have done two tours of Iraq but we feel more threatened here," said Flt Lt Stuart Hague, a pilot with 18 Squadron (B) RAF. "We feel exposed and we have so few machines. The helicopters are working very hard; we need more helicopters and newer ones." . . . .


*Final farewell to the 17 men who will not return home *  
Tom Coghlan, Telegraph (UK), 2 Oct 06

The last time that a unit of the British Army endured such a sustained period of combat was more than 50 years ago in the Korean War.  Yesterday, with the Helmand desert as a featureless backdrop, the Parachute Regiment Battle Group came to the end of its tour of Afghanistan with a final farewell to those comrades who will not be going home.  A stone cairn in the centre of the main British base, Camp Bastion, topped by a cross fashioned from brass cannon shells, lists all 17 members of the battle group who have been killed since the deployment began in May . . . .


*Post Op Medusa development continues*
ISAF News Release #2006-197, 2 Oct 06
http://www.jfcbs.nato.int/ISAF/Update/Press_Releases/newsrelease/2006/Release_02Oct06_197.htm?tsfsg=9037bd78d11f223928ac99e9f677481a

The development phase of Operation Medusa is well underway. Between $5 and $7 million has been committed by the aid agencies of the US, Canadian and German Governments.  The Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) at Kandahar is preparing initiatives to refurbish three schools in former Taliban strongholds, plus irrigation works and bridge construction projects.  A ‘cash for work’ program to clear debris, providing work for 2,500 – 5,000 people from the area is underway. Furthermore, as a consequence of the improved security in the district, the construction of a link road from highway 1 to Pashmul and Bizar-E-Panjwayi will recommence . . . .


Afghanistan: A modest proposal 
Gwynne Dyer, Gulf Times (Qatar), 2 Oct 06
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/printArticle.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=110635&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26

(....)

futile "war on drugs" will drag on endlessly elsewhere, but if they legalised the cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan – and bought up the entire crop at premium prices – they might just break the link between the Taliban and the farmers. Store it, burn it, whatever, but stop destroying the farmers’ livelihoods and put a few billion dollars directly into their pockets. Otherwise, the first Afghan cities will probably start to fall into Taliban hands within the next year to 18 months.


*Spinning pop tunes to beat the Taliban*
A US-sponsored radio station endears itself to Afghans by broadcasting the truth – along with a few good hits.
Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 4 Oct 06
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1004/p06s02-wosc.html?s=hns

The first words 1st Lt. Daniel Hampton learned in Pashto were ones he had heard time and time again in the remote reaches of eastern Afghanistan: " Mana raka radio," or "Give me one radio."  First Lieutenant Hampton's Afghanistan "combat" has turned him into something of a disc jockey, running a small radio station that broadcasts from this American firebase into the Kamdesh district of Nuristan, along the Pakistan border - the target of a US counter-insurgency effort to defeat Taliban-led militants.  Hampton has handed out about 4,000 small radios, sometimes distributing them while his Afghan journalists report at events such as the openings of a new school, mosque, or women's clinic . . . .


Shameless self promotion - mre on AFG:  http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/CANinKandahar


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## tomahawk6 (3 Oct 2006)

http://www.pentagon.mil/news/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1413



> -- Two U.S. soldiers and an Afghan soldier were killed and three U.S. soldiers were wounded during fighting with enemy combatants in the Pech district of Kunar province, Afghanistan, yesterday evening. The soldiers were operating as part of a combat patrol that made contact with enemy extremists. The unit engaged the insurgents with small-arms and artillery fire. All U.S. and Afghan wounded soldiers were taken to a U.S. treatment facility in Asadabad, where they were reported to be in stable condition.


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## GAP (4 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 4 October 2006*

Attacks continue for third straight day
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061004.wafghattack1004/BNStory/Front

SPERWAN, AFGHANISTAN — Canadian troops are under attack for the third straight day in Afghanistan. 

This time several rocket propelled grenades were aimed at a Canadian camp and a roadside bomb struck an armoured vehicle. 

Two Canadians were slightly injured in the bomb attack but remain at a forward base anticipating a quick return to duty, an officer said. 

The attacks come one day after Sergeant Craig Paul Gillam and Corporal Robert Thomas James Mitchell were killed and five soldiers injured while manning an observation post near road construction. 
More on link

Canada's membership in NATO brings obligations in Afghanistan  
REGINALD STACKHOUSE  Special to Globe and Mail Update
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060912.wcomment0912/BNStory/National/home

When is some Canadian leader going to tell us the real reason that justifies our soldiers being in Afghanistan, where some of them are being killed?

It's not so Afghan girls can go to school. Or so there can be free elections. Or so the drug trade can be stopped. If any of those reasons fit, Canadians should be fighting in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Sudan, or half a dozen other countries where tyrants hold power over their people.

But there is a reason that fits — being in Afghanistan is part of our belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Started in 1949 to check and balance the Soviet Union's clear and perilous Cold War threat, NATO's treaty contained two commitments that explain why our fighting men and women belong where they are.
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Afghanistan enjoys priority in Polish international program: Polish FM  
October 04, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/04/eng20061004_308987.html

Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said that Afghanistan enjoys a priority in the Polish program of international cooperation for development, reported the PAP news agency on Tuesday. 

She made the remarks during her talks with visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta on bilateral political and economic cooperation, said the report. 

Fotyga introduced Poland's recent decision to increase the Polish contingent for the peace-keeping forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan to over 1,000 from February 2007. 

The two also discussed the current security situation in Afghanistan. 

Currently, Poland has 100 soldiers in Afghanistan. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Tories blast Europeans for failing Nato in Afghanistan  
Web posted at: 10/4/2006 Source ::: AFP 
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=
World_News&subsection=United+Kingdom+%26+Europe&month=October2006&file=World_News200610049371.xml

bournmouth, England • Britain’s main opposition Conservatives yesterday criticised other European states for doing too little to help Nato defeat the Taleban in Afghanistan. 

Defence spokesman Liam Fox slammed the low level of military spending elsewhere in Europe as Britain leads Nato efforts to flush out remnants of the deposed hardline regime in volatile southern Afghanistan. 

Echoing a less overt, but nonetheless critical line from Britain’s Defence Secretary Des Browne in a September 19 speech, Fox said Nato’s reputation and cohesion were on the line, calling the cost of failure “catastrophic”. 

“That is why it is highly frustrating that some of our Nato allies are simply not pulling their weight in Afghanistan. It is our common security that is at stake. 

“We must all remember that if we do not fight the terror of Al Qaeda abroad we will end up fighting it at home,” he said, addressing the Conservatives’ annual conference in Bournemouth on the southern English coast. Nato said yesterday it hopes to complete its expansion across Afghanistan this week and take command of thousands of US troops in the east of the country, even as two American soldiers died in the troubled region. 
More on link

Jailbirds ripe for recruiting (By MARTIN SAMUEL)
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/commentary/commentarypage.asp

JOHN REID WAS THE British Defence Secretary who thought British troops could win a war in Afghanistan without a shot being fired. If the British Government did not have the media in the sort of slavering thrall that Pavlov engendered in canines, that statement would be aired daily and be well on its way to a place beside Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” as an utterance of such unforgivable idiocy that the man who made it was never taken seriously again.

For the record, the number of British bullets fired is fast approaching half a million, and some of the fighting has been so intense that bayonets have been fixed. Still, the country being what it is, Reid scaled the ladder to the post of Home Secretary, his eighth in Tony Blair’s Government. He got his new job, mainly, because he looks hard and talks tough and in times of threat the British people want to see politicians like that. Reid is Scottish, too, so we fondly imagine he might one day put the heid on some radical imam, the way he called Jeremy Paxman a West London wanker after a televised debate. 

Reid brought the house down at last week’s Labour Party conference with what amounted to a savaging of that outdated concept: innocent until proven guilty. Yet as his rose-tinted view of war suggests, this is another well-polished act. Engagement, bayonets fixed and bullets flying, is not really his speciality. The Prison Service has no strategy to tackle extremist recruitment within Britain’s detention centres and jails. What is our resident bruiser doing about this? Not a lot.

There are approximately 4,000 Muslim prisoners incarcerated in Britain, including the greatest number of terrorist suspects of any European country. It is a myth that they are kept separate from the rest of the prison community. The majority reside in high-security institutions, including Belmarsh, southeast London, but remain on normal wings because of lack of resources. The Prison Officers Association believes recruitment to extreme causes is going on, but is rendered helpless to stop it by circumstances ranging from language barriers to bureaucracy. A working group has been set up to monitor the problem. Until it reports, nobody moves.
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Body of Canadian killed in Afghanistan returned
Oct. 3, 2006. 09:32 PM
http://www.thestar.com/
NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1159912238413&col=968705899037&call_page=
TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News


CFB TRENTON, Ont. — The flag-draped coffin of a soldier killed last week in Afghanistan returned to Canada on Tuesday in a sombre repatriation ceremony. Pte. Josh Klukie was on foot patrol in the Panjwaii area last Friday when he stepped on a powerful explosive booby trap — an anti-tank mine packed with other explosives and a hair-trigger. Several soldiers passed over the hidden trap before the 23-year old set it off. On Tuesday, a bearer party escorted Klukie’s flag-draped coffin from a military Airbus to a hearse waiting on the tarmac of this eastern Ontario airbase. The sombre ceremony, observed by Klukie’s mother Carol and his brothers David and Daniel, included a piper playing the stirring lament “Flowers of the Forest.” Weeping family members comforted each other as they placed flowers on Klukie’s coffin after it was placed in the hearse. Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor were among the dignitaries present. Klukie’s fellow soldiers, who escorted his coffin onto a military transport in Kandahar on Sunday, described him as among the fittest in his platoon and a sensitive soul. One commander said Klukie was destined to do great things. Klukie, a native of Thunder Bay, Ont., was with Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment. The ceremony for Klukie came just hours after word that insurgents had killed two more Canadian soldiers and wounded five others. The soldiers were providing security for road construction and holding an observation post about 20 kilometres west of Kandahar city when they were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. Thirty-nine Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in Afghanistan since 2002. Canada currently has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan. 
End

UN expresses concern over displacement in Afghanistan  
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200610040940.htm

United Nations, Oct. 4 (PTI): The United Nations refugee agency has voiced concern over the increasing number of people being internally displaced in southern Afghanistan as a result of hostilities between Government forces backed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the insurgents. 

Some 15,000 families have been uprooted since July, it estimated. 

"We expect further displacement to take place until conditions are safe for the population to return to their homes," UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis told a news briefing yesterday. 

"This fresh displacement adds new hardship to a population already hosting 1,16,400 people, earlier uprooted by conflict and drought," he said. 

Some families were reported to have gone back from Kandahar city to Panjwai and Zhare Dasht in Kandahar province during daylight but to have returned to the city at night as they felt it was too insecure to stay overnight, she added. 
More on link

Afghanistan: Lost time
Wednesday, October 4, 2006 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/287407_fristed.asp

Since he hangs out with people who like to accuse even distinguished combat veterans of defeatism or appeasement, Sen. Bill Frist is wise to revise his remarks about the Taliban. But the larger reality around the Senate majority leader's observations is important.

Frist was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that the Afghan government needs to bring in Taliban supporters. He now says he really wanted to talk about using education, jobs and the like to attract those who might become Taliban.

With the growing Taliban insurgency, it makes a lot of sense to talk about political solutions to Afghanistan's problems. But the same was true in 2002 and 2003, when the Bush administration turned its back on the hard work of political, economic and social reconstruction to launch an unjustified military misadventure in Iraq. 

Lost time has meant more than a delay in solving Afghanistan's problems. It has also put the entire success of the international efforts in Afghanistan at ever-increasing risk. The number of Taliban and their supporters are rising, as Frist and fellow Republican Sen. Mel Martinez noted in a visit Monday. That has caused rising death tolls among coalition troops and the civilian population.
More on link

Army secretary visits Soldiers in Afghanistan
By Staff Sgt. Carmen L. Burgess 
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/read.php?story_id_key=9670

BAGRAM, Afghanistan (Army News Service, Oct. 3, 2006) – After spending time with Soldiers in Afghanistan last week, Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey says he continues to be pleased with progress being made in the war-torn country.

Harvey’s Sept. 25-27 trip was his third into Afghanistan during his nearly two-year tenure. He focused on visiting 10th Mountain Division Soldiers, from whom he received updates on equipment, training and building of the Afghan infrastructure. 

“It’s always good to be with Soldiers,” said the secretary. “I applaud their dedication to support and defend our country, and what they are doing for Afghanistan.”

Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, 10th Mountain Division commander, shared with the Army’s top official the great success his troops have had in building and maintaining good relations in a land 30 percent larger than Iraq and whose population is 15 percent greater.
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If Iraq is lost, Afghanistan is not -- at least not yet
Tom Plate has a solution for America's wartime woes
By Tom Plate Pacific Perspectives Columnist Tuesday, October 3, 2006
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/columns.asp?parentid=54412

Washington --- Like some drugged-out physicist with a far-out theory about the creation of the universe, I tried out my admittedly unusual "exit strategy" for getting out of Iraq on almost anyone who would listen.

The unsuspecting audience included a world-famous China expert, a widely admired Asian ambassador, a Japanese diplomat who is close to the new Prime Minister of Japan, an internationally recognized Dean of a foreign-policy school, and a former top cabinet member in the Clinton administration. This was all in one day. And they liked the idea.

I couldn't, alas, get inside the White House to run my exit plan past President George W. Bush. Allegedly, he was sighted holed up in the Lincoln Room frantically leafing through State of Denial, a new book by Bob Woodward that alleges a black hole of administration confusion, public deception, insider back-stabbing and an almost psychotic dependency on a denial of reality in all things involving the Iraq war.

Whatever your stance on this invasion, the bottom line is that the war is not going terrifically well, to say the least. U.S. generals are despondent about not having enough troops on the Iraqi ground to do the job, and U.S. troops on the ground are unhappy about the unceasing waves of terror attacks, the decreasing level of support from the U.S. public and the increasing sense that their Iraqi mission is indeed an impossible one.

Frankly, it seems like the latter phase of the Vietnam War all over again.  But there is at least one important difference. When the Nixon Administration decided to withdraw, there was only one place for our troops to conceivably go: and that was home. In the current quagmire, there is a very honorable alternative: instead of cutting and running, U.S. troops now in Iraq could – and I would say should -- be sent to nearby Afghanistan.
More on link

Two US, one Afghan soldier killed in Afghanistan clashes
Oct 3, 2006, 14:24 GMT 
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1207715.php/Two_US_one_Afghan_soldier_killed_in_Afghanistan_clashes

Kabul - Two US and one Afghan soldier were killed and three others injured overnight in fighting with insurgents in north-eastern Afghanistan, the coalition forces announced on Tuesday. 

A statement issued by the forces at Bagram Airfield outside Kabul said the soldiers were operating as part of a combat patrol in Pech district of Kunar province Monday evening when they made contact with enemy forces. 

'The unit engaged the insurgents with small arms and artillery fire,' the statement said. 

The injured were medically evacuated to a US treatment facility in Asadabad, where they remained in stable condition. 

   In a separate attack, a suicide bomber attacked NATO forces outside Kandahar city in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday, but its impact was not immediately known, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported. 

Eyewitnesses at the site told the Pakistan-based agency as the explosion was 'severe' but said the scene could not be surveyed as NATO forces immediately cordoned off the area. 
More on link

Bredesen: Tennessee Guard equipment left behind in Iraq, Afghanistan  
http://www.wbir.com/news/regional/story.aspx?storyid=38373
  
Governor Bredesen says much of the equipment Tennessee National Guard units took to Iraq and Afghanistan is still there. 

Bredesen says he's "very concerned" that the Guard might not have enough gear to mobilize during a state emergency. 

During an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press yesterday, Bredesen said trucks, humvees and bulldozers were left overseas for units replacing Tennessee companies. 

More than two-thirds of Tennessee's National Guard members have been sent to the Persian Gulf region since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the U-S. 

National Guard officials in Nashville say the state needs about 30 large trucks to move cargo, about 650 regular humvees and 200 more armored humvees. 

Major General Gus Hargett, who commands the Guard, says when the 278th Regimental Combat Team returned from Iraq last fall, the equipment shortage was critical. 

Hargett says if there'd been an earthquake in Memphis -- as he put it -- "we'd have had to hitchhike to get there." 

The Army has started sending replacement equipment -- mostly trucks. 
End

Soldiers rescue boy in Afghanistan
Updated: 10/4/2006 11:09:37 AM By: Amy Ohler 
http://news10now.com/content/all_news/watertownnorth_country/?ArID=81823&SecID=90

Another major accomplishment by 10th Mountain Division soldiers in Afghanistan. They rescued the son of an Afghan leader.

He was kidnapped by the Taliban last week. The boy's father received a letter requesting money the day his son disappeared.

10th Mountain troops and Coalition forces found the boy inside a cave. They took him back to the base for identification and then returned him to his family.
More on link


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## MarkOttawa (4 Oct 2006)

Max Boot: Get Serious About Afghanistan
Without more financial aid and efforts to curb the Taliban, the country will slip into the same chaos as Iraq.
_LA Times_, October 4, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-boot4oct04,0,6201842.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail



> ...Already this year coalition forces have suffered more fatalities in Afghanistan (163) than they did in all of 2005 (130) to say nothing of 2004 (58).
> 
> The situation is still not as dire as in Iraq, as anyone who has recently been to both countries can attest. But the trends are ominous...
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## MarkOttawa (5 Oct 2006)

Reconstruction seen key to U.S. exit
By Sharon Behn, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, October 5, 2006
http://washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20061004-100414-3803r



> NATO's top military commander said yesterday the U.S. exit strategy from Afghanistan depends on the effectiveness of reconstruction and aid, more so than the number of troops.
> 
> "Afghanistan will not be resolved by military means," said U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, who commands the Western alliance.
> 
> ...




Canada right to keep troops in Afghanistan: UN peacekeeping chief
Steven Edwards, The Ottawa Citizen, October 05, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=c04d64c5-15cb-434b-9f17-4c75cbf58d82



> The chief of United Nations peacekeeping operations yesterday praised Canada for deploying a sizable force to Afghanistan, saying the entire NATO deployment is providing "very important" help to the world body's work in that country.
> 
> Making the comments during a briefing on the UN's own burgeoning peacekeeping commitments around the world, Jean-Marie Guehenno effectively endorsed the arguments Prime Minister Stephen Harper made in his recent UN address on why Canada had intervened in Afghanistan.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (5 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 5 October 2006*

Arrested insurgents allegedly trained in Pakistan
Updated Wed. Oct. 4 2006 11:15 PM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061004/afghan_arrests_061004/20061004?hub=World

Security agents have arrested 17 people allegedly trained in Pakistan who they believe planned to launch suicide attacks in three Afghan provinces, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said.

The 17 were detained in Nangarhar, Kunduz and Kabul provinces and told authorities they attended militant training camps in neighbouring Pakistan, Said Ansari, spokesman for Afghanistan's intelligence agency, said Wednesday. It was unclear when they were detained.

Ansari said militants in Pakistan encourage fighters to carry out suicide attacks by telling them girls in Afghanistan are wearing un-Islamic clothes or studying subjects in school unrelated to Islam.

The would-be bombers trained in Shamshatoo, an Afghan refugee camp near Peshawar and at another camp near Data Khel in Pakistan's semiautonomous North Waziristan tribal region, Ansari said.

"They are telling those people that they should conduct suicide attacks because the foreigners who are here are doing bad things in Afghanistan that are unacceptable in an Islamic country,'' Ansari told a news conference.
More on link

NATO chief calls for more Afghan aid
POSTED: 0549 GMT (1349 HKT), October 5, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/04/nato.afghan.reut/index.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Western nations must do more to crack down on the drug trade and corruption in Afghanistan, NATO's commander said as the alliance prepared to assume security duties for the whole country.

NATO troops have faced a surge of violence in the South and East of Afghanistan, the most intense since U.S.-led forces toppled the hardline Taliban Islamist government five years ago following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

But U.S. Marine Gen. James Jones, NATO's top operational commander, said efforts to rebuild the country and establish the rule of law posed the biggest challenge.

"In my view, Afghanistan will not be resolved by military means," he said in Washington on Wednesday.

"I'm confident that we can take on any military challenge that there is and be successful, but the real challenge in Afghanistan ... is how well the reconstruction mission, the international aid mission, is focused," he said.

"And on that score I think there is a requirement to do more, to bring more focus, more clarity, more purpose and more results in a shorter period of time," he told an event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
More on link

12,000 U.S. Troops in Afghanistan to Serve Under NATO
By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1451

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4, 2006 – More than half of the U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan will become part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force during a transfer-of-authority ceremony tomorrow morning in the Afghan capital of Kabul. 

This graphic represents the expansion of NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. 

Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, will transfer command of Regional Command East to NATO. During that transfer, about 12,000 U.S. troops currently assigned to CFCA will join 20,000 NATO troops assigned to the ISAF mission. 
More on link

Wounded soldiers shouldn't lose pay perks, MPs say
Oct. 5, 2006. 01:00 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159998617517&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467

OTTAWA—Opposition MPs are pressing the government to reverse a policy stopping badly injured soldiers evacuated from Afghanistan from collecting danger pay and other financial perks that add thousands of dollars a month to their pay.

"I find it deplorable," said Liberal MP Dan McTeague (Pickering-Scarborough East). "If they're wounded, there's no way under the sun they should find themselves cut off. It looks like we're cheap or we don't care.

"If we've got $13 billion (surplus) bucks to put down towards our debt, surely we have enough money to restore the funding to our wounded soldiers who've taken a bullet for their country." 

The moment Canada's injured are sent to Germany or to Canada for medical treatment they are no longer entitled to "operational allowance" that adds $2,111 to monthly pay. 

That allowance, the same regardless of rank, compensates soldiers for being away from home and for mission hardships and risks, defence spokesperson John Knoll said. Allowance is paid for "being in that place and under those conditions." 
More on link

DoD Identifies Army Casualty
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10047
and 
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10049

Spc. Angelo J. Vaccaro, 23, of Deltona, Fla., died on Oct. 2 in Korengal, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered during combat operations. Vaccaro was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.

DoD Identifies Army Casualty          .

            Staff Sgt. Jonathan Rojas, 27, of Hammond, Ind., died on Oct. 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries suffered from enemy small arms fire while performing security operations. Rojas was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Wainwright, Ala.
End

Princess Anne visits Afghanistan
POSTED: 1036 GMT (1836 HKT), October 5, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/05/afghan.princessanne.reut/index.html

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Princess Anne visited British troops in Afghanistan this week, the first member of the royal family to do so since the soldiers were deployed in the south of the country, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.

A ministry spokeswoman said the princess and her husband, Rear Admiral Timothy Laurence, traveled to Kabul, Kandahar and the restive southern province of Helmand, where most of Britain's forces are based.

The spokeswoman was unable to give the exact timing of the trip.

During her time on the ground, the princess, who is a colonel of several units and regiments, had talks with Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of British troops in Afghanistan.
More on link

AFGHANISTAN: U.S. SENATOR URGES TALIBAN INCLUSION
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.347016120&par=

New Delhi, 5 Oct. (AKI/Asian Age) - Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf can claim his first 'victory' after his visit to the United States, with US Senate majority leader Bill Frist recommending, for the first time since 9/11, the need to bring the Taliban into the Afghan government. Senator Frist, on a visit to Afghanistan, said that a decision on this was to be taken by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Musharraf, who recently struck a deal with pro-Talibantribal forces in North Waziristan, spent considerable time in the US in a bid to persuade the Bush administration that it was essential to support the moderate Taliban in a bid to isolate the extremists. 

The Republicans had flirted briefly with the idea a few years ago, but this time Senator Frist's comments, Indian sources said, appeared to have the backing of US President George W. Bush who had recently responded to Gen. Musharraf's arguments with a strong "I believe him". 
More on link

RAF Afghanistan footage released   
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5408086.stm

The footage, which was released by the MoD, was shot last week 
Footage of Harrier pilots bombing Taleban targets in Afghanistan has been released in an attempt to improve the public's perception of the RAF's work. 
Shot last week, it shows the cockpit view as munitions fall on targets, as well as planes landing and taking off. 

The release was to show the operational role of the Harrier "in support of the ground troops", a wing commander said. 

Defence chiefs denied the move was in response to recent criticism that the RAF was "utterly, utterly useless". 
More on link

Time for a non-partisan Afghanistan policy
The Conservatives and Liberals are committed to the mission and cannot back out of it    
Douglas Bland, National Post Published: Thursday, October 05, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/editorialsletters/story.html?id=497dcf2f-d39b-4ffe-aca8-45f77b0eef84

The debate surrounding Canada's foreign policy and military commitment to Afghanistan has descended into partisan rhetoric. Canada needs political leadership from all parties aimed at building a consensus on a national strategy that policy planners and military leaders can use to guide their decisions over the next several years that we will be in Afghanistan.

All leaders will have to agree to the basic facts about Canada's Afghan mission. We have made a commitment as a country, and the UN and NATO don't care about our internal political squabbles. They understand our commitment only as Canada's commitment.

Jack Layton, and now Paul Martin, seem to believe that the situation and belligerents in Afghanistan are pliable and that the Canadian government can control all events in the field. Paul Martin reportedly is astonished that the war is not unfolding exactly as he says he was promised it would. Credible leaders understand that national policies are always subject to the enemy's ever-changing tactics.

Canada is now fully engaged in combat with two obvious options: meaningfully reinforce the status quo, or cut and run. But neither choice is practical. The first would eventually devour the tiny Canadian Forces, and the second would irreparably damage Canada's reputation in the international community.

Instead, political leaders ought to find a national strategy that will maintain Canada's honour while allowing some respite from the difficulties of the military commitment to Afghanistan.

A Canadian political consensus could be built around three policies.

- First, Canada should demonstrate a unified resolve to build a strong UN coalition to fight Afghanistan's enemies on as many fronts as possible. Prime Minister Stephen Harper should engage the other party leaders in this diplomatic effort announced as a commitment to uphold the authority of the UN.

- Second, Canada should immediately rethink its humanitarian and developmental program. The "business-as-usual" approach centred on the Canadian International Development Agency must be replaced by a new ministry responsibility for a "whole-of-government" approach to meeting this essential program effectively.
More on link

Gurkha spirit triumphs in siege of Nawzad
By Tom Coghlan (Filed: 05/10/2006)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/05/wafghan05.xml

The Gurkhas were never supposed to fire a shot in anger in Helmand. Their main duty was to protect the main British Army base at Camp Bastion.

But as British forces found themselves fighting a full-scale war, the Gurkhas were thrust into the front line and became involved in some of the fiercest fire fights of the summer-long campaign.

One of the most dramatic engagements took place in the town of Nawzad, a key strategic post in southern Helmand.

The Gurkha commanders realised that trouble was brewing when the town centre emptied of civilians.

As night fell they heard the sounds of holes being chipped through the walls of the buildings close to their fortified ''platoon house", the town's police station. Then the sound of civilian electricity generators in the town abruptly ceased, so that in the silence approaching British helicopters could be heard sooner.

"We knew it was the calm before the storm. We sensed what was coming," said Major Dan Rex, 35, the Gurkhas' tall, softly spoken commander.

During the next 10 days, the 40 Gurkhas sent to Nawzad to hold the police station fought tenaciously to defend themselves as they were subjected to 28 attacks lasting one to six hours each, including five full scale efforts by hundreds of Taliban fighters to over-run their compound.
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## MarkOttawa (5 Oct 2006)

Report: Frist says Afghan war can't be won militarily
Senate leader says his comments about bringing Taliban into government were taken out of context.
Christian Science Monitor, October 3, 2006, by Tom Regan
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1003/dailyUpdate.html



> US Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R) of Tennessee said Monday that the war against the Taliban can "never" be won militarily and that it was time to include "people who call themselves Taliban" in the Afghan government.
> 
> The Associated Press reports that Mr. Frist said he had learned from military reports that the Taliban were "too numerous and had too much popular support" to be defeated in a military campaign.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## MarkOttawa (5 Oct 2006)

If this story is accurate, the Pak involvement is massive.

color=yellow]Nato's top brass accuse Pakistan over Taliban aid[/color]
By Ahmed Rashid in Kabul (Filed: 06/10/2006)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/06/wafghan06.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_06102006



> Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.
> 
> Nato's report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban's military capability and states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (6 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 6 October 2006*

Afghan death toll price of leadership: Harper  
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061006.wharp05/BNStory/National/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp

CALGARY — The mounting Canadian death toll in Afghanistan is the price of leadership that comes with playing a significant role in global affairs, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Thursday.

Appearing in Calgary to receive the Woodrow Wilson Award for public service, Mr. Harper said Canadians want a clear, confident and influential role in a changing, dangerous road.

“A Canada that doesn't just criticize, but one that can contribute,” he said. “They want a Canada that reflects their values and interests, and that punches above its weight.”

Mr. Harper also said Canada is making a real effort on the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
More on link

Tories reignite support for war in Afghanistan
Andrew Mayeda, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Friday, October 06, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=4fedce12-9a14-4a5c-aba6-e70002a38817&k=63439

57% now support combat operations, but many doubt mission is succeeding

Public backing for the war in Afghanistan has surged after an aggressive campaign by the Conservative government to build support for the mission, but most Canadians want the troops to come home when the country's military commitment ends in 2009, according to a new poll.

The poll was conducted between Sept. 26 and 28 by Ipsos Reid for CanWest News Service and Global National.

It shows 57 per cent of Canadians support the use of troops in combat operations in Afghanistan.

That represents a six-percentage-point rise from early September, and a 10-point rise from late July, when support appears to have bottomed out for the year.

The surge followed a concerted effort by the Tories to build support for the Afghanistan mission.

The push began on Sept. 21 with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's first speech at the United Nations, where he stressed the importance of the mission to the global war on terrorism.

The next day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai delivered an impassioned plea for Canada's continued military involvement in his war-torn country, praising the Canadian soldiers who have died as the "greatest of their generation."

The campaign was capped by a rally on Parliament Hill in which thousands of people dressed in red as a show of support for the troops. At the rally, Harper played to Canadians' pride in their military history, boasting: "We don't start fights, but we finish them."

Ipsos Reid senior vice-president John Wright noted that the surge in support came after four Canadian soldiers were killed by a suicide bomber while the troops were mingling with Afghan civilians. But he said Mr. Karzai's speech in Ottawa refocused public attention on the reconstruction dimension of the mission.

"It underscored that there is another side to this," Mr. Wright said.
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The winter war
The Times October 06, 2006 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,542-2391214,00.html

Nato must press home its advantage in Afghanistan 

The transfer yesterday of American troops in eastern Afghanistan to Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) brings under British command the alliance’s biggest ground operation in its history. It also marks the biggest deployment of US forces under foreign command since the Second World War. Some 12,000 US troops were placed at the disposal of General David Richards, joining the British, Dutch and Canadian forces fighting the resurgent Taleban in the south. 
And at the formal transfer ceremony General Richards underlined the Nato resolve to use the new streamlined command to enhance the effectiveness of all the foreign forces in Afghanistan, now numbering 31,000 troops. 

It is five years, almost to the day, since the US-led coalition launched its attack on Afghanistan, then under the repressive rule of the Taleban and a training ground and haven for al-Qaeda. Since then, the military, political and economic convulsions have transformed the country, bringing an elected government to Kabul, liberating Afghanistan’s women from the serfdom to which the obscurantist regime had condemned them and offering the country a chance to rebuild and reawaken. 

Nevertheless, the Taleban are still far from defeated. They now pose the greatest threat to the country since they were ousted from power. Attacks on schools and government installations have grown, suicide bombers have hit allied convoys and more than 140 foreign troops have been killed since January. 
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For 'The Forgotten Five,' war in Afghanistan hasn't ended   
By Joelle Farrell Monitor staff October 02. 2006 8:00AM 
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061002/REPOSITORY/610020301/0/NEWS04

Mornings in Afghanistan, Sgt. John Wilder and Sgt. Bob Pratt shook scorpions out of their boots, drank their coffee and went to work.

They stitched wounds, treated snakebites and dressed barefoot children in new socks and shoes. Afghans collapsed at the camp's front gate, dehydrated from dysentery. Soldiers on guard were afraid to touch them. Pratt and Wilder carried the Afghans inside. 

Each night as the sun set, Wilder and Pratt pulled their Kevlar vests tight, readied their weapons and waited for the rockets to come. 

As medics with the New Hampshire Army National Guard, Wilder and Pratt were sent to Afghanistan to care for soldiers and local civilians. But Taliban fighters didn't care that the medics saved villagers' lives. Americans are enemies, and medics are soldiers. 

"People do tend to forget that there's a real war going on in Afghanistan," said Pratt. "I think the perception was it was going to be easier in Afghanistan, and it really wasn't." 

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the New Hampshire Army National Guard has sent at least 80 soldiers to Afghanistan. Those soldiers, including a group of five medics, arrived in Afghanistan after the war in Iraq had begun in March 2003. 

"We called ourselves 'The Forgotten Five,' " Wilder said of the five medics. 
Unlike the war in Iraq, the Afghan conflict caused little political or public outcry. People understood the connection between Afghanistan terrorist training camps and the terrorist attacks of 9/11
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Extra 150 troops bound for Afghanistan
9th August 2006, 5:15 WST
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=126&ContentID=2680

Prime Minister John Howard says Australia will send an extra 150 troops to bolster its military commitment in Afghanistan.The military personnel will be sent in addition to a 240-strong provincial reconstruction team being deployed to central Afghanistan.

The original team included infantry soldiers for protection, but the rising tide of violence in south and central Afghanistan has prompted the government to expand the security element.

Mr Howard announced the government's intentions in a statement to parliament.

"The purpose of this statement is to inform the House of the government's decision to send to Afghanistan an additional 150 troops of the ADF to reinforce the reconstruction taskforce and to provide enhanced force protection," he said.

Mr Howard said the path to security for Afghanistan would be long and hard after many years of violence and extremism.

"The path to security will be long and hard with many challenges lying ahead but Afghanistan will not have to face these challenges alone," he said.

Mr Howard said some troops would begin deploying this month with the bulk leaving for Afghanistan in September.

The reconstruction taskforce would remain in Oruzgan province for two years and would undertake construction projects, provide project management skills and deliver trade training.

"These activities will ensure that the benefits of the deployment continue long after our personnel have returned," Mr Howard said.

Mr Howard said the government was well aware of the risks faced by the Australian troops and would ensure they were fully equipped and resourced.

"After careful consideration the government has decided to increase the size of the reconstruction taskforce from 240 personnel to 270," he said.

"The government has also decided ... that the deployment will include an infantry company group of about 120 personnel to provide enhanced force protection.

"After six months the security situation in Oruzgan will be reviewed and the taskforce structure will be reconsidered in the light of that review.

"The additional deployments will therefore bring the total reconstruction taskforce strength to approximately 400."
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Ukraine to take part in Afghanistan anti-terrorism operation  
13:52 | 06/ 10/ 2006 
http://en.rian.ru/world/20061006/54569859.html   

KIEV, October 6 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine is ready to provide a detachment of military experts to participate in the international anti-terrorism operation in Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Friday. 

"During his two-day visit to Portugal for Ukraine-NATO consultations, Ukrainian Defense Minister Anatoliy Hrytsenko confirmed his country's readiness to provide a detachment of military experts," the spokesman said. 

Ukraine had been actively seeking NATO membership until a power-sharing agreement ended a political stalemate between pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko and his Russia-leaning rival Viktor Yanukovych, who was appointed the new prime minister in August. 

On September 14, Yanukovych said the country was shelving its bid to join NATO for the time being because of widespread opposition within society, and on September 21 he said in Brussels that the issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO will be decided by a national referendum. 

Neighboring Russia has also voiced concerns about Ukrainian NATO membership. 

Hrytsenko said Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko will issue the order deploying the troops soon. 

He emphasized that the unit sent will not be a combat detachment, but will be composed of military personnel who will provide expert assistance. 

"The issue is not about a combat detachment, but of military medical personnel, air traffic controllers, and staff to provide expert and other assistance," the minister said. 
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Senate report questions JTF2 secrecy
David ********, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Friday, October 06, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=0e2780ee-3b64-425f-8b6c-039e1534554a&k=95770

Legislators unable to find out how, where and why commandos operate, even whether they obey the law

The level of secrecy surrounding Joint Task Force 2 is so pervasive that a Senate committee is questioning whether the money provided to the Ottawa-based special forces unit is being spent well and whether there is proper oversight.

In its latest report, released yesterday, the Senate committee on national defence and security expressed its increasing frustration about the level of secrecy surrounding JTF2.

"While this committee has been supportive of the development and expansion of an elite special forces unit within the Canadian Forces, members have become increasingly skeptical of the secrecy that continues to surround this unit," the report notes. "We have also been concerned at what may well be a lack of monitoring of JTF2's activities."

The government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on JTF2 over the last decade, although the exact figure is secret, as is the size of the unit.

"Are taxpayers getting value for money from JTF2, and is this the best way to get the job done?" the committee asked. "Who ensures that JTF2 acts according to the Geneva Convention and the laws of Canada?"

Defence committee chairman Senator Colin Kenny said the committee is not asking that JTF2 be required to give a public accounting of every detail of its composition or activities. But the senators want a clearer picture of what the unit's responsibilities are and what capacity it has to fulfil those responsibilities.

"We recognize a significant level of secrecy is required for JTF2, but we also think there has been a myth built up that almost makes asking questions about them seem disloyal," Mr. Kenny said in an interview.

"We don't think that's healthy."
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Taliban put Pakistan on notice
By Syed Saleem Shahzad 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HJ07Df01.html

KARACHI - With trouble on the battlefield, US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has recommended, for the first time since September 11, 2001, the need to bring the Taliban into the Afghan government. At the same time, Pakistan is secretly playing its own game of carrot and stick in Afghanistan to influence events to its liking. 

However, two quick warning signals to Islamabad this week convey the unmistakable message that regardless of what Washington or Islamabad might desire, the Taliban are the ones who will decide which carrots and which sticks to play. 

Last month could prove to be pivotal in determining the ultimate fate of the Taliban and Afghanistan, and even the United States' "war on terror". 

The Taliban, after the success of this year's spring offensive, have drawn up a blueprint for an Islamic intifada in Afghanistan next year in the form of a national uprising and an internationalization of their resistance. 
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Taliban lay plans for Islamic intifada
By Syed Saleem Shahzad Oct 6, 2006 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HJ06Df01.html

THE PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and Afghanistan - With the snows approaching, the Taliban's spring offensive has fallen short of its primary objective of reviving the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, as the country was known under Taliban rule from 1996-2001. 

Both foreign forces and the Taliban will bunker down until next spring, although the Taliban are expected to continue with suicide missions and some hit-and-run guerrilla activities. The Taliban will take refuge in the mountains that cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they will have plenty of time to plan the next stage of their struggle: a countrywide "Islamic Intifada of Afghanistan" calling on all former mujahideen to join the movement to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan. 

The intifada will be both national and international. On the one hand it aims to organize a national uprising, and on the other it will attempt to make Afghanistan the hub of the worldwide Islamic resistance movement, as it was previously under the Taliban when Osama bin Laden and his training camps were guests of the country. 

The ideologue of the intifada is bin Laden's deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has assembled a special team to implement the idea. Key to this mission is Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar. Asia Times Online was early to pinpoint Haq Yar as an important player (see Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance, September 11, 2004). 

Oriented primarily towards Arabs, especially Zawahiri, Haq Yar speaks English, Arabic, Urdu and Pashtu with great fluency. He was sent by Taliban leader Mullah Omar to northern Iraq to train with Ansarul Islam fighters before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He returned to Afghanistan in 2004 and was inducted into a special council of commanders formed by Mullah Omar and assigned the task of shepherding all foreign fighters and high-value targets from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan. 

He is an expert in urban guerrilla warfare, a skill he has shared with the Taliban in Afghanistan. His new task might be more challenging: to gather local warlords from north to south under one umbrella and secure international support from regional players. 

A major first step toward creating an intifada in Afghanistan was the establishment of the Islamic State of North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal area this year. This brought all fragmented sections of the Taliban under one command, and was the launching pad for the Taliban's spring offensive. 

Subsequently, there has been agreement between a number of top warlords in northern Afghanistan and the Taliban to make the intifada a success next year. Credit for this development goes mainly to Haq Yar. 
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Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
Tipping point nearing. Tipping point nearing.
By Michael Byers Published: October 6, 2006 TheTyee.ca
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/10/06/Afghanistan/

We are approaching the five-year mark of Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan.

Joint Task Force 2, Canada's special-forces unit, has been active in that country since shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. We know that JTF-2 soldiers transferred detainees to U.S. custody in January 2002, participated in an attack at Tora Bora in December 2002, and transferred detainees to U.S. custody again during the summer of 2005.

The first deployment of regular soldiers came in January 2002, when 750 infantry from the Princess Patricia's Regiment were sent to Kandahar as part of an U.S. counter-insurgency task force. Four of these soldiers were killed, and eight others injured, in a "friendly fire" incident in April 2002.
More on link


----------



## GAP (7 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 7 October 2006*

NATO soldier killed in attack in Afghanistan
Updated Sat. Oct. 7 2006 8:36 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061007/soldier_killed_061007/20061007?hub=TopStories

A NATO soldier has been killed in the Panjwaii district of Afghanistan, an area where Canadian soldiers have a heavy presence. 

The soldier was killed when a roadside bomb and small arms fire targeted a military patrol on Saturday -- the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. 

NATO has not yet released the name or nationality of the soldier. 

In addition to the fatality, one of the patrolling vehicles was damaged, NATO said. 

After the attack an explosives disposal team and a military attack helicopter were dispatched to the area. 

The Panjwaii region is one of the most volatile sections of Kandahar province in Afghanistan's south. Numerous attacks and increased fighting have taken place in the region in recent months. 

The Taliban's use of roadside and suicide bombs has increased, and fighting has been heavy as NATO launched Operation Medusa, a month-long Canadian-led initiative though September to push insurgents out of the south. NATO said 300 fighters were killed during the operation and claimed it as a major success. 
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Injured soldiers won't lose extra pay: Hillier
Top general promises top-up
`We're going to look after them'
Oct. 7, 2006. 01:00 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171411447&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

Canada's top general has promised that soldiers won't suffer a pay cut if they "take a bullet for Canada."

"We're going to look after them," Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of defence staff, vowed yesterday.

Hillier and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor moved quickly yesterday to dampen growing public anger over current military policy that sees wounded soldiers lose their lucrative danger pay if they're evacuated from Afghanistan for medical treatment.

Hillier conceded that chopping the paycheques of wounded soldiers was bad optics.

"Canadians would not stand by and see somebody who has done such great service, who has been wounded in action for them, suffer consequences from that financial or otherwise," he said.
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Canadian soldiers are not enough
SARAH CHAYES From Tuesday's Globe and Mail 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061003.wcoafghan03/BNStory/specialComment/home

Unless Hamid Karzai cracks down on his government's corruption, the people will keep making room for Taliban, says author and Kandahar businesswoman SARAH CHAYES 

'Are you going back to Kandahar?"

On a speaking tour in the United States and Canada, I keep hearing this question. The recent assassination of Safia Ama Jan, the provincial director of women's affairs in Kandahar, not to mention the death of yet another Canadian soldier, has made people wonder whether the violence in Afghanistan has taken a quantum leap that would cause me to reconsider.

I have lived in Kandahar for nearly five years -- arriving originally as a radio reporter, then deciding to stay on to help rebuild. Currently, I run a small co-operative that manufactures fine skin-care products and exports them to Canada and the United States. For residents of Kandahar, like me, who have been watching the apparently inexorable decline, Safia Ama Jan's killing seemed utterly within the realm of normalcy. More than a year ago, in late May of 2005, the head of the provincial council of religious leaders -- a much more important person locally than Safia Ama Jan -- was gunned down outside his office right next to the seat of provincial government. Three days later, my best Afghan friend, the chief of the Kabul police, was blown up along with 21 other people at the oldest mosque in town, at a prayer service in memory of the slain mullah.

At that time, it seemed to me that nothing could ever get worse.
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Without security, there can't be reconstruction
From Friday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061006.weafghan06/BNStory/specialComment/home

The deaths of two Canadian soldiers and the injuries to five others in an ambush on Tuesday should shame those who have been arguing that Canada's Afghan mission should focus on reconstruction. In fact, the soldiers were attacked while guarding a road-building crew, illustrating that where possible Canadian soldiers are already helping efforts to rebuild Afghanistan, but also underscoring that the Taliban must be crushed before any serious reconstruction work can begin.

Former prime minister Paul Martin's claim that Canada has "largely abandoned" its reconstruction objectives in the Afghan mission, like NDP Leader Jack Layton's earlier call for the withdrawal of Canadian troops because it's the "wrong mission for Canada" and "out of balance," are fanciful.

Indeed, critics of Canada's mission are perpetuating a lie. They imply that it is reasonable to expect Canada to deploy regiments of civil engineers and social workers, with soldiers playing a support role as sort of community patrol officers, chatting with shopkeepers and dispensing candy to children, and that Afghanistan will thereby be magically delivered from a brutal insurgency. This is a cynical play on public anxiety over casualties among Canadian soldiers and, as Tuesday's attack illustrates, bears little resemblance to the facts on the ground.
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Behind the burqa
Students grateful for chance to learn
Still fear deadly wrath of Taliban
Oct. 7, 2006. 08:11 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171411347&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—Peel back the burqa, and the eyes of Afghanistan's seldom seen future stare back in frustration, fear and the feeling time is not on their side.

The teenage girls of Kandahar offer little insight on the work of the Canadians in their midst, except a solemn prayer that the foreign boots of NATO not leave them, not now especially.

But they can tell you everything about how frightening it is to walk the streets of Afghanistan's second-largest city today, nearly five years after the fall of the Taliban.

Even beneath the burqa, they fear the hidden hand of religious extremism is closing in, having already marked these young women for pursuing studies in English and computer programming
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More nations must `step up,' Hillier says
General says too many caveats imposed by some NATO members that limit how their troops can be used
Oct. 7, 2006. 07:20 AM ROSIE DIMANNO
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171411452&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

Bullet-shielded and combat-shy military deployment — pseudo-troops from NATO partners that won't fight, kept on a short, politically measured leash — could doom the international security mission in Afghanistan, where Canadians are paying such a high price in blood and treasure.

That comes, if not in those exact words but the frustration is palpable, from Canada's top soldier, Gen. Rick Hillier.

In an interview with the Star yesterday, Hillier said 2,000 more troops are needed now: Boots on the ground to hold the ground in volatile Kandahar province where the Taliban strike, if not at will, then certainly wilfully and with lethal cunning.
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Afghanistan's Truer Story  
Saturday 07 October 2006
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=6622

Recent deadly and indiscriminate suicide attacks in Afghanistan have caused death and grief among many innocent Afghan citizens. These attacks once again bring to light the desperate nature of Al-Qaeda and Taliban terror networks that prey on the moderate majority in Afghanistan and other nations in the region. There is no clearer example of this than the 17 September suicide bombing of Canadian troops handing out treats to Afghani children. Four Canadian soldiers were killed, along with a number of innocent Afghan children. 
Despair we may, but persevere we must in the face of this mindless violence and terror. Events of the past 5 years have given Afghan citizens new hope for freedom and opportunity. The moderate majority in Afghanistan want their nation to reemerge from years of repression at the hands of the deposed Taliban regime. The terrorists, an extreme, tiny minority within the region, want nothing more than to stifle this hope. However, their efforts are failing due to the indiscriminate violence and terror they are inflicting on Afghans and the people of other countries in the region. The terrorists themselves acknowledge their failure. As James Fallows reported in the Atlantic magazine, An Egyptian extremist, Mohammed Essad Derbala, recently stated, “…jihad for the sake of jihad has backfired…it produces the opposite of the desired results: the downfall of the Taliban regime and the slaughter of thousands of young Muslims.” 
Although steady progress has been made in Afghanistan, these high profile terrorist attacks dominate the news and reinforce a perception that the security situation is deteriorating, the Taliban are regaining control, and it’s only a matter of time before they return to power. This is not the case. These suicide attacks have not been without cost. They have brought personal pain and suffering back into the lives of Afghans who have recently emerged from 27 years of war. But, the resilience and determination of the Afghan people are evident. With the continued help of the United States, NATO and other Coalition partners, Afghans will continue to prevail over the cowardly acts of a ruthless regime that once ruled by fear and terror. After historic national elections in 2004 in which nearly 10 million citizens voted, this fledgling democracy is building almost from scratch the institutions of government and civil society and developing an economy. With the continued help of the international community, there is no doubt the country will be successful. 
Among the most visible examples of Afghan resiliency is that its citizens now understand, respect, and practice freedom of speech. Citizens are speaking out against terrorist suicide bombings. The Pakistani newspaper DAWN reports that after a recent attack, Kabul resident Mohammed Hayder Nangahari said, "This is a cowardly action that terrorists always take. They don't care if it is a residential area, government area or military area." Pharmacist Nawid Paidar, 31, said the killing of children, women and men in terrorist attacks was inhumane and he blamed militants crossing from Pakistan for the latest bombing. 

Repairing the decades of physical and emotional damage, establishing democratic principles and the rule of law will take patience and courage. The Afghan people, Coalition military forces and the international community possess that courage, and all have a positive vision of the future. The Taliban, on the other hand, continues to offer only more of the same: totalitarianism, mindless violence, war, poverty, and death. What has become evident is that the people of Afghanistan will be triumphant. They have experienced the pain and suffering of this inhumane regime; every suicide attack reminds them of the past and strengthens their resolve for a better future. 
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Taliban leader 'alive in Afghanistan'
From correspondents in Kabul 07oct06
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20543848-23109,00.html

THE Taliban's fugitive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is alive and leading the anti-government insurgency from inside Afghanistan, a purported top spokesman for the militant chief said today.


“Mullah Omar has been in Afghanistan and still is in Afghanistan and will remain here to lead the jihad (holy war) against the American troops,” said a man claiming to be Taliban spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutmaen.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have been bickering about the whereabouts of Mullah Omar and al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, each insisting the men are hiding in the other's territory.

Mutmaen said in a satellite telephone call from an undisclosed location that the Taliban and al-Qaeda chiefs had not seen each other since the toppling of the Taliban regime.

“Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar separated from each other. Each of them took their own destiny and have not seen each other since 2001,” he said.

“We have spiritual sympathy with each other but we are not in touch. Our resistance is a pure Afghan resistance.”

He also rejected claims by Afghan officials that most insurgency-linked attacks in Afghanistan are carried out by insurgents trained in Pakistan with support from fundamentalist elements there.

The fighters are based within Afghanistan and the Taliban considers Pakistan as “our second enemy,” he said.

“Pakistan, as an ally of the United States, is as bad as the Afghan puppet government. We are here and fighting here. No one is helping us – it's an Afghan resistance,” he said.

The Taliban were steadfast in their commitment to overthrowing the new Afghan Government, Mutmaen said.
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Pakistan arrests 40 Taliban suspects
From correspondents in Islamabad 07oct06
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20543594-23109,00.html

PAKISTANI police arrested over 40 suspected Taliban fighters in a series of raids in the southwestern province of Baluchistan near the Afghan border today, officials said today.

The arrests were made in the provincial capital Quetta and in a raid on a hotel in the nearby town of Kuchlak.

“We have arrested around a dozen suspects from Kuchlak and 33 from Quetta,” Qazi Abdul Wahid, a senior police official in Quetta, said. He said police were interrogating the suspects to establish their identities.

Police in Quetta have mounted a crackdown against suspected Taliban in recent months amid complaints from Afghanistan, the United States and NATO powers that militants were staging attacks in Afghanistan from the safety of Pakistani territory.

Last week police arrested six suspected fighters wounded in fighting in Afghanistan while in July they arrested around 250 in Quetta.

Scores of those arrested in July were handed over to Afghan authorities but were then released after finding that none appeared to be members of the Taliban movement.

US-led forces ousted the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 after the hardline Islamists refused to give up al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
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German Journalists Killed in Afghanistan  
Saturday October 7, 2006 2:46 PM By RAHIM FAIEZ Associated Press Writer 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6132162,00.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Two German journalists working for the country's national broadcaster and traveling on their own through northern Afghanistan were killed on Saturday by gunmen, the Afghan government said. 

The two - a man and a woman - were killed by unidentified gunmen while traveling through Baghlan province, said Zemari Bashary, the Interior Ministry spokesman. He said the two had been spending the night in a tent. 

The two worked for the German news agency Deutsche Welle, according to Wakil Asas, a reporter for the company in Kabul. Asas said the two were not based in Kabul and had only been in Afghanistan a short ce. 

Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-owned broadcast outlet, produces news for radio, television and the Internet. 
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Canada now seems out of step on Afghanistan
U.S. has learned its lesson in Iraq
Oct. 7, 2006. 01:00 AM THOMAS WALKOM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171410753&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

One of the more bizarre aspects of the Afghan war is how little Canada seems to have learned from the experience of others.

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper is to be believed, anyone who questions our participation in this war is "despicable" (at least that was his description this week of New Democratic MP Libby Davies).

Others toss around words like unpatriotic.

In the media, there is an unseemly, almost gleeful, quality to much of the coverage — even the coverage of death. It's as if, after years of staying on the sidelines, Canada has finally made it into the big leagues.

All of this is reminiscent of America immediately after that country invaded Iraq in 2003. Then, too, there was flag-waving, much optimism and the usual bold statements. ("We don't cut and run. We don't start fights, but we finish them.")

But now, almost four years later, the U.S. is finally beginning to come to its senses. Canadian fans of the current Kandahar mission might pay attention to what Americans have discovered about their post 9/11 military adventures in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

First, they have learned war is no fun. The U.S. death toll from Iraq continues to mount. And yet, as the U.S. government's own intelligence agencies noted in a recently declassified report, American efforts there have not lessened the threat of terrorism — they have made it worse.

To put it another way, by the time America eventually pulls out of Iraq, hundreds of U.S. soldiers and thousands of Iraqis will have died for nothing.
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Must find way to aid Afghanistan
Oct. 7, 2006. 01:00 AM 
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171410779&call_pageid=970599119419

CIDA silent on Afghan projects

It seems what we have suspected for some time is, in fact, true: CIDA has been hamstrung in Afghanistan and real development is happening at a deplorably slow pace. The Canadian contribution may be destined to be too little, too late. I suggest the Canadian government create a development task force that is independent of the cumbersome and secretive CIDA bureaucracy. Hopefully, this task force would be more accountable, manageable and more effective. 

The Afghan people need to see real improvements in their villages. The simple construction of a well would be a tremendous help to them. Our troops could also accompany the development workers in order to protect them during the construction phase.

Let's not drop the ball on this. We must analyze what the blockages are and quickly work out solutions to get our aid through.

Dorothy Gust, Toronto
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Two journalists, NATO soldier killed in Afghanistan
(DPA) 7 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October257.xml&section=subcontinent

KABUL - Two German journalists were killed in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed on Saturday.

According to the ISAF spokesman Dominic White, the two - a man and a woman - had been working “in connection with ISAF” until last Wednesday, when they went travelling on their own.

The Pakistani news agency AIP reported that both journalists were found murdered in a tent around 150 kilometres south of the northern provincial capital Baghlan.

Meanwhile, a soldier with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed in an attack in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, NATO said.

According to an ISAF statement, the soldier was killed following the ignition of an explosive device and small arms fire in Panjwayi district 20 kilometres west of Kandahar city Saturday morning.

The nationality of the soldier was not released, though there around 2,000 Canadian soldiers based in Kandahar under NATO-led ISAF making the Canadian contingent the largest part of the ISAF in Kandahar province.

Afghanistan has been facing a wave of attacsk by improvised explosives and suicide bombers since the start of the year, particularly after NATO took command of the fight against insurgents last spring.

Panjwayi is the former stronghold of Taleban rebels where NATO completed two operations in mid-September, in which NATO claimed to have killed over 500 Taleban insurgents. 
More on link

Five years in, fear of failure in Afghanistan
By Can Merey Oct 7, 2006, 9:43 GMT 
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1209146.php/Five_years_in_fear_of_failure_in_Afghanistan

New Delhi/Kabul - It's been five years since Afghanistan became the first target in the international war on terrorism. 

'Now the Taliban will pay the price,' US President George W Bush said during a television speech on October 7, 2001, the day American and British bombs began falling on the country. 'Peace and freedom will prevail.' 

Now, however, concern is growing in the West that the Afghan war might fail after all. 

The Taliban, Afghanistan's fundamentalist Islamic regime, paid the price by being ousted from power, but they have long since begun to repay the West through a strategy that is a mixture of guerrilla attacks and bombings. 

The number of suicide bombings, which had before been practically unknown in Afghanistan, has risen sharply to almost 60 this year. Apart from the suicide bombers themselves, about 170 Afghans and 13 foreign soldiers have lost their lives in these attacks so far in 2006. 

Since the end of 2001, about 500 foreign soldiers have died while on military assignment, but this year's toll has been far more than any preceding year, and foreign troops are looking back at the bloodiest summer they have seen since the Taliban's ouster. 
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Skirmishes, violence claim 15 lives in Afghanistan  
October 07, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/07/eng20061007_309744.html

Skirmishes and violence have claimed the lives of 15 people including 11 militants in Afghanistan, officials said on Saturday. 

"Seven Taliban militias and one police were killed during a clash in Dilaram district of southern Nimroz province on Friday," an official at the press department of the Afghan Interior Ministry told Xinhua but refused to be named. 

Two policemen were injured in the gunfire lasted for a while, he added. 

A similar incident occurred on the same day in the neighboring Farah province, leaving four militants and one police dead, provincial police chief of Farah province Syed Aqa Saqib told Xinhua. 

The incident occurred in Balabolak area, he added. 

Meantime, a roadside bomb in Arghandab district of the restive Zabul province left two persons killed and three others wounded on Friday, all of them civilians, district chief of Arghandab Fazal Bari told Xinhua. 

Militancy is on rise in Afghanistan as more than 2,400 people, mostly militants, have been killed since January this year in the post-Taliban nation. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Blair admits Afghanistan mission is 'very tough'
(Filed: 07/10/2006)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/07/ublair.xml

The Prime Minister has admitted the mission in Afghanistan is extremely difficult and reaffirmed his commitment to provide troops with any resources they need.

In an interview with the Armed Forces broadcaster, BFBS TV and Radio, Tony Blair acknowledged that the fighting in Helmand province had been "very, very tough".

But he insisted the mission by British and other Nato forces was vital to prevent the country falling back into the hands of al-Qa'eda and the Taliban, and again becoming a training ground for terrorists.

Mr Blair also said he was willing to provide any additional resources requested by troops on the ground.

"If the commanders on the ground want more equipment, armoured vehicles for example, more helicopters, that will be provided. Whatever package they want we will do," he said.

Since the start of operations in Afghanistan in November 2001, 40 British forces personnel have died.

Of these, 18 were killed in action, while 22 are known to have died either as a result of illness, non-combat injuries or accidents.

Since May, an average of five soldiers a week have been killed out of the 18,500 serving with Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).

The Prime Minister said it was essential to keep on explaining the importance of what the troops were doing in the light of the "negativity" of the reporting in some parts of the media.

"I think the morale of our troops carrying this out is actually high, but they get fed up - and so does everyone else - when it's all presented in a negative light when actually what they're doing there is of fundamental importance to the country," he said.
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Taliban Back, Using Iraq-Style Violence
By JIM KRANE The Associated Press Saturday, October 7, 2006; 9:08 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/07/AR2006100700155.html

KABUL, Afghanistan -- A sweating man wanders into a crowd and blows himself up, leaving a dozen bodies lifeless on the street. A few blocks away, a car bomb pulverizes an armored Humvee, killing two U.S. soldiers and 14 civilians. The kind of anonymous insurgent violence that is convulsing Iraq has migrated 1,500 miles east to plague Afghanistan five years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime.

The prospect of a second downward spiral _ though so far Afghanistan isn't nearly as violent as Iraq _ has experts worried that Western militaries don't have an effective strategy for these irregular wars.

"One Iraq is bad enough," said Bruce Hoffman, a counterinsurgency expert at Georgetown University. "Given that our two main theaters of operations aren't going well, one has to question how well the U.S. understands counterinsurgency."

The reborn Taliban acknowledges that it has adopted the suicide bombings, beheadings and remote-controlled bombs of the Iraqi insurgent movement. Nearly 200 civilians have been killed in suicide attacks this year that look all too much like the wave of bombings sweeping Iraq.

"We're getting stronger in every province and in every district and every village," said Qari Mohammed Yusuf Ahmadi, who calls himself the Taliban's spokesman for southern Afghanistan. "We don't have helicopters and jet fighters. But we're giving America and its allies a tough time with roadside bombs, suicide attacks and ambushes. Our Muslim brothers in Iraq are using the same tactics."
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U.S. senators ask Pakistan to seal border with Afghanistan   
The Associated Press Published: October 6, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/07/asia/AS_GEN_Afghanistan.php

KABUL, Afghanistan Two American senators said Pakistan needs to do more to stem the infiltration of insurgents into Afghanistan, as an attack by two suicide bombers in the country's east left one policemen dead and 17 people wounded.

Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said during a visit to Afghanistan on Friday that Pakistan needs to make a "much more aggressive effort to control the borders and to prevent any suggestion that Taliban elements can freely associate and organize themselves within Pakistan."

Afghan and some Western officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of insincere efforts to block the insurgent flow over the border. Pakistan rejects the charge and says it does all it can.

Pakistan's government signed a deal with pro-Taliban militants on Sept. 5 to end the fighting that broke out in North Waziristan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001. Under the deal, militants agreed to not carry out violent acts or send fighters into Afghanistan.

But U.S. military officials said the number of attacks on coalition and Afghan troops has tripled since that deal was reached.

"North Waziristan must be judged on harsh, hard realities," said Sen. Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, who together with Reed spent a few days in Afghanistan during a regional tour that included a stop in Pakistan. "If (the violence) is increasing, then clearly that policy has to be reassessed and re-evaluated."

Reed and Durbin met Afghan and U.S. officials, touring the country on the same day that two suicide bombers blew themselves up in eastern Afghanistan, killing one policeman and wounding seven other people.

The first bomber tried to enter the main police compound in the eastern Khost province, said provincial police chief Mohammed Ayub.
More on link


----------



## GAP (7 Oct 2006)

*More articles found 7 October 2006*

UPDATE

Cdn soldier killed by roadside bomb
October 7, 2006
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/09/19/pf-1862681.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A 40th Canadian soldier has died in Afghanistan. 

Military officials say the soldier was on a pre-dawn patrol in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan on Saturday when his armoured vehicle either struck a mine or was hit by a roadside bomb. 

The explosion penetrated the vehicle and the soldier later died from his injuries. 

No other soldiers were injured in the 5 a.m. blast. 

The Panjwaii area has been the scene of heavy fighting and several bomb attacks in the last month. Thirteen soldiers have died in the area since Sept. 1. 

Saturday's attack came on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban that began Oct. 7, 2001. Canadian soldiers arrived in the country a few months later and have been a near constant presence in Afghanistan since then
End




Blair roasts critics five years into Afghanistan mission
(AFP) 7 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October213.xml&section=subcontinent

LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday took a swipe at critics of the British military mission in Afghanistan, five years on from the start of operations to oust the Taleban regime from power there.

Blair acknowledged that British forces were facing a tough fight in tackling resurgent Taleban rebels.

But he insisted the mission by British and other NATO forces was vital to prevent Afghanistan falling back into the grip of the Taleban and the Al Qaeda terror network, and becoming a terrorist training ground once again.

‘I think the morale of our troops carrying this out is actually high, but they get fed up -- and so does everyone else -- when it’s all presented in a negative light when actually what they’re doing there is of fundamental importance to the country,’ Blair said.

He told the British Forces Broadcasting Service that British soldiers were winning a hard battle against Taleban fighters.

Forty British forces personnel have died since the start of operations in Afghanistan.

‘It’s been very, very tough, it was always going to be tough. Whenever you go into a battlefield situation like that, there are always things that you learn, there are always things that come at you in a more intense way then you expect.

‘The Taleban are fighting them hard and fortunately, since they’re up against the British troops, and our troops are fighting brilliantly, we are winning that,’ Blair said.
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Rubin: Afghanistan at Dangerous 'Tipping Point'
Interviewee:  Dr. Barnett R. Rubin, New York University 
Interviewer:  Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor 
October 6, 2006
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11620/rubin.html

Barnett R. Rubin, one of the top experts on Afghanistan, says the failure of the Bush administration to press Pakistan to halt its support for the Taliban has put Afghanistan into a very precarious situation. He says Afghanistan is “at a potential tipping point because the expectations of people in Afghanistan and throughout the region have changed quite dramatically and they really see the Taliban as having the initiative and being on the way to victory.”

Rubin, who is director of studies and a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, was the author of a Council Special Report on Afghanistan this year.

You’ve been a specialist in the field of Afghanistan and that part of the world for nearly a quarter of a century. Where does Afghanistan stand now, five years after the American invasion which led to the ouster of the Taliban government? Is the cup half full or half empty, would you say?

First, it’s much less than half full and much more than half empty, but the main thing is it’s standing on quite a rickety table and the whole thing could be knocked over. I think we’re literally, to pursue the metaphor, at a potential tipping point because the expectations of people in Afghanistan and throughout the region have changed quite dramatically and they really see the Taliban as having the initiative and being on the way to victory.

That’s what most Afghans feel, you think?

Yes, I think they do. They feel all the trends are going in the Taliban’s favor and the government and the international community are really not responding to it effectively at all. I think the predominant, overwhelming perception in the region is that the United States is not serious about trying to succeed in Afghanistan. Because what do they see? They see that we immediately turned our attention to Iraq, that the day after September 11, 2001, [Defense Secretary Donald M.] Rumsfeld wanted to bomb Iraq. 

They see that we’ve spent perhaps seven times as much money in Iraq, that we put more troops into Iraq, and that we tolerate Pakistan’s support for the Taliban, while we still treat General [Pervez] Musharraf, [Pakistan’s president] as an ally. And by the way, the intelligence data is extremely clear. I am told that the Pakistani intelligence service is supporting the Taliban leadership from the Taliban headquarters in Quetta, which is not in [Pakistan’s] tribal territories. And yet President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney did not mention the Taliban headquarters in Quetta to President Musharraf during his recent visit. Why is this? 

This is because everyone perceives that containing Iran, and trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program, and perhaps destroying the Islamic regime in Iran, and perhaps changing the regime in Syria, and winning in Iraq are much higher priorities for the Bush administration than succeeding in Afghanistan. And the administration thinks they can succeed in this regional objective only if they keep Pakistan relatively quiet. 

When both Musharraf and [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai were in New York last month for the UN General Assembly, Karzai said he’s given the coordinates to President Musharraf on where Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s headquarters were in Quetta. And you say the American intelligence confirms that, right?
More on link

Afghanistan troops 'will get whatever they need'
By Anthony Browne, Chief Political Correspondent October 07, 2006 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2392658,00.html


TONY BLAIR has admitted that conditions in Helmand province in Afghanistan are “very, very tough”, and promised to give commanders whatever equipment they need for the job. 
In an interview on British Armed Forces Radio, the Prime Minister went on the offensive against critics of the mission, although he said that there were aspects of it that were more intense than had been expected. He said that the mission was essential to stop terrorism coming to the streets of Britain. 

The Government has come under repeated attack for underestimating the difficulties that would be faced by the British troops it has sent to lead the Nato mission in the province, one of the most lawless in the country. The troops, who were meant to help with reconstruction, have faced intense fighting. 

Critics, who quote John Reid, the former Defence Secretary, saying that troops would leave without a shot being fired, have complained that soldiers have not been given proper equipment, and then given appalling medical care on the NHS when they are injured. 

However, in the interview broadcast today to mark the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan by a US-led alliance, he said: “It is right that it has been very, very tough, it was always going to be tough. 

“I think in some senses whenever you go into a battlefield situation like that there are always things that you learn, there are always things that come at you in a more intense way than you expect.” 
More on link

Tearful families greet fallen soldiers
October 6, 2006 
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/06/1964761-cp.html

CFB TRENTON, Ont. (CP) - For the second time this week, grieving family members and loved ones gathered at this eastern Ontario military base to receive the bodies of two Canadian soldiers killed in the line of duty in Afghanistan. 

In a scene that is becoming all too familiar for Canadians, a military transport carrying the remains of Sgt. Craig Gillam and Cpl. Robert Mitchell arrived Friday evening for a sombre repatriation ceremony. 

The two men died Tuesday when a small group of soldiers patrolling near Kandahar came under attack from insurgents armed with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles. Five others were wounded. 

Gillam's grieving widow, Maureen, accompanied by their two children, struggled to fight back tears as the family approached and laid roses on the officer's flag-draped casket. 

Gillam's mother, Agnes, holding a single red rose, clutched her face, sobbing, while his son, Stephen, tearfully saluted his fallen father's coffin after it was placed in a hearse. 

Mitchell's widow, Leanne, clutched a single red rose and braced loved ones for support as she approached the hearse carrying her husband's coffin. 

After paying her respects, she was enveloped in the warm embrace of several loved ones on the tarmac just steps away from her late husband's body. 

Gillam and Mitchell, both members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons based at CFB Petawawa in eastern Ontario, were killed the same day the body of Pte. Josh Klukie arrived at CFB Trenton. 

Klukie, a resident of Thunder Bay, Ont., was also based at CFB Petawawa.
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Defense Department Lauds Transfer in Afghanistan as Milestone  
Saturday October 07, 2006 (0058 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156386

WASHINGTON: The Defense Department issued a statement calling today?s transfer of command for international military security operations in eastern Afghanistan to the NATO Security Assistance an important milestone in the progress of improving security and stability in Afghanistan. 
The transfer of command responsibility from a U.S.-led coalition that effectively makes NATO-ISAF responsible for security operations throughout the country "is yet another step toward a brighter future for the people of Afghanistan," DoD noted in its release. 

It represents the latest step in a transition that began two years ago when NATO-ISAF took responsibility for security in the northern part of Afghanistan in the alliance?s first mission outside the northern Atlantic area. 

"The transfer today signifies continued progress and commitment," the DoD release noted. It points to the integration of the Afghan National Army into coalition combat operations, resulting in increased capability, as a major factor in making the transition possible. 

"The United States remains committed to the future of Afghanistan and the success of this NATO operation," the statement notes. 

"We will continue to lead the counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan, train and equip the Afghan national security forces and assist with reconstruction." About 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be assigned to this mission, defense officials said. 
More on link

Polio Cases Increasing in Afghanistan  
By George Dwyer Washington, DC 06 October 2006
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-06-voa30.cfm

The number of polio cases reported in Afghanistan so far this year is up sharply over figures tallied for the whole of 2005. As VOA's George Dwyer reports, nearly all of the new cases occurred in the country's southern provinces, scene of some of the fiercest armed violence the country has witnessed in years.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month (in September 2006), Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai addressed many of the challenges facing his country - including a troubling new development. "It is also sobering to know that polio - the children's disease - increased from 4 cases in 2005 to 27 cases this year."

That disturbing trend is being linked to the fact that many Afghan children have not received scheduled vaccinations in recent months. Widespread disruption of medical service - particularly in the country's war torn south - is considered the most likely cause.
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Iraq and Afghanistan: Optimism gone too far
06 Oct 2006 16:03:00 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/1265/2006/09/6-160310-1.htm

 Many would agree that a healthy dose of optimism is desirable even in the most dire situations. But U.S. Republicans may have gone a step further: They have set aside $20 million for a "commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan, of all places, Britain's Independent reports. 

They are so confident of success in the two conflicts that the "celebration funding" was included in a congressional military spending bill for the past year. 

The Independent cites The New York Times, which broke the story, saying the new legislation empowers the president to designate a day of celebration and "issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities". 

News of escalating violence both in Iraq and Afghanistan mean they will probably have to wait to spend this money
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Ex-footballer hurt in Afghanistan
06 October 2006 | 10:56 LISA CLEVERDON
http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=zNews&itemid=IPED06%20Oct%202006%2015%3A10%3A51%3A357

A FORMER Suffolk footballer is recovering at home after he narrowly escaped being killed by a landmine in Afghanistan.

Ryan Hewson, who played for Haverhill Rovers last season, was injured in a landmine blast while serving with the Colchester-based 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.

The striker, who is now back home with his parents, suffered shrapnel wounds and trauma as a result of the incident, which took place on September 12.

A spokesman for Colchester garrison confirmed Mr Hewson, who is a lance bombardier with the army, was travelling in a Land Rover when it struck the mine.

Terry McGerty, Haverhill Rovers president, said Mr Hewson had been a valuable member of the team, and wished him well.
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NATO faces tough test in Afghanistan  
October 6, 2006 BY JIM KRANE 
http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/85975,CST-NWS-afghan06.article

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO extended its security mission Thursday to all of Afghanistan nearly five years after the West began its war to defeat the Taliban, taking command of 12,000 U.S. troops in the war-battered country's east. 

The handover diminishes the Pentagon's role in Afghanistan and gives the Europe-based military alliance its biggest test yet. 

The transfer of command ''illustrates the enduring commitment of NATO and its international partners to the future of this great country,'' said British Gen. David Richards, who attended a handover ceremony in Kabul. 

The mission in Afghanistan, the biggest ground combat operation in NATO history, gives Richards command of the largest number of U.S. troops fighting under a foreign commander since World War II. About 8,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan remain under a separate command. 
Gun battles in southern Afghanistan killed two U.S. troops and one NATO soldier, officials said Tuesday. A second NATO soldier was presumed dead, the alliance said. 

The Taliban insurgency has been spreading, with close to 100 suicide attacks this year. 

''NATO has never been tested like this, ever,'' said Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. expert on Afghanistan. ''They've got an extraordinarily difficult task ahead of them.'' 

Analysts say NATO will be hard-pressed to reverse the insurgency and lawlessness, since the alliance lacks the troops to maintain a strong presence across volatile regions and halt militant incursions from Pakistan. AP 
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Cleric stresses role of Ulema in Afghanistan  
Mashhad, Oct 6, IRNA  Iran-Cleric-Ulema 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-235/0610062762183543.htm

Supreme leader's representative in Afghanistan Affairs said here presence of Afghan Ulema and clerics in that country can play an important role in establishment of security and stability there. 

Speaking to IRNA Thursday evening, Hojatoleslam Hossein Ebrahimi said the Afghan Ulema living in other countries by returning to their homeland and playing an active role in their society can contribute to establishing security and stability there. 

He went on to say the active presence of Ulema and clerics, simultaneously with activating other educational, scientific, cultural and religious centers in Afghanistan can assure and encourage Afghani people to the secure situation in their country. 

Ebrahimi said economic problems are among important issues in current Afghanistan adding about 2,000 Afghanis enter Iran daily to find a job. 
More on link

Pakistan army holds drill to defuses two rockets Islamabad, 
 Oct 7, IRNA 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0610079429183819.htm

Pakistan security forces on Saturday conducted an exercise in Islamabad to defuse rockets, a senior police officer said. 

The rockets kept near Zero point, the beginning point Islamabad. 

The bomb disposal squad carried out a mock operation. 

The police officer said that the exercise was aimed at dealing with the situation if rockets are found. 

The police and army surrounded the area. The army also searched the jungle for any other such weapon. 

Two rockets, believed to be pointing toward the president's and prime minister's houses, both located near parliament, were found on October 3. 

No one has so far claimed responsibility for planting the rockets. 

The police have detained several people for questioning after the recovery of the rockets on October 5. 

The government has not yet found any clue as to who have brought rockets to the capital city. 
End

FACTBOX-Key facts about suicide bombings in Afghanistan
Fri 6 Oct 2006 10:52:36 BST Oct 6 (Reuters) 
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L27925429&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-3

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of police headquarters in the eastern Afghan town of Khost on Friday, killing himself and a policeman.

The attack came a day before the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S. intervention that overthrew the Taliban government in late 2001.

Here are some facts on suicide bombings recorded in Afghanistan since January 2005.

KEY FIGURES:

Attacks: 72

Attacks in 2005: 17

Attacks in 2006: 55

Casualties (not including suicide bombers): 239

Wounded: 324

Attacks without casualties: 34/72

Attacks where bombs go off accidentally: 7/72

Attackers pre-empted by police: 2

WORST ATTACKS:

- August 3, 2006: The worst attack to date occurs in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, when twenty-one civilians are killed when a suicide bomber rams his car into a NATO convoy on the main highway.

- June 1, 2005: The second worst attack occurs, when a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform kills 20 people, including a police chief, in an attack on a mosque in Kandahar.

BLOODIEST DAY:

- At least 26 people die in two separate suicide attacks in Spin Boldak and Kandahar on Jan. 17, 2006.

MOST FREQUENTLY HIT AREAS:

- Kandahar: 33 attacks

- Kabul: 11 attacks

- Herat/Khost: 4 attacks

Source: Reuters;
End

Latvia extends Afghanistan mission for 1 year   
The Associated Press Published: October 5, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/05/news/EC_GEN_Latvia_Afghanistan.php

Latvia's parliament on Thursday extended the nation's 36-member mission in Afghanistan by one year until October 2007.

In the 100-seat Saeima, or parliament, 73 lawmakers voted for the extension and 18 against. The remaining lawmakers abstained or were absent.

Right-wing Latvian parties supported the extended stay, while ethnic Russian parties voted against.

Latvia, which joined NATO in 2004, has been a supporter of U.S.-led missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Baltic state currently has 36 soldiers in Afghanistan, and a total 169 in various international missions, including Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to the 
More on link

Terrorists Arrested in Afghanistan Claim: We Were Brainwashed  
Written by The Media Line Staff Published Thursday, October 05, 2006 
http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=15275

Seventeen Islamists detained in Afghanistan claim they were brainwashed and equipped by Arab, Chechen and Uzbek militants in Pakistan, the Afghan intelligence service announced on Wednesday, according to news wires. 

The group was arrested in September before it had a chance to strike, spokesman for the Afghan Directorate of Security, Sayyid An'sari, told reporters. 

The 17 men confessed they were trained in Pakistan to commit suicide attacks against public institutions. The training took place in Pakistani training camps across the border with Afghanistan, said An'sari. 

Pakistan and Afghanistan have accused each other over the past four years of allowing cross-border infiltrations of militants. Following his meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai at the beginning of September, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told reporters that "the only course left is to have trust… and not to blame each other. If we carry on the course of accusations and counteraccusations, we will never achieve peace." 

The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretches for 1,510 miles. Most of the border is not marked in any way, making incursions from both sides easier. In the past few months some 80,000 Pakistani soldiers have spread along the border in an attempt to prevent infiltrations. 
More on link


----------



## GAP (8 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 8 October 2006*


40th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan
JANE ARMSTRONG Globe and Mail Update
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061007.wnato-soldier1007/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

Kandahar, Afghanistan — A Canadian soldier was killed early Saturday when the armoured vehicle he was in hit a roadside bomb on the same stretch of land in southern Afghanistan that was the scene of a deadly ambush earlier this week.

Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, based in Petawawa, Ont., was the 40th to die in Afghanistan since 2002.

Mr. Wilson was on a pre-dawn patrol sent out to retrieve a group of soldiers that had spent the previous night securing the treacherous swath of farmland in the Panjwai district, where insurgent attacks on Canadian soldiers have become an almost daily occurrence.

"Today we are all mourning the loss of a brother in arms and a good soldier," said Colonel Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canada's Task Force in Afghanistan.
More on link

Truck's armour fails to save Canadian
Bomb kills gunner; death toll hits 40
Oct. 8, 2006. 07:32 AM LES PERREAUX CANADIAN PRESS
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160259012552&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—A roadside bomb killed a Canadian soldier yesterday as he rode inside a Nyala armoured truck, a blast-resistant monster hailed by troops just days ago as being virtually indestructible.

Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson, of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, based in Petawawa, Ont., was the 40th Canadian to die in Afghanistan since 2002, matching the number of British soldiers killed in the country since the Taliban were overthrown. Only the United States has suffered more deaths, with 341.

The vaunted Nyala RG-31 armoured vehicle was hit on a pre-dawn run to pick up other troops in the Panjwaii district of southern Afghanistan, military officials said. The force of the explosion penetrated thick armour and a shell designed to deflect blasts, killing the gunner. 

"You can always build a bigger bomb," said Col. Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan. "In this particular case, I think the enemy got a bit lucky."

Lewis declined to give details of the explosive or its effect on the Nyala. In the vehicle, the gunner operates a machine gun remotely from inside the cabin. Video from the scene showed the Nyala, appearing largely intact, being towed away with a wheel missing. 

"It's designed specifically to defeat this kind of threat and this is the first time something has happened," Lewis said.

"Is it a fluke, a freak? Perhaps. It doesn't happen very often. The troops have superb confidence in this vehicle."
More on link

Bloggers fight cyber-war over extra pay for wounded troops
Oct. 8, 2006. 01:00 AM  BILL TAYLOR FEATURE WRITER
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160259012546&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

As news comes of the 40th Canadian soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, other military personnel are in a cyber-fight over whether front-line troops should lose their danger pay if they're wounded badly enough to be sent home.

The blogging debate on the http://www.army.ca website follows last week's story of wounded troops forfeiting more than $2,000 a month in risk and hardship allowances once they're no longer "in theatre."

Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, has vowed to find other ways to top up their pay.

Contributors to the blog include both combat and non-combat troops. Many think the existing policy is fine. 

"Of course there is a precedent," writes one. "Considering how much the ... Senate gets paid for contributing nothing to the governance of Canada, it's equally logical for the troops not in danger to get danger pay."

Both Hillier and Liberal MP Dan McTeague come under fire. McTeague (Pickering-Scarborough East), whose cousin was hurt in Afghanistan last month, calls the pay policy "deplorable."

"Does the fact that the honourable member's own cousin was wounded mean that he is only now learning of this policy?" asks one blogger.

Another adds: "An injured soldier will probably benefit more from his/her injuries via Veterans' Affairs pensions than if they had received the danger pay ... I hate politicians ..."

A third, signing off with a saluting "smiley face," writes of Hillier: "I was watching Canada AM ... the Boss was awesome. He didn't even wait to hear the end of the question before he made it clear that he was getting it sorted out ... I really hope he gets into politics when he finishes his military career."
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A ball of fire, another burial
Pre-dawn blast claims life of 40th Canadian soldier 
Sun Oct 8 2006 By Renata D'Aliesio
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/canada/story/3720818p-4301257c.html 

PASHMUL, Afghanistan -- Just before sunrise a fiery ball streaked through the dark sky. Throughout the night, two crews of soldiers had kept watch over a dirt road near Pashmul. They were looking for insurgents attempting to hide more deadly explosives in the dark sand that the soldiers have come to call moon dust. 
The pre-dawn explosion, though, happened around a bend in the road that they couldn't monitor from their position. Master Cpl. Shane Schofield immediately suspected the worst. 

Within minutes, military radios delivered the news to the troops -- another tragic day in Afghanistan. 

"Happy Thanksgiving," Schofield said darkly. "Another Canadian dead." 

The deaths have come so often lately, many soldiers pause only a moment before returning to work. 

Yesterday's explosion, which killed a member of the Recce squad from the Royal Canadian Regiment in Petawawa, Ont., occurred just before 5 a.m. The blast from an anti-tank mine was so powerful it tore a sturdy Nyala vehicle into shreds of twisted metal.    
No one else was injured. 

The South African-made four-wheel-drive jeep, designed for reconnaissance work, is built to withstand impact from two simultaneous anti-tank mines. 

It wasn't clear why the Nyala blew apart, Canadian military spokeswoman Lt. Sue Stefko said yesterday. 

Some soldiers wondered whether the hatch was open for air, weakening the vehicle's ability to withstand the blast. 

The latest death raises the toll to 40 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the Canadian military arrived in 2002. One diplomat has also died. 

The name of the soldier killed yesterday wasn't released at the family's request. The death marks the third in a week for Recce soldiers. 

Two were killed in ambush in Pashmul on Tuesday. 

"It doesn't affect us as much. We say 'Wow that sucks,' but then we go on," Cpl. Greg Holler said. "If it was the first week here, we would be shocked by it." Most of the deaths have come this year alone, since Operation Medusa began at the start of September. 
More on link


‘Hours of boredom and seconds of terror'
Jane Armstrong, Globe & Mail, 6 Oct 06
https://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/76364

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — On matters of war, Major Andrew Lussier has read everything he can get his hands on.

He knows all about the grinding boredom of waiting and watching for an unseen enemy. And he knows this brand of boredom is alleviated only by short bursts of terror.

It turned out, Maj. Lussier's combat research was spot on Tuesday afternoon when his unit — which had the otherwise mundane task of guarding a road-building crew — was hit with a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire from Taliban insurgents as the late afternoon sun sank in the Afghanistan sky.

The ambush lasted less than 30 seconds. When the explosions and gunfire stopped, two Canadians soldiers — Corporal Robert Thomas James Mitchell, 32, and Sergeant Craig Paul Gillam, 40 — were dead. Eight others, including two U.S. soldiers, were injured.

“I prepared myself for this,” said the grim-faced squadron commander, head of a surveillance unit of the Royal Canadian Dragoons. Maj. Lussier talked to reporters Thursday moments after the flag-draped coffins of the two slain soldiers were carried up the ramp of a Hercules aircraft at the Kandahar Airfield, the second ramp ceremony in five days.

“You always hear about hours of boredom and seconds of terror,” Maj. Lussier said. “Well, I can confirm that. That's actually very accurate. That's what the fighting is like out there.”

At least two of soldiers wept openly as they carried the coffins from the tarmac to the aircraft in the bright morning sunlight.

Afterward, Maj. Lussier spoke warmly of both men, singling out Sgt. Gillam's efforts to warn his fellow soldiers of the attack while he alone opened fire on the Taliban fighters.

“His actions, I'm certain, were able to save the patrol,” Maj. Lussier said.

Back home in Canada, relatives of Sgt. Gillam, a married father of two teenagers, have said the soldier was apprehensive about his tour in Afghanistan.

His aunt in his native Newfoundland said he had asked her to pray for him.

Maj. Lussier's unit was protecting a crew of army engineers, which was punching through a north-south road in the Pashmul area, a cluster of villages in the treacherous Panjwai region.
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Nato troops party while British die on the front line
By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE Last updated at 22:00pm on 7th October 2006
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=409179&in_page_id=1770

Nato troops in Afghanistan are staging nightly drinking and karaoke sessions as British soldiers are dying on the front line. 

Exhausted British Paras returning from four months of battles against the Taliban - while enduring meagre rations and shortages of clean water - have been 'disgusted' to find other European troops partying at Kabul International Airport, known as KIA. 

The Paras have even dubbed the base "KIA Napa" after Cyprus's notorious party resort, Ayia Napa. 

Most Nato troops in Kabul are not sent to the front line because their governments have refused to put their lives at risk. They protect the airport and the capital instead. 

British soldiers from 3 Para Battle Group, who have seen 41 comrades die in Afghanistan since the spring, say the airport is a 'haven' for parties for Italian, Hungarian, French, German and Belgian troops. 

They are held in giant tents designed to cover military aircraft, or in huge containers that are transformed into makeshift nightclubs. 

One Para sergeant who stayed at the airport last week after a tour in Helmand Province said Kabul was "like something out of a Vietnam war film where everyone is oblivious to what is going on elsewhere". 

He added: "The clowns at the airport had no idea of what was going on in Helmand. An Italian invited us to a party where he said there would be a lot of chicks and plenty of action, then his French mate tried to pick a fight. I told my boys to keep away from them - losers. 
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Rumsfeld Reflects on Successes, Challenges, On Enduring Freedom Anniversary
By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1493

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7, 2006 – Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reflected today, the fifth anniversary of the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, on successes already achieved in Afghanistan and those under way, noting that “the trajectory is a hopeful and promising one.” 

Writing an op-ed in today’s Washington Post, Rumsfeld recalled five years ago today, when President Bush announced the mission, designed to disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and the regime that had harbored and supported Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. 

“It was never going to be an easy mission. Afghanistan was among the world's poorest nations, with little political or economic infrastructure,” Rumsfeld wrote today. He observed that three decades of war, drought and a Soviet occupation had left Afghanistan “a broken, lawless nation.” 

He acknowledged the enormity of the challenge Operation Enduring Freedom posed. “From halfway around the world, with but a few weeks' notice, coalition forces were charged with securing a landlocked, mountainous country that history had dubbed the ‘graveyard’ of great powers,” he said. 

Rumsfeld said it’s “not surprising” that military experts and columnists, who cited “forbidding terrain, brutal weather and the Sovet Union’s total failure,” began referring to Vietnam and quagmires -- both before and during combat operations. 
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2 Journalists Killed in Afghanistan
From the Associated Press October 8, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-germans8oct08,1,1659435.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two German journalists who had camped beside a road outside a northern Afghan village were killed by gunmen early Saturday, the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. 

Karen Fischer, 30, and Christian Struwe, 38, worked as freelance journalists for Deutsche Welle, Germany's state-owned broadcast outlet. They were the first foreign reporters killed in Afghanistan since late 2001, when eight journalists died.

The two were traveling through the northern province of Baghlan, about 100 miles northwest of Kabul, the capital. They had stopped for the night outside a village and set up a tent, said Mohammed Azim Hashami, the provincial police chief. 

They were killed by AK-47 gunfire about 1:30 a.m., he said. 

Hashami said nothing was stolen, including their vehicle. 

The two had been conducting private research for a documentary, Deutsche Welle said. Director Erik Bettermann called them "pioneers in reestablishing a functioning media system in Afghanistan" and said Struwe helped set up a state-run radio and television newsroom. 

In the country's south, a NATO soldier was killed by militants who detonated a roadside bomb and fired on a patrol. A suicide car bomber targeted a U.S. patrol in eastern Afghanistan but killed only himself. 
End

Pakistan observes first earthquake anniversary
Updated Sun. Oct. 8 2006 7:30 AM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061008/pakistan-quake/20061008?hub=TopStories

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistanis stopped for a moment of silence on the first anniversary of the South Asia earthquake that killed 80,000 people, while President Gen. Pervez Musharraf praised reconstruction efforts as a victory for Pakistan. 


Sirens wailed and a minute's silence was held at 8:52 a.m., when the 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck, leaving more than 100,000 injured and 3.5 million homeless in northern Pakistan and disputed Kashmir, the region divided between India and Pakistan. 

Hundreds of people stood in silence in the bustling main street of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and one of the worst hit cities. 

Musharraf led a somber memorial ceremony at the grounds of Muzaffarabad's Azad Jammu Kashmir University, which was destroyed in the earthquake. 

He praised the massive relief effort led by Pakistan's military, which sprang into action immediately after the quake to rescue people from the rubble, provide relief and begin large-scale reconstruction. 

"It is a victory for the government, for the army, for the people, for the non-governmental organizations and for the world that supported it," Musharraf told at least 1,000 people who attended the service. "It was due to the help and generosity of the whole world and the NGOs that we were able to improve the situation." 

The Pakistani president also urged people affected by the quake 
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Militants conduct 78 suicide attacks in Afghanistan in 9 months  
October 08, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/08/eng20061008_309942.html

Anti-government militants have conducted 78 suicide attacks in the post-Taliban Afghanistan over the past nine months killing 195 people mostly civilians, spokesman of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF) said Sunday. 

"Our database shows 78 insurgent suicide attacks since January, 60 borne by vehicle, 18 by bike or vest," Luke Knittig told newsmen. 

These attacks, he added, had claimed the lives of 195 people, mostly civilians, and injured 142 others. 

"These attacks, most in heavily populated areas, have killed 142 Afghan civilians, 13 international military, 22 Afghan army and 18 police," the spokesman noted. 

Thirteen people in association with suicide bombings were arrested and handed over to Afghan government, the spokesman said. However, he declined to identify their nationalities. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Prince Harry barred from fighting in Afghanistan  
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057402 

LONDON: Senior commanders in the British army have decided not to send Prince Harry to fight on the front line in Afghanistan as it might be "too dangerous" for the young Royal, a media report said on Sunday.

Although a formal decision on the Prince's future posting is yet to be made, sources in the Prince's regiment were quoted as saying that they believed it was too dangerous for him to be deployed in Afghanistan.

The decision not to send Harry -- a Second Lieutenant in the Household Cavalry regiment -- to the front line was taken after senior officers reviewed the Prince's personal safety in the wake of savage fighting, the 'Mail on Sunday' reported.

With a spurt in Taliban attacks in recent months, the officers could not risk a "constitutional crisis" by putting Harry's life on the line, the newspaper said.

"Second Lieutenant Wales is an officer in a very famous regiment and we would like to see him deploy. It would do wonders for his soldiers and the morale of the regiment and the British Army, but we must respect that he is a member of the Royal family", the newspaper quoted a regimental source.

The decision might come as a blow to the Prince who had recently threatened to quit the army if not allowed to fight alongside his fellow officers.

"If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform," Harry had told senior officers in April, the newspaper said.
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Taliban resistance to divide Western alliance in Afghanistan    
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-07 22:46:12  
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/07/content_5173825.htm

    KABUL, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Taliban's regrouping and stiff resistance against the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are likely to divide the Western alliance as public opinion in some of the Western countries is against fighting in Afghanistan. 

    The number of Westerners opposing the war in Afghanistan is much higher than five years ago when the U.S.-led military alliance invaded the war-ravaged Central Asian country to topple the Taliban regime on Oct. 7, 2001. 

    A majority of the people of Canada, a major ally of the United States in the war on terror, are against the military presence of Canada in Afghanistan, according to a survey conducted last month. 

    Fifty-nine percent of 2,038 Canadians interviewed in September were against Canada's military mission in Afghanistan, saying Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win". 

    Only 20 percent of Canadian adults between 18 to 34 years old, according to the survey, were willing to fight. 

    Canada has lost 39 soldiers since the beginning of its mission in Afghanistan nearly five years ago and the number is on the rise as Taliban militants are pointing their guns on Canadian troops in Taliban's former stronghold Kandahar where some 2,300 Canadian forces have been stationed to stabilize security. 

    Taliban-led militancy has claimed the lives of more than 2,400 people including more than 110 foreign soldiers since the beginning of this year, a figure almost double the casualties last year. 

    Out of the foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year, 69 are Americans, according to the Western media reports. And the United States has lost 280 soldiers ever since it launched the campaign against Taliban regime in late 2001. 

    The rising casualties have caused concern among the NATO member states and allies as none of the military alliance member was willing to commit more troops to Afghanistan when their defense ministers met in Belgium last month despite appeal by NATO-led ISAF Commander in Afghanistan General David Richards. 

    Taliban's rapid resurgence and increasing attacks on the U.S.-dominated forces in Afghanistan have also shocked Britain, another stanch ally of Washington in the war on terror as Prime Minister Tony Blair has admitted that the battle with Afghan insurgents has been more difficult than anticipated. 
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Cases of 569 prisoners to be decided soon: SC
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156478

KABUL: The Supreme Court of Afghanistan announced cases of 569 prisoners of Pul-i-Charkhi jail would be decided by the end of this year. 

In charge of Judicial Department Dr Abdul Malik Kamawi made this promise here with members of judiciary and executive commission. About 2,500 prisoners were imprisoned on different charges in Pul-i-Charkhi jail, located in east of Kabul. 

Kamawi, Minister of Judiciary Sarwar Danish and deputy head of Attorney General Ishaq Alkoh informed members of the commission about 240 political prisoners and 50 private jails. 

Head of judiciary and executive commission Syed Hussain Almi Balkhi said there might be some inmates who were waiting for several years to pass their some months imprisonment. 

Confessing the delay in deciding such cases, Kamawi said limited number of courts proved to be main obstacle for redressing the cases. He said: "When new chief justice has assumed charge, work on such cases has been expedited." Ministry for Judiciary Sarwar Danish voiced concern and said both minor and major criminals were among the prisoners and all should be provided justice. 

An MP, requesting anonymity, told Pajhwok Afghan News: "Now hearing of cases also needs bribes, and judge doesn?t start work cases until receiving bribes." He said such problems could not be resolved until administrative corruption was uprooted of the courts. Danish said: "We have no political prisoner, but a person detained on charge of disrupting internal or external security was dubbed as political inmate." 

According to Human Rights Commission about 50 jails are made by national and foreign people. Danish said problem of private cells in the country would soon be resolved. He also supported compensation for the prisoners who had spent more time in jail than their due tenure
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Japan`s Cabinet approves one-year extension of Afghan coalition support
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156480

TOKYO: Japan’s Cabinet approved a one-year extension of the law that allows the country’s support of coalition forces in Afghanistan, the government’s top spokesman said. 

Japan’s navy has provided fuel for coalition warships in the Indian Ocean since November 2001 under a special anti-terrorism law set to expire on Nov. 1. It had already been extended in 2003 for two years and again for a year in 2005. 

’’The international community is continuing its activities to eliminate international terrorism and its efforts are expected to continue ... (It) is important for Japan to continue its cooperation in accordance with our anti-terrorism measure,’’ Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters. 

The government is expected to submit the bill to parliament for planned enactment by the end of October. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier this week expressed his support for extending the law, which allows Japan to refuel naval ships from the U.S.-led coalition forces in the region as part of the anti-terror effort. 

The Indian Ocean dispatch has been part of Tokyo’s recent attempts to raise its international profile. Under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who stepped down last week, Japan also sent non-combat troops to southern Iraq to assist in U.S.-led reconstruction efforts. 

Both operations were criticized by some in Japan as violating the nation’s pacifist constitution, which prohibits the use of force in solving international disputes. 

Abe has pledged to follow an assertive foreign policy and military role. He has voiced support for amending the constitution to join more peacekeeping missions and work more closely with U.S. forces.

Meanwhile, British forces in Afghanistan will be provided with whatever resources they need, the prime minister has said. 

Addressing military personnel on the fifth anniversary of operations in the country, Tony Blair pledged "every support and every protection". 
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[The Waziristan peace deal
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156215

Peace in Waziristan, and elsewhere in Pakistan, is what the nation wants to hear about. Musharraf's deal with the tribal elders is a wise and bold step to mitigate some unpopular tilt to the west, which was overly dictated by the circumstances following 9/11 incidents. 

Musharraf has been honest, clear and right to tell the west that they would loose the war on terror without Pakistan's help. Europe has no stomach for war after two world wars and the bloody feuding within Europe earlier in the 18th and 19th centuries. Americans have very little experience in bloody long ground wars. They have mainly relied on heavy air power that makes wars forbidden due to very high cost and exit becomes essential. 

Musharraf may have done it right to bid for peace in Waziristan through the help of the elders there. Pakistan's prime concern is the security of the country, where geographical importance is compelling to brace for future dangers. Pakistan has no desire to get crushed between the US and Europe on one side and the now awakened Russian- Chinese block. Both these powers (US and EU) are feeling the heat of getting played out by the other, especially after the central Asia concerning Shanghai accord. 

Last year EU and US played "feel the other side" type of warm up of chess game with a gentle start. This year they have gone overly aggressive. America is looking for every opportunity to encroach into the remaining power of Russia, which on its part is openly talking about America's bid to tear it apart. The country has formed with China the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in a bid to stand up against America. Pravda few days ago brought out a new doctrine of even participating in wars in the neighborhood. 

With dangers brewing around, Pakistan internal bleeding must stop for permanent peace. Musharraf has done the very right thing. Very intensive terror related partnership with America might have been the need of the hour immediately after 9/11, given the threats coming Pakistan ways. 

Pakistan was ignored and thrown away like a used lemon before 9/11. Mr. Armitage, days before 9/11, was reported to have told the Indians in New Delhi that Pakistan was very close to be declared a terrorist state. But as surprise for the world, no Pakistani was found participating in 9/11 tragedies. 

Afghanistan is least governable country in the world and great men like Alexander have historically admitted the fact the Great, Chengez Khan, Tamerlane, the British and now the Americans. Nobody has ever been able to stabilize that country in the past and no one has ever been able to stop civil wars or worst corruption there. 
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Musharraf calls for joint strategy for elimination of Taliban
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156491

ISLAMABAD: President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Saturday said that he has forewarned of Taliban arising again and now they are becoming a bigger threat than the Al-Qaeda and a joint strategy by the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan is needed for their complete elimination. 

President expressed these views while talking to US CENTCOM chief Gen Abi Zaid who called on him at the President House. Matters related to Pak-US defense and military ties, war against terrorism, situation in Afghanistan and Tripartite commission. 

According to military sources, President Musharraf briefed the CENTCOM chief on Pakistan’s role against terrorism and the peace agreement with the tribesmen of Waziristan. 

President told that the peace agreement is yielding positive results and similar agreements would also be inked with tribesmen of South Waziristan so that foreign elements do not find any safe heaven in FATA and the Pakistani soil is not used for any terrorism acts. 

President stressed that terrorism cannot be combated just through the military might and Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US need to adopt a joint strategy keeping in view the regional situation. 

President Musharraf said that he had forewarned a long time ago about the Taliban rising again and now they are becoming a bigger threat than the Al-Qaeda. He said that Pakistani forces had broken the back of the Al-Qaeda and however we would need to work together for combating Taliban and Talibanization. 

President said that it is regrettable that Afghanistan is leveling charges against us despite knowing that we have played a front line role in the war against terrorism. 

He said that Afghan government should end the volley of charges against us as this is just giving an opportunity to the vested interests and could put the war on terrorism in jeopardy. 
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NATO sees spike in Afghanistan violence  
By RAHIM FAIEZ, Associated Press Writer  11 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061008.../color]



[color=pink]More on link[/color]


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## GAP (8 Oct 2006)

*More Articles for 8 October 2006*

Afghanistan, Then and Now : A Discussion With Anne Brodsky
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=14436
Shahram Vahdany October 7, 2006


Author of the book With All Our Strength, which chronicles the experiences of Afghan women, Brodsky recently said: "Nearly five years after the Bush administration's self-proclaimed 'liberation' of Afghanistan, one would expect a world of improvement in a country touted as the model for Iraq. Unfortunately, last month, during my fifth trip to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, one sees instead a country in which luxury hotels, armor-plated Landrovers of international organizations, and Pakistan-inspired private palaces built to launder drug money substitute for the necessary peace, security, rule of law, and economic development that would benefit the populace. Where girls and women continue to be forced and sold into marriage, and where a recent UNIFEM report finds that violence against women is widespread and continues with impunity.

"The window of opportunity for freedom and democracy, opened nearly five years ago, has instead been filled with continued violence, graft, and the largest opium crop in Afghanistan's history, equal to 50 percent of the country's legal GDP. This drug trade feeds, among others, the coffers of the warlords who grabbed 60 percent of the seats in parliament and the ever-strengthening Taliban resurgence. The result is a country where the people, who have never stopped struggling to build a better life after the Taliban, are losing hope as they find themselves more and more mired in poverty, suicide bombings, rising fear, school burnings that keep children, particularly girls, from education, fundamentalist backlash, and a growing resentment and lack of faith in Western intervention and in the very values that the West claimed to espouse during the routing of the Taliban." Brodsky is director of gender and women's studies at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County.

Shahram Vahdany - When was the last time you were in Afghanistan?

Anne Brodsky- In July and August of this year.

SV - How many times have you been to Afghanistan? 

AB - I've been in Afghanistan five times and I've been to Pakistan and working with Afghan refugees an additional, three times.
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Taliban Leader ‘Alive in Afghanistan’  
Written by The Media Line Staff Published Sunday, October 08, 2006 
http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=15298 

The fugitive leader of the Taliban, Mullah ‘Umar, is alive and leading attacks against the Afghani government from inside the country, a person identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman said on Saturday. 

The man, claiming to be spokesman Abdul-Hai Mutmaen, said Mullah ‘Umar was in Afghanistan and would remain there to lead the jihad against American troops, according to AFP. 

He rejected claims that fighters in Afghanistan were being trained in Pakistan, saying the Taliban considered Pakistan a “second enemy.”

Five years after forces led by the United States entered Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, Mutmaen said the group was still unwavering in its commitment to oust the new Afghani government. 

Two German journalists working for Deutsche Welle were killed by gunmen outside a northern Afghan village on Saturday, the first foreign reporters killed in the country since 2001. 

Also, a Canadian NATO soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Saturday, three days after NATO expanded its control over eastern Afghanistan. 
End

Canada, the United States and Afghanistan 
by John W. Warnock; Act Up in Sask; October 07, 2006  
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=11145&sectionID=49

“After watching Pte. Josh Klukie die, the members of 4 Platoon, Bravo Company, vow to finish their ugly little war.” Globe and Mail, October 2, 2006

Why are Canadian armed forces fighting a war in Afghanistan? The official position of the Canadian government is that we are there to prevent the relapse of that country into a “failed state” where the Taliban regains political control. Canadian forces support the democratically elected government headed by Hamid Karzai, which includes training the new national armed forces and police. We are helping to extend the central government’s control over the large areas of the country which have traditionally been controlled by local ethnic groups, their militias, and their “warlords.”

While the preponderance of Canada’s spending has gone to support our military forces in Afghanistan, our Liberal and Conservative governments have emphasized that we are also there to implement humanitarian assistance programs. This view is strongly supported by the mass media and Canada’s “embedded” reporters in Afghanistan. 

How quickly Canadians conveniently forget the origins of this war. Following the disaster of 9/11 in New York and Washington, Art Eggleton, the Minister of National Defence, immediately announced that Canadian forces operating within U.S. military units would participate in any U.S. operations in Afghanistan designed to eliminate the al Qaeda organization and even to replace the Taliban regime which protected them.

President George W. Bush took his case to NATO, which on October 2 gave its full support to a US/UK military attack on Afghanistan. Enough evidence was presented to convince the European governments that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were behind the 9/11 attack. For the first time NATO invoked Article 5, the joint defence clause, that holds that an attack upon one member is an attack against all. The Chretien government strongly supported this decision. Tony Blair spoke to a convention of the Labour Party, describing and promoting the forthcoming attack on Afghanistan. President Bush declared that no negotiations were being made and rejected offers by the Taliban government to close al Qaeda bases and extradite bin Laden for trial in a third country or an international court. 

The UN General Assembly condemned the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and called for “international co-operation to bring justice to the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the outrages.” Back in 1991 UN Secretary General Perez de Cuellar set forth basic principles for solving the political conflict in Afghanistan:
More on link


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## GAP (9 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 9 October 2006*

Defence minister trying to fix danger pay problem
Updated Fri. Oct. 6 2006 11:07 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061006/danger_pay_061005/20061006?hub=Politics

Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Canada's military commander said they are working to ensure soldiers continue to receive danger pay after they are injured. 

"I've asked the senior military staff and department staff to look how we treat wounded soldiers from a compensation point of view and they're moving quickly to look at that challenge," O'Connor told reporters Friday. 

Under the current rules, wounded soldiers who are removed from theatre can lose their more than $2,000 per month "operational allowances" within a few days. 

O'Connor's comments followed a story in the Toronto Star Star about a soldier whose legs were smashed during a Taliban attack in Afghanistan on Tuesday. 

Two soldiers were killed in the attack and five others were wounded, including Pte. Jeffrey Hunter, 23. 

With two smashed legs and shrapnel wounds, Hunter was taken to the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany for treatment. Just a few hours after he arrived he was told he no longer qualified for danger pay because he wasn't in theatre. 

During an appearance earlier Friday on CTV's Canada AM, Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier said that was unacceptable. 

"Yes, we have a problem," he acknowledged. 

"We're going to fix it and we're going to fix it quickly. I've got a bunch of very smart, big-brained people and we're going to figure out how to look after those soldiers." 
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Canada slams NATO's Afghan role
GLORIA GALLOWAY From Monday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061009.wxafghan09/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

OTTAWA — Canada's Defence Minister is confronting those NATO countries with troops deployed in relatively stable parts of Afghanistan — including Germany, France, Spain and Italy — saying they must lift the restrictions that prevent their soldiers from taking on the more dangerous tasks being shouldered by Canadians.

It's a problem that one former Canadian military leader says threatens the future of the 57-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization — an alliance founded on the principle that an attack against one of its members is an attack against all.

Canadian troops are paying the ultimate price with a frequency that has caused many at home to question Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. Trooper Mark Andrew Wilson, killed in a roadside bomb explosion this weekend, was the 40th Canadian soldier to die in the conflict.

But some of the large European countries with troops in the safer northern and western regions will not allow their soldiers to move into the danger zones when they are needed, even on a temporary basis. And some are not permitted to fight at night.
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Only 6 months left to win in Afghanistan, NATO general estimates
FISNIK ABRASHI Associated Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061008.wafghann1008/BNStory/Front

Kabul — NATO's top commander in Afghanistan warned on Sunday that a majority of Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to resurgent Taliban militants if their lives show no visible improvements in the next six months.

Gen. David Richards, a British officer who commands NATO's 32,000 troops here, said that he would like to have about 2,500 additional troops to form a reserve battalion to help speed up reconstruction and development efforts.

He said the south of the country, where NATO troops have fought their most intense battles this year, has been “broadly stabilized,” which gives the alliance an opportunity to launch projects there. If it doesn't, he estimates about 70 per cent of Afghans could switch their allegiance from NATO to the Taliban.

“They will say, ‘We do not want the Taliban but then we would rather have that austere and unpleasant life that that might involve than another five years of fighting,”' Gen. Richards said in an interview.
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Army gets aid against explosives   
By Hiawatha Bray The Boston Globe Published: October 8, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/08/business/simulate.php

The Pentagon called it Little Baghdad, a stretch of road at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona designed to look like a highway in Iraq.

When it was created in early 2004, the simulation was perfect, right down to 19 simulated explosive devices, one hidden in the carcass of a donkey.

The U.S. Army constructed Little Baghdad as a testing site for technologies that could help identify the so-called improvised explosive devices that have killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When the tests were completed, the U.S. Army gave top marks to a system from Flight Landata, a private company in North Andover, Massachusetts, whose airborne digital camera, mounted in a plane or helicopter, can spot improvised explosive devices at a distance of about 300 meters. In the test at Yuma, it correctly identified 17 of the 19 bombs, including the one in the donkey.

"That earned us an all-expenses-paid trip to Iraq," the Flight Landata president, Brooks Patterson, said.

Before the end of 2004, the camera system, BuckEye, was on duty in Iraq, and it is credited with saving lives. In one area near Mosul, the company said, the number of attacks with improvised explosive devices dropped from 65 a week to four after BuckEye-equipped aircraft began surveillance missions.

"We are a satisfied customer of the system," said Captain James Richards, a research and development coordinator for the Army Corps of Engineers. "It's doing the job."

Richards declined to provide details about lives saved or disasters averted by the BuckEye system, citing operational security.

At least two other companies - Leica Geosystems, which is based in Switzerland, and Applanix, based in Canada - make such georeferencing aerial photography equipment for commercial applications. But the two companies lost out to Flight Landata after all three systems were tested at the Yuma Proving Ground.

So far, the U.S. Army has purchased four BuckEye units, which carry a base price of $500,000 but sell for much more when loaded with additional sensor packages. The army also has bought versions with several accessories, but Flight Landata did not detail the features that the military had ordered.

The company is now marketing its products to the private sector, seeking to sell high-resolution survey data to agribusinesses, urban planning agencies and real estate companies.

In flights over the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico in November, the company plans to test its system for possible use in space exploration. The BuckEye system will try to spot water in the mouths of caves. Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have identified similar caves on Mars, and any water in them could be an incubator for life. If the BuckEye passes the terrestrial test, a future version might be sent to the planet.

The idea behind BuckEye might seem obvious: take multiple aerial photos of the same spot, then examine the images for changes. If freshly turned dirt appears by the side of the road, or a dead donkey moves, it might signal where an explosive device has been hidden. But it requires great precision.

"If you want to do this, the image has to be precisely 3-D georeferenced," said the Flight Landata chief scientist, Xiuhong Sun. In other words, precise geographical data must be embedded into the picture, so the latitude and longitude of every building, car, tree and dead donkey are determined. When a bomb is detected, disposal teams are sent to clear the road of explosives.

This was far beyond Flight Landata's ability when it was founded as an aerial photography company 12 years ago. Sun joined the company in 1995 after completing postdoctoral research in remote sensing technology at the University of Dundee in Scotland. He has spent years developing the georeferencing techniques that make Flight Landata's images so valuable. The company's first big infusion of government money came in 2002, when it won a grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to develop the system for earth sciences research.

BuckEye's relatively simple camera is bolted into a modular platform that uses global positioning systems to georeference every picture it takes. Then pictures of the same spot taken hours or days apart can be easily compared, or even laid right on top of one another. The pictures are sharp enough to detect objects as small as a centimeter, so changes on the ground are easy to see.

BuckEye also supports laser-based elevation measurement technology, allowing the camera to take three-dimensional images of landscapes or cities. It also includes hyperspectrum sensors that can detect electromagnetic frequencies far beyond those of visible light. This enables the system to spot threats invisible to the naked eye, like camouflaged vehicles.

Richards, the captain, said that in addition to searching for explosive devices, the U.S. Army used BuckEyes to generate three-dimensional maps of urban areas before sending in troops. The camera's images are far superior to those offered by intelligence satellites in space, and the 3-D feature lets battle commanders electronically "drive" down a dangerous street and identify every possible hazard along the way.

"We've done a whole bunch of cities in Iraq and also in Afghanistan," Richards said. "You know better what you're going into before you go into an operation."

 The Pentagon called it Little Baghdad, a stretch of road at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona designed to look like a highway in Iraq.

When it was created in early 2004, the simulation was perfect, right down to 19 simulated explosive devices, one hidden in the carcass of a donkey.

The U.S. Army constructed Little Baghdad as a testing site for technologies that could help identify the so-called improvised explosive devices that have killed hundreds of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

When the tests were completed, the U.S. Army gave top marks to a system from Flight Landata, a private company in North Andover, Massachusetts, whose airborne digital camera, mounted in a plane or helicopter, can spot improvised explosive devices at a distance of about 300 meters. In the test at Yuma, it correctly identified 17 of the 19 bombs, including the one in the donkey.

"That earned us an all-expenses-paid trip to Iraq," the Flight Landata president, Brooks Patterson, said.
More on link

Behind the Islamic veils and headscarves
Updated Fri. Oct. 6 2006 4:06 PM ET Phil Hahn, CTV.ca News
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061006/veils_headscarves_061006/20061006/

Recent comments by British cabinet minister Jack Straw mark the latest episode in the debate on the right for Muslim women to wear veils and headscarves, which points to the larger issue of religious freedom and the question of how Islamic traditions fit in a Western society.

Straw's request for Muslim women visiting his offices to remove their face-covering veils in order to facilitate communication has sparked anger in England's Islamic community

Unlike the French government which banned hijabs, or headscarves, from state schools, Straw defended Muslim women's right to wear them.

But the debate about hijabs takes many forms even among Muslims. While many believe that the veil is a way to protect women from the male gaze and secure personal liberty in a world that objectifies women, some argue the veil is an illusion of protection that absolves men taking responsibility for their own behavior. 

The notion that all Muslim women are required by Islamic law to wrap their heads and cover their faces in public is a gross generalization of a practice that is complex and wide-ranging. 

The Qur'an urges modesty to be practiced in both sexes. Men are urged to lower their gazes and cover their loins from knee to waist, while women are called to "draw their veils over their bosoms" and shield jewelry and other adornments from being seen by those outside the family. 

The Qur'an offers no instruction for women to cover themselves head to foot.
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Taliban frustrated over handling of their amnesty
Updated Sun. Oct. 8 2006 7:55 PM ET Paul Workman, CTV South Asia Bureau Chief
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061008/workman_taliban/20061008/

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- We were taken by our translator to a large house in Kandahar's so-called "Green Zone," an area of the city that is more protected, but not necessarily safe. Hidden behind the walls was a lush garden with flowering plants and pomegranate trees, rare in this impoverished, desert climate. 

And waiting inside were five local leaders of the Taliban, ready -- they said -- to accept the Afghanistan government's offer of amnesty, or at least to consider it.

All of the men carried the title "mullah," or religious leader, which often gives them unchallenged influence in their communities. The youngest looked no more than 28, his eyes underlined with kohl, his hands smeared with henna. Another kept his face partially covered with a scarf, or patto as it's called here. They all wore strong beards and claimed to have many followers back in their villages. 

"Whenever I want to come out from my house, I dress like a woman. I go out like a woman wherever I go." The man talking is Mullah Zakir Akhound, who says he's received three "night" letters threatening his life. "The Taliban have searched my house many times, but never found me," he says."Friends have called to tell me to run, because the Taliban is coming." 
More on link

NATO chief warns Afghans may switch allegiance to Taliban
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/08/afghan.taliban/index.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan said Sunday he "would understand" if many Afghans switched their allegiance back to the Taliban due to the failure of international forces to deliver needed improvements.

Speaking a day after the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led war that toppled the Taliban regime, British Gen. David Richards, commander of NATO's International Security Assistance Force, also repeated his call for more troops.

"By this time next year I would understand if a lot of Afghans, down in the south in particular, said to us all, 'Listen, you're failing year after year at delivering the improvements which you have promised to us. And if you don't do something about it,' that 70 percent or so will start saying, 'Come on, we'd rather have the Taliban.'"

The Taliban imposed strict Islamic law on Afghanistan after it came to power in 1996. Human rights groups worldwide accused the Taliban of cruelty and depriving citizens of human rights and religious freedoms. The regime also sheltered al Qaeda's leadership, including Osama bin Laden.

Since ousting the Taliban, U.S. and international forces have faced complaints that badly needed basic services are not being provided to large parts of Afghanistan. Soldiers have continued to battle insurgents, including remnants of the Taliban.

U.S. forces have helped build the new Afghan military and steadily hand over power authority to NATO forces. Last week, authority in the east was transferred from the U.S.-led coalition to ISAF at a ceremony in the capital, Kabul.

ISAF has more than 30,000 troops serving in Afghanistan, more than a third of them U.S. forces.

Richards said NATO needs more troops "because we need to now exploit the advantages -- the more favorable situation we are in the process of achieving ... Everyone is aware I've asked for this reserve force."

"We're at a tipping point," he added. With greater effort and more financial flexibility "next year could be much better," he said.
End

Afghanistan Sunflashes  
October 9, 2006 
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2006/10/09/1984962-sun.html

RED FRIDAY FOR THE TROOPS 

Red Friday, a celebration of support for Canada's troops that's already swept through Ottawa and Toronto, is finally coming to Edmonton. 

The city is invited to come out and show its military pride at Sir Winston Churchill Square on Nov. 3 at 11:30 a.m. 

"It's not about whether you favour the mission (in Afghanistan) or not, it's simply about showing our support for the troops," said Audra Franklin, a member of the Red Friday organizing committee. 

Her husband Master Cpl. Paul Franklin, who lost his legs in an Afghanistan bomb attack, will be among the speakers. 

Food and beverages will be available. 

NATO COUNTRIES URGED TO ACT 

OTTAWA (CP) -- Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor wants other NATO countries to bear more of the battle burden in volatile areas of Afghanistan, including the south where Canadian casualties are mounting. 

O'Connor wants other NATO countries, specifically from Europe, to lift their restrictions on their soldiers. He says unlike Canada, those countries are preventing their troops from being moved around within Afghanistan and some countries won't even let their forces go out at night. 

The defence minister says Canada wants these restrictions taken off those forces so that they can be deployed by the ISAF commander anywhere in Afghanistan to meet crises as they arise. 
More on link

Int'l media watchdog condemns killing of journalists in Afghanistan Brussels
Oct 9, IRNA IFJ-Afghanistan 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-239/0610092210100428.htm

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has condemned the killing of two German journalists by insurgents, thought to be Taliban fighters, in northern Afghanistan on Saturday. 

Karen Fischer, 30, and Christian Struwe, 38, were working for the German network Deutsche Welle on a documentary project when they were killed while traveling through the northern province of Baghlan, about 160 kilometers northwest of Kabul. 

"These deaths once again demonstrate how journalists are at risk in conflict zones," said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary. 

"This shocking and tragic event brings home to all of us the need to strengthen protection for journalists in the field." 
The Brussels-based IFJ represents more than 500,000 journalists in over 100 countries worldwide. 
End

Twenty militants killed in Afghanistan  
October 09, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/09/eng20061009_310155.html

Afghan and NATO forces have killed 20 Taliban operatives in Afghanistan's central Uruzgan province, an Afghan official said Monday. 

"Afghan and NATO forces conducted a joint operation in Charchino district of Uruzgan province Sunday. As a result, 20 Taliban militants were killed," police chief of Uruzgan province Mohammad Qasim told Xinhua. 

Only one Afghan soldier was injured in the gun battle while there were no casualties on NATO troops, he added. 

Meantime, Taliban's purported spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi rejected the claim, saying 20 Afghan and foreign forces were killed in the firefight. 

However, no independent sources were available to make comment on the rival sides' claims. 

More than 2,400 people, mostly militants, have been killed in Afghansitan since beginning this year. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Tracking the Taliban: Afghanistan half-a-decade later
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Tracking+the+Taliban%3A+Afghanistan+half-a-decade+later&articleId=b0aa3718-f4ee-4bd2-9272-dabff160d2fd

As the Mark Foley circus kept the country occupied last week, an anniversary came and went mostly unnoticed. It has been five years since the United States went to war in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden remains unaccounted for. The Taliban is out of power, but remains a poisonous thorn pricking U.S. and NATO troops.

Sen. John Kerry and others have proclaimed that Iraq is a sideshow and the real war to secure America is taking place in the Taliban's former stronghold. Would that it were true. We could just pack up our troops, drop them in Afghanistan, sweep out the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida and come home.

But if the real war against America's enemies were being fought in Afghanistan, then what are all those terrorists doing in Iraq? Evidently they didn't get the memo. If the terrorists think Iraq is the main front in this war, that's a good sign that it is, no matter what John Kerry says.

Kerry is right about one thing. More troops are needed in Afghanistan. Not necessarily U.S. troops, but more troops. More troops also are needed in Iraq. We cannot fight this war on the cheap or with insufficient manpower. As much as Donald Rumsfeld wants to create the military of the 21st century, we still need to clear and hold massive amounts of territory, which takes lots of good old fashioned 20th century-style conventional forces.
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US Worries Opium From Afghanistan Will Enter US Market  
By Stephanie Ho  Washington 08 October 2006
http://voanews.com/english/2006-10-08-voa26.cfm

A top U.S. counter-narcotics official says U.S. drug agencies are working with other international drug enforcement agencies to try to prevent heroin from Afghanistan from reaching drug users in the United States. 

 The figures speak for themselves. In the past few years, as opium poppy eradication efforts in other countries have met with a measure of success, post-Taleban Afghanistan has emerged as the world's leading, and nearly only, supplier of heroin.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime published a survey in September on opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which it said has risen 59 percent since 2005. The report called the 6,100 tons of opium harvested in Afghanistan this year "unprecedented," and said revenue from the harvest will exceed $3 billion.

Opium is used to make the drug heroin. The White House drug control policy director, John Walters, said opium poppy eradication efforts have been fruitful in Mexico and South America, the main sources for heroin in the United States. But he added that U.S. agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, are worried that those suppliers could replaced by Afghanistan.
More on link

October 8, 2006 

Food aid for Afghanistan's poor to be phased out
By SUE BAILEY
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/08/1978785-cp.html

Gulzia, a widowed mother of three, relies on food rations from Canada that are set to be phased out in April. (CP/Sue Bailey) 
KABUL (CP) - A long line of widows in tattered blue burkas waited for hours Sunday for Canadian-bought rations of flour, cooking oil, dried peas and medicine. 

Younger women had weary children alongside them who rarely fussed. The eldest widows, with mouths full of rotting teeth, described illnesses they can't afford to treat. 

They are the poorest of Afghanistan's poor, yet their monthly food support is to be cut off by April. 

That's when the Canadian International Development Agency plans to replace the rations, worth C$2.5 million a year, with training designed to help widows support themselves. 

"Food aid is always needed," says Fazila Banu Lily, program manager for CARE Afghanistan which has delivered the basic essentials for CIDA since 1996. 

"But for a development organization to go with relief for a long time - it doesn't really fit with their objective." 

The goal is to begin shifting Afghanistan toward self-sufficiency, she explained. 

After 25 years of almost relentless conflict and displacement, Kabul alone has an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 war widows. Many are illiterate and at the mercy of in-laws to care for them. Widows have no property rights here. 

It's not unusual in the bustling capital of Kabul to see women begging in heavy traffic, their hands outstretched as cars zip past
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NATO Keeps Count in Afghanistan  
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htatrit/articles/20061009.aspx

NATO Keeps Count in Afghanistan 
October 9, 2006: NATO has compiled some numbers on the military operations NATO troops have been involved in during the last few months in southern Afghanistan. The NATO force of some 20,000 lost 19 dead, while the Taliban lost at least a thousand, out of a force of 3-5,000. The Taliban have been terrorizing Kandahar, Uruzgan and Helmand provinces, in the south, for the last four months, causing some 80,000 people to flee their homes, at least temporarily. However, NATO combat operations have killed only 53 civilians. Taliban death squads have killed and/or kidnapped several hundred civilians. Over a hundred Afghan soldiers and police have been killed. 
More on link

Six insurgents, one soldier killed in Afghanistan fighting  
http://www.thenews.com.pk/update_detail.asp?id=10888
  
KABUL: Six Taliban militants and an Afghan army soldier have been killed in clashes across insurgency-hit Afghanistan, the Afghan defence ministry said Sunday.

Five of the rebels were killed during a gunfight with Afghan and US-led troops in eastern Paktika province on Saturday, the ministry said in a statement. An armed rebel was captured following the fighting, it said.

An Afghan soldier was killed the same day in a similar battle elsewhere in the restive province on the Pakistan border, the ministry said, without providing more details.

Militants fired from a moving vehicle at an Afghan army patrol in southern Helmand province but failed to cause any casualties. However, one of the attackers was killed in return fire, the statement said. 
More on link

Oregon Soldiers Bust Pakistani Smugglers In Afghanistan, End Security Threat  
Monday, Oct 9, 2006 By Cathrin Fraker, Oregon National Guard  
http://www.medfordnews.com/articles/index.cfm?artOID=332765&cp=10996

KABUL, Afghanistan - On Sept. 25, Camp Phoenix Security Forces (SECFOR) raided a nearby compound capturing 18 men suspected of pilfering U.S. connexes in route to Camp Phoenix. Soldiers from SECFOR received tips that connexes were being opened and contents were stolen prior to their arrival to Camp Phoenix and other Coalition locations. 
End


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## Pearson (9 Oct 2006)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=407830&in_page_id=1770&ico=Homepage&icl=TabModule&icc=NEWS&ct=5
'They could not see properly'

This was not the only re-supply run to go badly wrong. Another almost cost the lives of Canadian troops. "We were told a British convoy was coming up with the re-plen so we expected Brit wagons. There were two guys in one of the sangars <\[>defensive positions built with sandbags]. It had got blown up twice by RPGs. They heard this rumbling and at the end of the street they saw some sort of tank poking around the corner. They had no idea what it was, but it was not Brit. They could not see properly. They thought it was ex-Russian stuff the Taliban had got hold of. So there's two guys running off down the street with 84s <\[>shoulder-held missiles] just about to blow them up, until one of the guys saw this maple leaf on the front of one of the wagons. We got on the net <\[>radio] and had a massive meltdown about why we were not told they were coming." 

More on link.


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## MarkOttawa (9 Oct 2006)

Why we should care about Afghanistan
Oct. 9, 2006. ROSIE DIMANNO
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160345410322&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

Too soon to balk on Afghan mission
Oct. 9, 2006. RICHARD GWYN
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1160171410676&call_pageid=1109682110623

Nato commander due today for talks on Taliban
_The News_ (International), Oct. 9
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=3553



> The commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan — with satellite pictures and videos of training camps in Pakistan — will rush to Islamabad, most probably today (Monday), for talks with President General Pervez Musharraf over the Taliban insurgency and the alleged presence of Mulla Omar in Quetta.
> 
> Britain’s Gen David Richards, who last week became commander of foreign troops across Afghanistan, has decided to meet General Musharraf after the captured Taliban fighters and failed suicide bombers allegedly confirmed that they were trained by the Pakistani intelligence service. The information includes an address in Quetta where Mulla Omar, the Taliban leader, has allegedly been hiding.
> 
> ...



Kabul seeks joint Pak-Afghan Jirgas
_The News_ (International), Oct. 9
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=3550



> Afghanistan has proposed that joint Jirgas of Pakistani and Afghan tribal elders be held under the plan agreed by Presidents Bush, Musharraf and Karzai at the White House summit last month.
> 
> Pakistani tribal elders would be invited to Kabul and our leaders should go to Pakistan to participate in these Jirgas, if they are to be meaningful, Afghan leaders say, indirectly rejecting the idea that separate Jirgas in each country would be effective.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (10 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 10 October 2006*

PM must make case for Afghanistan  
October 10, 2006 
http://winnipegsun.com/Comment/Editorial/2006/10/10/1992252.html

Canadians deserve the straight goods on Afghanistan. 

A Senate defence report urges Prime Minister Stephen Harper to explain the mandate and achievements of the conflict to the public. 

It's good advice, but Harper has already been working on it. 

A new Ipsos Reid poll shows support for Canada's mission rose to 57% in late September. That's up from 47% in late July and 51% in early September. 

The rise comes after a speech by Harper to the UN stressing the global importance of the mission. And in Canada, Afghan President Hamid Karzai explained how vital the military action is to his country's struggle against oppression. 

The rising public support for the Afghanistan mission is no coincidence. And it comes even as the number of Canadian casualties mounts. 

The death of Trooper Mark Wilson in a roadside bomb attack Saturday brings the total to 40 soldiers killed and hundreds wounded since the Afghan conflict began four years ago. 

As the death toll climbs, so does our national sorrow. 

In yet another poll last week, 59% of respondents agreed our soldiers in Afghanistan "are dying for a cause we cannot win." And even in the Conservative hotbed of Calgary, 55% of people responding to a Sun online poll asking the same question said yes. 

These polls reveal a nation torn between the importance of the mission and the loss of Canadian life. This reinforces a call by Senate defence committee chairman Colin Kenny for a "very clear statement about what the government expects to get for putting the lives at risk and and spending all that money." 

His committee urges spending more to equip our troops and chanelling some aid money through the military to promote goodwill among Afghans in the zone where Canadians face fierce opposition from the Taliban. 

Still, says Kenny, "it is up to the government to make the case and we think if the case is well made, there will be a significant amount of public support for it." 

Harper has already established the importance of our participation internationally as "a Canada that doesn't just criticize, but one that can contribute" and reflects our values and interests. 

Now it is time for him to bring home the message about how the Afghan mission reflects the values we've fought and died for during our 149 year history. 
More on link

Germany nabs 'bin Laden Webmaster'
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/10/germany.alqaeda.reut/index.html

BERLIN, German (Reuters) -- German police arrested an Iraqi man on Tuesday who they suspect aided al Qaeda by posting messages from Osama bin Laden and other leaders of militant Islamist groups on the Internet, the prosecutor's office said.

Authorities believe the 36-year-old suspect, identified only as Ibrahim R., broadcast numerous audio and video messages from al Qaeda chief bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and the late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on the Web.

The Federal Prosecutor's Office said in a statement that Ibrahim R. was able to "circulate the messages worldwide and thereby support the groups in their terrorist acts and goals".

The man was arrested at his home near the northwestern town of Osnabrueck. His apartment was also searched.

This is the latest in a series of arrests of suspected al Qaeda members and supporters in Germany.
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Iran criticizes inadequate aid for Afghanistan reconstruction Vienna
Oct 10, IRNA Switzerland-Iran-Afghanistan 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-16/0610101565123136.htm

Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pour- Mohammadi in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday criticized the inadequate international assistance for reconstruction and development that reaches Afghanistan. 

Pour-Mohammadi, who arrived in Geneva earlier Monday upon an invitation of UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, was addressing the opening ceremony for the 11th session of a UN commission for voluntary return of Afghan refugees. 

He said inadequate international aid has led to a "worrying downward trend in repatriation of Afghan refugees to their homeland." He said that one million Afghan refugees have not yet signed up to return to their country besides 950,000 Afghans who manage to stay in Iran illegally, adding that "of the over 599,000 Afghan refugees who have entered Iran with proper documentation, some one- third of them have settled in Iran (illegally) and have not returned to Afghanistan." 
The minister cited terrorism, production of illicit drugs and human trafficking as among the main concerns in Afghanistan, and called on the international community to raise their contributions to help fight these evils. 
More on link

Afghanistan reports progress in inquiry into journalists' killings  
dpa German Press Agency Published: Tuesday October 10, 2006 
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Afghanistan_reports_progress_in_inq_10102006.html

Kabul- Progress has been made in the hunt for the perpetrators in the killings of two German journalists in Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday, three days after their deaths. Ministry spokesman Semarai Bashari would not disclose what kind of progress Afghan authorities had made. 

There have been no arrests in the killings of Karen Fischer, 30, and Christian Struwe, 39, journalists with the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle who were shot Saturday night in the tent they had pitched near a road in northern Afghanistan. 

They were the first German journalists killed there since the fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001.
End


Lack of an ax contributed to copter crash
Oct. 9, 2006, 11:27PM By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4247192.html

Report cites numerous reasons why 10 U.S. troops died in Afghanistan

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - A helicopter crash that killed 10 U.S. troops last May was caused by a series of mishaps, a new report concluded. Problems included a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop zone, trees that were too close to the runway and soldiers who lacked axes to cut them down.

Maj. Matt Hackathorn, a military spokesman at the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, said Monday that the May crash came "as a very hard lesson" in the difficulties of flying in Afghanistan.

Hackathorn said the military averages about 25 helicopter flights a day in eastern Afghanistan.

The CH-47 Chinook — a large transport helicopter with two overhead rotors — had such a small landing zone that only its two rear wheels could touch down, while its front two wheels hovered off the mountain's side, the report from the Accident Investigation Division of the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center found.
More on link


Afghan copter crash blamed on mishaps
Oct. 9, 2006, 1:51PM By JASON STRAZIUSO Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4246237.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — A helicopter crash that killed 10 U.S. troops last May was caused by a series of mishaps, a new report concluded. Problems included a nighttime landing on a small mountaintop zone, trees that were too close to the runway and soldiers who lacked axes to cut them down.

Maj. Matt Hackathorn, a military spokesman at the U.S. base at Bagram, north of Kabul, said on Monday that the May crash came "as a very hard lesson" in the difficulties of flying in Afghanistan.

The CH-47 Chinook _ a large transport helicopter with two overhead rotors _ had such a small landing zone that only its two rear wheels could touch down, while its front two wheels hovered off the mountain's side, the report from the Accident Investigation Division of the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center found.

Making matters tougher, it had to land at night between trees with only about 5 feet of clearance on either side of its rotors. Soldiers tried to cut down the most problematic tree but had no ax; instead they used a pick, hammer and knife.

"The job proved easier said than done," said the report, which appeared in the October issue of Flightfax magazine, a military publication on Army aviation safety.
More on link

UN Security Council plans to send mission to Afghanistan  
Tuesday, October 10, 2006 9:24:00 AM    
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1057748

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council plans to send a mission to Afghanistan in November to study the deteriorating situation on the ground in the wake resurgence of Taliban militants.

Voicing "alarm" over deteriorating security situation and threat posed by growing production of illegal drugs, Japan's UN envoy and council president Kenzo Oshima said the mission would give a message about UN's commitment to bring peace to the war torn country.

The press statement followed briefings to the Council by Tom Koenigs, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, and Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on the situation prevailing there.

UNODC released a survey last month that showed illicit opium production in Afghanistan has increased to a record 6,100 tons this year, a rise of 49 per cent on last year's figures. Afghanistan now accounts for 92 per cent of the world's supply of opium, the raw material used to make heroin.

Oshima expressed regret at the casualties suffered by Afghan and international forces, as well as civilians, as a result of attacks by the Taliban, Al-Qaida and other groups.

The Council members, he said, remain convinced that the best way to solve the interconnected problems of security, governance, development and the illegal drug trade is to continue to build "sound and resilient institutions," strengthen the rule of law and tackle corruption.

The Council, the statement said, welcomes the recent extension of the presence of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) into new provinces.
More on link

U.S. Resolve in Afghanistan Undiminished After Authority Transfer
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1491

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2006 – Yesterday’s transfer of authority for the final section of Afghanistan to NATO control does not diminish the U.S. commitment to the country one iota, a Defense Department official said here. 
“We don’t see that as a handing over the job to NATO,” said Mark Kimmitt, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Near East and South Asian affairs. “In fact,” he noted, “the United States will remain on the ground and the majority contributor to forces on the ground through NATO and through our own independent capabilities.” 

More than 12,000 U.S. servicemembers will come under the NATO–led International Security Assistance Force. That will bring ISAF’s strength to about 31,000 military members from 36 nations. 

Kimmitt spoke to European journalists who cover NATO during a Pentagon roundtable yesterday. He said the United States sees the NATO presence as a way to further internationalize the situation inside Afghanistan. The move will bring more resources and more countries into Afghanistan, he said. 

The International Security Assistance Force began operations in and around the Afghan capital of Kabul in 2002. NATO took command of the force on Aug. 11, 2003. It expanded to the north, based around Mazar-e-Sharif, in 2004, and to the west, around Herat, in 2005. The alliance took charge in the south, around Kandahar, earlier this year. British Army Gen. David Richards commands the force. U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill will take command early next year. 
More on link

U.S. Prepares for Operation to Aid Pakistan  
By Senior Airman J.G. Buzanowski, USAF  Special to American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1484

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 6, 2006 – A joint team of airmen and soldiers is in Pakistan preparing for Operation Promise Keeping, a follow-up mission to aid the people in remote northern parts of the country devastated by an earthquake last year. 
A magnitude 7.6 earthquake centered roughly 60 miles northeast from here struck Oct. 8, leaving more than 73,000 people dead, 128,000 injured and 3.4 million homeless. 

Two days later, a coalition of nations formed Operation Lifeline, providing food, water, shelter and medical care until the operation's conclusion in March. 

Operation Promise Keeping picks up where Lifeline left off, officials said, bringing rebuilding supplies to the people as they prepare for the winter near the Himalaya Mountains. According to a release from the U.S. Embassy here, the United States has pledged $206 million in earthquake reconstruction assistance to Pakistan over the next four years. 
More on link

Jones: Drug Lords Threaten Afghan Stability Efforts
By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1471

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2006 – Powerful drug lords constitute a growing threat to security and stability efforts in Afghanistan, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe said here yesterday. 
NATO forces pummeled Taliban insurgents in recent stand-up fighting in southern Afghanistan, Marine Gen. James L. Jones said yesterday at a Council on Foreign Relations meeting. 

However, Jones told council members and reporters, the Taliban aren’t the only problem, and he noted another, growing threat to Afghan stability. 

“The narcotics cartels have their own armies and their own capabilities,” he pointed out. “They’re conducting a massive exploitation effort.” 

Drug czars want to continue making millions from Afghanistan’s opium-poppy crops, explained Jones, who’s also commander of U.S. European Command. About 90 percent of Afghanistan-originated narcotics end up in drug marketplaces across Europe, he noted. 

The narco-traffickers coerce Afghan farmers and officials through violence or bribery to ensure that the drugs reach their markets, he said. 
More on link

Afghan, Coalition Forces Capture Terrorist
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1505

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces captured a suspected terrorist today after searching a compound in Farah, U.S. military officials reported. 
Intelligence linked the terrorist to recent makeshift car bomb attacks in the Farah region. 

During the search of the compound, the suspect tried to evade capture by running from the scene. Elements of the force pursued the suspect and captured him after nearly an hour-long chase through the surrounding countryside. 

Three other people were detained during the operation and will be questioned to determine their involvement with terrorist activities in the Farah region, officials said. 

The operation ended with no injuries reported. 
End

Slain hero protects Afghan valley
Locals attribute `safety' to slain hero 
Tajik leader ousted Russians, Taliban
Oct. 10, 2006. 08:13 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160430612578&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

PANJSHIR VALLEY, AFGHANISTAN—Some guest lodgings come replete with hair dryer, coffee maker and alarm clock. This one comes with pre-dawn call-to-prayer and a rocket-propelled grenade under the bed. 

Such are the idiosyncrasies of the impregnable Panjshir Valley, which despite the occasional surprise that lurks beneath a traveller's mattress, remains far and away the safest place in Afghanistan.

That this is northern Afghanistan doesn't guarantee security from an emboldened Afghan insurgency, a fact borne brutally three days ago in neighbouring Baghlan province, where two German journalists working for national broadcaster Deutsche Welle were slain by unidentified gunmen. That their valuables were left untouched suggests the attack was political rather than criminal.

But here in the panoramic Panjshir, a 100-kilometre ribbon of lush green farmland armoured left and right by Hindu Kush mountain ridges impassable to all but the hardiest mujahideen, worry melts away. 

The rusting hulks of nearly a 100 Soviet tanks remain in situ today, including one whose cannon protrudes from the rapids of the fast-flowing Panjshir River. If their guns are silent, each still booms the legacy of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the so-called "Lion of Panjshir," whose venerated exploits shredded Communist attempts to tame the valley.
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Behind the burqa
Students grateful for chance to learn
Still fear deadly wrath of Taliban
Oct. 7, 2006. 08:11 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160171411347&call_pageid=968332188492&col=Columnist1016110013469

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—Peel back the burqa, and the eyes of Afghanistan's seldom seen future stare back in frustration, fear and the feeling time is not on their side.

The teenage girls of Kandahar offer little insight on the work of the Canadians in their midst, except a solemn prayer that the foreign boots of NATO not leave them, not now especially.

But they can tell you everything about how frightening it is to walk the streets of Afghanistan's second-largest city today, nearly five years after the fall of the Taliban.
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Progress brewing in one Kandahar café
How a former exile is battling the Taliban with billboards, espresso and the Internet
Oct. 5, 2006. 05:33 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159998617510&call_pageid=968332188492&col=Columnist1016110013469

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—In many ways, Mohammed Naseem is the canary in the coal mine of southern Afghanistan. As long as he and others like him draw breath, there will remain a chance for a peaceful Afghan future.

We first encountered Naseem seven months ago, when the native Kandahari turned entrepreneur-in-exile was back in his hometown and well into the process of carving out a niche market in highway billboards.

That may sound dull to Western ears, as it did to us, initially. But consider that most living Afghans are wholly unaccustomed to highways, let alone billboards. More than a few of his friends thought he was a bit crazy to pump his life savings, at as much as $2,000 a pop, into the erection of roadside signage.

But Naseem made a go of it. His crews were fast on the heels of the slow spread of internationally funded highway building, which continues today despite insurgent attacks on road workers. Advertisers bought in and the money began to flow.
More on link

Clinging to hope in the city of dread
Kandahar governor endures tough job
Acknowledges huge challenges ahead
Oct. 4, 2006. 01:00 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159912238780&call_pageid=968332188492&col=Columnist1016110013469

Ask the governor of Kandahar whether he expects to see Afghanistan back on its feet in his lifetime and a slightly bitter, bemused smile crosses his lips.

"I don't know about my life, how long it will be," a weary Asadullah Khalid says, his eyes flashing added meaning. "But I hope."

Though he is barely 36, Khalid knows there are many who would have him dead today, given half a chance. It is a risk that comes with the territory for this appointee of President Hamid Karzai, who stands foremost among Canada's partners in the drive to push back the Taliban insurgency.

Barely a month ago, Khalid admits, his days were looking numbered as a gradual buildup of Taliban fighters just beyond Kandahar's western limits hit a crescendo that threatened to overtake the city. Kandaharis later interviewed by the Toronto Star described a city of dread, with many braced for a bloody Taliban reckoning.

Then came the purge known as Operation Medusa, the Canadian-led NATO assault on the massing of militants in the Panjwaii and Zhari districts. Hundreds died in the two-week operation, and whatever its ultimate fallout, the short-term dividend is a city returned to its former self.
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Kabul explosion 'injures eleven'  
10. October 2006, 01:35 
AfghanNews.net 

BBC News - At least 11 people, including a number of police officers, have been injured in an explosion in the Afghan capital, Kabul, say police. 

A bomb fixed to a bicycle exploded as a police van passed by, Kabul police official Alishah Paktiawal told the AFP news agency. 

He said some civilians travelling in a taxi behind the bus were also hurt. 

Bomb blasts in Kabul are generally rare, although there have been a number of suicide bombings in recent months. 

Mr Paktiawal said that "a remote-controlled bomb fixed on a bicycle on the roadside which targeted a ministry of interior police bus" caused the explosion. 

The windows of the bus and neighbouring shops were shattered by the blast, a report said. 
More on link

British hire anti-Taliban mercenaries  
8. October 2006, 15:39 By Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times 
http://www.afghannews.net/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1295

BRITISH forces holed up in isolated outposts of Helmand province in Afghanistan are to be withdrawn over the next two to three weeks and replaced by newly formed tribal police who will be recruited by paying a higher rate than the Taliban. 

The move is the result of deals with war-weary locals and reverses the strategy of sending forces to establish “platoon houses” in the Taliban heartland where soldiers were left under siege and short of supplies because it was too dangerous for helicopters to fly in. 



Troops in the four northern districts of Sangin, Musa Qala, Nawzad and Kajaki have engaged in the fiercest fighting since the Korean war, tying up more than half the mission’s available combat force. All 16 British soldiers killed in the conflict died in these areas. 

“We were coming under as many as seven attacks a day,” said Captain Alex Mackenzie of the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, who spent a month in Sangin. “We were firing like mad just to survive. It was deconstruction rather than reconstruction.” 

Lieutenant-General David Richards, commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, has long been critical of tying up troops in static positions, while the British government has grown increasingly concerned that it was affecting public support for the mission. 

Since taking command of the British forces at the end of July, Richards has been looking for a way to pull them out without making it look like a victory for the Taliban. 

“I am confident that in two to three weeks the securing of the districts will be achieved through a different means,” he said. “Most of the British troops will then be able to be redeployed to tasks which will facilitate rapid and visible reconstruction and development, which we’ve got to do this winter to prove we can not only fight but also deliver what people need.” 

The districts will be guarded by new auxiliary police made up of local militiamen. They will initially receive $70 (Ł37) a month, although it is hoped that this will rise to $120 to compete with the $5 per fighting day believed to be paid by the Taliban. “These are the same people who two weeks ago would have been vulnerable to be recruited as Taliban fighters,” said Richards. 

“It’s employment they want and we need to make sure we pay more than the Taliban.” 

The withdrawal of the British troops will coincide with the departure of 3 Para, whose six-month deployment is coming to an end. The battalion will be replaced by Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade who started arriving last week. 

Locals in these districts are fed up with the fighting that has led to the destruction of many homes, bazaars and a school. A delegation of more than 20 elders from Musa Qala met President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday evening and demanded to be allowed to look after their own security. “The British troops brought nothing but fighting,” they complained. They pledged that if allowed to appoint their own police chief and district chief, they would keep out the Taliban. 

The other crucial factor has been Nato’s success last month in inflicting the heaviest defeat on the Taliban since their regime fell five years ago. The two-week Operation Medusa in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province left between 1,100 and 1,500 Taliban dead, many of whom were believed to be committed fighters rather than guns for hire. 

“Militarily it was against the odds — it was only because the Taliban were silly enough to take us on in strength when we had superior firepower and because of very, very brave fighting on the part of Americans, Canadians, British and Dutch, as well as the Afghan national army,” said Richards. 

The Taliban, emboldened by their successes in Helmand, had changed their strategy from hit-and-run tactics to a frontal attack, apparently intending to try to take the key city of Kandahar. They had taken advantage of a change of command of foreign troops in the south from American to Canadian and eventually Nato to move large amounts of equipment and men into the Panjwayi district southwest of the city. The area was a stronghold of the mujaheddin during the Russian occupation and contains secret tunnels and grape-drying houses amid orchards and vineyards alongside the Argandab River. 

After initial setbacks, including the crash of a British Nimrod aircraft in which 14 servicemen died and an incident in which an American A10 bomber strafed Canadian forces, killing one and wounding 35, Nato forces turned the situation around. Wave after wave of Taliban arriving on pick-ups to join the fight were mown down. More than 100 are believed to have been captured and reports from Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan suggest that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, has instructed his men to return to their old guerrilla tactics. 
End

Afghans enjoy freedom despite growing fear  
7. October 2006, 10:56  By Abdul Saboor, Reuters 
http://www.afghannews.net/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1291

Five years after U.S. forces launched their offensive to oust Afghanistan's Taliban, Shakeela Jan says she is happy to have the freedom to work but that she travels to her job every day in fear. 

U.S.-led forces routed the Taliban in weeks following the October 7, 2001 launch of Operation Enduring Freedom. Five years later, the hardline Islamists and their militant allies have mounted their most sustained campaign of violence. 

Women were banned from working under the Taliban. Now, Jan works with a dozen other women in a Ministry of Communications call center. 

"We're worried when we come to work. You can see how the situation is getting worse every day," said January 

There have been 56 suicide attacks in Afghanistan so far this year compared with 17 the whole of last year. Dozens of people have been killed in blasts in Kabul over the past month. 

"People have to have security where they live but there's no security. How can we work and enjoy working outside our homes?" Jan asked. 

About 40,000 foreign troops, half of them American, are in Afghanistan -- the most since 2001. Fighting is largely confined to the countryside in the south and east. But bombers have struck across the country. 

On Saturday a NATO soldier was killed in the south after his patrol was attacked by insurgents. Nearly 500 members of NATO and U.S.-led forces have died in Afghanistan since 2001. 

Gunmen also ambushed two German journalists traveling in northern Afghanistan, killing them both. Police said the two, a man and woman, were working on a documentary. 

ANNIVERSARY NOT MARKED 

The anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led offensive is not being marked in Afghanistan. Most people are not aware of it. 

"The purpose of the American invasion of Afghanistan was to destroy al Qaeda, but they couldn't," said former policeman Abdul Mohib, when asked about the anniversary. 

"Now we see al Qaeda is stronger than five years ago and people are suffering a lot because of their underground operations
More on link

Afghan, Coalition Forces Capture Terrorist
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1505

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces captured a suspected terrorist today after searching a compound in Farah, U.S. military officials reported. 
Intelligence linked the terrorist to recent makeshift car bomb attacks in the Farah region. 

During the search of the compound, the suspect tried to evade capture by running from the scene. Elements of the force pursued the suspect and captured him after nearly an hour-long chase through the surrounding countryside. 

Three other people were detained during the operation and will be questioned to determine their involvement with terrorist activities in the Farah region, officials said. 

The operation ended with no injuries reported. 
End


----------



## The Bread Guy (10 Oct 2006)

*Technical Briefing on Development Programs in Afghanistan*
Government of Canada media advisory, 10 Oct 06
http://news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=245169&

Senior government officials will hold a technical briefing on Wednesday, October 11, 2006, to provide media representatives with information about community-based development programs in Afghanistan.

The briefing will discuss development assistance initiatives in Afghanistan and the concrete results that are being achieved in helping to bring stability to the country.

Media representatives interested in attending or participating in the event by teleconference should register by contacting the Foreign Affairs Media Relations Office at 613-995-1874.

Event:  Technical briefing

Date:  Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Time:  2:00 p.m.
Location:  Cadieux Auditorium
Lester B. Pearson Building
125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario

Note: This briefing is open to representatives of the media only.


*Pay rise for British troops in Iraq, Afghanistan*
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11 Oct 06
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1760387.htm

Britain has announced pay increases for its troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, in recognition of the ferocity of fighting in the region.  The payments are designed to put British soldiers on a more equal salary footing with their national counterparts, many of whom do not pay tax while on tours of duty.  The government says it will pay tax-free, flat-rate bonuses to frontline soldiers, which will amount to an additional 2,240 pounds (A$5,584; CDN$4,600) over a six month tour of duty overseas . . . .


*AFGHANISTAN: Aid workers hope NATO takeover will improve security*
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 5 Oct 06
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55841&SelectRegion=Asia&SelectCountry=AFGHANISTAN

 NATO took over command of military operations in eastern Afghanistan from the US-led coalition on Thursday, prompting aid workers in the country to call for action from the organisation on improving security and engaging more with the local community.  “We hope that NATO will boost efforts to ensure safety of aid workers in Noristan and many parts of Kunar provinces where access has been very poor due to insecurity,” said Mohammad Hashim Mayar, deputy head of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) . . . .


*Musharraf's misunderstood Afghan strategy*
BBC, via Afghan News Service, 10 Oct 06
http://www.afgha.com/?q=en/node/1374

Allies in the "war on terror" may want to turn the heat on Pakistan to rein in its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), but they may need to be careful not to drive President Pervez Musharraf too hard on the issue in public.  The fear is that instability in Islamabad would increase the influence of Islamic hardliners in the region.  This was apparent when the commander of Nato troops in Afghanistan, Gen David Richards, arrived in Islamabad on Monday for a meeting with the president . . . . 


*Australians fight an unbeatable foe in Afghanistan's forgotten war*
Clive Williams, Canberra Times, 11 Oct 06
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your%20say&subclass=general&story_id=515908&category=Opinion&m=10&y=2006

ACCORDING to the Defence website, there are currently around 510 Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel deployed to Afghanistan as part of Operation Slipper. The major new development is the phased transfer of 400 ADF personnel to the Netherlands-led Provincial Reconstruction Team in Oruzgan (aka Uruzgan) province. The contingent should be fully there by November.  The Australian Reconstruction Task Force is equipped with Bushmaster infantry mobility vehicles and Australian light armoured vehicles. But as the force's name implies, its primary role is to focus on reconstruction and community-based projects . . . . 


*Young soldier laid to rest*
TBSource.com, 10 Oct 06
http://www.tbsource.com/Localnews/index.asp?cid=87671

A final farewell was bid to a fallen Thunder Bay soldier Tuesday.  Twenty-three-year-old Private Joshua James Klukie was killed in action last month in Afghanistan. Tuesday morning, family, friends, loved ones, and military members gathered at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church to give the soldier his last salute. Klukie was the 37th Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan.  Klukie enrolled with the Canadian Forces in October 2004, later to be deployed to Kandahar Afghanistan in August of 2006 . . . .


----------



## GAP (11 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 11 October 2006*

Troops to face 'unrelenting pace' in Afghanistan
Updated Tue. Oct. 10 2006 11:06 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061010/edmonton_afghanistan_061010/20061010?hub=Canada

Canadian soldiers leaving Edmonton for Afghanistan this week will face the most intense service yet, according to their commander. 

"We'll be subjected to a degree of operational tempo not yet experienced in the Canadian Forces," Col. John Vance told 122 troops, who are expected to begin their long journey to Afghanistan Thursday morning. 

"It will be an unrelenting pace of preparation, support and recovery." 

The Edmonton Garrison-based soldiers will provide tank and mechanized support for troops already fighting in the war-torn country. 

Vance said the increased armour will bring heightened expectations. 

"The very reason we are deploying tanks, armoured engineer vehicles and armoured recovery vehicles is that they offer a measure of protection to their crews and the people they support that is unparalleled in theatre," said Vance. 

All tanks and squadrons heading to Afghanistan will come from Edmonton, according to CTV's David Ewasuk, "meaning a heavy rotation coming soon and lasting for at least the next few years." 

Despite the danger the troops will face, many were eager to deploy and begin their mission. They were initially scheduled to leave Tuesday rather than Thursday. 

"I'd rather be getting on the plane right now to get it over with, but it gives a little more time with the family, so it's all right," Cpl. Michael Currie, a tank crew member, told CTV Edmonton. 
More on link

Sombre Thanksgiving in Kandahar
LES PERREAUX  Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061009.wafghan1009/BNStory/National/home

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The makeshift hearse, a light armoured vehicle, rolls across the tarmac under a blazing sun at Kandahar Airfield. For once, the distant jagged mountains cut cleanly into a blue sky because the wind has died and the dust has returned to the earth.

The LAV turns at the rear of the C-130 Hercules cargo plane and two columns of about 600 soldiers. Amid the hundreds of desert brown fatigues, the black tarmac, drab-green vehicles and gunmetal grey aircraft, the red from the Maple Leaf draped coffin of Trooper Mark Wilson flashes into view.

Pte. Wilson died Saturday in a roadside bomb attack. He was the 40th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan. He was 39, had two children, and this is his ramp ceremony on Thanksgiving Day.

Eight soldiers, his closest friends, flank the rear of the vehicle and haul the heavy steel casket onto two sawhorse stands.
More on link

Violence rages across Afghanistan  
By our correspondent
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=3587

PESHAWAR: It was another violent day in Afghanistan on Tuesday with the Afghan government, Nato and Taliban claiming to have inflicted losses on the enemy in different parts of the country.

There were conflicting claims about the harm caused by a remote-controlled bomb explosion in northern part of Kabul. The Taliban claimed 14 policemen were killed in the blast but Afghan authorities said only 10 cops sustained injuries.

In the Khak-i-Afghan district in Zabul province, the police chief claimed three Taliban fighters were killed in a clash and one Afghan soldier was injured. Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf Ahmadi insisted 15 Afghan soldiers were killed in the fighting. He also conceded the loss of three Taliban fighters.

Another Taliban spokesman Dr Muhammad Hanif claimed 13 foreign troops were killed in Taliban attacks during the last 24 hours. He said eight foreign soldiers were killed in Alishang district in Laghman province and five more in Waigal valley in Nooristan province. There was no independent confirmation of Taliban claims and the US and Afghan military authorities also refuted these claims. 

Dr Hanif also claimed three Afghans spying for the US were shot dead by Taliban in Khushmand district in southern Paktika province.Meanwhile, the police chief in Khost province admitted that seven rockets were fired at the Khost airbase. He contended the rockets failed to cause any damage. The Taliban had earlier claimed that the rockets caused some damage at the airbase. The Afghan Islamic Press quoting residents in the area reported that US-led coalition forces bombed an area close to the Khost airbase after the rocket attack. Earlier on Monday, a roadside bomb blast killed five people, including an Afghan district administrator, in the eastern Nangarhar province on Monday.
More on link

Britain forced to use private helicopters in Afghanistan
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 11/10/2006)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/11/uhelicopter.xml

The desperate shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan has forced the Ministry of Defence to seek the help of a private helicopter company, the government has admitted.
   
Troops will be ferried around the country in Russian made aircraft, including the biggest helicopter in the world, if the £20 million deal is struck with the British owned company. 

Military commanders in Afghanistan have for the last three months been privately demanding more helicopters to help defeat the Taliban and provide supplies to troops in remote villages.

Lord Drayson, the defence procurement minister, told the House of Lords that the Government was considering using an independent helicopter company to provide logistical support for the RAF. 

A proposal from Security Support Solutions Ltd to provide four Mi17 Hip and three giant Mi26 Halo transporters was being “seriously considered” by the MoD.

The company has the aircraft, flown by former special forces pilots, available immediately to carry troops, food and ammunition around the country including the volatile towns in northern Helmand province. 

The MoD is also considering an offer from the Danish military to purchase six Merlin helicopters which its military are said not to want because of the high maintenance costs, defence sources revealed. 

It is also thought that the RAF is short of medium lift helicopter pilots with many either on operations or resting between deployments. 

Lord Drayson admitted that there was a shortage of helicopters in Afghanistan. 
More on link

Pakistan to support strong, stable Afghanistan: president  
October 11, 2006 
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/11/eng20061011_310576.html

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf Tuesday reiterated it will support a strong and stable Afghanistan, which is not only in the interest of both Pakistan and Afghanistan but also for the entire region. 

Talking to visiting Commander of International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) General David Richards, the president said that Pakistan is extending considerable assistance to Afghanistan for its reconstruction, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported. 

Musharraf said various incentives have been provided to boost trade relations between the two countries and Pakistan is assisting Afghanistan in the fight against terrorism and extremism, besides hosting over 2.5 million Afghan refugees, said the APP report. 

The Sept. 5 peace agreement in Pakistani North Waziristan between the local government and tribal elders was aimed at checking the activities of terrorists and militant Taliban, it said. 

According to APP, the Commander of the ISAF has said the primary purpose of his visit to Pakistan is to thank Pakistan for the excellent cooperation being extended in the fight against terrorism. 

The ISAF fully appreciates that a vast majority of problems of Afghanistan emanate from within the country having deep roots as the country remained highly unstable for over two decades, David Richards said, quoted by APP. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

History repeating in Afghanistan?
POSTED: 0329 GMT (1129 HKT), October 10, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/10/afghan.guerrillas.ap/

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Military operations are successfully on target. The insurgents are taking heavy casualties. The allies are winning the battle for the people's hearts and minds, and victory is near.

It sounds like the latest statements issued by NATO's peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, but it's really some equally optimistic assessments from U.S. commanders 40 years ago, when the balance in the Vietnam War swung in favor of Vietcong guerrillas.

"There is no doubt we are on the winning side," declared Gen. Paul Harkins, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, in July 1962. A year later, as insurgents were seizing control of the countryside -- in a conflict which would draw more than 500,000 U.S. troops into the fray -- the four-star general was even more optimistic: "By Christmas it will be all over."

Today's escalating insurgency in Afghanistan, combined with the Israeli military machine's failed attempt this summer to crush a small Hezbollah fighter force in Lebanon, has again put a spotlight on guerrilla warfare.

It also has highlighted Western commanders' failure to master strategic lessons from past guerrilla victories -- called "asymmetric wars," by the Western military -- like the French and U.S. debacles in Vietnam, France's loss of its colony of Algeria, or Yugoslav partisans' successful resistance to Nazi occupation.
More on link

Over 75 killed by clashes, bomb in AfghanistanPublished
10 October, 2006, 10:26 AM Doha Time 
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=112043&version=1&template_id=41&parent_id=23

KABUL: A bomb ripped through a government vehicle in eastern Afghanistan yesterday and killed five people while the security forces reported they had killed more than 70 militants in clashes at the weekend.
The remote-controlled bomb in eastern Nangarhar province killed a district's top three officials - the chief of Khogyani district, his police commander and his intelligence chief.
A policeman and a passer-by were also killed, Nangarhar police spokesman Ghafoor Khan said.
The officials were travelling to a village to visit a school that the Taliban-led militants torched late on Sunday, Khan said.
Purported Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack, saying his Taliban fighters detonated the bomb which was planted on a road.
The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force announced meanwhile that ISAF and Afghan troops killed 52 insurgents in an operation in southern Afghanistan's Uruzgan province.
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Ottawa fights Afghanistan battle on home front  
Mike Blanchfield CanWest News Service Tuesday, October 10, 2006
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=16ea47a8-9996-45e5-acb8-48ca69e40cd6&k=8182

OTTAWA - Despite the rising body count in Afghanistan, the federal government is quietly ramping up efforts to boost the profile of its reconstruction work in an attempt to persuade a divided public that Canadian efforts are bringing positive results to the war-torn country.

Those endeavours include increasing the number of Canadian aid agencies working on the ground in Afghanistan, something the Canadian International Development Agency hopes to announce as early as this week, CanWest News Service has learned.

However, some vocal critics, including a Senate committee, are questioning the core tenet of Canada's development assistance program - partnering with the Afghan government to find "made-in-Afghanistan" solutions, and working through United Nations agencies and other large international organizations to disburse the $100 million per year that CIDA has committed to Afghanistan.

The Senate's national security and defence committee was particularly critical of CIDA in its most recent survey of Canadian foreign aid, the military and the ongoing Afghanistan mission. It chided the cabinet minister responsible for the agency, Josee Verner, for being unable to state how much is being spent on aid in the Kandahar region in south Afghanistan, the focus of Canada's involvement where about 2,500 troops are based.

"The committee also finds it unsatisfactory that Canadian aid seems to be distributed primarily through multilateral agencies and through the new government of Afghanistan, which in its infancy has developed a reputation for some degree of corruption," the Senate committee, comprising Conservatives and Liberals, said in its report.
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Bicycle Bomb Blast Wounds 11 Aboard Bus in Afghanistan 
Tuesday , October 10, 2006 
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,219118,00.html

KABUL, Afghanistan  — A bomb placed on a bicycle and detonated by remote control exploded next to a police bus in Kabul on Tuesday, wounding 11 people, police said.

Insurgents also attacked a police checkpoint in central Wardak province late Monday, leaving one policeman dead and wounding two others, said Jan Mohammad, a provincial police official.

NATO and Afghan troops, meanwhile, clashed with militants in southern Zabul province on Monday. Two insurgents were killed and one Afghan soldier was wounded during the firefight, said Noor Mohammad Paktin, Zabul's police chief.

Police in Kabul picked Tuesday through the twisted remains of the bicycle bomb, which wounded both police and civilians. The windows on the bus were shattered but it was not otherwise heavily damaged, and police drove it away about an hour after the 8 a.m. attack.

"They are targeting police," said Jan Agha, a police officer at the scene. Agha complained that his US$50 monthly salary was not worth the increasing risks that police are facing.

Militants have been stepping up attacks, including roadside and homicide bombings, across Afghanistan the last several months. Foreign troops and Afghan security forces are the most frequent targets.
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Tripartite meeting on returns to Afghanistan
10 Oct 2006 10:57:37 GMT Source: UNHCR
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/UNHCR/40b040c598c1b8fd43af508b25b5b789.htm

 Iran, Afghanistan and UNHCR yesterday began two days of discussions here in Geneva on voluntary repatriation to Afghanistan. High Commissioner António Guterres, Minister of the Interior of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mr. Pour Mohammadi, and Minister for Refugees and Repatriation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Mr. Mohammad Akbar Akbar opened the 11th Tripartite Commission Meeting on Voluntary Repatriation to Afghanistan. Monday's meeting was attended by leading donor countries and international organisations, and will continue today at the working level.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Guterres paid tribute to the exceptional solidarity and generosity of the government and people of Iran for hosting refugees for more than a quarter of a century. He also commended the government and people of Afghanistan for their continuing courage and resilience.

Following the Tripartite Commission meeting, the High Commissioner and Minister Pour Mohammadi held bilateral talks, which included prospects for further repatriation, reintegration needs inside Afghanistan, protection concerns, and assistance interventions. A Joint Project was signed on a range of assistance projects aimed at improving skills through vocational training programmes and providing education and medical assistance for the remaining Afghans in Iran. Copies of the Joint Statement issued by the High Commissioner and the Minister are available at the back of the room.
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Why Exactly are We in Afghanistan, What Is Our Goal?
By Betty Marlene McCulley, Dundas The Hamilton Spectator (Oct 11, 2006) 
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160517011122&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1112876262536

First, let me make this clear: a Canadian soldier who dies while following orders ultimately sent by the Canadian prime minister is a hero and deserves the full recognition of Canada, flags at half-mast included.

Likewise, a Canadian soldier who is wounded under the same circumstances deserves all the support possible, for having put his/her life in jeopardy.

That said, for a Canadian soldier to "not die in vain" requires either to acknowledge that all Canadian soldiers who die have not "died in vain" because they were doing what Canada required them to do, or that "to not die in vain" requires their mission to be a success.

If this second is true, then we Canadians need to hear explicitly what that mission is. Why exactly are we in Afghanistan fighting Afghan nationals? What is our goal so that we can say that we won or we lost?

This is something that we need Prime Minister Stephen Harper to spell out exactly.
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Taliban Strategy in Afghanistan
By Rahul K Bhonsle
http://newsblaze.com/story/20061010224125rahu.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html

The conflict in Afghanistan enters a new phase with the command of coalition forces passing to North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The event is ominous in more ways than one. As General David Richards of Britain takes over command in Afghanistan, some cynics recall a return to the days of the Anglo Afghan wars in the 19th Century.

American troops will be under a non American commander for the first time after the Second World War, a sign of acceptance of the limits of power by the United States. The rapid collapse of the Taliban in December 2001 had buoyed US armed forces to attribute the success to a new, "American Way of War", combining air power and Special Forces. In the euphoria of victory the Americans failed to mop up the Taliban, particularly its leader Mullah Omar whose come back has been the hallmark of the downward turn of events during the year.

The Taliban strategy in Afghanistan is now apparent.
Having consolidated its base in Southern Afghanistan and the No Man's Land of the Durand Line it is hopeful of extending its influence in an arc extending from Helmand in the South West to Kandahar - Paktika - Paktia - Nangharhar and Kunar due North North East. Reports indicate that it has sizeable influence in many of these areas even controlling the Afghan police. At the same time it is continuously expanding its influence to Nimroz and Farah in the West and Nuristan in the North.

This revival has been facilitated by a number of factors. The low troop strength and lack of government presence in Southern Afghanistan provided Taliban with ample opportunity to regroup in its core area of influence, where sympathy was reignited with harsh policies of the Coalition forces who undertook air and helicopter attacks. Simultaneously the symbols of development particularly schools were torched, frustrating the relief agencies and overstretching the security forces on the ground. 
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Afghanistan says North Korea's nuclear test threatens the region   
The Associated Press Published: October 11, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/11/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_NKorea_Nuclear.php

KABUL, Afghanistan Afghanistan's government on Wednesday joined the international chorus of countries condemning North Korea's apparent nuclear test, calling it a provocative act that threatens world peace.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the test was a "provocative act and detrimental to not only peace and stability of the region, but also to global efforts to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons."

"The Afghan foreign minister urgently calls upon North Korea to return to multilateral talks to resolve their differences with the international community," the statement said.

Despite strong international opposition and threats, North Korea on Monday purportedly carried out its first nuclear test, which some scientists and governments believed was a partial failure, producing a smaller blast than planned.

 KABUL, Afghanistan Afghanistan's government on Wednesday joined the international chorus of countries condemning North Korea's apparent nuclear test, calling it a provocative act that threatens world peace.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the test was a "provocative act and detrimental to not only peace and stability of the region, but also to global efforts to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons."

"The Afghan foreign minister urgently calls upon North Korea to return to multilateral talks to resolve their differences with the international community," the statement said.

Despite strong international opposition and threats, North Korea on Monday purportedly carried out its first nuclear test, which some scientists and governments believed was a partial failure, producing a smaller blast than planned.
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Attack White House, militant urges
Oct. 11, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160517010430&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

DUBAI—A man believed to be a top Al Qaeda militant who escaped from a U.S. jail near Kabul was shown in a new videotape broadcast yesterday, exhorting followers in Afghanistan to fight on until they attack the White House.

"Allah will not be pleased until we reach the rooftop of the White House," Abu Yahya al-Libi was shown telling fighters in the tape aired by the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

The channel said the hour-long tape showed footage of Libi urging fighters to train hard and even to try to acquire nuclear technology.

"You have to get well prepared by starting with exercise, and then you have to learn how to use technology until you are capable of nuclear weapons," he said.

Libi is believed to be the alias of Libyan Mohammad Hassan, who along with three other Al Qaeda militants broke out of the U.S. jail at Bagram Air Base last year.
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Refueling Soldiers Make Relief Mission Happen in Pakistan
By Senior Airman J.G. Buzanowski, USAF
Special to American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1510

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10, 2006 – A CH-47 Chinook helicopter can fly with one engine. It can fly without its advanced flight-control system. But it doesn’t get off the ground without fuel.  

That’s why petroleum supply specialists like Army Cpl. Charlette Henager are here with a team of three Chinooks and their crews. The helicopter aircrews are delivering rebuilding supplies to the northern part of Pakistan, which was devastated by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake a year ago. 

Henager, a Fremont County, Colo., native, volunteered to come on this mission, dubbed Operation Promise Keeping. She and her fellow petroleum supply soldiers have several responsibilities, from refueling the helicopters to testing jet fuel bought from local suppliers. 

“We test the fuel thoroughly to make sure it’s safe,” Henager said. “We test it to make sure it doesn’t have water or debris in it.” 

Several servicemembers in Pakistan for Operation Promise Keeping were here in 2005 for Operation Lifeline, the multinational response to bring food, medical aid and relief supplies to the area. Henager said it was important for her and her fellow fueling specialists to return to Pakistan. 

“When we were first deployed last year, it was right after the earthquake,” she said. “We’d top off every single aircraft as soon as they would get back to make sure they were ready for their next mission.” 
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Afghan, Coalition Forces Capture Terrorist
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1505

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces captured a suspected terrorist today after searching a compound in Farah, U.S. military officials reported. 
Intelligence linked the terrorist to recent makeshift car bomb attacks in the Farah region. 

During the search of the compound, the suspect tried to evade capture by running from the scene. Elements of the force pursued the suspect and captured him after nearly an hour-long chase through the surrounding countryside. 

Three other people were detained during the operation and will be questioned to determine their involvement with terrorist activities in the Farah region, officials said. 

The operation ended with no injuries reported. 
End






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## The Bread Guy (12 Oct 2006)

*Assessing the Threats  to CF Leopard Tanks  in Afghanistan:  IEDs are Bad Enough. Are Leopards Facing Guided Missiles?*
Stephen  Priestley,  Canadian American Strategic Review, Sept 06
http://www.sfu.ca/casr/ft-isaf-armour3.htm

Recent news reports have speculated on potential threats to CF Leopard C2 tanks when deployed to Afghanistan (. . . .) The US TOW anti-tank missile was specifically mentioned. TOW would most certainly be a threat to Leopards but it is improbable that the Taliban insurgents have access to these sophisticated guided missiles . . . .


*'They faced fighting that hasn't been seen for a generation'*
Audrey Gillan, The Guardian, 12 Oct 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1920272,00.html

He fought in both wars in Iraq and on the streets of Northern Ireland - but never had he experienced such intense battles as his troops fought in Afghanistan.  Returning from a six-month tour, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, commander of 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment Battle Group, said as they got home to their barracks last night: "This was the most intense I have experienced. It was a war fighting operation." . . . .



*A hero's welcome for Paras*
Tom Wells & Tom Newton Dun, Sun Online (UK), 12 Oct 06
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006470494,00.html

BRAVE Paras were greeted with chants of “heroes, heroes” as they flew home from Afghanistan last night. Dozens of friends and relatives cheered as more than 150 men from 3 Para Battlegroup Regiment arrived at barracks in Colchester, Essex . . . .


*It's the Royal Dare Force*
Sun Online (UK), 12 Oct 06
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006470495,00.html

A SQUADDIE ducks as a Harrier jump jet screams feet above his head — during a terrifying game of “chicken”.  The daredevil stunt is the latest craze among thrill-seeking British troops in Afghanistan.  To beat the boredom of the desert, Our Boys challenge each other to remain standing in the path of £40million RAF warplanes flying just 15 FEET above the ground.  If they duck, they lose the game. And Top Gun pilots join in the fun by flying as low as they safely can . . . .


*'Dogs of War' for missions*
Tom Newton Dunn, Sun Online (UK), 12 Oct 06
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006470491,00.html

DESPERATE defence chiefs are considering hiring mercenaries to fly missions in Afghanistan. They believe “commercial” help may be the only way to combat a dire shortage of helicopters.  It would be the first time outsiders have flown military operations since the formation of the RAF and Army Air Corps.  But the Dogs of War move would spark controversy across ranks — over whether civvies could be trusted with troops’ lives in the lethal conditions . . . . 


*Paras back home from Afghanistan *  
BBC Online, 11 Oct 06
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6042232.stm

British paratroops have returned to the UK following a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan.  Personnel from the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment flew into Stansted before going on to barracks in Colchester, Essex.  About 150 soldiers were led by Lt Col Stuart Tootal, who was greeted by Defence Secretary Des Browne . . . .


*Afhgan war has turned corner: Army*
Ananova (UK), viewed 12 Oct 06
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2032231.html?menu=

As more than 150 Parachute Regiment soldiers returned home from Afghanistan today, the outgoing British task force commander announced that the war has turned a corner.  Brigadier Ed Butler, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said military operations were giving confidence to ordinary Afghans to stand up to the Taliban.  In an upbeat assessment of the bloody past six months, Brigadier Butler said rebels and insurgents had underestimated the resolve of British fighters.  He said: "When we were preparing to come here we knew there would be rocky times ahead and that things would get harder before they got easier. That has certainly been the case, but I judge we have turned a corner . . . .

More on AFG....
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/CANinKandahar


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## GAP (12 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 12 October 2006*

American charged with treason for alleged al-Qaeda ties
Associated Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061012.wtreason1012/BNStory/International/?cid=al_gam_nletter_newsUp

Los Angeles — As a teenager, Adam Yedihe Gadahn appeared to be on a spiritual quest.

The 28-year-old American charged Wednesday with treason for allegedly aiding al-Qaida was raised in a largely nonreligious household. At one point he dabbled with demonic heavy metal music and later studied Christianity.

Still in his teens, he abandoned both, walking into an Orange County mosque in the 1990s and pronouncing his devotion to Islam.

“I can't say when I actually decided that Islam was for me. It was really a natural progression,” he wrote on a Web site in 1995, when he was 17 years old. “I knew well that they were not the bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists that the news media and the televangelists paint them to be.”
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Afghanistan paras' warm welcome   
By Marianne Garvey  BBC News, Colchester  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6043088.stm

About 150 soldiers from the Third Battalion of the Parachute Regiment have been greeted by their families as they returned to the UK following a tough six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. 

The paratroops, who were part of 16 Air Assault Brigade, received a hero's welcome when they were reunited with their loved ones at their Hyderabad barracks in Colchester. 

They described how the tour had been difficult, but morale had remained high. 

"At times, it was like the opening scenes of 'Saving Private Ryan' - it was like nothing else," said warrant officer Tom O'Malley. 
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Pakistan catches alleged plotters
POSTED: 0336 GMT (1136 HKT), October 11, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/11/pakistan.arrests.ap/index.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president on Wednesday said authorities had captured "extremists" allegedly behind an attempt on his life.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf's comments were the first to confirm that any suspects were in custody following last week's explosion in a park near his residence in Rawalpindi, the garrison city close to the capital, Islamabad, and the discovery of two rockets planted near the National Assembly. (Full story)

Asked at a news conference whether the explosion and rockets were meant for him, Musharraf said: "I cannot say for sure whether I was being targeted. Maybe I was."

"We have unearthed the whole gang. We have caught the culprits and they are extremists," he said without describing them further nor saying how many had been detained.

Nobody was hurt in either incident. On Saturday, another two Russian-made 107 mm rockets were found and defused near the headquarters of Pakistan's spy agency. The interior minister said they were planted by "miscreants," a term often used by Pakistani officials when referring to Islamic militants.

Musharraf has survived at least three known attempts on his life since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1999. At least 16 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on his convoy in Rawalpindi in 2003.

The attempts on Musharraf have been blamed on al-Qaeda-linked militants.

The Pakistani president also said that a Sept. 5 truce between Islamic militants and the government in the North Waziristan tribal region was not assured, saying it was vital that local authorities help strengthen the standing of the traditional tribal elders in the area over pro-Taliban extremists.

"There is no guarantee that it will succeed," he said of the peace deal.

Some U.S. and NATO officials have suggested that Pakistan's truce with militants in North Waziristan, which ended fighting that broke out after the 2001 American-led invasion of Afghanistan, could provide a sanctuary for armed extremists attacking foreign troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have vowed to not let militants in the area conduct attacks inside Pakistan or Afghanistan.

"Let's take the people away from the militant Taliban. Let's take them on our side against the militants," Musharraf said. "We have to win this battle against extremists."

Musharraf angered Islamic radicals after allying Pakistan with the U.S.-led war against terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We have to win this battle against extremists," Musharraf told reporters Wednesday.

Musharraf has said Pakistani authorities have handed about 700 al-Qaeda-linked suspects over to U.S. authorities since 2001. But top al-Qaeda figures, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be at large along the porous Pakistan-Afghan border frontier.
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Bombing attacks injure 5 in Afghanistan  
October 12, 2006         
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/12/eng20061012_311243.html

Two bomb explosions killed one and wounded five people including three military personnel in Afghanistan's eastern Khost province Thursday morning, officials said. 

Two civilians were injured when a remote controlled bomb exploded 5 km away from Khost city, while three military personnel were wounded in the second attack which was a suicide one and targeted military men, spokesman of Interior Ministry Zamari Bashari said. 

However, he declined to say if the injured military men belonged to the Army, Police or NATO forces. 

On the other hand, spokesman of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force Major Luke Knittig said there were no casualties on ISAF troops. 

Meantime, an official at the Interior Ministry told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that three military personnel injured in the incident were from Afghanistan National Army (ANA). 

The press department of the Defense Ministry declined to make comment on the incident, saying it has not received any report from Khost so far. 

Suicide bombings have claimed the lives of nearly 200 people mostly of them civilians since the beginning of this year in Afghanistan. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Taliban lay plans for Islamic intifada
By Syed Saleem Shahzad 
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HJ06Df01.html

THE PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and Afghanistan - With the snows approaching, the Taliban's spring offensive has fallen short of its primary objective of reviving the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, as the country was known under Taliban rule from 1996-2001. 

Both foreign forces and the Taliban will bunker down until next spring, although the Taliban are expected to continue with suicide missions and some hit-and-run guerrilla activities. The Taliban will take refuge in the mountains that cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they will have plenty of time to plan the next stage 
of their struggle: a countrywide "Islamic Intifada of Afghanistan" calling on all former mujahideen to join the movement to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan. 

The intifada will be both national and international. On the one hand it aims to organize a national uprising, and on the other it will attempt to make Afghanistan the hub of the worldwide Islamic resistance movement, as it was previously under the Taliban when Osama bin Laden and his training camps were guests of the country. 

The ideologue of the intifada is bin Laden's deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has assembled a special team to implement the idea. Key to this mission is Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar. Asia Times Online was early to pinpoint Haq Yar as an important player (see Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance, September 11, 2004). 
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Indian consulate in Afghanistan attacked
Indo-Asian News Service Kabul, October 12, 2006|18:21 IST
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7598_1818826,000500020005.htm

An unknown man attacked the Indian consulate in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province but caused no damage, local police said on Thursday.

"A man riding a motorbike threw two hand grenades on the Indian consulate in Kandahar city on Wednesday night, but caused no loss to life or damaged property," said local police officer Abdul Shakor.

One of the grenades landed inside the consulate while the other fell outside the police post guarding the consulate building, the officer added
End

Czech troops' return from Afghanistan delayed over outdated plane
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/news/index_view.php?id=214305

Prague- The return of 53 Czech troops from Afghanistan, originally scheduled for Wednesday evening, has been delayed over an outdated military plane, but this morning the Czech soldiers landed in Pardubice, east Bohemia, Jan Pejsek from the Defence Ministry said. 
The 100-member Czech contingent served in northern Afghanistan within the provincial reconstruction team for six months. The first part of the contingent returned home in late September. 

The Czech soldiers travelled along with their German colleagues to Bonn where a Czech military plane, a Soviet-made Tu-154, was waiting for them. However, Germans did not allow the outdated plane to take off since it does not meet noise standards for night flights. That is why the Czech troops could fly home only this morning. 

Czechs serve in Afghanistan in the joint Czech-German-Danish unit near Faizabad in the mountainous province of Badakhshan. They provide safety of the international mission. 

At present, 83 Czech soldiers serve in the reconstruction team within the NATO operation in Afghanistan (ISAF) and another 18 Czech troops work at the international airport in Kabul. The Czech Republic has another 120 soldiers in special units within the anti-terrorism operation Enduring Freedom. 

The Defence Ministry wants to reinforce the Czech participation in the ISAF mission by up to 90 soldiers. 

The Czech military had problems with the outdated TU-154s earlier as the planes do not meet noise and emission standards. 

That is why the military should receive the first of the two ordered new Airbus A-319 CJs in December, while the second aircraft should be delivered next September. Both planes to replace the Tu-154s will cost some three billion crowns. 

Another tender should be launched for the purchase of smaller aircraft to replace Soviet-made Yak-40s. The Czech military will at the same time try to sell the Tu-154s. 
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Local readers united with Afghanistan
By Rebekah Gordon, STAFF WRITER Article Last Updated:10/12/2006 02:39:25 AM PDT
http://www.insidebayarea.com/sanmateocountytimes/localnews/ci_4480181

Just months after launching the One Book, One Community program, San Mateo County's 32 libraries can't seem to keep "The Kite Runner" on the shelf. 
"We're amazed at the interest in the book," said Al Escoffier, city librarian for the Burlingame Public Library. "Our library alone has 100 copies, and most of them are in circulation." 

The book, which spent three years on the New York Times Best Seller list, is narrated by Amir, who emigrates from Afghanistan to Fremont with his father, and returns some 30 years later to his homeland to rescue the son of his childhood friend after the boy's parents are killed by the Taliban. 

It is the centerpiece in the libraries' first countywide program to give residents a common reading experience. 

But the effort is about more than just reading a book. More than 50 free events — from book discussions to performances and lectures — throughthe month will expand on Afghan culture and the themes of the book. 

"We wanted to draw in as many people in as many different ways as we could," Escoffier said. "One of our desires was to show the whole cultural background, the whole country and bring that to the public in a way that would enrich their understanding of the book." 
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Two suicide blasts wound 16 in Afghanistan
Reuters Thursday, October 12, 2006; 1:54 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101200055.html

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Two suicide bombers, one targeting a U.S.-led coalition convoy and another Afghan soldiers, blew themselves up in the southeastern province of Khost on Thursday, wounding 16 people.

This year is the bloodiest in Afghanistan since coalition forces overthrew the Islamist Taliban government in 2001.

A coalition spokesman said no-one in the convoy was hurt.

But 14 civilians and two Afghan soldiers were wounded in the attacks, officials and witnesses said.

Ariana private television station cited its reporter in Khost saying 16 people were wounded, but did not give details.

One attacker hurled himself on a car carrying Afghan troops a few hundred meters from the provincial governor's office in Khost city and the second used a car against the U.S.-led troops on a road south of the city.
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40th Cdn. soldier to die in Afghanistan back home
Updated Wed. Oct. 11 2006 11:00 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061011/wilson_return_061011/20061011?hub=Canada

CFB TRENTON, Ont. -- The body of the 40th Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan since 2002 has returned home. 

A military transport carrying the remains of Trooper Mark Wilson touched down in a driving rain at CFB Trenton in eastern Ontario on Wednesday night for a sombre repatriation ceremony. 

Wilson was on a pre-dawn run to pick up other troops in the Panjwaii district west of Kandahar on Saturday when his armoured Nyala vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. 

Wilson was a member of the Royal Canadian Dragoons based out of Petawawa, Ontario. 

He was the third soldier from his unit to die this month. 

The 39-year-old leaves behind a wife and two sons
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What might have been in Afghanistan
Editorial Article Launched:10/12/2006 03:06:00 AM EDT Thursday, October 12
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/editorials/ci_4479731

It has been five years since the United States embarked upon a foreign mission that really could have changed the balance in the fight against Islamic terrorism. In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. forces routed the Taliban from Afghanistan, sending Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's leadership on the run. But with the country still unstable, the Bush administration turned its attention to Iraq to fulfill neoconservative fantasies of a Middle East redrawn to America's liking. Today, the Taliban has returned, Afghan democracy is a pipedream, and Afghanistan is joining Iraq as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism.
Hamid Karzai, the White House's puppet president, rules Kabul but little else, as the warlords who live off the opium production that is returning to full flower again hold sway in much of the country. The Taliban is regaining its old turf, its progress measured by butchered school teachers and the disappearance of women back into the shadows. If there was a chance that Afghanistan could have emerged as a bulwark against terrorism it has disappeared, along with Mr. bin Laden.
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British soldiers return after Afghanistan tour
Published: 11 Oct 2006 By: Darshna Soni 
http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=3568

British soldiers are returning from fierce fighting in Afghanistan as their six month tour ends. 

The war on terror began with the invasion of Afghanistan five years ago. 

British troops there have been involved in the fiercest fighting their regiment has experienced since the Korean War, according to military experts. 

After a six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan, 150 Parachute Regiment soldiers have arrived back in the UK. Several of them became fathers while they were away
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Towards a peaceful Afghanistan  
By Ikram Sehgal
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=27973

Five years after naively occupying fixed defences along conventional lines and receiving the drubbing of their lives, mainly by B-52 bombers, the Taliban have re-grouped in the districts around their original base Kandahar and are resorting to classic hit-and-run tactics, the hallmark of guerrillas everywhere. During the 80s the Afghan mujhahideen outfought the combined might of the Soviet Union and a strong Afghan Army, multiple times more men, material and helicopters than that presently deployed by NATO. 

The mujhahideen could then count on a constant flow of arms, equipment and other supplies from (and through) Pakistan. Every one of the nine mujhahideen factions had a Taliban contingent. After the Soviets left in 1989, the excesses of brutal warlords, the corruption of officials appointed by the Northern Alliance led by the Tajiks who controlled Kabul, the general anarchy prevailing in Afghanistan and the emergence of a charismatic one-eyed cleric in 1993-94 made the Taliban into a unified force.

Better armed and equipped, NATO's ground troops are far lesser in number than the Soviets and far more averse to taking casualties. The lack of combat experience and a failure to recognise ground realities condemns their present campaign to a recipe for failure. The Taliban this time do not have the access to the resources the Mujhahideen had in the eighties -- that dried up by the early nineties. But the Taliban have battle-hardened cadres and a constant supply of recruits, mostly from inside Afghanistan but some from Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, with a smattering of Pakistanis as well.
More on link

Afghanistan: Trembling in fear behind the burka
Source: Globe and Mail October 11, 2006 
http://southasia.oneworld.net/article/view/140738/1/

The letters are delivered in the night, dropped on the doorsteps of female Kandahar professionals. The anonymous missives warn the occupants that they will "bleed" if they don't stop working. 

Other threats are more urgent. A female employee at a United Nations agency in Kandahar was warned by an unknown caller to leave Afghanistan within half an hour. More than half a dozen female government workers in the southern 
and western provinces have complained of death threats. 

These are a few examples of the rising tide of violence against women in Afghanistan, especially in the south. Five years after the fall of the repressive Taliban regime, women - in particular working women - are increasingly being targeted by extremists. 

"When I leave for work in the morning, I don't know if I will be coming home," one working woman lamented during a Monday-morning meeting at a women's resource centre in downtown Kandahar. 
More on link

UNSC plans Afghanistan mission  
Thursday October 12, 2006 (0230 PST)
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156863

UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council plans a mission to Afghanistan to review the volatile situation and assure the country’s people of the world body’s commitment, Japan’s U.N. Ambassador Kenzo Oshima said. 
Oshima, the current Security Council president, said the visit probably would take place sometime in November. 

Fighting in Afghanistan between insurgents and coalition forces this year is the worst since the hard-line Taliban government was ousted in late 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion. 

"Preliminary thinking has suggested that perhaps it will not be feasible to have a full-scale 15-member council mission to Afghanistan at this point in time, including for logistical reasons," Oshima told reporters. 

"Subject to further consultations I expect this mission to be a rather compact mission comprising of several member states," he said after a council briefing from Tom Koenigs, the special U.N. envoy in Afghanistan and others, and Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. drugs and crime office. 
More on link


How to turn the tide in Afghanistan   
Ahmed Rashid International Herald Tribune Published: October 12, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/12/opinion/edrashid.php

KABUL NATO will fail to combat the growing insurgency in Afghanistan unless it shows the flexibility and determination to deal with three major problems simultaneously - all of which are the legacy of the American failure in Afghanistan over the past five years.

A few days ago NATO took over all military operations in Afghanistan from the Americans. But ordinary people in Kabul are fearful that the Taliban are on their way back to power and the international community does not have the power or desire to stop them.

To turn the tide in Afghanistan, NATO will have to act not just as a military alliance, but also as a political, economic and diplomatic alliance - something it has never done before.

Since the spring when 10,000 NATO forces took over in southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces, they have suffered three times the casualty rate of American soldiers, as a result of well-planned offensives by the Taliban.

Although NATO forces have killed hundreds of Taliban, there is no quick end to the insurgency in sight as the Taliban move skillfully from mass frontal attacks on NATO positions to one-man suicide attacks in Afghan cities.

Not surprisingly the public, Parliaments and news media in many NATO countries whose soldiers are dying in Afghanistan are up in arms, and demanding that their governments recall their troops.

In the past few days, Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Stephen Harper of Canada have said their forces will get the best equipment and support available (Canadian troops have suffered the heaviest casualties). But their people want answers to more obvious questions: Why are the Taliban back, when the United States repeatedly said they were finished? Why has Pakistan's military regime continued to allow Taliban leaders to live on its soil? Can NATO actually succeed?

Since 2001, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan has failed to deploy enough peacekeeping troops, resources and reconstruction aid. NATO is only now rectifying that, spreading troops out to key areas in the south that have been hit by the insurgency and developing a more clear- headed reconstruction policy.

But NATO members have been slow to come up with the necessary financial aid and military equipment. Major reconstruction has yet to take place. Even in Kabul there is less electricity today than there was under the Communists in the 1980s.

In the long term, NATO forces in the south can only win if they are prepared to come in with enough aid and reconstruction to win over the alienated Pashtun tribes. NATO's military successes must become an economic lever that pries more money out of the European Union, the United States and the Muslim world.

The second problem is the Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai, which has failed to come up with speedy and decisive decisions, promote good governance and clamp down on corruption and drug trafficking among its own ministers and officials.

As Afghans have become more and more critical of their own government, the Taliban find they can recruit extensively among disaffected people inside Afghanistan for the first time since 2001.

NATO has to play a critical political role in resuscitating the Afghan government and giving it the confidence to perform better.

Third, NATO has to play a diplomatic role in convincing Pakistan to stop pursuing a dual-track policy of supporting the war on terrorism when it comes to capturing Qaeda leaders, but declining to do the same when it comes to the Taliban. Washington has tolerated this dichotomy for the past five years because it placed little importance on restraining the Taliban, but NATO cannot afford to do the same.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Sept. 21, General James Jones, NATO's supreme commander, testified that the Taliban headquarters was in Quetta, Pakistan. Yet President George W. Bush did not even bring up Quetta when he hosted a dinner recently for Karzai and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.

The UN secretary general's latest report to the Security Council on Afghanistan says the Taliban leadership "relies heavily on cross-border fighters, many of whom are Afghans drawn from nearby refugee camps and radical seminaries in Pakistan." It lists five leadership centers for the insurgency. U.S. and NATO intelligence officials reportedly believe that at least three of those centers are based in Pakistan.

America's refusal to address this issue has convinced Afghans that the West is not serious about ending the Taliban insurgency and securing Afghanistan. NATO has to change this public perception if it is to succeed.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia."
 KABUL NATO will fail to combat the growing insurgency in Afghanistan unless it shows the flexibility and determination to deal with three major problems simultaneously - all of which are the legacy of the American failure in Afghanistan over the past five years.

A few days ago NATO took over all military operations in Afghanistan from the Americans. But ordinary people in Kabul are fearful that the Taliban are on their way back to power and the international community does not have the power or desire to stop them.

To turn the tide in Afghanistan, NATO will have to act not just as a military alliance, but also as a political, economic and diplomatic alliance - something it has never done before.

Since the spring when 10,000 NATO forces took over in southern Afghanistan from U.S. forces, they have suffered three times the casualty rate of American soldiers, as a result of well-planned offensives by the Taliban 
More on link

16 Afghans, 1 Iranian arrive in Afghanistan after release from Guantanamo Bay prison   
The Associated Press Published: October 12, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/12/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Guantanamo_Prisoners.php

KABUL, Afghanistan Sixteen Afghans and one Iranian released from years in captivity at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, an Afghan official said.

The 16 Afghans appeared at a news conference alongside Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, which assists with the release of detainees from Guantanamo and the U.S. prison at the Bagram military base north of Kabul.

Mejadedi said many of the detainees, who are now free, had served up to four years in Guantanamo. He said "most" of the prisoners were innocent and had been turned in to the U.S. military by other Afghans because of personal disputes.

The released Iranian prisoner, who also arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, was handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said.

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul confirmed that 16 Afghans had been released from Guantanamo and turned over to the Afghan government. Lt. Marcelo Calero said he had no information about the Iranian prisoner.

One of the released prisoners, Sayed Mohammead Ali Shah, said he had been a delegate at the country's first loya jirga, a council of leaders that helped establish the interim government in 2002 after the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001.

"For four years they put me in jail in Cuba for nothing," said Shah, a doctor from the eastern province of Paktia whose hands shook from nervousness when he spoke.

"All these people (the other prisoners) and all those Afghans still in Cuba, they are innocent," he told reporters. "All were arrested because of false reports, and the Americans, without investigating, they arrested innocent people and put them in jail for a long time."

Another former prisoner, Habib Rahman, 20, said he was arrested because he had a weapon in his home.

"They told me, 'You are against us, you are anti-American and anti-government and you are fighting with us,'" said Rahman, from Paktia. "At that time in our area everyone had weapons. I was innocent and I hadn't participated in any fighting."

Rahman said that he was treated harshly at Guantanamo, and that one time he was kept awake for 38 hours while being questioned about ties to terrorists.

"The last time they tortured me like that was four months ago," he said. "They were kicking us all the time, beating us with their hands."

Sayed Sharif Yousufy, a spokesman for the Afghan reconciliation commission, last month said that between 90 and 110 Afghans were still at Guantanamo, meaning that between about 74 and 94 would still be there.

One of the released prisoners, Sadir, who only goes by one name, said 74 Afghans remain in Guantanamo.

 KABUL, Afghanistan Sixteen Afghans and one Iranian released from years in captivity at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, an Afghan official said.

The 16 Afghans appeared at a news conference alongside Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, which assists with the release of detainees from Guantanamo and the U.S. prison at the Bagram military base north of Kabul.

Mejadedi said many of the detainees, who are now free, had served up to four years in Guantanamo. He said "most" of the prisoners were innocent and had been turned in to the U.S. military by other Afghans because of personal disputes.

The released Iranian prisoner, who also arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, was handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross, he said.

A U.S. military spokesman in Kabul confirmed that 16 Afghans had been released from Guantanamo and turned over to the Afghan government. Lt. Marcelo Calero said he had no information about the Iranian prisoner.

One of the released prisoners, Sayed Mohammead Ali Shah, said he had been a delegate at the country's first loya jirga, a council of leaders that helped establish the interim government in 2002 after the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001.

"For four years they put me in jail in Cuba for nothing," said Shah, a doctor from the eastern province of Paktia whose hands shook from nervousness when he spoke 
More on link


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## MarkOttawa (12 Oct 2006)

A letter of mine in the _Ottawa Citizen_ today:

Afghanistan has not been 'invaded' by foreign forces
http://server09.densan.ca/archivenews/061012/cit/061012bm.htm



> Re: Canada loses 40th soldier to bomb, Oct. 8.
> http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=298ddcc9-a85f-4454-b3b2-e81dbb06c1b9
> 
> This story refers to "the U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban." But there was no invasion of Afghanistan.
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (12 Oct 2006)

*More Articles found 12 Oct 2006*


CIDA: Helping Afghans Rebuild their Lives-Canada Supports Community-Based Development In Afghanistan  
OCTOBER 11, 2006 - 14:05 ET   VALCARTIER, QUEBEC--(CCNMatthews - Oct. 11, 2006)
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&actionFor=616075&searchText=false&showText=all

The Honourable Josee Verner, Minister of International Cooperation and Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages, announced that Canada, through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), will provide over $18 million to help Afghans rebuild needed infrastructure, improve access to basic necessities and strengthen democratic development.

"Afghanistan has made significant progress in its reconstruction, with Canada being a leading nation helping it to achieve this progress," said Minister Verner. "Because of the efforts of our troops and development workers, governance in Afghanistan has been strengthened and poverty has been reduced. It is through their commitment that Afghanistan will stabilize and become safe for reconstruction, allowing it to thrive without the oppression of the Taliban."

The funding announced today will improve the lives of Afghans throughout the country. Canada will provide:

- $13 million in additional support to Afghanistan's highly successful national community development program, the National Solidarity Program (NSP). The program gives rural Afghans a voice in their country's development through the election of Community Development Councils (CDCs). To date, over 13,000 CDCs have been established across Afghanistan, representing more than half of all communities. More than one-third of projects provide access to health care, clean water and education initiatives, improving the lives of thousands of Afghan families;

- $2 million to expand the positive results of the NSP to two more districts in Kandahar, namely Spin Boldak and Khakrez; and,

- over $3.1 million in additional support to the National Area Based Development Programme (NABDP), which is led by the Government of Afghanistan. Working with Canada's PRT, the NABDP will construct or rehabilitate infrastructure in six districts of Kandahar province. The work will include bridge construction and opening of transportation and trade corridors. The improved access to markets, water and other basic services will enhance the lives of over 500,000 rural Afghans.

Today's announcement is part of Canada's total contribution of nearly $1 billion over 10 years aimed at reconstruction, reducing poverty and strengthening Afghanistan governance; all key elements in stabilizing the country and the region.

"All Canadians can be proud of our accomplishments in Afghanistan, such as ensuring young girls are able to receive an education in safety and security, "said Minister Verner. "Our integrated approach of development, diplomacy and defence is helping the Afghan people stabilize their country, establish the rule of law, and ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a haven for terrorists."


Backgrounder
CANADA'S ASSISTANCE TO BUILDING A STABLE, SECURE AND PROSPEROUS AFGHANISTAN

Canada's engagement in Afghanistan, through the complementary and mutually reinforcing efforts of the Canadian Forces, our diplomats, development workers and civilian police, is helping the Afghan people to build a secure, self-sustaining, democratic country. Since September 2006, the Government of Canada has announced the following initiatives:

New announcements

National Solidarity Program ($13 million)

The National Solidarity Program (NSP) is the Government of Afghanistan's mechanism for the development of rural infrastructure. The program seeks to reduce poverty by strengthening community level governance and by providing grants to communities throughout the country to implement projects identified by communities themselves such as reconstruction activities.

CIDA is contributing a further $13 million in October 2006 to support the work of the NSP, implemented through the World Bank-administered Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. Through this program, nearly 5,000 community initiatives have already been completed, improving the lives of thousands of Afghan families. Improvements were made to drinking water and sanitation, irrigation, infrastructure development, income generation, and health clinics.
More on link

Taliban commander: 'hundreds' of suicide bombers ready to fight in Afghanistan
Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=world_home&articleID=2412169

ZABUL PROVINCE, Afghanistan (AP) - A Taliban commander said in an interview insurgents will battle "Christian" troops until they leave Afghanistan, warning hundreds of militants are ready to launch suicide attacks to again install strict Islamic law. 
The regional-level commander, Mullah Nazir Ahmed Hamza, said the Taliban still has thousands of fighters, despite NATO reports of heavy losses in recent battles, that support for the hardline movement is increasing every day and U.S. and NATO forces will have a tough time beating the fighters without air support. 

"We want an Islamic state and Islamic law," Hamza said while sitting next to a dozen armed fighters in Afghanistan's southern mountains over the weekend. 

"We don't want the Americans or any other Christians." 

"As a Muslim it's my duty, I have to fight and I have to carry out jihad against the Americans until they leave." 

The Taliban, which controlled Afghanistan from 1996 until being ousted from power in late 2001 by the U.S.-led coalition, instituted a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Women were not allowed to leave their homes without a man and girls couldn't attend school. Men were forced to wear long beards and movies, television and music were banned. 

Hamza said Taliban fighters are moving from province to province to launch ambushes - roadside and suicide bombs - against western and Afghan security forces. He said fighters by the hundreds are ready to launch suicide attacks. 

"Whenever the mujahedeen are preparing for jihad, it means they made a decision to sacrifice their lives," Hamza said while sitting next to an isolated mud compound in Zabul province. 

"Whenever we need a suicide attack, (I will) give my life and that day will be the luckiest day of my life," he continued. 

"I am always ready to carry out a suicide attack against the Americans and their allies." 

A spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan's Constitution specifically spells out no Afghan laws can contradict Islam. 

Taliban militants have launched a growing number of attacks this year, including a record number of suicide bombings. NATO said Sunday there have been 78 suicide attacks this year that killed 142 Afghan civilians, 40 Afghan security personnel and 13 international troops. 

"It continues to shock and disgust me and others that the insurgents seem proud of their ability to indiscriminately kill so many of the people that they should be supporting in other means," NATO spokesman Maj. Luke Knittig said Tuesday. 

Hamza said the Taliban - who claim to control large areas of mountainous terrain in southern and eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan - now control most of Zabul province, saying: "Even one kilometre from Qalat the government doesn't have control," referring to Zabul's provincial capital. 

Knittig said NATO's International Security Assistance Force is aware of Taliban activity in Zabul. 

"But they are headed for the hills there. That's something we do know about and are addressing," he said. 

"Qalat city in Zabul is growing and has a good deal of development beyond the city itself. That's our focus, not chasing Taliban in the hills." 

NATO Gen. David Richards said Sunday a majority of Afghans would likely switch their allegiance to the Taliban if their lives show no visible improvements in the next six months. 

Hamza said the fighters are not paid, though western military officials and analysts say many Taliban fighters are villagers who fight only for a paycheque, anywhere from the equivalent of C$5.65 to C$11.30 a day, a decent sum in Afghanistan. Police and teachers make only C$80 a month, by comparison. 

"They are saying that we are getting money to fight," Hamza said. 

"It's all rumours that the Americans and our government are spreading. We are mujahedeen." 

"We are just fighting for our country, for Islam." 
End

Contractors in Afghanistan Are Making Big Money for Bad Work
Sun, 08 Oct 2006 19:47:17 -0700
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_43472.shtml

A highway that begins crumbling before it is finished. A school with a collapsed roof. A clinic with faulty plumbing. A farmers' cooperative that farmers can't use. Afghan police and military that, after training, are incapable of providing the most basic security. And contractors walking away with millions of dollars in aid money for the work. The Bush Administration touts the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan as a success story. Perhaps, in comparison to the violence-plagued efforts in Iraq and the incompetence-riddled efforts on the American Gulf Coast, everything is relative. A new report "Afghanistan, Inc.," issued by the non-profit organization CorpWatch, details the bungled reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.

Massive open-ended contracts have been granted without competitive bidding or with limited competition to many of the same politically connected corporations which are doing similar work in Iraq: Kellogg, Brown & Root (a subsidiary of Halliburton ), DynCorp, Blackwater, The Louis Berger Group, The Rendon Group and many more. Engineers, consultants, and mercenaries make as much as $1,000 a day, while the Afghans they employ make $5 per day.

These companies are pocketing millions, and leaving behind a people increasingly frustrated and angry with the results.

Instead of reprimanding these contractors for their poor work, USAID announced a new contract totalling $1.4 billion awarded to the joint venture of The Louis Berger Group, Inc. and Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. on September 22.

"It's a shame that after the disasterous performance of Louis Berger in Afghanistan in the last five years, the company has been awarded with such a large sum of money. It's telling that the punishment for wasting millions of taxpayers' money can get you millions more from our government," Nawa said of the new contract.

Fariba Nawa, an Afghan-American who returned to her native country to examine the progress of reconstruction, uncovers some examples of where the money has (and hasn't) gone, how the system of international aid works (and doesn't), and what it is really like in the villages and cities where outsiders are rebuilding the war-torn countryside.

In Afghanistan, Inc., you'll get an inside look at a system gone out of control, with little accountability and plenty of opportunity for graft and abuse. It isn't a story you want to read; it's a story you must read.

CorpWatch investigates and exposes corporate violations of human rights, environmental crimes, fraud and corruption around the world. Through its independent media work, CorpWatch fosters global justice, accountability and democratic control of corporations. 
End

Army Experts: Unconventional Conflicts to Dominate Future Operations
By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1570

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12, 2006 – Irregular, unconventional conflicts like those under way in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to dominate U.S. military operations for the foreseeable future, Army officials agreed this week at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual convention here. 
“I don’t see conventional challenges to be dominant for a long time,” said Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History, during a panel discussion on irregular warfare and counterinsurgency operations. 

“Our enemies are going to make us fight this kind of war until we get it right,” Crane said. “This is our future.” 

The Army is rewriting its doctrine and incorporating lessons learned in the terror war into its operations so it’s better postured to confront this new threat, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, during an Oct. 10 luncheon address. 

He pointed to the new counterinsurgency manual, Field Manual 3-24, developed jointly with the Marine Corps, as a big step toward preparing the force for the challenges associated with irregular warfare. 

In addition, transformational changes taking place within the Army -- in terms of equipment, training, technological advances and new approaches—are also helping ensure its ability to address unconventional threats. 

But fighting irregular conflicts and helping new democracies get on their feet isn’t something the military can do alone, said Kalev Sepp, assistant professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Calif. 

“This is revolutionary” -- building democracies and helping them establish capitalist economies and open and public police forces and judicial systems, Sepp pointed out. “The mission is too broad to put on the shoulders of the military alone,” he said. “It has to be interagency.” 

“We will not prevail with the force of arms alone,” Schoomaker agreed. 

Schoomaker warned about the stakes of the current conflict and expressed concern that the American people have lost the focus they demonstrated immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. 

“This is perhaps the most dangerous period in our lifetime,” he said. “We are in the midst of a long war and the stakes could not be higher.” 

Schoomaker noted that al Qaeda and other terror organizations hate all that America stands for and show no signs of wavering in their commitment to spread their hateful ideology. The Sept. 11 terror attacks “were not the war’s first salvos,” he said, but rather, the continuation of a long string of attacks against the United States and its interests. 

Yet five years into the terror war, Schoomaker warned that American response to this threat -- one against which he acknowledged, “victory is not assured” -- has been largely “tepid.” 

That’s a concern, he said, because the conflict is far from over. “We are much closer to the beginning than the end of this long conflict,” he said, emphasizing the need for public support and financial backing to ensure the mission succeeds. 

“Ultimately, victory requires a national strategic consensus, evident in both words and actions,” he said. “While such a common strategic foundation, understood and accepted by the American people, existed during the Cold War, … it is not yet evident that such common understanding exists today.” 

Schoomaker said it shouldn’t take another attack like the United States experienced on Sept. 11, 2001, “to shake us into action.” 
End

Gitmo Guards Brag of Beatings
Associated Press  |  October 06, 2006
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,116215,00.html?ESRC=marine-a.nl

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. - Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press. 

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer. 

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said. 

A 19-year-old Sailor referred to only as Bo "told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison," the statement said. 

"One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others," the statement said. The Sailor said he was never punished. 

The statement was provided to the AP on Thursday night by Lt. Col. Colby Vokey. He is the Marine Corps' defense coordinator for the western United States and based at Camp Pendleton. 

Calls left for representatives at Guantanamo Bay on Friday were not immediately returned. A Pentagon spokesman declined immediate comment. 

Other guards "also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees" that included hitting them, denying them water and "removing privileges for no reason." 

"About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees" and that included "punching in the face," the affidavit said. 

"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees." 

Vokey called for an investigation, saying the abuse alleged in the affidavit "is offensive and violates United States and international law." 

Guantanamo was internationally condemned shortly after it opened more than four years ago when pictures captured prisoners kneeling, shackled and being herded into wire cages. That was followed by reports of prisoner abuse, heavy-handed interrogations, hunger strikes and suicides. 

Military investigators said in July 2005 they confirmed abusive and degrading treatment of a suspected terrorist at Guantanamo Bay that included forcing him to wear a bra, dance with another man and behave like a dog. 

However, the chief investigator, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, said "no torture occurred" during the interrogation of Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. 

Last month, U.N. human rights investigators criticized the United States for failing to take steps to close Guantanamo Bay, home to 450 detainees, including 14 terrorist suspects who had been kept in secret CIA prisons around the world. 

Described as the most dangerous of America's "war on terror" prisoners, fewer than a dozen inmates have been charged with crimes. This fall, the Navy plans to open a new, $30-million maximum-security wing at its prison complex there, a concrete-and-steel structure replacing temporary camps. 
End


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## The Bread Guy (12 Oct 2006)

Longish read, but good one, on how the indig troops not quite playing as big a role in the 2001 take-over of Kandahar, shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act - http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#rid-33409

*Spinning the war in Afghanistan*
Sarah Chayes, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept-Oct 06
http://www.thebulletin.org/print.php?art_ofn=so06chayes

In September 11, 2001, I was in Paris, working as a radio reporter. The terrorist attacks shattered me, to a degree that took me by surprise. Covering the official condolence ceremony at the turreted French police headquarters, with the great bells of Notre Dame Cathedral throbbing in the background, I found myself weeping, unable to wipe my eyes because I had to hold my microphone. I was grateful to the French for dropping all the contentiousness that has characterized our peoples' long and intimate partnership. For days, they waited outside the U.S. Embassy to pay their respects. Conversations struck up between French men and women and Americans there had an achingly profound quality. Though the thought took days to surface, I began to feel that the horror that had befallen us might hide a miracle. It might goad us to go to work again, to be what we kept saying we were: the champions of human dignity, the exemplars of public participation in government, a government acting in good faith, the mentors of peoples struggling to be free.

Or it might not.

For there was something about the reaction to 9/11 that disturbed me. Along with the new openness, the surge of self-questioning in America, another tendency was emerging. It was a reflex to divide up the world into two opposing blocs: We the West versus Them--now embodied by Islam, which had suddenly appeared on the world stage to fill the role left vacant by the vanquished Soviet Union. The shorthand term for this notion, taken from the title of a book, entered our vocabulary: the Clash of Civilizations.

It was clear to me that the Al Qaeda terrorists who flew their planes into those enormously symbolic American buildings were trying to force people everywhere into splitting apart along these lines. Quite aside from the terrorists' use of mass murder, it was this intent that made them abhorrent to me. 

But some of us seemed to want the selfsame thing. And some of our leaders seemed to be showing the way, deliberately blurring all the myriad distinctions that give our world its depth and richness. Suddenly, the world was being described in binary terms, and instinctively, I knew that was wrong. An "us versus them" reaction may be normal in humans when attacked, but is it accurate? Is it productive? Is it the reaction that those to whom we look for guidance should be bringing out in us? Is this the best we can do? 

I don't think so. I don't believe in the Clash of Civilizations. I believe that most human beings share some basic aspirations and some basic values: freedom of determination, accountability, access to learning, and the reasonably equitable distribution of wealth, for example. How far different peoples have reached in their effort to achieve these things depends a lot on what has befallen them over the course of time--not on some irrevocable cultural difference. 

And so it seemed urgent to me, at that assumption-shattering moment--that moment full of potential and peril--to do my personal best to help counteract the tendency to caricature, to help bring out the human complexity of this new exchange. My background and abilities equipped me for this effort. I could talk to people on both sides of the alleged divide. I could help them hear each other. 

My editor at National Public Radio (NPR) sent me to Quetta, Pakistan, exactly where I wanted to go. Considered the most conservative and anti-American town in all of Pakistan, it had been the cradle of the Taliban movement. It was from Quetta that the Taliban, a reactionary group that used a radical reading of Islam as the basis for the world's latest experiment in totalitarianism, had set off in 1994 to capture nearby Kandahar, Afghanistan--to widespread international indifference. 

A few years later, Osama bin Laden joined the Taliban leadership there. In return for financial and military assistance in their effort to conquer the rest of Afghanistan, the Taliban offered bin Laden a haven where he could nurture and develop his Al Qaeda network. Kandahar became the base from which the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces took over ever--larger amounts of Afghanistan, until an opposing coalition of militias called the Northern Alliance was left clinging to only a tiny sliver of the country in the far north. 

Because of this foothold, it was in the north that most of the U.S. bombing had been concentrated after 9/11; and it was to the north that flocks of journalists had been dispatched. For the story most Americans seemed anxious to hear--of relieved Afghans welcoming American liberators--could be most plausibly reported from the north. 

The south was different. Well after the start of the war, U.S. planners were still struggling for a similar scenario there. They were looking for local insurgents, like the Northern Alliance, that U.S. bombing could be said merely to support. But it was harder to find them in the south. Seen as hostile and dangerous, cloaked in a darkness to match the Taliban's black robes, home to the core of the elusive Al Qaeda network, the Afghan south seemed 
impenetrable. 

But it could not be ignored. Kandahar had been the first capital of Afghanistan, and it was still the marrow of the nation's bones. And now, after 9/11, it was the antipode, the very place where the attacks had been planned. Quetta, with its promise of Kandahar once the Taliban fell, proposed just the challenge I hungered for. I arrived in the last days of October 2001.

As expected, it proved a difficult time and place to be an American journalist. But not for the reasons I had foreseen. The difficulty lay not in local hostility but in reporting back to a traumatized nation. 

"The worst period in my entire career," a friend and revered colleague confided to me as we compared notes afterward. He sent me a list of story ideas that his editors had rejected. 

"Our people simply didn't want us to do any reporting," my friend, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, complained. "They had already decided on the story they wanted and just assigned us to dig up some stuff to substantiate it." 

A CNN correspondent told me that she had received written instructions not to film civilian casualties. And I remember confabbing in the marbled hall of the opulent Quetta Serena Hotel with BBC reporter Adam Brookes in mid-November 2001, the weekend Kabul fell, listening to how he'd had to browbeat his desk editor to persuade him that Kandahar was still standing.

It was as though, because the 9/11 attacks had taken place in New York City and Washington, D.C.--the American nerve centers--they had blown out the critical-thinking apparatus in the people I had trusted to have one: the editors, the experienced journalists. 

National Public Radio was not immune, though my one civilian casualty piece did enjoy the full support of my editors, to their credit. It was a story that simply had to be reported, for the Afghan refugees I interviewed every day could think and talk of nothing else. Their hearts shattered by decades of gunfire and explosions, these refugees had as yet seen nothing like the bombs that were blowing up their country now. With no experience of precision ordinance, they were almost mad with fear, as their imaginations overloaded their mental circuitry with remembered images of carnage. That U.S. bombing was accurate was an important point. But that the bombing was traumatizing the Afghan civilians whom it was supposed to be liberating was just as true. The anguish I heard every day--the pleas to tell President George W. Bush, for the love of God, to stop the bombing--was not an act; it was real. And it seemed important for me to expose Americans to the psychological impact that this war was having, not the least because it might have future repercussions. Ideological movements like Osama bin Laden's are rooted in collective psychology just as much as matters more concrete.

So I did the story, visiting a hospital ward in Quetta, where most of the patients were children. I chose one small boy to open my report--at random really, because doctors were arriving to examine him, and their activity would give me some ambient sound to record. The boy was terribly injured; I wondered how he had ever survived the drive from Kandahar. It was so bad that I decided to censor myself. I took out the description of one of his wounds; I was afraid such a long list would sound like overkill. Even so, my story drew vituperative reactions from listeners. One said he was so angry that he almost had to pull his car off the road to vomit.

My editors, bless them, did not hesitate to run the piece. 

But as time went on, I began to sense impatience in Washington with my reporting. That same late 2001 period between the fall of Kabul and of Kandahar, when the BBC's Brookes had trouble with his desk, a senior NPR staff member whom I deeply admired wrote me an e-mail to the effect that he no longer trusted my work. He accused me of disseminating Taliban propaganda: I, like Brookes, was reporting that Kandahar was still in Taliban hands. He called my sources "pro-bin Laden," for why else would they be leaving Afghanistan at the very moment that the Taliban was losing control and anti-Taliban Afghans were celebrating?

For that report, I had interviewed truck drivers who were transporting loads of Kandahar's trademark pomegranates across the border to merchants in Pakistan. Were those workingmen "pro-bin Laden?" A withering U.S. bombing campaign was under way. In that context, could villagers not be simply fleeing their homes under the rain of fire without guilt by association with the Taliban? And--a most difficult question for Americans to untangle--was pro-Taliban necessarily the same as pro-bin Laden? 

These were the sorts of distinctions, I was learning, that it was imperative to make. Otherwise, we were going to get this wrong, with devastating consequences.



During the six weeks between 9/11 and my arrival in Pakistan, the U.S. government had worked quickly. CIA agents were dropped almost immediately into northern Afghanistan, with briefcases of money, to set about buying allies. Other officials sent out feelers to their contacts in the south, primarily in my destination, Quetta.

Alongside the teeming thousands of day laborers, bakers, trinket sellers, hustlers, and Taliban recruiting agents who clogged the streets of Quetta's Pashtunabad neighborhood---the flotsam of Afghanistan's various wars--a community of Afghan elites had also taken up quarters in the Pakistani town: engineers, many of them, the heads of humanitarian organizations or demining agencies, former officials of political factions, former resistance commanders. It was to this community that the American officials turned after 9/11, looking for anti-Taliban proxies to work with. 

Two sharply contrasting candidates quickly emerged: dapper, bald-headed Hamid Karzai, whose father had been speaker of the Afghan National Assembly in the golden age, before a 1970s communist coup; and Gul Agha Shirzai, an uncouth former Kandahar provincial governor who had presided over unspeakable chaos there in the early 1990s. 

Despite the stark contrast between these men, American planners decided to enroll them both. The notion was to mount a pincer operation against the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Karzai would sneak inside Afghanistan, pass Kandahar, then work his way back down toward it from the north, gathering followers. Gul Agha Shirzai would collect some fighters of his own and push up toward the city from the south. 

On October 23, 2001, just before I made it to Quetta, Shirzai was boasting to the Los Angeles Times that he could raise 5,000 fighters. "We are ready to move to Kandahar and get rid of the evil there," he told reporter Tyler Marshall. "Our men are inside and ready." But Shirzai swore he wanted no role in any post-Taliban government. "I don't have any desire for this," he claimed. 

Not a week after Marshall's article came out, I was checking in at the Serena Hotel. A reporter's first imperative upon landing a new beat is to develop sources. That means striking up acquaintanceships with people who are part of the story, and who, for whatever reason, wish to talk about it. It took a while, after I fused into the mass of my colleagues all grappling to cover the same events, like sharks roiling in the water over a piece of bloody meat. But eventually I found one. 

He was a commander in Shirzai's force whom I discovered in a public call office in Chaman, the Pakistani border town that rubs up against Afghanistan with the greedy voluptuousness of a spoiled cat. His name is Mahmad Anwar. He became a friend.

He proved to be a very good friend, and I never think of him with anything but warmth--even though I discovered later that he had yanked my chain with a charming shamelessness back then, recounting the events not as they actually transpired, but as Shirzai and his American advisers wished people to think they had. He took a boyish delight in the bright colors he threaded through the tapestry he wove for me. 

When I asked Mahmad Anwar, months later, to tell me the real story of the move on Kandahar, he agreed with relish. "We met secretly at Gul Agha Shirzai's house," he recounted, recalling the excited preparations. It would have been about October 12, 2001. 

It was a solemn session. Just three men were there. They accomplished the ablutions Muslims perform before prayer with a practiced ritual grace, and took a copy of the Koran down from its niche in a wall. Every Afghan house has one, placed somewhere aloft, above any other book. 

Shirzai unfolded the cloth that was wrapped around it to protect it from the ever-present dust, touched it to his lips, and the three men placed their hands upon it and swore: "By God Almighty, we will fight the Taliban to our deaths, if we must. And when we defeat them, we will turn over the government to educated men. This by God we vow."

Mahmad Anwar darted me a look to be sure I grasped the significance: "It was a sacred oath. We vowed to surrender our weapons and go home once the Taliban were done for." 

Such was the mood of self--sacrifice and the feeling of optimism about the implications of the coming Pax Americana, as many Afghans remember it. In that pregnant moment, they abruptly shed their bitterly earned cynicism. They were electrified by the belief that, with American help, the nightmare was going to end, and they would at last be able to lay the foundations of the kind of Afghan state they dreamed of: united under a qualified, accountable government. 

Grasping a wad of bills in his left hand, Gul Agha Shirzai licked a finger and paged through them with his right, counting out about $5,000 in Pakistani rupees for Mahmad Anwar, to pay for his men and their supplies. Armies, in Afghanistan, are personal affairs. Each commander calls up his own liegemen. As the meeting drew to a close, Mahmad Anwar pronounced a warning to Shirzai: "Do not tell Pakistan what we are doing." 

The role of the Pakistani government in Afghan affairs is one of the most contentious issues not just in Kandahar, but throughout the country. After more than two decades in which it has meddled industriously in the destiny of their country, almost all Afghans--even those who might once have benefited---mistrust the motives of their southern neighbor. 

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. During the savage decade-long war that followed, Pakistan gave aid and shelter to Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance, not to mention to millions of Afghan civilians who fled the carnage. Still, most Afghans think that Pakistani officials tried to determine the political results of that war, tried to replace the Soviet puppet at the head of the Afghan state with a puppet of their own. And Afghans resent it. They resent what feels like Pakistan's effort to run their country's economy. They breathe on the embers of a boundary dispute, "temporarily" settled more than a century ago, but in their view still legally open. And they resent the swarms of intelligence agents that Pakistan sends off to Afghanistan in the guise of students, manual laborers, diplomats, and even Afghan officials, won over or bought during years of exile. 

If the Pakistani authorities got mixed up in the anti-Taliban offensive, my border-dwelling friend Mahmad Anwar feared, it would mean danger for him and the rest of the force, for Pakistan had supported the Taliban regime from its very inception. From his vantage point in Chaman, Mahmad Anwar had observed the kind of assistance the Pakistani army and intelligence agency had provided the Taliban over the years. And now, in the wake of 9/11, they were turning on their black-turbaned protégés? They were converting to the antiterror cause? The switch was suspect, in most Afghans' view. Mahmad Anwar was sure that he and his men would be ambushed if Pakistani spies found out about their plans. Or, even if the fighters did survive, a Pakistani connection with their activities could only hide some ulterior motive, Mahmad Anwar believed.

Shirzai nodded absently at his warning, and the men filed downstairs, where they bumped into a tall Westerner. Shirzai introduced him as "an envoy from the forces in the Gulf." The presence of this man, at such an early stage, indicates how much it was at U.S. bidding that Shirzai rounded up his force at all. On his own, Kandaharis assure me, Shirzai had no followers at all. Only U.S. dollars, transformed into the grubby bills he had just counted out for Mahmad Anwar, allowed him to buy some. 

About a month after that discreet meeting, a messenger arrived at Mahmad Anwar's house. The rendezvous was for that night.

The dozens of wooly haired fighters left Quetta a little before 10 p.m.--under the noses of more than a hundred foreign journalists, not one of whom got the story. Pulling up at the turnoff, Mahmad Anwar gasped. At the head of a line of vehicles, two Pakistani army trucks were idling. 

"Yeah, sure, we tried to hide from the Pakistanis," he remarked to his men. "But here they are." 

It is hard to believe that Mahmad Anwar or anyone else involved really thought it possible to keep this venture secret, given the legendary omniscience of the Pakistani intelligence agency, and given the close U.S.--Pakistan cooperation on the anti-Taliban effort. Still, the overt collaboration was a sore point with the numerous Afghans who knew about it at the time. 

Soon, headlights probing, another several dozen trucks drove up--Gul Agha Shirzai's personal contingent--and the militiamen and their Pakistani shepherds gunned it for the border. The herd of trucks thundered through a half-dozen police checkpoints along the rough dirt road, Pakistani escorts signing to their colleagues to lower the ropes. When they reached the border, the Pakistanis stopped and pulled aside. 

The Afghans' trucks leapt forward, shouldering each other aside on the inky road, passing and being passed in a testosterone-fueled competition. Mahmad Anwar boasts that only he was able to keep up with Shirzai. It was wintertime, in the desert night. "We could hardly move our fingers." After a while, the former governor stopped and had his men collect some twigs and light a fire. "We didn't even have any weapons yet," Mahmad Anwar recalled, still dumbfounded at the memory. What kind of an invasion was this, anyway? "And now the Pakistanis knew all about us." Furious, he strode over to join Shirzai. 

"We agreed not to tell Pakistan about our plans. What happened?" 

"We couldn't cross the border without Pakistan's permission," replied Shirzai. 

"We have the Americans with us," Mahmad Anwar retorted. "What do we need with Pakistan?"

Looking back, Mahmad Anwar thinks Shirzai was putting his fealty on display. He judges the Pakistani government must have realized by then that its protégés in the Taliban were doomed. And, with characteristic versatility, it was already switching its bets. It was maneuvering to get some trusty of its own placed in charge of strategic Kandahar under the new Afghan regime. Gul Agha Shirzai was the man.

A few hours later, the ragtag invasion force reached its staging point just inside Afghanistan. "I couldn't make out what was going on," Mahmad Anwar remembered. "How could we fight without guns? So I asked Shirzai: 'Where will we get weapons for this fighting?' Shirzai answered, 'Maybe the Americans will give us some.'"

As if on signal, the fighters sighted a ball of dust spinning toward them across the barren landscape in the pale, rising light. It was a truck. When a press of excited men rolled back its tarps, Mahmad Anwar eyeballed some 600 brand new Kalashnikovs, and machine guns and grenade launchers, straight from Pakistan. He watched his comrades crowd around the truck, like starving men at a food distribution. So this was why Shirzai had been so blasé, he thought. 

Throughout the morning, meanwhile, new fighters were drifting in to join the force. Among them was another man who would become my friend, the future police chief of Kandahar and Kabul, Muhammad Akrem Khakrezwal.

A year and a half later, when I was fitting the pieces of this story together, realizing how much of it I had gotten wrong in my reporting at the time, I asked Akrem for his version.

He invited me to come by his house around 4 p.m. It was July, hot beyond imagination. Most of Kandahar was still asleep, the leaden torpor not yet broken. I joined Akrem at his silent house, and, as he spread himself comfortably on his side, leaning one arm on a cushion laid with tasteful carpet, I flipped back the cover of a notebook.

Akrem confirmed Mahmad Anwar's estimate of 600 automatic rifles, plus 60-100 rocket launchers loaded in the truck that arrived the same morning he did. "I asked Gul Agha where he got them, for they were not the kind you find in the bazaar. He said the Americans had bought them from Pakistan and given them to him."

A second weapons delivery came about a week later. "They told us to build fires to guide the plane," he said, grimacing in recollection at the strenuous nighttime hike. The airdrop included weapons, ammunition, and food--cases of Meals Ready to Eat, sealed in heavy, dun-colored plastic. You have to open up the outside envelope, pour about two fingers of water in, and lean it up against a rock to let the chemical heat warm the food. Whether the Afghans figured that out is anyone's guess.

In any case, they got a tutorial by the next day. Two U.S. helicopters angled noisily at them and, touching down in a blizzard of dust and stones, deposited a half-dozen Special Forces soldiers near the Afghan encampment. The Americans set up their sophisticated communications devices on the hoods of some trucks Shirzai provided, all stems and antennae like a daddy longlegs. 

The next day, this patchwork anti-Taliban force struck out toward the main road to Kandahar. The plan was to cut the Taliban's supply lines. 

Circling like flies overhead in maddening figure eights, two U.S. jets tracked the force. The sound reassured the Afghans, with its promise of overpowering backup. But it also emphasized the danger of their position. 

"We were really frightened," Akrem recalled, an unsentimental admission. "We were sure the Taliban would fall on us any minute." 

But apart from the noise of the planes--mosquitoes' whines in a lower register--silence. At sundown, a moment of chest-constricting peace in the desert, when the slanting light paints the hills in burnished gold, the militiamen stopped at a stream to wash and pray. 

And then the moment shattered like exploding glass. The stuttering bark of automatic weapons ripped the air, ricocheting against the rocks, amplified a thousand times. The men scattered from the stream. They dove for cover. Stony splinters shot past; the whine of deflected bullets lanced their ears. 

And it got worse: Another group of Taliban fighters was closing in from behind. 

"The American soldiers told us their friends in the planes would try to bomb them."

The Special Forces soldiers struggled to bring some order to their proxies' pell-mell retreat. 

Those droning bombers did get a bead and let loose, blowing up some seven trucks, Akrem estimated. And that settled the fight. The anti---Taliban militia captured a heavy gun and 20 prisoners. But the next day, Shirzai let the Taliban captives go, even giving them some money to speed them on their way. Hamid Karzai did the same thing, say men who were with him on the far side of Kandahar, in the mountains to the north. Asked why, the fighters shrug their shoulders, disapproval manifest, if unspoken. 

Perhaps the leniency was aimed at post-war reconciliation, making a distinction between the Taliban rank and file--conscripted boy-soldiers, mostly--and the leaders of the movement. Maybe it indicated that the lines separating the opposing camps were not traced as sharply as Western observers might presume. 

The next day, the fighters reached the main road, at a strategic pass. They were alone, unopposed. Celebrating, they began to deploy in the hills above, when a car approached, a single Arab at the wheel. The fighters captured him, binding his hands, and shot up the occupants of a second vehicle that approached a while later.

After that, for fully three weeks, Akrem said, "Not a single Talib, by God, did we see."

Mahmad Anwar remembered the same thing. "There was no fighting at all," he confessed. "The Americans did everything." After the one skirmish by the brook, the Americans laid down the rule: "'From now on, don't you move without our order.' We didn't kill a single person with a gun," Mahmad Anwar swore, innocently. Indeed, he remembered a rather embarrassing exchange with some of the U.S. Special Forces soldiers, after they all reached Kandahar. "So," he remembered boasting to the American troops. "We brought you to Kandahar at last."

"What are you talking about," the U.S. soldiers retorted. "We brought you to Kandahar." 



I must say I blushed to hear these revelations after the fact. 

Being a journalist, even one of good faith, is always an exercise in approximation. There is just not enough time, at least in radio, to be sure you got it right. Morning Edition has a 4.5-minute hole in tomorrow's show. You have to come up with something by the end of the day, almost anything. So you charge around talking to as many people as you can find in the closing window of time. You sort through the suspected manipulations. You work to put a story together that adds something, and feels plausible--given what you've been told and what you think of the people who did the telling. And when in doubt, you conform. It is the safest course, and it is the course your editors feel comfortable with. That stuff about scoops was never my experience. NPR, at best, strives to add a new angle or some needed depth to a story someone else has broken. My editors never really wanted me to do the breaking. They never liked having me out on a limb. 

But Afghanistan is a place of too many layers to give itself up to the tactics of a rushed conformity. Afghanistan only uncovers itself with intimacy. And intimacy takes time. It takes a long time to learn to read the signs, to learn how to discover behind people's words a piece of the truth they dissemble. 

Like other journalists that November 2001, I reported frequent fighting between the Taliban and Shirzai's militia, the two sides, for example, "battling for control of the main road to Kandahar." I told of the strategic pass changing hands; I told how, by contrast, the forces under Hamid Karzai "negotiated--not fought--their way toward the Kandahar from the north." The military pressure that Shirzai's group was putting on from the other side, to help accelerate Karzai's negotiations, seemed at least partially to warrant the friendship that developed between the unsavory warlord and his American patrons. 

But the whole picture was false. This din of battle was an illusion that both elements of the anti-Taliban alliance south of Kandahar wanted conveyed: the Americans so as to demonstrate the strength of the local resistance to the fundamentalist militia, and Gul Agha Shirzai--displaying a brilliant flair for the value of PR--to "gain prestige," as Akrem put it. "Gul Agha kept saying there were battles," he told me. But "Hitz jang nawa. There was no fighting at all." 

And I, like so many other reporters, fell for it.
-----
Sarah Chayes, a former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, gave up journalism in 2002 to settle in Afghanistan. After working with President Hamid Karzai's older brother at the helm of his nonprofit organization, Chayes turned to economic development. She currently runs a cooperative that manufactures natural skin-care products. Her forthcoming book, The Punishment of Virtue (Penguin Press), recounts post-Taliban Afghanistan as she has witnessed it. This article is an excerpt.


----------



## GAP (13 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 13 October 2006*

1 NATO soldier dead, 1 wounded in suicide attack
Updated Fri. Oct. 13 2006 8:58 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061012/blast_afghan_061013/20061013?hub=TopStories

One NATO soldier is dead and another is wounded after a suicide bomber drove a car into a convoy Friday in southern Afghanistan. 

Eight civilians were killed and eight were wounded in the attack which took place in Kandahar City. 

Following the attack, the wounded NATO soldiers were taken to a military medical facility. One of the soldiers died in hospital 

The attack, which happened in Kandahar City, damaged two NATO vehicles and two civilian vehicles, according to Abdul Wasae, a police official at the scene. 

Twelve shopfronts were damaged in the blast and parts of the suicide vehicle were scattered around the scene as firefighters attempted to put out the flames. 

A woman and two children were among the injured, according to reports. 

NATO has not disclosed the nationalities of the two soldiers who were wounded. They were taken to a military medical facility for treatment, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesperson 

About 2,200 Canadian soldiers are based in Kandahar province. Another 100 more are stationed in Kabul. 
More on link

Original Story
Suicide bomber targets NATO convoy in Afghanistan
Associated Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061013.wafghan1013/BNStory/International/home

Kandahar — A suicide bomber in a car targeted a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing eight civilians and wounding 10 other people including two NATO soldiers, alliance and police officials said.

The attack in Kandahar city also damaged two NATO and two civilian vehicles, said Abdul Wasae, a police official at the scene.

Pieces of the vehicle used in the bombing were scattered over the blast site and smoke rose from the scene as firefighters tried to put out the flames. The fronts of 12 shops were damaged.

The eight wounded civilians included two children and a woman, said Masood Khan, a doctor at a local hospital where they were being treated.

The two soldiers wounded in the blast were taken to a military medical facility for treatment, said Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, a NATO spokesman. He would not disclose their nationalities.

Some 2,300 Canadian troops are based in Kandahar province as part of the NATO-led mission. When reached by the Canadian Press, a military spokeswoman said she could not say whether the wounded NATO soldiers are Canadian.

While NATO has said clashes with insurgents have decreased in the last month in southern Afghanistan, the militants are increasingly resorting to roadside and suicide attacks in their bid to weaken the government and hit foreign troops.
More on link

Peacekeeper wounded in Afghanistan may have been shot by other Finns  
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Peacekeeper+wounded+in+Afghanistan+may+have+been+shot+by+other+Finns/1135222285735

According to the Defence Staff Investigation Department, it is possible that the Finnish peacekeeper who was wounded in Afghanistan a couple of week ago may have in fact been the victim of a friendly-fire incident. 
      Previously it was assumed that the Afghani police may have opened fire against the Finns, believing them to be insurgents. 
      The Investigation Department does not want to reveal at this stage on what evidence the latest suspicions are based. According to Ossi Kervinen, Director of Public Affairs at the Defence Staff, the preliminary investigation is still very much in progress and a public announcement of certain details might affect those still to be heard on the matter. 
      
Presumably the new suspicions arose after those present were heard and the locations of the Finnish soldiers at the scene were compared. Also, the shooter has not been found among the Afghanis. 
      The investigation into the incident is still under way, and Kervinen refrained from speculating when it might be concluded. 
      Among other things, the Defence Staff have requested executive assistance from the National Bureau of Investigation (Finland's central criminal police) and are still waiting for certain answers from the Bureau. 
      
The incident took place at the beginning of October, while a Finnish detachment of six peacekeepers was performing a night-movement exercise on a firing-range in darkness in Aybak District in Northern Afghanistan. The exchange of fire lasted about 15 minutes. 
      The wounded soldier underwent surgery twice at a Norwegian field hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif, after which he was quickly repatriated. According to the doctor in charge of his care, the peacekeeper is on his way to recovery, but further surgery will be needed. 
End



Playing the body count for votes   
J.L. Granatstein, National Post Published: Friday, October 13, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=bfb37125-4437-4095-9f4d-31e916700ca0&p=1

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton has been demanding that Canada cease its combat role in Kandahar, Afghanistan -- a war, he says, that cannot be won -- and devote itself to aid and development efforts there. In arguing this, he is on the moderate edge of his party -- constituency associations at the NDP's recent convention proposed resolutions that called Canadian troops "terrorists" and an "occupation" force -- but he easily carried his delegates with him. Support the troops, the New Democrats cry. Bring 'em home. Opinion polls suggest that preaching against the Afghan War resonates with Canadians.

The New Democratic Party is not one with much military expertise in its ranks. Layton himself has none; nor does Alexa McDonough, the former party leader. Only Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer (who spoke in opposition to Layton's Afghan policy at the convention) and Winnipeg MP Bill Blaikie speak with any authority on military matters.

And yet, the NDP is scoring points with its Afghanistan position, especially as the casualties in Canada's Kandahar operation continue their steady rise. Why?

The NDP always harks back to Canada's proud tradition of United Nations peacekeeping. Canadians love peacekeeping, which they associate with doing good, a military on the cheap, no casualties and a role that differentiates them from their superpower neighbour. For a half-century, we like to imagine, Canadians kept the peace in Cyprus, the Middle East, the Congo, and dozens of other troubled countries with their blue berets and white-painted vehicles, while the United States makes war everywhere.

Yet this popular belief bears scant connection with either history or the reality of modern UN operations. Unfortunately, neither the NDP nor the public seems to care.

In fact, the NDP would far prefer Canada's troops be deployed to Darfur in Sudan than to Kandahar. There, the UN would be in charge, or so Layton appears to believe.

There are, of course, a few practical problems with a Darfur operation. The Khartoum government refuses entry to UN troops and threatens a jihad against them if they dare to come. Moreover, Canada has no way to get troops to Darfur (even if it had the troops to send), no way to support them logistically in a barren area of the world, and no way to get them out in an emergency. Finally, the casualties in Darfur might be far higher than in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, because the U.S. is (relatively) uninvolved and because women and children are being brutalized, Darfur is the NDP's preferred operation.

The Afghanistan operation by contrast is portrayed as the work of a coalition of the willing -- the U.S., NATO, and a few other American satraps such as Australia. To Layton, Kandahar is just another part of George W. Bush's Great War on Terror. "It's time," he said on Sept. 26, "for a new approach. One that puts reconstruction, development and aid ahead of counter-insurgency."

What Layton refuses to acknowledge is that the Afghan operation has been sanctioned by repeated UN resolutions, and is yet another military operation sub-contracted by the UN to those who are willing to pick up the burden. The UN's undersecretary-general for peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, says bluntly that traditional UN peacekeepers can't do the job in Afghanistan where robust forces are needed to take on the Taliban insurgents. The world organization wants its political and humanitarian efforts -- and, not least, its efforts to assist women and children -- in Afghanistan to succeed, and Guehenno understands that without military action, the development and stabilization efforts could be stymied. The undersecretary-general last week even congratulated Canada for sending tanks to Kandahar.
More on link

Suicide bombing kills 8 civilians in S. Afghanistan  
October 13, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/13/eng20061013_311573.html

A suicide car bombing killed eight civilians and injured eight persons on Friday in the southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan, an official told Xinhua. 

Eight civilians were killed and eight persons including two NATO soldiers injured in the bombing, which happened at around 10: 00 a.m. local time in Kandahar city, the provincial capital, said Kumbkhla, head of local Minwais Hospital. 

Meanwhile, Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Kandahar Governor, told Xinhua that the bombing was targeting at a NATO military convoy and had damaged a NATO vehicle. 

Maj. Dominic White, a spokesman for NATO troops, told Xinhua that "a low number of casualties" happened to NATO soldiers, but he declined to release the exact number. 

He said at least five civilians were killed in the bombing, but he had no information about the injured civilians. 

Due to backwardness in military equipment and tactics, Taliban and other militants have frequently carried out suicide bombings against ISAF troops in this country. 

Because of rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled nearly five years ago. 

Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed this year in this volatile country. 

Source: Xinhua
End


More NZ troops to Afghanistan  October 13, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/13/eng20061013_311634.html

More than 100 New Zealand soldiers will be heading to Afghanistan on Monday, said a military official Friday. 

The contingent will relieve the personnel who have been serving with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in the Bamyan Province for the last six months. 

They will be heading to an icy winter where temperatures can reach as low as minus-20 degrees. Group Captain Kevin Short said the biggest challenge will be achieving their objectives while enduring such a harsh winter. 

Fourteen fewer personnel are being used on the winter rotation because the icy conditions and deep snow make it too difficult to patrol a number of mountain ranges and passes. 

The deployment is the ninth rotation to serve in Afghanistan. The Reconstruction Team's job is to ensure security in Bamyan province, through regular patrols, and liaising with local government to help distribute aid and improve infrastructure. 

Source: Xinhua 
End


U.S. transfers 16 Guantanamo detainees to Afghanistan  
October 13, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/13/eng20061013_311363.html

The United States on Thursday transferred 16 detainees from the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Afghanistan, and one detainee to Morocco, the Pentagon announced. 

With Thursday's transfer, Washington has transferred about 335 detainees from Guantanamo to foreign governments, either for release or for continued detention. 

Approximately 440 detainees remain at Guantanamo. 

Of those still being held at the Guantanamo, about 110 have been determined by the U.S. government as eligible for transfer or release through a comprehensive series of review processes, the Pentagon said in a statement. 

The Defense Department "expects that there will continue to be other transfers and releases of detainees," and "a determination about the continued detention or transfer of a detainee is based on the best information and evidence available at the time, both classified and unclassified," it said. 

The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo in January 2002, to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Ali Ammad Jalali: Afghanistan's 'light footprint' leads to failure
01:00 AM EDT on Friday, October 13, 2006KABUL, Afghanistan
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20061013_ctafgha.3232542.html

AFGHANISTAN faces the worst crisis since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Attacks by a resurgent Taliban and acts of suicide terrorism have taken the lives of more than 2,000 people this year; poor governance and a lack of economic opportunities erode security daily; drug production has increased to a record high; the government is losing control of an increasing number of districts to insurgents or warlords, and corruption is rampant.

Not long ago, Afghanistan -- with its successful, free presidential and parliamentary elections, improvement in women's rights and free media -- was advertised as a success story among post-conflict societies. It was considered an example for Iraq. Today, the Iraqi situation inspires acts of terrorism in Afghanistan.

What went wrong? Was it the deployment of insufficient troops in a large, mountainous country or the investment of minimal funds to rebuild a heavily destroyed land? Did the U.S. war in Iraq shift needed attention and resources from an incomplete mission in Afghanistan? Were the incoherent reconstruction approaches of the international community and Afghan government responsible? Was it the failure to address the regional dimension of insurgency and terrorism? All of the above?

No one can ignore the notable progress in Afghanistan, but the current troubles are a result of what was not done rather than what was done.

From the outset, two contradictory concepts drove international intervention in Afghanistan. The country was described as the major front of a global war on terrorism, yet the intervention was a "light footprint" engagement. This "light footprint" continues to impair every aspect of reconstruction in Afghanistan.
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Photo Gallery: USS Enterprise at ready for Afghanistan duty  
Photos by Jennifer H. Svan, ©Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Friday, October 13, 2006
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=40718

The sound of war at sea is the rumble of jets catapulting off the USS Enterprise deck. As the ferocity of fighting in Afghanistan goes, so does the pace of operations aboard the ship: Steady, sometimes intense, with little letup and two missed port calls since Sept. 2.

As the ferocity of fighting in Afghanistan goes, so does the pace of operations aboard the ship: Steady, sometimes intense, with little letup and two missed port calls since Sept. 2.

In five weeks, aircraft from the ship’s Carrier Air Wing One have dropped more than 90 bombs in support of NATO and coalition ground troops in Afghanistan.

Each day, about 14 F-18 sorties shoot off the flight deck towards the southern and eastern parts of the country, loaded and ready to fire.

“Sometimes that support is just a presence and sometimes that support is dropping bombs on the bad guys,” said Capt. Mark E. Wralstad, Carrier Air Wing One commander.
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France, Germany express concern over security in Afghanistan 
 October 13, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/13/eng20061013_311328.html

France and Germany on Thursday voiced worries over the deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan. 

"France and Germany expressed their concern over the security situation of Afghanistan," the Franco-German committee of Defense and Security said in a joint statement. It also called for joint efforts from the international community to fight terrorism. 

Some 2,750 German soldiers, 1,200 French soldiers and 200 French special forces are currently deployed in Afghanistan. France has lost seven soldiers, including six members of its special forces, during the past 12 months in the war-torn Central Asian state. 

The two European countries also urged the Sudanese government to accept the United Nation's proposed peacekeeping force for the western Darfur region, following the "tragedy experienced by the Darfur people". 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Defense Department official going to Afghanistan — as Marine   
The Associated Press Published: October 12, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/12/america/NA_GEN_US_Official_Deployment.php 

WASHINGTON Paul McHale, a top civilian Pentagon official and a former congressman, has been recalled to active duty and will be sent to Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned.

McHale, the assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, will head overseas by the end of the year, according to a Defense Department official who requested anonymity because the time and location of the deployment had not been released publicly.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke confirmed on Thursday that McHale would be taking a leave of absence to go back on active duty.

"Like many other Marine reservists, Secretary McHale has been recalled to active duty and will serve overseas," said Krenke.

She said he is expected to return to his civilian Pentagon job after he completes his service.

 WASHINGTON Paul McHale, a top civilian Pentagon official and a former congressman, has been recalled to active duty and will be sent to Afghanistan, The Associated Press has learned.

McHale, the assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, will head overseas by the end of the year, according to a Defense Department official who requested anonymity because the time and location of the deployment had not been released publicly.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke confirmed on Thursday that McHale would be taking a leave of absence to go back on active duty.

"Like many other Marine reservists, Secretary McHale has been recalled to active duty and will serve overseas," said Krenke.

She said he is expected to return to his civilian Pentagon job after he completes his service.
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AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: UN-assisted Afghan repatriation ends
12 Oct 2006 17:36:33 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/3b869cc7f134b39e04a7c509e08060dd.htm

 ISLAMABAD, 12 October (IRIN) - After five years in operation, the UN-assisted Afghan repatriation programme came to an end on Thursday, said UN officials in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. 

"Today is the last scheduled departure for [UNHCR-assisted] voluntary Afghan repatriation across the country [Pakistan]," said Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad. 

The UN refugee agency has been operating the programme since 2002 under a special tripartite agreement between UNHCR and the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

The tripartite accord will officially expire at the end of December 2006 but repatriations have already been stopped due to slow returns and the upcoming registration of Afghan citizens in Pakistan, starting on 15 October. 

"Undoubtedly, the Afghan operation from Pakistan is the biggest such operation in UNHCR's history, under which 2.8 million Afghans returned in a space of five years," Tan maintained.

Under the programme, Afghan returnees were eligible for transport assistance ranging from US $4 to $37 per person, depending on the distance to their destination inside Afghanistan, as well as a monetary grant of $12 to help them with additional costs to re-establish their lives. 
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2 kidnapped Pakistani engineers released in S. Afghanistan  
Friday October 13, 2006 (0126 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156975

KABUL: The Taliban released two abducted Pakistani engineers in southern Kandahar province of Afghanistan Thursday, a local official told Xinhua. 

The two engineers, who were working for a road construction company, were freed after Taliban militants were paid a big ransom of 60,000 U.S. dollars, said Haji Aqha Lalei, head of the reconciliation commission in Kandahar. 

He didn`t say who had paid the ransom, but said local elders and government had negotiated with the militants for the hostages` release. Some gunmen kidnapped the engineers, who were carrying out some surveying work at a construction site, on Sunday. 

During the kidnapping process, a conflict broke out between the militants and the policemen working as guards at the site, killing two insurgents and injuring three policemen. However, a purported Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said he had no information about the kidnapping case. 
End

South Dakota MP unit headed to Afghanistan:
A dangerous assignment in a dangerous land, says Guard spokesman Ward
By Tom Lawrence, Black Hills Pioneer October 12, 2006 
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1300&dept_id=156923&newsid=17318663&PAG=461&rfi=9

RAPID CITY - A group of military policemen from South Dakota are headed to Afghanistan.  
Advertisement


The 235th Military Police Company will be deployed next week and 150 soldiers will perform security details in Afghanistan. They will go to Fort Bliss, Texas, next week and then on to Afghanistan after spending 90 days completing the required training at a mobilization station. The unit is deploying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and will be activated for a maximum of 525 days.
The soldiers and their families will take part in deployment ceremony at the Rapid City Central High School gymnasium at 10 a.m. Saturday; Gov. Mike Rounds and Maj. Gen. Michael A. Gorman will speak during the ceremony, which is open to the public.
The MPs will work in several high-risk areas, according to Major Orson Ward. "This is dangerous work in a dangerous country," Ward said. "But our soldiers are highly trained and capable of handing these types of missions."
They will be led by Capt. Jerime Porter, 34, who has been an MP during his entire six years in the National Guard.
Porter said his men will receive 90 days of intense training at Fort Bliss. "It's hands-on training that goes above and beyond what they have received before," he said.
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Bleeding Afghanistan
Fri, 06 Oct 2006 15:02:50 -0700
http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/11641/Bleeding_Afghanistan

Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence
This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. Fifty cruise missiles were launched from submarines in the Arabian Sea. B52 and B2 Stealth bombers began air strikes. The Pentagon called the attack Operation Enduring Freedom. The invasion came less than a month after 9/11. Among the Bush administration’s goals were the capture of Osama Bin Laden and the dismantling of the Taliban.

Five years later, neither objective has been realized. In recent months the Taliban has seized control of entire regions of the country. The security situation has worsened as suicide bombings are up 600 percent this year. Opium and poppy cultivation are at record highs. NATO forces are suffering their highest casualty rate in five years. The number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has now reached about 20,000—the highest number of U.S. forces in the country since the invasion. Meanwhile, the Bush administration continues to hold hundreds of prisoners without charge at Bagram airbase.
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Canada troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana plants
Thu Oct 12, 2006 4:12pm ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-12T232757Z_01_N12349486_RTRUKOC_0_US-CANADA-MARIJUANA.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C2_worldNews-8

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of 10-feet (three meter) high marijuana plants.

General Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, said on Thursday that Taliban fighters were using the forests as cover. In response, the crew of at least one armored car had camouflaged their vehicle with marijuana.

"The challenge is that marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices ... and as a result you really have to be careful that the Taliban don't dodge in and out of those marijuana forests," he said in a speech in Ottawa.

"We tried burning them with white phosphorous -- it didn't work. We tried burning them with diesel -- it didn't work. The plants are so full of water right now ... that we simply couldn't burn them," he said.

Even successful incineration had its drawbacks.

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those (forests) did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hillier said dryly.

One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."
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Pakistan catches alleged plotters
POSTED: 0336 GMT (1136 HKT), October 11, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/11/pakistan.arrests.ap/index.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan's president on Wednesday said authorities had captured "extremists" allegedly behind an attempt on his life.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf's comments were the first to confirm that any suspects were in custody following last week's explosion in a park near his residence in Rawalpindi, the garrison city close to the capital, Islamabad, and the discovery of two rockets planted near the National Assembly. (Full story)

Asked at a news conference whether the explosion and rockets were meant for him, Musharraf said: "I cannot say for sure whether I was being targeted. Maybe I was."

"We have unearthed the whole gang. We have caught the culprits and they are extremists," he said without describing them further nor saying how many had been detained.

Nobody was hurt in either incident. On Saturday, another two Russian-made 107 mm rockets were found and defused near the headquarters of Pakistan's spy agency. The interior minister said they were planted by "miscreants," a term often used by Pakistani officials when referring to Islamic militants.

Musharraf has survived at least three known attempts on his life since taking power in a bloodless coup in 1999. At least 16 people were killed in a suicide bomb attack on his convoy in Rawalpindi in 2003.

The attempts on Musharraf have been blamed on al-Qaeda-linked militants.

The Pakistani president also said that a Sept. 5 truce between Islamic militants and the government in the North Waziristan tribal region was not assured, saying it was vital that local authorities help strengthen the standing of the traditional tribal elders in the area over pro-Taliban extremists.
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Locals want role in Pakistan's quake reconstruction
A year after an earthquake killed 73,000, rural leaders say they need a greater voice in rebuilding.
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor 
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1012/p07s02-wosc.html

MANSEHRA, PAKISTAN – There are mornings when Sardar Bashir, a mayor in this earthquake-affected region of Pakistan, wishes he had never been elected to local government. Angry residents often crowd his office, lamenting the slow pace of reconstruction and the lags in basic amenities. 
"All the time, the communities are facing problems ... complaining about water problems, road problems. They're saying, 'You're not doing anything,' " says Mr. Bashir, a union council nazim, or mayor, representing Shohal Mazullah, Balakot, in North West Frontier Province. 

Bashir, a survivor himself of the Oct. 8, 2005 earthquake that killed 73,000 people, certainly welcomes the civic outpouring that has arisen from the rubble of the earthquake. It's the very expression of grass-roots politics envisioned by sweeping government changes in 2001. 

What frustrates Bashir, however, is that he has no power to address these concerns. They pour into his office each day, but when he carries them to the federal government or the military, they fall on deaf ears, he says. "[The Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority] doesn't listen to us in any way. We know what the situation is, but they don't listen to us."

His complaint is echoed by other union council nazims who say that, while they best know their communities' reconstruction needs, their suggestions have been marginalized or ignored altogether by federal authorities during the past year of earthquake recovery. "If they listened to us in making the policy, 80 to 90 percent of the problems would be solved," Bashir says.

Comments like this seem to confirm worries that have long hovered over Pakistan's worst natural disaster: The military-led administration has dominated the reconstruction process, often to the detriment of survivors. Federal policies, observers say, have contributed to inefficiencies that have, in aggregate, greatly slowed the national project of recovery.

"[Local governments] have been paralyzed," says Kaiser Bengali, a Karachi-based analyst. "This was an opportunity to place the devolved local government at the heart of the reconstruction. But we've lost that opportunity."
More on link







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## GAP (13 Oct 2006)

*More Articles found 13 October 2006*

Canada armed forces "on life support": top soldier
Thu Oct 12, 2006 5:27 PM EDT
http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-12T212410Z_01_N12294136_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-DEFENSE-CANADA-COL.XML

By David Ljunggren

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's overstretched armed forces "are still very much on life support systems" despite recent budget increases, the country's top soldier said on Thursday.

General Rick Hillier's remarks were clearly aimed at former Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who was cool to the military and presided over sharp cuts in spending during his time in power from 1993 to 2003.

Canada currently has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan and Hillier said they need more armored vehicles immediately.

Chretien was replaced by fellow Liberal Paul Martin, who upped military spending. Canada's new Conservative government, which won power in January in part on a promise to boost the armed forces, says it will spend C$17 billion ($15 billion) on new helicopters, planes, ships and trucks.

Although Hillier is known for being outspoken, his remarks to the Canadian Association of Defense and Security Industries on Thursday were noticeably blunt.

"We are just starting to emerge from a decade of darkness in the Canadian forces, where everything that we did, every day's activity, all of our focus intellectually and physically (was) designed to constrain, reduce, close, get rid of, stop doing or minimize," Hillier said.

The cuts in both funding and personnel were "incredibly demoralizing" and came at the same time as the remaining troops were being asked to work harder.

"The combination was a body blow that we in uniform now are just beginning to realize how severe it was (sic). The body blow of all those things, a confluence of the perfect storm, has left us in a fragile set of circumstances, still very much on life support systems across the Canadian forces," Hillier said.

"But we're headed back in a way that all of us are proud to be a part of ... We've got investment coming in and we've actually started down the road to do a whole bunch of things that we've been waiting for decades to get at."

Canada has a total of 84,000 full-time and reserve soldiers. Last year the Liberals vowed expand the regular armed forces by 5,000 soldiers to 67,000 over five years. The Conservatives plan to increase that total to 75,000.

"Right now in recruiting centers across our country ... we're seeing twice as many applicants show up as we did this time last year," Hillier said.

($1=$1.13 Canadian)
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## GAP (14 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 14 October 2006*

Soldier loses two legs, but finds a calling
He's working hard to make Edmonton centre of excellence in aiding amputees 
KATHERINE HARDING From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061011.wxamputee11/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

EDMONTON — When you ask Master Corporal Paul Franklin what keeps him going, the wounded Edmonton soldier is blunt: Diet Coke and sheer stubbornness.

Master Cpl. Franklin lost both legs in an attack in Afghanistan last January. And while many wounded Canadian soldiers have opted to recover in private since returning from the dusty battlefields, the 39-year-old military medic has been quite vocal about his own difficult medical journey.

And now, even with his recovery far from over, Master Cpl. Franklin is embarking on an entirely different struggle: a plan to make Edmonton a "centre of excellence" when it comes to helping amputees across the northern Prairies and territories cope with and recover from the loss of limbs.

"When I was in the hospital, I thought there would be more information available for someone in my condition -- a double above-the-knee amputee," he said. "But it wasn't freely available. I thought that wasn't quite good enough."
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Note: At this time news reports are stating that it was a US soldier killed
Afghan bomber kills NATO soldier, eight civilians
Oct. 13, 2006. 04:04 PM ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1160689842676&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A Taliban suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed van into a NATO military patrol manned mostly by U.S. troops today, killing one NATO soldier and eight Afghan civilians as shrapnel blasted nearby shops. 
The morning attack on a busy commercial street in Kandahar also wounded another NATO soldier and eight more civilians. A dozen shops were wrecked. Vegetables spilled onto a bloodstained Khojuk Baba Road, which was also littered with twisted metal from the bomber’s van. 

A NATO official said the bomber struck a convoy made up primarily of U.S. soldiers, but did not divulge the nationality of the dead or wounded troops. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to share the information with the media. 

The road where the attack took place is a main thoroughfare used to reach outlying villages from the southern city. 

Most of those killed and wounded were shopkeepers. Among the wounded were two children, said Masood Khan, a doctor at a hospital where they were taken. 

“These innocent people sitting in the shops or passing by on a Ramadan day have been killed and wounded,” said Naqibullah Khan, an angry grocery shop owner near the blast site, referring to the Islamic holy month of fasting. “I do not know what type of jihad (holy war) this is. Why do they (the Taliban) want to kill their Muslim brothers?’’ 

The attack, one of many to hit Kandahar and the surrounding area this year, underlined the challenges facing NATO and raised further doubts about its ability to secure what was the seat of the Taliban regime before its ouster in late 2001. 

The military alliance says its clashes with insurgents have decreased in recent weeks. But militants are increasingly resorting to roadside and suicide attacks in their bid to weaken the government and hit foreign troops. 
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Afghan projects listed by Tories
Oct. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160604611908&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

OTTAWA—The federal government has fired back at criticism over the slow pace of redevelopment in Kandahar, claiming Canadian cash is helping build irrigation ditches, string hydro lines and create employment opportunities for Afghans.

Josée Verner, minister of international co-operation, yesterday announced details of $18 million in funding for Afghanistan, including $3 million for five new bridges and $13 million for community initiatives.

"Afghanistan has made significant progress in its reconstruction," Verner's statement said.

But at a CIDA briefing yesterday, officials who insisted on not being identified still were unable to list how their agency's work is making a difference in the south.

Officials touted the success of a micro-financing program that provides loans to rural Afghans, especially women, to build a livelihood but conceded the perilous security situation has hindered introducing the program in the Kandahar region.

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, who slammed reconstruction efforts last week, remains unconvinced that large-scale development is actually taking place. "I think our troops are vulnerable as long as it's not going on," he said in an interview.
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Security personnel convoy attacked in Kohlu   
Tuesday October 03, 2006 (2240 PST)
http://www.paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156046

QUETTA: A convoy of security personnel was attacked in the Bhambor Top Mountain range located at the border of Kohlu / Dera Bugti, by some unknown miscreants, which resulted in three security personnel martyred while numerous sustained injuries. 

The Security personnel were on their way to the region to clear the area of mines, where they were attacked and their vehicle was hit by a rocket fired from close range. 

The security personnel returned the attack, and the miscreants fled the scene. 

The security personnel have cordoned the region and are searching for the miscreants, while the wounded have been shifted to hospital. 

End.

Protests in Canada hit Afghan war  
Saturday October 14, 2006 (0202 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?157079

 OTTAWA: The Collectif ɣhec ࠬa Guerre, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Labor Congress and the Canadian Islamic Congress are jointly calling for a countrywide day of protest on Oct. 28. 
In 2003, these same forces brought 250,000 to 350,000 people into the streets of Montreal to oppose the war in Iraq just before it started. About 10 percent of the people of Quebec took part throughout the province. 

In early August, they brought out 15,000 to 20,000 people to protest Israel?s attack on Lebanon and Canada?s involvement in Afghanistan. 

Their call explicitly demands: "End Canada?s occupation of Afghanistan." They point out that "This October marks the fifth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, and the people of that country are still suffering from the ravages of war. 

Reconstruction in the country is at a standstill and the needs of the Afghan people are not being met. The rule of the new Afghan state, made up largely of drug-running warlords, will not realize the democratic aspirations of the people there." 
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Circulation of rupee banned in Kunar  
Saturday October 14, 2006 (0202 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?157076

 JALALABAD: Following the two eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Laghman, the provincial government in Kunar has also imposed a ban on use of Pakistani rupee in transactions. 
The decision was taken by provincial Governor Shalizai Didar while presiding over a high level meeting on. 

The meeting was attended by officials of the revenue department, police headquarters, national security and representatives of traders. 

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News, the governor said in order to strengthen the Afghan currency, the meeting had decided to ban the circulation of rupee. He said Afghans had been asked to use their own currency in transactions instead of rupee. 

He said the security agencies had been directed to do their utmost to impose a complete ban on the circulation of rupee in the province. Any one found involved in flouting the new orders, would be liable to legal action, said the governor. 

Despite the decision by the provincial government, common citizens believe it was impossible to impose a complete ban on rupee in the province. 
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Gas, oil reserves ten times more than predicted: Survey  
Saturday October 14, 2006 (0202 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?157075

KABUL: Mines and Mineral Minister Engineer Mohammad Ibrahim Adil said the recent surveys revealed oil and gas reserves in Afghanistan were ten times more than predicated. 
On return of his nine-day visit from the United States the minister told Pajhwok Afghan News the former estimation carried out by the Russian showed Afghanistan had 120 cubic meters gas and over 15 million tons of oil. 

He said the new statistic was based on the geological survey of the United States which was showed to him during his visit. The new survey showed northern provinces and provinces of Herat, Helmand and Paktika many resources. Adil met US government officials and investors and discussed with technical support and investment in the field of gas in the war-battered country. 

Privatization of the oil sites will soon begin in Shiberghan province from where Russian had also excavated oil, he said. The US officials promised technical cooperation and equipping geological survey department of Afghanistan with the required tools, he said, adding US investors also revealed eagerness for investment in Afghanistan.
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President Karzai Condemns the Killing of the District Chief, Police Commander and Intelligence Chief of Khogyani District  
Thursday October 12, 2006 (1345 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156911

Arg, Kabul – H.E. Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, strongly condemned the burning of a school and killing of the district chief, police commander and intelligence chief of Khogyani district of Nangarhar province.

According to reports, a planted bomb killed five people, including the district chief, police commander and intelligence chief of Khogyani district of Nangarhar province while they were traveling to a village to visit a school that the enemies of Afghanistan had burnt late Sunday. 

In his reaction to the news the President said: “The enemies of peace and prosperity of Afghanistan, by burning schools and martyring government officials, are trying to hamper the progress of Afghanistan, but they must understand that they will be defeated and brought to justice.”
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Causes of Honour Killing in Afghan society highlighted  
Friday October 13, 2006 (0205 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156982

MUMBAI: Participants of the international seminar titled, "Honour Killing: Violence Against Women in South Asia", have unequivocally condemned all forms of violence against women, especially those committed in the name of ?honour?. 
The two-day seminar was jointly organised by the Department of Civics and Politics, University of Mumbai, Mahila Sarvangeen Utkarsh Mandal (MASUM) and Pakistan-India People?s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD). 

During the seminar, professors, scholars, representatives of media and NGOs from India, Pakistan and Afghanistan presented their papers on the sensitive issue of honour killing in south Asia countries. 

While highlighting the reasons behind the crime and suggestions to avoid such killings, the participants were unanimous in their observation that the society condones such crimes which allows such acts to flourish. 

Ranging from murders and other physical violence to humiliation, starvation, deprivation and seclusion, such crimes happening all the time in the South Asian countries, observed the participants. 

When women defy the will of their family in choosing their life-partner, it is not only the single individual who is murdered, hunted or excommunicated, but families that do not excommunicate the couple are also punished, fined and humiliated by the caste, tribe or community, observed the participants. 
More on link

25 insurgents, 1 civilian killed in S. Afghanistan 
Saturday October 14, 2006 (0202 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?157074

KABUL: Twenty-five militants and one civilian were killed in the southern Uruzgan province of Afghanistan, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement received on Friday. 
A joint ISAF and Afghan National Army (ANA) patrol was attacked near Tarin Kowt, the provincial capital, it said, adding ISAF forces are reported to have been struck by a roadside bomb before being engaged by small arms fire. 

Twenty-five insurgents were killed in the following conflict, which occurred on Wednesday afternoon, and a number of ANA soldiers were injured. One local Afghan civilian was killed in the crossfire and seven others were injured, the statement said, adding there were no ISAF casualties. Due to rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled nearly five years ago. Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed this year in this volatile country.
End

Stranded in troubled neighbourhood  
Thursday October 05, 2006 (1619 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156216

India’s history owes much to the Ghaznavis and Ghauris of Afghanistan. Musghals were the latest to reach Delhi via Kabul. The empire they would construct would last more than a millennium. 


Anglo-Saxons drew the western borders when they happened to rule India. They had taken up the country’s South in a fit of absent-mindedness. The rest was conquered deliberately with a promise to push the Central Asian nations back to their natural confines.

The Anglo-Saxons have never abandoned Pakistan while the country strived to keep the western borders of the subcontinent intact for the sake of its own survival. During the Cold War era, Americans were in the lead. Europeans have also entered the scene after the fall of Soviet Union.

Pakistani and NATO forces are manning Durand Line now. Does India owe anything to Pakistan? Is Afghanistan thankful to its eastern neighbour for the labour it has borne to ensure its integrity? Pakistan is really obsessed with these questions; it does not suit to the interest of neighbours to impress on Pakistan that it is doing only a thankless job.

Why Pakistan is blamed by India and Afghanistan for fanning militancy in the neighbourhood? Why they thrust on Pakistan the responsibility to defend the porous borders on its own? Why they behave so irresponsibly when their neighbour strives to find stable ground to set its foot on? Can Pakistan abandon legacies so easily as the leadership of Kabul and Delhi tend to suggest? Why they want only Pakistan to taste the fruit it had not sowed the seeds of? 
More on link

Bring Out the Nails  
Monday October 02, 2006 (1150 PST) Anwaar Hussain eagleeye@emirates.net.ae 
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155901

Bring out the nails to be hammered into the coffin of the fast approaching death of the dream of American Empire which has started to wane badly in its staging outposts of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bring out the nails. 
 Bring out the nails because in Afghanistan, the first Neo-colony of the American Neo-Conservatives, the Taliban are on the rise a la the fabled phoenix rising from the ashes and where they once again control most parts of southern Afghanistan openly setting up shadow administrations there and where the coalition forces are getting a beating of their lives from the rag tag Taliban and where the whining and griping among the coalition forces over their looming defeat is increasing with each passing day and where on the Pakistani side too, the supremo General Musharraf has beaten a hasty retreat from the bordering Waziristan rather than trying to reinforce failure. Bring out the nails.

Bring out the nails because, drunk with delusions of grandeur and self-adulation, the Empire seekers made a bad choice in Afghanistan as the launching pad of their dream by ignoring the warning of Sir Olaf Caroe, the last British governor of North West Frontier Province of bordering Pakistan, who said: "Unlike other wars, Afghan wars become serious only when they are over." Bring out the nails.

Bring out the nails because the Empire seekers failed to understand, and still do not, that it is not the Taliban phenomenon that is writing the epitaph on the grave of their Empire building dream, that being a mere label, but it is the Pathan culture that is responsible for their imminent demise and which they failed to study enough and of which the British knew only too well but chose not to inform their gullible partners. Bring out the nails.
More on link

British officer resigns over 'grotesquely clumsy' war in Afghanistan  
Monday September 11, 2006 (1026 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?153794

LONDON: An officer has resigned from the British army in protest at its "grotesquely clumsy" campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Sunday Times reports. 
Captain Leo Docherty was aide-de-camp to Colonel Charlie Knaggs, a senior commander in the British task force in southern Afghanistan, but quit last month after becoming disillusioned with its strategy in Helmand province, The Sunday Times said. 

The approach is "a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency," Docherty was quoted as saying." All those people whose homes have been destroyed and sons killed are going to turn against the British," he said. 
More on link

Afghan embassies to be purged of corrupt officials  
Friday October 13, 2006 (0205 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156983

KABUL: Deputy foreign minister Zalmay Aziz in his briefing to the parliament confirmed administrative corruption existed in Afghan embassies in some foreign countries. 
Aziz was summoned by the foreign relations committee of the lower house to explain rampant corruption in various organisations. He said they had launched investigations about suspected embassies. Aziz said the ministry had sent investigative team to the Afghan embassies in Brussles, Buglaria, Paris and some other countries. 

Confessing corruption in some embassies, the deputy minister said embassies staff in some cases involved in illegal actions due to their unawareness of law. 

To a question about spending excessive money by ambassadors for their personal use, Aziz said there were no such documents to prove the accusations. The diplomats might have used their salary and house-rent given by the government for their private use, he added. 

Members of parliament criticised the foreign ministry for letting some envoys to remain in office more than their due period. Confirming the extensions in ambassadors? tenure, he said they were working to chalk out plan to end this exercise in future. 
More on link

Minister performs ground-breaking of hospital in Balkh  
Friday October 13, 2006 (0205 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?156984

 MAZAR-I-SHARIF: Minister for Public Health Dr Sayed Mohammad Amin Fatimi laid the foundation stone of a 500-bed hospital in this capital of the northern Balkh province on Thursday. 
The new hospital is being constructed on the site of the old hospital which was gutted after breaking out of fire there last month. The new hospital will be equipped with all modern facilities, officials said. 

Speaking to journalists, Fatimi said the 500-bed hospital would be built on the same place at the cost of $15 million. The amount would be provided by the Ministry of Health. 

He said the hospital would be equipped with all modern health facilities. It would facilitate residents from nine northern provinces. Without mentioning the exact time period during which the hospital would be constructed, the minister said the construction work would be carried out with full speed. 
More on link

General is too optimistic about Afghanistan   
October 14 2006 
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/72117.html

IT IS very heartening to learn that General Sir Richard Dannatt (October 13) has called for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq soon but he is being very optimistic if he believes that Britain can succeed in Afghanistan, a country in which its government only has a modicum of control in Kabul, the rest of the country being controlled by warlords enjoying the riches of increased poppy production and other illicit activities. Both these wars, along with our responses to the Israeli-Palestinian and Lebanese conflicts, have had a direct bearing on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in British-born Muslims.
Why this has not been forcibly brought to the attention of Blair and his clone-like, deaf and dumb cabinet members before now, says something very revealing about them: they are without any experience in the armed forces; have totally failed to take heed of correct intelligence; were so cowed by the glorious leader as to believe his untruths, scared of losing their positions, pensions and other perks; were overawed by his apparent claims to have a direct line to the Almighty. David Cameron and his shadow cabinet are no better for they supported this illegal and murderous war.
Why are Blair and Bush not being arraigned for war crimes and castigated for failing to set an example to the world by upholding the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty? By failing to do so, they became responsible for and hastened the proliferation of nuclear states. Can Westminster governments be allowed to lead Scotland into any more disastrous foreign incursions?
Ian F M Saint-Yves, Dunvegan, School Brae, Whiting Bay, Arran.

General Sir Richard Dannatt is to be admired for his courage in saying what has needed to be said. It is time to support our troops by bringing them home. I hope he retains his job: he's got guts and a deep sense of duty that runs deeper than political opportunism. He's a hero.
More on link

Special Forces Soldier Killed in Afghanistan
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/florida/news-article.aspx?storyid=67035

TITUSVILLE, FL (AP) -- An Army Special Forces soldier died of combat-related injuries sustained in Afghanistan, the Department of
Defense said Friday.

Chief Warrant Officer Scott W. Dyer, 38, died Wednesday in Banditemur, Afghanistan. He was an assistant detachment commander assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, N.C. and deployed in August.

Dyer enlisted in 1987 as a cavalry scout and volunteered in 1993 for Special Forces training, the Army said. He served as an engineer until 2002 and graduated in 2003 from Warrant Officer's
Candidate School. In 2004 he was reassigned as an assistant detachment commander.

He received numerous awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal, National Defense Service Medal and
Army Achievement Medal. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal for valor
More on link


----------



## GAP (14 Oct 2006)

*More Articles found 14 October 2006*

*Update:*
2 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Saturday, October 14, 2006 | 1:27 PM ET CBC News 
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/14/afghanistan.html

Two Canadian soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday after militants ambushed them with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire.

Three soldiers were also wounded in the battle in Kandahar province Saturday afternoon, NATO said in a statement. The soldiers' identities were not released. The deaths of the soldiers brings the number of military fatalities in Afghanistan to 42.
More on link

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan attack
Updated Sat. Oct. 14 2006 1:15 PM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061014/soldiers_killed_061014/20061014?hub=TopStories

KABUL -- NATO said two of its soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan on Saturday after militants ambushed the soldiers with rocket propelled grenades and gunfire. 

Three soldiers were also wounded in the battle in Kandahar province Saturday afternoon, NATO said in a statement. The nationalities of the soldiers were not released. However, the majority of troops in Kandahar are from Canada. 

There was no immediate assessment of militant casualties, said Maj. Daryl Morrell, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. 

Taliban militants have been stepping up attacks in the country's south in recent months, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. 

On Friday, in Kandahar city, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed van into a NATO military patrol on a busy commercial street, firing deadly shrapnel at nearby storeowners and shoppers. One NATO soldier and eight Afghan civilians were killed. 

The blast also wounded another NATO soldier and eight civilians. A dozen shops were wrecked. 

NATO says its clashes with insurgents have decreased somewhat in recent weeks. But militants are increasingly resorting to roadside and suicide attacks to weaken the government and hit Afghan and foreign troops. 
End

Afghanistan 'like a human abattoir'   
Allan Woods, CanWest News Service Published: Saturday, October 14, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/news/story.html?id=c3891785-e9bd-4f61-9d56-f7b676668487

OTTAWA -- Canadian troops pelted with rocks by hostile Afghans, French soldiers disemboweled by Taliban fighters, and paratroopers soiling themselves at the thought of facing fierce enemy fire.

Increasingly, these are the accounts that are emerging from southern Afghanistan and they are not coming through official channels, nor through the newspaper reports and television broadcasts of the Canadian, British and U.S. forces who fight under the NATO banner in the war-torn country.

Those reports are governed by a contract that restricts the movements of journalists and the types of information that can be reported from Afghanistan. Unlike the official accounts, those from soldiers are the descriptions that the government does not want Canadians to see. They come directly from the soldiers in the field who have relayed the grisly details of combat through Internet postings and e-mails to friends and family back home.

They detail some of the fiercest fighting that soldiers have encountered in the country, and the stark horrors of combat.

"We headed off to what can only be described as the Wild West," one Canadian artillery officer wrote of a July 6 mission in Helmand province in support of a company of British soldiers under attack from Taliban fighters. The Brits had been reduced to boiling river water to drink after a failed air drop of supplies that ended up in the hands of the Taliban.

"When we arrived in Sangin, the locals began throwing rocks and anything they could at us. This was not a friendly place. We pushed into the district centre and, during the last few hundred metres, we began receiving mortar fire."

The accounts are both shocking and compelling for their casual retelling of the realities of combat. They are inspired as much by a desire to share the excitement and danger of pitched battles that often escape the witness of the media as by frustration when that coverage does occur.

But as death tolls mount these personal accounts are increasingly becoming a release valve for the growing frustrations of soldiers who find themselves facing a tougher, more resilient enemy in a hostile land where Taliban fighters on dirt bikes carry weapons in one hand and their children in the other.

"There have been some terrible incidents," one soldier told Britain's Daily Mail in an e-mail interview. "It is horrible to kill a kid. Nothing could prepare you for it."

Another e-mail obtained by the newspaper paints a horrific picture of British soldiers soiling themselves with fear and suffering mental trauma because of the threats they face on the ground. The troops were flown into combat on a Chinook helicopter to rescue Afghan troops and French special forces, but found dead bodies strewn across the battlefield and gun fire directed at their helicopter.

"The scene was like a human abattoir. We fought off the Taliban but were too late to save the French guys. All of us were shaking when we were flown back to base. One of the Afghan survivors said the French had been tied up, then gutted alive by the Taliban. It was one of the most shocking things I had ever heard."
More on link


Bomb injures 3 soldiers in Afghanistan, 3 Taliban killed   
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=329242&sid=SAS

Kandahar, Oct 14: A bomb struck a military vehicle in volatile southern Afghanistan on Saturday, injuring six Afghan soldiers, while three Taliban were killed in a separate clash, security officials said. 

Police and provincial officials said the blast in Kandahar province was a suicide car bomb that was rammed into an army convoy but the Defence Ministry said it was a remote-controlled device. 

"Six soldiers were very lightly injured in a remote-controlled roadside bomb today in Kandahar's Zhari district," the ministry said in a statement. 

"It was a suicide attack by the enemies of Afghanistan," the Interior Ministry in the capital said, referring to the extremist Taliban movement blamed for most attacks in the troubled country. 

The blast comes a day after a similar suicide blast claimed by the Taliban killed a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) soldier and eight Afghan civilians in Kandahar city. 

Zhari is part of an area that was the focus last month of NATO's biggest anti-Taliban operation launched against entrenched insurgents who had massed fighters and equipment just west of the city. 

The nearly two-week-long operation medusa left hundreds of Taliban dead and forced others out of the area, ISAF said afterwards, labelling it the biggest defeat of the rebels since they were ousted from government in 2001. 

Bureau Report 

End


On patrol with the Dragoons in Kandahar Province
Paul Workman, CTV News South Asia Burea Chief Updated: Fri. Oct. 13 2006 8:47 PM ET 
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061013/workman_dragoons_feature_061013/20061013/

Forward Operating Base Sperwan — The first thing that assaults you is the dust. It's thick and choking, like drifts of brown talcum powder, coming up to your calves in places and getting into every exposed pore in your body. By the light of a bright moon, it looks like snow sifting over a barren landscape. And when the soldiers here mixed it with water for their makeshift shower, it hardened like cement. 

In military terms, this is FOB Sperwan, a new Forward Operating Base occupied by Canadian and Afghan troops, along with a few Americans doing special operations. 

Paul Workman, Forward Operating Base Sperwan

This is the western limit of maneuvers against the Taliban, and where the Royal Canadian Dragoons are now digging in. In the centre is an unfinished school built by UNICEF, and below, a belt of farmland, green with vineyards, a little corn and a lot of marijuana. Even through the dust, the smell is rich as you're driving by. 

The Dragoons are a small unit, no more than about 30 soldiers, here to do reconnaissance, defending isolated bases like this with their specialized listening equipment and night-vision technology. For now, it's been calm, and the Dragoons are desperately hoping it will stay that way, after suffering a frightful week of attacks, roadside bombs and the loss of three soldiers just a few kilometers to the north. For such a close-knit squadron, that much death, in such a short period of time is devastating. 

 Maj. Andrew Lussier says 'When you lose a few soldiers, you question yourself forever.' 

"When you lose a few soldiers, you question yourself forever," says the officer in command, Maj. Andrew Lussier. "I think any leader worth his salt will feel the same. Did I do everything I could have done? I'll struggle with that forever." 

It's the burden of leadership, he says, or perhaps the curse of leadership. "These guys depend on me, as I believe in them. Listen, it's a death in the family, it's a simple as that." 

The Dragoons are Canada's oldest armored regiment. They trace their history back to the Northwest Rebellion and the Klondike Gold Rush. After the First World War, they changed from horses to armored vehicles and then just a couple of decades later, fought in Sicily, Italy and Normandy. Korea followed, and now they're in Afghanistan, the bloodiest combat Canadians have faced in a generation. There isn't a single soldier in the regiment who ever expected to endure such intensive fighting or such painful losses. And some of them are only in their early twenties. 

"Certainly when the combat phase opened, it was clear to us that nobody's done this stuff in decades, this kind of deliberate planning and level of operations on this scale. I've had 19 years in the army and I've never done anything like this," explains Lussier. 

 Lussier looks out through the scope of his gun.

He's got two days of growth on his face, a red nose from the sun, and there's a film of dust from his hairline to his T-shirt. 

"We're forging perhaps the next chapter in the history of the Canadian military, and the troops talk about that, they're proud of it, proud to be a part of it." 

So that's what it's all about? Being there, as maybe their fathers or grandfathers were before them. Or, being able to go home as veterans who survived the Battle of Panjwai, and Pashmol Pocket, when dozens of others were shipped back in wooden coffins, some of them your best friends. 

"Maybe it's a little bit of cockiness," says Lussier, "but they kind of look down at other people who weren't there, saying 'Hey, you weren't there, we were.' I don't know if that's right or not, but that's just the way it is." 
More on link

On Kyoto, Afghanistan and winning in Quebec   
National Post Published: Saturday, October 14, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=6d1e39e5-5eab-4324-b232-278e1906bf82

Following are responses Michael Ignatieff provided to questions submitted by the National Post. Some have been edited for length. For additional questions, and the full responses, visit nationalpost.com and look for Online Extras.

Q Can Canada meet its Kyoto commitments by 2012? If so, how?

Michael Ignatieff Canada must stay committed to the Kyoto process and do what it can to meet the 2012 targets, but time is now desperately short if what that means is changing the way Canadian industry works, to not only stop growth in carbon emissions, but actually roll it back to 1990 levels.

The Conservative government has displayed a profound lack of leadership in this area. We must exercise leadership within the Kyoto process, and think beyond Kyoto, setting longer-term targets and implementing enforceable policies.

Q How much would you be willing to spend to meet the Kyoto commitments?

M.I. It's not about spending. It's about tough environmental leadership. This means moving beyond the Conservatives' short-sighted thinking and implementing serious measures to prevent the environment from being used as a free garbage dump.

I have proposed a comprehensive set of policies to work toward the Kyoto targets, but also move beyond them, reducing emissions to 50% below 1990 levels by 2050. My plan includes market-oriented measures on renewable energy generation, carbon sequestration and vehicle emissions standards. I have also proposed a cap-and-trade system for large emitters and a shift in the GST and excise taxes on fuels to reward cleaner fossil fuels while penalizing dirtier ones. If we implement tough market-oriented regulations, big spending is unnecessary.

Q How long do you feel Canada should maintain its troops in Afghanistan?

M.I. I supported the extension of the Afghanistan mission originally put forward by the Liberal government to February, 2009. At the time of the vote of in the House of Commons on this issue, I made it clear that my support of the extension was conditional on the Harper government maintaining the original balance of the mission envisioned by the Liberal government of the day: providing humanitarian aid, ensuring human security and facilitating reconstruction. This has to remain a balanced mission. We can and should be contributing more to the reconstruction and humanitarian efforts to get the country back on its feet.

I do not support an open-ended mission. By 2009, Canada will have been in Afghanistan for seven years and I believe we should then hand the torch over to our NATO partners and to the increasingly able Afghan security forces. We must plan for that transition. We can return home with our heads held high, confident we have fulfilled our moral promise to the Afghan people, as well as our commitment to the democratically-elected Afghan government and to our international allies.

Q Would you limit the activities of the troops to a non-combat role?

M.I. We all recognize this is a very difficult mission, for our troops and for all Canadians. However, eliminating the human security component of the mission misses an important part of the peace-building equation: We can't build schools or hospitals unless the Afghan people are safe in their own country. Moreover, Canada is part of a team in Afghanistan with a mandate from the UN, and we can only ask our NATO allies to do what we are willing to do ourselves. We need to continue to work with our international partners, and do more on the humanitarian and development aspects of the mission.
More on link

UK denies parallels in Afghanistan with Soviet invasion London,
Oct 13, IRNA UK Parliament-Afghanistan 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-239/0610132801171944.htm

The British government has denied that claims of any parallels between the current deployment of UK and allied troops in Afghanistan and the previously disastrous Soviet occupation of the country. 

"I have studied Afghanistan's history and think the important point is that the Soviet campaign and the campaigns of the British Empire were absolutely different in nature from what we are undertaking," Defence Minister Lord Drayson said. 

Speaking in the House of Lords on Thursday, Drayson said the point was made clear to him recently by Estonia's defence minister Jurgen Ligi, who said the people of his country were sent to Afghanistan "as a form of punishment under the Soviet empire." 
"We, with our coalition partners, are supporting the development of a democracy in Afghanistan, with the complete support of the people of Afghanistan as expressed in their democratic elections. That is completely different," he said. 

The minister was responding to a question from Conservative peer, Lord Blaker, asking why the government did not think history will repeat itself following previous foreign interventions in Afghanistan. 

Soviet forces were forced to retreat from Afghanistan in 1988 after the failure of its nine-year war to combat anti-government Mujahideen insurgents. 

During the debate, the Defence Minister admitted that restrictions from different countries on troops contributing to the UK-commanded Nato forces caused problems on operations in Afghanistan. 

It "is correct to say that the national caveats that some countries place on their forces create additional complexity that needs to be managed by NATO force commanders," Drayson said. 
More on link


Bomb explosion kills 1, injures 2 in E. Afghanistan 
October 14, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/14/eng20061014_311814.html

A government employee was killed and two others were injured Saturday morning in a bomb explosion close to the Governor House in eastern Laghman province of Afghanistan, an official at Interior Ministry said. 

"A remote-controlled bomb went off at around 07:55 a.m. when some government employees were gathering at the gate of the Governor House in Mehtarlam, the provincial capital," Dad Mohammad Rasa told Xinhua. 

However, he declined to say whether the governor was the target, only saying the victims were not high officials. 

Due to rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled nearly five years ago. 

A suicide car bombing killed one NATO soldier and eight civilians on Friday in the southern Kandahar province. 

Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in this volatile country this year. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Situation in Afghanistan reached a boiling point
13.10.2006 17:15 msk Bahtijar Ahmedhanov, Moscow News
http://enews.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=1640

NATO Commander (Afghanistan) Lieutenant General David Richards said on October 8 that the situation in this country reached the boiling point. The British general believes that the majority of the population will end up on the Taliban's side unless some positive changes take place within six months, no more.

Richards' fears are not groundless at all. Judging by what various sources report, losses of the counter-terrorism coalition are mounting. Residents of Badakhshan this correspondent talked to claim that fighting takes place in the environs of Jelalabad, Hardez, and Kandahar (eastern and southern provinces) almost every day but NATO command is keeping it under the lid.

A representative of NATO command in Afghanistan said in the meantime that 78 shakhid attacks in the country killed 200 people this year. Only 17 such terrorist acts were registered in Afghanistan in 2005.
More on link

Private equity fund CDC enters strife-torn Afghanistan
venerdì, 13 ottobre 2006 2.07  
http://www.borsaitaliana.reuters.it/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=fundsNewsUK&storyID=2006-10-13T120738Z_01_NOA343548_RTRUKOC_0_FINANCIAL-AFGHAN-FUND.xml&archived=False  

LONDON (Reuters) - A UK-backed private equity fund of funds business said on Friday it has put money into a fund dedicated to Afghanistan, seeing business opportunities in one of the world's poorest nations.

CDC Group, a government-backed emerging markets fund of private equity investments, said it has committed $5.8 million (3.1 million pounds) to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund, run by Acap Partners. CDC said this fund is the first private equity fund to be focused on the country.

The venture comes in what has been the bloodiest year in the mountainous country since U.S.-led coalition forces overthrew the Islamist Taliban government in 2001. Taliban rebels have carried out scores of suicide bombings against foreign and Afghan forces in the capital, Kabul, and across the nation.

Even so, Afghanistan has seen its economy expand by about 14 percent in the 2005-06 period, but the problem for businesses has been getting access to medium-term capital, CDC said.

"Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries with GDP per capita of less than $200. However, the economy has grown rapidly in recent years and there has been progress in reform of the banking sector, the issue of a new currency as well as the construction of roads," said Innes Meek, CDC portfolio director responsible for the Afghanistan Reconstruction Fund.

The Afghanistan fund so far has raised total commitments of $20.3 million. It has a pipeline of 200 potential investments with entrepreneurs seeking total investments of $380 million.
More on link



More on link


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## MarkOttawa (14 Oct 2006)

Eikenberry says troops getting job done, but more to do
_Goldsboro News-Argus_, Oct. 11
http://www.newsargus.com/news/archives/2006/10/11/eikenberry_says_troops_getting_job_done_but_more_to_do/index.shtml



> ...
> Last week, Eikenberry transferred control of the 12,000 U.S. troops in the eastern and southeastern portions of the country over to  NATO commander British Gen. David Richards [who seems rather less  upbeat than his American colleague]. It was the final transfer of command as NATO assumed full control of military operations in the country...
> 
> "This is a challenging military mission for NATO -- the most challenging operation in its history," Eikenberry said. "But I believe the NATO alliance will be successful in Afghanistan.
> ...



Rather more upbeat than Gen. Richards:

Afghanistan 'at tipping point'
http://www.itv.com/news/world_5c35a6b214d67ae424d4f0518b47414a.html

Mark 
Ottawa


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## MarkOttawa (14 Oct 2006)

Second Heaviest Day of Strikes for Enterprise Strike Group
_Navy newstand_, Story Number: NNS061012-01
Release Date: 10/12/2006 8:41:00 AM
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=26002



> From USS Enterprise Public Affairs
> 
> ABOARD USS ENTERPRISE, At. Sea (NNS) -- On Oct. 7, aircraft assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 1 stationed aboard USS Enterprise (CVN 65) participated in their second heaviest day of close air support in the skies over Afghanistan since they began operations in there early September. Enterprise with its embarked air wing is currently located in the Northern Arabian Sea.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## GAP (15 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 15 October 2006*

Slain Canadian soldiers named
JANE ARMSTRONG Globe and Mail Update and Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061014.wnato14_2/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

Kandahar, Afghanistan — Two Canadian soldiers were killed Saturday afternoon near the same dangerous road construction project in southern Afghanistan where three other Canadians have lost their lives this month.

Sergeant Darcy Tedford and Private Blake Williamson are both with the 1st battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment.

They were killed when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded over their heads west of Kandahar.

They were guarding a road being built by Canadians that would link the violent Panjwaii district with a main highway that is a prime target for insurgent attacks.
The fallen soldiers will be honoured in a special ceremony in Kandahar before making their final journey home, but the exact timing is not being released.

Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack and are in hospital in serious, but non-critical condition.

Two others were injured when Taliban insurgents attacked Canadian soldiers with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire in the Pashmul area, a cluster of villages in the strife-torn Panjwai region. Those soldiers are now in a non-critical condition. 

It is believed a rocket-propelled grenade burst overtop some soldiers in an armoured vehicle, killing two and injuring two more, said Colonel Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canda's Task Force in Afghanistan.

"My understanding is that two of them may have been inside the vehicle, but hatches open, and two others may have been outside," Col. Lewis told reporters Saturday night.

A near three-hour gun battle between the Canadians and Taliban fighters ensued, Col. Lewis added. "After the first 15 minutes or so, we were the ones doing most of the shooting."
More on  link

Report: France plans to withdraw 200 troops from Afghanistan   
The Associated Press Published: October 15, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/15/europe/EU_GEN_France_Afghanistan.php 

PARIS A French newspaper reported Sunday that France plans to withdraw 200 special forces officers from southeast Afghanistan by early next year.

The Defense Ministry refused to comment on the report in Journal de Dimanche newspaper, which cited unnamed sources "close to the military."

"The decision to withdraw the elite troops was taken at the highest level by the president of the republic and the army chiefs of staff," the report said, adding that another 1,700 French troops that are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan would not be affected by the decision.

Deployed in southeastern Afghanistan, the French special forces have been involved in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban and the search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The newspaper suggested the worsening security situation in Afghanistan was a possible reason for the decision to pull the special troops out. Nine elite troops have been killed in combat.

Meanwhile, France recently committed 2,000 troops to a U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, and the availability of special forces there could prove useful, the report said. France leads the expanded U.N. force that is charged with maintaining the Aug. 14 cease-fire between Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants and Israel after a 34-day-war.

 PARIS A French newspaper reported Sunday that France plans to withdraw 200 special forces officers from southeast Afghanistan by early next year.

The Defense Ministry refused to comment on the report in Journal de Dimanche newspaper, which cited unnamed sources "close to the military."

"The decision to withdraw the elite troops was taken at the highest level by the president of the republic and the army chiefs of staff," the report said, adding that another 1,700 French troops that are part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan would not be affected by the decision.

Deployed in southeastern Afghanistan, the French special forces have been involved in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban and the search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

The newspaper suggested the worsening security situation in Afghanistan was a possible reason for the decision to pull the special troops out. Nine elite troops have been killed in combat.

Meanwhile, France recently committed 2,000 troops to a U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, and the availability of special forces there could prove useful, the report said. France leads the expanded U.N. force that is charged with maintaining the Aug. 14 cease-fire between Lebanon-based Hezbollah militants and Israel after a 34-day-war.
More on link

Italy: Reporter seized in Afghanistan
POSTED: 0948 GMT (1748 HKT), October 15, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/15/afghanistan.italy.reut/index.html

ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- Italy's Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it believed Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello, who has disappeared in southern Afghanistan, had been kidnapped.

"All the elements lead us to believe he has been kidnapped and that is how we are treating the case," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Torsello's abduction had already been reported by media and aid workers in Afghanistan, but Italian authorities had not commented.

He was seized by five gunmen on the highway from the capital of Helmand province to neighboring Kandahar province, Afghanistan's independent Pajhwok news agency quoted traveling companion Gholam Mohammad as saying on Saturday.

Pajhwok said its call to Torsello's mobile phone was answered by a man saying: "We are the Taliban and we have abducted the foreigner on charges of spying."

But a Taliban spokesman told Reuters the Islamist group was not involved in any abduction, blaming criminals instead.

The latest abduction came as two more NATO soldiers, both Canadian, died in combat in the south of Afghanistan on Saturday in the bloodiest year since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban in 2001.

An Italian online newspaper, PeaceReporter, which specializes in reports from conflict zones, said Torsello had confirmed by phone he had been kidnapped, but not by whom.

PeaceReporter said he had spoken briefly to the security chief at a hospital run by the Italian relief organization Emergency in the Helmand capital of Lashkar Gah.

Torsello, a Muslim based in London, said he did not know where he was being held. He said he had been kidnapped on Thursday from a public bus, according to PeaceReporter.

Helmand and Kandahar are Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces and have been the scene of heavy fighting in the past few months between Taliban guerrillas and NATO forces.
More on link

Two Canadians killed in Afghanistan ambush
Updated Sat. Oct. 14 2006 11:36 PM ET CTV.ca News
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061014/soldiers_killed_061014/20061014?hub=CTVNewsAt11

An insurgent ambush has killed two Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and wounded two others. 

Col. Fred Lewis, deputy commander of Canadian forces in southern Afghanistan, told reporters on Saturday that the wounded soldiers were in serious condition in hospital at the Kandahar Airfield.

The names and hometowns of the soldiers have yet to be released.

"The soldiers were near Pashmul, which is about 25 kilometres west of Kandahar," CTV News' Paul Workman told Newsnet on Saturday. 

"It's been the site of a number of attacks in the last week or so. In fact, about six Canadian soldiers have been killed in that very place."

The soldiers were helping to develop a road meant to serve as a safer liaison between the volatile Panjwaii district and Kandahar-bound Highway 1 when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and firearms attacked them. 

The RPG attacks came as two of the soldiers were outside their armoured vehicles, Workman said.
More on link

Troops being fleeced by partners
October 15, 2006 12:00am
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20580226-2,00.html

AUSTRALIAN troops are returning from war zones to discover they've been fleeced of up to $50,000 by gold-digging wives and girlfriends.

An investigation has found some soldiers have had tens of thousands of dollars taken from joint bank accounts by partners. 
The problem has become so widespread the Defence Department now gives departing troops advice on how to protect their cash while they are overseas. 

"It is out of control. You will not meet a single soldier who doesn't know someone this has happened to," one Iraq veteran said. 

"It is terrible for morale because no matter how much you trust your partner that fear is lurking in the back of your mind. You don't want to be watching your back in some desert and worrying about what's going on back home." 

An ordinary army private can make about $2000 a week during a tour of duty in deadly war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. During a six-month deployment in a war zone, a private can make more than $50,000 tax free. 

A Hervey Bay veteran said he was three months into a six-month tour of East Timor when he returned home on a relief visit in 2001 and discovered his partner of four years had taken $18,000 and all his furniture. The 26-year-old, who has left the army and is now a truck driver, says he could do nothing about the theft. 

A military instructor said a close friend serving in Iraq came home to find his partner had left him and taken $50,000.
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Pakistan begins Afghanistan immigrant census  
Sunday, 15 Oct 2006 10:16 
http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/news/international-affairs/pakistan-begins-afghanistan-immigrant-census-$454680.htm

Pakistan's government has instigated a campaign to register all Afghan citizens living in the country for the first ever time. 

About one million Afghan refugees are currently thought to be living in refugee camps in Pakistan, with a further 1.4 million estimated to be living within the country's urban areas. 

The ten-day registration drive, which begins today, represents an attempt by Pakistan's government to monitor the country's fluid Afghan population, with tens of thousands of people crossing the border between the two country's every day as a result of family and business ties.

However the registration exercise, which will see Afghans living in Pakistan supplied with an official identity card that will be valid for three years, is also being seen as a step towards the further repatriation of Afghan citizens.

Afghan refugees, a number of whom entered Pakistan following the Soviet invasion of the country in 1979, have been encouraged by the Pakistani authorities to return to their homeland since the country's authoritarian Taliban regime was ousted from power following US-led military action in 2001.

According to the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, which is helping the Pakistani government to conduct the registration drive, more than 2.8 million Afghans have been repatriated within the past five years and Pakistan is said to be keen to close its remaining refugee camps in the future.
More on link

Provincial parliament member killed in S. Afghanistan   
 www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-15 16:19:43  
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/15/content_5205343.htm

    KABUL, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- Unknown gunmen killed a member of the parliament of the southern Kandahar province in Afghanistan on Sunday, a witness told Xinhua. 

    The gunmen shot a car carrying Mohammad Yunis Hussaini, a member of the provincial parliament, at around 11:00 a.m. in Kandahar city, the provincial capital, the witness named Shaib said. 

    Hussaini was killed, while his driver and bodyguard were injured in the attack, he added. 

    It is unknown who is behind the incident, and no one has claimed responsibility. 

    Earlier on Sunday, a bomb explosion killed two civilians and injured three others in the western Herat province. 

    Kandahar, a traditional stronghold of Taliban militants, has suffered from lots of violence this year. 

    Due to rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled nearly five years ago. Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in this volatile country this year. Enditem 
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Clashes in eastern Afghanistan leave 3 police, 3 suspected Taliban dead   
The Associated Press Published: October 15, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/15/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Clashes.php

KABUL, Afghanistan At least three police officers and three suspected Taliban died in clashes between in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday.

Police shot dead two suspected militants on a motorbike who attacked their patrol in the eastern Paktika province on Sunday, said Sayeed Jamal, the spokesman for the province's governor.

Separately, a three-hour clash with militants in neighboring Khost province late on Saturday left three police dead, one missing and two wounded, said Gen. Mohammed Ayub, Khost's police chief.

One Taliban was killed in the clash near the border with Pakistan, Ayub said.

Militants used rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns during the attack, Ayub said.
More on link

Father of U.S. commander in Afghanistan dies  
Oct 14, 2006 : 10:30 pm ET 
http://www.heraldsun.com/state/6-778698.html

GOLDSBORO, N.C. -- Harry William Eikenberry, the father of a U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, died Thursday, according to Seymour Funeral Home. He was 82. 

Eikenberry's son, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, is the commander of several thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan not under NATO control. The younger Eikenberry was in Goldsboro last week to visit his ailing father. 

Harry Eikenberry died at Wayne Memorial Hospital, according to the funeral home, which did not provide a cause of death. 

He was born Nov. 18, 1923 in Indianapolis and graduated from Purdue University with a degree in chemical engineering. He retired as president of Hevi-Duty Electric in Goldsboro after 24 years. 

Apart from Karl Eikenberry, survivors include Harry Eikenberry's wife, Anna Dughi Eikenberry, daughter Karen Eikenberry Glaubiger, stepsons John David Shannon and John B. Shannon, stepdaughter Elizabeth S. Mitchell, six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 
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U.S. soldier charged with smuggling weapons from Afghanistan
By Brian Haas Posted on Sat, Oct. 14, 2006 South Florida Sun-Sentinel
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/15761459.htm

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - David Kellerman, an army special forces soldier, treated Camp Phoenix in Afghanistan like it a personal weapons warehouse, according to a federal indictment. He smuggled and stockpiled at least one machine gun, a disassembled grenade launcher, explosives and grenades and thousands of rounds of varying types of ammunition.

None of it makes sense to his father.

Lawrence Kellerman, of Lake Worth, Fla., can't figure out what went wrong enough to put his son, a U.S. Army Reservist and air marshal, in federal custody on multiple firearms and explosives charges. Maybe it was a head wound he sustained in Afghanistan, he wondered. Maybe his son was overzealous in bringing back war trophies, something he himself did after the Korean War.

David Kellerman, 44, awaits extradition in North Carolina on charges of violating seven federal laws governing weapons and explosives. Authorities said they found caches of weapons and explosives in his houseboat in Fort Lauderdale and storage units in Deerfield Beach, Fla., and Dania Beach, Fla.

His father said David excelled in his duties, and it doesn't gibe with what authorities now accuse him of doing.

"He was a hero over there; he did 19 months of combat," said Lawrence Kellerman, from his home. "I don't know what happened to him."

Kellerman's mother declined to comment on her son's situation because relatives were still trying to gather information.

Lawrence Kellerman said he thinks a head wound sustained last year in an attack in Afghanistan could have affected his son's judgment.

"I wondered why he volunteered this second time," he said. "He told me he had `unfinished business' back there."
More on link

Soldier injured in axe attack recovering from latest surgery
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/534584.html

VANCOUVER (CP) — A Canadian soldier who suffered a near-fatal axe attack in Afghanistan is recovering well from his latest surgery as support from around the world continues for his healing, says his wife.

Debbie Lepore told CBC Radio that Greene had an operation on his skull three weeks ago and is ready to face the challenge of rehabilitation.

Greene is also able to move his body more on his own now instead of physiotherapists doing it for him, Lepore said.

The soldier was ambushed March 4 while sitting down for what he thought would be a friendly gathering of elders in an Afghanistan village. 

Greene had put down his weapon and removed his helmet during the meeting when a villager in his teens snuck up behind him, pulled an axe from his clothing and struck him in the head. Canadian and Afghani soldiers shot and killed the attacker. 

The last thing Greene remembers is being mugged, Lepore said.

"Because the person would have come up from behind, that’s how it would have felt to him."

Lepore doesn’t think her husband feels any sense of betrayal.
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Writethru: Explosion kills 2 in W. Afghanistan  
October 15, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/15/eng20061015_311990.html

A bomb explosion killed two civilians and injured three others on Sunday in the western Herat province of Afghanistan, local police told Xinhua. 

"The incident took place in Pul-e-Tawa area at around 09:30 a.m. , killing two civilians and wounding three others," a senior police official in Herat city Nisar Ahmad Paikar said. 

During the incident, a bomb was planted on a handcart to attack NATO forces in the area, he added. 

Meanwhile, an official at Interior Ministry Gul Jahan told Xinhua that the bomb was apparently targeting some German advisors to the training of Afghan police in the province. 

Due to rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled down nearly five years ago. 

In the past months, numerous bomb attacks have stricken this country. 

Just on Saturday, six Afghan soldiers were killed as a roadside bomb struck their convoy in the eastern Paktia province. 

On the same day, a bomb targeting the governor of the eastern Laghman province killed one government employee and injured two others. 

Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in this volatile country this year. 

Source: Xinhua
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'No coup attempt against Musharraf'
14 Oct, 2006 1459hrs ISTIANS 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2171403.cms

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has denied a report suggesting there had been a coup attempt against President Pervez Musharraf after his high-profile visit to the United States. 

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, however, confirmed that eight people including air force officers, suspected to have links with Al Qaeda, have been arrested in connection with rockets planted near Musharraf's residence. 

Sherpao termed as 'baseless' a report in an online magazine that a coup had been foiled and that 40 Islamist extremists have been arrested in this connection. 

"It is totally baseless (report), the Musharraf government is very strong and faces no threat," the minister said. 

Other Pakistani newspapers also carried a strong denial by the minister and arrest of those suspected of planting rockets near the VVIP complex where Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz reside and along the nine kilometres deeply forested route that Musharraf travels to work. 

They were detected earlier this month, soon after Musharraf returned from his prolonged visit to the US, the UN and Britain. 

"Why should there be a coup, the baseless report is someone's personal imagination," he added. 

Asked at a media conference if Musharraf was the target of these rockets, the minister said the terrorists actually intended to create chaos in the twin cities. 

"Most of those arrested are middle-ranking Pakistani Air Force officers, while the civilians arrested include a son of a serving army brigadier," the report had claimed. 
More on link






More on link


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## MarkOttawa (15 Oct 2006)

MoD forced to hire civilian helicopters in Afghanistan
_The Independent_, Oct. 15.  By Francis Elliott and Raymond Whitaker 



> Britain is so short of helicopters in Afghanistan that military chiefs are being forced to scour the world for civilian aircraft to support its troops after the US rejected a plea to help plug the shortfall.
> 
> An ageing fleet of just eight Chinooks is working around the clock to supply and reinforce soldiers in remote outposts facing waves of Taliban attacks. The only Chinook in the Falklands was taken away for use in the campaign.
> 
> ...



La France pourrait retirer ses troupes d'élite d'Afghanistan
LEMONDE.FR | 15.10.06 
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3216,36-823738@51-799721,0.html



> Selon des sources proches de l'armée, l'état-major français a décidé de rappeler ses troupes d'élite déployées en Afghanistan aux côtés des militaires américains depuis 2003, révèle Le Journal du dimanche dans son édition du 15 octobre.
> 
> La décision française, prise au cours d'un conseil de défense, n'a pas encore été actée mais serait effective début 2007.  Elle s'inscrit "dans la redéfinition en cours des missions militaires en Afghanistan", explique le JDD. L'opération Enduring freedom, auprès de laquelle 200 hommes des forces spéciales français sont engagés sous commandement américain, est en train de disparaître. Quelque 10 000 des 15 000 militaires américains ont déjà rejoint la Force internationale d'assistance à la sécurité (ISAF) et les 5 000 restants "devraient se consacrer à former les réguliers de l'armée afghane", souligne le journal.
> 
> Le repli des forces spéciales françaises s'explique aussi par la dégradation de la situation sécuritaire dans le pays lors de *ces derniers mois, où neuf militaires français sont morts en mission de combat* [my emphasis], et par l'engagement militaire français au Liban.



Mark
Ottawa


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## tomahawk6 (15 Oct 2006)

http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10076

IMMEDIATE RELEASE	No. 1031-06
October 14, 2006


DoD Identifies Army Casualty

     The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. 

     Spc. Jason A. Lucas, 24, of Columbus, Ohio, died on Oct. 13 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when his vehicle was struck by a suicide bomber using a vehicle-born improvised explosive device. Lucas was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Polk, La. 

     For further information related to this release, contact the 10 Mountain Division Public Affairs Office at (315) 772-5461.


----------



## GAP (16 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 16 Oct 2006*

Canadian supply convoy rammed by suicide bomber
Updated Mon. Oct. 16 2006 10:38 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061015/afghan_bomber_061016/20061016?hub=TopStories

A suicide car bomber rammed into a Canadian resupply convoy Monday leaving at least three Afghan civilians dead and one Canadian soldier slightly injured. 

The soldier is reportedly in good condition in hospital at Kandahar Airfield. 

The bomber died in the blast which occurred around 12:30 p.m. at a busy intersection on the outskirts of Kandahar. 

Some bystanders were struck by shrapnel and debris and the windows on a nearby mosque were blown out. 

At least four Afghan civilians were also wounded in the attack, police officer Abdul Wasai told The Associated Press. 

Truck driver Abdul Shakoor, 23, was at an adjacent customs office when the incident occurred. 

"Part of it hit my belly,'' Shakoor told AP as he arrived at the Mirwise Hospital in Kandahar. 

"I can't hear anything now, but I am thankful to Allah that I am not dead. I am supporting all of my family.'' 

Another suicide attack near a school in Kabul has left three Afghans wounded, reported Reuters. Police were tracking the vehicle and surrounded the bomber when he blew himself up. 

The school was located on a main road that links the U.S. embassy and the city's airport. 

Hayat Khan, a purported Taliban commander, told Reuters by phone that both attacks were done by Taliban bombers. 

A total of 42 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002. Currently, about 2,300 Canadian troops are based in southern Afghanistan. 

The funeral for Trooper Mark Wilson, killed in a roadside bomb attack over the Thanksgiving weekend near Kandahar, will be held in London, Ont. on Monday. 
End

Canadian soldiers are not enough
 SARAH CHAYES From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061003.wcoafghan03/BNStory/specialComment/home

Unless Hamid Karzai cracks down on his government's corruption, the people will keep making room for Taliban, says author and Kandahar businesswoman SARAH CHAYES 

'Are you going back to Kandahar?"

On a speaking tour in the United States and Canada, I keep hearing this question. The recent assassination of Safia Ama Jan, the provincial director of women's affairs in Kandahar, not to mention the death of yet another Canadian soldier, has made people wonder whether the violence in Afghanistan has taken a quantum leap that would cause me to reconsider.

I have lived in Kandahar for nearly five years -- arriving originally as a radio reporter, then deciding to stay on to help rebuild. Currently, I run a small co-operative that manufactures fine skin-care products and exports them to Canada and the United States. For residents of Kandahar, like me, who have been watching the apparently inexorable decline, Safia Ama Jan's killing seemed utterly within the realm of normalcy. More than a year ago, in late May of 2005, the head of the provincial council of religious leaders -- a much more important person locally than Safia Ama Jan -- was gunned down outside his office right next to the seat of provincial government. Three days later, my best Afghan friend, the chief of the Kabul police, was blown up along with 21 other people at the oldest mosque in town, at a prayer service in memory of the slain mullah.

At that time, it seemed to me that nothing could ever get worse.
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Jailed for escaping 'the old man'
JANE ARMSTRONG From Monday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061015.wxprison16/BNStory/International

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — At 13, Shabano is as self-conscious and awkward as any teenaged girl. She laughs shyly when asked personal questions and nervously chips at the orange nail polish that can't hide her grimy nails.

But Shabano, like the other “women” prisoners in the Kandahar district jail, has adult-sized problems. Two months ago, she was jailed for running away from an arranged marriage with a 50-year-old man, a deal negotiated by her father before his death. Home for her now is a dark cell containing nothing but a filthy mattress folded up and stacked against the concrete wall.

Shabano has been locked up for breaking her father's deal, an exchange that horrified the girl who refers to her former fiancé simply as “the old man.”

“I don't want to spend my life with this old man,” she said, scrunching her nose in disgust. And then in a burst of anger, she launched into a diatribe against her country's ancient custom of arranging marriages for young girls.
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Petawawa faces more tears
Oct. 16, 2006. 01:00 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1160949009995&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=968332188492&call_pagepath=News/News

Town being tested by deadly Afghan mission with loss of 12 troops in just over a month

OTTAWA—When some 1,000 troops from CFB Petawawa departed for Kandahar in August, the town's mayor, Bob Sweet, knew it would be a difficult deployment.

But as the base mourned the death of yet two more soldiers — Sgt. Darcy Tedford and Pte. Blake Williamson — taking its toll to 12 in just over a month, Sweet never imagined the price would be this stiff.

"We are at war. I don't know whether the rest of Canada understands that, but certainly we do here in Petawawa," Sweet said.

CFB Petawawa, located about 170 kilometres west of Ottawa, is a century-old military base that has seen its share of deployments and sacrifices. But even this base — and its town — are being tested by the deadly Afghanistan mission that has seen its troops die in roadside blasts, mortar attacks and suicide bombings in recent weeks.
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Kabul a city of horror, hope
Afghan capital struggles with grinding poverty But amid the misery are flickers of optimism
Oct. 14, 2006. 07:28 AM MITCH POTTER MIDDLE EAST BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1160776234209&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

KABUL—If a city can be measured by its gridlock, there may be a glimmer of hope in the fact that nothing moves quickly any more in the Afghan capital. The sheer number of automobiles today — some estimates run upward of 400,000 — shows that more than a few people are prospering under the post-Taliban era.

But in the daily grind of bumper-to-bumper traffic, all of Afghanistan's other ugly realities soon become apparent. The traffic jams now are a focus point for a parade of the country's least fortunate, who hobble or crawl from window to window seeking handouts. Victims of landmine accidents stand along the major roads, their clothing pulled back to better display their stumps for maximum sympathy. Women carrying deformed infants approach idling cars silently, a quick glance at the baby's misshapen head sufficient to prompt the handing over of a small fistful of Afghan banknotes
More on link

DoD Identifies Army Casualty
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10076

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. 

 Spc. Jason A. Lucas, 24, of Columbus, Ohio, died on Oct. 13 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, from injuries sustained when his vehicle was struck by a suicide bomber using a vehicle-born improvised explosive device. Lucas was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Polk, La. 

DoD Identifies Army Casualty
http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/Release.aspx?ReleaseID=10075

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. 

 Private 1st Class Thomas J. Hewett, 22, of Temple, Texas, died on Oct. 13 at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C., from injuries sustained during a Sept. 26 incident in Baghdad, Iraq, during which an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Hewitt was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.
End

Raid on suspected militant hideout in Afghanistan
http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=5542848&ClientType=Printable

KABUL, Afghanistan Coalition and Afghan forces say they've killed three suspected militants in a raid on a housing compound today.

One coalition soldier was wounded in the fighting.

The troops called in airstrikes on the suspected militant hideout in central Afghanistan, where the military says troops found bomb-making materials.

They add that no women or children were living at the compound.

The clash follows the reported abduction of an Italian freelance photographer and his assistant in southern Afghanistan over the weekend.
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NATO is running Mountain of Wrath in Afghanistan, its third operation this autumn
16.10.2006 10:01 msk Vladimir Mironov, Russky Kurier
http://enews.ferghana.ru/article.php?id=1646

The onset of the operation was an embarrassment. NATO contingent commander General David Richards (Great Britain) announced that up to 70% of the Afghanis could end up on the Talibs' side.

Operation Mountain of Wrath is intended to drive the Taliban from the southern and southeastern provinces of Afghanistan. Two previous operations (Jellyfish and Vengeance) were attempts to accomplish just that. Both partially failed and continue even now, albeit halfheartedly. The NATO command has ordered a change of tactic. It is the Afghani regular army that will be dealing with the Talibs for a change, and the NATO contingent 7,000 men strong (including 2,500 servicemen of the US Army) will serve as a backup. The international contingent is operating on the territories of five provinces in the south, center, and east. Fighting is particularly vicious in Pandjvai (Kandahar).

The Talibs rely on their old tactic. Whenever they sustain heavy losses or feel that defeat is imminent, the Talibs fall back into the Pakistani mountains to lick their wounds and return again. The War Office in London in the meantime published a sensational report. The military maintains that "... NATO has only six months to restore order in Afghanistan or the majority of the Afghanis will side up with the Talibs."
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NZ Afghanistan service recognized by the U.S.  
 October 16, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/16/eng20061016_312221.html

New Zealand Defence Minister Phil Goff welcomed the awarding of medals Monday by the United States to 17 members of the New Zealand Defence Force. 

Ten New Zealanders have been awarded the Bronze Star and seven have been awarded the United States Army Commendation Medal in recognition of exemplary service in Afghanistan between 2004 and 2005. 

The recipients of these awards served in a wide variety of roles and undertook a range of tasks. Most were acknowledged for their work with the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan but several received awards for work in staff or headquarters roles. 

"We are proud of the way our forces have served in Afghanistan and what they have achieved. New Zealanders have contributed to Bamyan becoming one of the most stable, secure and progressive provinces in Afghanistan," said Goff. 

Also, about 85 New Zealand army, navy and air force personnel are on their way Monday to Afghanistan where they will be involved in security and rebuilding infrastructure. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Stable Afghanistan in best interest of region: PM  
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=3683 

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday said Pakistan wanted to see strong, stable and peaceful Afghanistan as it is in the best interest of the region.

In an interview with Sky News TV channel, the prime minister said, "We want to see a strong, stable, peaceful and vibrant Afghanistan" adding that it is the cornerstone of Pakistan's policy. He said, "We want to see more reconstruction in Afghanistan, bright future and elimination of poppy cultivation." He said the real problem in Afghanistan is indigenous, and it has to be tackled in Afghan territory, and if somebody crosses over, should be dealt with full force of law.

Referring to Pakistan’s efforts for ensuring peace in Afghanistan, the prime minister said, "There is no reasons as why the government of Pakistan would like to encourage any such activity, which creates law and order or security problem in Afghanistan.

He said, "Pakistan is not encouraging such activities." He said the action was deep inside the Afghanistan and not at the border; therefore, it is internal and indigenous affair. The prime minister said: "We absolutely do not believe in such activities; these are not taking place from Pakistan. Our support and involvement to the whole efforts is based on our national interest and conviction that we must fight terrorism in all its means and forms. Pakistan is strongly committed to ensuring that there should be a peaceful neighbour on its northern border. Afghanistan is an important country and important neighbour to Pakistan."

He said both the countries have very old ties, which are very multifaceted, and they transcend history, culture, economics, people to people contact, therefore there is no reason that Pakistan would involve in any activity to destabilise Afghanistan.
More on link

German Army vehicles in Afghanistan attacked
Oct 15, 2006, 23:37 GMT 
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1211420.php/German_Army_vehicles_in_Afghanistan_attacked

Kabul - In attacks with an armour-piercing weapon and a bomb, German Army vehicles moving through Afghanistan have come under fire twice within the past two days, the peacekeepers' command said Sunday. 

The attacks, and the disclosure Sunday of a car-bomb attack at the start of September on a German military camp, underline the upsurge in hostilities against the German contingent among the ISAF peacekeeping force although it is not actively fighting the Taleban. 

Late Friday, a German soldier was injured when a three-vehicle patrol came under fire near Kunduz in the north of the country, the command on the outskirts of Berlin said, confirming a report to appear Monday in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 

The armour-piercing projectile hit a Fennek reconnaissance vehicle. The newspaper said the German was hurt by shrapnel in the leg. 

On Sunday afternoon, a bomb blew up near a German convoy passing through the old section of Feyzabad, the command said. One of the three vehicles, Wolf four-wheel-drive car, was damaged, but none of its occupants were hurt. 

In Afghanistan, a spokesman for the German forces at Mazar-e- Sharif told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that a car-bomb had been left at the gate of the Germans' Camp Marmal there. That had not previously been disclosed to the German media. 

Camp Marmal guards had noticed that the vehicle should not have been there and called sniffer dogs which detected explosives planted inside the vehicle. When the hood was lifted, a pack of explosives was found near the engine. 
End

3 policemen killed in E. Afghanistan  October 16, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/16/eng20061016_312010.html

Three policemen were killed by Taliban militants in the eastern Khost province of Afghanistan Saturday, a police officer told Xinhua on Sunday. 

The militants attacked a police checkpoint in Babrak Tana area bordering Pakistan on Saturday night, killing three policemen and injuring two others, said Ziarat Gual Mangal, the deputy provincial police chief. 

At least one Taliban insurgent was also killed in the clash, he added. 

Khost, a mountainous region, has been a hotbed of Taliban rebels, who attack government and foreign targets frequently. 

Due to rising Taliban-linked violence this year, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled nearly five years ago. 

Over 2,400 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in this volatile country this year. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

New troops head to Afghanistan
Oct 16, 2006 
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/858812

Just over 100 defence force personnel flew out for Afghanistan on Monday morning ahead of news that the work of New Zealand troops there has been given official recognition by the United States.

The contingent is the ninth rotation of defence force personnel to serve with the New Zealand reconstruction team in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of friends and family turned out at Ohakea air base to farewell the army, navy and air force personnel heading to Bamyan Province.

Group leader Captain Kevin Short says the troops have mixed feelings. On one hand, he says, they are keen and anxious to get to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country, but on the other it is always hard to leave behind family.

Short says they face freezing conditions during the Afghan winter with temperatures potentially dropping as low as minus 20.
End

Fort Polk soldier from Ohio killed in Afghanistan
http://www.katc.com/Global/story.asp?S=5541915

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- An Ohio soldier assigned to Fort Polk, La., was killed in Afghanistan when the vehicle he was riding in was struck by another vehicle with an improvised explosive device, the U.S. Department of Defense said Saturday.

Army Spc. Jason A. Lucas, 24, of Columbus, died in Kandahar on Friday, the government said.

Lucas was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division in Fort Polk, La.

No further details were released.
End

Taleban bomb’ kills two civilians in western Afghanistan  
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=103686

HERAT: A remote-controlled bomb exploded near a western military convoy in western Afghanistan on Sunday, killing two Afghan civilians, police said, in a new attack blamed on the Taleban. 

The bomb exploded as the men, believed to be police force trainers, passed by the convoy on the outskirts of the western city of Herat, provincial police commander Mohammad Ayoob Salangi told reporters near the explosion site. 

’Two of our countrymen were martyred and another wounded. It was a roadside bomb exploded by the enemies of Afghanistan,’ the police chief said. 

The Taleban movement that was in government between 1996 and 2001 is waging an insurgency that relies on roadside and suicide bomb attacks which target mainly foreign and Afghan security forces but kill more civilians.
End

1164 sexually assaulted during six months  
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=103665

ISLAMABAD: In the first 6 months of the current year, 1164 boys and girls were sexually assaulted in the country, according to a report. 

The report said that 7 per cent were sexually assaulted by the police officials, pir, teachers, doctors and prisoners. 

It was said in the report that 73 per cent boys while 27 per cent girls were sexually assaulted. In Punjab 789 cases were reported while in Sindh 276, in Islamabad 68, in NWFP 21 and in Balochistan 10 cases were reported. 

71 per cent cases were reported in the rural areas while in urban areas 29 per cent cases were reported. 

In child related crime, abduction of girls for sexuality assault have been increased immensely and 401 girls were abducted for this purpose. 

It is worth to mention that hundred of cases not registered formally.
End

They say “Health is Wealth”  
Ms. Sameen Masood 
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/articledetails.php?id=80257

Summer is here and you can see the “Sharbat wala’s” here and there and specially at bus stops. The other day I noticed a “Chat wala” at the corner of a busy road and I was forced to think how hygienic that food really was? “Not at all” was what I concluded. The “Chat wala” motivated me to share some facts of a research I once did in my masters on “The awareness conditions regarding the vaccination against Hepatitis B.” Hepatitis B is a liver disease which damages the liver and its regular functions and vaccination is not the ultimate solution. Doctors and physicians advice proper care and precaution even after the vaccination. Hepatitis B is not only a physical disease but a social disease as well. It is a fatal epidemic and spreads quickly if proper care and precaution is not practiced. 

The research was conducted on a small scale and the results were striking and must to share. A small sample was taken in which half of the respondents were vaccinated whereas half were not. All the respondents belonged to middle class and 60% were highly educated and 40% were graduate or under graduates. Respondents who had great knowledge regarding Hepatitis B and its vaccination were 25% whereas 65% had knowledge to some extent and 10% knew very little about the disease and its vaccination. The source of knowledge of 60% of the respondents was mass media, 10% came to know from doctors and clinics whereas friends and family were the sources of 5% of the respondents and 25% had multiple sources. But only 60% of the respondents consulted doctors regarding the vaccination whereas 40% did not. Even more striking fact was that 70% of the respondents had their family members vaccinated whereas 30% did not. It means that 20% of the respondents realized the importance of the vaccination and vaccinated their families but did not prefer it for themselves. Only 30% of the respondents found the vaccination process complex whereas 70% found no complexity in the vaccination process which means that there are 20% of the respondents who did not find the vaccination process complex but still were not vaccinated. A majority of 70% of the respondents discuss the issue with friends and family whereas 30% did not, at the same time, 40% of the respondents had a friend or relative who was a patient of Hepatitis B whereas 60% knew no patient of Hepatitis B. A great majority of the respondents knew some of the major causes of the disease which are barber’s blade, infected blood transmission, sweat and saliva of the patient but only half of the respondents follow basic precautionary measures and hygiene rules such as clean boiled drinking water, hygienic food, clean atmosphere etc. 
More on link







More on link


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## MarkOttawa (16 Oct 2006)

Blair tells Canadians to support Afghan mission
Last Updated: Monday, October 16, 2006 | 11:27 AM ET CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/16/blair-canada.html



> British Prime Minister Tony Blair is urging Canadians to support their troops in Afghanistan, a country that is "one of the front lines of the war against terror."
> 
> Speaking to the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce in London, Blair warned that waning public interest or support of the NATO mission in Afghanistan was a clear signal to the Taliban and al-Qaeda that they were winning the conflict of ideas.
> 
> "If we let them win, will that make them any less likely to come after us?" he asked, "They're not going to stop. I believe it is absolutely vital that we stay the course, and never let Afghanistan be used again as a training ground for terrorists."..



Mark
Ottawa


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## Colin Parkinson (16 Oct 2006)

Stretching the term "news article"


http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/10/16/OperationBackfire/


Quote
While the media in Canada continues to soft-peddle the country's disastrous "mission" in Afghanistan, a cursory examination of the facts reveals that the two men most responsible for this continuing nightmare are simply not up to the task of developing a strategy worthy of the name. Stephen Harper and Lieutenant General Rick Hillier, his "butt-kicking" military chief, have demonstrated a level of ineptitude that should have Canadians extremely worried.


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## The Bread Guy (16 Oct 2006)

From the same Sarah Chayes who wrote in the Globe & Mail, she also shares her experiences as a reporter in Afghanistan being told by an editor what stories were worth covering...

*Spinning the war in Afghanistan*
Sarah Chayes, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 2006   

In September 11, 2001, I was in Paris, working as a radio reporter. The terrorist attacks shattered me, to a degree that took me by surprise. Covering the official condolence ceremony at the turreted French police headquarters, with the great bells of Notre Dame Cathedral throbbing in the background, I found myself weeping, unable to wipe my eyes because I had to hold my microphone. I was grateful to the French for dropping all the contentiousness that has characterized our peoples' long and intimate partnership. For days, they waited outside the U.S. Embassy to pay their respects. Conversations struck up between French men and women and Americans there had an achingly profound quality. Though the thought took days to surface, I began to feel that the horror that had befallen us might hide a miracle. It might goad us to go to work again, to be what we kept saying we were: the champions of human dignity, the exemplars of public participation in government, a government acting in good faith, the mentors of peoples struggling to be free.

Or it might not.

For there was something about the reaction to 9/11 that disturbed me. Along with the new openness, the surge of self-questioning in America, another tendency was emerging. It was a reflex to divide up the world into two opposing blocs: We the West versus Them--now embodied by Islam, which had suddenly appeared on the world stage to fill the role left vacant by the vanquished Soviet Union. The shorthand term for this notion, taken from the title of a book, entered our vocabulary: the Clash of Civilizations.

It was clear to me that the Al Qaeda terrorists who flew their planes into those enormously symbolic American buildings were trying to force people everywhere into splitting apart along these lines. Quite aside from the terrorists' use of mass murder, it was this intent that made them abhorrent to me. 

But some of us seemed to want the selfsame thing. And some of our leaders seemed to be showing the way, deliberately blurring all the myriad distinctions that give our world its depth and richness. Suddenly, the world was being described in binary terms, and instinctively, I knew that was wrong. An "us versus them" reaction may be normal in humans when attacked, but is it accurate? Is it productive? Is it the reaction that those to whom we look for guidance should be bringing out in us? Is this the best we can do? 

I don't think so. I don't believe in the Clash of Civilizations. I believe that most human beings share some basic aspirations and some basic values: freedom of determination, accountability, access to learning, and the reasonably equitable distribution of wealth, for example. How far different peoples have reached in their effort to achieve these things depends a lot on what has befallen them over the course of time--not on some irrevocable cultural difference. 

And so it seemed urgent to me, at that assumption-shattering moment--that moment full of potential and peril--to do my personal best to help counteract the tendency to caricature, to help bring out the human complexity of this new exchange. My background and abilities equipped me for this effort. I could talk to people on both sides of the alleged divide. I could help them hear each other. 

My editor at National Public Radio (NPR) sent me to Quetta, Pakistan, exactly where I wanted to go. Considered the most conservative and anti-American town in all of Pakistan, it had been the cradle of the Taliban movement. It was from Quetta that the Taliban, a reactionary group that used a radical reading of Islam as the basis for the world's latest experiment in totalitarianism, had set off in 1994 to capture nearby Kandahar, Afghanistan--to widespread international indifference. 

A few years later, Osama bin Laden joined the Taliban leadership there. In return for financial and military assistance in their effort to conquer the rest of Afghanistan, the Taliban offered bin Laden a haven where he could nurture and develop his Al Qaeda network. Kandahar became the base from which the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces took over ever--larger amounts of Afghanistan, until an opposing coalition of militias called the Northern Alliance was left clinging to only a tiny sliver of the country in the far north. 

Because of this foothold, it was in the north that most of the U.S. bombing had been concentrated after 9/11; and it was to the north that flocks of journalists had been dispatched. For the story most Americans seemed anxious to hear--of relieved Afghans welcoming American liberators--could be most plausibly reported from the north. 

The south was different. Well after the start of the war, U.S. planners were still struggling for a similar scenario there. They were looking for local insurgents, like the Northern Alliance, that U.S. bombing could be said merely to support. But it was harder to find them in the south. Seen as hostile and dangerous, cloaked in a darkness to match the Taliban's black robes, home to the core of the elusive Al Qaeda network, the Afghan south seemed 
impenetrable. 

But it could not be ignored. Kandahar had been the first capital of Afghanistan, and it was still the marrow of the nation's bones. And now, after 9/11, it was the antipode, the very place where the attacks had been planned. Quetta, with its promise of Kandahar once the Taliban fell, proposed just the challenge I hungered for. I arrived in the last days of October 2001.

As expected, it proved a difficult time and place to be an American journalist. But not for the reasons I had foreseen. The difficulty lay not in local hostility but in reporting back to a traumatized nation. 

"The worst period in my entire career," a friend and revered colleague confided to me as we compared notes afterward. He sent me a list of story ideas that his editors had rejected. 

"Our people simply didn't want us to do any reporting," my friend, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, complained. "They had already decided on the story they wanted and just assigned us to dig up some stuff to substantiate it." 

A CNN correspondent told me that she had received written instructions not to film civilian casualties. And I remember confabbing in the marbled hall of the opulent Quetta Serena Hotel with BBC reporter Adam Brookes in mid-November 2001, the weekend Kabul fell, listening to how he'd had to browbeat his desk editor to persuade him that Kandahar was still standing.

It was as though, because the 9/11 attacks had taken place in New York City and Washington, D.C.--the American nerve centers--they had blown out the critical-thinking apparatus in the people I had trusted to have one: the editors, the experienced journalists. 

National Public Radio was not immune, though my one civilian casualty piece did enjoy the full support of my editors, to their credit. It was a story that simply had to be reported, for the Afghan refugees I interviewed every day could think and talk of nothing else. Their hearts shattered by decades of gunfire and explosions, these refugees had as yet seen nothing like the bombs that were blowing up their country now. With no experience of precision ordinance, they were almost mad with fear, as their imaginations overloaded their mental circuitry with remembered images of carnage. That U.S. bombing was accurate was an important point. But that the bombing was traumatizing the Afghan civilians whom it was supposed to be liberating was just as true. The anguish I heard every day--the pleas to tell President George W. Bush, for the love of God, to stop the bombing--was not an act; it was real. And it seemed important for me to expose Americans to the psychological impact that this war was having, not the least because it might have future repercussions. Ideological movements like Osama bin Laden's are rooted in collective psychology just as much as matters more concrete.

So I did the story, visiting a hospital ward in Quetta, where most of the patients were children. I chose one small boy to open my report--at random really, because doctors were arriving to examine him, and their activity would give me some ambient sound to record. The boy was terribly injured; I wondered how he had ever survived the drive from Kandahar. It was so bad that I decided to censor myself. I took out the description of one of his wounds; I was afraid such a long list would sound like overkill. Even so, my story drew vituperative reactions from listeners. One said he was so angry that he almost had to pull his car off the road to vomit.

My editors, bless them, did not hesitate to run the piece. 

But as time went on, I began to sense impatience in Washington with my reporting. That same late 2001 period between the fall of Kabul and of Kandahar, when the BBC's Brookes had trouble with his desk, a senior NPR staff member whom I deeply admired wrote me an e-mail to the effect that he no longer trusted my work. He accused me of disseminating Taliban propaganda: I, like Brookes, was reporting that Kandahar was still in Taliban hands. He called my sources "pro-bin Laden," for why else would they be leaving Afghanistan at the very moment that the Taliban was losing control and anti-Taliban Afghans were celebrating?

For that report, I had interviewed truck drivers who were transporting loads of Kandahar's trademark pomegranates across the border to merchants in Pakistan. Were those workingmen "pro-bin Laden?" A withering U.S. bombing campaign was under way. In that context, could villagers not be simply fleeing their homes under the rain of fire without guilt by association with the Taliban? And--a most difficult question for Americans to untangle--was pro-Taliban necessarily the same as pro-bin Laden? 

These were the sorts of distinctions, I was learning, that it was imperative to make. Otherwise, we were going to get this wrong, with devastating consequences.

During the six weeks between 9/11 and my arrival in Pakistan, the U.S. government had worked quickly. CIA agents were dropped almost immediately into northern Afghanistan, with briefcases of money, to set about buying allies. Other officials sent out feelers to their contacts in the south, primarily in my destination, Quetta.

Alongside the teeming thousands of day laborers, bakers, trinket sellers, hustlers, and Taliban recruiting agents who clogged the streets of Quetta's Pashtunabad neighborhood---the flotsam of Afghanistan's various wars--a community of Afghan elites had also taken up quarters in the Pakistani town: engineers, many of them, the heads of humanitarian organizations or demining agencies, former officials of political factions, former resistance commanders. It was to this community that the American officials turned after 9/11, looking for anti-Taliban proxies to work with. 

Two sharply contrasting candidates quickly emerged: dapper, bald-headed Hamid Karzai, whose father had been speaker of the Afghan National Assembly in the golden age, before a 1970s communist coup; and Gul Agha Shirzai, an uncouth former Kandahar provincial governor who had presided over unspeakable chaos there in the early 1990s. 

Despite the stark contrast between these men, American planners decided to enroll them both. The notion was to mount a pincer operation against the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Karzai would sneak inside Afghanistan, pass Kandahar, then work his way back down toward it from the north, gathering followers. Gul Agha Shirzai would collect some fighters of his own and push up toward the city from the south. 

On October 23, 2001, just before I made it to Quetta, Shirzai was boasting to the Los Angeles Times that he could raise 5,000 fighters. "We are ready to move to Kandahar and get rid of the evil there," he told reporter Tyler Marshall. "Our men are inside and ready." But Shirzai swore he wanted no role in any post-Taliban government. "I don't have any desire for this," he claimed. 

Not a week after Marshall's article came out, I was checking in at the Serena Hotel. A reporter's first imperative upon landing a new beat is to develop sources. That means striking up acquaintanceships with people who are part of the story, and who, for whatever reason, wish to talk about it. It took a while, after I fused into the mass of my colleagues all grappling to cover the same events, like sharks roiling in the water over a piece of bloody meat. But eventually I found one. 

He was a commander in Shirzai's force whom I discovered in a public call office in Chaman, the Pakistani border town that rubs up against Afghanistan with the greedy voluptuousness of a spoiled cat. His name is Mahmad Anwar. He became a friend.

He proved to be a very good friend, and I never think of him with anything but warmth--even though I discovered later that he had yanked my chain with a charming shamelessness back then, recounting the events not as they actually transpired, but as Shirzai and his American advisers wished people to think they had. He took a boyish delight in the bright colors he threaded through the tapestry he wove for me. 

When I asked Mahmad Anwar, months later, to tell me the real story of the move on Kandahar, he agreed with relish. "We met secretly at Gul Agha Shirzai's house," he recounted, recalling the excited preparations. It would have been about October 12, 2001. 

It was a solemn session. Just three men were there. They accomplished the ablutions Muslims perform before prayer with a practiced ritual grace, and took a copy of the Koran down from its niche in a wall. Every Afghan house has one, placed somewhere aloft, above any other book. 

Shirzai unfolded the cloth that was wrapped around it to protect it from the ever-present dust, touched it to his lips, and the three men placed their hands upon it and swore: "By God Almighty, we will fight the Taliban to our deaths, if we must. And when we defeat them, we will turn over the government to educated men. This by God we vow."

Mahmad Anwar darted me a look to be sure I grasped the significance: "It was a sacred oath. We vowed to surrender our weapons and go home once the Taliban were done for." 

Such was the mood of self--sacrifice and the feeling of optimism about the implications of the coming Pax Americana, as many Afghans remember it. In that pregnant moment, they abruptly shed their bitterly earned cynicism. They were electrified by the belief that, with American help, the nightmare was going to end, and they would at last be able to lay the foundations of the kind of Afghan state they dreamed of: united under a qualified, accountable government. 

Grasping a wad of bills in his left hand, Gul Agha Shirzai licked a finger and paged through them with his right, counting out about $5,000 in Pakistani rupees for Mahmad Anwar, to pay for his men and their supplies. Armies, in Afghanistan, are personal affairs. Each commander calls up his own liegemen. As the meeting drew to a close, Mahmad Anwar pronounced a warning to Shirzai: "Do not tell Pakistan what we are doing." 

The role of the Pakistani government in Afghan affairs is one of the most contentious issues not just in Kandahar, but throughout the country. After more than two decades in which it has meddled industriously in the destiny of their country, almost all Afghans--even those who might once have benefited---mistrust the motives of their southern neighbor. 

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. During the savage decade-long war that followed, Pakistan gave aid and shelter to Afghanistan's anti-Soviet resistance, not to mention to millions of Afghan civilians who fled the carnage. Still, most Afghans think that Pakistani officials tried to determine the political results of that war, tried to replace the Soviet puppet at the head of the Afghan state with a puppet of their own. And Afghans resent it. They resent what feels like Pakistan's effort to run their country's economy. They breathe on the embers of a boundary dispute, "temporarily" settled more than a century ago, but in their view still legally open. And they resent the swarms of intelligence agents that Pakistan sends off to Afghanistan in the guise of students, manual laborers, diplomats, and even Afghan officials, won over or bought during years of exile. 

If the Pakistani authorities got mixed up in the anti-Taliban offensive, my border-dwelling friend Mahmad Anwar feared, it would mean danger for him and the rest of the force, for Pakistan had supported the Taliban regime from its very inception. From his vantage point in Chaman, Mahmad Anwar had observed the kind of assistance the Pakistani army and intelligence agency had provided the Taliban over the years. And now, in the wake of 9/11, they were turning on their black-turbaned protégés? They were converting to the antiterror cause? The switch was suspect, in most Afghans' view. Mahmad Anwar was sure that he and his men would be ambushed if Pakistani spies found out about their plans. Or, even if the fighters did survive, a Pakistani connection with their activities could only hide some ulterior motive, Mahmad Anwar believed.

Shirzai nodded absently at his warning, and the men filed downstairs, where they bumped into a tall Westerner. Shirzai introduced him as "an envoy from the forces in the Gulf." The presence of this man, at such an early stage, indicates how much it was at U.S. bidding that Shirzai rounded up his force at all. On his own, Kandaharis assure me, Shirzai had no followers at all. Only U.S. dollars, transformed into the grubby bills he had just counted out for Mahmad Anwar, allowed him to buy some. 

About a month after that discreet meeting, a messenger arrived at Mahmad Anwar's house. The rendezvous was for that night.

The dozens of wooly haired fighters left Quetta a little before 10 p.m.--under the noses of more than a hundred foreign journalists, not one of whom got the story. Pulling up at the turnoff, Mahmad Anwar gasped. At the head of a line of vehicles, two Pakistani army trucks were idling. 

"Yeah, sure, we tried to hide from the Pakistanis," he remarked to his men. "But here they are." 

It is hard to believe that Mahmad Anwar or anyone else involved really thought it possible to keep this venture secret, given the legendary omniscience of the Pakistani intelligence agency, and given the close U.S.--Pakistan cooperation on the anti-Taliban effort. Still, the overt collaboration was a sore point with the numerous Afghans who knew about it at the time. 

Soon, headlights probing, another several dozen trucks drove up--Gul Agha Shirzai's personal contingent--and the militiamen and their Pakistani shepherds gunned it for the border. The herd of trucks thundered through a half-dozen police checkpoints along the rough dirt road, Pakistani escorts signing to their colleagues to lower the ropes. When they reached the border, the Pakistanis stopped and pulled aside. 

The Afghans' trucks leapt forward, shouldering each other aside on the inky road, passing and being passed in a testosterone-fueled competition. Mahmad Anwar boasts that only he was able to keep up with Shirzai. It was wintertime, in the desert night. "We could hardly move our fingers." After a while, the former governor stopped and had his men collect some twigs and light a fire. "We didn't even have any weapons yet," Mahmad Anwar recalled, still dumbfounded at the memory. What kind of an invasion was this, anyway? "And now the Pakistanis knew all about us." Furious, he strode over to join Shirzai. 

"We agreed not to tell Pakistan about our plans. What happened?" 

"We couldn't cross the border without Pakistan's permission," replied Shirzai. 

"We have the Americans with us," Mahmad Anwar retorted. "What do we need with Pakistan?"

Looking back, Mahmad Anwar thinks Shirzai was putting his fealty on display. He judges the Pakistani government must have realized by then that its protégés in the Taliban were doomed. And, with characteristic versatility, it was already switching its bets. It was maneuvering to get some trusty of its own placed in charge of strategic Kandahar under the new Afghan regime. Gul Agha Shirzai was the man.

A few hours later, the ragtag invasion force reached its staging point just inside Afghanistan. "I couldn't make out what was going on," Mahmad Anwar remembered. "How could we fight without guns? So I asked Shirzai: 'Where will we get weapons for this fighting?' Shirzai answered, 'Maybe the Americans will give us some.'"

As if on signal, the fighters sighted a ball of dust spinning toward them across the barren landscape in the pale, rising light. It was a truck. When a press of excited men rolled back its tarps, Mahmad Anwar eyeballed some 600 brand new Kalashnikovs, and machine guns and grenade launchers, straight from Pakistan. He watched his comrades crowd around the truck, like starving men at a food distribution. So this was why Shirzai had been so blasé, he thought. 

Throughout the morning, meanwhile, new fighters were drifting in to join the force. Among them was another man who would become my friend, the future police chief of Kandahar and Kabul, Muhammad Akrem Khakrezwal.

A year and a half later, when I was fitting the pieces of this story together, realizing how much of it I had gotten wrong in my reporting at the time, I asked Akrem for his version.

He invited me to come by his house around 4 p.m. It was July, hot beyond imagination. Most of Kandahar was still asleep, the leaden torpor not yet broken. I joined Akrem at his silent house, and, as he spread himself comfortably on his side, leaning one arm on a cushion laid with tasteful carpet, I flipped back the cover of a notebook.

Akrem confirmed Mahmad Anwar's estimate of 600 automatic rifles, plus 60-100 rocket launchers loaded in the truck that arrived the same morning he did. "I asked Gul Agha where he got them, for they were not the kind you find in the bazaar. He said the Americans had bought them from Pakistan and given them to him."

A second weapons delivery came about a week later. "They told us to build fires to guide the plane," he said, grimacing in recollection at the strenuous nighttime hike. The airdrop included weapons, ammunition, and food--cases of Meals Ready to Eat, sealed in heavy, dun-colored plastic. You have to open up the outside envelope, pour about two fingers of water in, and lean it up against a rock to let the chemical heat warm the food. Whether the Afghans figured that out is anyone's guess.

In any case, they got a tutorial by the next day. Two U.S. helicopters angled noisily at them and, touching down in a blizzard of dust and stones, deposited a half-dozen Special Forces soldiers near the Afghan encampment. The Americans set up their sophisticated communications devices on the hoods of some trucks Shirzai provided, all stems and antennae like a daddy longlegs. 

The next day, this patchwork anti-Taliban force struck out toward the main road to Kandahar. The plan was to cut the Taliban's supply lines. 

Circling like flies overhead in maddening figure eights, two U.S. jets tracked the force. The sound reassured the Afghans, with its promise of overpowering backup. But it also emphasized the danger of their position. 

"We were really frightened," Akrem recalled, an unsentimental admission. "We were sure the Taliban would fall on us any minute." 

But apart from the noise of the planes--mosquitoes' whines in a lower register--silence. At sundown, a moment of chest-constricting peace in the desert, when the slanting light paints the hills in burnished gold, the militiamen stopped at a stream to wash and pray. 

And then the moment shattered like exploding glass. The stuttering bark of automatic weapons ripped the air, ricocheting against the rocks, amplified a thousand times. The men scattered from the stream. They dove for cover. Stony splinters shot past; the whine of deflected bullets lanced their ears. 

And it got worse: Another group of Taliban fighters was closing in from behind. 

"The American soldiers told us their friends in the planes would try to bomb them."

The Special Forces soldiers struggled to bring some order to their proxies' pell-mell retreat. 

Those droning bombers did get a bead and let loose, blowing up some seven trucks, Akrem estimated. And that settled the fight. The anti---Taliban militia captured a heavy gun and 20 prisoners. But the next day, Shirzai let the Taliban captives go, even giving them some money to speed them on their way. Hamid Karzai did the same thing, say men who were with him on the far side of Kandahar, in the mountains to the north. Asked why, the fighters shrug their shoulders, disapproval manifest, if unspoken. 

Perhaps the leniency was aimed at post-war reconciliation, making a distinction between the Taliban rank and file--conscripted boy-soldiers, mostly--and the leaders of the movement. Maybe it indicated that the lines separating the opposing camps were not traced as sharply as Western observers might presume. 

The next day, the fighters reached the main road, at a strategic pass. They were alone, unopposed. Celebrating, they began to deploy in the hills above, when a car approached, a single Arab at the wheel. The fighters captured him, binding his hands, and shot up the occupants of a second vehicle that approached a while later.

After that, for fully three weeks, Akrem said, "Not a single Talib, by God, did we see."

Mahmad Anwar remembered the same thing. "There was no fighting at all," he confessed. "The Americans did everything." After the one skirmish by the brook, the Americans laid down the rule: "'From now on, don't you move without our order.' We didn't kill a single person with a gun," Mahmad Anwar swore, innocently. Indeed, he remembered a rather embarrassing exchange with some of the U.S. Special Forces soldiers, after they all reached Kandahar. "So," he remembered boasting to the American troops. "We brought you to Kandahar at last."

"What are you talking about," the U.S. soldiers retorted. "We brought you to Kandahar." 

I must say I blushed to hear these revelations after the fact. 

Being a journalist, even one of good faith, is always an exercise in approximation. There is just not enough time, at least in radio, to be sure you got it right. Morning Edition has a 4.5-minute hole in tomorrow's show. You have to come up with something by the end of the day, almost anything. So you charge around talking to as many people as you can find in the closing window of time. You sort through the suspected manipulations. You work to put a story together that adds something, and feels plausible--given what you've been told and what you think of the people who did the telling. And when in doubt, you conform. It is the safest course, and it is the course your editors feel comfortable with. That stuff about scoops was never my experience. NPR, at best, strives to add a new angle or some needed depth to a story someone else has broken. My editors never really wanted me to do the breaking. They never liked having me out on a limb. 

But Afghanistan is a place of too many layers to give itself up to the tactics of a rushed conformity. Afghanistan only uncovers itself with intimacy. And intimacy takes time. It takes a long time to learn to read the signs, to learn how to discover behind people's words a piece of the truth they dissemble. 

Like other journalists that November 2001, I reported frequent fighting between the Taliban and Shirzai's militia, the two sides, for example, "battling for control of the main road to Kandahar." I told of the strategic pass changing hands; I told how, by contrast, the forces under Hamid Karzai "negotiated--not fought--their way toward the Kandahar from the north." The military pressure that Shirzai's group was putting on from the other side, to help accelerate Karzai's negotiations, seemed at least partially to warrant the friendship that developed between the unsavory warlord and his American patrons. 

But the whole picture was false. This din of battle was an illusion that both elements of the anti-Taliban alliance south of Kandahar wanted conveyed: the Americans so as to demonstrate the strength of the local resistance to the fundamentalist militia, and Gul Agha Shirzai--displaying a brilliant flair for the value of PR--to "gain prestige," as Akrem put it. "Gul Agha kept saying there were battles," he told me. But "Hitz jang nawa. There was no fighting at all." 

And I, like so many other reporters, fell for it.

-----
Sarah Chayes, a former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, gave up journalism in 2002 to settle in Afghanistan. After working with President Hamid Karzai's older brother at the helm of his nonprofit organization, Chayes turned to economic development. She currently runs a cooperative that manufactures natural skin-care products. Her forthcoming book, The Punishment of Virtue (Penguin Press), recounts post-Taliban Afghanistan as she has witnessed it. This article is an excerpt.

September/October 2006 pp. 54-61 (vol. 62, no. 5) © 2006 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists


----------



## The Bread Guy (17 Oct 2006)

*Editorial: The true Afghan mission*
Globe and Mail, 17 Oct 06
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/12983

''....Canada should keep at it. It was not altruism that drew Canada to Afghanistan, though keeping that desperate country safe from the Taliban is a sensible use of the Right to Protect, a United Nations policy pushed by Canada. No, it was largely self-interest. As Mr. Blair said in a speech to a Canada-United Kingdom business group, it's in the West's interests, and Canada's, to keep the terrorists from settling in again....''



*Reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan hindered by halt to CIDA spending *  
Murray Brewster, Canadian Press, 16 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/061016/n101695A.html

Canada's efforts to bring peace and stability to southern Afghanistan are being hindered by the reluctance of a federal agency to spend money earmarked for reconstruction, a Senate committee was told Monday. And the absence of that rebuilding effort is putting the lives of Canadian soldiers at risk, said the chair of the Senate security and defence committee.  Several projects by the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar have been ready to implement, but they're on hold because of a lack of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency or CIDA, Brig.-Gen Al Howard testified. "There are a few funding glitches," he said. "There are a number of projects where we are just waiting to get additional money." . . . .



*Canada joins U.S. effort to protect soldiers in Afghanistan from bombs*
Canadian Press, via MyTelus news, 16 Oct 06
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=world_home&articleID=2418434

Canada has formally joined a U.S. effort to protect soldiers from the kind of improvised bombs that are killing Canadians in Afghanistan.  The two countries signed a memorandum of understanding Monday at the Canadian Embassy to formalize the assignment of three soldiers from Canada to the Pentagon-based effort. There are also bomb research teams in Iraq and Afghanistan and staff at bases in Maryland and Virginia. Americans created a task force in 2003 to study ways to diffuse and avoid roadside bombs in Iraq. The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization was permanently established in January by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld . . . . 

*Contractors Hijack Counter IED Effort, Say Counter-Insurgency Experts*
Project on Government Oversight (POGO) Blog, 28 Jun 06
http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2006/06/contractors_hij.html

Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe is one of the best reporters on the Pentagon beat.  His latest article takes a look at the rapid expansion of the relatively new Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), where $6 billion has been spent to date, and criticism of it.  Not surprisingly, an internal Pentagon report written by counter-insurgency specialists argued that the new bureaucracy has overly prioritized technical solutons at the expense of common-sensical, cheaper and more effective solutions, such as "preventing Iraqis from becoming part of the insurgency." Intelligence and short-term projects have been sidelined in favor of long-term expensive, Cold War style contractor-driven initiatives, say anonymous members of the task force which wrote the report . . . .



*UK forces quit Afghan base*
Al Jazeera, 17 Oct 06
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/979D8809-8C7D-43FF-95C8-99646C230777.htm

British troops have withdrawn from Musa Qala, a key base in southern Afghanistan where they have come under heavy attack from Taliban fighters.  Mark Laity, a Nato spokesman in Kabul, said the British troops withdrew from the district in Helmand province after tribal elders and the provincial governor agreed to take responsibility for security in the area.  He also said that the troops had left "because of the sustained period of calm" and added that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, had supported the move . . . .


*UK troops pull out of Afghan region  * 
Press Association, via Guardian Unlimited (UK), 17 Oct 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,,-6152695,00.html

British troops have pulled out of a previously-troubled district in southern Afghanistan following an agreement with local elders and Afghan officials, a Nato spokesman said.  The decision to withdraw from Helmand province's Musa Qala district came after an agreement with local tribal elders, the provincial governor, and with the knowledge and support of President Hamid Karzai, said Mark Laity, a Nato spokesman in Kabul . . . .


*UK troops pull out of Afghan town  * 
BBC Online, 17 Oct 06
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6057728.stm

British troops have pulled out of an Afghan town which has been a centre of Taleban insurgency in recent months. Musa Qala, one of the district centres in Helmand province, has been the scene of intense fighting. Troops have withdrawn to an area outside the town to allow what locals have called a "ceasefire". However, the military have not used this term . . . .


*UK troops withdraw from Afghan district*
ITV (UK), 17 Oct 06
http://www.itv.com/news/world_908277ffcd037972df79c5b1dfed604b.html

British soldiers have pulled out of a district in southern Afghanistan in a move that is being hailed as an improvement in the security situation following 35 days of quiet in the area.  Troops withdrew from the volatile Helmand province's Musa Qala area after an agreement with the provincial governor and tribal elders.  The MoD denies any discussions have taken place with the Taliban and that the Governor of Helmand remains in control of Musa Qala . . . .



*Soldiers face penalties for trashing mess hall*
To Thanh Ha, Globe & Mail, 16 Oct 06
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/16124

They went to Alberta to prepare for their impending deployment to Afghanistan, but for 15 members of the famous Vandoos regiment, the special training trip could lead to disciplinary punishment for drunkenness and vandalism.  The soldiers are accused of wrecking the mess hall of non-commissioned officers at Camp Wainwright.  The base is home to the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre, the army's new combat simulation facility.  The 15 were among a larger group of privates and corporals who last Tuesday celebrated the end of more than a month of realistic combat training before their deployment to southern Afghanistan in a few weeks . . . .


----------



## The Bread Guy (17 Oct 2006)

*Harper defends slow pace of reconstruction in Afghanistan*
Canadian Press, 17 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/061017/n101741A.html

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is defending the slow pace of reconstruction spending in Afghanistan, saying the security situation in the southern part of the war-torn country is difficult.  He says Canadian aid is still being delivered in many parts of the country.  Opposition parties are demanding that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) resume spending its nearly $10-million reconstruction budget in the Kandahar region . . . .



*
DoD News Briefing with Gen. Richards from Afghanistan*
U.S. Department of Defense, 17 Oct 06
http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3757

''....I think as a result of a successful tactical victory in an area southwest of Kandahar, that is known as Operation Medusa -- it involved troops from Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark for a while, and the United Kingdom, as well, importantly, as the Afghan National Army and police -- I think we have now established the psychological ascendancy over the Taliban in a military sense....''


*NATO faces 'window of opportunity'*
Coalition must bring Afghans onside before Taliban returns, commander says
Paul Koring, Globe & Mail, 18 Oct 06
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061018.AFGHAN18/TPStory/TPInternational/Asia/
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/76747

Military successes over the Taliban in recent months have opened a crucial six-month "window of opportunity" to prove to Afghans in the south that long-promised reconstruction and security can be delivered, NATO's commander in Afghanistan said yesterday.  However, British Lieutenant-General David Richards warned that "if we fail to deliver on the promises that they [the Afghan people] feel have been made to them," the Taliban will be back in strength next summer. "If you do not have the consent of the people in a counterinsurgency, at the end of the day, you're probably going to lose. So we need to explore these ways to get the people onside." ....


*NATO, Afghans plan first nationwide operation*
Andrew Gray, Reuters (UK), via ReliefWeb,17 Oct 06
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/HVAN-6UNSRZ?OpenDocument

NATO is planning its first nationwide operations with Afghanistan's army and police in an effort to increase security and aid reconstruction, the alliance's top commander in the country said on Tuesday.  British army Gen. David Richards said Afghan authorities and international organizations must make the most of the next six months to boost popular support after NATO victories over resurgent Taliban Islamist fighters in the south last month . . . .


*NATO General Urges More Progress in Rebuilding Afghanistan*
David McKeeby, Washington File Staff Writer, usinfo.state.gov, 17 Oct 06
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=October&x=20061017173248idybeekcm0.585705

Recent tactical victories against Taliban forces must be followed up with a redoubled international effort to deliver on promises of reconstruction and economic development aid, says the top commander of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.  “We have this window of opportunity, which we now will need to exploit,” British Army General David Richards, appearing via videoconference from Kabul, Afghanistan, told journalists at an October 17 Pentagon press briefing . . . .


*General Says Afghan Development Must Come This Winter*
Al Pessin, Voice of America, 17 Oct 06
http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-10-17-voa55.cfm

The British general who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan says he launched the country's first nationwide security plan on Tuesday, and that the international community must take advantage of gains made in fighting the Taliban during the summer and begin to deliver a better life to the Afghan people within the next six months . . . .


*NATO Commander Says Troops Proved Toughness Over Summer*
Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service, 17 Oct 06
http://www.blackanthem.com/News/military200610_1529.shtml

NATO had a tough summer in Afghanistan, but the troops came through and have proven they are tough and in for the long haul, the NATO International Security Assistance Force commander said today.  Talking from Afghanistan with Pentagon reporters, British Army Gen. David Richards said the Taliban tried to exploit NATO's arrival to try to deter the alliance from assuming command of operations in Afghanistan . . . .


*Commander: Mistakes Made in Afghanistan*
Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press, via Washington Post, 17 Oct 06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/17/AR2006101700785.html

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan failed to follow through as it should have after ousting the Taliban government in 2001, setting the stage for this year's deadly resurgence, the NATO commander in the country said Tuesday.  The mistake consisted of adopting "a peacetime approach" too early, British Gen. David Richards told Pentagon reporters. He said the international community has six months to correct the problem before losing Afghan support, reiterating a warning he issued last week . . . .


*NATO forces get job done in Afghanistan, general says*
Gordon Lubold, Air Force Times, 17 Oct 06
http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2293098.php

The British NATO commander in Afghanistan said his forces are building on a recent “tactical victory” near Kandahar and hopes to significantly increase security in the violent country by next spring.  U.K. Army Gen. David Richards, commander of the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said Oct. 17 that the successes of his force against Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan have proven to locals they can get the job done. Strategic success will not come overnight, he said, but recent successes are reason for optimism . . . .



*Afghan progress hit by Iraq, commander says*
Peter Graff, Reuters, 17 Oct 06
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-10-17T184154Z_01_L17848556_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AFGHAN-BRITAIN-IRAQ.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsArt-C2-NextArticle-1

The decision to divert forces to invade Iraq cost the West years of progress in Afghanistan, the outgoing commander of British forces in Afghanistan said on Tuesday.  The comments by Brigadier Ed Butler, who returned this week from commanding the British contingent, were the second implicit criticism of government policy on Iraq from the military's top brass in less than a week.  Butler commanded a force of 4,500 British troops who went into Afghanistan's biggest opium-producing province, Helmand, for the first time this year and encountered fierce resistance from Taliban guerrillas. 


*Paras almost ran out of supplies*
icKent (UK), 17 Oct 06
http://ickent.icnetwork.co.uk/news/tm_headline=paras-almost-ran-out-of-supplies&method=full&objectid=17946991&siteid=106484-name_page.html

British Paras fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan came close to running out of rations and supplies, their commanding officer said.  Brigadier Ed Butler, the commanding officer of the recently returned 3 Para Battle Group, said that on occasions his men had been down to "belt rations".  Speaking to journalists in London, he said that some troops may have underestimated the "ferocity and tenacity" of the Taliban resistance . . . .


----------



## GAP (18 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 18 October 2006*

The true Afghan mission
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061017.weafghanistan17/BNStory/Afghanistan

British Prime Minister Tony Blair reminded Canadians yesterday that they are fighting the good fight in Afghanistan. But Afghan authorities are undermining that fight by allowing tribal customs to prevail over civilized legal norms.

It has not escaped Mr. Blair that while Canada's soldiers are playing a leading role in Afghanistan, alongside those of his own country, the United States and the Netherlands, Canadians back home are feeling ambivalent about the mission. Some of that ambivalence is due to a perception -- nurtured by Liberal leadership aspirants such as Bob Rae -- that Canada's role is one of "peacekeeping, constitution-making," rather than fighting in violent battles.

But some of that ambivalence is due to the painful juxtaposition of events, as in yesterday's Globe and Mail. In one story, two more Canadian soldiers were killed by insurgents, bringing the total Canadian dead to 43; in another, a 13-year-old Afghan girl sat in jail because she had run away from home rather than marrying the 50-year-old man her father had promised she would.

This newspaper has argued that the job of rebuilding Afghanistan requires a strong military presence from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that Canada is right not to shirk its fair share of the load. (Questions could be asked of some of the NATO partners about whether they're willing to do the same.) Six Canadians have died since September while helping to protect a road-construction project that is still just four kilometres long. The road is to link the isolated farms and villages of Panjwai with a highway to southern Afghanistan.
More on link

Afghan swap deal on seized Italian
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/18/italy.afghan.reut/index.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- The kidnappers of an Italian photojournalist have demanded Italy handover an Afghan who converted to Christianity from Islam by midnight Sunday in return for the hostage's release, a Web site said.

Abdul Rahman, 41, who converted 16 years ago while working with a Christian aid group as a refugee in Pakistan, was spirited away to Italy in March and granted asylum after being charged with leaving Islam, which carries the death penalty.

The kidnappers made their demand through a hospital run by Italian aid agency Emergency in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold and major opium center, said PeaceReporter, specializing in conflict cover, on Wednesday.

Gabriele Torsello had been in close contact with the hospital while working in the south until he was taken by five gunmen from a public bus headed for the neighboring province of Kandahar, the Taliban's birthplace.

The kidnappers, who spoke to the hospital's security chief, did not say what they would do if their demand was refused, PeaceReporter said.

The hospital and the Italian embassy in Kabul could not be immediately contacted for comment on Wednesday.

Afghan police say Torsello is being held by the Taliban, but the group has denied any involvement, blaming criminals.

Torsello's kidnapping last Thursday came about a week after two German journalists were shot dead while camping in the relatively safer north of the country.

More than 3,000 people, including about 150 foreign soldiers and hundreds of insurgents, have died in fighting this year, the bloodiest since the Taliban's Islamist government was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 for refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 attacks un the United States.

Most of the violence is in the south, around Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban and the drug lords are strongest.

NATO, which recently took command of security across Afghanistan from the United States, says it killed hundreds of fighters in a two week offensive, Operation Medusa, just northwest of Kandahar city last month.
More on link

Blair: Veil is sign of separation
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/10/17/britain.blair.ap/index.html

LONDON, England (AP) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that Islamic head scarves are a sign of separation and Britain's Muslims should be encouraged to integrate with mainstream society in order to improve the quality of their lives.

Blair's comments represented a strong stand in an emotional debate that has raised broad questions about Muslim communities' ties with the rest of Britain.

The issue gained attention two weeks ago when former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, now leader of the House of Commons, said Muslim women visiting his office should remove their veils. A Muslim teaching assistant in northern England was then suspended from her job for refusing to remove a black veil that left only her eyes visible.

The incidents have set off an angry back-and-forth about a garment seen as a symbol of some Muslims' reluctance to fully integrate into British life. The issue of alienation was brought painfully to Britons' attention last year, when four young British Muslims carried out suicide bombings that killed 52 commuters on London's transit network.

Blair said Tuesday that the veil "is a mark of separation, and that's why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable."
More on link

Next Stone film to be about bin Laden hunt
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/10/17/film.stone.reut/index.html

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- In a follow-up to his recent 9/11 drama "World Trade Center," filmmaker Oliver Stone plans to direct a movie about the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden, Paramount Pictures said Monday.

The film will be based in part on "Jawbreaker," a recent book chronicling the U.S.-led assault on the al Qaeda stronghold in eastern Afghanistan's Tora Bora region, a spokeswoman for Paramount, the studio behind the project, told Reuters.

Stone and Paramount, which released "World Trade Center" in August, optioned rights to "Jawbreaker" months ago, she said, confirming a report in the Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety. Paramount is a unit of Viacom Inc.
More on link

Karzai: Taliban leader in Quetta
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/17/afghan.karzai.ap/index.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press that Mullah Omar, the supreme Taliban leader who headed the repressive Islamist regime ousted by U.S.-led forces five years ago, is hiding in the southeastern Pakistani city of Quetta.

Despite U.S. efforts to ease acrimony between two key anti-terror allies, the Afghan leader in an interview late Monday also blamed neighboring Pakistan for a surge in Taliban violence in Afghanistan, and demanded that President Pervez Musharraf crack down on militant sanctuaries.

"We know he is in Quetta," Karzai said of the fugitive Omar, whose regime was toppled after the September 11 attacks on America for giving sanctuary to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. government has offered a US$10 million (euro8 million) reward for information leading to Omar's capture.

Pakistan's government on Tuesday bluntly rejected Karzai's allegations, which have been voiced repeatedly by Afghan officials.

"We know he (Omar) is in Afghanistan. The entire world knows that he is in Afghanistan," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, said in Islamabad.
More on link

Monday, October 16 2006 @ 02:08 PM MDT 

Canada losing moral authority in Afghanistan
by Paul Richard Harris 
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20061016130833403

Canada’s Role in the World

By almost any measure, Canada is a minor power. Never seen as a threat to anyone, most people around the world view us favorably. Despite the winters. But there are some very real cracks appearing in our veneer and we are starting to lose our shine. How dull and unattractive our cloak might become is still not predictable but Stephen Harper is doing his best to accelerate Canada’s depreciation.

It is generally recognized that, although Canada fought well above its weight class in two world wars, our strongest role has been that of the peacemaker – an honest broker far more interested in talking through disputes than reaching for weapons. We have operated what is sometimes called a ‘3D foreign policy’ – diplomacy, development, and defense – with the clear emphasis on the first ‘D’. In that regard, we have often seemed like a very distant neighbour to the United States, despite having such a wide range of common interests. 

Over the years, we have provided peacekeepers in numerous places around the globe where our task was to keep the warring factions apart long enough for dialogue and cooler heads to prevail. In fact, one of our previous prime ministers, Lester Pearson, is often considered to be the father of peacekeeping, for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize.
More on link

UK''s Afghanistan mission "could take another 20 years," says MP   
MIL-UK-AFGHANISTAN-MP 
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=913762

LONDON, Oct 16 (KUNA) -- British troops could be in Afghanistan for another 20 years, according to a main opposition Conservative MP and Territorial Army soldier who has just returned from a tour of duty there.

Mark Lancaster said in an interview with the UK Parliamentary House Magazine Monday, that there needed to be "political honesty" about the commitment. Lancaster, who spent eight weeks during the summer on British Army service in Afghanistan, said his tour of duty had left him better informed of the difficulties facing the NATO mission there. "I do know that progress is being made, but it is painfully slow," he said.

"I also know that if we are to create a stable society, eradicate the poppy fields and provide a genuine alternative livelihood for farmers, that is going to take a very long time, perhaps 15 to 20 years, even longer if we add the objective of 'combating terrorism' to the pot." He said. "If I am right, then the time has come for a degree of political honesty in assessing our commitment to the Afghanistan problem," the MP added.

"If we are to remain, then our commitment will not be just for 'a couple of years' but more like 'a couple of decades' if there is to be any hope of there being lasting change....This is the debate Parliament needs to have," Lancaster concluded.
More on link

8 Pakistanis freed from US detention in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay return home
By Associated Press Monday, October 16, 2006 - Updated: 01:59 PM EST
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=162610

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Eight Pakistanis released from U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned home Monday, a Cabinet minister said. 

     Two of the men had been held in Guantanamo Bay and the six others were at Bagram, the main U.S. military base north of the Afghan capital, Kabul, said Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao. 

     Sherpao said the eight were arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of being terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He declined to give their identities. 

     The eight were taken to a jail in Rawalpindi, the garrison city near the capital, Islamabad, where authorities were to debrief them before allowing them to return to their homes, Sherpao said. 
More on link

Troops destroy bomb-making cell in Afghanistan, kill three  
Tuesday October 17, 2006 (0055 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?157338

KABUL: Coalition war planes bombed and destroyed a bomb-making cell in central Afghanistan, in an encounter that left three insurgents dead and one foreign soldier wounded, the force said. 
Afghan and coalition troops had gone to the compound in the central province of Ghazni on intelligence that it housed a cell making "improvised explosive devices", bombs often used in the Taliban-led insurgency. 

"When the combined force attempted to peacefully search the compound and ask residents to come out for questioning, enemy personnel inside the compound began firing and wounded one coalition solider," it said in a statement. 

"The combined force called in close-air support and killed three suspects in the engagement." 

The compound housed "improvised explosive device facilitators" and only men, it said on Monday. 

During the fighting, a weapons cache blew up and caused extensive damage. 

Doors inside the compound were later found to be booby-trapped with grenades and rocket-propelled grenade rounds. Racks of small arms and ammunition were discovered strewn around the courtyard, the statement said. 

The troops called in a second air strike that "was directed to destroy the explosives in the remaining compound buildings." 
More on link

Widow of airman killed in Afghanistan crash blames defence cuts
Tue 17 Oct 2006
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1534752006

THE widow of one of the 14 servicemen killed in last month's Nimrod crash in Afghanistan last night blamed their deaths on Ministry of Defence cuts. 

Flight Sergeant Steve Beattie, the weapon systems operator on the Nimrod, was one of 12 crewmen from RAF Kinloss in Moray killed on 2 September, along with a Royal Marine and a soldier from the Parachute Regiment, when their reconnaissance plane crashed in Kandahar. 

Last night his widow, Shona Beattie, said she believed defence cuts were putting lives at risk. 

"All I can remember is Steve coming in the summer, saying, 'I can't remember, Shona, the last time I have taken off in a plane with all parts working'. They have cut back and cut back." 

Air Vice-Marshal Ian McNicoll, the Air Officer Commanding 2 Group, said: "At this stage, the indications are that the accident was caused by a technical failure, but we must wait for the board of inquiry to report."
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Is it fair that soldiers must pay for train tickets when home on leave?
By MARK BONOKOSKI -- Toronto Sun October 17, 2006 
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/17/2050844-sun.html

PORT HOPE -- Four Canadian soldiers, dressed in their military fatigues and en route to their base in Trenton, stopped for lunch here the other day at the Winchester Arms where Daniel Christie was holding court at his usual spot near the end of the bar. 

Christie, a now "retired "Via Rail engineer, having quit before he was fired (again), is one of those characters every small town needs -- well read, best-intentioned, articulateand unafraid of tilting at windmills. 

Some would even call him a shit disturber,a trade unionist through-and-through who, when pen is in hand, can also turn a phrase ona dime, as evidencedby the weekly column he wrote for the Port Hope Evening Guide until the newspaperwent on strike and he opted out of scabbing. 

And he is nigh impossible to dislike, his blend of skepticism and cynicism tempered by a palpable social conscience that takes him beyond being simply dismissed as a raker of muck with away with words. 

At this writing, 42 Canadian soldiers have been killed in the war in faroff Afghanistan, two over the weekend, and it is a reality that hits even closer to home when four young men infatigues suddenly walk into your local tavern on their way to a future that could very well tragically end with yet another ramp ceremony being broadcast on the six o'clock news
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Soldier afforded fitting last farewell
October 17, 2006 By JENNIFER O'BRIEN -- London Free Press
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/17/2050873-sun.html

We all mourn : A city pays its respects as Trooper Mark Wilson is laid to rest. The sounds of silence

Inside a London church yesterday, at least 1,000 people -- relatives, friends and soldiers -- stood united behind the broken family of Trooper Mark Wilson. 

Outside the packed Mary Immaculate Catholic Church -- under yellow-ribboned trees and in a wind-lashed parking lot -- stood scores of people who didn't know the fallen soldier, but felt his loss. 

It was a fitting final farewell from a city that has joined in grief -- most notably with a grassroots yellow-ribbon campaign -- since Wilson, 39, died Oct. 7 in a roadside blast near Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

"I have been enormously impressed with how our community has responded to this tragedy," Rev. Graham Keep said in an emotional sermon piped over outdoor speakers to throngs gathered outside the church. 

"As a sign of solidarity with Mark's family, one cannot find any yellow ribbon anywhere in this city." 

"They're sold out," he said of fabric stores that had reported a run on yellow ribbon since a radio show caller challenged the city to show its support for the grieving family. "Good, they should be sold out." 

Yesterday, the bright ribbons adorned the lapels of many who attended. Others wore red. Some wore poppies. 
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Counter-Terrorism: The Untouchables  
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20061006.aspx

October 6, 2006: The most frequent source of Islamic terrorists is a place that counter-terrorism organizations have a very difficult time reaching. That would be the thousands of madrasses (religious schools) that teach the Wahabi (and related) interpretation of Islam. Wahabis believe that infidels (non-Moslems) are the cause of all the world's problems. The solution is to convert or kill all the infidels. That's it. A simple message. All the rest is just lots of anecdotes reinforcing the basic message. The radical madrasses don't teach terror, which makes them hard to shut down, but they do emphasize the need to struggle, even die, in order to serve Islam as best you can. Saudi Arabia, where Wahabism developed in the 18th century, tries to get the madrasses faculty to lighten up a bit, and at least point out that terrorism is un-Islamic. Not surprisingly, many of these madrasses teachers refuse to back down when it comes to delivering a hard core message. They are on a mission from God. Saudi Arabia has dismissed some of the more extreme teachers, and even jailed a few. But those who can no longer teach openly, while on the government payroll (Saudi Arabia pays the salaries of all clergy and religious teachers), do it on the sly. In other countries, attempts to shut down pro-terrorist madrasses has been difficult, because the religious teachers scream persecution, and accuse the government of being an enemy of Islam. Since these madrasses don't teach logic or critical thinking, they can usually get their students out in the streets, to protest the closure efforts. 
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Soldier afforded fitting last farewell
October 17, 2006  By JENNIFER O'BRIEN -- London Free Press
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/17/pf-2050873.html

We all mourn : A city pays its respects as Trooper Mark Wilson is laid to rest. The sounds of silence

Inside a London church yesterday, at least 1,000 people -- relatives, friends and soldiers -- stood united behind the broken family of Trooper Mark Wilson. 

Outside the packed Mary Immaculate Catholic Church -- under yellow-ribboned trees and in a wind-lashed parking lot -- stood scores of people who didn't know the fallen soldier, but felt his loss. 

It was a fitting final farewell from a city that has joined in grief -- most notably with a grassroots yellow-ribbon campaign -- since Wilson, 39, died Oct. 7 in a roadside blast near Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

"I have been enormously impressed with how our community has responded to this tragedy," Rev. Graham Keep said in an emotional sermon piped over outdoor speakers to throngs gathered outside the church. 

"As a sign of solidarity with Mark's family, one cannot find any yellow ribbon anywhere in this city." 

"They're sold out," he said of fabric stores that had reported a run on yellow ribbon since a radio show caller challenged the city to show its support for the grieving family. "Good, they should be sold out." 

Yesterday, the bright ribbons adorned the lapels of many who attended. Others wore red. Some wore poppies. 
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44 Taliban killed in Afghan clashes
October 17, 2006 By FISNIK ABRASHI
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2006/10/17/2048921-ap.html

KABUL (AP) - British troops pulled out of a troubled southern Afghanistan district Tuesday after reaching an agreement with tribal elders, while fighting killed 44 suspected Taliban militants across the country, officials said. 

NATO, meanwhile, announced it was launching a new countrywide military operation with Afghan forces to maintain pressure on the Taliban over the fall and winter, and to pave the way for long-promised development after the harshest fighting in five years. 

Mark Laity, a NATO spokesman in Kabul, said the decision to withdraw the British troops from Helmand province's Musa Qala district follows an agreement with tribal elders and the provincial governor, and was supported by President Hamid Karzai. 

"There has not been any contact with the Taliban, and they are not involved in this," Laity said. 

He said the troops were leaving because it had been 35 days since the last major clash. They would leave Afghan security forces in charge. 

Musa Qala has been one of the most volatile regions of Helmand, where about 4,000 British troops who deployed to the province in the spring have met with stiffer-than-expected resistance from resurgent Taliban militants. 

The British defence ministry said that the pullout did not represent a setback, and that British forces would retain a presence in nearby districts. 
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The sounds of silence
October 17, 2006  By IAN GILLESPIE -- London Free Press
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/17/2050872-sun.html

There were words, to be sure. And there were sights, as well. 

But often, it was the sounds -- and sometimes even the stunning absence of sound -- that stood out at yesterday's funeral for Trooper Mark Wilson at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church. 

There were, for instance, the words of Rev. Graham Keep. 

"This thing called life is temporary . . . and in this moment, we are called to look at our own lives," said Keep, whose words were also carried by loudspeaker to mourners who couldn't find a seat in the church and gathered in the church's basement and parking lot. 

"Mark's death was not in vain," Keep said. "It's a call to all of us to be peacekeepers in our lives." 

There were words, to be sure. Though Keep clearly understood how such things can fall so short. 

"What can we say in a time like this?" he asked the mourners. "Words often seem empty." 

And there were sights. 

There were the lines of firefighters, police officers and members of the RCMP and military in their crisp uniforms and polished boots; the rows of medals dangling from veterans' chests; the flag-draped coffin bearing the remains of the London native, who was killed in the early-morning hours of Oct. 7 near Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

There was the sight of Wilson's family, their sorrow almost too visible for an onlooker to bear. 

And there were sounds, too. 
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Sculpture carved from a maple tree honours troops
October 17, 2006 By JOE WARMINGTON -- Toronto Sun
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/17/pf-2050845.html

ORANGEVILLE -- Dwayne Orvis has Canada tattooed on his right arm. 

In fact, it's about the only thing on that arm that remains intact. 

"I get a tattoo in every country in which I served," the injured soldier, from Shelburne, near Orangeville, said yesterday. 

Canada was the first. Bosnia and Kosovo are two of the others. 

The one he got from Afghanistan sits right below the map of Canada and the red Maple Leaf. Courtesy of the Taliban, it's a giant scar which pales in comparison to the ones you can't see on the inside. 

Look at it for a minute and watch him wince and you can see the kind of damage a homemade suicide bomb can do. 

"It kind of hurts in the cold," the master corporal said of his shattered and severed arm that took the brunt of a blast from a bomber on a bicycle Sept. 19. It was blown apart. 

He knows he's fortunate to be alive. Several of his pals, and many Afghani civilians and children he tried to protect, were not as fortunate. 

And yesterday, as he took part in the unveiling here of a sculpture dedicated to Canada's troops in Afghanistan, there was another attack. 
More on link


----------



## GAP (18 Oct 2006)

*More Articles found 18 October 2006*

Air strikes kill 22 Afghan civilians: reports
Updated Wed. Oct. 18 2006 9:18 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061018/afghan_rocket_061018/20061018?hub=TopStories

The provincial government in Kandahar province is confirming that nine civilians were killed and 11 others wounded in NATO air strikes Wednesday. 

NATO said the operation was believed to have caused "several" injuries. 

Three houses were targeted in Zhari district, said Gov. Asadullah Khalid, according to The Associated Press. 

He said some Taliban militants were also killed, though he did not give a number. 

Earlier Wednesday, there were reports that as many as 13 civilians were killed in a separate attack when a rocket struck a house in an Afghan village during a clash between insurgents and NATO troops. 

Abdul Rehman, a resident of Tajikai, told AP the rocket was fired from an aircraft, striking a home. All inhabitants of the dried mud house, including the owner, were killed, Rehman said. 

"The government and NATO are fighting the Taliban, and civilians are the victims," Rehman told AP. He said police sealed off the ruins of the five-room house after removing the bodies, and only relatives were being allowed in. 

Provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhel said there were some civilian casualties in the Tajikai attack, but he would not confirm how many. 

He said one Taliban militant was killed and three police officers were wounded in the fighting. 
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Norway says won't send more troops to Afghanistan
Wed 18 Oct 2006 15:49:57 BST
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L18611322&WTmodLoc=World-R5-Alertnet-2

OSLO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Norway's centre-left government said on Wednesday it would not send special forces to Afghanistan, rejecting NATO calls for reinforcements to southern Afghan regions where foreign soldiers face growing resistance.

Last month officials from the U.S.-led NATO military alliance called on Norway to boost its presence in Afghanistan from its current 480 troops, and diplomats had said that Norwegian officials signalled they would abide.

But Norway's foreign and defence ministers said in a joint statement that the country's forces were already stretched and that no more troops could be sent to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan for the time being.

The decision followed heightened tensions between the parties in Norway's Labour-led coalition government as politicians from the Socialist Left Party (SV), a junior coalition partner, opposed sending more soldiers.

"Norway will not expand its military contribution to ISAF to include special forces at the present time," said Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and Defence Minister Anne-Grete Stroem-Erichsen.

"The Norwegian contribution will be based on an overall assessment of needs and capacities, and the obligations we have assumed linked to other current international operations and a possible future U.N. operation in Sudan/Darfur."

Norway said, however, it would increase financial aid to Afghanistan and continuously review its abilities to send more troops.
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Reconstruction efforts hindered by halt to CIDA spending
October 16, 2006 By MURRAY BREWSTER
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/16/pf-2041307.html

OTTAWA (CP) - Canada's efforts to bring peace and stability to southern Afghanistan are being hindered by the reluctance of a federal agency to spend money earmarked for reconstruction, a Senate committee was told Monday. 

And the absence of that rebuilding effort is putting the lives of Canadian soldiers at risk, said the chair of the Senate security and defence committee. 

Several projects by the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar have been ready to implement, but they're on hold because of a lack of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency or CIDA, Brig.-Gen Al Howard testified. 

"There are a few funding glitches," he said. "There are a number of projects where we are just waiting to get additional money." 

The federal government has set aside $100 million in development aid for Afghanistan, $10 million of which is for projects in the volatile southern region, where Canadian troops have been engaged in a bloody struggle with Taliban insurgents. 

Howard was reluctant to criticize CIDA, saying the agency is the expert in development and has its own way of conducting business. 

"It's not just about money," said the former artillery officer, who spent a tour in Afghanistan when Canadian troops were based in Kabul. 

"It's also about trying to building the capacity so (the Afghans) can do it themselves. We could race out the front gate and build a school. We could probably do it tomorrow without any difficulty." 

But trying to dig water wells, construct schools, roads and bridges through the local authorities is a slow, frustrating exercise, said Howard. 
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NATO Commander Says Troops Proved Toughness Over Summer
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1652

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2006 – NATO had a tough summer in Afghanistan, but the troops came through and have proven they are tough and in for the long haul, the NATO International Security Assistance Force commander said today. 
Talking from Afghanistan with Pentagon reporters, British Army Gen. David Richards said the Taliban tried to exploit NATO’s arrival to try to deter the alliance from assuming command of operations in Afghanistan. 

“We needed to prove, both to them and to the people of this country – in particular people of the south – that NATO ISAF was up to the job that we had been entrusted with, building on the great work of the U.S.-led coalition,” Richards said. “That meant that we had to fight, and fight we have.” 

He said the alliance had a tactical victory in Operation Medusa in the area southwest of Kandahar. The NATO troops came from Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdom. Richards said the operation helped the Afghan National Army and police establish “the psychological ascendancy over the Taliban in a military sense.” 

He said there is no doubt any more that NATO can fight. Alliance soldiers inflicted “the biggest single defeat on the Taliban that had occurred since 2001,” Richards said. 

But having established its bona fides, the alliance must build upon its accomplishments, he said. “We have now with the government and with the international community to exploit the window of opportunity,” the general said. 

The Afghan government, NATO and the international community must deliver reconstruction and improvements in governance that Afghans want. “They need to appreciate that it's not all going to happen tomorrow, but that it is … on an upward curve with a continuing sense of improvement,” Richards said. “That will build confidence that all this effort is worth it and the fighting, when it occurs, is worth it and leads to a better future. 

He said failure to deliver would mean a bad year in 2007. “If we can deliver it and we start to persuade moderate opinion – which is still a vast majority in this country, they want us to succeed – that we are up to it, then things could be much better by April next year, and that is our aim jointly, with the government, with the international community and obviously within the band, the grouping, of those that constitute the security forces at work here,” he said. 

The general said he had spent the morning with the chiefs of the Afghan army and police. The three gave final direction on the first pan-Afghanistan security operation in which the whole country will feel the effect of properly coordinated security operations. “This is one of the great advantages of NATO-ISAF expansion,” he said. “For the first time, we have a single commander with a single headquarters with whom the Afghans can now operate and cooperate. And we gave clear direction, I hope, about how we are to take forward our operations together this winter.” 
End

Afghanistan-bound S.C. Guard unit to get send-off
By CHUCK CRUMBO ccrumbo@thestate.com Posted on Tue, Oct. 17, 2006  
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/15776411.htm

The first group of S.C. Army National Guard soldiers will leave Wednesday on a mission that will take them to Afghanistan.

A farewell ceremony for about 200 troops from the Guard’s 218th Infantry Brigade will be held in Mullins. The troops, from the 1st Battalion, 263rd Armor Regiment, will go to Camp Shelby, Miss., for about two months of training and then deploy for a year in Afghanistan.

The soldiers will be the first from the 218th to go to Afghanistan since the Newberry-based brigade was alerted in August that it could send 1,800 soldiers to support Operation Enduring Freedom.

There, the brigade’s primary mission will be to train the Afghan army. Small groups of S.C. Guard troops have been trainers and advisers to the Afghan military since the early days of the Afghanistan war, launched weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks. The 218th will have command of the entire Afghan training mission, code-named Task Force Phoenix.

Brig. Gen. Bob Livingston, brigade commander, said the mission would give the 218th the chance “to go as a team.”

“We wanted the leadership of this state to go and take care of our people,” Livingston said at a weekend briefing for Guard members and their families in North Charleston.

Nicknamed “The Dragons,” the Mullins-based battalion has companies in Marion, Dillon and Conway with M1A1 tanks, mortars and support vehicles. But that equipment will stay behind. Instead, its soldiers will serve as a security force, getting around Afghanistan in Humvees.

They will also serve as a bridge between the present Guard unit handling Task Force Phoenix — Oregon’s 41st Brigade — and the 218th, scheduled to arrive in the spring
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U.S. General: Afghan Road, Electricity Projects Move Ahead
By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1676

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2006 – Steady progress is being made to provide new roads, electric power and water distribution systems to the Afghan people, the U.S. Army’s top engineer said today. 
The Taliban destroyed much of Afghanistan’s feeble infrastructure while they were in power, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander and chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said from Afghanistan during a teleconference with Pentagon reporters. 

That’s why Afghanistan isn’t a reconstruction mission, Strock said. 

“This is a construction mission,” the three-star general said. “And, when you look at the resources available in this country, it’s going to take a while to mobilize them. And, it’s going to take time.” 

Yet today, about 921 kilometers of Afghan roads are under construction or have been completed, representing a $170 million investment, said Strock, who’s in Afghanistan to check up on road building and other engineering projects. 

The fifth-poorest country in the world, Afghanistan is a large, mountainous country that’s in need of a good road system to boost its economic development, Strock said. That’s why U.S. Army engineers are partnering with other agencies, he noted, to build a circuitous road network that will connect Afghanistan’s chief cities. 

“We’re very close to completing the national ring road, which is the primary road which links all the major cities of the country around the circumference of the country,” Strock explained. Secondary roads are also being built, he said, to connect provincial centers and the villages beyond. 

Establishing a modern road system in Afghanistan will provide a conduit between the central government and its people, Strock said. And, he added, new roads will also connect Afghanistan’s people to “health care, economic opportunity, education” and other economic generation factors. 

“So, the roads are really one of the most important areas we’re working on now,” Strock said. 

A recent increase in insurgent-led violence in some rural areas of Afghanistan hasn’t slowed reconstruction efforts, Strock said. Provincial reconstruction teams continue to implement Afghan-recommended projects across the country, he noted, especially in areas that have experienced security challenges. 

Strock’s engineers also are engaged in providing electric power and water distribution systems for Afghanistan’s citizens. Since Afghanistan has no national power grid, he explained, the engineers have been building rudimentary water-powered electricity generators around rural areas of the country. 

“The only practical way to get power to the people is through local pinpoint electrical sources,” Strock said. “This is the kind of system they need. It requires no resources to operate except the natural flowing water.” 

This simpler method of generating electricity dovetails with local agricultural and irrigation programs, Strock said, and provides Afghans “a resource that they have not had available to them.” 

Strock acknowledged many Afghans might not know about ongoing reconstruction projects conducted on their behalf, because of the size of the country and poor communications. 

“If you’re not in the immediate vicinity of one of our projects, you may not know anything about it,” Strock said. The country’s rugged terrain, he explained, makes it “very difficult for people to really understand what’s going on around them.” 

Part of the challenge, Strock noted, is getting the word out to the Afghan people about the many reconstruction projects being undertaken that will eventually improve their lives. 

Real progress is being made in Afghanistan, Strock said. 

“I think we have sufficient resources, and we’re now in the process of gaining that irreversible momentum we seek,” the general said. 
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AFGHANISTAN: School torched in Badakhshan
17 Oct 2006 06:50:50 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/d0943f8f8ab30e4cd06287f6234cfa27.htm

BADAKHSHAN, 16 October (IRIN) - Unidentified gunmen set fire to a large high school in the northeastern province of Badakhshan on Saturday night, local officials said on Sunday.

"Last night a number of gunmen entered Hazrat Khalid school in Zebak district, tied up two guards and then set fire to the school building," Abdul Mohammad Fateh, head of Badakhshan education department, said.

"Nearly 80 percent of the building has been torched. They also set fire to all equipment, including books and note books and even cans of dry milk," Fateh maintained.

According to Fateh, some 800 boys and girls used to study in Khalid school. 

Local security officials said so far no one has been arrested in connection with the incident.

Mohmmad Sadiq Fatman, deputy education minister, blamed the attack on "the enemies of Afghanistan" - a reference to the hardline Taliban militants who were toppled by the US-led coalition in 2001. The militant group closed down all girls' schools and banned women from work in governmental institutions during their five years in power.

"They are the enemies of development of our country and are trying to keep our people in darkness and ignorance and then exploit them for their brutal aims," Fatman asserted.

A primary school building was also damaged on Saturday when it came under rocket attack in Sarkh district of the southeastern Logar province, local officials have said.

Schools and educational institutions are a common target for resurgent Taliban guerrillas who are fighting against the US-backed government of Hamid Karzai. They operate mainly in the south and east of Afghanistan.
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AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Afghan registration begins
17 Oct 2006 06:56:30 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/8e44b7724e6538610a6f2ba28e845191.htm

ISLAMABAD, 16 October (IRIN) - At least 1,000 Afghans participated in the first day of a massive 10-week registration drive that started on Sunday across Pakistan, officials said on Monday. 

The campaign is aimed at providing millions of Afghan exiles in Pakistan with identity cards to allow them to stay in the country for the next three years. 

"It [registration] is up and running. Generally, it's quite a slow start. However, we hope the pace will accelerate from next week after the holy fasting month of Ramazan," Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman for the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. 

The US $6 million registration exercise is a follow-up to a comprehensive Afghan census conducted in Pakistan in February and March 2005, which found more than 3 million Afghans were living in the country. Most had arrived after December 1979, fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 

Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) is conducting the exercise using fingerprint biometrics and photos to record information through 90 fixed registration centres supported by mobile registration vehicles across the country.

The UN refugee agency and government authorities are monitoring the process. 
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ISAF: Taliban commander killed in airstrike in Afghanistan
Oct 17, 2006, 7:59 GMT 
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1211827.php/ISAF_Taliban_commander_killed_in_airstrike_in_Afghanistan

Kabul - A Taliban commander was killed Tuesday in an airstrike carried out by US-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in a joint operation with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, the ISAF said. 

The international force said another 10 to 15 Taliban militants were killed by the three 225-kilogram bombs dropped in the strike in the Khod Valley in Uruzgan province. 

The airstrike targeted a compound of the mid-level Taliban leader who, the ISAF said, had carried out ambushes on Afghan and ISAF troops. 

No civilians were hurt in the operation and no other buildings damaged, it added. 
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Kidnapped reporter in Afghanistan says he is ok
(Reuters) 17 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October645.xml&section=subcontinent

KABUL - Kidnapped Italian journalist Gabriele Torsello says he is fine and being moved around by his abductors, a web site reported on Tuesday.


PeaceReporter (www.peacereporter.net), which specialises in reports from conflicts, said Torsello had contacted a hospital run by Italian aid agency Emergency in Lashkar-Gah, capital of strife-racked Helmand province in the south.

Torsello spoke to the hospital’s security adviser late on Monday night to say that he was alright and that his kidnappers had just moved him from one place to another.

One of the kidnappers also told the adviser they would make contact again soon, PeaceReporter said.

Torsello, a London-based photojournalist who is a Muslim, had met staff at the hospital before leaving for Kandahar city, capital of neighbouring Kandahar province, by bus last week.

He was kidnapped by five gunmen on Thursday after he left by bus from Lashkar-Gah.

Torsello was in the area — a Taleban stronghold and the centre of opium trade in the world’s main supplier of that commodity — to report on the deaths of civilians and destruction of hospitals and homes by NATO forces in operations against the Taleban.
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AFGHANISTAN: BOUCHER - ITALIANS, CONTINUE YOUR WORK
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200610171203-1078-RT1-CRO-0-NF11&page=0&id=agionline-eng.oggitalia

(AGI) - Rome, 17 Oct - The US intervention in Afghanistan is part of the strategy of the global fight against terrorism. It is a commitment that will last for many years and of Italy, a country that has been fundamental since the outset, we ask for a continuation of the contribution to the re- building of the country. This was the statement made by the deputy to the secretary of state Rice, Richard Boucher, speaking to the foreign and defence commission in the Senate on the matte of military commitments abroad. (AGI) - 
171203 OTT 06 
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FACTBOX-Foreign hostages in Afghanistan
17 Oct 2006 14:12:06 GMT Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L17356911.htm

Oct 17 (Reuters) - Kidnapped Italian journalist Gabriele Torsello says he is fine and being moved around by his abductors, a Web site reported on Tuesday.

Following is a short chronology of some reported foreign kidnappings in Afghanistan.

November 2003 - Turkish engineer Hassan Onal is released by Taliban kidnappers after a month in captivity. Onal was seized from a U.S.-funded highway project on Oct. 30.

December 2003 - Two Indians, kidnapped while working on a U.S.-funded road project, are released unharmed.

March 2004 - One Turk is shot and a second kidnapped in an attack in southern Afghanistan. They had been working on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. The kidnapped Turk was later released.

November 2004 - United Nations workers Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Shqipe Hebibi from Kosovo and Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan are freed almost four weeks after they were abducted at gunpoint in Kabul. A Taliban splinter faction, Jaish-e Muslimeen (Army of Muslims), claimed to have held them.
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Legislative candidate headed to Afghanistan with Oregon Guard
10/17/2006, 10:38 a.m. PT The Associated Press    
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-16/116110705569920.xml&storylist=orlocal

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — As the votes are counted in his state Senate race, Paul Evans expects to be getting ready for battle in Afghanistan.

Evans, a Democrat, is to leave Nov. 5 for a 60-day stint with the 116th Air Control Squadron of the Oregon Air National Guard.

Two days later, on Nov. 7, the mailed-in ballots will be counted in his race with incumbent Republican Sen. Jackie Winters.
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Stone buys rights to CIA agent's Afghanistan memoir
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 | 6:43 PM ET  CBC Arts 
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/story/2006/10/17/stone-oliver-jawbreaker.html

Director Oliver Stone plans to follow the mainstream success of this summer's World Trade Center with a film about the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The film will be based in part on the recent book Jawbreaker, which chronicles the experiences of soldiers in Afghanistan and the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Stone surprised critics and audiences by steering clear of politics and controversy with World Trade Center, which tells the story of two New York Port Authority police officers who survived the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Stone told the Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety he saw in Jawbreakerthe same chance to create compelling drama.

"I'm not looking to make a political movie, but it always seems to come down to that with me," said Stone.
More on link

Anthrax Vaccine For Soldiers Serving In Iraq, Afghanistan And South Korea To Resume
Main Category: Bio-terrorism / Terrorism News
Article Date: 17 Oct 2006 - 13:00pm (PDT)
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=54400

The US Defense Department said compulsory anthrax vaccination of military personnel serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and South Korea will resume within the next 30 to 60 days. Anthrax immunization is said to raise the risk of infertility, multiple sclerosis and lupus. Although people have died following a vaccination, the Pentagon says the link between anthrax immunization and death is not evident.

Anthrax immunization has been a controversial subject - it has even been halted by a federal court.

As well as military personnel, defense contractors in those three countries will also be immunized.

According to William Winkenwerder Jr., Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the vaccine is effective and safe. He said the only side effects are swelling, redness, flu-like symptoms, some pain and malaise. "In all the studies we have performed, looking very, very thoroughly at the vaccine, there is no increase in mortality, there is no increase in morbidity, there is no increase in hospitalizations," he said.

Mark Zaid, a lawyer who has challenged the immunization program, said there is no scientific proof that the vaccine is effective in human beings.
More on link

Local soldier returns from Afghanistan
After spending seven months serving on his second tour with the Canadian military in Afghanistan, local soldier Cpl. Kyle Scott is back home. 
Nicole Quintal Reporter Wednesday October 18, 2006
http://www.whitecourtstar.com/News/261435.html

After spending seven months serving on his second tour with the Canadian military in Afghanistan, local soldier Cpl. Kyle Scott is back home.
Scott spent most of his time covering the ground in and around the city and province of Kandahar as a part of Canada’s Operation ARCHER mission. The mission focused on securing and ridding the area of Taliban in order to help people living there experience a better life and move on. 
As a combat engineer, he was responsible for demolition construction, road building, munitions clearing and the clearing of mine fields, to name a few. He would be sent to rid rooms or compounds of weaponry, as well as clear roads and pathways of mine detectors.
The mission was filled with days of exhausting hard work and in some cases, Scott and other soldiers wouldn’t be able to shower for over 20 days. Often, he would work seven days straight each week, unless the mission was going fairly smooth. If it was, he and the other soldiers were allowed to sleep in on Saturday morning, but by 1 p.m. they had to be in uniform and begin maintenance on their vehicle. 
While serving in the Taliban-devastated country, many things stood out to Scott, including the sweltering 60-degree Celsius temperatures.
"The heat just stops you in your tracks. The dust and sand. The smells. In the city there was rotting food and animals and sewage in the streets. The smells were pretty overwhelming at times," he said.
More on link

Police: Rocket Hits House in Afghanistan
The Associated Press Wednesday, October 18, 2006; 5:11 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101800180.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- A rocket hit a house during a clash between suspected Taliban insurgents and NATO and Afghan security forces in a southern village, killing some civilians, police said Wednesday.

At least one Taliban militant was also killed and three police were wounded in four hours of fighting that started at 10 p.m. Tuesday in Tajikai, a village in southern Helmand province, said provincial police chief Ghulam Nabi Malakhel. He said several civilians were killed but did not say how many.
More on link

AFGHANISTAN: ABDUCTORS DEMAND CONVERT IN EXCHANGE FOR ITALIAN REPORTER
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.350751741&par=

Kabul, 18 Oct. (AKI) - The abductors of Italian journalist Gabriele Torsello have reportedly said they will free him in exchange for an Afghan who converted to Christianity from Islam and obrained political asylum in Italy. Photojournalist Torsello, a Christian who converted to Islam, was kidnapped last Thursday while he was travelling from Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile Helmand province to neighbouring Kandahar - the two parts of the country where fighting between insurgents and NATO forces is fiercest.


Abdul Rahman was offered political asylum by Italy last March after escaping a potential death sentence for having rejected Islam and converted to Christianity. 

He travelled to Italy after a a court judged him mentally unfit to stand trial on apostasy charges and released him and now lives in an undisclosed location. 

Torsello's kidnappers asked for the exchange in a phone call to a hospital in Afghanistan run by Italian charity Emergency. 

The kidnappers reportedly want the exchange to take place before the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. 
More on link

Officer: Britain's battle in southern Afghanistan tougher than expected  
The Associated Press Published: October 18, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/18/europe/EU_GEN_Britain_Afghanistan.php

LONDON British troops fighting Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan came close to running out of rations of food and water during some battles, their commanding officer said.

Brig. Ed Butler, commander of the 3 Para Battle Group, which recently returned to Britain after a six month deployment, said that on occasions his men had been down to "belt rations."

Speaking to journalists in London on Tuesday, Butler said that some troops may have underestimated the "ferocity and tenacity" of the Taliban resistance. But he said that they had never been in danger of being overrun by Taliban forces.

Butler said the delay in deploying NATO troops in southern Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban in 2002, while Britain and the United States carried out the invasion of Iraq, had affected operations in Afghanistan.

Butler, who led the 3 Para Battle Group during its deployment in Helmand province, Afghanistan, said he believed that they had "tactically defeated" the Taliban.

But he warned the enemy could still regroup over the winter and it was now essential to press ahead with reconstruction projects to convince the local population that the NATO operation is worth supporting.

"If we take our eye off the ball and we don't continue to invest in it, there is a danger they (the Taliban) will come back in greater numbers next year," he said.

Butler said the ferocity of the fighting over the summer had taken some of his troops by surprise.
More on link


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## cplcaldwell (18 Oct 2006)

From CBC.ca shared under the Fair Dealings Provisions of the Copyright Act, RSC

Link to article



> *NATO regrets civilian deaths after air strikes in Afghanistan*
> Last Updated: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 | 2:00 PM ET
> CBC News
> 
> ...


----------



## The Bread Guy (18 Oct 2006)

*Soldiers to be limited to one combat tour in Afghanistan: minister*
Canadian Press, via mytelus.com, 18 Oct 06
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=canada_home&articleID=2419703

To avoid wearing out his troops, Canada's defence minister is proposing to limit combat troops to one deployment in war-torn Afghanistan, if possible.  Gordon O'Connor told the Commons defence committee Wednesday that with a little luck and good planning, the army won't have to ask soldiers to return again and again to battle Taliban insurgents ....

*Hillier defends tactics in Afghanistan*
Tenille Bonoguore, Globe & Mail, 18 Oct 06
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061018.wafghan1018/BNStory/International/home
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/25398

The Canadian Army knows where the Taliban commanders are in southern Kandahar and have a clear delineation of the group's boundaries, the Chief of the Defence Staff told the Commons defence committee Wednesday.  Adding that he never said Canadians were negotiating with the Taliban, General Rick Hillier said defectors from the Taliban were being encouraged to “use words in parliament instead of bullets in Kandahar to achieve their ends”.  “We are in their country. It is their political process. They built the process based on the constitutions they developed and are working through it,” Gen. Hillier said told the committee ....



*Canada presses NATO to do more in Afghanistan*
Reuters (UK), 18 Oct 06
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18102006/325/canada-presses-nato-afghanistan.html

Canada is pressing other NATO countries to send more troops to Afghanistan and lift restrictions on the soldiers already stationed there, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said on Wednesday.  Canada has 2,300 troops in the south of Afghanistan, where they have repeatedly clashed with Taliban militants. More than 40 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far.  NATO, conceding it is short of troops, is pressing member states to send more soldiers to the south but is running into resistance ....

*Hillier to push allies for danger zone aid*
Some NATO troops not eligible for risky duty
Mike Blanchfield, (with files from The Associated Press),  Ottawa Citizen, 18 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=a489c0ce-6922-40ec-96a2-9f8d21c60fc9

Canada's top soldier is leading a behind-the-scenes offensive against an unlikely target: fellow NATO allies.  Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, is leading Canada's charge in trying to persuade countries in the 26-nation alliance -- particularly France, Italy, Spain and Germany -- to cough up more soldiers for dangerous duty in Afghanistan's south, or grant permission to the troops they already have stationed in country to serve in the hazardous region ....


*Norway will not send special forces to Afghanistan*
Daily Times (PAK), 19 Oct 06
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\19\story_19-10-2006_pg7_6

NATO-member Norway will not send special forces to southern Afghanistan despite the alliance’s appeal for additional forces to battle Taliban insurgents, the government said on Wednesday.  “Norway will not expand its military contribution to ISAF with special forces at present,” said a joint statement by Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and Defense Minister Anne-Grete Stroem-Erichsen. The statement said that Norway will instead increase aid for the Afghan people, and will work to strengthen international civilian efforts in Afghanistan ....



*Letter:  Afghan progress *  
Ed Butler, Commander, 16 Air Assault Brigade, The Guardian (UK), 19 Oct 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1925414,00.html

Your front-page story (Iraq war cost years of progress, October 18) paints a misleading and mischievous picture of what I said at a media briefing on Tuesday. It omits some of my comments and extrapolates meaning and intention from others which is completely false . . . .



*DoD Press Briefing with Lt. Gen. Strock at the Pentagon * 
Presenter: Commander, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock   October 18, 2006 10:00 AM EDT
http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3760 

''....part of our mission is reconstruction. That, too, I think, as I mentioned, is going in the right direction. We have sufficient momentum. I think we have sufficient resources, and we are in the business of gaining steady progress here. We do this with the Afghan ministries. They really help us to understand the requirements of the people and help us set the priorities as they think they should be ....''


*Engineers plan to double number of construction projects in Afghanistan region *  
Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes. 19 Oct 06
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=40864

U.S. engineers plan to hit the gas on reconstruction in Afghanistan, with double the number of projects in the region planned for this fiscal year, said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Army Corps of Engineers.  The Afghan Engineer District has plans for about 600 reconstruction projects, officials said.  The engineering district conducts construction and engineering projects in Central Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, officials said . . . .


*Afghan Construction Projects Reach or Near Completion*
American Forces Press Service, 17 Oct 06
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1634

Several construction projects in Afghanistan have recently been completed, and many more are close to completion, military officials in the Afghan capital of Kabul reported. The Khayr Khot Medical Clinic in Paktika province had a grand opening ceremony Oct. 14. The clinic will provide health care to citizens of the province’s Sharana district.  The clinic complex consists of a building with five rooms, a bathroom and a guard post with perimeter wall. riginally built by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan in 1999, the facility needed significant repairs, coalition officials said. The refurbishment cost $120,000 and was funded by the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development . . . .



*Karzai: Taliban Leader Mullah Omar Hiding In Pakistani City*
Kathy Gannon, Associated Press, 18 Oct 06
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=4503a91b-8787-481c-b923-af95377b4923

....  Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press in an interview late Monday that Mullah Omar, the supreme Taliban leader who headed the Islamist regime ousted by U.S.-led forces five years ago, is hiding in the southeastern Pakistani city of Quetta.  The Afghan leader also blamed neighboring Pakistan for a surge in Taliban violence in Afghanistan and demanded President Pervez Musharraf crack down on militant sanctuaries ....


----------



## The Bread Guy (19 Oct 2006)

*Single tour proposed for soldiers*  
O'Connor recognizes toll on troops, Some support roles will be excepted
Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, 19 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&col=968350116467&c=Article&cid=1161208213868&call_pageid=968332188774

Canada's mission in southern Afghanistan is so dangerous and demanding that top defence officials want to ensure soldiers have to serve only one tour of duty there. "We are trying as best as possible ... to try and ensure that most people don't go back to Afghanistan to that combat area," Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said yesterday.  By juggling some staff and ramping up recruiting, the armed forces should be able to get to February 2009 — the scheduled end of the mission — without forcing "large numbers" of troops to serve more than one six-month stint fighting insurgents ....


*Afghan mission 'successful' but demanding on personnel: Hillier*
CBC Online, 18 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2006/10/18/hillier-troops.html

Canada's top soldier says the country's troops are successfully carrying out their mission in Afghanistan — but Gen. Rick Hillier warned the deployment is forcing the military to make use of every asset it has.  The troops are making an important difference in Afghanistan, Hillier, Canada's chief of defence staff, told the House of Commons defence committee in Ottawa on Wednesday.  Gen. Rick Hillier told the House of Commons defence committee that the demands of the Afghan mission are prompting the military to deploy soldiers overseas who were not originally meant to be sent abroad.  He said they have been able to make use of intelligence and local information to target key Taliban commanders and protect development projects ....



*A typical Afghan mess ruins Canadians' day*
Jane Armstrong, Globe & Mail, 19 Oct 06
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061019.AFGHAN19/TPStory/TPInternational/Asia/

The gunfight was in full swing when Canada's reconstruction team pulled into the village.  A turbaned man with streaks of blood on his tunic wandered across the parking lot. Two U.S. Marines were screaming expletive-filled orders at a pair of detainees, and Afghan army troops were massing at the gate of the compound, which is normally a school.  It wasn't how Warrant Officer Dean Henley's week was supposed to start.  As part of Canada's civil military co-operation unit, WO Henley is known as a peace broker in this war-torn area of southern Afghanistan. Some even call him the "Prince of Panjwai." ....


*Relief groups reject Afghan projects*
Work alongside soldiers too dangerous
Army's humanitarian role blurs the line
Rick Westhead, Toronto Star, 19 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&col=968793972154&c=Article&cid=1161208213873&call_pageid=968332188492

Several leading Canadian relief organizations say they will not assist in reconstruction efforts in southern Afghanistan because it's impossible to keep their employees safe when Canada's military is also involved in nearby humanitarian projects.  They say that when Canadian soldiers are nearby digging wells, building schools or working on their own development efforts, it poses a threat to their employees. Officials with CARE Canada and World Vision Canada were responding to comments by Canadian Brig.-Gen. Al Howard, who told a Senate committee in Ottawa on Monday that several reconstruction projects in the volatile Kandahar region are on hold because of a lack of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency ....



*Chrétien government rejected military's advice on Afghan deployment: ex-army chief*
CBC Online, 18 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/18/afghan-military-advice.html

The former Liberal government led by Jean Chrétien rejected the advice of military commanders by deciding in early 2003 to send 2,000 troops to Afghanistan, CBC News has learned.  In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, Canada had sent several hundred soldiers to assist U.S. troops in tracking down al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan. When that mission ended, senior military officers recommended that Canada send only 500 soldiers in a very limited role — but Ottawa chose instead to deploy 2,000 troops.  Lt.-Gen. Mike Jeffrey, who was commander of Canada's army, says he told the chief of defence staff that his forces weren't ready for a significant mission overseas.  The commander of the army at the time, Lt.-Gen. Mike Jeffrey, said he told the chief of defence staff that his forces weren't ready for a significant mission overseas ....



*Karzai’s Wild Card*
Dr. G. Rauf Roashan, Afgha.com, 19 Oct 06
http://www.afgha.com/?q=en/node/1459

President Karzai has taken upon himself to seek a radical solution to the problem of increased violence by Taleban in his country in meeting with tribal leaders on the Pashtun lands. Ever since his election as the Afghan president he has hesitated to play his Pashtun tribal card. Both politics as well as common sense have dictated to him to lead the country not as a Pashtun, but as an Afghan void of tribal affiliations. He has been able to maintain the balance in this regard. However, because of the fact that Taleban emanated from among Pashtun students of the madrassas in Pakistan and because of the shifting of the center of extremist activities from Afghanistan to Pakistan and newly found basis for al-Qaeda within the Pashtun belt in Pakistan, it seems a necessity that Karzai for the first time should play his so far un-played Pashtun card ....



*Opinions: New tool in fighting terrorists: smoking Afghani marijuana?*
Macy Hanson, Web Devil, 19 Oct 06
http://www.statepress.com/issues/2006/10/19/opinions/698349

Don't take my word for it. Take the Houston Chronicle's.  According to a Reuters report published in the Houston Chronicle, "Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy - almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-high marijuana plants."  It turns out that marijuana really does help terrorists after all.  The problem, according to Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of the Canadian defense staff, is that marijuana plants absorb considerable amounts of energy. This makes locating Taliban fighters seeking cover in Afghan marijuana forests difficult to locate with thermal-imaging technology.  This is bad news for the military effort to rid the area of guerrilla Taliban fighters ....


----------



## GAP (19 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 19 October 2006*


Afghan teens recruited for security detail
Renata D'Aliesio  Times Colonist Tuesday, October 17, 2006
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=86f9a846-91ff-4466-b35b-2083eaea7d96&k=60462

Kandahar -- Canadian troops building and guarding a road where six soldiers have died in 16 days will soon receive help policing the treacherous region: local teenagers armed with AK-47s and just 10 days of training.

The new auxiliary force of officers is being thrown together to aid with security in Kandahar province and other troubled spots in southern Afghanistan.

NATO had resisted taking this route, preferring to focus on recruiting and training police officers, Canadian Col. Gary Stafford said. But poor recruitment and escalating attacks from insurgents have left them with little choice but to try the government's plan.

"The Afghan government requested that we expedite and get individuals into high-risk areas," said Stafford, NATO's regional police adviser for southern Afghanistan.

"Normally, to become a policeman it's going to take nine to 10 weeks of training, but because there is such a need for these young men, they have decided to provide them with a 10-day training program."

The move to establish an auxiliary force highlights the state of policing in southern Afghanistan. It's in disrepair, leaps and bounds behind the Afghan National Army.

Stafford estimates there are 1,600 police officers in Kandahar province, but most of them are part of a militia that answers to the governor.
More on link

More bombs as kidnappers demand Italy quit Afghanistan
Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:37am ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-19T123730Z_01_ISL151434_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C2_worldNews-1

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed several Afghan civilians and wounded British soldiers when he attacked a military convoy in the troubled south on Thursday, witnesses and an Afghan army officer said.

Bodies of civilians, some with arms and legs blown off, were scattered around the scene and a NATO vehicle was ablaze after the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province -- a Taliban stronghold -- witnesses said.

"The bomber was on foot and hurled himself at the convoy of NATO," said Afghan army officer Shamsuddin. He had earlier said two NATO soldiers were killed but NATO said there were no alliance casualties.

The British Defense Ministry said several of its soldiers were hurt but none killed in the blast in the city's bazaar. 


Helmand, also the opium capital of the world's largest producer, is one of the country's most violence-racked areas in what is the bloodiest year since the Taliban's strict Islamist government was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello (www.kashgt.co.uk) was kidnapped last week from a bus on his way from Lashkar Gah to neighboring Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.

In a call to an Italian-run hospital in Helmand, his kidnappers have demanded Italy surrender an Afghan granted asylum after he was prosecuted in Kabul this year for converting to Christianity from Islam 16 years ago.
More on link


Italy rejects new ultimatum over kidnapped reporter in Afghanistan  
dpa German Press Agency Published: Thursday October 19, 2006 
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Italy_rejects_new_ultimatum_over_ki_10192006.html

Rome- Italy on Thursday rejected a new ultimatum issued by the kidnappers of an Italian journalist held in Afghanistan calling on the government to pull its troops out of the country. "A withdrawal is out of the question. We will stay because Afghans want us to," Defence Minister Arturo Parisi said. 

Gabriele Torsello, a Muslim convert who works as a freelance reporter for Peace Reporter, an internet news service, was kidnapped last week. 

On Tuesday, the kidnappers reportedly issued a different ultimatum, offering to free Torsello in return for Abdul Rahman, an Afghan who received asylum in Italy in March after he faced the death penalty in his home country for converting to Christianity. 

It remains unclear where the kidnapped journalist. He was taken prisoner on a road between Helmand Province and Kandahar.
End

Afghan bomber kills 2 kids, wounds British troops
Updated Thu. Oct. 19 2006 8:35 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061019/afghan_attack_061019/20061019?hub=TopStories
and here
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1902818.ece

A suicide bomber killed two children, wounded seven civilians and a number of British soldiers in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. 

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the attack in the town of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province wounded "a small number" of British soldiers. 

Squadron Leader Jason Chalk, an ISAF spokesperson, said he had no reports of British fatalities and did not have any immediate information on what kind of vehicle was attacked. 

Ghulam Muhiddin, spokesperson for Helmand's governor, said the attacker targeted British soldiers. He earlier had said the bomber targeted a British aid organization's vehicle. 

Muhiddin said the bomber was on foot, and that the blast killed two children -- a boy and a girl both under age eight -- and wounded seven civilians. 

The attack comes as NATO's secretary general is saying the soldiers need more help from member states. 

Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also says the mission will only succeed if it can help the Afghan government improve ordinary people's lives, including jobs, infrastructures and alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers. 
More on link

Afghanistan: clashes wound 70
4.05, Wed Oct 18 2006
http://www.itv.com/news/8d7497aea4ed32917faeda77796e62da.html

During the first nine months of this year, 70 British personnel were admitted for treatment after being wounded in action in Afghanistan, official figures show.

The Ministry of Defence figures show that a further 53 people - including civilian as well as military personnel - were admitted to British or coalition medical facilities for non-battle injuries.

Fourteen personnel were categorised as very seriously injured from all causes excluding disease while a further nine were categorised as seriously injured.

In total, 198 were evacuated by air from Afghanistan on medical grounds, whatever the reason.

In Iraq over the same period, 47 personnel were admitted to the British military hospital at the Shaibah logistics base near Basra after being wounded in action. A further 855 were admitted for disease or non-battle injuries.

Three were categorised as very seriously injured and seven as seriously injured while 553 were evacuated from Iraq by air.
More on link

British exit Afghanistan area after deal struck
Article published Oct 18, 2006
http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061018/NEWS/610180550/-1/State

Kabul, Afghanistan | British troops pulled out of a once restive district in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday after reaching an agreement with tribal elders for Afghan forces to take over security duties.
NATO also announced a new countrywide military operation with Afghan troops designed to maintain pressure on Taliban fighters during the fall and winter and pave the way for long-promised development after the most bitter fighting in five years.
Officials said fighting across Afghanistan killed 44 suspected Taliban militants.
Mark Laity, a NATO spokesman in Kabul, said the decision to withdraw British soldiers from Helmand province's Musa Qala district followed an agreement with tribal elders and the provincial governor and was supported by President Hamid Karzai.
"There has not been any contact with the Taliban and they are not involved in this," Laity said.
He said the soldiers were leaving because there hadn't been a major clash in the district in 35 days. Musa Qala was one of the Helmand areas where resurgent Taliban militants put up stiffer resistance than expected when about 4,000 British soldiers deployed to the province this past spring.
British Gen. David Richards, commander of the 32,000-strong NATO-led force in Afghanistan, said British troops would still be in nearby districts if the Afghan forces policing Musa Qala needed help.
He also announced the launch of Operation Eagle, but didn't say how many NATO and Afghan soldiers would be involved or the specific areas being focused on.
"The underlying purpose of this integrated security operation is to allow and encourage much needed reconstruction and development to take place across Afghanistan," he said.
Richards told reporters NATO forces need to show progress during the next six months to keep the Afghan people's support and prevent the Taliban from taking a stronger hold.
At a news conference in London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq important for "the security of the world."
More on link

Soldiers return from Afghanistan   
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6065598.stm

Craig O'Donnell was killed in a suicide bomb attack 
Soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders are due to be reunited with their families after a hazardous tour of duty in Afghanistan. 
About 100 Scottish troops will return home after six months in the trouble-torn country. 

One of their number, 24-year-old Private Craig O'Donnell from Clydebank, was killed in a suicide bomb in Kabul. 

The Argylls, now the 5th Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, were granted the freedom of Stirling. 

The troops, who will return to barracks in Canterbury, were sent to Afghanistan as part of Nato's ISAF force to guard and protect the military headquarters in the capital. 
More on link

Afghanistan's border base sees frequent clashes with Taliban  
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/19/content_5221124.htm

BERMEL, Afghanistan, Oct. 18 (Xinhua)-- The Bermel military base is located in the east of Afghanistan's eastern province Paktika and it is only 10 kilometers from Pakistan. 

    About 400 to 500 Afghan soldiers are deployed in the base, which lies on a desert-like plain and is surrounded by high walls and thorny wire netting. Civilian houses are scattering one or two kilometers away. 

    "Our base is often attacked by rockets launched by Taliban militants on the mountains," said Abdul Karim, an Afghan solider who is in his twenties and serving in the base. 

    "I and my comrades fought with some Taliban insurgents yesterday on the mountains to the west and the fight lasted from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.," said Karim on Wednesday. 

    Some U.S. soldiers are also stationed there, but an Afghan interpreter for the military being asked declined to tell the number of them, saying "It is a military secret." 

    A U.S. officer told Xinhua that about 20 Taliban militants were killed in the conflict on Tuesday, which Karim fought in, and three others were arrested. 

    Seventeen bodies of the militants were lying on the ground in a compound in the base, bullet holes clearly seen on some bodies. The U.S. officer said several bodies were still left on the mountains. 

    Paktika and other eastern provinces have suffered from rising Taliban-linked violence this year as numerous attacks and clashes occurred
More on link

Hanging of Pakistani-British national delayed    
www.chinaview.cn 2006-10-19 19:31:20   ISLAMABAD, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) 
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-10/19/content_5225329.htm

 Hanging of a Pakistani-British national, scheduled on Nov. 1, has been delayed for two months, Pakistani officials said on Thursday. 

    Officials at the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, some 30 km south from Islamabad, said that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had issued an order for the delay. 

    Mirza Tahir Hussain was found guilty of killing a taxi driver in 1988, when he was going to meet his relatives on return from Britain. He has already served 18 years in a death cell at the Adiala Jail. 

    His family said that the taxi driver had tried to sexually harass and to loot him at gun point and that the driver was hit by a bullet during scuffle. 

    Black warrants for the execution have been issued and his parents as well as relatives of the man killed were informed through a letter. 
More on link

Norway not to send more troops to Afghanistan  
October 19, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/19/eng20061019_313327.html

Norway's government decided Wednesday not to send additional soldiers to boost NATO forces in the south of Afghanistan, although U.S. and NATO want more military aid from Norway, according to report from Oslo. The announcement was made after meetings within the government and with foreign policy MPs from the majority left-center alliance. 

The Norwegian government is continuing evaluating the situation and has not yet replied to NATO's request to member nations for more troops to southern Afghanistan. 

"It is not going to happen now, but the possibility of sending extra forces later is still open," sources said. 

Instead of sending military personnel, the government will offer education and training to the Afghan military and police forces, and contribute with other types of civil assistance. 

"We will increase our contribution, but not with military personnel at first," according to sources. 

The government bases its current decision on the belief that there is more to be gained from strengthening the civil sector than the military, the report said. 

NATO spokesman James Apparthurai told Norwegian news agency NTB that the alliance would continue to press Norway to contribute more to the effort in Afghanistan, even though Norway must be able to decide how its forces would be deployed. 

Norway has about 500 troops in Afghanistan. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Thursday, October 19, 2006  


Engineers plan to double number of construction projects in Afghanistan region  
By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Thursday, October 19, 2006
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=40864

ARLINGTON, Va. — U.S. engineers plan to hit the gas on reconstruction in Afghanistan, with double the number of projects in the region planned for this fiscal year, said Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Afghan Engineer District has plans for about 600 reconstruction projects, officials said.

The engineering district conducts construction and engineering projects in Central Asia including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan, officials said.

Projects will focus on transportation, water and power infrastructure, Strock said, calling reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan a “race against time.”

The acceleration of reconstruction projects will continue until 2008, by which time the Corps should have built enough infrastructure to allow engineers to move into remote provincial areas and villages, he said.

“Right now, you simply can’t get in some of the places that need the most help,” Strock said.
More on link

AFGHANISTAN: Millions face hunger as drought worsens, warns aid group
18 Oct 2006 15:55:45 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/8a3ef8440b1909aaffd38ceaa78bde78.htm

QALAT, 18 October (IRIN) - Some 2.5 million drought-stricken Afghans across much of the country have lost their crops and are facing acute food shortages, international aid group Christian Aid warned on Wednesday in the capital, Kabul.

An assessment carried out by the aid group in 66 villages in the provinces of Badghis, Farah, Faryab, Herat and Ghor, mainly in the northwest, found that many people have lost 70 to 80 percent of their rain-fed crops following too little rain last winter and spring.

According to government figures, around 20,000 people have left their homes in order to survive, the UK based aid group has said. 

"It is really vital now to realise the plight of these [drought-stricken] people as the winter is getting closer and snow could close roads to many of the remote parts of those provinces," said Sultan Maqsood Fazil, Christian Aid's advocacy officer in Afghanistan.
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In brief: Stone goes to Afghanistan  
Staff and agencies Thursday October 19, 2006 Guardian Unlimited 
http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1926055,00.html

Oliver Stone will hop from Ground Zero to the mountains of Afghanistan for his next film project. Fresh from the success of World Trade Center, which documented the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the veteran director is planning a movie charting the US's subsequent fight against the Taliban and hunt for Osama bin Laden. The production will be loosely based on Jawbreaker, a fact-based bestseller by former CIA officer Gary Berntsen. "It will be a compelling drama, not a polemic," Stone assured Variety magazine.
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German lawmakers to probe Turk's claims of Afghanistan abuse
Published: 10/19/2006
http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=147313

BERLIN - A parliamentary committee will probe claims that German special forces in Afghanistan abused a prisoner who was later held for four years in the US Guantanamo Bay jail, politicians said on Thursday. 
Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turk, was arrested by US forces in Pakistan shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. 

US investigators claimed he was an "enemy combatant" with links to Al-Qaeda and he was transferred to a US prison in the Afghan city of Kandahar before being incarcerated in Guantanamo. 

He was released this year because of a lack of proof that he had belonged to a terrorist organisation. 

Kurnat, 24, has claimed he was physically beaten by German soldiers in Afghanistan, but the German government said on Wednesday that while there was proof of "verbal contact" it had found nothing to back up his more serious claims. 

Senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government said the parliamentary defence committee would now look into the matter. 

"The accusations that Kurnaz has made against members of the army's KSK special forces must be cleared up quickly and without reserve," Merkel's Christian Democrats and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, said in a joint statement.
End




More on link


----------



## The Bread Guy (20 Oct 2006)

*MacKay tells NATO that Canada cannot carry on without help in Kandahar*
Murray Brewster, Canadian Press, 19 Oct 06
http://www.cp.org/premium/ONLINE/member/elxn_en/061019/p101927A.html

The Conservative government has bluntly told the secretary general of NATO that the country cannot shoulder the entire burden of fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Canada's foreign affairs minister said Thursday.  Peter MacKay said he has asked that other members of the alliance send troops to the volatile region, which has claimed the lives of 42 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat.  "My point to him was, we cannot continue to do this without further support," MacKay said in a speech, referring to NATO's Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.  "No one country, or even a handful of countries can do all that is necessary to provide the kind of security environment needed." ....


*MacKay, NATO repeat calls for Afghanistan reinforcements*
CBC Online, 19 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/10/19/mackay-afghanistan.html

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay has repeated his call for more countries to send troops to Afghanistan's volatile southern region, comments echoed by the secretary general of NATO.  "We are calling in a … forceful way for other countries to come and participate in what is a very difficult part of this mission," MacKay said Thursday after an address to the Canadian International Council.  "We sense that there are other countries willing to come and to participate."....


*Canada repeats call for more NATO allies to send troops to Afghanistan*
People's Daily Online (CHN), 20 Oct 06
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200610/20/eng20061020_313666.html

Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay Thursday repeated his call for more NATO allies to send troops to Afghanistan. The Conservative government has told Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, that Canada could not shoulder the entire burden of fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, MacKay said in an address to the Canadian International Council on Thursday. "My point to him was, we cannot continue to do this without further support," MacKay said, referring to the NATO leader. "No one country, or even a handful of countries can do all that is necessary to provide the kind of security environment needed." ....



*Senate committee accuses Harper government of sabotaging Afghanistan probe *  
Murray Brewster, Canadian Press, 19 Oct 06
http://www.cp.org/premium/ONLINE/member/elxn_en/061019/p101925A.html

Members of the Senate's all-party security and defence committee accused Stephen Harper's Conservative government Thursday of attempting to smear the upper house and possibly obstruct their investigation into Canada's deepening involvement in Afghanistan. Committee members were recently slammed in media reports and in a national newspaper editorial over a $138,000 overseas trip that included a stop at a luxury hotel in Dubai. Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said someone in the government with an agenda and perhaps in the prime minister's office likely pointed out the trip to a journalist. He said the story that aired was full of inaccuracies, which have now cast a shadow over the committee as it tries to get to the bottom of questions over reconstruction spending in Kandahar ....



*Suicide bombers won’t stop us in Afghanistan: NATO chief*
Daily Times (PAK), 20 Oct 06
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\20\story_20-10-2006_pg7_33

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said on Thursday that suicide bombers would not defeat the military alliance’s efforts to ensure democracy prevails in Afghanistan. Such tactics proved that Taliban rebels could not defeat multinational forces through conventional warfare, he added. Earlier on Thursday, a suicide car bomb exploded in the southern Afghan town of Lashkar Gah, wounding a “small number” of British troops and at least four Afghans, according to the Ministry of Defence ....



*Letter:  No projects stalled for lack of money*
Josée Verner, Minister of International Co-operation, Toronto Star, 20 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161294617320&call_pageid=968332189003&col=968350116895
http://tinyurl.com/tkqps

An article in the Toronto Star, which is based on information provided to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence on Oct. 16, implies that funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Kandahar is stalled. No projects in Kandahar are being held up for lack of funds.  Canada's new government has made substantial financial commitments, especially for stabilization and reconstruction in Kandahar. CIDA has delivered on Canada's aid commitments to Afghanistan, in Kandahar and across the country. We have delivered $3.1 million to build bridges, roads, and small dams in Kandahar province. This work enables farmers to produce, get their goods to markets and earn a living ....

*Continuing conflict hinders UN humanitarian operations in Afghanistan*
UN News Centre, 19 Oct 06
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20315&Cr=afghan&Cr1=

Insecurity throughout much of Afghanistan, particularly in southern, south-eastern and eastern Regions, continues to impede United Nations humanitarian operations in the war-torn country, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reported in its latest update.  Missions have been suspended in nearly all regions, while there have been three separate attacks on WFP commercial vehicles carrying food along the main corridor linking Quetta in Pakistan, through Kandahar, to Heart, threatening to disrupt the flow of drought relief supplies to the west of the country ....



*France Reviewing Use Of Forces In Afghanistan: Defense Min *  
Associated Press, via nasdaq.com, 19 Oct 06
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20061019\ACQDJON200610191856DOWJONESDJONLINE001319.htm&selected=9999&selecteddisplaysymbol=9999&StoryTargetFrame=_top&mkt=WORLD&chk=unchecked&lang=&link=&headlinereturnpage=http://www.international.na

French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie visited a U.S. Revolutionary War battlefield Thursday in an effort to highlight historical ties between France and the U.S., then met with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld about modern wars with more strained U.S.-French relations.  Alliot-Marie met with Rumsfeld for about an hour, then told reporters that French officials are reviewing the continued use of France's special forces in Afghanistan. "Decisions will be made later" on whether they will stay, she said.  Through an interpreter, she said the special forces "have been extremely involved in those missions, and they have paid ... a rather heavy burden."  She said the expansion of NATO's role in Afghanistan is an appropriate time to reassess France's presences there ....



*There is never going to be a Nato victory in Afghanistan*
The military option is going nowhere. The way forward is to emulate Pakistan by withdrawing troops and making deals  
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian (UK), 20 Oct 06
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1926820,00.html

General Sir Richard Dannatt's brave call for an early British withdrawal from Iraq contained one logical flaw. It did not apply to Afghanistan, he said, because foreign troops were invited by the Kabul government. This gave them a different status from coalition forces in Iraq, "which is why I have much more optimism that we can get it right in Afghanistan". It was an odd remark since US and British forces have a standing invitation from the Baghdad government. There is a clear parallel with Afghanistan, just as there is in his core arguments: Britain's presence in Iraq is exacerbating the security problems, and "we are in a Muslim country and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear" ....


----------



## GAP (20 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 20 October 2006*

Vandoos to beef up mission, O'Connor says
DANIEL LEBLANC 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061019.DEFENCE19/TPStory

OTTAWA -- The Canadian Forces will pack a bigger punch in Afghanistan next month and will be able to put more resources into the hunt for Taliban insurgents, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said yesterday.

Speaking to the House of Commons defence committee, Mr. O'Connor said the arrival of 125 troops from the Royal 22nd Regiment, nicknamed the Vandoos, based in Valcartier, Que., will free up other troops for offensive operations. Along with the newly arrived tanks, he said, the Canadian Forces will be able to deal with the increased violence in the province of Kandahar.

Currently, he said, many troops are protecting the Canadian Forces provincial reconstruction team (PRT), which is offering development and aid in the area.

"When the Vandoos company gets there and goes into Kandahar to protect the PRT, they will be dedicated to protect the PRT. That will allow the battle group and the tank squadron that is streaming in the same time to deal with the insurgency," Mr. O'Connor said.
More on link

Bombers hit Afghanistan ahead of major holy day
Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:52 AM BST
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-20T105152Z_01_SP216081_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AFGHAN.xml&WTmodLoc=HP-C3-World-5

By Terry Friel

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed an Afghan soldier and wounded seven more in an eastern province bordering Pakistan on Friday, the army said.

The attack in Khost by a suicide bomber on foot came hours after an operation by U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan troops killed a militant and captured four in the same province.

Despite offensives by NATO since it took command of the war against the Taliban from U.S. forces over recent weeks, violence has been mounting and attacks have occurred almost daily. 

There have been several major bombings and clashes in recent days as the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan draws to a close ahead of the start of Eid al-Fitr on Monday, the most important celebration in the Islamic calendar.

Fighting this year is the worst it has been since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban's strict Islamist government in 2001 and more than 3,000 people, including more than 150 foreign soldiers, have been killed in the violence.

Copying tactics from Iraq, the Taliban and other insurgents are increasingly targeting the poorer trained and equipped Afghan military and police, as well as provincial and district officials and other government workers.

CIVILIAN DEATH MOUNT

In recent weeks, scores of civilians have been killed in a rising wave of suicide attacks.   Continued... 
More on link

Royal Marine killed in Afghanistan
19 Oct 06 
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/RoyalMarineKilledInAfghanistan.htm

It is with deep regret that the Ministry of Defence has confirmed the death of a Royal Marine from 45 Commando following an explosion in Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan today, 19 October 2006.


Ministry of Defence
The attack took place at a little before 1100 local time and was the result of a suicide bomb against a military convoy that was exiting the Afghan National Police Station. 

The Royal Marine was severely injured in the initial incident and airlifted to hospital but sadly later died of his wounds despite receiving the best possible medical attention. 

During the attack one other Royal Marine was injured and is currently in the UK field hospital at Camp Bastion, listed as Very Seriously Ill. 

Next of Kin have been informed and have requested a period of time to inform their close family and friends before the identity of the Marine who died is revealed. They have requested that the media respect their privacy at this distressing time.

Brigadier Jerry Thomas, Commander of the Helmand Task Force, expressed his sympathy for the families and friends of those killed and injured in the attack: 

"Our thoughts are very much with the families, friends and colleagues of those who were killed and injured today in this cowardly and indiscriminate attack. I hope those injured will have a speedy recovery. We should not forget that innocent Afghans going about their daily business were also injured, including two children who were killed today. 

"My troops are performing their jobs here with admirable courage and professionalism and will continue to do so after today’s attack. This has not deterred us from our mission, which is to support the legitimate Government of Afghanistan in providing security and reconstruction for ordinary Afghans."
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The true Afghan mission
From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061017.weafghanistan17/BNStory/specialComment/home

British Prime Minister Tony Blair reminded Canadians yesterday that they are fighting the good fight in Afghanistan. But Afghan authorities are undermining that fight by allowing tribal customs to prevail over civilized legal norms.

It has not escaped Mr. Blair that while Canada's soldiers are playing a leading role in Afghanistan, alongside those of his own country, the United States and the Netherlands, Canadians back home are feeling ambivalent about the mission. Some of that ambivalence is due to a perception -- nurtured by Liberal leadership aspirants such as Bob Rae -- that Canada's role is one of "peacekeeping, constitution-making," rather than fighting in violent battles.

But some of that ambivalence is due to the painful juxtaposition of events, as in yesterday's Globe and Mail. In one story, two more Canadian soldiers were killed by insurgents, bringing the total Canadian dead to 43; in another, a 13-year-old Afghan girl sat in jail because she had run away from home rather than marrying the 50-year-old man her father had promised she would.

This newspaper has argued that the job of rebuilding Afghanistan requires a strong military presence from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that Canada is right not to shirk its fair share of the load. (Questions could be asked of some of the NATO partners about whether they're willing to do the same.) Six Canadians have died since September while helping to protect a road-construction project that is still just four kilometres long. The road is to link the isolated farms and villages of Panjwai with a highway to southern Afghanistan.
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More bombs as kidnappers demand Italy quit Afghanistan
Thu Oct 19, 2006 8:37am ET
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-19T123730Z_01_ISL151434_RTRUKOC_0_US-AFGHAN.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C2_worldNews-1

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed several Afghan civilians and wounded British soldiers when he attacked a military convoy in the troubled south on Thursday, witnesses and an Afghan army officer said.

Bodies of civilians, some with arms and legs blown off, were scattered around the scene and a NATO vehicle was ablaze after the blast in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province -- a Taliban stronghold -- witnesses said.

"The bomber was on foot and hurled himself at the convoy of NATO," said Afghan army officer Shamsuddin. He had earlier said two NATO soldiers were killed but NATO said there were no alliance casualties.

The British Defense Ministry said several of its soldiers were hurt but none killed in the blast in the city's bazaar. 

Helmand, also the opium capital of the world's largest producer, is one of the country's most violence-racked areas in what is the bloodiest year since the Taliban's strict Islamist government was ousted by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello (www.kashgt.co.uk) was kidnapped last week from a bus on his way from Lashkar Gah to neighboring Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.
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Where the Taliban get their weapons
SONYA FATAH AND DARRA ADAM KHEIL From Friday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061020.wxgun20/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

PAKISTAN — Mohammed Tariq sits cross-legged on the raised wooden platform inside his arms store, cradling a gleaming new Kalashnikov. Rows of glistening semi-automatic firearms stand against the wall behind him.

He flips open the 2005 edition of Handguns. "See this?" he says, opening the book to a random page and pointing to an image of a handgun. "We've copied this perfectly. Have lunch with a retired brigadier or a retired colonel. You'll find out everything."

Tariq is no ordinary shopkeeper and Darra Adam Kheil, a one-strip town framed by the craggy, barren facade of the Kohat range in the lawless tribal belt of eastern Pakistan, is no ordinary place.

Studded with hashish bars, the town of 15,000 is the headquarters of the region's illegal firearms market. 

Here, small, storefront operations churn out knockoff versions of weapons at cut-rate prices, providing a key source of hardware for the Taliban, who are locked in an increasingly deadly battle with North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces across the border in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, most of whom are Pashtun and native to the region, were once completely dependent on Darra for their weaponry. 

And while the militant Islamist group has developed other sources of supply, the town remains the cheapest, easiest place for foot soldiers to equip themselves before joining the insurgency.

While gun running has a long tradition in the region, the arms bazaar is a legacy of the proxy Cold War showdown between the mujahedeen and the Soviet Union.

The United States poured weapons into Pakistan during the Afghan war to arm the mujahedeen and stave off the Russians. Arms dealers, buyers and sellers cropped up overnight, stockpiling weapons in large arms reservoirs across Peshawar, the nearby provincial capital.
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MacKay says NDP position on Afghanistan 'naive' 
 Updated Thu. Oct. 19 2006 2:49 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061019/peter_mac_061019/20061019?hub=Canada

OTTAWA -- Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay is accusing the New Democrats of demoralizing Canadian troops in Afghanistan with talk of withdrawing them from combat. 

MacKay says in a speech to the Canadian International Centre that calling for peace talks with the Taliban -- a suggestion made by NDP Leader Jack Layton -- only makes insurgents bolder. 

Although he doesn't refer to Layton by name, MacKay says there are some who believe they can wave a magic wand and make the insurgency disappear. 

That's "naive,'' he says. 

The Conservative government has been grappling with declining public support for the mission, which has claimed the lives of 42 Canadian soldiers and a diplomat. 

MacKay says he believes there will be a lasting peace at the end of the world fight against terrorism. 
End

Taliban Targeting Afghanistan Leaders
By JASON STRAZIUSO The Associated Press Thursday, October 19, 2006; 1:09 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101900835.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- First a Taliban suicide bomber killed a provincial governor. Then a gunman murdered a Women's Ministry director. A police chief, intelligence director and top administrator from the same eastern district were killed.

Bombs targeted but missed two more governors elsewhere. And the latest target _ a provincial councilman _ was slain in Kandahar this week.

Hewing closely to a strategy used by Iraqi insurgents, Taliban militants are increasingly targeting top government officials in Afghanistan, which has seen a spike in assassinations and attempted killings the last six weeks.

The attacks are forcing officials to travel with more bodyguards and to set up more checkpoints. Some government employees have stopped going to work, fearing for their lives.

"The Taliban can't fight in a big group, so now they've moved on to these targeted assassinations," said Naimatullah Khan, deputy chief of the council in southern Kandahar province, whose colleague was killed last weekend.

Violence has spiked alarmingly in Afghanistan this year, and insurgents have adopted tactics used in Iraq, such as roadside bombings and suicide attacks.

Hitting top officials, including associates and appointees of President Hamid Karzai, appears to be part of a wider strategy of undermining his government, which took over after the fall of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001 but still has only a feeble reach. The Taliban also have killed or abducted aid workers to stymie development, and burned down hundreds of schools.

In Iraq, assassinations have forced government officials to live behind heavy protection and think long and hard before volunteering for public service. The same could happen in Afghanistan.
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Two children, one marine die: another day in Afghanistan
STEPHEN MCGINTY  (smcginty@scotsman.com) 
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1552202006

Story in full ON THE dusty, dangerous roads of Afghanistan, death can come in the blink of a bomber's eye. 

It was to be just a routine patrol in the centre of the city of Lashkar Gah, in Helmand province, but a suicide bomber turned it into a carnage of fire and twisted steel, killing one Royal Marine and seriously injuring another. 

Two children also died in the attack, which came yesterday morning as the marines were leaving the Afghan national police station in a convoy of military Land Rovers. 

At 11am, local time, it is understood a man equipped with explosives threw himself at one of Land Rovers and blew himself up. The force of the explosion flipped the vehicle on to its roof and left it in flames. 

Extra troops flooded the scene and the injured men were immediately evacuated by helicopter to the UK field hospital at Camp Bastion. 

It was later announced that one of the marines, from Arbroath-based 45 Commando, had died - the first Royal Marine to be killed in Afghanistan since they took over from the Paras two weeks ago - and that a second was listed as "very seriously ill". 

The number of British troops killed in Afghanistan now stands at 41. 
More on link

France reviews special forces' Afghanistan duty
19 Oct 2006 23:47:59 GMT Source: Reuters
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19369590.htm

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - France is re-examining its deployment of around 200 special forces troops in Afghanistan, Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Thursday.

Alliot-Marie declined to confirm a French newspaper report that Paris planned pull the troops out of southern Afghanistan at the start of next year but she said it was time to take a fresh look at the deployment.

Afghanistan is suffering its bloodiest phase since U.S.-led troops drove Taliban Islamist militants from power after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Speaking after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington, Alliot-Marie said the review was a logical step after NATO took responsibility for security across Afghanistan this month.

"There's a new organization on the ground in Afghanistan," Alliot-Marie told reporters.

"What we're saying is that we have to look at the consequences, including on the presence of special forces, and particularly French special forces, in Afghanistan."

The special forces form part of the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, which mounts counter-terrorism missions against Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, which focuses on establishing stability in Afghanistan, took control of the east of the country from the U.S.-led forces earlier this month, giving it nationwide responsibility for the first time.

"I would recall that French special forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, since the beginning, that they are there in large number compared to the total of our special forces and that they have paid a heavy price for their presence, notably with several deaths," Alliot-Marie said.
More on link

In Afghanistan, killings are anything but random
The Associated Press
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/15801651.htm

Taliban militants aim squarely for high-ranking officials and aid workers.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan | First, a Taliban suicide bomber killed a provincial governor. Then a gunman murdered a Women’s Ministry director.

A police chief, an intelligence director and a top administrator from the same eastern district were killed.

Bombs were aimed at but missed two more governors elsewhere. The latest target — a provincial councilman — was slain in Kandahar this week.

Taliban militants are increasingly making targets of top government officials in Afghanistan, which has seen a spike in assassinations and attempted killings the last six weeks.

The attacks are forcing officials to travel with more bodyguards and to set up more checkpoints. Some government employees have stopped going to work, fearing for their lives.

“The Taliban can’t fight in a big group, so now they’ve moved on to these targeted assassinations,” said Naimatullah Khan, deputy chief of the council in southern Kandahar province, whose colleague was killed last weekend.

Violence has spiked in Afghanistan this year, and insurgents have adopted tactics used in Iraq, such as roadside bombings and suicide attacks.

Hitting top officials appears to be part of a wider strategy of undermining President Hamid Karzai’s government, which took over after the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001 but still has only a feeble reach. The Taliban also have killed or abducted aid workers to stymie development and have burned down hundreds of schools.

Targeted killings are nothing new in Afghanistan, Afghan officials say. Mujahedeen who fought the Soviet occupation in the 1980s used the tactic against pro-communist government officials.
More on link

Gunmen kill eight in Afghanistan  
http://www.thenews.com.pk/update_detail.asp?id=11570
  
KABUL: Gunmen ambushed a car carrying Afghan civilians working for a remote U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan and killed eight of them execution-style, a police
official said Friday.

The victims, who worked for the U.S. military as laborers in the mountainous Korangal area of Kunar province, were killed Thursday while driving home from work, said Abdul Saboor, Kunar's deputy police chief.

Gunmen stopped the workers' car, searched them and took about US$6,000 before gunning them down, said Salehzai Didar, Kunar's governor. Two workers escaped, he said.
End

Muslim clerics ordering Taliban into Afghanistan 
Friday, October 20, 2006 by Adrian Morgan 
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?id=6206

The provincial government is made up almost entirely of members of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or MMA. This is an alliance of six Islamist parties, who constitute the opposition to the government   

On September 5 an "accord" took place between the Pakistani government and the Taliban who control most of the borderlands of North and South Waziristan in North-West Frontier Province. The deal signed by Taliban leaders and Pakistan government representatives included the clause: "There shall be no cross-border movement for militant activity in neighbouring Afghanistan." 
In exchange for signing the deal, 45 Taliban members who had helped to broker the deal were paid 100,000 rupees apiece ($1,658), and the government promised the Taliban 10 million rupees ($165,838) if it did not return to them vehicles and weaponry it had seized during military operations.

Within days of the deal being signed, it was being broken. The three-page agreement included the clause "There will be no target killing", but bodies of people executed by the Taliban as "US spies" began to turn up.

Pakistan wanted to reduce its troop deployment from the border region. Apparently 80,000 troops have been stationed on the border, and these were needed in Balochistan province, where a new insurgency was forming.

The politicians who had come up with the idea were the Islamists in the Regional Assembly of North-West Frontier Province. The provincial government is made up almost entirely of members of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or MMA. This is an alliance of six Islamist parties, who constitute the opposition to the government.

The leader of the MMA is the cleric Qazi Hussain Ahmed, who is also leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which wishes to see Pakistan entirely ruled by sharia law. He promised last year to mount a revolution, and organised many of the anti-cartoon riots in February, which became violent calls for the overthrow of the government.

It should have been obvious to anyone with any intelligence that a deal supported by the MMA and the Taliban would work only in the interests of Muslim extremism, and would not benefit either the government of Afghanistan, Pakistan nor its allies in the "war on terror". Analysts expressed their concerns when the "accord" was made and today, their fears appear to have been validated.

Agence France Presse in Yahoo News reports that captured Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan have confessed to coming from Pakistan, and they claim that they were sent to fight "Jihad" against British forces there on the orders of Muslim clerics.

Three young Taliban fighters were captured after their group's attempt to ambush a platoon of Afghanistan soldiers in Barmal district of Paktika province went awry. 32 Taliban attacked a patrol but were met with fierce gunfire. The Afghanistan troops called in reinforcements, and within five hours, all of the Taliban fighters, save three, were dead or had fled. The fire-fight took place close to the Afghan/Pakistani border.
More on link

Pakistan bomb blast kills 7, wounds dozens more
Updated Fri. Oct. 20 2006 10:16 AM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061020/pakistan_bomb_061020/20061020?hub=World

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A bomb left in a fruit cart struck a crowded market Friday in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least seven people and wounding dozens, police said.

The explosion occurred in a downtown district of Peshawar about 10 minutes before iftar, the time for breaking the daily fast during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, police officer Zafar Khan said.

The blast left body parts, fruit, colored bangles and sandals scattered across the street, which was cordoned off as bomb disposal experts retrieved pieces of debris.

"After the explosion people all around the area were crying," said Habibullah Khan, an 18-year-old glass bangle vendor. "Then there were people lying in pools of blood. Debris was everywhere."

At the time of the blast, the street was crowded with shoppers making last-minute purchases of food and shoes and jewelry for next week's three-day festival of Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Seven people were killed and 41 wounded, including several who were taken to a hospital in serious condition, Khan said.

Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, which was caused by a homemade bomb planted in a fruit cart left by the side of the road, said Mohammed Riffat Pasha, chief of police in the North West Frontier Province of which Peshawar is the capital.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao condemned the bombing but would not speculate on who may have been behind it.
More on link


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## The Bread Guy (21 Oct 2006)

*Media Advisory*
Interment ceremony of Private Blake Williamson
MA-06-010 - October 20, 2006

OTTAWA — The interment ceremony of Private Blake Williamson of the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment, based in Petawawa, will be held Saturday October 21, 2006 at 2:15 p.m. at the National Military Cemetery of the Canadian Forces, 280 Beechwood Avenue, Ottawa. 

As per the request of the families, media may attend to view the ceremony, though no interviews will be given.

Pte Williamson and Sgt Darcy Tedford were killed when their unit was ambushed near the new Panjwayi development road, at approximately 3:10 pm (Afghanistan time), October 14, 2006. 

-30-


*Soldier's kin praise repatriation*
Patrick Maloney, London Free Press, 21 Oct 06
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Local/2006/10/21/2087044-sun.html

The London family of a slain soldier who will be buried today is praising the Canadian government's response to his death in Afghanistan. In a rare behind-the-scenes look at the repatriation of our soldiers, the family of Pte. Blake Williamson -- killed in an ambush last Saturday -- has publicly applauded the "sincere" care surrounding his body's return to Canada.  "There was nothing they missed. Nothing," said Londoner Mae Williamson, the 23-year-old soldier's grandmother. "They couldn't have handled it any better." ....



*Media Advisory*
Interment ceremony of Sergeant Darcy Tedford
MA-06-011 - October 20, 2006

OTTAWA —The interment ceremony of Sergeant Darcy Tedford of the 1st Royal Canadian Regiment, based in Petawawa, will be held October 23, 2006 at 2:00 p.m. at the National Military Cemetery of the Canadian Forces, 280 Beechwood Avenue, Ottawa.

As per the request of the families, media may attend to view the ceremony, though no interviews will be given.

Sgt Tedford and Pte Blake Williamson were killed when their unit was ambushed near the new Panjwayi development road, at approximately 3:10 pm (Afghanistan time), October 14, 2006. 

-30-



*New regiment's commandos head to Afghanistan soon*
Undisclosed number to aid JTF2 contingent
A CanWest reporter, Ottawa Citizen, 20 Oct 06

Members of the newly formed special forces regiment based in Petawawa are heading to Afghanistan as Canada continues to bolster its commitment to the war in that southwest Asian country. The regiment, formed in August, will send an undisclosed number of troops to join members of the Ottawa-based Joint Task Force 2 special forces unit already operating in the Kandahar area. It is the first mission for the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, which at this point has about 300 members, including headquarters and supply staff, as well as a training cadre. The unit is expected to expand to around 700 by 2010 ....  Canadian Forces spokesman Maj. Doug Allison said the military will not discuss how many members of the special operations regiment are being sent to Afghanistan or when they will leave. "We anticipate in the near term that the regiment will make a contribution to the Canadian SOF (special operations force) efforts within Afghanistan," said Maj. Allison. "They will take part in the full spectrum of special operations contributing to the overall efforts in Afghanistan."  The regiment can be used for a variety of roles, including training foreign soldiers, special reconnaissance operations or direct-action missions, military parlance for attacking enemy targets or individuals ....




*Wounded troops get under wraps*
Mike Blanchfield, Ottawa Citizen, 21 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=63e7c2cd-8590-4af5-af32-2dde9128125d

The Canadian Forces will not reveal the exact number of soldiers wounded in specific incidents in Afglhanistan, to prevent their Taliban enemies from using the information as "propaganda" against them, a military spokeswoman said yesterday.  The Forces did disclose that 210 Canadian soldiers have been injured in Afghanistan since 2002, with 190 of the casualties this year. Of the 190 wounded, 65 had to be medically evacuated back to Canada  ....  The Forces decided in early September to begin withholding the number of Canadian troops injured in specific incidents to prevent the Taliban from using the information against the NATO coalition, said senior Forces spokeswoman, Cmdr. Denise Laviolette.  "The only thing we're not doing anymore is giving specific numbers of injured for specific incidents," she said in an interview yesterday.  "That is because, obviously, if we have an incident where 25 guys are hurt or five guys are hurt and it goes public, then the other side can use that as favourable propaganda for their purposes" ....



*Canada gives Afghanistan warning *  
BBC Online (UK), 21 Oct 06
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6072366.stm

Canada's foreign minister has told Nato that the alliance's other members must provide more support to the military operation in southern Afghanistan. Peter Mackay said that even a handful of countries could not do "all that is necessary" to provide the secure environment which was needed. The country's defence minister has admitted that their 2,000-strong troop deployment is stretched to capacity ....  The BBC's Lee Carter says Ottawa is growing increasingly frustrated over the unwillingness of mainly European Nato members to deploy troops to help fight mounting Taleban resistance ...



*Editorial:  Canada's Afghan aid*
Toronto Star, 21 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161381023834&call_pageid=970599119419

....  This is an issue Prime Minister Stephen Harper must address or risk further erosion in support for this mission. First, an accounting is needed. Where exactly is Canada's aid going, and is it working? Then Ottawa must decide whether to redirect and increase the aid ....


----------



## GAP (21 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 21 October 2006*

Captain Greene's toughest mission
MARK HUME From Saturday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061021.wxgreene21/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

VANCOUVER — Debbie Lepore was lying in bed with the darkness of night starting to soften and cold showers falling on the city when she heard someone at the door.

She knew immediately what it meant. Her man was in Afghanistan. And there in the darkness, before the phone started to ring incessantly, before the haunting images began to flicker across the television screen with news reports, she knew.

Something terrible had happened to Captain Trevor Greene, the big, good looking, athletic writer and soldier she had met five years earlier, to whom she was engaged, and with whom she had recently had a baby girl, named Grace.

“It was about 6 or 6:30 in the morning. Saturday. March 4th,” she said in an interview from Vancouver General Hospital this week, where she goes daily

“There was a knock on the door. You know instantly what it is.”

She'd had that premonition once before, months earlier, when Canadian military officers had come to her Vancouver home to tell her Capt. Greene, 41, had suffered minor injuries in an attack on an armoured vehicle he was in.

“I had a sense it was more serious this time,” she said.

And it was. Capt. Greene, a man who friends say always wanted “to do good,” a champion of the downtrodden who wrote books about the missing women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the homeless in Japan, was struck in the head with an axe when he sat down with Afghan villagers to talk about how to get clean water for their homes and farms.

A member of a military unit known as CIMIC, for Civilian-Military Co-operation, Capt. Greene had taken off his helmet as a sign of trust and respect.

He was attacked from behind, suffering a deep head wound that put him in a coma for weeks, and which, nearly eight months later, has left him confined to a hospital bed. His attacker was shot dead.

Capt. Green was not the first Canadian soldier to be injured in Afghanistan, but the attack on him shocked Canadians — perhaps because its nature brought home to them the reality that this was a mission like no other, where violence and treachery could come from anywhere, without warning.

Ms. Lepore held her breath and opened the front door.
More on link


Dutch increase troops in south Afghanistan, move aircraft
Oct 20, 2006, 16:52 GMT More on link
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1212982.php/Dutch_increase_troops_in_south_Afghanistan_move_aircraft

The Hague - The Dutch cabinet agreed the deployment of a further 130 ground troops to southern Afghanistan to bring total strength there to 1,530, during the weekly cabinet meeting in The Hague Friday. 

Defence Minister Henk Kamp described the decision as 'fine tuning' and said there was no need for parliamentary approval. 

The additional troops have received training in protection and security and are intended to release other Dutch personnel for the reconstruction tasks that are the mission's main mandate. 

From November 1, when the Dutch take over the lead role in southern Afghanistan from the Canadians, a further 200 Dutch troops are to be deployed. 

The defence ministry also announced that the six Dutch Apache helicopters in Afghanistan had been moved Friday from Kandahar airfield to the Dutch headquarters at Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan Province. 

The eight Dutch F-16s currently based at Kabul are to be moved to Kandahar in mid-November with the aim that they will be able to react more quickly to requests for support in southern Afghanistan. 

The deployment of NATO troops to the south of Afghanistan under an extended mandate for the International Security Assistance Force has met greater resistance than expected. 

The Dutch are deployed mainly to Uruzgan, while the British are securing Helmand and the Canadians Kandahar. 
More on link

Fear of Taliban is tangible in Kandahar
SUE BAILEY Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061020.wafghanthreats1020/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — There's a warning posted in a Kandahar mosque that crystallizes a growing culture of fear, distrust and paranoia.

It reads: “Anyone that works for the foreign troops is the eyes of the foreigners. And we take the eyes first.”

Welcome to Kandahar, Afghanistan's second most important city. It's the closest town to the Kandahar Airfield where most of 2,300 Canadian soldiers in the country are based.

Despite their best efforts and those of 21,000 other coalition troops, security isn't improving here. It's getting worse.

Hardened soldiers increasingly dread travelling Kandahar's teeming roads, especially the bomb-prone stretch dubbed Suicide Alley.

The main drag through town is sporadically pockmarked and gouged where the most ardent anti-government militants have blown themselves up, taking dozens of troops and civilians with them. There are attacks at least once a week and rising.

Kandahar is among the poorest parts of Afghanistan, making it one of the poorest places on Earth.

“This is the worst hellhole I've ever been in,” declared a Canadian contractor who wished to remain anonymous. “And I've bicycled across Africa by myself.”

Threats are by no means limited to outsiders.
More on link

On the road with the Taleban  
By David Loyn BBC News, Afghanistan  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6069842.stm

Nato troops in Afghanistan have been facing a growing number of suicide bomb attacks. It was hoped the troops would be able to make peace, win friends and provide security for reconstruction projects, but now it seems the regime they removed is beginning to return. 

"You destroyed our government and all because of just one guest in our country, Osama," said the man leading the war against the British. 
We sat late at night in what must have been the women's side of a house commandeered for just that night by a man who stays constantly on the move. 

The family were not there of course, but their presence was all around.  

A Chinese-made sewing machine sat in the corner, and small scraps of cloth littered the floor, mingling with the rinds and pith of pomegranates, which the Taleban soldiers who filled the room ate as we talked. 

Afghans feel that there is not enough to show for the billions spent by the world on their country since 9/11  

We sat cross-legged on thin felt mattresses lining the wall, with the commander propped up on a cushion in the corner. 
He was an intelligent man in his 40s, smoother and more groomed than many Talibs I have come across, with delicate hands. 

He spat his pips into a small bowl as we talked, breaking off frequently to listen to a two-way radio, receiving news at one point that a British military vehicle had been hit by a landmine. 

The commander waved me away impatiently when I said that the British had come to provide security for reconstruction. 

"They have had five years and look at the state of the roads here" he said. 

International promises  

And that is the biggest problem for the credibility of the British operation in the south. Afghans feel that there is not enough to show for the billions spent by the world on their country since 9/11. 

 Corruption on this road has a powerful symbolic resonance for Afghans  

Too little of the money promised has made any difference to life here and that is a powerful recruiting tool for the Taleban. 
And there is another problem with the roads. 

As we made our way towards our rendezvous along the main road from Kandahar to the west, Afghanistan's trade lifeline, we were stopped every few minutes at checkpoints. 

At every one we were asked for money: not much - 10 Afs - about 10p ($0.19) at each one. But they demand more from truck drivers, and the amounts add up. 
More on link

Where the Taliban get their weapons
SONYA FATAH From Friday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061020.wxgun20/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

DARRA ADAM KHEIL, PAKISTAN — Mohammed Tariq sits cross-legged on the raised wooden platform inside his arms store, cradling a gleaming new Kalashnikov. Rows of glistening semi-automatic firearms stand against the wall behind him.

He flips open the 2005 edition of Handguns. "See this?" he says, opening the book to a random page and pointing to an image of a handgun. "We've copied this perfectly. Have lunch with a retired brigadier or a retired colonel. You'll find out everything."

Tariq is no ordinary shopkeeper and Darra Adam Kheil, a one-strip town framed by the craggy, barren facade of the Kohat range in the lawless tribal belt of eastern Pakistan, is no ordinary place.

Studded with hashish bars, the town of 15,000 is the headquarters of the region's illegal firearms market. 
More on link

You're in the army now
Military could start using sailors to replenish troops in Afghanistan
By CHRIS LAMBIE Staff Reporter 
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/535722.html

Sailors could be turned into infantry soldiers under a new plan the military is considering to keep fresh troops headed to Afghanistan.

Military planners are looking at several possibilities to avoid sending soldiers to the devastated country more than once. Those include "re-rolling," which means taking members from a branch of the Canadian Forces and putting them in the infantry.

"We’re all part of the same family. It doesn’t matter if we’re in the navy or the air force or the army — we all signed on the dotted line," said Petty Officer (2nd Class) Derek Speirs, a navy cook based in Halifax who has done a peacekeeping stint in the Golan Heights and is willing to serve in Afghanistan.

"We’re all here to defend our country, and that’s what we’re paid to do
More on link

French defense minister urges close cooperation between U.S., French intelligence, military to combat terrorism   
The Associated Press Published: October 21, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/21/america/NA_GEN_US_France_Alliot_Marie.php

NEW YORK French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said that despite recent tensions, France and the United States would always be united whenever their essential liberties were threatened.

While the two countries may at times have conflicting interests, she said Friday, "Each time that the essential, that is, liberty, democracy and the security of our people, was at stake, we were always together."

She cited this "profound friendship" and the long-standing cooperation between their intelligence communities as vital to combatting terrorism.

"Our special forces have always continued to combat terrorism side by side, for example, in Afghanistan," she said, though recently there has been some question as to whether France will pull its special forces out of the country.

Alliot-Marie told the AP that France is in the midst of discussions regarding the continued presence of French special forces, which are under separate command from the NATO troops, in Afghanistan.

"The forces in Afghanistan are in the process of being completely reorganized," she said. "We are in the middle of talking with all the countries who have special forces" in the country.

In a speech to the French-American Foundation, she said that European-American cooperation is essential for addressing the "clash" between the West and the rest of the world.
More on link

Suicide bomber kills four in Afghanistan  
Web posted at: 10/20/2006 9:0:26 Source ::: AFP 
http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Pakistan+%26+Sub-Continent&month=October2006&file=World_News200610209026.xml

KANDAHAR • Two suicide attacks hit Afghanistan yesterday, killing two children, a British soldier and a policeman. They were the latest in a spate of suicide attacks that Nato insists is a sign that the radical Islamic Taleban movement is weakened. 

The soldier and children were killed in a suicide blast in the southern town of Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand province, where most of the 5,000 British troops in Afghanistan are based, the Nato-led force and Afghan police said. 

The suicide attacker launched himself at a British patrol in the town. Two British soldiers were wounded, one of whom later died, a spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said in Kabul. 

An interior ministry spokesman in the capital added: “The suicide bomber has died, seven civilians have been wounded, two civilian children have been martyred.” The attack struck a military convoy that had been leaving a police station, the Ministry of Defence in London said. 

Isaf could not say what had caused the explosion. One Afghan official said it was a car bomb and another said the attacker had strapped explosives to his body. 
More on link

AFGHANISTAN: As deadline looms, CPJ urges kidnappers to free journalist
http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/afghan20oct06na.html 

New York, October 20, 2006—Ahead of the deadline set by the kidnappers of an Italian photographer in Afghanistan, the Committee to Protect Journalists appeals for his immediate safe release. 

Freelancer Gabriele Torsello was seized by five gunmen October 12. At first, the kidnappers set a deadline of Sunday night for their demands to be met. That has now changed to midnight Monday, according to the independent news agency, Pajhwok Afghan News.

His kidnappers originally claimed to be members of the Taliban, but senior Taliban leaders have denied involvement. In a later phone call to Pajhwok in Kabul, the kidnappers said, “they were just Muslims fighting foreign occupation” in Afghanistan, Pajhwok reported. 

Initially, the kidnappers demanded the return of an Afghan Muslim who converted to Christianity and who is now living in Italy. Torsello is a convert to Islam. The demand changed to include the withdrawal of Italian troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Italian officials in Rome and Kabul say they are in communication with the group, but have made very few statements about the situation.

“No purpose will be served by continuing to hold Gabriele Torsello or causing him harm,” said Joel Simon, CPJ’s executive director. “Gabriele’s work reflects his deep social concern and represents the best traditions of journalism.” 
More on link

Bombers hit Afghanistan ahead of major holy day
By Terry Friel Reuters Friday, October 20, 2006; 1:38 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102000248.html

KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed an Afghan soldier and wounded seven more in an eastern province bordering Pakistan on Friday, the army said.

The attack in Khost by a suicide bomber on foot came hours after an operation by U.S.-led coalition forces and Afghan troops killed a militant and captured four in the same province.

Despite offensives by NATO since it took command of the war against the Taliban from U.S. forces over recent weeks, violence has been mounting and attacks have occurred almost daily.

There have been several major bombings and clashes in recent days as the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan draws to a close ahead of the start of Eid al-Fitr on Monday, the most important celebration in the Islamic calendar.
More on link

Authorities say over 15 tons of drugs seized in Afghanistan   
The Associated Press Published: October 21, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/21/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Drugs.php

KABUL, Afghanistan Afghan authorities seized over 15 tons of drugs in the past 10 days in operations targeting smugglers in seven provinces, Afghanistan's top counter-narcotics official said Saturday.

Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud said the seizures included seven tons of opium, eight tons of marijuana and just over one ton of heroin.

The U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime said last month that cultivation of opium-producing poppies in Afghanistan rose 59 percent this year to produce a record 6,100 tons of opium — or about 92 percent of the world's supply and outstripping heroin demand by a third.

The U.N. agency said only six of Afghanistan's 34 provinces are poppy-free.

It said some 2.9 million people were involved in growing opium, representing 12.6 percent of the total Afghan population, and that revenue from this year's harvest was predicted to hit over US$3 billion (€2.4 billion).

Daoud said that a renewed campaign with the help of local authorities is under way to convince the farmers not to grow the lucrative crop.
More on link


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## GAP (22 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 22 October 2006*

War: Canadian-style
Bringing the war home | A special report
Mar. 20, 2006. 01:32 PM MITCH POTTER STAFF REPORTER
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1142204499098&call_page=TS_Afghanistan&call_pageid=1140433364397&call_pagepath=Special/Afghanistan

SOMEWHERE NEAR GOMBAD, AFGHANISTAN - Eyes are watching tonight as the blackness settles in on the barren mountaintop. Eyes that seek Canadian blood. They have been watching for weeks, from the very first moment Alpha Company of the First Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Battle Group made its presence known in the high hills of the Shawali Kot region of northern Kandahar Province.
Everyone can feel the eyes.

"Tonight is different, something weird is going on," a Canadian soldier announces tersely, his face drawn with tension.

He points toward the distant shadows of the western valley below, where telltale car headlights push through the darkness. He points to the eastern valley opposite, and here too the single headlamp of a motorbike can be seen flickering along a goat path. All of this movement is wrong, because nothing in these war-ravaged valleys moves after dark. The night means danger, a time for the ethnic Pashtun villagers to stay indoors and wait for daylight. Those who defy the darkness are the dangerous ones. 

The Canadians do not panic. There is no need, for, after a hard day's hump through knee-high rushing rivers and on up the mountainside laden with full combat attire, they have settled upon a campsite from which all can be seen. It is a campsite others have favoured before them, judging by the empty weapons cache discovered nearby.

From here, the Canadians have the strategic advantage. They have a belly full of high-energy MREs — meals, ready-to-eat. They have night-vision equipment. They have clandestine Rules of Engagement more generous than anything their kind has known since the Korean War. And they are ready.

It helps also that they came with friends — a dozen Afghan National Army (ANA) recruits and their special-forces trainers, who work under the flag of a country that can't be named at the request of Canadian Forces.
More on  link

*Afghanistan's war of words*
Rudyard Griffiths thinks self-serving analysis of Canada's mission is poisoning the public debate
Oct. 22, 2006. 01:00 AM RUDYARD GRIFFITHS
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161467438985&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

With Canada's combat death toll now heading into the 40s, public discussion — if you can still call it that — of the war in Afghanistan has degenerated into a simplistic grudge match that is doing little to advance understanding at home or define what success looks like on the ground in the dangerous Kandahar region. 

To start, politicians and pundits opposed to the war are fixating on the idea that Afghanistan is the "Son of Iraq." Specifically, detractors of the Afghanistan deployment think NATO, like the U.S. Army in Iraq, is incapable of defeating a counter-insurgency that has popular support and unlimited opium dollars.

The thinking is that to stay in Kandahar is to forestall Canada's inevitable descent into an Iraq-like quagmire. Ipso facto, we should bring our troops home and redeploy the military where it is urgently needed, as peacekeepers in Darfur. 

But Afghanistan isn't Iraq and we draw this parallel at our peril. Most of Afghanistan is prospering and at peace. The south, where the fighting is taking place, is made up of a single ethnic and religious group, Sunni Pashtuns. There is simply no structural reason for Afghanistan to spiral into the kind of intractable sectarian violence that is fast derailing the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

*What is dangerous to Canada and our interests is the "bring home the troops" movement's casual disregard for the terms on which we are in Afghanistan.*  
More on link

Canada's Afghan aid
Oct. 21, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161381023834&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Canada is heavily — and rightly— invested in Afghanistan's struggle to recover from anarchy and rebuild. Keeping 2,500 troops in Kabul and Kandahar will cost $6 billion by 2009, by some estimates, and 42 soldiers and a diplomat have died there. 

But Canadians also put a high value on aid. While Ottawa's pledge of $1 billion in aid from 2001 to 2011 is generous, it pales in comparison to our military outlay. And of that $100 million in aid this year, barely $10 million is going to Kandahar, where most of our troops are deployed.

This is an issue Prime Minister Stephen Harper must address or risk further erosion in support for this mission. First, an accounting is needed. Where exactly is Canada's aid going, and is it working? Then Ottawa must decide whether to redirect and increase the aid. 

Providing a credible accounting won't be easy. Some aid flows through the Afghan government. Some goes via the United Nations, the World Bank and other agencies. Some is managed by our troops.

Canada has bankrolled microcredit services to 200,000 small business owners. It has helped get tanks, artillery and guns out of the hands of militias. It is also investing in bridges, dams, roads, schools and clinics.

But Ottawa has yet to provide a coherent accounting, much less a cost-benefit analysis. That frustrates Sen. Colin Kenny, whose Senate national security committee champions an activist global role. It is wrong that even Parliament is in the dark.

One thing seems clear. 

Scandalously little aid is getting to Kandahar, where Canadian troops are at risk of being seen as occupiers, not helpers. More aid must be made available to Kandahar's local leaders so they can take ownership of projects, defend them against Taliban attack and improve their lives. 

Even if all of Ottawa's aid this year were earmarked for Kandahar, it would be but a small fraction of our military investment.

Security and aid must be mutually reinforcing to be fully effective. Canada has not struck that balance yet.
End

Barry Burns Live   From Afghanistan  
http://www.cjob.com/station/blog_barryburns.aspxhttp://www.cjob.com/station/blog_barryburns.aspx
CJOB REPORTER WITH AUDIO FILES ON HIS REPORTS

NATO probes execution allegation
Father of slain Afghan teenager describes killer as `foreign' soldier
Oct. 22, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161467439234&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

KANDAHAR—NATO is probing the claims of an Afghan man who says a soldier shot his teenage son dead execution style during a deadly raid on a village just west of Kandahar.

"As soon as I heard about this incident, I ordered an investigation because we want to make sure we find out what happened," said Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, the Canadian and NATO commander in Afghanistan's volatile south.

"I feel a tremendous amount of remorse and regret over the loss of life and people who get injured," he said in an interview.

"I expressed that to the governor and to the village elders, who I met right after the incident to say I'm deeply sorry that this happened."

"We're working with the Afghans to try to do the right thing."

Nine civilians were killed and several more wounded when a coalition air strike rained bombs and rockets on their mud homes in Ashogha early Wednesday.

The NATO attack to root out suspects blamed for a spate of roadside bombings came as villagers were stirring for their pre-dawn meals.

Food and even water are forbidden during daylight hours during the holy month of Ramadan leading up to Eid ul-Fitr — Afghanistan's major religious holiday feast that begins Monday. 

Abdul Karim and his only surviving son, Sakhi Jan, 18, plan to spend the Eid festival nursing their wounds and grieving the loss of most of their family.

Karim says his wife, son and two daughters were killed when a bomb ripped through their mud home after 2 a.m. local time Wednesday. Another son, 16, was wounded.

Karim told Canadian Press that he tried to conceal his son under a blanket as soldiers, whom he could only describe as "foreign" in the darkness and confusion, entered the house to search it.

"When they saw my son in wounded condition, they shot him and killed him in front of my eyes," he said. "Now I and my son, Sakhi Jan, we are admitted in hospital and we want justice."

A NATO spokesman declined to confirm whether any of its troops — Canadian or other — took part in the raid, citing "operational reasons."

Eleven more civilians were killed during a Wednesday firefight in Tajikan village in Helmand province, west of Kandahar.

The two bloody incidents prompted Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to once again call on coalition troops to be more careful when fighting in civilian areas. The deaths are a potential blow to Karzai's already weak standing in some parts of the south.

They also enraged villagers whose help is critical to the long-term success of NATO's war against the resurgent rebel movement
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Canada builds video army
Combat simulator to train soldiers without risking lives
Oct. 21, 2006. 08:34 AM RICK WESTHEAD STAFF REPORTER
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161381024284&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

ORLANDO—In a dimly lit shipping container tucked in the corner of a hotel parking lot in this northern Florida city, a Canadian Forces mission to storm through the decrepit streets of Baghdad is taking shape.

As a trio of Black Hawk helicopters flies overhead and a Humvee idles nearby, a pair of camouflage-clad soldiers, a Canadian flag emblazoned on their shoulders, grip machine guns and grenades and prepare to patrol.

There's no real threat of danger on this mission, however. 

Like the cityscape and burning buses littered through the streets, these soldiers are computer-generated. They're part of a new military simulation program, based on a video game, the Canadian Forces has agreed to buy.

Each soldier stands in a round "pod" and is given a mock M4 machine gun equipped with wireless receivers and virtual reality headsets that pan left or right and up or down to reflect the wearer's movements.

Soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan may soon begin training on the military simulator, developed by U.S. company Alliance Cyberspace and its Toronto-based partner Nytric. 

Nytric's president, Avanindra Utukuri, 32, and his small staff have spearheaded a number of projects in recent months and sales have surpassed the $2 million-a-year mark, Utukuri said.

The Canadian government will pay $1.5 million for the software and the companies are awaiting word from the military to proceed with plans to develop a version of the simulator that would depict the dusty streets of Kandahar. Defence Research and Development Canada, a branch of the Canadian Forces, is expected to operate its simulator from a warehouse in Downsview.

Virtual reality simulation sessions might sound unorthodox for troops about to go to Afghanistan but most modern armed forces are looking at adapting to rapid advances in technology.

Many NATO troops, for instance, are now protected by ceramic body armour instead of traditional metal plates. And in the skies above Kandahar, unmanned electric-powered planes the size of birds search for trouble.
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Britain risks defeat in Afghanistan: former military chief
(AFP) 22 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October849.xml&section=subcontinent

LONDON - The former chief of the British military said the country’s armed forces risked defeat in operations in Afghanistan due to a lack of clear strategy, The Observer newspaper reported on Sunday.


Field Marshal Sir Peter Inge, the former chief of the defence staff, attacked Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and come on the back of the present army head saying British troops should leave Iraq “sometime soon” because their presence was exacerbating security problems there.

“I don’t believe we have a clear strategy, either in Afghanistan or Iraq,” Inge said at a meeting sponsored by the Open Europe think tank last week, the newspaper said.

“I sense we’ve lost the ability to think strategically.
End

AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: Afghan registration starts slowly
22 Oct 2006 07:59:36 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/1bdffbfe4c54833b16c116165b9b8e6b.htm

ISLAMABAD, 20 October (IRIN) - Across Pakistan, some 13,000 Afghan refugees have been registered in a drive that started five days ago, officials said on Friday. 

The campaign is aimed at providing millions of Afghan exiles in Pakistan with identity cards valid for three years. The cards recognise the bearer as an Afghan citizen temporarily living in Pakistan.

"We anticipated a gradual start because of Ramadan and we expect the pace of registration to pick up after Eid," Indrika Ratwatte, the Assistant Representative of the Pakistan office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. 

The US $6 million registration exercise is a follow-up to a comprehensive Afghan census conducted in Pakistan in February and March 2005, which found more than three million Afghans were still living in the country five years after comprehensive voluntary repatriation campaigns organised from Pakistan and Iran.

Only Afghans counted in the last year's census can take part in registration, which will continue until the end of the year. 
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PAKISTAN: Fear of dengue fever spreads
22 Oct 2006 07:37:49 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/572c09910dd9cfe493a52909dd35a616.htm

LAHORE, 20 October (IRIN) - Fear of the black and white striped mosquito responsible for spreading dengue fever has been keeping thousands of people indoors across the Pakistani provinces of Sindh and the Punjab.

Levels of concern have risen sharply, since the first cases of dengue virus - causing high fever, severe body aches and sometimes death if left untreated - were reported several weeks ago. There have been at least 20 deaths, almost all in the southern province of Sindh. 

But the disease has now reached the Punjab. One woman suspected of having the disease in the town of Chakwal, about 80 km south of the federal capital Islamabad, died three days ago.

The deadly virus, carried by the Aedes mosquito, is not normally a hazard in Pakistan. Indeed little is known about the disease in the country, with some doctors in Lahore confessing they were forced to look up text books to confirm causes and symptoms, after first reports of the disease came in.

Dengue is more commonly found in South East Asia – but this year, it has rampaged across India with scores hospitalised. There have been at least 93 confirmed dengue deaths in India over the past six weeks.
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Afghanistan 'in absolute chaos'  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6074342.stm

The papers focus on the ongoing difficulties faced by UK troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Corporal Trevor Coult is reported in the Sunday Mirror as saying that, compared with Afghanistan, Iraq is "like a walk in the park". 

The Observer reports on comments made by the former head of Britain's armed forces, Sir Peter Inge, that he fears "operational failure" in Afghanistan. 

He cites a lack of joined-up thinking across Whitehall. 

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, writes in the Sunday Times that the UK is becoming polarised by race and faith. 

'Political correctness'  

Several papers report on an internal e-mail sent to police in Manchester, telling them to avoid arresting Muslims at prayer times during Ramadan. 

The News of the World argues that this is an example of political correctness running out of control. 

The Sunday Times questions the need for an established church in England. 

The Observer says Home Secretary John Reid could abandon the open-door policy to Romanians and Bulgarians before their countries join the EU next year. 

Only limited numbers of immigrants from the two countries will be able to work in Britain, it adds. 

Labour promise  

The Sunday Times says such a decision will be a dramatic shift in policy. 

It contrasts this with Labour's election manifesto, saying anyone who worked hard was welcome in the UK. 
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Canadians in Afghanistan: What's the real cost?
By KATHLEEN HARRIS, FREE PRESS PARLIAMENTARY BUREAU
http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2006/10/22/2095729-sun.html

OTTAWA -- As controversy rages over Canada's role in Afghanistan, some observers believe defence officials are lowballing the numbers of war-wounded and downplaying the severity of injuries in the battle zone. 

Military brass don't officially track numbers of enemy casualties, but the Canadian death toll stands at 43 and the injured count at about 211, though the Defence Department concedes the tally is not exactly current. There are no statistics available from the department on how many wounds were serious enough to leave permanent injury. 

But an article to be published this week in Esprit de Corps magazine chronicles the incidents of death and injury to Canadian troops based on internal "serious-incident reports" obtained through access to information. It suggests Canadians are getting a "sanitized" version of events. The authors count 274 casualties -- 43 killed, including Trooper Mark Wilson, a Londoner, and 231 wounded -- and insist the official reports of "non-life-threatening injuries" don't tell the real story about the human cost of war in Afghanistan. 

"We hear that phrase and we go back to sleep," said magazine editor Scott Taylor, a former soldier. "We don't realize in some cases it's a bullet to the throat and the guy is paralysed from the chest down, or he's lost an arm. They realize when they stabilize these guys they're not going to die, but 'non-life-threatening injury' doesn't reflect the actual severity." 

Taylor said Ottawa has a vested interest in keeping the spotlight away from soldiers who lose limbs or mobility as it works to sell the Afghanistan mission to the public and to recruit new soldiers. 

"The worst aspect for recruiting is seeing people who have been dismembered," he said. "It's easier to glorify a flag-draped coffin than a guy with no legs." 

But better protective gear, such as helmets and flak jackets, means more soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are surviving blasts and gunshot wounds, but suffering more damage to their extremities. That means more spinal damage and amputations and Taylor believes Canadians should know about it. 
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Situation on borders of CIS and Afghanistan remains stably tense
22.10.2006, 12.16
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=10910900&PageNum=0

  
 BISHKEK, October 22 (Itar-Tass) - The situation at outside borders between CIS countries and Afghanistan remains constantly tense. This conclusion was drawn by members of the 56th meeting of the Council of Borderguards’ Commanders (SKPV) of Commonwealth countries, which concluded its deliberations in the Kyrgyz capital on Saturday. 

“This conclusion was made by examining the situation in the Afghan direction and sharing opinions on this question,” chairman of the SKPV coordination service Alexander Manilov said in an interview with Itar-Tass. 

According to the general, the special operation Marzbon-2006 on the Tajik-Afghan border was aimed at cutting short the drug trafficking from Afghanistan and illicit arms supplies as well as channels of illegal immigration. Its participants included Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. 

Borderguards “seized over 240 kilos of drugs, most of which is heroin, 38 border transgressors and 41 breakers of the border regime. Guards “killed one drug courier who offered resistance and wounded five”, Manilov noted. 

However, joint efforts and measures to cut short drug trafficking from Afghanistan “do not yield complete results. Afghanistan increases areas, sown to opiate poppies”. Production of drugs and their smuggling have become a well-neigh economic sector for many Afghan northern provinces, the general continued. 
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NATO soldiers kill 15 insurgents in Afghanistan  
http://www.thenews.com.pk/update_detail.asp?id=11690  

KABUL: NATO-led troops killed 15 insurgents in southern Afghanistan after the rebels attacked their convoy with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, the force said Sunday. 

The rebels attacked an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrol in the southern province of Zabul on Saturday, an ISAF statement said. 

"ISAF forces returned fire killing 15 insurgents. Two ISAF vehicles were damaged and no ISAF personnel were injured," it said 
End

15 suspected insurgents killed by NATO in southern Afghanistan, alliance says   
The Associated Press Published: October 22, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/22/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Insurgents_Killed.php

KABUL, Afghanistan Insurgents attacked a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, sparking a gunbattle that left 15 suspected militants dead and two NATO troops wounded, the alliance said Sunday.

The clash occurred in Daychopan district of Zabul province on Saturday, after militants ambushed a NATO convoy with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, a NATO statement said.

Two NATO vehicles were also damaged, it said. NATO did not disclose the nationalities of the wounded soldiers.

It was impossible to independently verify the claim.

 KABUL, Afghanistan Insurgents attacked a NATO convoy in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, sparking a gunbattle that left 15 suspected militants dead and two NATO troops wounded, the alliance said Sunday.

The clash occurred in Daychopan district of Zabul province on Saturday, after militants ambushed a NATO convoy with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, a NATO statement said.

Two NATO vehicles were also damaged, it said. NATO did not disclose the nationalities of the wounded soldiers.

It was impossible to independently verify the claim.
End

Senior officer, five Taliban killed in southeastern Afghanistan   
MIL-AFGHANISTAN-TALIBAN 
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=914877

Senior officer, five Taliban killed in southeastern Afghanistan

KABUL, Oct 21 (KUNA) -- A senior Afghan security official was killed in a remote-controlled bomb attack while the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed killing five Taliban fighters in "precision" bombing of their hideouts in southeastern Afghanistan, police reported on Saturday.

Chief of the intelligence department of Afghanistan's southeastern Khost province was on way home when his vehicle was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb in the Ismailkhel area of the province. Police chief of the province Mohammad Ayub said the intelligence chief's vehicle was destroyed with a remote-controlled bomb. He said "enemies of the country, a euphemism for Taliban, were involved in the attack." Separately, NATO forces claimed killing five Taliban in an air raid in the same region. The strike, the third against Taliban insurgents in the previous four days, was carried out in Giyan district of the Paktika province. Two days back, Governor of Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province Asadullah Khalid admitted the killing of nine civilians in such an attack.

The ISAF statement said the operation was conducted as part of the "Operation Mountain Fury", which is underway in the southeastern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan.
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Canada Sends Reinforcements To Afghanistan
October 21, 2006 2:46 p.m. EST
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7005253786

Mort Karman - All Headline News Staff Writer
Ottawa, Canada (AHN) - At least 125 more Canadian troops, this time from the Royal 22nd Regiment, based in Valcartier, Quebec, will be sent to Afghanistan early next month, reports Radio Canada International. 

Gordon O'Connor, Canada's defense minister, told the House of Commons Friday the additional manpower is needed to assist in fighting the Taliban. Canada now has 2,300 troops in Afghanistan. 

Canada has lost 43 dead and at least 160 wounded in the violent fighting. It is the largest loss Canada has suffered since the Korean War in the early 1950's. 

Meanwhile several Canadian NGO's have said they will not assist in reconstruction efforts in that war torn country because, they claim, it is impossible to keep their people safe when Canada's military is also involved in humanitarian projects. The NGO's say that when Canadian soldiers are nearby, reconstruction projects in the dangerously violent Kandahar region are on hold because of a lack of funding from the Canadian International Development Agency. 

CIDA may not have many funding options because few Canadian relief groups are willing to bid for Reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan's perilous southern provinces, where more then a dozen Canadian troops have been killed or injured in the past few weeks. 

CARE and World-Vision say they have not and will not, pursue contracts with CIDA for work in Kandahar until the Canadian military focuses its efforts exclusively on security and policing efforts
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Voter Turnout of Bulgarian Troops in Afghanistan is 100%    
22 October 2006 | 15:41 | FOCUS News Agency 
http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n98094
  
The voter turnout of the Bulgarian servicemen in Afghanistan is 100%, the Ministry of Defense told FOCUS News Agency. A total of 141 servicemen and 9 civil citizens have cast a ballot in the polling station at the international airport in Kabul. 
50% of the total of 145 Bulgarian servicemen in Bosnia and Herzegovina have voted, as well as one-third of the team of the Bulgarian “Drazki” frigate, which takes part in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The Bulgarian sailors vote in Limassol, Cyprus. 
Nikola LALOV 
End

Mullah Omar promises more sttacks in Afghanistan  
Mullah Omar's message, on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, was reportedly sent via electronic mail to Pakistan's NNI news agency.   
Sunday, October 22, 2006 by RFE/RL   
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=122&id=6239&t=Mullah+Omar+promises+more+sttacks+in+Afghanistan

Afghanistan's fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, says his men will increase their attacks against foreign forces and oust them from the country.


Mullah Omar's message, on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, was reportedly sent via electronic mail to Pakistan's NNI news agency. Mullah Omar's message also said he was confident the U.S.-led coaltion would be defeated just like the Soviets.

Meanwhile, NATO reported today its troops killed at least 15 insurgents in southern Afghanistan after the rebels attacked their convoy.

The NATO-led international Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the attack came in the southern province of Zabul on October 21. No ISAF personnel were injured.

The ISAF soldiers in Afghanistan are trying to help the government establish stability against a resurgent Taliban militia. 

In Kabul, the Afghan government and the United Nations appealed today for $43 million in international aid to respond to a severe drought and help families displaced by fighting in the country's south.

A UN statement said 1.9 million people will need food assistance, because of a shortfall in the wheat harvest. The appeal includes help for some 20,000 families displaced by fighting in Oruzgan, Helmand, and Kandahar provinces
End

Josee Verner visits Afghanistan amid violence
Updated Sun. Oct. 22 2006 11:14 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061022/verner_afghanistan_061022/20061022?hub=TopStories

Fifteen insurgents were killed in a gun battle between NATO forces and insurgents in southern Afghanistan Saturday -- one day before the international cooperation minister paid a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

Two NATO soldiers were wounded in the firefight which took place in the Daychopan district of Zabul province. The militant fighters ambushed a NATO convoy, firing on them with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, NATO announced. 

The nationalities of the two wounded soldiers have not been released. 

Meanwhile, International Cooperation Minister Josee Verner arrived in Kandahar Sunday before flying onto Kabul, the capital city, where she announced money for two new projects. 

Verner said the government is spending $14.5 million on a girls' education project. 

The initiative will be established by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee. It will involve the building of up to 4,000 community-based schools and the training of an equal number of female teachers, The Canadian Press reports. 

Another $5 million will go towards micro-credit initiatives to help women establish their own fruit and vegetable gardens. 

Verner also announced $10 million for other construction projects in Afghanistan. 
End



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## MarkOttawa (22 Oct 2006)

In the Land of the Taliban
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/magazine/22afghanistan.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
NY Times Magazine, by ELIZABETH RUBIN
Published: October 22, 2006

In-depth reporting, well-worth reading.  Part 2 next week.

Travel restrictions too tight for aid workers in Afghanistan: MacKay
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061022.waid22/BNStory/National/home
CP, Oct. 22



> Canadian diplomats and aid organizers in southern Afghanistan have been under tight, government-imposed travel restrictions ever since diplomat Glyn Berry was killed in a roadside bomb attack in January — and the constraints appear to be hampering reconstruction efforts.
> 
> Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay has acknowledged the limits and is trying to get them eased.
> 
> ...



A coincidence?

Josee Verner visits Afghanistan amid violence
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061022/verner_afghanistan_061022/20061022?hub=Canada
CTV News Staff, Oct. 22 (with CP files)



> Fifteen insurgents were killed in a gun battle between NATO forces and insurgents in southern Afghanistan Saturday -- one day before the international cooperation minister paid a surprise visit to the nation...
> 
> Meanwhile, International Cooperation Minister Josee Verner arrived in Kandahar Sunday before flying onto Kabul, the capital city, where she announced money for two new projects.
> 
> ...



Mark
Ottawa


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## Edward Campbell (23 Oct 2006)

Mon, 23 Oct 06

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061023.wxafghans23/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

 Critics slam Afghan naval mission

*Throwing sailors and air force members into ground combat a mistake, experts say*

ALEX DOBROTA 
From Monday's Globe and Mail

OTTAWA — Throwing sailors or air force members into ground combat in Afghanistan would be a colossal mistake, military experts said yesterday.

The proposal from the Department of National Defence is an option offered to avoid sending major army units back to Kandahar for a second time. But the plan encountered nothing but hostile fire yesterday.

It could lower troops' morale, would take too long to implement, place too great a strain on navy and air force ranks and generally makes no sense, a variety of critics said.

"I just can't see how you turn a sailor into a soldier without taking as long to do it as it would take for you to take a recruit off the street," said David Bercuson, the University of Calgary professor who is one of Canada's leading military analysts.

"It's an act of desperation, there's no question about that," echoed Scott Taylor, editor of Esprit de Corps military magazine. "It's a whole different mentality, a different role, different everything from being a sailor to a combat arms soldier."

Canada has 2,300 army personnel on the ground in Afghanistan and has made a commitment to keep that presence until 2009. But the army is too small to fulfill that mission without calling some units for a second tour of duty, said Capt. Richard Langlois, a spokesman with DND.

The use of members from other services, known as "re-rolling," is being studied as the Forces seeks ways to avoid sending soldiers to Afghanistan more than once. 

"It's just an option that was brought up to alleviate the rotation tempo," Capt. Langlois said.

The proposal came up in discussions between the office of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and that of Defence Staff General Rick Hillier some time before last week, Capt. Langlois said.

The idea was quickly dismissed yesterday by Jack Granatstein, professor emeritus of history at York University in Toronto, who said it could limit efficiency.

"Our regiments are close-knit groups and it's tough to put an outsider in," Mr. Granatstein said.

Currently, the Royal Canadian Regiment from Petawawa is almost midway through its rotation, which ends next February. 

It will be replaced by a formation composed of several units across the country that is currently assembling at Camp Gagetown in New Brunswick, and then in August, 2007, the Royal 22nd Regiment (Vandoos), is scheduled to take over. That's when the army will have to start second tours if no other plan emerges. 

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## The Bread Guy (23 Oct 2006)

*Higher toll, deadlier clashes: the new reality for Canadians in Afghanistan *  
Les Perrault, Canadian Press, 22 Oct 06
http://www.recorder.ca/cp/National/061022/n102227A.html

The rocket screamed in and smashed sand a few dozen metres away, neatly tying a sickening knot in the pit of my gut as a visceral reminder of how much the Afghan mission had changed. Later, as soldiers casually shrugged off "friendly" shrapnel buzzing in like oversized bees and landing at our feet, it was confirmed. I spent 19 days as an embedded reporter with frontline units and their friendly, generous, gregarious, grumpy and terrified soldiers. My time out front was less than half of my 47-day stint in Afghanistan this time, about one-eighth of the time the average soldier in frontline units will spend in hostile territory ....



*Canadian war resister to speak tonight*
Hamilton Spectator, 23 Oct 06
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161553810753&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815

Francisco Juarez became Canada's first war resister in the spring when he said "No" to a training exercise that would have landed him in Afghanistan.  The 35-year-old native of Vancouver was threatened with court martial and eventually fined $500 and discharged without honour.  Juarez, who joined the navy in 2002 but switched to the reserves last year to have more time to finish his studies, said he no longer believed in Canada's mission to Afghanistan and could not be a part of it.  He speaks in Hamilton tonight at 7 at the Skydragon Centre, 27 King William St ....



*Injured soldier a real trouper*
Despite having to fight for danger pay, he's anxious to return to duty
Tom Godfrey, Toronto Sun, 23 Oct 06
http://torontosun.com/News/OtherNews/2006/10/23/2104851-sun.html

Wounded trooper Jeffrey Hunter says he can't wait to return to service even though he's fighting to collect his danger pay after being wounded in Afghanistan. "I fully intend to stay in the military," Hunter said yesterday. "This is my life and my career."  The serviceman was given a standing ovation by 1,800 people at the 17th annual Royal Canadian Military Institute's military band spectacular, in which 10 navy, army and air force bands performed. The member of the Royal Canadian Dragoons is forced to use a wheelchair after he suffered serious leg wounds three weeks ago in the Pashmul area, just west of Kandahar. His fellow officers, Sgt. Craig Gillam, 40, of Newfoundland, and Cpl. Robert Mitchell, of Manitoba, were killed in the attack ....



*Military training under fire*
Trustees, critics want to stop co-op program teaching students to be soldiers -- why?  
Moira MacDonald, Toronto Sun, 23 Oct 06
http://torontosun.com/News/Columnists/MacDonald_Moira/2006/10/23/2104916.html

The army only seems to become a hot topic when the army starts doing one of the key things it is trained for, which is to go to war. So it's no surprise a high school co-op program that Canada's military has operated with schools for years has become controveresial now that our mission in Afghanistan is resulting in casualties and army recruitment efforts are increasing. High school co-op programs are supposed to give students a taste of what particular careers would be like by putting them directly into the work environment. Ontario co-op students typically spend up to four days a week for one semester in a work placement, earn course credits and sometimes money, depending on the placement ....



*Alberta town to ship Kraft Dinner to troops*
Canadian Press, via Halifax Chronicle-Herald, 23 Oct 06
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/536180.html

Mayor Lloyd Bertschi was talking with a friend from the Edmonton Garrison about life in Afghanistan, where more than 2,000 Canadians are stationed, when the comforts of home came up.  First came peace, quiet and family, he said, but not far behind was a surprising Canadian staple: Kraft Dinner.  "As you can imagine, the rations that they have over there are probably less than spectacularly tasty, and I guess it’s just the taste, it’s kind of a remembrance of the kind of thing that they get at home that they don’t get when they’re there," Bertschi said with a laugh ....


*Flag is troops' way of saying thanks*
Hamilton Spectator, 23 Oct 06
http://www.hamiltonspectator.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=hamilton/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161553810756&call_pageid=1020420665036&col=1014656511815

Call it the flag of our sons and daughters.  A veterans group has raised a Canadian flag over Burlington that flew at the Canadian headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The flag was sent to them by the troops as thanks for sending thousands of packages of flavour crystals to Kandahar over the last year.  "It's a great expression of support for our soldiers who are over there in trying times," said Gary Ostofi, president of the Royal Hamilton Military Institute, which received the flag. "It shows them that the people of Hamilton and Burlington care about them." ....



*Get 'em out, families say*
Afghan mission. As body count rises, soldiers' relatives say Canada's role is misguided  
Allan Woods, CanWest News Service, 23 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=e6ca58c3-f7f9-49af-8cf2-c86ad1eb1edf&k=67978

Families of some Canadian soldiers say the escalating body count in Afghanistan, and lack of success the international community has had bringing security to the Afghan people, has convinced them that the Harper government should pull Canadian troops out.  This is believed to be the first time Canadian military families of those serving in Kandahar, or set to be deployed there, have publicly expressed anti-war sentiments.  In exclusive interviews with CanWest News Service, parents and siblings say they are concerned about the dangerous fighting the Taliban. They are also unsettled by the war-focused nature of the mission, and see no end goal that defines when, and under what conditions, Canadian troops will come home for good ....


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## GAP (23 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 23 October 2006*

AFGHANISTAN: TALIBAN AND NATO 'IN TALKS' TO PULL OUT OF SEVERAL AREAS
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.352346312&par=

Karachi, 23 Oct. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - Talks are underway between the Taliban and NATO forces - through tribal elders - over the pullout of troops from 12 districts along the Pakistan Afghan border, providing the Taliban make concessions to the NATO forces and agree not to attack their bases in those Afghan provinces where the deal is signed, North Waziristan-based sources told Adnkronos International (AKI). "So far all 12 districts are situated from Kandahar to Kunar, but later on there would be a consideration for other districts situated in Nangarhar province,” sources maintained.

A Taliban spokesperson, Mohammad Hanif, on Sunday said that both American and Afghan soldiers had pulled out of an area in eastern Afghanistan, under a deal clinched with tribal elders, the second in a week.

Hanif said that NATO forces and troops of the Afghan National Army had withdrawn from the Babrak Tana area in the Ali Sher district of the south-eastern province of Khost on Sunday night upon the mediation of tribal elders. The Taliban spokesperson referred to the alleged pull out as another major victory of the Taliban against NATO forces. 

There has been no word of this alleged 'deal' from the NATO forces in Afghanistan. 

A similar accord was struck between the Taliban and NATO forces through local tribal elders in the Musa Qala district in southern Helmand province. Under the agreement, British troops pulled out of the town on 17 October. 
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Prison sentence for Dutch soldier refusing to serve in Afghanistan
(AFP) 23 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October892.xml&section=subcontinent

THE HAGUE - Dutch prosecutors on Monday asked for a four-month prison sentence for a 21-year-old soldier who has refused to serve in Afghanistan, the ANP news agency reported.

The soldier, identified as J. Wegenaar, is appearing before the military chamber of the Arnhem district court. His lawyers told the court that he had refused to serve because the Dutch army had not provided proper psychological care following an earlier mission in Afghanistan. They said Wegenaar was still suffering psychological problems from his first tour of duty between October 2004 and January 2005.

ANP reported that the soldier told the judges that the Afghanistan mission was ‘a suicide mission’ because the soldiers were not properly trained or prepared for what awaited them.

The Netherlands has sent 1,550 soldiers to the violent southern Afghan province of Uruzgan to serve with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
End

Afghanistan’s war of words continues  
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=103979

TORONTO: With Canada’s combat death toll now heading into the 40s, public discussion — if you can still call it that — of the war in Afghanistan has degenerated into a simplistic grudge match that is doing little to advance understanding at home or define what success looks like on the ground in the dangerous Kandahar region. 

To start, politicians and pundits opposed to the war are fixating on the idea that Afghanistan is the "Son of Iraq." Specifically, detractors of the Afghanistan deployment think NATO, like the U.S. Army in Iraq, is incapable of defeating a counter-insurgency that has popular support and unlimited opium dollars,Tornoto STar reported. 

The thinking is that to stay in Kandahar is to forestall Canada’s inevitable descent into an Iraq-like quagmire. Ipso facto, we should bring our troops home and redeploy the military where it is urgently needed, as peacekeepers in Darfur. 

But Afghanistan isn’t Iraq and we draw this parallel at our peril. Most of Afghanistan is prospering and at peace. The south, where the fighting is taking place, is made up of a single ethnic and religious group, Sunni Pashtuns. There is simply no structural reason for Afghanistan to spiral into the kind of intractable sectarian violence that is fast derailing the U.S. occupation of Iraq. 

What is dangerous to Canada and our interests is the "bring home the troops" movement’s casual disregard for the terms on which we are in Afghanistan. 

Every Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan is part of a larger, multinational NATO force that has the full sanction of the United Nations. To withdraw our troops before February 2009 — the date Parliament committed to the UN mission — would be an unparalleled and unprincipled act of unilateralism. In one fell stroke, we would be renouncing the very multilateral institutions we’ve championed on the world stage for the last half century. 

If we have to be in Afghanistan for the next two years to uphold an international principle that is vital to how a "middle power" like Canada needs the world to work, then what are our options? What is the long-term plan? 

When it comes to responding to these kinds of practical questions, backers of the current mission have eschewed straight answers in favour of promulgating a self-serving and unrealistic interpretation of our role in Afghanistan. 
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Military considers longer tours of duty in Afghanistan
Last Updated: Sunday, October 22, 2006 | 11:32 AM ET  CBC News 
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/22/afganistan.html

The Canadian military wants to increase the time served by its troops in Afghanistan to nine months, up from six, a general told soldiers gathered in Edmonton on Saturday.

Brig.-Gen Mark Skidmore spoke after a change of command ceremony that put him in charge of army forces in Western Canada.

The career soldier from London, Ont., took over the job from Brig.-Gen. Tim Grant, who will become commander of Task Force Afghanistan for six months.

"If you're a member of the Canadian military, particularly a soldier with a skill set that's required in Afghanistan, and you haven't been yet, I think chances are very good that the opportunity is going to be there to serve," Skidmore told the assembled troops at the Jefferson Armouries.

On Wednesday, Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, said the Armed Forces will be looking outside combat units to find troops.
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12 die during clashes in Afghanistan
Oct. 22, 2006, 4:05PM By FISNIK ABRASHI Associated Press Writer © 2006 The Associated Press 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4279160.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — Fighting between forces loyal to two pro-government warlords in western Afghanistan Sunday left at least 12 people dead, while NATO said its forces killed 15 suspected militants who launched an attack on an alliance convoy in the south.

Meanwhile, the Afghan government and the United Nations appealed for $43 million in aid for 1.9 million people facing food shortages because of severe drought.

Hundreds of people armed with heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms took part in the battle Sunday between the rival warlords' factions in the village of Waryan in western Herat province, local chief Mirwais Payman said.

The warlords Amanullah Khan and Arbab Basir are both ethnic Pashtuns who support the U.S.-backed government, Payman said. The cause of the clash was not immediately known.

Police and Afghan army troops separated the sides, Payman said.

Also on Sunday, NATO said insurgents attacked one of its convoys in southern Zabul province with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades a day earlier, sparking a gunbattle that left 15 suspected militants dead.

Two NATO troops were wounded in the clash, the alliance said in a statement. The alliance did not disclose their nationalities.
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Concerns grow for safety of abducted Italian in Afghanistan
Oct 22, 2006, 20:43 GMT 
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1213464.php/Concerns_grow_for_safety_of_abducted_Italian_in_Afghanistan

Rome/Kabul - Concerns were mounting in Italy Sunday over the fate of an Italian photojournalist abducted a week ago in Afghanistan as an ultimatum issued to the government to pull its troops out of Afghanistan expired, local television reported. 

The fate of Gabriele Torsello, a 34-year-old convert to Islam, who was nabbed in the restive Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on October 14, is unknown, the reports said. 

The Italian Government has so far rejected the kidnappers' calls for a troop withdrawal. 
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Afghan strategy defended
Published: 22 Oct 2006 By: Channel 4 News 
http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=3682

The Defence Secretary denies the Government underestimated Afghan resistance to UK troops. 

Des Browne, speaking from the capital Kabul on his second visit to the country, said anyone who thought the Government had not appreciated the "nature of the job" the army was doing there was "frankly wrong". 

He told the BBC's Sunday AM programme: "If anyone thinks that we underestimated the nature of the job that we are doing here then they are frankly wrong.

"What we have seen in Afghanistan when the Taliban ran this country was brutality at a level that beggars belief."
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Afghanistan's Drought, Conflict Prompt UN Appeal for More Aid  
By Paul Tighe
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=awymIlOGrwbU&refer=europe

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Afghanistan will need $43.3 million in aid to feed families affected by drought and displaced by the insurgency in the south of the country, the United Nations and the Afghan government said. 

The aid will supplement a $76.4 million appeal announced in July and will provide food assistance to an estimated 1.9 million people, 200,000 more than forecast four months ago, the UN said yesterday on its Web site. International donors have so far provided half of the money sought in July, it said. 

``There is an urgent and pressing need to continue assistance to drought and conflict affected communities,'' Ameerah Haq, the deputy UN special representative, said. Aid will enable the UN to ``provide vital food and other essential living items as we approach the winter months.'' 

Fighting in Afghanistan's southern provinces has increased as fighters from the ousted Taliban regime resist attempts by Afghan and international forces to expand their control. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has deployed 31,000 soldiers across the country, took over command of forces in the southern region July 31. 

An estimated 20,000 families have been displaced by fighting in Helmand, Kandahar and Uruzgan provinces in the south, the UN said, citing the Afghan government. 
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Canada's Afghanistan mission destabilizing: James Ingalls
The Hill Times, October 23rd, 2006 NEWS STORY  By Simon Doyle
http://www.hilltimes.com/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2006/october/23/afghanmission/&c=1

Opinion of the Afghan mission is shifting in Liberal caucus, says one Grit, as opposition parties step up their criticism of the mission.
As opposition parties step up their pressure on the Conservative government to rethink its mission in Afghanistan, the co-author of a new book on the war says that the Canadian-led mission is destabilizing the country and pushing the population into the arms of the Taliban. 

James Ingalls, co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence, a new book on U.S. foreign policy in Afghanistan, said in an interview that the Canadian-led combat mission in southern Afghanistan is counter-productive and destabilizing to the country. 

"Canada right now, they're in full support of what the U.S. is doing, in terms of the worst aspects of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, which I think are the combat operations that the U.S. is undergoing, the so-called hunt for terrorists. Canada is right behind them, in fact they're probably the most enthusiastic," Mr. Ingalls said. 

He called the mission's military tactics "counter-productive" if the intent is to achieve "a stable Afghanistan where people are capable of controlling their own destiny." Instead, he said, the country is being destabilized with the steady death of civilians and suspected Taliban fighters. 
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18 bodies of Pakistani nationals repatriated from Afghanistan  
Islamabad, Oct 23, IRNA Pakistan-Bodies 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0610239702101142.htm

Bodies of 18 Pakistani youth, who were killed during recent fighting along the border with foreign forces in Afghanistan, have been repatriated to their country's tribal region, locals in the region said. 

They were between the ages of 15 and 25, according to locals who have seen the bodies. 

The bodies were brought to North Waziristan through very difficult terrain late last night and were buried in different areas of the tribal agency, including Miranshah, after they had been identified. 

Nine of those killed were teenagers, who had recently joined the Taliban movement and had gone to Afghanistan to fight foreign and Afghan troops for the first time. 

The Afghan government had accused the Pakistani government of allowing militants to cross into Afghanistan to fight foreign forces or launch attacks from Pakistani territory. 

A peace agreement signed between the government and tribal elders in Miranshah last month stated that militants would not cross into Afghanistan to launch attacks. 

Sources said that some 100 fighters, led by a local commander in Miranshah, Saifullah, had crossed into Afghanistan. 

They had attacked a convoy of allied forces in the Burmal district of Paktia province. The allied forces also suffered casualties in the attack. 

Sources said that only four fighters were injured in the attack but 40 fighters were killed in the US airstrike when they were returning. 

Bodies repatriated to Miranshah are stated to be of those who died in the US air attack. 
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Factional fighting kills 30 in W. Afghanistan  
October 23, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/23/eng20061023_314412.html

A fighting between two rival factions killed about 30 people in Shindand district of the western Herat province of Afghanistan, the provincial police chief told Xinhua on Monday. 

The conflict broke out on Sunday after some militants loyal to a local commander, Arbab Basir, ambushed a car carrying a well- known commander, Amanullah Khan, said Mohammad Ayub Salangi. 

The ambush occurred in Shindand district, about 120 km south of the provincial capital Herat, he added. 

About 30 people from both sides including Khan and his son were killed in the ambush and the following clash, and many others were injured, Salangi said, adding the situation has been under control now. 

Meanwhile, a spokesman of the NATO forces in Herat confirmed with Xinhua that about 30 were killed in the fierce fighting. 

The spokesman said some NATO soldiers have been dispatched to the district to keep security, but he declined to tell the exact number. 

Khan, an ethnic Pashtun commander, who has hundreds of militias, has frequently clashed with his Tajik rivals led by former Herat province governor Ismail Khan in the previous years. 
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Canada cannot abandon Afghanistan, Dallaire says
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061023.NATSS23-1/TPStory/National

Edmonton -- Canada must follow through with its mission in Afghanistan, Senator Roméo Dallaire says.

The retired general, who led the ill-fated United Nations force in Rwanda, said people must give up on the notion of the Canadian military as a peacekeeping force.

"The concept of peacekeeping has failed in this era," Mr. Dallaire said yesterday during closing ceremonies of the Building World Peace -- The Role of Religions and Human Rights conference. 

He also criticized Canada for ignoring the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region in Sudan 
End

Germany remains committed to Afghanistan, minister says  
dpa German Press Agency Published: Monday October 23, 2006 
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Germany_remains_committed_to_Afghan_10232006.html

Berlin- Germany remains committed to rebuilding the police force in Afghanistan despite an increasingly difficult security situation, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Monday. Germany has 40 police trainers in four Afghan cities in addition to around 2,500 troops serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 

Schaeuble said the police role helped "strengthen the trust of the Afghan people in democratic state institutions and in so doing deprive terrorism of its main source of sustenance." 

The minister was speaking after a meeting with his Afghan counterpart Ahmad Zarar Moqbel during which the two countries signed an accord renewing Germany's police commitment. 

The agreement provides for assistance in building up a police force throughout Afghanistan and continuing to supply equipment and training, the interior ministry said. 
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AFGHANISTAN: DEADLINE SET BY ABDUCTORS OF ITALIAN JOURNALIST EXPIRES
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.352088181&par=

Rome, 23 Oct. (AKI) - The deadline set by the abductors of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello expired on Monday but no accord had reportedly been reached between Italian negotiators and the captors. Italian charity in Afghanistan Emergency, which is involved in talks for his release, said they had spoken with the abductors on Monday and they had guaranteed the photojournalist was in good condition. 

Italian papers reported on Monday that negotiations were under way and that officials with the Italian foreign ministry and intelligence expected they would gain momentum after the end of the holy month of Ramadan between Monday and Tuesday. 

Torsello, a Christian who converted to Islam, was kidnapped abetween October 12 and 14 while he was travelling from Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile Helmand province to neighbouring Kandahar - the two parts of the country where fighting between insurgents and NATO forces is fiercest.

Italy's defence minister Arturo Parisi has categorically rejected the demands by the kidnappers of the Italian photojournalist to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in order to secure his release. 

After initially offering to hand over Torsello in exchange for the return of a Christian convert, Abdul Rahman, who has been granted asylum in Italy, last week the captors - who claim to be Taliban militia but whose identity has not been determined - said if that were not agreed to they would insist on a complete pullout of Italy's 1,800 troops in Afghanistan.
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Island domain for Afghanistan
Simon Hayes OCTOBER 24, 2006  
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20632220^15306^^nbv^,00.html

INTERNET domain registrations in war-torn Afghanistan are being hosted from a network operations centre in Sydney as part of an unusual export drive.

Members of the Council of Country Code Administrators, including nations such as East Timor, Namibia, Mongolia, Dominica and Kiribati, use software and infrastructure from the Christmas Island Internet Administration to run their domain registrations. 
Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean with a population of 2500, has turned around its struggling internet registry by building a shared infrastructure and administrative system. 

Unlike its near neighbour, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Christmas missed the dotcom boom, and has only 4000 domain registrations, but its system has proved attractive. 

"With limited revenue and a community-owned company, attracting venture capital or selling part of the business was not desirable, or an option," director Garth Miller said. "The way forward was to look for partners to fund our software development and operation of a world-class infrastructure. 
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Food aid for Afghanistan's poor to be announced: CIDA
By SUE BAILEY October 23, 2006 
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2006/10/23/pf-2105313.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - Canada will continue to provide emergency food aid for widows in the capital of Kabul past a planned cut-off date of March 31, The Canadian Press has learned. 

"There will be a brand-new multi-year vocational training and food aid program," a senior official with the Canadian International Development Agency said Monday. 

"You don't just stop feeding," said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "You can't expect people to just find another food source and we know that." 

An official announcement was not included as part of International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner's two-day swing through Afghanistan, but is expected soon. 

Earlier this month, a long line of widows waited hours for Canadian-bought rations of flour, cooking oil, dried peas and medicine. The food is delivered about once a month to 7,300 eligible women in Kabul. 

CARE has delivered the basic staples on CIDA's behalf since 1996. The aid agency is expected to continue offering job and skills training, but food rations will likely be handled by others, said the source. 

Ottawa committed just over $2.5 million last year to extend the program for the 12 months ending next March 31. 
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$94 Million Helps Progress in Afghanistan
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1771

KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 23, 2006 – The United States has awarded $94 million to seven Afghan firms to build or improve road and water distribution systems in six Afghan provinces. 
The funds, awarded Oct. 19, will help build more than 390 kilometers of roads in Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nuristan, Kunar, Paktika and Ghazni provinces and establish water distribution systems in Bamyan and Kunar provinces. 

The new construction funds were awarded under the Commander's Emergency Response Program, a U.S. program to fund projects of urgent need. 

"Overall, roads are what provide the foundation for continued growth and prosperity in Afghanistan," Army Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, said. 

Eikenberry, along with Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, the U.S. Army chief of engineers and commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and Col. William E. Bulen, commander of the Corps of Engineers’ Afghanistan Engineer District, were all present for a CERP partnership signing ceremony with representatives from the selected construction firms. 

The companies that were awarded 12 contracts are: Afghan Builders Consortium, Al-Watan Construction Company, AMERIFA, Kainaat Construction Logistics and Trade Company, Pro Sima International, Tatekan and Afghan Bakhter Companies, and Zurmat Construction Company
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## GAP (24 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 24 October 2006*

*Canadian Forces abroad** See Map at Bottom of Posting*
CBC News Online | Updated October 23, 2006
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/cdnmilitary/operations.html

In the years since the Second World War there has been a major evolution in the Canadian Forces. Gone is the massive standing army, the formidable naval fleet and the air force. 

Today, Canada's military is lean, even by modern standards, with 60,000 regular troops and 20,000 reserves, although the new Conservative government has promised to increase both the regular and reserve forces. 

Currently, there are more than 3,000 Canadian Forces personnel stationed on missions abroad. They range in size from one-person commitments to Cyprus and Senegal, to the approximately 2,300 soldiers stationed in Kandahar, Afghanistan. 
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Probe clears Canadians in Afghan police death 
*See picture of Police Vehicle at bottom of posting*
Updated Mon. Oct. 23 2006 11:31 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061023/military_probe_061023/20061023?hub=Canada

A military probe has cleared Canadian soldiers in the fatal shooting of an Afghan policeman, concluding his vehicle was unmarked when it sped towards a checkpoint. 

The officer died in late August, after soldiers opened fire on his white pickup truck, about 25 kilometres west of Kandahar. 

One bullet passed through the vehicle's windshield, killing the officer. Six other Afghan police officers were injured. 

Some witness accounts claimed the truck was marked as an Afghan police vehicle. But the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (NIS) has released a photograph of the vehicle, clearly showing it was unmarked. 

NATO had remained adamant the soldiers could not have known they were firing at police officers. 

"Neither their vehicle, nor their immediate appearance, readily identified them (as police)," Col. Fred Lewis, the deputy commander of Canada's NATO contingent in southern Afghanistan, said in August. 

NIS also concluded soldiers correctly followed the necessary rules of engagement. Some witness accounts said the police had shot at the soldiers, who then returned fire. 

The dead officer is believed to have been a part of Afghanistan's secret police.
End

Colonel urges patience on Afghanistan mission  
Last Updated: Tuesday, October 24, 2006 | 5:56 AM ET  CBC News 
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/24/capstick-committee.html

Canada's mission to Afghanistan is making progress despite continuing violence but Canadians need to be patient because the process of creating a stable country will take years, a military officer told a parliamentary committee on Monday.

Canadian Forces Col. Mike Capstick, who spent a year in the Kabul working with the Afghan government, told the Commons defence committee that Canada helping make a difference to Afghanistan.

"Somewhere around 75 per cent of the country is relatively stable and secure. And it's stable and secure enough for development to occur. Of course, incidents occur — suicide bombers here and there," Capstick said.

The ongoing insurgency facing Canadian troops in southern Afghanistan, he said, can be beaten but not quickly.

"If it's to be successful, the international community is going to have to be involved for a long time," he said.

Canada has more than 2,000 troops in Afghanistan, with the majority in southern Afghanistan. Forty-two Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since Canada first sent troops there in early 2002.
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US Pressures Germany to Send Troops to Southern Afghanistan  
24.10.2006 
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2213419,00.html

The US has urged Germany to send troops from northern Afghanistan to hot spots in the south, while Taliban leader Mullah Omar released a video warning fighting will heat up even more. 

"I would very respectfully ask Germans…to reflect on whether the very narrow and very rigid restrictions put on the German troops make sense for NATO," US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said Sunday at a defense conference organized by Welt am Sonntag. 

"Wouldn't it be better if Germany and France…could be willing to have those troops sent sometimes on a periodic, temporary basis to help the Dutch, British, US and Canadians that are undertaking the major share of the fighting?" he added. 

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also called on member states to strengthen and expand NATO's role in Afghanistan. 

Renewed Taliban threats

 The US appeal for increased German involvement coincided with a video released Sunday by Taliban head Mullah Mohammed Omar. 

"With Allah's help the conflict will be intensified. I am convinced that the fighting will be a surprise for many," said Mullah Omar, as reported by Reuters.  

The Taliban leader has been at large since US forces overthrew the Taliban regime after Sept. 11, 2001. He and cohort Osama bin Laden are the two most-wanted terror suspects in the world. 

Germany extends time, not area

The German army has 2,900 troops in northern Afghanistan as part of the 30,000-strong NATO mission and also supports forces in the south with air transports. 

Germany agreed last month to keep troops in northern Afghanistan for another 12 months, but said it would not join the NATO forces in the south where violence has been escalating. 
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Canada announces aid to Afghanistan  
October 24, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/24/eng20061024_314548.html

Canada is providing Afghanistan with an aid of 30 million Canadian dollars (26 million U.S. dollars) to help rebuild its economy and provide economic opportunities for women there, according to a statement issued on Monday by the Ministry of International Cooperation. 

Nearly half of the money is to be used to build schools and train 4,000 female school teachers for some 120,000 schoolchildren, most of them girls, in 11 Afghan provinces, International Cooperation Minister Josee Verner, who visited Afghanistan on Sunday, said in the statement. 

Another 5 million Canadian dollars (4.4 million U.S. dollars) is to be used to help some 1,500 Afghan women to grow and sell fruits and vegetables. 

Besides, 10 million Canadian dollars (8.9 million U.S. dollars) will go to ongoing construction projects in the country. 

"Canada is proud to help Afghan women realize the promise of the country's new constitution, which recognizes the rights of women," Verner said in the statement. 

"These projects also mobilize the power of women as agents of economic development and social change, to improve the well-being of their families and their communities," the minister said. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Afghan roads are one wild ride
Jane Armstrong, 20/10/06 at 11:06 AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061020.WBwitnessworld20061020110613/WBStory/WBwitnessworld/

There are two ways to travel in southern Afghanistan if you’re a foreign reporter – by military convoy or in a hired car. Both have their benefits and perils. Each provides a sharply different perspective of this war-torn region.

Travelling in a military convoy means you’ve put your safety in the hands of the people who are prime targets for insurgents. Nearly every day there is news of an ambush or suicide bomber attack on a convoy of coalition vehicles, which roam the highways ferrying soldiers and supplies to and from the Kandahar airfield.

Despite the many layers of metal protection provided by an armoured vehicle, I always felt safer in the back seat of my fixer’s beat up Toyota Corolla, my Western status obscured with the burka I draped over my body.

In a convoy, everything that moves on the soldier’s horizon is a potential threat. Every car, bicycle or even donkey cart that crosses its path could be driven by a suicide bomber packed with explosives. As a result, convoys barrel along the highways in the centre of the road at full speed, horns blaring. A stalled or slow-moving convoy is a sitting target, so the driver’s goal is to keep moving at all costs. The gunner in the lead vehicle stands in the turret behind his machine gun, frantically waving his arms, ordering cars and people to the side of the road.

In Kandahar city, where a simple traffic snarl is the gravest of threats, drivers push their way through the crowded markets and traffic circles like they’re playing a life-or-death game of bumper cars.

I’ve travelled in enclosed, armoured vehicles like the Bison and in lighter armoured vehicles, such as the Nyala and G-wagon, which have windows. In retrospect, the Bison was the least nerve-wracking. It’s hot and claustrophobic inside, but there’s feeling of safety in not having a clue where you are or what surrounds you.

On my first two journeys off the base I rode in a Bison, squeezed in with half a dozen other soldiers, my eyes on the floor, counting up and down to 100 to pass the time. On my third trip out with the soldiers, I was in a convoy of G-wagons – they look like sturdy SUVs – which left Kandahar last Monday during evening rush hour at 4 p.m. There was no counting on this journey.
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Travel restrictions too tight for aid workers in Afghanistan: MacKay
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061022.waid22/BNStory/National/home

OTTAWA — Canadian diplomats and aid organizers in southern Afghanistan have been under tight, government-imposed travel restrictions ever since diplomat Glyn Berry was killed in a roadside bomb attack in January — and the constraints appear to be hampering reconstruction efforts.

Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay has acknowledged the limits and is trying to get them eased.

“We are working as effectively and efficiently as possible to

free up any restrictions that stand in the way of development, that stand in the way of the progress being made,” Mr. MacKay said following a recent speech to diplomats.

“We're looking for every means of efficiency to do that, both in our department and CIDA and at National Defence.”

Some frustrated overseas staff have likened the constraints to being “nannied” by Ottawa, a source at Foreign Affairs told The Canadian Press.

The question of how much reconstruction is taking place in southern Afghanistan, and how effective those efforts have been, are among the main political lines of attack by opponents of the war. Critics complain the mission has been all fighting and no aid.
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Navy, air force won't be deployed to Afghanistan
TENILLE BONOGUORE Globe and Mail Update
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061023.wparl-afghan1023/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

The government will not deploy sailors to Afghanistan and has no intention to extend the duration of active postings to that country, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told Parliament Monday.

The proposal was one option outlined in a Department of National Defence document discussing ways to avoid sending major army units back to Kandahar for a second time.

But Mr. O'Connor scuttled the suggestion in Parliament.

“There is no intention of employing sailors or airmen or airwomen in infantry roles. As well, there is no intention of extending the time that people are in Afghanistan if they're in active operations,” Mr. O'Connor said.
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New Humanitarian Appeal Launched for Afghanistan    
October 24, 2006. By (AND) - www.andnetwork.com  
http://www.andnetwork.com/index?service=direct/0/Home/recent.titleStory&sp=l54282  

On Sunday, the Afghan Government and the United Nations appealed for a further $43 million to respond to the humanitarian needs of people affected by Afghanistan’s drought and those families displaced by the recent conflict in southern Afghanistan. 
  
That is on top of the appeal launched in July for nearly $76.4 million, for an initial six month-period. Approximately 53 per cent of that appeal has been received so far. It is now estimated that, due to the drought conditions, 1.9 million people will need food assistance -- 200,000 more than estimated in July 
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1.9 mln USD for slush fund in Afghanistan burned  
12:01' 24/10/2006 (GMT+7)  
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/international/2006/10/625874/

More than 1.9 million U.S. dollars in cash was burned on May 24 when a British military transport aircraft caught fire after landing in southern Afghanistan, according to The Daily Mail on Sunday.

The money, packed into two four-wheel-drive vehicles being carried on the British Hercules C-130 plane, was reportedly intended to "buy off" local warlords against the Taliban. 

The British Ministry of Defence on Friday night confirmed that a "sizeable amount of cash" was being transported by the plane. 

It was said that the RAF aircraft had flown in a "black operation" from Kabul to the crude dirt landing strip outside the town of Lashkar Gar in Helmand province. 

Since the pilot managed to touch down, there were no casualties. Stephen Evans, the British ambassador to Afghanistan, and special forces on board escaped the burning plane in seconds, the paper said
End

Rumsfeld, Discusses NATO, Afghanistan With Spain's Defense Minister
By Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service Oct 24, 2006, 03:18
http://www.blackanthem.com/News/military200610_1704.shtml


Blackanthem Military News, WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States and Spain have an important bilateral relationship, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today after a meeting with his Spanish counterpart.  

Rumsfeld and Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso discussed a range of issues during a meeting in the Pentagon and spoke to the media afterward. 

The delegations discussed a number of bilateral and NATO issues. "We also talked about international issues and our responsibilities with the international community and how we keep moving forward in the very complex and changing world we are in," Alonso said. 

Speaking of the strong relationship between the two countries, Rumsfeld noted the United States has bases in Spain. "We cooperate on a great many things, like for example in Afghanistan," he said. "We are not as active, but interested in the outcome in Lebanon. Of course Spain is very deeply involved (there)." 

Rumsfeld said the United States and Spain "don't always agree on everything, but we have a good, solid relationship that we value." 

Spain, as part of NATO, is part of a major command shift in Afghanistan, where all 26 NATO nations are participating in operations under the auspices of the International Security Assistance Force. Servicemembers from all NATO members and 16 other nations make up ISAF. 
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Opportunities and Bonuses Available for Reenlistment
Week of October 23, 2006
http://www.military.com/military-report/opportunities-and-bonuses-available-for-reenlistment?ESRC=miltrep.nl

Servicemembers and Veterans interested in reenlistment can earn bonuses of up to $20k, in addition to retaining their rank and pay rate at discharge. The DOD has placed a high priority on attracting prior service personnel, as they already possess strong leadership skills. 

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## MarkOttawa (24 Oct 2006)

Dutch army should take prostitutes abroad -mayor
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) Oct. 23
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1570262006



> A Dutch mayor has raised eyebrows by backing the idea of sending prostitutes to accompany Dutch troops on foreign missions.
> 
> "The army must consider ways its soldiers can let off steam," Annemarie Jorritsma, mayor of the town of Almere in central Netherlands and a member of the ruling VVD liberals, told Dutch television.
> 
> "There was once the suggestion that a few prostitutes should accompany troops on missions. I think that is something we should talk about," she said, adding that the prostitutes would keep soldiers from turning to local women...



Mark
Ottawa


----------



## The Bread Guy (25 Oct 2006)

*Canada should create a Special Canadian Emergency Task Force for Kandahar*
Senlis Council news release, 24 Oct 06
http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/media_centre/news_releases/72_news

Canada should increase its commitment to Afghanistan and take leadership within the NATO alliance to develop a new initiative there, said The Senlis Council, an international development and security think tank as part of a series of recommendations for Canada’s role in Afghanistan, made in a paper released at an International Symposium held in Ottawa tuesday.  “Canada took on responsibility for Kandahar and should see it through. We all should be deeply concerned about the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to Afghanistan, if not for the Afghan people themselves then for what that would mean for our own security.” said Canadian-born Norine MacDonald QC, Founding President of Senlis, who is also the group’s lead field researcher in Kandahar province ....

*Losing Hearts and Minds in Afghanistan. Canada´s Leadership to Break the Cycle of Violence in Southern Afghanistan  * 
Senlis Council Policy Paper, October 2006 
http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/publications/015_publication


*Canada should boost Afghan mission, take lead in strategy development: paper *  
Canadian Press, 24 Oct 06
http://www.cp.org/premium/ONLINE/member/elxn_en/061024/p102405A.html

An international think tank says Canada should boost its commitment to Afghanistan and take the lead in developing new NATO strategies in the country's contentious south and elsewhere. In a paper submitted to an international symposium, the Senlis Council, Canadians should be deeply concerned about the return of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to Afghanistan, if not for Afghans people themselves then for Canada's own security. Norine MacDonald, a Canadian who is founding president of development and security think tank and its lead field researcher in Kandahar province, says the military situation southern Afghanistan has declined dramatically in recent months ....


*Think tank calls for new approach in Afghanistan*
CTV News online, http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061024/afghanistan_senlis_061024/20061024?hub=TopStories

An international think tank wants Canada to maintain but refocus its commitment to Afghanistan, as the NDP again called for the Conservative government to rethink the mission.  "The mission in Afghanistan is fundamentally unbalanced," NDP Leader Jack Layton said Tuesday in Parliament's question period.  "Approximately one dollar in aid is spent for every nine dollars on combat ... will the prime minister heed the calls of Canadians, including more and more military families, and rethink this mission?" ....


*Afghanistan needs food, Ottawa told*
Kids 'starving' near Canadian base: Think-tank 
Warns that new strategy required to win Kandahar
Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, 25 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&col=968793972154&c=Article&cid=1161726632759&call_pageid=968332188492

Afghan children are "starving" in a refugee camp 15 minutes down the road from a Canadian military base and there's been no attempt to deliver emergency aid to help them, a frontline researcher says.  "I can't understand why no aid has been delivered," said Norine MacDonald, a Canadian lawyer who heads the Senlis Council, an international policy think-tank that aims to provide analysis, ideas and proposals on foreign policy, security, development and counter-narcotics strategies.  It is funded by the Network of European Foundations, a group of 11 trusts and charities, including the Children's Aid Foundation ....



*Afghanistan Opium Cultivation Monitored By International DMC Constellation*
Spacemart.com (UK), 24 Oct 06
http://www.spacemart.com/reports/Afghanistan_Opium_Cultivation_Monitored_By_International_DMC_Constellation_999.html

After extensive trials in 2005, DMC International Imaging Ltd. (DMCii) won a contract from the UK Government to supply high-resolution satellite coverage of the whole of Afghanistan to support the surveying of opium crops. The Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) coordinated by DMCii includes the UK's own satellite, as well as four satellites built at the Surrey Space Centre for other DMC member nations; Algeria, China, Nigeria and Turkey.  Full country coverage at this resolution can be achieved because, unlike single satellites, the Disaster Monitoring Constellation is able to revisit an area every day. This enables data to be collected rapidly and the problems of cloud to be avoided.  DMC images were timed to match the peak in crop growth in different areas of the country. The 32metre resolution multispectral data enables crop characteristics to be measured at a field level, and the 600km wide images help analysts to unify the opium crop estimates from other data sources, including ground surveys, aerial photos and very high resolution satellite spot samples ....



*Canada’s new government announces listing of Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) as a terrorist entity*
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC)  news release, 24 Oct 06
http://www.psepc-sppcc.gc.ca/media/nr/2006/nr20061024-1-en.asp

Minister of Public Safety, the Honourable Stockwell Day announced that yesterday Canada’s new government listed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s faction of the Hezb-e Islami, Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), as a terrorist group pursuant to the Criminal Code of Canada.  The Government of Canada has determined that this entity knowingly engages in terrorist activity. This brings to 40 the number of listed entities under the Criminal Code.  “Canada’s new government is once again taking decisive action to protect Canadians from terrorism and to safeguard our nation’s security,” said Minister Day. “Listing Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, which has joined forces with Al Qaida and the Taliban, is an important step in ensuring our safety and security in the global fight against terrorism,” he added.  HIG espouses a violent anti-Western ideology whose objective is the overthrow of the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the elimination of all-Western influence in Afghanistan and the creation of a fundamentalist state. Since late 2002, Hekmatyar has joined forces with Al Qaida and the Taliban to form a violent anti-Western, anti-Afghan government alliance ....

*Profile:  Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG)*
PSEPC web page, viewed 25 Oct 06
http://www.psepc-sppcc.gc.ca/prg/ns/le/cle-en.asp#hezb

Description
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s faction of the Hezb-e Islami, Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin (HIG), espouses an Islamist anti-Western ideology whose objectives are the overthrow of the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the elimination of all Western influence in Afghanistan and the creation of an Islamist fundamentalist state. In furtherance of its objectives, HIG has formed an alliance with Al Qaida and the Taliban. On July 23, 2002, Al Qaida became a listed entity pursuant to section 83.05 of the Criminal Code and on May 24, 2005, HIG leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar became a listed entity pursuant to section 83.05 of the Criminal Code. HIG has a history of engaging in terrorist activities inside Afghanistan in order to achieve its goals, including killings, torture, kidnappings, attacking political targets, as well as targeting civilians, journalists, foreigners, and foreign aid workers. 

Date listed
Oct.23, 2006


*Afghan resistance faction that killed Canadians declared terrorist group*
Canadian Press, 24 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=442ff92d-e39b-4d23-bc96-6a309a37a934&k=2462

An Afghan resistance faction responsible for the deaths of at least two Canadian soldiers and likely others has been officially declared a terrorist group under the Criminal Code of Canada.  Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin is the 40th organization to be designated a terrorist group under Canadian law.  The group, known as HIG, is headed by former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; it has long had ties to the Taliban and al-Qaida, and has kidnapped, tortured and killed civilians, journalists, foreigners, political leaders and aid workers ....


*Group gets funds here to kill our troops*
Day: Afghani Islamists banned by Ottawa as terrorists
Stewart Bell, National Post,  25 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=3c4d4c4f-d015-4b9a-b25c-db90ad2bbb4a

An armed Islamic group in Afghanistan that is blamed for attacks against Canadian soldiers has allegedly been raising money in Canada, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said yesterday.  Mr. Day told the National Post in an interview the government has evidence that Hezb-e Islami Gulbuddin, which is allied with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, has received financial support from within Canada.  Evidence of a suspected fund-raising pipeline to the pro-Taliban faction was one of the reasons Cabinet ministers agreed on Monday to put the group on Canada's official list of terrorist organizations, Mr. Day said ....


*Canada brands Afghan party a terrorist group*
Reuters (UK), 24 Oct 06
http://ca.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-10-24T164627Z_01_N24199226_RTRIDST_0_CANADA-SECURITY-CANADA-GROUP-COL.XML&archived=False

Canada has officially branded the Hezb-i-Islami party headed by former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as a terrorist organization, Public Security Minister Stockwell Day said on Tuesday.  The party is allied with Taliban militants. Hekmatyar, who was briefly prime minister in the 1990s, earlier this year pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and is believed to be hiding in the border region with Pakistan.  "The government of Canada has determined that this entity knowingly engages in terrorist activity," Day said in a statement. Canada has 2,300 troops in southern Afghanistan battling the Taliban ....



_*More news/opinion on CAN in K'Har:*_
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/CANinKandahar



*Photos of German troops in Afghanistan with skull spark scandal *  
Agence France Presse, 25 Oct 06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061025/wl_sthasia_afp/germanyafghanistanmilitary

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung has ordered an investigation after a newspaper printed photographs of German soldiers in Afghanistan playing and posing with a skull.  These pictures revolt and mystify me," Jung told the popular daily Bild, which splashed the photographs on its front page.  They show German soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force displaying the skull like scalp hunters.  In one picture, a soldier mounts it on the cablecutter at the front of the group's patrol vehicle, which bears both the German flag and the acronym for the international force, ISAF ....


German Troops in Afghanistan Under Probe
Associated Press, 25 Oct 06
http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2006/10/25/ap3117798.html

Germany's Defense Ministry said Wednesday it was investigating photos published by the country's biggest-selling newspaper that appear to show German troops in Afghanistan posing with a skull.  The Bild daily said the macabre pictures, one of which it printed on its front page Wednesday, showed German peacekeepers near the capital Kabul, in early 2003.  The uniformed men were seen holding up the skull and posing with it on a jeep; one is seen exposing himself with the skull. Bild's headline declared: "German soldiers desecrate a dead person." ....


----------



## GAP (25 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 25 Oct 2006*


Canadians go undercover in Afghanistan
Planners get inside government ministries to bring order out of chaotic reconstruction
PAUL KORING 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20061025.AFGHAN25/TPStory/TPInternational/Asia/

KABUL -- Embedded deep inside key ministries of the Afghan government, a handful of senior Canadian officers -- all volunteers -- are stretching the definition of military assistance.

"We are unique from a military perspective," says Colonel Don Dixon, the team's leader, sitting in a bare-bones office in a nondescript house in Kabul where the group's 16 members live. "I'm not here in a war-fighting role."

But measured by long-term impact, the no-strings-attached expertise, strategic advice and basic organization the group is bringing to Afghanistan's sometimes chaotic ministries may have an effect as far reaching as the combat campaign being waged far to the south in Kandahar by a Canadian battle group of more than 2,300 soldiers.

The high-powered, low-key and ambiguously named Strategic Advisory Team is the brainchild of General Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff. Gen. Hillier, an outgoing military man who commanded North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops in Afghanistan in 2004, built a set of personal relationships while he was in Kabul that included President Hamid Karzai.
More on link

Congressmen call for action in Afghan opium crisis
POSTED: 0159 GMT (0959 HKT), October 24, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/24/us.afghanistan.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two GOP congressmen have told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that more needs to be done about Afghanistan's opium crisis because of increased violence and terrorism against coalition forces.

The opium and illicit drug trafficking has greatly increased in recent months and threatens to "totally corrupt all of the new Afghan democratic institutions we support," Illinois Reps. Henry Hyde and Mark Kirk said in an October 12 letter.

Hyde is chairman of the House International Relations Committee and is retiring after a 32-year congressional career. Kirk, now serving his third term in Congress, is a former longtime aide to the committee who also has served as an intelligence officer in the Pentagon's war room.

Rumsfeld had no response to the congressmen's letter as of Tuesday, according to Hyde's committee staff.

A Rumsfeld spokeswoman, Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Finn, said the Pentagon intends to respond. "We take this matter very seriously," she said.

The congressmen suggested that the Drug Enforcement Administration combat the problem by focusing on drug kingpins in Afghanistan, heroin processing labs and drug convoys.
More on link

‘A lot of nervousness’ about British deal in Afghan: US envoy
(AFP) 25 October 2006 
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October926.xml&section=subcontinent

LONDON - The US ambassador to Afghanistan has questioned Britain’s deal to pull out of a previously insurgency-hit town, saying there is “a lot of nervousness” about it, The Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday.


British troops pulled out of the Musa Qala district in the southern Afghan province of Helmand about a week ago, following a request from war-weary residents.

“There is a lot of nervousness about who the truce was made with, who the arrangement was made with, and whether it will hold,” Ronald Neumann told the newspaper in an interview in Kabul.

Neumann added that the “jury is out” on whether the deal was a positive move.

International Security Assistance Force commander General David Richards said at the time that the move was a “redeployment”, stressing there had been no negotiations with the Taleban militia.
More on link




Iraq and Afghanistan: Staying Until the Fight is Over 
 Greg C. Reeson  October 25, 2006
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/greeson_20061025.html

The Armed Forces Press Service recently quoted Army Chief of Staff General Peter J. Schoomaker as saying that the current level of soldiers in Iraq could remain constant through 2010. Naturally, this sounded alarms in the mainstream media, which had been reporting for some time that the Army planned to reduce troop levels significantly during late 2006 and into 2007. 

There are two important things to note here. The first is pretty straightforward: troop levels are constantly adjusted to meet the conditions on the ground. When the level of violence dipped in Iraq, the commanders on the ground reduced the number of troops in the country to just over 100,000 and talked about further possible reductions. As the level of violence steadily increased this year, though, troop levels again went up, with some deployments accelerated and some re-deployments delayed. The same held true in Afghanistan, where NATO countries were called upon to increase troop levels in response to increased Taliban activity in the southern part of the country. 

The point is that there is no magic formula for the number of soldiers on the ground. Troop levels rise or fall in direct proportion to the levels of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Calls for massive troop reductions ignore the realities in both countries. The fight is far from over and Afghanistan and Iraq could easily be lost if our resolve wavers. 
More on link

Reconstruction, Reform Key to Afghanistan's Future, General Says
October 24, 2006 11:31 PM EST
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/19657.html

By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2006 – NATO will not be defeated militarily in Afghanistan, but the key to long-term stability in that country rests on reconstruction and reform, NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe said here today.



"Afghanistan's long-term solution is not only a military problem; it's not just a military problem," Marine Gen. James L. Jones told reporters at the Foreign Press Center. "The focus has to be on the right amount of reconstruction at the right place at the right time." 

NATO and the Afghan government specifically need to do better in counternarcotics efforts, judicial reform, training local police, and fighting government corruption, Jones said. It's important for the people of Afghanistan to view the government as being tough on drugs and corruption, so they can have confidence in their leaders and believe they will change the country for the better, he said. 

NATO has kept its commitments in Afghanistan, and its International Security Assistance Force has proved its mettle in tough fighting against the Taliban in the south recently, Jones said. The successful execution of Operation Medusa proved once and for all that NATO forces have the capacity to stand and fight if challenged, he said. 

"I think the Taliban and other forces - criminal elements, narcotics traffickers and whoever else was involved - had a very strong answer to that particular question," he said.
More on link

Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Approach to Current Challenges
Oct 2006, Vol. 151, No. 5 By Des Browne
http://www.rusi.org/publication/journal/ref:A453F1F8FBBD34/

The United Kingdom's first priority in Afghanistan is to create security. This needs to be followed straight away, with progress on reconstruction, to consolidate the security created. In addition, people must be reassured that there is a real future for Afghanistan. This requires the application of a comprehensive approach, that is, the inter-weaving of different elements – security, reconstruction, law and order, and governance – reinforcing each other ‘like the strands of a rope’.
More on link

38 Taliban rebels killed in Afghanistan
25 October 2006 13:05
http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/1025/afghan.html

NATO soldiers have killed 38 Taliban rebels in strikes against militants returning to infiltrate an area of southern Afghanistan that has seen previous heavy clashes.

Heavy bombardment was reported in the Zhari and Panjwayi districts of southern Kandahar province late yesterday.

The area, which is about 35km west of Kandahar city, was the focus of nearly two weeks of intense fighting last month as part of Operation Medusa, ISAF's largest anti-Taliban offensive.
More on link

Marijuana, opium seized in Afghanistan
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5586187&nav=1LFX

KABUL, Afghanistan NATO-led troops and Afghan authorities have teamed up on a couple of big drug busts in Afghanistan.

Troops and police seized over nine tons of marijuana from a truck in southern Afghanistan. And in western Afghanistan, U-S and Afghan troops recovered over 120 pounds of opium from a car.

Opium cultivation has surged since the Taliban was ousted in late 2001. The former regime had banned the crop and virtually eradicated it. But since the U-S invasion, it's been making a resurgence, this time with support from Taliban-led militants. Afghan and Western counter-narcotics officials say the militants encourage poppy cultivation and use the proceeds to fund their insurgency.
More on link

A backseat view of Afghanistan
24 Oct 2006 16:22:00 GMT
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/27415/2006/09/24-162213-1.htm

A backseat view of Afghanistan Is it my imagination or are the beggars on Kabul's streets more insistent this time around? Some have taken to pounding on the window of my car with their palms. When I was here just over a year ago their fingertips tapped gently on the glass. 

"Boro, boro!" Aziz, the driver, tells the beggars. "Go, go!" Men missing limbs, small children, and women clutching babies ignore him. A blind man, his pupils turned up at odd angles, stands insistently next to the car. 

Poor Aziz, I think. He's already stressed about getting stuck in the city's hellish traffic jams - a running cheetah emblazoned on the side of a nearby Toyota mocks us. He's also worried that we'll come too close to military patrols, popular bombing targets. 

On my first day we got stuck between two patrols in stand-still traffic next to the American base. The one in front of us stopped a Toyota. A soldier in beige fatigues slowly approached the driver, a young man wearing a white skullcap. Aziz did a quick U-turn before I saw what happened next. 

He has become markedly more aggressive since we met five days ago. He drives too fast and regularly goes down the wrong way on one-way streets. "Khareji," or foreigner, he says to an irate traffic cop who stops him after one of his antics. The policeman waves us on. It's depressing how well that word works. 
More on link

War on West shifts back to Afghanistan
Militants are being drawn away from Iraq, experts say.
By Sebastian Rotella, Times Staff Writer October 25, 2006 
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-iraqafghan25oct25,1,6817245.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true

The conflict in Iraq is drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists aspiring to battle the West turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan, European and U.S. anti-terrorism officials say.

The shift of militants to Afghanistan this year suggests that Al Qaeda and its allies, armed with new tactics honed in Iraq, are coming full circle five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban mullahs.
More on link

New Airdrop System Offers More Precision from Higher Altitudes
By Donna Miles American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1815

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Oct. 25, 2006 – A new, self-steering airdrop system that’s being field tested in Afghanistan represents a revolutionary step beyond traditional delivery methods, the commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces told a group visiting the command headquarters here during the past weekend.  

For security reasons, officials requested the base’s exact location not be revealed. 

Air Force Lt. Gen. Gary North praised the new Joint Precision Airdrop System that steers itself from high altitudes using its own global positioning system. “It’s FedEx and Domino’s, all at once,” he told civilian leaders participating in the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference. 

JPADS offers more accuracy than conventional airdrop methods in delivering supplies to ground troops in extremely remote locations, he said. It also enables drops from higher altitudes, better protecting delivery aircraft from enemy threats. 

The new system got its first combat tryout in late August when a C-130 Hercules aircraft from the 774th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron dropped supplies to an Army unit operating in a remote location in Afghanistan. 

Air Force Maj. Neil Richardson, chief of the combat programs and policy branch at Air Mobility Command, gave the performance a thumbs-up. “The system did exactly what it was designed for and delivered ammunition and water to ground troops here in Afghanistan,” he said. 
More on link



More on link


----------



## The Bread Guy (26 Oct 2006)

*‘Neo-Taliban’ movement is getting a boost in Afghanistan*
M Rama Rao, Asian Tribune, 26 Oct 06
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/2796

Notwithstanding Pakistan’s denials, evidence is mounting of its direct and indirect involvement in the rise of ‘neo-Taliban’ movement in Afghanistan. Islamists from North Africa and even Europe and far away Caribbean islands are ‘detected’ travelling to Madrassas in Quetta and Peshawar and using them as ‘staging’ bases to cross into Taliban-dominated areas of southern Afghanistan and beyond.  Militants belonging to Al Qaeda and its allies, who have honed their tactics in Iraq, also appear to be heading towards Afghanistan to ‘accelerate’ the Taliban offensive, opine anti-terrorism experts like Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France's lead counter-terrorism agency. They have detected ‘a new flow’ of militants heading to Afghanistan, according to a report in the Los Angles Times ....


*Foreign fighters return focus to Afghanistan*
Anti-terror officials say fewer jihadis in Iraq, more moving to aid Taliban
Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times, 26 Oct 06
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0610250060oct25,1,3100835.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

The conflict in Iraq is drawing fewer foreign fighters as Muslim extremists aspiring to battle the West turn their attention back to the symbolically important and increasingly violent turf of Afghanistan, European and U.S. anti-terror officials say.  The shift of jihadis to Afghanistan this year suggests that Al Qaeda and its allies, armed with new tactics honed in Iraq, are coming full circle five years after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban mullahs.  Until Sept. 11, 2001, Afghanistan was the land of jihad, hallowed ground where fighters from across the Muslim world helped vanquish the Soviet Union in the 1980s, fought alongside the Taliban in the 1990s and filled terror training camps overseen by Osama bin Laden. Loss of the Afghan sanctuary scattered the networks and sent bin Laden fleeing toward the Pakistani border region, where many anti-terror officials believe he remains ....



*NATO bombs kill scores of Afghan civilians: officials*
Reuters, 26 Oct 06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102600249.html

NATO warplanes killed at least 50 civilians, mostly women and children, in bombing in southern Afghanistan during a major Islamic holiday, local leaders said on Thursday.  The incident happened on Tuesday, the middle of the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month, in Panjwai, an area where the alliance said it had killed hundreds of insurgents in a two-week offensive last month.NATO says it killed 48 insurgents during heavy fighting in the area in Kandahar province on Tuesday and had received credible reports several civilians were killed in the operation ....


*NATO says Taleban using civilians as shields, as high toll feared*
Agence France Presse, 26 Oct 06
http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/October/subcontinent_October989.xml&section=subcontinent&col=

The NATO force in Afghanistan Thursday accused the Taleban of using civilians as human shields, as authorities scrambled to verify reports that at least 60 people were killed in military strikes.  The International Security Assistance Force said it could not say how many civilians were killed in a series of operations in the southern province of Kandahar late Tuesday, but was helping Afghan authorities to find out.  ISAF said late Wednesday that 48 Taleban were killed in three engagements, including air strikes, in Kandahar’s Panjwayi area late Tuesday ....



_*More on Canada in Kandahar:*_
http://milnewstbay.pbwiki.com/CANinKandahar



*Tories brand BBC's Taliban interview 'obscene propaganda'*
Daily Mail (UK), 26 Oct 06
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=412685&in_page_id=1770

The BBC has come under fire from the Conservative Party after broadcasting an interview with a spokesman for the Taliban. His face hidden by a veil, Dr Mahammed Anif told BBC2's Newsnight that the Taliban would throw foreign armies out of Afghanistan. He also dismissed British and American claims to be rebuilding the country as an "excuse" to invade. Other members of a Taliban group in Helmand province were also filmed, vowing to fight to the death against British troops who are seeking to bring security to the area. Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox denounced the interviews as "obscene" and accused the BBC of broadcasting propaganda on behalf of Britain's enemies ....


*Conservatives criticise BBC over Taleban interview*
Kuwait News Agency, 26 Oct 06
http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=915820

The BBC was criticised Thursday by the main opposition Conservative Party after it broadcast an interview with a Taleban spokesman.  Dr Mahammed Anif told the BBC TV current affairs programme "Newsnight" that the UK and US had wanted an "excuse" to invade Afghanistan, and foreign armies would be thrown out of the country.  Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox said the interview was "obscene" and accused the BBC of broadcasting propaganda on behalf of Britain's enemies.  The BBC said it was "entirely legitimate" to air the Taleban's views.  During the interview, other members of a Taleban group in Helmand province were also filmed vowing to fight to the death against the British troops who are seeking to bolster security in the area ....



*Photos of German troops in Afghanistan with skull spark scandal*
Agence France Presse, 26 Oct 06
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/061025/1/44apg.html

Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised tough action after German soldiers in Afghanistan were photographed playing and posing with a human skull.  "The chancellor has made it clear that she finds these pictures shocking and disgusting," government spokesman Thomas Steg said Wednesday, adding that Merkel wanted the troops responsible to face "strict measures".  Germany's top-selling newspaper Bild on Wednesday printed the photographs of four German soldiers from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force displaying a skull like scalp hunters ....

*German soldiers disgrace dead*
Bild, 24 Oct 06
http://www.bild.t-online.de/BTO/news/aktuell/2006/10/25/afghanistan-soldaten-totenkopf/afghanistan-totenkopf-soldaten.html
Google translation to English - http://tinyurl.com/yh2gq2

Only the bad suspicion: Did German soldiers abuse the German Turk and former Guantanamo prisoner Murat Kurnaz in Afghanistan? The defence committee of the federal daily must clarify this reproach from today on.  Now this new shock message for the German Federal Armed Forces guidance: German soldiers violated a dead one obviously in Afghanistan in widerwärtigster way!  The shock photos, which emerge now, show soldiers of the German Afghanistan contingent (Isaf) in Tarnanzügen on a patrol travel in the environment of the capital Kabul.  The photographs already developed according to statement of a German Federal Armed Forces member in the spring 2003. They bring the many thousand soldiers, who did their service since beginning of the employment in Afghanistan courageously and correctly, in bad discredit! ....

*Germany orders inquiry into Afghan skull photos *  
Madeline Chambers, Reuters (UK), 25 Oct 06
http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Germany_orders_inquiry_into_Afghan_skull_photos.html?siteSect=143&sid=7193999&cKey=1161811376000

Newspaper pictures purporting to show German soldiers desecrating a human skull in Afghanistan caused outrage in Germany on Wednesday and prompted the government to launch an immediate investigation.  A photograph of a smiling soldier in fatigues posing with a skull was splashed on the front page of top-selling German daily Bild under the headline: "Shock photos of German troops".  Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung told ZDF television six suspects had been identified in conjunction with the probe -- four of them former soldiers, and two who were still serving.  Chancellor Angela Merkel said the pictures were repulsive ....


----------



## GAP (26 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 26 October 2006*

Recruit centres see more action
Generals seek way to spread burden
Food crisis looms, CARE worker says
Oct. 26, 2006. 10:04 AM BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH OTTAWA BUREAU
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1161814212710&call_pageid=968332188774

OTTAWA—Young Canadians are flooding into military recruiting centres even as top commanders caution that more and more of these future soldiers can expect to see frontline service in Afghanistan, whether they want to or not.

"Kids are flocking to our recruiting centres across our country," Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of defence staff, said yesterday.

"Twice the number so far this year as during the same time last year," Hillier said. "We have connected with the Canadian population. We would like to do a little bit better with all minority communities with whom we are trying to establish a relationship, but we know that takes long-term," Hillier said.

Combat deaths in Kandahar have made this the deadliest year in decades for the military, but that doesn't seem to have deterred young people aspiring to a career in uniform.

But Hillier's comments, made to the Commons' foreign affairs committee, suggest that the forces' recruiting push, which includes gritty new TV ads showing troops in action, is paying dividends.

While Hillier didn't talk numbers yesterday, the influx of new recruits is expected to help ease the military's personnel crunch as it looks at ways of filling the ranks of its Afghanistan mission through to February 2009.
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War takes heavy toll on N.S.
Province loses seven in Afghanistan
Military service a long, proud tradition
Oct. 24, 2006. 05:57 AM CHRIS LAMBIE CANADIAN PRESS
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161640212602&call_pageid=1140433364397&col=1140433364286

HALIFAX—If blood is the price for stabilizing Afghanistan, then Nova Scotians have picked up a hefty chunk of the tab.

Seven of the 42 Canadian soldiers killed in the country since 2002 came from the Maritime province. Only Ontario, with more than 13 times the population, has seen a higher death toll.

Less than 3 per cent of Canada's population lives in Nova Scotia, but more than 16 per cent of the country's soldiers killed in Afghanistan came from this province.

Continue the morbid math exercise and you'll find Newfoundland and Labrador, which has lost four young men, has the highest per capita number of soldiers killed in the conflict, with Nova Scotia running a close second.
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CRITICISM OF GERMANY AND FRANCE
Avoiding the Violence in Afghanistan
By Joshua Gallu 
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,444666,00.html

Southern Afghanistan is in trouble. But what can NATO do about it? With commanders in the field in need of support, Germany prefers staying in the relatively secure northern part of the country. Criticism is growing louder. 

What to do about Afghanistan? On the one hand, the 37 countries taking part in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's mission in the country remain in the country trying to secure democracy and provide Afghanis with a future. On the other, fighting is on the rise -- as are tensions within the alliance. Some countries feel they are shouldering a disproportionate share of the war's risk and lethality.

It's not a difficult conclusion to arrive at. Countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and the US have faced a fierce and rejuvenated Taliban in Afghanistan's southern provinces, while other countries -- like Germany -- have avoided conflict by staying in the relatively stable northern provinces.

Those in the firing lines are becoming increasingly unhappy with this state of affairs. NATO countries holding the southern part of the country have recently stepped up diplomatic pressure on their allies reluctant to put themselves more in harms way than they already are.
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Reconstruction, Reform Key to Afghanistan’s Future, General Says
By Sgt. Sara Wood, USA American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1801

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2006 – NATO will not be defeated militarily in Afghanistan, but the key to long-term stability in that country rests on reconstruction and reform, NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe said here today. 
“Afghanistan’s long-term solution is not only a military problem; it’s not just a military problem,” Marine Gen. James L. Jones told reporters at the Foreign Press Center. “The focus has to be on the right amount of reconstruction at the right place at the right time.” 

NATO and the Afghan government specifically need to do better in counternarcotics efforts, judicial reform, training local police, and fighting government corruption, Jones said. It’s important for the people of Afghanistan to view the government as being tough on drugs and corruption, so they can have confidence in their leaders and believe they will change the country for the better, he said. 

NATO has kept its commitments in Afghanistan, and its International Security Assistance Force has proved its mettle in tough fighting against the Taliban in the south recently, Jones said. The successful execution of Operation Medusa proved once and for all that NATO forces have the capacity to stand and fight if challenged, he said. 

“I think the Taliban and other forces – criminal elements, narcotics traffickers and whoever else was involved – had a very strong answer to that particular question,” he said. 

Now that the military problem in Afghanistan is being handled, the next crucial step is making real progress in reconstruction, Jones said. Creating the conditions for prosperity will prevent the Taliban from taking hold and influencing the people, he said. 

“We find in Afghanistan that where you have a good governor, a good police chief, the presence of the Afghan National Army, and reconstruction, that generally the Taliban and the forces that are opposing the expansion of the Karzai government generally cannot sustain themselves, and this is obviously what we want to do throughout the country,” he said. 
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New Projects, Training Opportunity Mark Progress in Afghanistan
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1800

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2006 – Military officials in Afghanistan reported several new examples of ongoing progress: resumption of a road project in Paktika province, a new well for a school in Panjshir province, and the training of Afghan soldiers and police in the United States. 
Construction of the Naka Bazaar Cobblestone Road in Naika district has resumed after being halted in May due to security concerns, officials said. The project, which employs 60 local Afghans at an estimated cost of $199,000, will link villages in Paktika province and improve its economic viability. 

Taliban extremists dug up many of the cobblestones that had been laid, destroyed the contractor’s materials and equipment, and threatened his life this summer, said Maj. Matthew Hackathorn, a Combined Joint Task Force 76 spokesman. Construction resumed recently with the help of the Afghan National Army, Afghan National Police and International Security Assistance Force troops helping to secure the area, he said. 

In another sign of progress, more than 1,900 Afghan students at the Rohka district school now have access to fresh, clean water, thanks to provincial officials and their partnership with U.S. forces, officials said. Students previously drank water drawn from a nearby irrigation ditch. 

Local officials, residents and students joined the Panjshir Provincial Reconstruction Team during Oct. 21 dedication ceremonies. The U.S. Commander’s Emergency Response Program paid for the $25,000 project. During the dedication, children were treated to 500 kits of school supplies, including backpacks, pens, pencils, notepads, and for the top two students, bicycles. 
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NATO troops, Afghan police seize pot, opium
Updated Wed. Oct. 25 2006 11:09 PM ET Associated Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061025/AFGHAN_SIEZURES_061025?s_name=&no_ads=

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NATO-led troops and Afghan police seized over nine tons of marijuana from a truck in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said Wednesday.

Four people in the truck were detained, NATO said. No date was given for the seizure in Zabul province, on a road between the southern city of Kandahar and Kabul.

In the country's west, U.S. and Afghan troops recovered over 120 pounds of opium from a car in Farah province, another NATO statement said Tuesday.

The U.S. soldiers were supporting an Afghan army checkpoint when a car failed to stop, the statement said. An Afghan soldier noticed a suspicious bag where the spare tire was supposed to be and alerted the next checkpoint, where the car was searched and the driver and passenger detained.

Afghanistan grew 59 percent more opium this year, yielding a record crop of 6,100 tons, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crimes.

The agency said that is enough to make 610 tons of heroin, outstripping world demand by a third.

Some 2.9 million Afghans, or 12.6 percent of the population, are involved in opium cultivation. The U.N. predicted revenue from this year's harvest would top $3 billion.
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Aid program for Afghan widows to be restored: CP
Updated Mon. Oct. 23 2006 11:36 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061023/afghan_program_061023?s_name=&no_ads=

KANDAHAR -- Canada will continue to provide emergency food aid for widows in the capital of Kabul past a planned cut-off date of March 31, The Canadian Press has learned. 

"There will be a brand-new multi-year vocational training and food aid program," a senior official with the Canadian International Development Agency said Monday. 

"You don't just stop feeding," said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity. "You can't expect people to just find another food source and we know that." 

An official announcement was not included as part of International Co-operation Minister Josee Verner's two-day swing through Afghanistan, but is expected soon. 

Earlier this month, a long line of widows waited hours for Canadian-bought rations of flour, cooking oil, dried peas and medicine. The food is delivered about once a month to 7,300 eligible women in Kabul. 

CARE has delivered the basic staples on CIDA's behalf since 1996. The aid agency is expected to continue offering job and skills training, but food rations will likely be handled by others, said the source. 

Ottawa committed just over $2.5 million last year to extend the program for the 12 months ending next March 31. 
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Fighting kills scores in Afghanistan
By Terry Friel Reuters Wednesday, October 25, 2006; 1:17 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/25/AR2006102500330.html

KABUL (Reuters) - NATO troops have killed almost 50 Taliban guerrillas and several civilians in fighting in the Islamist group's southern heartland, witnesses and alliance officials said on Wednesday.

A NATO spokesman said 48 insurgents had been killed in three separate clashes, along with several civilians, on Tuesday in an area which NATO said had been cleared of hundreds of rebels during a two-week offensive last month.
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‘Neo-Taliban’ movement is getting a boost in Afghanistan
Thu, 2006-10-26 17:22  By M Rama Rao reporting from New Delhi
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/2796

New Delhi, 26 October (asiantribune.com): Notwithstanding Pakistan’s denials, evidence is mounting of its direct and indirect involvement in the rise of ‘neo-Taliban’ movement in Afghanistan. Islamists from North Africa and even Europe and far away Caribbean islands are ‘detected’ travelling to Madrassas in Quetta and Peshawar and using them as ‘staging’ bases to cross into Taliban-dominated areas of southern Afghanistan and beyond.

Militants belonging to Al Qaeda and its allies, who have honed their tactics in Iraq, also appear to be heading towards Afghanistan to ‘accelerate’ the Taliban offensive, opine anti-terrorism experts like Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, director of the DST, France's lead counter-terrorism agency. They have detected ‘a new flow’ of militants heading to Afghanistan, according to a report in the Los Angles Times. 

The expert view is that these militants see a ‘clearer battleground and a wealth of targets’ in Afghanistan these days five years after the Taliban was thrown out of the country in a war that signalled the beginning of a long global battle led by the United States against terrorism.
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We owe it to Afghanistan  
By KERRY DIOTTE October 26, 2006 
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Columnists/Diotte_Kerry/2006/10/26/2134072.html

Jack Layton and the federal NDP might have renewed a call this week to pull Canadian troops from Afghanistan, but a veteran war correspondent says that would be a foolish betrayal of a vital cause. 

Former NBC TV reporter and current documentary film-maker Arthur Kent, 52, feels such run-for-it opinions are ill-informed. The two-time Emmy award winner, who owns a film company in London, England, has spent nearly three decades reporting on Afghanistan. 

"This is not a territorial fishing dispute," he says. "This is something that demands participation for our own security ..." 

Kent is at the Edmonton Garrison tonight to screen his film Afghanistan: Peacemaking In Progress, before he addresses a Canadian Association of Journalists weekend symposium. 

Kent rose to fame during the Gulf War when he was dubbed the "Scud Stud." He began his career in Edmonton as Alberta correspondent for CBC's The National. 

He figures Canada's military effort in Afghanistan "is not a George Bush-Tony Blair war. We do not have an option." 

He believes Canada owes it to the people of Afghanistan to try to root out the oppressive Taliban, in part because "we did nothing to stop their rise" in the 1990s. 

The Taliban are brothers-in-arms with al-Qaida terrorists and find refuge in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Osama bin Laden is widely thought to be hiding out in Pakistan, says Kent. 

"During the 1990s civil war it was said the Taliban was 50,000 guys with rifles - now they're about 20,000." He admits some are "extremely good" fighters but many aren't and could be made to surrender. 

He returned to that nation and finished shooting his film this spring. "I wanted to see what my Afghan friends were feeling ... The majority despise the Taliban and want help. 

"The war has to be brought to a speedy conclusion. 

"You can't negotiate with the Taliban or Osama bin Laden. They kidnap, kill and behead people. You're talking about Grade-A ghouls. They're a nasty bunch." 
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NATO commander urges Turkey to take active mission in Afghanistan
The New Anatolian / Washington
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-16944.html

Supreme NATO Commander U.S. Gen. James Jones on Tuesday urged Turkish forces to take mission in operations outside of the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul.

Calling on allied countries, particularly Turkey, to remove national restrictions on their forces' operations in Afghanistan, Gen. Jones said such caveats adversely affect commanders' ability to fight Taliban insurgents.

Stating that the 26 NATO chiefs of defense will meet in Brussels next week to discuss ways to remove restrictions on each country's contribution to Afghanistan, Jones also told reporters in Washington that he had sent letters to each chief of defense with the restrictions that NATO would like to have removed.

"It's not enough to simply provide forces if these forces have restrictions on them that limit them from being effective," he said. "These national restrictions, or caveats, restrict the ability of the on-the-scene commander to have the maneuverability and the capabilities he needs."

Stating that there are some 102 national restrictions, 50 of which he judge to be operationally significant, Jones went on to complain that many of the caveats are related to very tight national rules of engagement, effectively leading to an inability to fight insurgents.

"Additional troop contributions by NATO nations would be welcomed, but that the lifting of caveats is more important," he added. "Removing caveats is like providing more troops. It's like a force multiplier."

Turkish strategy, command against expanded operation

Despite continued demands from NATO for further contributions from Turkish forces in Afghanistan, Turkey ruled out such an option and based its views on a new strategy.
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NZ soldiers come home from Afghanistan
26/10/2006 14:12:02
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=106319

It is hoped Afghanistan may have been left a better place because of them - but the tour of duty for 122 New Zealand soldiers is over.

The Army, Navy and Air Force personnel will return home to Ohakea Air Base next Monday after serving six months on the Provincial Reconstruction Team.

During their time in Bamyan province, the team destroyed tons of munitions and weapons, helped to construct five police stations and six bridges and built relationships with local security forces.

A fresh rotation of 108 personnel went to the region earlier this month to pick up where this deployment left off.
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NATO kills 38 militants in southern Afghanistan
AFP, KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN Thursday, Oct 26, 2006, Page 6 
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2006/10/26/2003333458/print

Advertising  NATO soldiers killed 38 Taliban rebels in strikes against militants returning to infiltrate an area of southern Afghanistan that has seen previous heavy clashes, the force said yesterday.
Afghan authorities in the Zhari and Panjwayi districts of southern Kandahar Province -- the birthplace of the fundamentalist Taliban movement -- confirmed there had been heavy bombardments late on Tuesday.

"In two separate engagements we killed 38 insurgents yesterday [Tuesday] through very careful targeting against specific groups of insurgents trying to infiltrate back into Zhari and Panjwayi," International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) spokesman Major Luke Knittig said. "We had eyes on them and we knew what they were up to and took action."

The area, which is about 35km west of Kandahar, was the focus of nearly two weeks of intense fighting last month as part of Operation Medusa, ISAF's largest anti-Taliban offensive.

NATO said afterwards that its soldiers and the Afghan troops involved in the operation had handed the Taliban their heaviest defeat since the hardliners were driven from power in late 2001.
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Ousted rulers masters of a wide area in Afghanistan  
Thursday October 26, 2006 By David Loyn
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10407621

HELMAND PROVINCE - Racing at high speed across the desert in the north of Helmand province, our convoy was kicking up a dust-storm that could be seen from space.

A couple of saloon cars and four trucks, with fighters dangling their legs over the side.

The Taleban were demonstrating their control over a wide region.

These are the same Taleban that Brigadier Ed Butler, the commander of British forces in the region, said were "practically defeated" in Helmand.

Instead, they are confident and well-armed, all with AK 47s, and many carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which they use with lethal effect against helicopters as well as armoured vehicles and supply convoys.

We shot past the burned-out remains of a Spartan armoured personnel carrier, destroyed on August 1 with the loss of three British lives.

The Taleban said that when British troops first came to northern Helmand in the northern summer, they would try to go out on patrol every day. By the time they pulled out, they hardly left their bases at all.
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I'm running away to Afghanistan...but don't tell mum   
This feisty S'porean teen sneaked off to Afghanistan last year and wrote a series of e-mails to her family and friends describing her adventures. Letter from Kabul, beginning today, is the first in a series, based on her mail. NG TZE YONG reports 
By Ng Tze Yong  October 26, 2006 
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,116258,00.html

A VISIT to Afghanistan does not usually figure in most teenage girls' to-do list.

Though she was just 17 then, she wanted to go so much that she lied to her mother, who wouldn't let her.

'I tried to persuade her for two months but there was just no way she was going to let me go to Afghanistan,' said Miss Natasha.

So in August last year, Miss Natasha told her mother, a 53-year-old divorcee, that she was going to volunteer in an orphanage in the Czech Republic.

Instead, she flew solo on a roundabout 48-hour flight to Kabul, the capital of war-torn Afghanistan, where she spent two weeks.

Miss Natasha was then in her first year of study for her A-level exams in the UK.

She spent two weeks in Kabul visiting Sunbol Ghulam Habib, a 10-year-old girl she sponsors through Jahan, a non-governmental organisation.

Often she was wearing borrowed men's clothes.

She said: 'In Afghanistan, a woman must wear loose clothing. But the only loose clothing I had were my pyjamas.'

She is now 18 and is a first-year law student at the University of Warwick.

Miss Natasha has a 16-year-old brother and 20-year-old sister studying in Singapore. Her mother works as a secretary.
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Army testing Afghanistan-bound soldiers for drugs
Updated Wed. Oct. 25 2006 11:09 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061025/afghanistan_drug_test_061025?s_name=&no_ads=

The military has started testing Canadian soldiers for illegal drugs before deploying them to Afghanistan, CTV News has confirmed. But one source said hundreds of troops have apparently failed the test. 

"We're told that 1,000 of them have had the test so far, and one source told us that about 300 of them have failed," CTV's Rosemary Thompson reported on Mike Duffy Live Wednesday. 

The government has refused to release the test results. But Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor said soldiers who tested positive for illegal drugs -- like marijuana, cocaine and heroin -- will be tested again. 

"If troops fail twice, they'll be sent to a drug education program," O'Connor told reporters. 
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## Colin Parkinson (26 Oct 2006)

Perfect Evil Part Two
http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/perfect-evil-part-two.htm

Half a decade ago, Steve Shaulis gave me a copy of the excellent book written by his Pakistani friend Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Steve had been working in Afghanistan for several years before the book was published, and had long maintained that we would suffer for ignoring that place. In his book Rashid, a Pakistani journalist with extensive ties in Afghanistan, Central Asia, and the west, clearly spelled out, long before the 9/11 attacks, the structure of the Taliban and their close association with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. The closing paragraph of his book proved prophetic:


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## The Bread Guy (26 Oct 2006)

*Nato forces kill 'up to 85' civilians in Afghan attack *  
Justin Huggler, The Independent (UK), 27 Oct 06
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1932719.ece

Nato forces in Afghanistan have killed scores of civilians in a single operation, bombing them in their own homes as they celebrated the end of Ramadan. Nato commanders were facing serious questions yesterday as the Afghan government said it had confirmed that at least 40 civilians were killed in Nato bombing raids in Panjwayi district, near Kandahar.  Nato said its own initial investigation found that only 12 "non-combatants" were killed, but it had no explanation for the discrepancy with the government's figures ....


*Dozens of Afghan villagers reported dead after NATO attack on Taliban * 
Associated Press, via International Herald Tribune, 26 Oct 06
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/26/news/afghan.php

Dozens of villagers were killed in a NATO military strike against suspected Taliban militants in the fighters' former southern Afghan stronghold, Afghan officials said Thursday. But NATO said a preliminary review found that only 12 civilians had been killed in the clashes.  The number of civilian deaths - estimated by Afghan officials at between 30 and 80, including many women and children - was among the highest in any foreign military action in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban and could turn locals against the counterinsurgency campaign.  Villagers fled the region by car and donkey, and hundreds of mourners attended a funeral for some 20 victims buried in a mass grave.  NATO said a preliminary review had found that 12 civilians had been killed in the clashes in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar Province on Tuesday, but the alliance could not say if they had died because of Taliban or NATO action.  Major Luke Knittig, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said as many as 70 militants may have been killed in three separate clashes. He said NATO had struck at militants using artillery fire and airstrikes and regretted any civilian casualties ....



*Afghan setback*
Telegraph (UK), 27 Oct 06
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/10/27/dl2702.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2006/10/27/ixopinion.html

Operations in Kandahar this summer led Nato to believe that it had broken the back of the Taliban in the province. There were claims of between 500 and 1,000 guerrillas having been killed, raising hopes that the way was open to winning over the local population through reconstruction. That success makes all the more galling the deaths of a shocking number of civilians in bombing raids during the night of Tuesday/Wednesday. They are a severe psychological blow to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan.  An alliance spokesman talked yesterday of using "precision strikes" against insurgents. But such accuracy is impossible when the enemy blends so easily into the civilian population. Mortars, artillery and aircraft are blunt instruments that inevitably cause collateral damage.  Such heavy reliance on them stems from lack of Isaf manpower. In September, Nato commanders requested up to 2,500 extra troops for southern Afghanistan. The response from the big alliance nations not already active there – France, Germany and Italy – has been underwhelming; they prefer continued deployment in less dangerous parts of the country ....



*Peacekeeper in Afghanistan Injured by Friendly Fire*
YLE Uutiset Online, 26 Oct 06
http://www.yle.fi/news/left/id46010.html

A Finnish peacekeeper in Afghanistan was injured by friendly fire early in October, the Defence Forces said on Thursday.  The man was struck by three bullets from Finnish assault rifles, two of which were stopped by his bullet-proof vest. He is recovering in a hospital in Finland and his situation is stable.  The incident occurred when Finnish soldiers were practicing night manoeuvres. The soldier, acting as a sentry, overheard one of the local languages being spoken in the dark and went to warn the other peacekeepers.  Before he could reach the other Finns, the enemy began shooting, and the Finnish side returned fire. The soldier was caught in crossfire which lasted around ten minutes. Afghan police were also involved in the shootout.  ....  Finnish peacekeepers serving in Afghanistan are critical of deficiencies in the equipment available to them in the operation. The peacekeepers say that, for example, Finland's Defence Forces have not supplied Finnish ISAF troops with utility vests. The Finnish soldiers in the peacekeeping force have borrowed vests from Swedish and Norwegian soldiers or purchased the equipment themselves ....



*Poland denies sending 2,000 troops to Afghanistan*
People's Daily Online (CHN), 27 Oct 06
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200610/27/eng20061027_315498.html

Polish Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Thursday that the report that Poland would send 2, 000 troops to Afghanistan was not true, the PAP news agency reported.  Sikorski made the remarks while he was speaking to the lower house of the parliament. Poland has reportedly pledged to send 1,000 troops to Afghanistan to bolster the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).  The pledge of troops came days after the commander of NATO's mission in Afghanistan, General James Jones, appealed to member states of the alliance to send more troops to the central Asian country to combat a revived insurgency in the south ....


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## GAP (27 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 27 October 2006*

Canadian speaks openly about serious injury after U.S. friendly-fire
'I had a dream I had died and been reincarnated'
Mike Blanchfield, The Ottawa Citizen Published: Friday, October 27, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=fb33f5ab-b1ff-4d70-89c6-a9c6733b8004&k=72757

His coma dreams were telling him he had died and been reborn.

Vivid scenarios flashed through the part of Cpl. Michael Spence's brain that had not been surgically removed as he lay unconsciousness in a medically induced state for 10 days following the Afghanistan battlefield tragedy that killed a fellow soldier and left several more wounded, none more seriously than the plain-spoken, blue-eyed 22-year-old rookie infantryman from Russell.

"I had a dream that I had died and been reincarnated ... as a baby ... Reborn. It was very vivid," Cpl. Spence recalled yesterday. "I thought I had baby's hands. I was kind of freaking out."

Later, Cpl. Spence would wake up for real in an Ottawa hospital room surrounded by his parents, Rick and Christina, and his girlfriend, Holly Steeves.

He looked Ms. Steeves in the eye -- hers was the first face he saw -- and through a haze of sedatives plainly asked if he was dead.

His father had to answer for her: "You're here. You're in Ottawa. We're all here. You didn't die."

With that, Cpl. Spence began what will be a long road to recovery, as part of the new generation of Canada's walking war wounded. It's an ordeal with which his family, his girlfriend and his country are just beginning to come to grips.

Cpl. Spence is one of 210 Canadian troops wounded in Afghanistan since 2002, but 190 of those occurred this year as fighting between a reborn Taliban insurgency and NATO troops reached a fever pitch.

For the most part, the Forces have stopped releasing specific details about its wounded in Afghanistan. Many soldiers have opted to keep details of their injuries to themselves and shunned media attention.

During an interview with the Citizen yesterday, Cpl. Spence spoke in detail for the first time about his injuries, which came in one of the most controversial incidents of the Afghanistan war.

Cpl. Spence was the most seriously injured of at least six Canadians wounded in a friendly-fire incident that claimed the life of former Olympic athlete Pte. Mark Anthony Graham.

The group was strafed by an American A-10 Warthog bomber in the early morning darkness on Sept. 4.

Asked about the pilot's actions that day, Cpl. Spence said: "He did what his job trained him to do. ... It was an accident. Accidents happen. Accidents happen in any workplace. I'm not bitter about anything."

Cpl. Spence could be bitter if he wanted to. No one expected him to walk or speak, or even read, because of the massive head injuries he sustained. But his recovery has exceeded all expectations.
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Bomb kills 14 Afghans as funerals continue
Updated Fri. Oct. 27 2006 7:57 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061027/afghan_bomb_061027/20061027?hub=TopStories

At least 14 villagers were killed in southern Afghanistan after a roadside explosion tore through a vehicle traveling to a provincial capital for holiday celebrations, officials said. 

The blast happened near a village north of Tirin Kot, the capital of Urzugan province. 

Andre Salloum, a spokesperson for NATO's International Security Assistance Force said the cause was an anti-tank mine. But it wasn't immediately clear if it was an old mine or one that was newly planted. 

The victims, from the village of Safid Shar, were traveling in a pickup truck or small bus to Tirin Kot to celebrate the end of Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holiday. 

Meanwhile, funerals continued in the neighbouring southern city of Kandahar for some of the several dozen civilians who Afghan officials say died during a NATO military operation against the Taliban in the Panjwaii district on Tuesday. 

While initial NATO reports found that 12 civilians were killed during three separate incidents, Afghan officials put that number between 30 and 80, including many women and children. 

Taliban threats 

The deaths have prompted Taliban's military commander, Mullah Dadullah, to accuse NATO forces of genocide, and he's vowing retribution in the form of suicide attacks. 

"Military commanders here fully expected this out of the Taliban," said CTV's Paul Workman in Kandahar on Friday. The Taliban "know that this issue of civilian deaths is very, very sensitive and they know how to take advantage of it." 

NATO is taking the threats of suicide attacks seriously, said Workman. 
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Gunmen kill member of provincial council in N. Afghanistan  
October 26, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/26/eng20061026_315395.html

Unknown gunmen shot dead a member of the provincial council of Faryab province in northern Afghanistan, the provincial governor Abdul Latif Ibrahimi said Thursday. 

"Two unidentified gunmen on a motorbike opened fire on Syed Noor Mohammad Agha, a member of Faryab's provincial council, killing him and injuring his guard on Wednesday," Ibrahimi told Xinhua. 

The incident occurred in Koh-e-Sayad village of Shirin Tagab district when Agha was coming out from a meeting, the governor added. 

He did not say who were behind the incident. 

It is the second deadly attack on a provincial council member over the past 10 days. 

Mohammad Yunis Hussaini, a member of the provincial council in the southern Kandahar province, was killed on Oct. 15 by militants. 

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgence, Afghanistan has plunged into the worst spate of violence this year after the Taliban regime was toppled down five years ago. 

Over 2,500 people, mostly Taliban militants, have been killed in this volatile country this year. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Poland's defense minister proposes one-year Afghanistan mission  
October 26, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/26/eng20061026_315353.html

Poland's Defense Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said on Wednesday that he would recommend to the president and the Council of Ministers that the mission of Polish troops in Afghanistan last only 12 months, the PAP news agency reported. 

At the start of 2007, Poland plans to increase its involvement in Afghanistan to 150 soldiers for Enduring Freedom Operation and to some 1, 000 for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 

Poland has already sent 190 soldiers and civilian military employees to Afghanistan. 

"Our commitment is for one year. There are other countries in NATO and we hope they will take our place," the minister told a press conference. 

"This is not our national operation but an operation of our allies," he said, adding that the decision on the matter will be made by the president. 

Sikorski's remarks came after NATO commanders in Afghanistan called on member states to pledge more troops contribution to shore up ISAF's presence in southern Afghanistan, due to resurging Taliban-linked violence there this year. 

The violence has plunged Afghanistan into the worst spate of bloodshed since the Taliban regime was toppled down nearly five years ago. 

The pledge of forces has aroused controversy in Poland, and the issue was put on the agenda of the Sejm, or the lower house of parliament, which started its sitting on Wednesday. 

Source: Xinhua
End

U.S. Official Addresses Rift With Allies
By Mark Landler 
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,444827,00.html

The official said the U.S. had done a poor job of explaining the legal principles behind its effort to prevent terrorism, but also faulted Europe for a lack of cooperation. 

BERLIN, Oct. 25 - Seeking to heal one of the deepest rifts between the United States and its European allies, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said here on Wednesday that the Bush administration had done a poor job of explaining its legal principles in its effort to prevent terrorism.

But he also faulted European countries, which have criticized the American military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He said they were reluctant to take back their own citizens when released and had been insufficiently helpful in negotiating with other countries for the safe return of prisoners facing mistreatment in their own lands.

"We have repeatedly asked our European allies to join in these efforts," Mr. Gonzales said in a speech to a polite, skeptical invited audience. "But despite demands that Guantánamo be closed, the United States has received little help from our European allies regarding the fate of these detainees
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AFGHANISTAN: ITALIAN MUSLIMS TO APPEAL ON ARAB TV FOR JOURNALIST'S RELEASE
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.353597924&par=

Ancono, 26 Oct. (AKI) - Italy's largest Muslim group, the Union of Italian Islamic Communities (UCOII), is planning to appeal for the release of the Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello who was kidnapped in Afghanistan, on the Arabic language satellite television channels, Al Jazeera and the US government-funded Al Hurra. UCOII also expressed its solidariety with the family of Torsello, a Christian who converted to Islam. 

Torsello was kidnapped between October 12 and 14 while he was travelling from Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile Helmand province to neighbouring Kandahar - the two parts of the country where fighting between insurgents and NATO forces is fiercest.

"UCOII would like to express its solidarity and closeness to the family members of the reporter Gabriele Torsello and to the entire country," the group said in a statement released on Thursday. 

"Honest journalists and voluntary workers in high risk areas, people who put their lives in danger to do good, merit that we all stand up for them. We firmly call for the release of the reporter Gabriele Torsello, without any pre-conditions," said the statement. 

UCOII also announced a series of initiatives to secure Torsello's release
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6 Germans under investigation as Afghans protest skull photos scandal   
The Associated Press Published: October 26, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/26/europe/EU_GEN_Germany_Afghan_Soldiers.php

BERLIN Six suspects were under investigation in a scandal over pictures of German soldiers posing with a skull in Afghanistan, Germany's defense minister said Thursday, with the Afghan government saying it was "deeply saddened" over the macabre photos.

Informing parliament about the probe, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung repeated his vow that such behavior had "no place" in Germany's military and that training for foreign deployments would be reviewed.

"Anyone who behaves like this has no place in the army," the minister told the Bundestag lower house of parliament. "We will enforce all consequences, both criminal and disciplinary."

Jung said he was relieved that investigators had been able within only 24 hours to identify six suspects. Of the six, four are no longer in the military, he said.

He said he had instructed the army's inspector general, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, to review training procedures. But he warned against a "wholesale judgment" of the German soldiers deployed in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Sudan, Djibouti, Congo and Lebanon.

The Bild newspaper, which first published the photographs Wednesday, ran more on Thursday, again blacking out the faces of the soldiers. It did not say where it obtained the photos, which it dated to early 2003.

Meanwhile, RTL television on Thursday showed two more similar images which it said dated from March 2004.

Schneiderhan said the military was still looking into isolated cases but would also investigate whether officers had known about the pictures and turned a blind eye.

"It is individuals who have been led astray and haven't understood what they are doing," Schneiderhan told RTL.
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Nato troops kill 48 in clashes with Afghanistan militants
Thu 26 Oct 2006
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1586312006

NATO troops have killed 48 suspected militants in three separate battles in southern Afghanistan. 

Meanwhile, Afghan police and Western troops seized more than ten tonnes of marijuana from a truck. 

At least four civilians were wounded in the clashes in Kandahar's Zhari and Panjwayi districts on Tuesday, the alliance said, adding that they were receiving treatment at military medical facilities. 

The clashes had targeted militants who were attacking Nato's development efforts in the area. 

Nato-led troops used mortar, artillery and air support in the clashes with large groups of insurgents. 

The troops positively identified insurgents, killing an estimated 48, Nato confirmed. "We deeply regret any civilian casualties caused," a Nato statement read. 

Nato-led troops and Afghan police, meanwhile, seized more than 10.3 tonnes of marijuana from a truck in southern Afghanistan. 

The truck was stopped near Qalat in Zabul province on a road that links the southern city of Kandahar to Kabul. 

In the country's west, US and Afghan troops recovered more than 55 kilos of opium from a car in Farah province, another Nato statement said.
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End commitment in Afghanistan
Oct. 27, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161899442319&call_pageid=970599119419

Recruiting centres seeing more action

The Stephen Harper government is clearly cutting corners to fulfill its misguided and irresponsible commitment to provide Canadian soldiers to fight a war in Afghanistan until 2009.

We are now told the physical fitness standards for new recruits will be reduced, that we don't have enough soldiers to do the job, that sailors and air force personnel will be asked to pitch in, that defence personnel who work at desks may be handed rifles and that we are short on up-to-date equipment.

Why are we behaving so recklessly with the lives of our young men and women? Our commitment should end in January 2007.

Linda Silver Dranoff, Toronto
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We need a Plan Afghanistan
BY ROBERT WEINER www.weinerpublic.com AND RICHARD BANGS
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/15859625.htm

Here's an issue that needs strong focus as the election approaches: Afghanistan has experienced record highs for opium crops and now supplies 92 percent of the world's heroin-producing opium according to the United Nations. Afghanistan has increased its opium production 60 percent in the last year -- under our watch -- after the White House promised progress and a decrease.

Protecting crops

According to an indictment of Afghanistan's Bashir Noorzai, after his capture on April 23, 2005, in New York City, ''The Noorzai organization provided demolitions, weaponry and manpower to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In exchange for its support, the Taliban provided the Noorzai organization with protection for its opium crops.'' The indictment cites the group's manufacture and distribution of more than 500 kilograms of heroin processed from opium grown in Afghanistan.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy 2006 National Strategy points out that Afghanistan's ``illegal-drug economy contributes to an environment of corruption and instability that can foster insurgent and terrorist organizations that threaten the democratically elected Afghan Government.''
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Women under attack in Iraq, Afghanistan
Oct. 27, 2006, 5:08AM By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer 
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4291804.html

UNITED NATIONS — Women are facing increasing violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, especially when they speak out publicly to defend women's rights, a senior U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council.

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women, called on for fresh efforts to ensure the safety of women in countries emerging from conflicts, to provide them with jobs, and ensure that they receive justice, including compensation for rape.

"What UNIFEM is seeing on the ground _ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia _ is that public space for women in these situations is shrinking," Heyzer said Thursday. "Women are becoming assassination targets when they dare defend women's rights in public decision-making."

Heyzer spoke at a daylong open council meeting on implementation of a 2000 resolution that called for women to be included in decision-making positions at every level of striking and building on peace deals. It also called for the prosecution of crimes against women and increased protection of women and girls during war.
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Roadside blast kills 14 people in southern Afghanistan   
The Associated Press Published: October 27, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/27/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Violence.php

KABUL, Afghanistan A roadside blast Friday ripped through a vehicle in southern Afghanistan, killing 14 people as they traveled to a provincial capital for holiday celebrations, an official said.

The explosion, which also wounded three people, went off on a road leading to a small village just north of Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, said Abdul Qayum Qayumi, the governor's spokesman.

It wasn't clear if the explosion was from an old mine left over from past conflicts or a newly planted roadside bomb, Qayumi said.
End

Is NATO Losing the Real Battle in Afghanistan?
This week's deadly civilian bombing has further eroded the support of locals, who want to see less guns and more butter from the international force
By RACHEL MORARJEE/KABUL 
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1551391,00.html

Posted Thursday, Oct. 26, 2006
In the vineyards and poppy fields of southern Afghanistan it is hard to know who the enemy is. In their black turbans, Taliban fighters can vanish like ghosts into the local population, leaving NATO soldiers shooting into thin air, or worse still at the wrong targets — which is what happened this week as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan came to a close. 

Afghan officials said dozens of civilians were killed late Tuesday when NATO warplanes bombarded a village in the district of Panjwai just 20 kilometers outside the largest city in southern Afghanistan, the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Panjwai district has been the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the Afghan south this summer, with NATO killing at least 500 suspected insurgents in the two-week-long Operation Medusa, which concluded last month. 

Control of Panjwai, which lies so close to the political heart of the Afghan south, is vital, and it seems NATO's hold on the district is slipping. Lieutenant General David Richards called Operation Medusa, a "significant success," but weeks later the Taliban have come back with a vengeance, staging large-scale attacks on NATO bases in the area and scotching NATO claims that they had driven the Taliban out of Panjwai. 

Taliban fighters launched a series of bloody attacks on NATO troops late on Tuesday night, the second day of the Eid al Fitr holiday, and NATO struck back, bombing houses where Taliban fighters had taken refuge. Eyewitnesses in the village of Zangwat said that 25 houses had been razed to the ground, and their inhabitants killed and injured as Taliban fighters took shelter behind their walls, using the local population as human shields. Niaz Mohammad Saradi, district governor of Panjwai district, said 60 people were killed, while other officials put the death toll as high as 85. NATO says it has confirmed 12 civilian casualties. Whatever the final number, the mounting bloodshed among old men, women and children in southern Afghanistan is whittling away support for the NATO mission. 
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NATO secretary-general visits Bush, to talk about Russia, Afghanistan, summit in Latvia   
The Associated Press Published: October 27, 2006
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/27/america/NA_GEN_US_NATO.php

WASHINGTON NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, fresh from a visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, is in Washington for talks about matters including the NATO chief's wish for closer relations between the alliance and Russia.

President George W. Bush and de Hoop Scheffer also are likely to discuss on Friday the alliance's stepped-up role in fighting the Taliban militia in southern Afghanistan and the 26-nation organization's summit next month in Latvia.

De Hoop Scheffer said he wanted to deepen the relationship between Moscow and NATO because of Russia's importance to solving many conflicts. "Russia's active participation for the solution of many conflicts is essential," de Hoop Scheffer told Putin.

Russia signed a partnership agreement with NATO in 2002, outlining cooperation in counterterror, nonproliferation, peacekeeping and other fields. At the same time, Putin's government has continued to make public his opposition to the alliance's eastward expansion.

That expansion has included the absorption of countries that were part of the former Soviet Union — the Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — and former members of NATO's Cold War nemesis, the Warsaw Pact — Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

De Hoop Scheffer and Bush are expected to review the progress of the alliance's mission in Afghanistan. Some 32,000 NATO-led troops are serving in the most dangerous areas of the insurgency-wracked deeply conservative Muslim nation.
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More revelations of abuse by German troops in Afghanistan (Roundup)
Oct 26, 2006
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/southasia/article_1214946.php/More_revelations_of_abuse_by_German_troops_in_Afghanistan__Roundup_

Berlin/Kabul - A scandal surrounding German soldiers in Afghanistan threatened to widen Thursday after a television station said it would show more photos of troops posing with a human skull. 


Germany's RTL television network said the digital images showed a German soldier kissing a skull balanced on his left biceps and another soldier posing with a skull on the hood of a Jeep used by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). 

RTL planned to show the pictures in its main evening news broadcast, a day after the mass circulation Bild newspaper published similar images, triggering a wave of condemnation in Germany and Afghanistan. 

'People who behave in such a manner don't belong in the armed forces,' Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung told parliament Thursday during a debate on new security guidelines. 

Jung said the army had identified six soldiers shown in macabre photographs of the incident that appeared in Bild. 'Four of them are no longer in the armed forces, and the two others will be firmly dealt with,' the minister said. 

The pictures showed men dressed in German army combat fatigues playing with the skull on military vehicles. One of the photos showed a soldier exposing his penis while holding the skull in his right hand. 

RTL said its photographs, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the defence ministry, were taken in March 2004, about a year after those that appeared in Bild. 

German opposition Greens politician Hans-Christian Stroebele said he had been told by at least half-a-dozen soldiers that there were hundreds of such photos in existence. 
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Layton Blames Government Policy for Deaths in Afghanistan  
Josh Pringle  Thursday, October 26, 2006 
http://www.cfra.com/headlines/index.asp?cat=2&nid=43991

NDP Leader Jack Layton says this marks the deadliest week for civilians in Afghanistan since international forces invaded the country five years ago. 

At least 60 civilians were killed during NATO operations in a volatile area of southern Afghanistan this week. 

Layton is blaming federal government policy in Afghanistan for a rise in civilian deaths in the south Asian country. 

Layton adds it's no wonder civilians are being killed, with Canada spending one dollar on humanitarian aid for every nine dollars spent on military operations. 
End

Japan extends Afghanistan naval support mission
Thu Oct 26, 2006 
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-10-27T020235Z_01_T201121_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-JAPAN-AFGHANISTAN.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C2_worldNews-6

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan approved on Friday a law extending for another year a naval mission in the Indian Ocean that provides rear-guard support for U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan.

The law was approved by the upper house of Parliament by a majority vote. It passed the more powerful lower house last week.

The law, which enabled Japan to send its navy to the Indian Ocean mainly to help refuel ships, first came into effect in November 2001 in the face of widespread opposition. It was the first dispatch of Japanese forces to a war situation since World War Two.

The legislation also set the stage for a separate, more controversial law allowing the deployment of Japanese troops to Iraq on a reconstruction mission that ended in July.

Shinzo Abe, who became prime minister a month ago, has promised to tighten ties with the United States, a key security ally, and work toward rewriting Japan's pacifist constitution.
End

Karzai calls for probe into killing of civilians
Afghan officials say dozens died in NATO-led strikes on Taliban targets
Oct. 27, 2006. 01:00 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161899442924&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan—President Hamid Karzai has appointed a team of tribal elders and community leaders to investigate the deaths of scores of civilians during NATO air strikes in a volatile area of southern Afghanistan, the Afghan government said yesterday. 

The eight-member team from various districts of Kandahar province is to investigate reports of civilian deaths — there were as many as 85 victims, many of them women and children celebrating the Eid festival at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, according to local reports — and to recommend ways to prevent civilian casualties in the future, the president's office said. 

Asked about the civilian deaths, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he was not yet aware of the details, but "my understanding is that Canadian Forces weren't involved in the particular incident," The Star's Les Whittington reports.
More on link


----------



## The Bread Guy (28 Oct 2006)

*Governor General announces the first-ever awarding of Military Valour Decorations*
http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4905

October 27, 2006

OTTAWA—Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, announced today the awarding of the first four Military Valour Decorations to members of the Canadian Forces who have displayed gallantry and devotion to duty in combat. 

The recipients will be invited to receive their decoration from the Governor General at a presentation ceremony to be held at a later date. 

Military Valour Decorations are national honours awarded to recognize acts of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. They consist of the Victoria Cross, the Star of Military Valour and the Medal of Military Valour. This marks the first time that these decorations, which were created in 1993, have been awarded.

Note that the rank used in this document reflects the substantive rank held by the member at the time of the incident. 

Name/current posting, home town

Star of Military Valour
Sergeant Patrick Tower, S.M.V, C.D., Edmonton, Alta., and Victoria, B.C.

Medal of Military Valour 
Sergeant Michael Thomas Victor Denine, M.M.V., C.D., Edmonton, Alta. 
Master Corporal Collin Ryan Fitzgerald, M.M.V., Shilo, Man., and Morrisburg, Ont.
Private Jason Lamont, M.M.V., Edmonton, Alta., and Greenwood, N.S.

The citations for the recipients (Annex A), as well as additional information on the Military Valour Decorations (Annex B) are attached.

-30-

(....)


*Governor General announces 24 Mentions in Dispatches and 27 Meritorious Service Decorations*
http://www.gg.ca/media/doc.asp?lang=e&DocID=4904

Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General and Commander-in-Chief of Canada, announced today the awarding of 24 Mentions in Dispatches and 27 Meritorious Service Decorations (military division) to individuals whose specific achievements have brought honour to the Canadian Forces and to Canada.  

The recipients will be invited to receive their decoration or insignia at presentation ceremonies to be held at a later date. The citations for these awards will be published at a later date.

Note that the rank used in this document reflects the substantive rank held by the member at the time of the incident ....


*Statement by the Chief of the Defence Staff on the First-Ever Awarding of Military Valour Decorations*
http://www.forces.gc.ca/site/newsroom/view_news_e.asp?id=2129

NR-06.079 - October 27, 2006

OTTAWA - General Rick Hillier, the Chief of the Defence Staff, issued the following statement today on the first-ever awarding of Military Valour Decorations to four Canadian soldiers.

"Today is a great, proud and historic day for the Canadian Forces and for Canada. Her Excellency the Governor General-the Commander-in-Chief of Canada-announced earlier today that four Canadian soldiers have been honoured with Military Valour Decorations for heroic and selfless acts in Afghanistan in recent months. 

These are among the very highest honours we have to offer for those who show courage in the presence of the enemy. More than that, this is also a first - today is the very first time these awards have been given-the first time the high standard has been met-since they were created some 14 years ago. 

The four honoured soldiers are: 

Sergeant Patrick Tower, of Victoria, British Columbia - The Star of Military Valour;
and the Medal of Military Valour, to 
Sergeant Michael Thomas Victor Denine, of Edmonton, Alberta. 
Master Corporal Collin Ryan Fitzgerald, of Morrisburg, Ontario; and 
Private Jason Lamont, of Greenwood, Nova Scotia. 
You need only to read the citations for these soldiers to understand the meaning of true heroism: running across open terrain under heavy enemy fire to give aid to wounded and stranded comrades; clearing burning vehicles from a roadway under fire to allow others to get to safety; taking exceptional and resourceful measures under the worst possible pressure to suppress enemy fire and save the lives of fellow soldiers. 

These actions reinforce my personal belief that the men and women of the Canadian Forces are among the best, brightest and bravest this country has to offer. Today all their comrades-in-arms in our military offer their heartfelt congratulations to these exceptional soldiers."

-30-


*Prime Minister Harper and Minister O'Connor pay tribute to Canadian soldiers*
http://www.conservative.ca/EN/1091/57415

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor today paid tribute to the four Canadian soldiers who were today named by Her Excellency the Governor General as the first-ever recipients of the Military Valour Decoration for their heroic actions in Afghanistan between May and August 2006.

Created in 1993 but never before awarded, the Military Valour Decoration expressly recognizes valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. The soldiers named today are:  Sergeant Michael Thomas Victor Denine, of Edmonton, Alberta; Master Corporal Collin Ryan Fitzgerald, of Morrisburg, Ontario; Private Jason Lamont, of Greenwood, Nova Scotia; and Sergeant Patrick Tower, of Victoria, British Columbia.

"I know all Canadians will wish to join us in offering congratulations to the four Canadian soldiers honoured with Military Valour Decorations today,” said the Prime Minister.  "These awards are among the very highest recognition Canada has to offer our soldiers for bravery in the midst of armed conflict. All are being honoured for truly heroic actions, under enemy fire.”

"I offer my highest praise to these true Canadian heroes, who represent the very best of our Canadian Forces and of Canada.  They stand for the devotion to duty and steadfastness of all the men and women who serve this country, at home and abroad,” added Minister O’Connor.

Sergeant Denine, Master Corporal Fitzgerald, Private Lamont and Sergeant Tower will be presented with their decoration by Her Excellency the Governor General at a ceremony to be held at a later date.



*Four Canadian soldiers to be honoured with medals for bravery in Afghanistan *  
Bill Graveland, Canadian Press, 27 Oct 06
http://www.cp.org/premium/ONLINE/member/elxn_en/061027/p102725A.html

Four Canadian soldiers who risked their lives in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan will be the first to receive new medals for "gallantry and devotion to duty in combat."  Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on Friday announced the national honours awarded to recognize acts of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. They consist of the Star of Military Valour and the Medal of Military Valour. It is the first time the decorations created in 1993 have been awarded. The actual medals themselves will be presented to the four soldiers at a ceremony at a later date.  "I'm very proud to introduce to you four Canadian heroes behind me," said Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, at an event Friday evening in Calgary where the four men received ribbons to mark the announcement ....


*War heroes honoured*
Four soldiers first to receive bravery medals since their creation
Nadia Moharib, Calgary Sun, 28 Oct 06
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/National/2006/10/28/2155202-sun.html

Four Canadian soldiers recognized last night for selfless acts of bravery reluctantly accepted the honour of being singled out for their heroics in Afghanistan. Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff, presented the recipients ribbons to mark the announcement at the 2006 Calgary Leadership Dinner. The actual medals, announced earlier by Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean to recognize acts of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy, will be pinned on later.  Edmonton-based Sgt. Patrick Tower earned the Star of Military Valour, second only to the Victoria Cross in importance ....


*Morrisburg soldier to receive valour decoration*
Ottawa Citizen, 27 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=01870f73-4c7f-487b-8eac-773b9c11dd5f&k=22488

A Morrisburg soldier who risked his life in Afghanistan is among the first group of Canadians to be been honoured with one of Canada's first Military Valour Deorations for clearing an escape route from enemy territory in Afghanistan.  Master Cpl. Collin Ryan Fitzgerald was one of four soldiers named today by Rideau Hall, the first to receive such decorations since they were created in 1993. He will receive the Medal of Military Valour at a later ceremony with Governor-General Michaëlle Jean.  The medal is awarded for "an act of valour or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy."  On May 24, 2006, Master Cpl. Fitzgerald faced tremendous fire during an enemy ambush while he took the wheel of a burning platoon vehicle and steered it off a roadway. The vehicle had threatened to trap other soldiers inside enemy territory ....


*Military announces first recipients of 'new' valour honours*
CBC Online, 27 Oct 06
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/27/military-valour.html

Four Canadian soldiers who risked their lives in Afghanistan have become the first to receive medals for "gallantry and devotion to duty in combat."  Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean announced the national honours, which are awarded to recognize acts of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy, on Friday.  The Star of Military Valour and the Medal of Military Valour were created in 1993, but this is the first time the decorations have been awarded. The actual medals themselves will be presented to the four soldiers at a ceremony at a later date ....


*Combat medals recognize valour of 4 Canadians*
CTV.ca, 28 Oct 06
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061027/combat_medals_061027/20061027?hub=Canada

Four Canadian soldiers who risked their lives in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan will be the first to receive new medals for "gallantry and devotion to duty in combat."  Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on Friday announced the national honours awarded to recognize acts of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy. They consist of the Victoria Cross, the Star of Military Valour and the Medal of Military Valour. It is the first time the decorations created in 1993 have been awarded.  The Star of Military Valour is going to Sgt. Patrick Tower, who is based in Edmonton and is originally from Victoria, B.C. ....


----------



## GAP (28 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 28 October 2006*

Canadians support combat for a 'just cause'
Sat Oct 28 2006 By Chris Lackner
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/world/story/3751714p-4337371c.html 

OTTAWA -- A majority of Canadians support military participation in "conventional combat missions," such as the Afghan counter-insurgency, as long as they're convinced the cause is just and progress is being made, according to a new poll conducted for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute. 
The survey revealed that 55 per cent of Canadians are willing to send troops into danger -- even if it leads to deaths and injuries -- as long as they believe in the military's goals. 

"Some people might be surprised to see the level of Canadian commitment to getting on the playing field and not just sitting on the grandstands when it comes to military combat missions," said Greg Lyle, managing director at Innovative Research Group Inc., which carried out the survey. 

Only 19 per cent of respondents said they've always been firmly opposed to combat missions, while 23 per cent said they'd be willing to send troops, but that casualties would affect their level of support. 

"This isn't a blank cheque for the government to take troops wherever they want," Lyle said. "But if Canadians are convinced the cause is right and we're making a difference, they are prepared to send soldiers into harm's way -- even if there is no direct Canadian interest at stake and no Canadian lives at risk." 

But the poll also showed Canadians are increasingly uneasy with the military's current role in Afghanistan.    
While 54 per cent support the troops presence, opposition to the mission has risen to 42 per cent from 36 since a similar poll was conducted in June.Dawn Black, defence critic for the New Democratic Party, said the poll demonstrates that the public is increasingly uncomfortable with the mission because it lacks focus and doesn't appear to be offering tangible benefits to Afghan civilians. 
More on link

Al-Qaeda warns Canada
Quit Afghan mission or endure attack like 9/11, threat says  
Stewart Bell, National Post Saturday, October 28, 2006 
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=e9f20f44-ec19-470c-9ac3-6c79218d4d91

OTTAWA - An al-Qaeda strategist has warned Canada to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan or face terrorist attacks similar to 9/11, Madrid and the London transit bombings.

The threat, attributed to a member of the al-Qaeda information and strategy committee, condemns Prime Minister Stephen Harper for refusing to pull out of Afghanistan.

It also refers to Canada's "fanatic adherence to Christianity" as well as its purported attempts to "damage the Muslims" and its support for the "Christian Crusade" against al-Qaeda.

"Despite the strong, increasing opposition to spread its forces in the fire of South Afghanistan, it seems that they will not learn the lesson easily," Hossam Abdul Raouf writes.

"They will either be forced to withdraw their forces or face an operation similar to New York, Madrid, London and their sisters, with the help of Allah."

The document, written in July, was obtained and translated by the SITE Institute, a U.S. non-profit group that monitors terrorist Web sites for clients, many of them in government.

It is the second reference in recent weeks to al-Qaeda singling out Canada because of its role in Afghanistan.

Last month, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, referred to Canadian troops in Kandahar as "second-rate Crusaders."

The increasing focus on Canada in jihadist propaganda follows last June's arrest of 17 terrorist suspects in Toronto and comes as Canada is debating its role in NATO-led combat operations in southern Afghanistan.

The text of the threat suggests that al-Qaeda is aware of divisions within Canada over the mission, pointing to public opinion polls and opposition within Parliament.

It is also consistent with analysis by Canadian intelligence officials who report that al-Qaeda views Canada as a "priority target" because of the country's high-profile role in Afghanistan and its close relationship with the United States in the war on terrorism.

"Despite the differences between the Canadian foreign policy and its U.S. counterpart, and despite the hatred the Canadian people harbour towards the Americans -- their bad neighbours who cannot hold back their damage from them -- they agree with them regarding leading the Christian Crusade in Afghanistan and confronting al-Qaeda there," it says.

"They use the same excuses that are used by the British and others. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: 'The Canadians learned from the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. that a terrorist threat can enter into our private borders. The Afghani government wants us there, and we are fighting a truly abominable enemy. This is in our national interest. I believe that what we are doing is extraordinary. We will take a commanding role in the province of Kandahar.' "

The suspected "homegrown" Canadian extremists arrested by the RCMP in Toronto on June 2 were allegedly motivated partly by their anger over Afghanistan. Authorities claim they intended to take hostages on Parliament Hill and kill the Prime Minister unless he withdrew troops from Afghanistan and released all Muslims from Canadian prisons.
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Russian vets of Afghan war pity Canada
Red Army finally abandoned fight, 'it is impossible to win there' 
Sat Oct 28 2006 By Matthew Fisher
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/world/story/3751713p-4337348c.html 

MOSCOW -- Senior Sgt. Sergei Kirjushin spent the most intense 18 months of his life in Afghanistan in the late 1980s with an elite Red Army airborne regiment that sometimes fought Islamic holy warriors at such close quarters he could "feel their breath." 
Like a surprisingly large number of the former Soviet Union's 620,000 Afghan war vets, the burly ex-paratrooper is aware the Canadian army is now fighting some of the very same mujahideen and their progeny for control of the same unforgiving, arid landscape. 

Kirjushin's convinced nothing good will come of Canada's war in Afghanistan. 

"It is really impossible to win there. No positive result can be expected," Kirjushin, whose shaved head gives him a ferocious look, said during a long, often grim conversation at the Afghan War Veterans Association in the centre of the Russian capital. 

"As every nation that goes to fight in Afghanistan discovers, nobody has ever conquered that place. Even children were involved. They would blow up our tanks." 

Col. Alexander Khmel, who as a young artillery officer spent a year with an infantry unit in Afghanistan and still has four pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body from his time there, shared Kirjushin's dark pessimism about the task facing Canadian troops.    
"Please send my personal condolences to your army and to the families of those who have already died," said Khmel, who retired from the Red Army last year. 

"If your army stays there, further losses are inevitable. Lots of them. I really feel sorry for your boys." 

Military analyst Alexander Golts, who covered the Afghan war for the Red Army newspaper, provided a more nuanced but equally discouraging assessment of the latest war in a distant place where Russian troops used to call the enemy "dukhi" or 'ghosts" because they would often hide their weapons and quietly mix in with the local population at the end of a losing battle only to resurface somewhere else to continue the fight. 

"An American general once told me that a civilized nation can't win a guerrilla war until it stops being civilized itself," said Golts. "I think that that is true in Afghanistan. 

"Any attempt to bring outside principles to Afghanistan by military force cannot work because this is a traditional society that simply does not understand principles, whether they are principles of freedom or principles of communism. They only see us as invaders." 

The former Soviet Union's' Afghan misadventure lasted a decade. When it was over in 1989 about 15,000 Soviet soldiers and more than one million Afghans were dead. 

A timely paper written last year for NATO by Col. Oleg Kulakov, a serving Russian army officer who spent five years in Afghanistan as a military interpreter, discussed many of the difficulties that bedeviled the Red Army there between 1979 and 1989. 
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Aerial cavalry makes life-or-death difference  
PAUL KORING From Saturday's Globe and Mail 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061028.wxafghan28/BNStory/Afghanistan/home

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — Raining death and destruction from the sky. Making horrific headlines when things go wrong.

Close air support, or CAS, doesn't sound nearly as deadly, nor as crucial, nor as rapid-reacting as it is. But allied warplanes wheeling above or laying down withering fire on Taliban fighters — sometimes only tens of metres from embattled Canadian troops — make a daily life-or-death difference in Afghanistan.

“Our guys sleep better at night when they hear those jets,” said Captain Tim Spears, the senior forward air controller for the Canadian battle group.

Just the sound of the warplanes, or even the drone of an unmanned aerial vehicle, can thwart an attack, sending Taliban fighters scurrying for cover. “They know the sound; they know we can see them and hurt them,” Capt. Spears said.

On balance, Canadian and other NATO troops are far safer and need take far fewer risks because of air power. But it can also go terribly wrong.

Only this week, a fierce controversy was set off when NATO warplanes, targeting Taliban fighters, killed at least 11 civilians, including women and children. Some local Afghan officials set the number of deaths at scores of civilians.

Last month, Canadian soldiers suffered a “friendly fire” attack when a U.S. A-10 Warthog mistakenly sent a burst of cannon fire into a group of Canadian soldiers. One was killed. Dozens were hurt. The careful, complex system of checks and balances failed. But even in the grim aftermath, some of the wounded Canadians credited close air support with saving their lives in the fierce battles of Operation Medusa.

Bombings or missile strikes by NATO's combat aircraft in Afghanistan, mostly American but also British and Dutch, rarely make news, except when things go wrong: Celebratory gunfire at a wedding is mistaken for insurgents shooting; women and children are killed when a bomb hits a Taliban compound or the dreaded “blue on blue” toll of friendly fire occurs.
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Medical discharges thinning military's ranks
GLORIA GALLOWAY From Saturday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061028.wxsoldiers28/BNStory/National

OTTAWA — The number of Canadian Forces members who were fired because they were too ill or injured to serve in a battle zone doubled between 2002 and 2005 — a puzzling increase that comes even as the military tries to bolster its ranks.

"They are letting go of so many people," said Brenda MacDonald, an ex-military nurse who was released because of a medical illness and who wants the Forces to find jobs for the released soldiers within the Department of National Defence.

The trend appears to be at odds with a recent decision to forgo physical-fitness tests for new recruits. But some veteran members of the Forces suggest there has been a concerted effort to drive out people with disabilities, even as the standards are being weakened for newcomers.

Under a policy called "universality of service," all members of the military must be physically able to participate in missions. If a medical condition prevents deployment, a member of the Forces is released with no guarantee of being placed in another job within the Defence Department or any other branch of government.
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Karzai expresses ‘pain' over Afghan civilian deaths
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061027.wkarzai1027/BNStory/International/home

Kandahar — President Hamid Karzai expressed “sadness” and “pain” on Friday amid reports that dozens of civilians may have been killed in a NATO operation in southern Afghanistan's Panjwaii district.

Speaking at a new conference in the Afghan capital, Mr. Karzai did not specify how many civilians lost their lives in the NATO bombing and artillery attacks, but said Afghan authorities were conducting an investigation.

Local Afghan officials put the number as high as 80, while NATO officials said they did not believe more than a dozen civilians had been killed in the fighting.

Mr. Karzai said only that “numbers” of civilians were killed when the bombs and shells destroyed three houses, killing most of the people inside.
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An unknown soldier
When Private Mark Graham died in Afghanistan, reports recalled his past Olympic track glory. But as GREG McARTHUR writes, he kept running all his life -- away from confusion and outsized expectations, and into his early grave. 
GREG MCARTHUR From Saturday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061027.cover28/BNStory

Mark Graham woke up, stood on the rocky hillside and swatted the sleeping Francois LePage, whose feet were dangling off the side of the armoured vehicle they manned together. “Wake up,” he said. “Let's go to the fire. I'm freezing.”

These would be the last words they would ever exchange.

The rest of the soldiers in Charles Company's Eighth Platoon that Monday morning in September were already tearing into their breakfast rations, readying themselves for another strike at their objective, a schoolhouse in the Afghan village of Pashmul that they had failed to seize the day before.

Then, suddenly, sparks began dancing at their feet. Next came the sound — the whir of a Gatling gun, spraying the camp with corn-cob-sized bullets. When the rounds hit the ground, they shattered into hot metal that pierced the heads, backs, arms and legs of the Canadians. The near-molten shrapnel collided with bones and organs and split into more pieces, so tiny that most will never be retrieved.
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Women and children killed, NATO admits  
Civilians die as Taliban-held compound hit 
PAUL KORING  From Friday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061027.wafghan27/BNStory

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — NATO rejected the contentions of some local Afghan officials yesterday that its warplanes had killed scores of civilians, but admitted some women and children died during air strikes on a Taliban-held compound.

"What is being reported as civilian casualties are the bodies of insurgents," said a senior NATO officer in Kandahar, who spoke on condition that he not be identified. The officer has access to the detailed operational logs and reports from coalition troops close to the scene of the air strikes both during the attacks and in the immediate aftermath. He said he was aware of "nothing that could have caused that many civilian casualties."

However, he said 11 civilians, including women and children, were believed killed -- and others injured -- in the third and largest of a series of running battles between Taliban and NATO forces on Tuesday and into the early hours of Wednesday morning. He also said that the preliminary post-attack assessment showed "we hit what we intended to hit," so that if there were civilian casualties it wasn't as a result of a bomb missing the target but rather civilians being inside or close to a Taliban-held compound.

But the fallout from the latest civilian casualties -- whatever their scale -- will be a setback for Canadian efforts to win local support in the contested Panjwai area west of Kandahar. There was anguish at a mass funeral in Kandahar and the anger among relatives of the dead and wounded civilians in hospitals.
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Bush discusses Afghanistan, Sudan with NATO chief  
October 28, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/28/eng20061028_315928.html

U.S. President George W. Bush met with visiting NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in the White House on Friday and they discussed issues including Afghanistan and Sudan's Darfur, White House spokesman Tony Snow said at a briefing. 

"As for the president's meeting with the NATO secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, they had a good meeting," Snow said. 

"They talked a lot about NATO's role in Afghanistan and ways of moving forward. Also (they) talked about their shared interest in Darfur and getting something done there," Snow said. 

The meeting came amid a planned NATO summit due in Riga, Latvia next month. 

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan took over authority of the east of the country from the U.S.-led coalition at the beginning of the month, putting 12, 000 coalition troops, mainly Americans, under NATO command. 

Bush has also called for a role for NATO in Sudan's conflicts- stricken Darfur region. 

Source: Xinhua 
End

Defence analyst decries changing role of Canadian forces in Afghanistan 

Will Afghanistan become Canada’s Iraq?  – Steven Staples. 
By Wayne Thibodeau The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.pe.ca/index.cfm?sid=4435&sc=2

Canada has all but abandoned its peacekeeping role and an Ottawa defence analyst is blaming the United States. 

In a 27-page report called Marching Orders, Steven Staples says Canada’s role in Afghanistan has compromised the country’s role as a leader in peacekeeping. 

Staples prepared his report for The Council of Canadians which held its annual general meeting in Charlottetown Friday. 

Staples said Canada’s slide of support for UN peacekeeping did not begin overnight but it has been greatly exacerbated since the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. 

“Our military is being transformed from one of the best peacekeeping forces in the world to nothing more than a U.S.-led war fighting force,” Staples told reporters in Charlottetown Friday. 

“Already, we have spent more than $5 billion on the war in Afghanistan, which the government now admits is such a thing — a war. Next year, we will spend $1.4 billion on the mission in Afghanistan. We will spend $6 million on UN peacekeeping — a pittance.” 
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Antigonish among towns to protest role in Afghanistan
By JIM MacDONALD
http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/537178.html

ANTIGONISH — Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay can expect a crowd outside his constituency office in Antigonish this afternoon, denouncing Canada’s role in Afghanistan.

The town is one of 34 locations across the country where demonstrators will urge Prime Minister Stephen Harper to withdraw troops in the devastated country until the territory is safe for peacekeepers.

"We’re making ourselves targets by supporting the American offensive there when we can be helping the people," local organizer Jasmine Graham said Thursday night.

The event, called Canadian Troops Out of Afghanistan, is being organized by the Collectif Echec a la guerre, the Canadian Peace Alliance, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian Islamic Congress.

About 200 people are expected to set out from Antigonish town hall about noon and march to Mr. MacKay’s office, where a moment of silence will be observed for fallen soldiers and Afghan civilians.

The protesters will then head to St. F.X., where peace activist Steven Staples will give a presentation entitled Missile Defence to Afghanistan: How Citizens are Confronting the Bush Agenda in Canada.
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Commander shares views on Afghanistan
Jeff Hurst, Cambridge
http://www.cambridgetimes.ca/cam/news/news_646423.html 
  
(Oct 27, 2006) 
Taliban may be the universally hated name when it comes to terrorism, but it's only one of the deadly challenges facing Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

There are also armed gangs, drug lords, criminals, tribal leaders, corrupt police officers and incompetent government officials. But perhaps the biggest challenge is that 80 per cent of the population doesn't know who to believe in.

"They (Afghan citizens) want to believe life will be better," said Brig.-Gen. Dwight Davies, during a lecture Friday at the Brantford campus of Wilfrid Laurier University.

Deputy commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) in Afghanistan, Davies was part of a weekend conference entitled From Courcelete to Kandahar: The Canadian Army, 1916-2006.

The 30-year military veteran said the conflict in Afghanistan is a totally new experience for Canadian soldiers. There's no good guys versus bad guys, no solid battle lines or rules of engagement.
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AFGHANISTAN: D'ALEMA, DON'T LEAVE THE COUNTRY TO THE TALIBAN
(AGI) - Milan, Oct 27 - 
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200610271856-1256-RT1-CRO-0-NF82&page=0&id=agionline-eng.italyonline

The international community must change its approach in Afghanistan, in a "difficult" challenge. "But we don't want to leave the country to the Taliban, it would be a defeat for the population and for all of us". Massimo D'Alema, foreign minister, talking during the Italian-German forum, turned to the matter of Afghanistan to repeat that it is necessary to change the approach of the international community in that country because "we will not win on a military level only, we need to intensify and develop a economic and political cooperation that involves the community much more". Finally, the foreign minister made a recommendation: "it is necessary to make an effort to avoid civilian victims when using force".
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German Afghanistan Veterans Suspended Amid Skull-Photo Scandal  
By Brian Parkin and Claudia Rach
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=ai9wuhtib4sI&refer=europe

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung today ordered the suspension of two soldiers who posed for photos with a human skull during a 2003 mission with ISAF peace- keepers in Afghanistan. The pictures were published this week. 

Snapshots of German soldiers holding human remains appeared in the Bild Zeitung newspaper on Oct. 25, prompting the army to launch an investigation to find the culprits. Further photographs depicting soldiers from other units stationed in Afghanistan were published by RTL television yesterday. Tampering with human remains is a punishable offence in Germany 

Jung told reporters outside parliament that the army had suspended two of the six soldiers depicted in Bild's photos. ``I've also asked the Inspector-General of the Army to review troop training before and during service'' in Afghanistan. Jung has called the photos ``loathsome.'' 
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Afghanistan radio station to be rebuilt  
by Rebecca S. Bender, 10/27/2006 
http://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=16635
  
An Internews radio station in Afghanistan gutted by a firebomb in August will be granted a new lease on life with the help of a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy as well as equipment donations.

Radio Istiqlal, a community radio station in the remote province of Logar, Afghanistan, was burned to the ground around 2 a.m. on Aug. 11 after a firebomb was thrown through a window by an unknown person. A station manager on duty in the building was able to escape with only minor injuries, but the equipment and the structure were entirely lost.

A call for assistance went out shortly thereafter, and the National Endowment for Democracy responded with a grant. A number of smaller, individual donations came in as well, according to an Internews news release, and a local media development organization, Nai, donated production equipment.

Suitable sites for the new Radio Istiqlal are still being sought, Internews’ communications and corporate affairs Senior Vice President Annette Makino said Thursday. 

“There have been a couple of false starts,” she said, noting that one site that had looked hopeful was subsequently ruled out because of broadcasting accessibility problems. “If all else fails, they’ll probably rebuild in that same spot.”

Workers hope to have the station up and running by December, when the heavy snowfall starts, Makino said.

Radio Istiqlal was started by Internews in 2004 and broadcast 10 hours of Afghan news and entertainment each day.

“Afghanistan is a very challenging environment for radio stations to survive in,” Jan McArthur, country director for Internews in Afghanistan, stated in a news release. “(Y)et these independent, local stations are vitally important if democracy and civil society are to have a chance of flourishing here.”

The individual or group behind the firebombing has not been identified, though local authorities speculated that the event was related to an anonymous flyer, which appeared around the same time, condemning Western values and lifestyles as decadent, corrupt and immodest.
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## GAP (29 Oct 2006)

*Articles found 29 October 2006*

*Fraser hands reins to Dutch after Afghan mission*
Updated Sun. Oct. 29 2006 1:50 PM ET Canadian Press
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061029/afghanistan_fraser_061029/20061029?hub=Canada

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- After more than eight months in the kind of high-stress zone that tries tough souls, Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser is about to hand over command in southern Afghanistan. 

It's a rotational change of guard Wednesday that will see Dutch Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon take over as NATO leader in the South. 

Fraser will soon head home to Edmonton and his wife Poppie, their two sons and an aging Akita dog named Seiko. 

"This environment is more dangerous than I've ever seen anywhere else in the world," he said in a parting interview with The Canadian Press. 

"Over here, everybody is a target. The Taliban respects nobody. A reporter, the International Committee of the Red Cross, UN, military, Afghan. Everybody is an equal target of opportunity for them." 

From Cyprus to the height of Bosnia's ugly civil war, Fraser has seen nothing in 26 years and seven missions that equals southern Afghanistan. 

Still, he thinks the situation in Kandahar is misconstrued. 

"Security is probably the most over-used, ill-defined word in the lexicon in this country. 

"There's tens and hundreds of thousands of people going about living their lives downtown. And that place is just bustling," he said of the ramshackle sprawl of vegetable vendors and low-rise buildings near the main military base at Kandahar Airfield. 

"Suicide attacks are a concern," he says. "The Taliban have gone and demonstrated complete disregard for attacking the people. Because what they're attacking is success." 

Few women are seen on Kandahar streets even in full veils, and local Afghans who welcome foreigners describe growing intimidation and fear. 

"I don't agree with that assessment," Fraser says. "A lot of those people don't get out of their houses. What they have is a perception. Eight months ago, Kandahar city wasn't as busy as it is now. 

"You've got to put it into context." 

Forty-two Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died in Afghanistan since 2002. Since March, Fraser has watched 34 times as members of his military family were honoured and sent home in caskets. 

There's no shortage of debate -- some of it stingingly critical -- about mounting troop and civilian death tolls, the slow pace of reconstruction and the prospects of success against those who would revert Afghanistan to a repressive terrorist incubator. 

Fraser's optimism is steadfast. 

Afghan police and security forces are being built from nothing, he says. 

Several provincial governors have restored enough law and order to move on to budgets, education "and other issues that any governor or provincial premier would have to deal with." 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops are advancing into parts of the country that were virtual no-go zones even a year ago, he says. The list includes Spin Boldak, a notoriously cut-throat border conduit for smugglers, mercenaries and suicide bombers who move from Pakistan into Afghanistan all but unimpeded. 

"We are making progress," Fraser says. "That's a good news story. That's an expansion of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan's footprint." 

Holding that ground ultimately depends on whether military leaders can help deliver enough locally driven development. How better to convince Afghans to shun a growing anti-government insurgency than to offer new health clinics, schools and credit for new businesses? 

Too many Afghans, though, are still waiting five years after a resurgent Taliban was defeated. It doesn't help that many people have lost faith in a widely corrupt Afghan government that doubles as a bastion for former warlords accused of vicious abuses. 

Further complicating Canada's aid efforts is the refusal of several international agencies to work in the South. CARE and World Vision are among those who say the military's foray into road building, well digging and school projects has blurred the line between unarmed aid workers and combat troops. 

They want soldiers to stick with security. 

Fraser calls that "Old Think." 

"The new reality is we're all working complementary to each other in an environment that is dangerous. 

"These people deserve nothing less than our international community's 100-per-cent commitment to provide them hope and opportunity in a safe environment. 

"It's worth it," he says. "And this is do-able. But it comes at a cost."
End

Canadian convoy travels through 'Ambush Alley'
Updated Sat. Oct. 28 2006 11:32 PM ET Paul Workman, CTV News
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061026/kandahar_convoy_061028/20061028?hub=TopStories

South Asia Bureau Chief -- The ramp comes up and we're locked inside a Canadian Forces "Bison," an armored vehicle that's uncomfortable, dark and as the day moves forward, increasingly warm. Sweatingly warm. There is one tiny window out the back but you really can't see anything. You're wearing a helmet and a heavy flak jacket, and in spite of it all, the ride makes you feel sleepy. 

Perhaps it's the tension. You're in a Canadian military convoy moving down the highway toward Kandahar City and there's more than a chance of being hit by a roadside bomb, or a suicide attack. It could be a yellow and white Corolla taxi, it could be a truck packed with explosives, or it could be a motorcycle with a bomb hidden under the driver's clothes. The soldiers in the convoy have seen it all, or at least been warned to expect it all.
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Francis Silvaggio reports from Afghanistan on the Canadian troops reaction to an anti-war rally across the country.
Video Report

http://video.canada.com/VideoContent.aspx?&popup=1


End

A bad day? 'You have no idea, buddy'
Soldiers find they can never really go home 
Sun Oct 29 2006
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/world/story/3752005p-4337953c.html
By Lee Rosenberg 

'Being here, you begin to put things into perspective. Back home you get a speeding ticket and it ... ruins your day. Here you don't get blown up and it's a good day' -- Pte. Sean Parker  

PASHE, Afghanistan -- Pte. Sean Parker was in an Australian hostel when he overheard a conversation that sent him into a stony silence. A young woman was complaining to a friend about how mean her mother was, about how sometimes she really hated her. 

Parker, 24, had just fought in the trenches of Operation Medusa, a Canadian-led offensive that resulted in large insurgent casualties. He watched men die beside him. He had also lost a friend and section mate weeks earlier. And now this.    
It was a moment of reckoning, the Edmonton native says, one where he quickly understood the war in Afghanistan had made him different from others, perhaps even changed him forever. 

"It's hard to explain," Parker says, sitting on the rough gravel in a mountainous base overlooking the Tailbone heartland of Panjwaii and Pashmul. He hasn't showered or eaten a freshly cooked meal in weeks. 

More often than not, home has been a square patch of dirt behind his section's LAV armoured vehicle. 

"Being here, you begin to put things into perspective. Back home you get a speeding ticket and it ... ruins your day. Here you don't get blown up and it's a good day." 

Parker is among the 2,300 Canadian soldiers currently serving in Afghanistan who are entitled to an 18-day vacation that falls at some point during their six-month tour. (Those who serve longer may also be entitled to R and R periods of three to four days that can only be taken at a select location). 

The transition from battle zone to beach vacation, especially for the 1,200 frontline soldiers like Parker, is jarring. They've found it difficult adjusting to the outside world. 

"I have really good friends back home, but I realized after this tour, that my military friends will always be my best friends," said Cpl. Andrew Harris, 24. 

Harris decided to spend time among family and friends in his Burlington, Ont., home. He says he faced many of the same challenges as other soldiers who choose to vacation in Thailand, Australia and Europe. "When they bitch and complained about the small things that everyone back home takes for granted, you just look at them like 'you have no idea, buddy.' " 

Infantry soldiers in Pashmul are treated to nightly "light shows," which often include hours of gunfire, artillery attacks and aerial bombardments. They live under constant threat of enemy attack. 

"I'll admit that bangs made me jump," Harris says of his trip home. 
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*How the West short-changed Afghanistan*
The Sunday Times October 29, 2006 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-2422241,00.html

We went to war to restore democracy and prosperity to Afghanistan, and spent billions on building new homes, hospitals and highways. But five years and thousands of lost lives later, everything is crumbling and the ferocious Taliban are back. Where did it all go wrong? Fariba Nawa reports on the troubles of her homeland 
  
The supposedly "posh" apartment where I am writing this is in one of dozens of buildings constructed in 2004 near downtown Kabul. It is part of the extensive reconstruction process taking place in Afghanistan in the midst of war. The landlord is a businessman who built the shiny five-storey apartment block with tinted windows as an investment in what then seemed an equally shiny new economy. Across the way are a mosque and a wedding hall, and the call to prayer competes with Afghan pop music. Lately, the roar of fighter jets has added another level to the noise, as security in Kabul declines to its worst state in five years. During the morning rush hour earlier this month, the windows shook from an explosion that injured more than a dozen police several blocks away.

There are three of us in the flat, including my fiancé and an American friend, and we pay £165 a month in rent, the going price in the city. But few locals could afford such luxury: a civil servant’s salary is £27 a month. And this is no Trump Tower. We’re not sure if our building is earthquake-safe, since no seismic standards are enforced in this construction boom. Afghanistan is to earthquakes as Florida is to hurricanes – we know that when the ground shakes, the walls crack and the doorframes shift. 

Our bathroom drains emit the stench of sewage; the pipes inside the walls leak, and the water seeps into the plaster. The lightest touch sends disintegrated wallboard cascading to the floor. There’s no insulation in the walls, and the gaps in our misshapen door and window frames allow icy winds to blow in. The building’s exterior was never finished with a primer or sealant, so when it rains, the moisture soaks through and beads on the interior walls. Metal beams supporting the ceiling of our living room are rusting, the rust is bleeding through the paint, and the paint is cracking. The list goes on.

I consider myself lucky. These flawed buildings and services are an inconvenience, but I could leave. Yet the shoddy reconstruction effort in Afghanistan since the Taliban were theoretically ousted has had far greater consequences for Afghans, and now, it seems, for westerners, who have footed the bill for these botched efforts. Amid the detritus of rubble and lost opportunities, the Taliban have returned.
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The Crusaders Admit: Our Troops are Being Defeated in Afghanistan; An Analytical Study of the Crusader Forces Occupying Afghanistan
By SITE Institute
http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications222806&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

Prepared by Hossam Abdul Raouf, a member of the Committee of Information and Strategy for al-Qaeda, and Editor-in-Chief of the “Vanguards of Kharasan” electronic periodical, a 66-page analytical study of the “Crusader” occupation of Afghanistan was recently distributed to jihadist forums. The piece, written between June and July 2006, follows an admission that American, allied, and NATO forces are being defeated in Afghanistan. In the pursuit of proving this claim, as well as showing the might and initiative of the Mujahideen, the author focuses on news articles concerning the “Afghani problem,” which were published by English Pakistani newspapers, such as the Nation, the Dawn, and the Frontier Post, as well as quotations from American Congressmen and U.S. and British military commanders. 


The introduction to the document, previously translated by the SITE Institute , summarizes Raouf’s goals in the analysis as proving Western “Crusader” hubris and selfishness in the Afghan occupation, especially by the United States, and deliberate attempts by the commanding regimes to obfuscate the reality of the ground war. The analysis then pursues the signs and indications of the Crusader’s defeat in Afghanistan, highlighting reasons for U.S. withdrawal and their handing greater authority to NATO forces in the southern provinces, and reviewing the conditions of British, Canadian, Dutch, Australian, and other foreign forces. 


Hossam Raouf observes that the reduction of U.S. forces in Afghanistan this year is due to a confluence of factors, including the strength of the Taliban and their firm control in many Afghan provinces, failure of U.S. intelligence to locate Taliban and al-Qaeda leadership, and the transfer of forces to cover the “great losses” in Iraq. He also claims that American soldiers are suffering mental collapse, and refers to evolving tactics and methods of the Mujahideen in combat as additional reasons. On the latter point, suicide bombings, termed as the “Islamic nuclear bomb that the enemy cannot face,” by Taliban commander Mullah Dadallah, is one of the strategies imported from the Iraq insurgency. The author adds: “While suicide attacks were not accepted in the Afghani culture in the past, they have now become a regular [phenomenon]!” 
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NATO soldier killed in S. Afghanistan  
October 29, 2006         
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/29/eng20061029_316176.html

One soldier of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was killed and eight others injured in Afghanistan's southern Uruzgan province, said an ISAF statement received Sunday. 

"One ISAF soldier was killed and eight others wounded when their convoy was caught in the blast of an improvised explosive device earlier Saturday," it added. 

However, the statement withheld the nationalities and identities of the victims, adding in accordance with the NATO policy, ISAF does not release the nationalities of casualties prior to the relevant national authority doing so. 

But it said Dutch forces have been stationed in the troubled Uruzgan province. 

Two civilians were also injured in the incident, the statement said. 

On the other hand, a purported Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi said that 25 foreign troops have fighter being killed or injured in the operation conducted by Taliban operatives. 

He added the incident took place in Darwishan area north of provincial capital Tirin Kot where four military vehicles were also damaged. 

Ahmadi also confirmed that five Taliban fighters were killed and three others were wounded. 

More than 2,500 people, mostly according to officials were militants, have been killed since beginning this year in Afghanistan. 

Source: Xinhua 
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Older vets reach out to troops returning from Iraq, Afghanistan
ELLIOTT MINOR Associated Press 
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/15873444.htm

COLUMBUS, Ga. - Jack Wagner was wounded twice during two tours in Vietnam, but instead of a hero's welcome upon his return, he was advised to ditch his uniform to avoid the wrath of anti-war protesters.

"That made a lot of Vietnam veterans go in the closet. They didn't want to be labeled as baby killers," said Wagner, the 59-year-old national commander of the 4,800-member Combat Infantrymen's Association.

After being disparaged by demonstrators, Vietnam veterans also found themselves shunned by some of the World War II and Korean War veterans who made up the bulk of membership in the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and other leading veterans groups.

"All we wanted was for someone to say, 'Welcome Home,'" said Wagner of Cape Coral, Fla.

With World War II veterans dying at a rate of 1,100 per day and many Korean War vets now in their 70s, it's Vietnam veterans like Wagner who have taken the helm of some of the nation's leading veterans organizations. They know the importance of extending a welcoming hand to the latest generation of combat veterans - the more than 1 million Americans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Even though many of us may disagree on the way this war is being handled, we are in total support of those young troops," said Wagner during his group's recent annual convention in Columbus. "We want to promote camaraderie and open our arms to all those who have seen the horrors of war from the front line."

Veterans groups have traditionally been guided by a patriotic spirit and a desire to honor the sacrifices of those who served. They also realize that new members are vital to their survival.
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Protesters demand withdrawal from Afghanistan
Updated Sat. Oct. 28 2006 11:20 PM ET  CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061028/afghanistan_protests_061028/20061028?hub=TopStories

Groups of people rallied in cities and communities across Canada on Saturday, demanding the withdrawal of this country's troops from the NATO-led military mission in Afghanistan. 

"Troops out now!" was a common chant by demonstrators across the country. Many seemed opposed to the fact Canada was involved in combat in Afghanistan, rather than carrying out a traditional peacekeeping mission.

There were nearly 200 people protesting and waving placards in Halifax, almost 500 marching in Montreal and 600 in Vancouver. 

CTV News' Denelle Balfour reported there were several hundred people attending the Toronto rally, which gathered outside the downtown U.S. consulate.
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NATO asked to pay for Afghan victims
POSTED: 0655 GMT (1455 HKT), October 28, 2006 
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/10/28/afghan.civilians.ap/index.html

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A leading human rights organization said NATO-led troops are not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties in Afghanistan and called on the Western military alliance to establish a program to compensate victims' families.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said NATO's recent operations in Afghanistan have resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians across the country.

"While NATO forces try to minimize harm to civilians, they obviously are not doing enough," Sam Zarifi, the group's Asia research director, said in a statement released in New York on Friday. "NATO's tactics are increasingly endangering the civilians they are supposed to be protecting and turning the local population against them."

Dozens of civilians were reported killed in southern Afghanistan earlier this week during clashes between NATO-led troops using airstrikes and artillery and insurgents using civilian areas as cover in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province.

Human Rights Watch said NATO has relied extensively on the use of aircraft to attack insurgent positions, adding that in June 2006, U.S. Central Command reported 340 air strikes in Afghanistan, double the 160 strikes carried out in Iraq in the same month.

"NATO should reconsider the use of highly destructive but hard-to-target weaponry in areas where there is a clear risk of considerable civilian casualties," Zarifi said, referring to bombs and missiles launched by airplanes that can easily miss their target.

"We heed the calls for maximum caution in our operations to minimize civilians casualties," said Maj. Luke Knittig, the spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
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Canada threatened by Al-Qaida over Afghanistan: report  
October 29, 2006          
http://english.people.com.cn/200610/29/eng20061029_316135.html

The Al-Qaida network has threatened Canada with terrorist attacks if the country still refuses to pull out its troops from Afghanistan, the National Post reported on Saturday. 

The threat came from a document written by Hossam Abdul Raou, a member of the Al-Qaida information and strategy committee, the newspaper said. 

The Canadians "will either be forced to withdraw their forces or face an operation similar to New York, Madrid, London," Raouf wrote. 

The document was translated by a U.S. non-profit organization, the SITE Institute, which monitors the Internet for terrorist threats, the newspaper said. 

The document also condemns Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for keeping troops in Afghanistan and refers to Canada's alleged attempts to "damage the Muslims" and support for a "Christian crusade" against Al-Qaida. 

Raouf wrote that "despite the strong increasing opposition to spread its forces in the fire of south Afghanistan, it seems that they (Canadians) will not learn the lesson easily." 

Canada has more than 2,000 troops deployed in Kandahar, working with NATO to fight Taliban forces since the mission started in 2002. 

Source: Xinhua 
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Afghanistan security is worsening, study says  
By Philip Dine St. Louis Post-Dispatch Tucson, Arizona | Published: 10.29.2006
http://www.azstarnet.com/news/153355

WASHINGTON — Security in Afghanistan is deteriorating, with the budding Afghan army one of the few rays of hope in a nation where conditions are dire, according to a study funded by the U.S. government. 

"The security sector shows the most dramatic decline" of the five areas studied, said an interim report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies made available to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Last year, efforts to stabilize and secure the country were seen as a success. Today, however, Afghans feel less safe than they did a year ago." 

At the same time, progress is being made in building the Afghan National Army, and Afghans continue to have confidence that as the army gains strength security will greatly improve. 

The report says that Afghans have not yet lost faith in their government or the international community, but that the country is "at a tipping point" and the effort to rebuild Afghanistan will fail unless "the needs of ordinary Afghans are met." 

"Afghans are less hopeful today than they were a year ago. The state-building mission has lost ground, and is slipping further into the danger zone," the report says. 

The Washington-based think tank is evaluating progress in a study funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The project has included 1,000 lengthy interviews with Afghans, equally divided between men and women, throughout Afghanistan. 
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Afghanistan war is 'cuckoo', says Blair's favourite general
Ned Temko and Mark Townsend Sunday October 29, 2006 The Observer 
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1934425,00.html

Tony Blair's most trusted military commander yesterday branded as 'cuckoo' the way Britain's overstretched army was sent into Afghanistan.
The remarkable rebuke by General the Lord Guthrie came in an Observer interview, his first since quitting as Chief of the Defence Staff five years ago, in which he made an impassioned plea for more troops, new equipment and more funds for a 'very, very' over-committed army.

The decision by Guthrie, an experienced Whitehall insider and Blair confidant, to go public is likely to alarm Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence more than the recent public criticism by the current army chief Sir Richard Dannatt. 'Anyone who thought this was going to be a picnic in Afghanistan - anyone who had read any history, anyone who knew the Afghans, or had seen the terrain, anyone who had thought about the Taliban resurgence, anyone who understood what was going on across the border in Baluchistan and Waziristan [should have known] - to launch the British army in with the numbers there are, while we're still going on in Iraq is cuckoo,' Guthrie said.
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AFGHANISTAN: RANIERI, WE'LL STAY BUT NEED TO REFLECT
(AGI) - Turin, Oct. 28 - 
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200610281822-1214-RT1-CRO-0-NF51&page=0&id=agionline-eng.arab

"Italy will continue to carry out its task, in the framework of the NATO decisions, but everyone is aware of the necessity of a serious reflection on how things are going in Afghanistan, in order to avoid the risk that the situation gets out of control." This was stated by the president of the Chamber's foreign affairs commission, Umberto Ranieri, speaking today in Turin at the work of the 30th European meeting of the Trilateral Commission. Precisely Italy's foreign policies and Italy's role on the international field was discussed during the first Trilateral meeting. Ranieri observed, "Italy has committed itself to carrying out an important role in international politics, in the construction of Europe, with the conviction of a re-launch of the multilateral approach as proven by the mission in Lebanon. A multilateral approach also determined by a need compared to the evident difficulty of America's unilateral policies." As for this, Ranieri cited the situation in Iraq and said "there is the need to find a way out." As for Europe, the president of the foreign affairs commission underlined "the importance of the Germany E.U. presidency, which will start in January, from which we expect an impulse to re-start the process for the European constitution." Even the parliamentary member from Forza Italia, Margherita Boniver, spoke on Italian foreign policy by underlining that in this framework "that discontinuity that was spoken of so much in the electoral campaign does not exist at all. And this is shown by the fact that, despite the many doubts on the mission in Lebanon, the opposition voted in favour of the mission and demonstrated a sense of responsibility that was not present in the past legislature from those who were at the time the opposition parties." (AGI) - 
281822 OTT 06 
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Achakzai urges govt to shun interference in Afghanistan  
http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=104181

PISHIN: President Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM), Mehmood Khan Achakzai, has called for an end to interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan so that Pakistan and the whole region remains safe from any possibilities of an impending war. 

He said this while addressing a mammoth public meeting in Quetta on Saturday, which was also addressed by party’s Provincial president Abdul Rauf and others and was replete with revolutionary poetry and anthems orated by Raza Shaidan. 

He warned that the country and this region was passing through a critically disastrous phase and the situation of the country was worsening day by day. This would have to be changed through a popular mandate. 

He espoused three major allegations currently being faced by Pakistan, which include illegal export of nuclear material and technology to Iran, N. Korea and Libya, labeling every arrested terrorist as being trained in Pakistan, while the third most serious and heinous one blames the incumbent military rulers of Pakistan for constantly meddling in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, and which was pushing the entire region towards the brink of a never-ending war. 
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2.2% Pay Raise Effective January 2007 - US Forces
American Forces Press Service | Jim Garamone | October 25, 2006
http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,117560,00.html?ESRC=marine-a.nl

WASHINGTON – With the 2.2 percent across-the-board pay raise that is part of the Fiscal 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, the Defense Department will reach its goal to bring military basic pay to the 70th percentile when compared to civilians with comparable education and training, a top DoD compensation official said.

The goal grew out of the 9th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation released in 2002, which concluded that basic pay did not adequately compensate an increasingly educated military force.

Virginia Penrod, DoD’s director of military compensation, said the 2.2 percent across-the-board pay raise – which kicks in Jan. 1, matches the employment cost index for the year. ECI measures the growth in private-sector wages. Current law ties any military pay raise to the index.

Also helping DoD reach its goal, she said, is targeted pay raises for servicemembers in grades E-5 to E-7 and warrant officers that go into effect April 1.
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Taliban leaders refuse talks with Karzai  
Associated Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061028.wafghan28/BNStory/Front

KABUL — Taliban leaders have ruled out talks with President Hamid Karzai's government as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan, a purported statement from the hardline militia said Saturday.

On Friday, Mr. Karzai told reporters he was ready to negotiate with fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar if he stops receiving support from neighbouring Pakistan — where the Afghan leader alleges Mr. Omar is hiding.

Mr. Karzai made a similar offer in an interview with The Associated Press in January, telling Omar to “get in touch” if he wanted to talk peace. Fighting in the country has since escalated sharply as a resurgent Taliban has battled NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces in the bloodiest clashes since the hardline regime fell in late 2001.

Over the past two years, hundreds of Taliban supporters, including some senior officials, have reconciled with the government, but there have apparently been no high-level talks with the rebel leadership.
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Ghulam Ishaq Khan, once led Pakistan
Oct. 28, 2006. 01:00 AM RIAZ KHAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1161985810262&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

PESHAWAR, Pakistan—Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who became Pakistan's president in 1988 after the death of his predecessor in a plane crash, died yesterday after a bout of pneumonia. He was 91.

Ishaq Khan had been ill for about three months. He died in Peshawar, the northern city where he spent most of his life, his son-in-law Irfanullah Marwat said.

A career bureaucrat, Ishaq Khan was a close ally of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq and held the post of chairman of Pakistan's Senate, when the military dictator was killed in a plane crash Aug. 17, 1988, in eastern Pakistan along with U.S. Ambassador Arnold L. Raphel and several top Pakistani generals. The plane exploded minutes after takeoff. Just why it blew up has been the subject of much subsequent theorizing. 
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## MarkOttawa (29 Oct 2006)

Taliban plan to fight through winter to throttle Kabul
Sunday October 29, 2006, _The Observer_
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1934251,00.html

Militia fighters are operating just an hour's drive from the capital's suburbs, *confident of undermining Western support for the war* [my emphasis]



> The Taliban are planning a major winter offensive combining their diverse factions in a push on the Afghan capital, Kabul, intelligence analysts and sources among the militia have revealed.
> 
> The thrust will involve a concerted attempt to take control of surrounding provinces, a bid to cut the key commercial highway linking the capital with the eastern city of Jalalabad, and operations designed to tie down British and other Nato troops in the south.
> 
> ...



British troops hide from bombers
_The Sunday Times_, October 29, 2006



> BRITISH troops in the two main towns in the southern Afghan province of Helmand have been forced to stay in their barracks by the threat of Taliban suicide bombers.
> 
> The decision to keep the troops in their bases follows intelligence that suicide bombers are waiting in the province’s two main towns to attack British troops, said Lieutenant-Colonel Andy Price.
> 
> ...



Taking the Fight to the Taliban (article in _NY Times Magazine_ about US troops in south; Canadians mentioned at very end)
By ELIZABETH RUBIN, Published: October 29, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/magazine/29taliban.html

Mark
Ottawa


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## The Bread Guy (29 Oct 2006)

*Choppers could carry troops into Afghanistan*
Murray Brewster, Canadian Press, via Globe & Mail 29 Oct 06
Article Link - Permalink

Ottawa has quietly amended its contract with the maker of the navy's new Cyclone helicopters to ensure that the choppers will not only be able to hunt submarines, but also carry troops.  The design change, expected to add roughly $5-million to the overall price tag, would allow the air force to assign the choppers to a wide variety of different roles — including potential air support for the army in Afghanistan.  The Defence Department, however, denies that it's making the move with the Afghan mission specifically in mind.  Colonel Dave Burt, director of air requirements for the department, acknowledged that being able to strip the H-92 quickly of its sonar and radar gear, and strap in troop seats, was not part of the initial design for the Cyclones, the long-awaited replacements for the decades-old Sea Kings ....



*Canadian general hands reins to Dutch after gruelling Afghan mission *  
Sue Bailey, Canadian Press, 29 Oct 06
Article Link

After more than eight months in the kind of high-stress zone that tries tough souls, Canadian Brig.-Gen. David Fraser is about to hand over command in southern Afghanistan.  It's a rotational change of guard Wednesday that will see Dutch Maj.-Gen. Ton Van Loon take over as NATO leader in the South.  Fraser will soon head home to Edmonton and his wife Poppie, their two sons and an aging Akita dog named Seiko.  "This environment is more dangerous than I've ever seen anywhere else in the world," he said in a parting interview with The Canadian Press ....


*Experienced Dutch commander takes over*
Canadian Forces Army feature, 27 Sept 06
Article Link

Starting in November of this year, Canadian soldiers in southern Afghanistan will come under the command of Dutch Brigadier-General Ton van Loon.  BGen van Loon will be responsible for the multinational force patrolling the six provinces in the southern part of Afghanistan, an area of about 220,000 square kilometres. Included in the force are 2,500 Canadians responsible for Kandahar province.  He will be taking over from BGen David Fraser who has led the Multi National Brigade for Regional Command South for the last nine months. Formal transfer of authority will occur on November 1.   BGen van Loon has been in the Royal Netherlands Army since 1977. He possesses a tremendous amount of operational experience, serving in Germany, England and as commander the 11th Field Artillery Battalion during an operational deployment in Kosovo in 1998 ....



More on CAN in AFG



*After the fighting and dying, the Taleban return as British depart*
Anthony Loyd & Tahir Luddin, Times Online (UK), 30 Oct 06
Article Link

AMONG the many battles in his life, Nafaz Khan recalls the long fight for Musa Qala as one of special significance. As the former chief of police and militia commander in the northern Helmand town it was there that he fought alongside British troops against the Taleban.  ''I loved those British soldiers,'' he said. “They were great fighters and knew each of my men by name. Together we killed many, many Taleban.”  Soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment, who were withdrawn from Musa Qala this month as part of a deal with Afghan tribal elders after more than two months of heavy fighting, remember the experience as one of violence, dirt, heat and lack of water. For Mr Khan, though, it held particular deprivation ....



*US urges Nato allies to help south Afghanistan mission*
Daniel Dombey, Stephen Fidler and Rachel Morarjee, Financial Times, 29 Oct 06
Article Link

The US is pushing its Nato allies to send more troops and support to help in Afghanistan ahead of a showpiece summit next month.  Officials say Washington is putting pressure on Spain, France, Italy and Germany, all of which have soldiers elsewhere in the country, to free up their troops to move into the south, where the most bitter fighting in Afghanistan is taking place.  “Wouldn’t it be better if Germany and France . . .  could be willing to have those troops sent sometimes on a periodic, temporary basis to help the Dutch, British, US and Canadians that are undertaking the major share of the fighting?” Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, asked last week ....



*Tribal council hails Taleban, Qaeda chiefs ‘heroes of Islamic world’  *  
The Penninsula Online (Qatar), 30 Oct 06
Article Link

Describing as Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar as “heroes of the Islamic world”, a meeting of pro-Taleban tribal militants and elders in Pakistan have vowed to fight the “enemies of peace” in Bajaur Agency.  A ‘jirga’ (tribal council) of the Mamoond tribe and local pro-Taleban militants in the Umree area of Mamoond tehsil of Khar district announced that tribal people would protect Pakistan’s borders. The announcement comes days after the political administration of Bajaur Agency released nine suspected Al Qaeda militants, triggering rumours that a North Waziristan-like peace accord was also likely in Bajaur, which overlooks Afghanistan’s Kunar province where Bin Laden and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar are suspected to be hiding ....


*Pro-Taliban Tribesmen Hold Anti-US Rally*
Iran Daily, 29 Oct 06
Article Link

About 5,000 pro-Taliban tribesmen held an anti-US rally in a remote Pakistani tribal region near the east Afghan border, vowing to continue their holy war against America and its allies.  According to AP, the rally was held Saturday near Damadola, a village on the outskirts of Khar where an alleged US missile attack killed an Al-Qaeda leader and civilians earlier this year, prompting protests against Washington.  Pakistani officials have said the attack was targeting Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri, but that he was not there at the time.  “We are mujahedeen (holy warriors) and we will continue jihad against Americans and their allies,“ said Faqir Mohammed, a pro-Taliban leader who is wanted by Pakistan security forces for allegedly backing militants in the region ....


*Pro-Taliban tribesmen rally against U.S.*
Associated Press, 28 Oct 06
[http://24hour.startribune.com/24hour/world/story/3405307p-12514297c.html]Article Link[/url]

About 5,000 pro-Taliban tribesmen held an anti-America rally in a remote tribal region near the Afghan border on Saturday, vowing to keep waging a holy war against "infidels."  The rally was held 125 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad near Damadola, a village near the site of an alleged U.S. missile attack that killed several al-Qaida members and civilians in January.  The missile attack prompted protests against Washington.  "We are mujahedeen (holy warriors) and we will continue jihad against Americans and their allies," said Faqir Mohammed, a pro-Taliban leader who is being sought by Pakistani security forces for allegedly backing foreign militants.  Mohammed said he was not afraid of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf or the coalition forces in Afghanistan.  "Any one who supports Americans is our enemy," he said ....


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## GAP (30 Oct 2006)

*Articles found October 30, 2006*

Losing the PR war at home and abroad
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD  From Monday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061030.wxblatchford30/BNStory/National/home 

TORONTO — If the Taliban are clobbering the Canadian Forces in the Afghan public relations war, as some fear, then bloody hell if the same thing isn't happening here at home.

Over the weekend, modestly attended and utterly banal peace marches held in cities across the country led Saturday radio and TV newscasts and print websites (including The Globe and Mail's) and Sunday newspapers, but barely a scintilla of attention was paid to the awarding of prestigious Canadian military decorations and honours.

The awards were announced midafternoon on Friday -- in plenty of time for newspaper deadlines -- but rated only a mention in some major Saturday papers, including The Globe (which ran only a brief, as we call minuscule stories, and then in only some editions) and the National Post. In Toronto, for instance, the only daily to run a proper story on Saturday was the Sun.

In a world where the word "hero" has all but lost its meaning -- attached as it is to almost anyone who endures a mild trauma without mental collapse or meets the now low threshold of nominal good citizenship -- about 40 gallant Canadian soldiers went almost entirely unrecognized by the press, and thus by their countrymen.

It is little short of disgraceful, and I have to say, when I saw my own newspaper on Saturday -- we managed to run four other Canadian Forces-related stories that day, including one which suggested that soldiers are low-achieving losers in flight from dead-end jobs -- I was ashamed.

Virtually all those honoured are members of 1st Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry or those support and reserve units attached to them; they were the Canadian Battle Group in Kandahar during what the military calls Roto 1, the period from January-February this year through the end of August.

Many of them are soldiers I got to know during my two tours as an embedded reporter in Afghanistan; a couple, including Sergeant Patrick Tower, the big dog among them all, I know well.

Two of the awards -- for Captain Nichola Goddard, a 26-year-old from the 1st Royal Canadian Horse Artillery in Shilo, Man., who was given the Meritorious Service Medal, and 22-year-old Private Kevin Dallaire, who was mentioned in dispatches -- were made posthumously. Capt. Goddard and Pte. Dallaire were both killed in action, respectively, on May 17 and Aug. 3.

Four of the decorations, including Sgt. Tower's, were awarded for the first time since 1993, when Canada created its own military honours, including a Victoria Cross, separate and distinct from the traditional British awards. So the announcement was momentous for two reasons -- first, the remarkable courage of those honoured, and second, because in four cases, the awards were historic.

Sgt. Tower won the Star of Military Valour, in prestige behind only the Victoria Cross, which has never been awarded.

The official citation reads as follows: "Sgt. Tower is recognized for valiant actions taken on Aug. 3, 2006, in the Pashmul region of Afghanistan.

"Following an enemy strike against an outlying friendly position that resulted in numerous casualties, Sgt. Tower assembled the platoon medic and a third soldier and led them across 150 metres of open terrain, under heavy enemy fire, to render assistance. On learning that the acting platoon commander had perished, Sgt. Tower assumed command and led the successful extraction of the force under continuous small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. Sgt. Tower's courage and selfless devotion to duty contributed directly to the survival of the remaining platoon members."

Three other soldiers were awarded the Medal of Military Valour.

Sergeant Michael Denine's citation reads as follows: ". . . on May 17, while sustaining concentrated rocket-propelled grenade, machine gun and small arms fire, the main cannon and the machine gun on his light armoured vehicle malfunctioned. Under intense enemy fire, he recognized the immediate need to suppress the enemy fire and exited the air sentry hatch to man the pintle-mounted machine gun.

"Completely exposed to enemy fire, he laid down a high volume of suppressive fire, forcing the enemy to withdraw. Sgt. Denine's valiant action ensured mission success and likely saved the lives of his crew."

Master-Corporal Collin Fitzgerald, with B Company 1PPCLI out of Shilo, won his MMV for "outstanding selfless and valiant actions carried out on May 24, 2006, during an ongoing enemy ambush involving intense, accurate enemy fire.

"MC Fitzgerald repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire by entering and re-entering a burning platoon vehicle and successfully driving it off the roadway, permitting the remaining vehicles trapped in the enemy zone to break free. MC Fitzgerald's courageous and completely selfless actions were instrumental to his platoon's successful egress and undoubtedly contributed to saving the lives of his fellow platoon members."

Private Jason Lamont, a medic, earned his MMV on July 13, when "an element of the reconnaissance platoon came under heavy enemy fire from a compound located in Helmand Province, and was isolated from the rest of the platoon.

"During the firefight, another soldier was shot while attempting to withdraw back to the firing line and was unable to continue. Without regard for his personal safety, Pte. Lamont, under concentrated enemy fire and with no organized suppression by friendly forces, sprinted through open terrain to administer first aid. Pte. Lamont's actions demonstrated tremendous courage, selflessness and devotion to duty."

On the day that Sgt. Tower performed so nobly, Aug. 3, four young Canadians were killed in combat -- first, Corporal Chris Reid, and shortly afterward, Sergeant Vaughn Ingram, Corporal Bryce Jeffrey Keller and Pte. Dallaire -- a number of others were badly wounded, and still more felled by the devastating summer heat.

The scene, as it's been described for me in detail by participants from many corners of the battle, was nightmarish and horrific. Sgt. Tower was not only courageous, he remained calm enough to take care of his troops in ways great and small, and sufficiently devoted that once having led his men to safety, he was ready to go back out into the thick of the danger. As he told Commanding Officer Ian Hope and Regimental Sergeant-Major Randy Northrup, who themselves were awarded the Meritorious Service Cross, "Good to go, sir."

Oh, and Sgt. Ingram was Sgt. Tower's best friend.

The key to the SMV and MMV is a phrase I love, because it is so soldierly, so understated: The awards are given for an act of valour, self-sacrifice or devotion to duty "in the presence of the enemy."

Well, the boys are back home now, minus their friends and mates killed in action or accident, and not all of the living have their limbs or their eyes, and all are changed. There are many days when they must wonder if somehow, they aren't still in the presence of some enemy even less readily identifiable than the Taliban.

cblatchford@globeandmail.ca
End

Wounded Canadian back on duty in Afghanistan
Updated Sun. Oct. 29 2006 11:56 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061029/wounded_major_061029/20061029?hub=TopStories

A Canadian soldier wounded in a Sept. 4 friendly fire incident in Afghanistan was anxious to return to duty. He got his wish on Sunday as he landed at the Kandahar airfield. 

"I was coming back if I had to buy my own ticket," Major Matthew Sprague, from C Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment, told CTV News. 

It feels strange to be back, Sprague said, but he was determined. 

"If you're a soldier and you're in a battle and you get wounded, and you can get back to the battle, I think you have a duty to do so," he said. 

Within hours of landing, Sprague was putting on new battle gear over his healed wounds. 

Talking to CTV's Paul Workman, he pointed to the spot on a hillside near the Masum Ghar operating base where he and his troops came under friendly fire in September from a U.S. A-10 Warthog. 

Sprague's company were scattered on the hillside, just after dawn, that morning. The Canadian troops were burning garbage, which attracted the American aircraft's fire for a few short but deadly seconds. 

Medic Shannon Fretter recalled watching the jet swoop down. 

"I just ran for my medical bag and headed to the largest patch of blood and started working," Fretter said. 

It was a frightening moment. The mistaken attack killed one soldier and wounded more than 30 others. 

Sprague had a gaping wound in his head and shrapnel in his back, shoulder and buttocks. 

Afghanistan has been a very deadly mission for Sprague's C Company. A day before the friendly fire episode, four other soldiers were killed in a clash with the Taliban
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Breaking the Afghan drought
Paul Koring, 29/10/06 at 11:06 AM EST

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - It's hot, dusty and dry – especially dry. Very dry. As in "no beer". The big sprawling air base where about half of Canada's 2,300 soldiers are based in southern Afghanistan is an alcohol-free zone (except in the British and French officers' messes which are off-limits to Canadians). And its an alcohol free-mission. Almost. 

Last Saturday was one of those warmly-welcomed exceptions. Pallets of donated cold beer (Molsons, Coors and Moosehead) plus German sausage and blaring music made for Oktoberfest-lite in Afghanistan. 

Bavarians might not have recognized it, nor might most Canadians. But for the hundreds of Canadian soldiers pouring back a few wet ones (actually there was a strict limit of two) it was a deeply meaningful experience celebrating the nation's multi-ethnic heritage. As for the soldiers out in the field, they will – they were promised – get their two beers when they rotate into the main base for a few days relief.
End

Pakistani attack on al Qaeda kills 80 
Updated Mon. Oct. 30 2006 6:24 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061030/pakistan_alqaeda_061030/20061030?hub=World

Pakistani troops and helicopters firing missiles killed as many as 80 militants training at a religious school used as an al Qaeda training center near the Afghan border, officials said. 

Local leaders said all those slain when the school, or madrassa, was destroyed were civilians. 

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said initial estimates based on intelligence sources on the ground indicated that the attack killed about 80 suspected militants, who appeared to be in their 20s and were from Pakistan and other countries. 

"These militants were involved in actions inside Pakistan and probably in Afghanistan," Sultan told The Associated Press. 

The bodies of 20 men killed in the attack were lined up in a field near the madrassa, in Chingai village near Khar, the main town in the Bajur tribal district, before an impromptu burial attended by thousands of local people, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. 

Dozens of villagers sifted through the rubble of the madrassa, shifting blocks of smashed concrete and mud bricks aside to try to find survivors. Some picked up body parts scattered across the area and placed them in plastic bags normally used for fertilizer. 

"We heard helicopters flying in and then heard bombs," said one of the villagers, Haji Youssef. "We were all saddened by what we have seen." 

Among the dead was Liaquat Hussain, a local Islamic cleric who ran the madrassa, locals said. Several of his aides also died, they said. 

The attack came two days after 5,000 pro-Taliban tribesmen held an anti-American rally in the Bajur area near Damadola, a village close to the site of an alleged U.S. missile attack that killed several al Qaeda members and civilians in January.
More on link

Kandahar
Globe and Mail Update
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061025.wworldfact1025/BNStory/GlobeSportsOther/

Kandahar is one of the oldest cities that the world has known with a history that serves as a tumultuous record of the region itself.

Kandahar's history dates back to the ancient Sanskrit epic the Mahabharata, putting its origins as early as 5000 years ago, but the present city itself was founded by Alexander the Great in 330 BC.

The capital of Kandahar province, the city lies 450 km south-west of Afghanistan's capital Kabul, and has a population of about 316,000.

In its rich and turbulent history, rule of Kandahar has often changed hands. India and Persia long fought over the city, which was strategically located on the trade routes of central Asia. It was conquered by Arabs in the 7th century and by the Turk Ghaznavids in the 10th century. 

Genghis Khan sacked it in the 12th century, after which it became a major city of the Mongol empire until their defeat. Babur, founder of the Mughal empire of India, then took Kandahar in the 16th century, and that was later contested by the Persians and by the rulers of emerging Afghanistan, who made it the capital of their newly independent kingdom in 1748.

British forces occupied Kandahar twice during the 19th century, and during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, Kandahar witnessed heavy fighting that killed many civilians. After the Soviet withdrawal, the city slowly fell into the hands of the local Pushtun militia.

Then, in August 1994, the city was thrust back into the international spotlight as the Taliban emerged from the city and set out to conquer the country by applying its ultra-conservative version of Islamic Sharia law: television was banned, women were barred from attending school, driving and working outside the home.

Although they managed to hold 90 per cent of the country's territory, they were ostracized by the rest of the world for their policies, including their treatment of women and support of terrorists. 

The Taliban was ousted from power in December 2001 by international forces. Canada sent 40 elite anti-terrorist troops to Kandahar on Dec. 19, 2001. That was increased to 800 the following year and 1,800 in 2003.

September 2006 was the bloodiest month of combat Canada's military had endured since the Korean War. Canada has about 2,300 troops in Afghanistan as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is a coalition of NATO members and other contributing nations, deployed under the authority of the United Nations Security Council and under the command of NATO. Canada has agreed to keep troops in Afghanistan until 2009.
End

Afghanistan celebrates opening of Command and General Staff College
By COMBINED FORCES COMMAND – AFGHANISTAN, COALITION PRESS INFORMATION CENTER, KABUL, AFGHANISTAN 
Oct 30, 2006, 04:21
http://www.blackanthem.com/News/military200610_1819.shtml

Blackanthem Military News, KABUL , Afghanistan – The Afghan Command and General Staff College held a ceremony Oct. 28 marking the start of the first class to attend this school meant for generals in the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army.

“Over the next six months you will participate in the first ever Senior Command and Staff College offered by the Afghan National Army,” said Maj. Gen.  Robert Durbin, Commanding General, Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan, speaking to the students.  “You will increase your effectiveness by improving your knowledge about the art and science of leadership and command.”
            
The course is modeled after the U.S. Army and NATO Command and General Staff Colleges.
            
According to Col. Mohammad Yaqub, instructor at the Command and General Staff College, general officers from the police and army will learn strategic thinking, interagency cooperation and overall contingency planning.
            
“Throughout the six months, officers, ambassadors and strategic experts will speak to the students explaining how to think about the big picture,” said Yaqub.  “They will learn how to use every resource available to them and how to request additional assets from allies if the need arises.”
            
Durbin added, “This course of instruction will allow the Afghan National Army and Police the opportunity to see how they fit into the international political and military environment and how to effectively integrate non-governmental organizations and media with the full spectrum of military operations, from humanitarian relief to counterinsurgency.”
End

Britons want their troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan
http://www.bloggernews.net/11269

A survey conducted by The Daily Telegraph has shown that a majority of Britons support the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of the situation in both these countries. About 7, 500 British troops are currently in Iraq, commanding a number of coalition troops throughout the southeastern provinces of Iraq and another 4,500 British troops are serving in Afghanistan as a part of the NATO force in the country. 56% of 1,722 people surveyed want the British forces to the withdrawn from Iraq in 12 months time and 19% want the troops to be withdrawn immediately. 37% of the respondents want the troops to be pulled out of Iraq at some point within the next year.

The respondents gave a similar kind of response in the case of Afghanistan with more than 80% of the respondents supporting the troop withdrawal within a 12-month time frame, while the rest of the respondents want the withdrawal to happen immediately. More than three-fourth of the respondents were not happy with the way the British government is handling the situation in Afghanistan and 81% of the respondents believe that the British forces are over-stretched at the moment. The findings of this survey could put more pressure of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is already being criticized for his military policies on Iraq and Afghanistan.
More on link

Afghanistan: NATO Should Do More to Protect Civilians
30 Oct 2006 12:39:07 GMT Source: Human Rights Watch
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/HRW/fc76b329865a85e3ada3e36a571887de.htm

 (New York, October 30) ? NATO forces operating under the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force to Afghanistan (ISAF) need to take greater precautions to protect civilians and establish a program to compensate Afghans who have lost family members, are injured or suffer property damage due to their actions, Human Rights Watch said today. Recent ISAF operations have resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians across the country. Although an ISAF statement expressed regrets about civilian casualties, it denied any wrongdoing. 

"While NATO forces try to minimize harm to civilians, they obviously are not doing enough," said Sam Zarifi, Human Rights Watch's Asia research director. "NATO's tactics are increasingly endangering the civilians that they are supposed to be protecting, and turning the local population against them."

According to media reports, more than 60 civilians were killed this week in heavy fighting between NATO forces and insurgent forces in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. NATO has admitted that at least 12 civilians were killed in NATO air and ground operations in Panjwai. Another two dozen were reportedly killed last week during clashes in Kandahar and neighboring Helmand province, during which NATO used heavy aerial bombardment. 

On October 24 in southern Kunar province, NATO forces test-fired mortar rounds in a residential area that killed one girl and injured two other seven-year-old girls. And according to media reports, on July 31 in Helmand province, NATO aircraft fired upon a pickup truck, killing 13 members of a family, including nine children, who were trying to flee the fighting.
More on link

Backsliding in Afghanistan
Bit by bit, the U.S. is losing control in the country because of a resurgent Taliban, drought and inadequate aid.
October 30, 2006
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-afghan30oct30,0,3034225.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail

WITH WINTER approaching, all the indicators for Afghanistan have headed south. We are on the brink of losing Afghanistan to the resurgent Taliban and to the poverty and despair in which U.S. forces found it five years ago.

Among the many signs that the almost $12 billion the U.S. has poured into Afghanistan since 2003 for reconstruction has been neither sufficient nor well spent: Afghans will go hungry again this winter unless they receive massive food aid. Fierce fighting between NATO and Taliban forces in a wide swath of the south has conspired with drought to destroy farmers' crops. Both the drought and the renewed warfare were predicted. The Bush administration's failure to prevent either disaster stems from its stubborn view that Afghanistan can be fixed on the cheap.

ADVERTISEMENTDrought is an old enemy in Afghanistan, yet spending on water projects has lagged, as has all infrastructure work in a nation where 70% of the people are poor farmers. Without wells, ditches and modern irrigation techniques, the cycle of poverty that leaves families no choice but to grow poppies or starve will never be broken.

But in 2004, the administration invested only $23 million in water projects; it allocated $243 million to counter-narcotics and police training. Both sums, of course, are grossly inadequate. But the imbalance is telling. The administration has never matched its belated rhetorical commitment to "nation building" in Afghanistan with the troops and money that might have made that possible. 
More on link

70 militants die in attack at base in Afghanistan
Posted on Mon, Oct. 30, 2006 ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/news/world/15882977.htm

KABUL, Afghanistan - NATO and Afghan troops killed 70 suspected militants who attacked a military base in southern Afghanistan, the alliance said yesterday.

Some 100 to 150 militants attacked a base north of Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan on Saturday, said Maj. Luke Knittig, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. The alliance and Afghan troops fought back for several hours, killing 70 insurgents, Knittig said, upgrading an earlier estimate of 55 dead. One Afghan soldier was wounded. It was impossible to independently verify the death toll at the remote battle site.

Yesterday, a roadside blast killed one NATO soldier and wounded eight in Uruzgan, the alliance said. Three civilians were wounded.

Saturday's fighting in Uruzgan province came a day after an international human rights group said NATO's tactics increasingly endanger civilians and are turning the population against the Western alliance. NATO's top commander apologized Saturday for civilian deaths but said insurgents endanger civilians by hiding among them.
End

Stable Afghanistan part of Pak policy: PM  
http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=29843
   
ISLAMABAD: Federal ministers Sardar Yar Muhammad Rind and Muhammad Ejaz-ul-Haq met Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz separately here at the Prime Minister House Sunday evening. The ministers discussed with the Prime Minister overall political situation and important subjects pertaining to their respective ministries. 

According to the Prime Minister House Yar Muhammad Rind who is Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions told the prime minister that the registration of Afghan refugees is going on in a smooth manner that would provide their exact data and facilitate their repatriation to Afghanistan. 

The prime minister said on the occasion that a strong and stable Afghanistan is part of Pakistan's policy because we want Afghanistan to develop and prosper so that Afghan refugees in Pakistan can gradually return to their homeland and live a more settled life. He said the government of Pakistan would extend all possible assistance to enable them to resettle in their own country with the support from UNHCR. 

Shaukat Aziz assured Yar Mohammad Rind that the government would continue to strive for the uplift and welfare of Balochistan. Sardar Rind belongs to that province and heads the largest tribe of Balochs. The prime minister told the minister that the government has taken several steps to provide employment opportunities to the people of Balochistan including increasing their quota in federal jobs from 3.5 per cent to 5 per cent. "We are also focusing on the youth of Balochistan to provide them skills and to create self-employment opportunities for them," he added. 

The political situation in Balochistan in general also came under discussion during the meeting. Sardar Rind said that recent visit of the prime minister and his meetings with local notables and leaders were very well received by the local people. He also briefed the prime minister about the status of ongoing development schemes in his constituency. 

The Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Muhammad Ejazul Haq who called on the prime minister at the PM House, briefed him about the arrangements made by his ministry for Hajj and said that 150,000 persons will perform Hajj this year. He said that Hajj flights would start from 5th December. 

The prime minister asked the ministry to ensure proper arrangements for the accommodation, medical care and transportation of Hajjis and look after their other needs so that they can perform Hajj in a trouble-free manner. 
More on link

82nd Airborne, Afghan Army Share Ideas
By Sgt. Kevin Stabinsky, USA Special to American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1902

FORT POLK, La., Oct. 30, 2006 – Members of the Afghan National Army have conducted training on American military equipment to prepare for upcoming missions at the Joint Readiness Training Center here. 
Forty-two Afghan soldiers and police officers arrived here Oct. 23 to train with 82nd Airborne Division soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. 

“We’ve been working to familiarize (the Afghan soldiers) with our .50 caliber (machine gun), M107 sniper rifle and night vision goggles,” said U.S. Army Sgt. Colin Cleek, a member of the scout and sniper platoon of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. 

The 82nd Airborne paratroopers also trained the Afghan soldiers on map reading. 

“Though many of the 42 ANA soldiers grew up in a war-torn country and have combat experience, they did not have modern equipment to work with,” Army Staff Sgt. James Darnell, a platoon sergeant, said. 

At Fort Polk, the Afghans are learning tactics and how to use weapon systems. “The better they are trained, the better prepared they will be to counter the enemy,” Darnell said. 

The Afghan soldiers were pleased with the training and seemed eager to take on a greater responsibility for their country’s security, U.S. officials said. 
More on link

Afghanistan Celebrates Opening of Command and General Staff College
American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1915

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2006 – The Afghan Command and General Staff College held a ceremony Oct. 28 marking the start of the first class to attend the school, which teaches generals in the Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army. 
“Over the next six months, you will participate in the first ever senior Command and Staff College offered by the Afghan National Army,” U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Robert Durbin, commander of Combined Security Transition Command Afghanistan, told the first class of students. “You will increase your effectiveness by improving your knowledge about the art and science of leadership and command.” 

The course is modeled after the U.S. Army and NATO command and general staff colleges. 

Afghan Col. Mohammad Yaqub, an instructor at the Command and General Staff College, explained that general officers from the police and army will learn strategic thinking, interagency cooperation and overall contingency planning. 

“Throughout the six months, officers, ambassadors and strategic experts will speak to the students explaining how to think about the big picture,” Yaqub said. “They will learn how to use every resource available to them and how to request additional assets from allies if the need arises.” 
More on link


The Bundeswehr's Excesses in Afghanistan
DESECRATORS OF THE DEAD *See Pictures of Germany's AOR, etc below*
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,445356,00.html

The photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan have endangered the mission of an army deployed to win the "hearts and minds" of Afghans. The government has promised tough disciplinary actions. 

German State Secretary of Defense Christian Schmidt was practically gushing with praise for Germany's troops, calling them "citizens in uniform" with strong characters and rock-solid ethics. Schmidt, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), even ventured to characterize the Bundeswehr's soldiers as "well-balanced individuals."

That, at least, was the theory.

Schmidt's statement was released to the press last Wednesday. On the same day, the German public got a taste of a completely different reality when images were published showing German soldiers who had placed a skull onto the hood of a Mercedes "Wolf" all-terrain truck as a sort of war trophy, a soldier pressing his naked genitalia against a skull and soldiers using the remnants of skulls as decorations, all the while smiling for the camera.

The scandalous photos from Afghanistan, published by the tabloid Bild and distributed worldwide last week, have plunged the Bundeswehr into its biggest crisis in years. They fly in the face of a concept under which German soldiers are meant to serve as ambassadors of democracy, and under which they are meant to seek acceptance in crisis regions like Afghanistan and Lebanon, a strategy intended to boost their own security. Only if it manages to win the "hearts and minds" of the local population, says Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), can the German military prevail over the enemy in such countries.
More on link


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## GAP (30 Oct 2006)

*More articles found 30 October 2006*


AFGHANISTAN: Drought-stricken farmers appeal for urgent assistance
30 Oct 2006 18:00:41 GMT Source: IRIN
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/4e70e51b2038a6f9aac4704ffce9fa72.htm

MAIMANA, 30 October (IRIN) - Farmers in the northwestern Afghan province of Faryab say they are desperate for help to survive the winter after the devastating drought that destroyed this year's crops.

Their calls come after last week's appeal to donors from the government and from the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) to provide urgent help for those in need. 

For now, the lost harvest is forcing farmers like Ali Mohammad, 45, from Pashtoon Kot district, to sell their emaciated animals in an effort to feed their families after crops failed two months ago.

"I only got 70 kg from my wheat yield this year [compared to] nearly 900 kg in a good year. So in one month we will be starving and winter is getting closer," Mohammad said, as he jostled with dozens of other farmers trying to sell their livestock at the provincial capital's market.

As a result of the drought, there has been a 55 percent loss in rain-fed wheat in provinces in the north and northeast compared with 2005, according to Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Kabul.

Production of wheat, which is a third rain-fed and accounts for 80 percent of all cereal output, is expected to fail sharply. Official estimates put total output in 2005 at 3.7 million mt, down 13 percent on 2005, while total cereals production is expected at 4.8 million mt compared to domestic demand of around 6 million mt. Faryab province, home to 1 million people, has been hit particularly hard by the drought as almost 90 percent of agricultural land is watered by rain, leaving an estimated 180,000 farmers without water.

"Farmers have lost over 80 percent of their rain-fed wheat crops due to very low precipitation this year," said Assadullah Bahar, head of the provincial agriculture and livestock department of Faryab in Maimana city.
 More on link

EU, Russia express concern over worsening drug situation in Afghanistan Brussels
Oct 30, IRNA  EU-Russia-Council 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0610302261181608.htm

The European Union and Russia held the fifth meeting of their Permanent Partnership Council on Freedom, Security and Justice in Helsinki Monday. 

The two sides "welcomed the development of effective cooperation in the fight against terrorism, including issues such as 
radicalisation and recruitment, cyber-crime and the use of the internet for illegal purposes, terrorist financing," said a joint statement issued after the meeting this afternoon. 

The EU and Russia "welcomed the strengthening of cooperation in the sphere of drugs and expressed their common concern about the deteriorating drugs situation in Afghanistan." 
"They stressed the need for further close and broad cooperation at the international level," noted the statement. 

At the meeting, the EU was represented by Finland's Minister of Justice Leena Luhtanen and Minister of the Interior Kari Rajam, the current EU Presidency, Finland, Franco Frattini, EU Commissioner responsible for Justice, Freedom and Security, among others. 

Russia was represented by Viktor Ivanov, aide to the Russia President Rashid Nurgaliyev, Interior Minister, Vladimir Ustinov, Justice minister and Yury Chaika, Prosecutor General. 

The meeting discussed movement of persons, migration and asylum, organised crimes including money laundering, trafficking in human beings, and corruption . 
More on link

AFGHANISTAN: FATHER OF ITALIAN JOURNALIST LAUNCHES APPEAL
Rome, 30 Oct. (AKI) 
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Security&loid=8.0.354776785&par= 
   
 The father of an Italian photojournalist kidnapped in Afghanistan launched an appeal on Monday for his liberation on Italy's first Islamic radio, 'Radiocom Islam'. Commenting on a rally Saturday promoted in the central Italian city of Ancona by the country's largest Muslim organisation, the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), Marcello Torsello said: "The message I am trying to send out is that Gabriele is one of them, like the Afghan people, he is a Muslim, he loves this population, and is working so that the world will know how they are living and how much help they need."

Gabriele Torsello, a Muslim convert, was kidnapped between October 12 and 14 while he was travelling from Lashkar Gah, the capital of the volatile Helmand province to neighbouring Kandahar - the two parts of the country where fighting between insurgents and NATO forces is fiercest.

The kidnappers had warned they would kill him unless the Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman, who has been granted asylum in Italy, was not handed over to an Islamic court for trial and Italy's 1,800 troops left Afghanistan.

Italian charity in Afghanistan, Emergency, which is involved in negotiations for Torsello's release, said it had spoken with the abductors last Monday after the ultimatum expired and it had guaranteed the photojournalist was in good condition. 

Italian mediators, who have reportedly contacted Torsello's captors through Emergency, are allegedly ready to grant humanitarian aid in exchange for his release.

Last week, UCOII made an appeal for Torsello's release on the Arabic language satellite television channels, Al Jazeera and the US government-funded Al Hurra. 
More on link

Pak FM to visit Afghanistan to review jirga modalities Islamabad
Oct 30, IRNA Pakistan-Kasuri 
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0610304652183401.htm

Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri will visit Afghanistan soon to firm up modalities for convening of grand Jirgas or council of elders on both sides of the Durand Line, the Foreign Office said on Monday. 

Foreign Office spokesperson, Ms. Tasnim Aslam said in her weekly news briefing in Islamabad that an understanding for such Jirgas was reached between President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai at a meeting hosted by President Bush in Washington. 

The spokesperson expressed her surprise on a reported statement by NATO commanders that attacks inside Afghanistan have increased following North Waziristan peace agreement. 

She said these remarks have come at a time when NATO itself was trying to conclude similar deals inside Afghanistan and one or two agreements have already been finalized in different areas of Afghanistan. 

The spokesperson said the challenges facing Afghanistan cannot be addressed by trying to shift responsibility to Pakistan. 

A comprehensive approach focused on reconstruction, reconciliation and willing hearts and minds was necessary to resolve the Afghan problem. 

Siachen: To a question she said Pakistan believes that all issues including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir and Siachen are resolvable given political will and commitment. 

In this connection, she pointed out Pakistan and India were close to signing an agreement on Siachen in 1989. 

Responding to another question she said Pakistan condemns human rights violations in the Indian-controlled Kashmir. 
More on link

Jones: NATO’s Afghanistan Success Wasn’t Achieved Overnight
By Gerry J. Gilmore American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1943

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2006 – NATO’s security and reconstruction achievements in Afghanistan are the result of years of planning and incremental implementation, the organization’s supreme allied commander in Europe said in the Afghan capital Oct. 28. 
Afghanistan was not even on NATO’s mission list in 2003, Marine Gen. James L. Jones, who was visiting the country, told reporters at a Kabul news conference. 

Yet today, Afghanistan “is NATO’s most ambitious and most important mission,” the general said. NATO’s International Security Assistance Force helps provide stability across Afghanistan by combating Taliban extremists and other criminals and assisting in national reconstruction efforts. 

Yet, “it takes time to generate political will and the capabilities of the alliance to engage at these strategic distances,” the four-star general said. 

Jones, who also is commander of U.S. European Command, recalled that NATO began its Afghanistan mission in Kabul in 2003. ISAF operations expanded into northern Afghanistan in 2004, and then moved west in 2005. 

The ISAF took responsibility for Afghanistan’s southern region on July 31, and earlier this month it assumed responsibility for the eastern portion. Today, about 20,000 NATO forces are in Afghanistan, with 37 countries involved in reconstruction efforts. 

“So, we have spent the better part of the last three years building the force, raising political support, getting the international decisions so that we could get to where we are,” Jones explained. 

The southern part of Afghanistan is the traditional home of the Taliban. And, there was a shortage of anti-terrorist troops in the south until NATO forces moved into the area, Jones noted. 

“Since July of this year, we have … put as many as 9,000 NATO troops into the south,” which disrupted the activities of the Taliban, drug traffickers and other criminals, Jones said. 

“We’ve upset any number of things that are acting as cancers” against Afghanistan’s recovery and reconstruction, Jones said. 

NATO forces soundly defeated Taliban troops and other criminal elements in recent fighting in southern Afghanistan during Operation Medusa, the general said. There’s been a marked decrease in insurgent activity in southern Afghanistan since Operation Medusa concluded, he said. 
More on link


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## The Bread Guy (31 Oct 2006)

*Wounded Canadian back on duty in Afghanistan*
CTV.ca, 29 Oct 06
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20061029/wounded_major_061029/20061029?hub=TopStories

A Canadian soldier wounded in a Sept. 4 friendly fire incident in Afghanistan was anxious to return to duty. He got his wish on Sunday as he landed at the Kandahar airfield. "I was coming back if I had to buy my own ticket," Major Matthew Sprague, from C Company of the Royal Canadian Regiment, told CTV News. It feels strange to be back, Sprague said, but he was determined. "If you're a soldier and you're in a battle and you get wounded, and you can get back to the battle, I think you have a duty to do so," he said. Within hours of landing, Sprague was putting on new battle gear over his healed wounds ....



*Latest contingent of soldiers from CFB Valcartier leaves for Afghanistan *  
Martin Ouellet, Canadian Press, 30 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=2dc899d2-bb98-457f-bc93-704d68170634&rfp=dta

A contingent of 76 soldiers from Canadian Forces Base Valcartier left Monday evening for a dangerous mission of several months in Kandahar, the scene of violent clashes with insurgent Taliban fighters. "The army is respected throughout the world now," Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told soldiers before their 22-hour flight to Afghanistan. "I would say that you are the best army we have in the world. You are the best-trained soldiers and I know that you're going to succeed." O'Connor said the soldiers are embarking on a noble mission. "The people of Afghanistan need our help. They have spent more than 30 years either under the Soviet yoke or civil war or under the Taliban."  More than 50 of the soldiers will protect rebuilding projects in the dangerous Kandahar region during their nine-month stay ....


*'We're ready as we're going to be'*
Soldiers to train Afghan national army and assist in rebuilding projects  
Mark Cardwell, Montreal Gazette, 31 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=6607e450-a642-4a18-afcb-8b60d1d9bee0&k=36372

It was a send-off that Pte. Jonathon Leduc says he won't soon forget.  "It really makes you realize how important this mission is," the 20-year-old infantryman said about the throng of senior politicians and military officers who turned out to wish him and 73 others best wishes as they boarded a plane for Afghanistan at the airport here last night.  Fifty-three of the soldiers from the Valcartier Canadian Forces Base will bolster a provincial reconstruction team - or PRT - that is providing protection at Canadian bases in the southern area of Afghanistan around Kandahar.  They will be in country for nine months.  The other 21 soldiers will, for the next four months, be part of a military monitoring team that is training and mentoring members of the Afghan army ....



*More News on CAN in AFG *here



*Canada commits six jets to NATO*
CF-18s could end up in Afghanistan 
Critics accuse government of flip-flop
Bruce Campion-Smith, Toronto Star, 31 Oct 06
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1162248614282&call_pageid=968332188492

Just a month after the defence department denied any plans to dispatch CF-18 fighter jets to Afghanistan, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has opened the door to a possible deployment.  With opposition critics accusing the government of a flip-flop, O'Connor told the Commons yesterday: "Recently we made a commitment to NATO that we will have six CF-18s ready for NATO if they require us. That is why the money was spent to fix up these CF-18s."  The Toronto Star revealed last month that Ottawa was making preparations in case its fighter jets were needed in Afghanistan. That included a $1.9 million contract with the U.S. government for "deployment support" for the CF-18s ....



*More troops at risk, general warns * 
Ottawa says CF-18s ready for Afghanistan  
Paul Koring, Globe & Mail, 31 Oct 06
http://www.theglobeandmail.com//servlet/story/RTGAM.20061031.wxafghanfraser31/BNStory/Afghanistan/home
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More Canadian soldiers will be killed but the cost in blood must be paid in Afghanistan unless Canadians want to fight Islamic jihadists at home, Brigadier-General David Fraser said yesterday as he prepared to hand over command of NATO and Canadian forces in war-torn southern Afghanistan.  His comments came as Canada has begun to consider increasing its contributions of military hardware, such as buying protective gear for Afghanistan's police force, as well as readying tanks, helicopters and CF-18 fighter jets for possible use in the country.  "I don't want my sons to be doing what I'm doing here on the shores of Canada," the general said in an interview.  "This is the home of the Taliban, the Taliban are a threat to nations around the world, including our own," Gen. Fraser said ....



*$203M more for Afrganistan*
Increased Taliban threat cited
Alan Findlay, Edmonton Sun, 31 Oct 06
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2006/10/31/pf-2185892.html

The federal government detailed $203 million in previously unanticipated National Defence spending in Afghanistan yesterday, citing an increased threat posed by the Taliban. "With the decision to continue the leadership role in Afghanistan, the threat posed by enemy forces has evolved and increased, putting the safety of Canadian military and civilian personnel working in the region at high risk," states the supplementary booklet of Treasury Board spending estimates ....


*$1B needed to sustain Forces*
Tories: Afghan mission, new equipment leave military short on funds for fiscal 2006Eric Beauchesne, Ottawa Citizen, 31 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=e8287a00-2e0d-46cf-945a-bb82a09efcd4

The government is seeking Parliament's approval to spend nearly $1 billion to sustain Canada's military through the rest of this fiscal year, including hundreds of millions of dollars to support the mission in Afghanistan and to buy new equipment.  Those are among the supplementary spending estimates, totalling $9.2 billion, presented yesterday to Parliament ....


*Tabling of the 2005-2006 Supplementary Estimates (A)*
Treasury Board news release, 27 Oct 06
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/media/nr-cp/2005/1027_e.asp

Supplementary Estimates (A), 
2005-2006, 27 Oct 06 (.pdf)

The Government of Canada today tabled in the House of Commons the 2005-2006 Supplementary Estimates (A) totalling $13.5 billion.  "These Supplementary Estimates are essential in delivering on the Government's priorities and moving forward on its agenda, as articulated in the Budget 2005 and in the Speech from the Throne," said Minister Alcock.  These Supplementary Estimates are within and consistent with the $196.4 billion in overall planned spending for 2005-2006, as set out in the February 23, 2005 Budget.  With these Supplementary Estimates, the government is seeking Parliament's approval to spend $7 billion in expenditures that were not sufficiently developed or known to be reflected in the Main Estimates tabled on February 25, 2005 ....


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## cplcaldwell (31 Oct 2006)

_Just found this a bit old. Relates to other threads on Citations and Decorations. _ 

*Hero Para is in line for VC*
Manchester Evening News
Chris Osuh
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/225/225580_hero_para_is_in_line_for_vc.html

A PARATROOPER from Manchester has been nominated for the Victoria Cross for saving the life of a wounded American soldier while under fire from the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Private Peter McKinley, 21, could become only the second living serviceman in 40 years to be awarded Britain's highest military honour.

He endured a 15-minute barrage of grenades and machine-gun fire as he treated the US serviceman during one of the fiercest battles of the current campaign fought by the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment.

Army chiefs are now putting his name forward for a VC for the "massive act of bravery". Pte McKinley was one of 100 Paras sent from their base to rescue an American supply convoy ambushed by Taliban fighters at Sangin in northern Helmand province.

The Paras formed a defensive cordon around the Americans, but as night descended, dozens of Taliban, armed with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, launched a blistering attack. Two American soldiers were badly wounded when grenades tore into the jeep where they were sheltering.

First-aider Pte McKinley heard their desperate screams for help and ran across open ground to the vehicle as enemy rounds whistled overhead.

*Training*
He found the American sergeant had suffered serious facial injuries and other wounds including a broken arm, a neck injury, and fragments in his legs.

Pte McKinley said: "They were still firing at us when I ran back to the Humvee. The sergeant was in a pretty bad way but my training just kicked in and I spent about 15 minutes looking after his wounds, stemming the blood and keeping his airway clear."

Major Will Pike, the commander of A Company, described the soldier's actions as "massively impressive". He added: "He was very brave while completely disregarding his own safety. He also treated the American soldier beyond the level that as team medic he is expected to perform. We have a lot of private soldiers who are very young and just out of training but have proved very steady under fire."

To earn the VC soldiers have to display conspicuous bravery or daring or perform a prominent "act of valour or self-sacrifice in the face of the enemy".

An MoD spokesman said: "We can confirm Pte McKinley provided medical treatment to a US soldier whilst under sustained attack."


© Copyright 2006 Manchester Evening News. If you wish to use this article for commercial purposes please contact our syndication department.

_*Shared Under the Fair Dealings Provisions of the Copyright Act, RSC*_


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## The Bread Guy (31 Oct 2006)

*No plans for CF18s in Afghanistan: O'Connor*
mytelus.com, 31 Oct 06
http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cbc/canada_home&articleID=2435394

There are no plans to deploy Canadian CF-18 fighter jets to Afghanistan, Minister of National Defence Gordon O'Connor said Tuesday.  O'Connor was responding to questions in Parliament about newspaper reports that Canada had agreed to send six CF-18s to NATO if the Alliance asked for them.  It's the second time this week that the issue has come up in the House of Commons ....



*Alberta prairie stands for Afghan desert as New Brunswick troops prepare  *   
Bob Weber, Canadian Press, 31 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=070c9ffc-b277-4abb-98a2-e30e364068df&k=63347

The frostbitten Alberta prairie was a poor facsimile of Kandahar's dusty desert, but the bullets were real enough. About 150 soldiers from the New Brunswick-based Royal Canadian Regiment were engaged in their final round of live-fire training Tuesday before heading to Afghanistan, a deployment that their commanders expect will include both fighting and development work - and the embedding of Canadian soldiers with the Afghan military. "The new component we're putting on the ground is the Observer-Mentor Liaison Team," said Col. Mike Cessford, who will assume deputy command of Task Force Afghanistan next February ....



*Who pays for Afghanistan's Tim Hortons?*
Canadian taxpayer foots nearly $4-million bill
Hannah Boudreau, Brian Liu, globalnational.com,  Ottawa Citizen, 31 Oct 06
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=925e280d-e9fc-402e-a121-151618ddd9d6&k=17995

....  through Access to Information requests, Global National has learned that it took a lot more than thirsty soldiers longing for a "double-double" morale boost to open the Afghan coffee shop -- to the tune of nearly $4 million in Canadian taxpayers' dollars .... Upon the March announcement of the plans to open the Kandahar branch, Tim Hortons announced in a press release that it would convert a trailer normally used for restaurant renovations and deliver it to the Canadian Forces for use in Afghanistan.

Documents obtained now show that in fact, two trailers were purchased and retrofitted at the cost of $378,000. And renting the two Illyushin-76 cargo planes to transport the trailers over? The Canadian government picked up the $425,000 tab for that too.

The costs don't stop there: 

- First delivery of ingredients: $1.4 million
- Sustaining the business through the first year: $550,000
- Engineering work to establish the outlet: $350,000
- Operation and maintenance: $150,000
- Salaries: $650,000
- Training: $30,000 ....



*More on CAN in AFG** Here*



*Nato force too weak for early Afghan success, says general*
Rachel Morarjee, Financial Times, 1 Nov 06
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/393dc05c-694e-11db-b4c2-0000779e2340.html

Nato does not have enough troops in Afghanistan to ensure an early victory over Taliban militants, the alliance's military commander in the country said yesterday.  "If you said to me, if your aim is to win, I'd say no. I haven't got enough [to] win this, say, in the next six months, but I can continue to make sufficient improvements to keep the people here confident in us and in their government," General David Richards said in an interview with the Financial Times.  Gen Richards said that with the 31,000 Nato forces currently in Afghanistan it would be possible to "persuade through substantive improvement, the people of this country that we are making real progress ....



*U.S., Afghanistan to hold strategic dialogue next year *  
Reuters, 31 Oct 06
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061101/ts_nm/afghan_usa_dc

The United States will hold senior-level talks with Afghanistan next year, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday, stressing American support for Kabul as it confronts rising violence from the Islamist Taliban. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said the spike in clashes and suicide bombings in Afghanistan this year did not represent a threat to President Hamid Karzai's government.  "While we've seen an increase in the number of attacks in the regions and some of the provincial cities and even in Kabul and Kandahar themselves over the past few months, we do not believe that these attacks pose a strategic threat to the central government," he said.  Burns, who will hold strategic talks with Karzai in Kabul in January, said the clashes also were the result of NATO and other allied troops "taking the battle to the Taliban, along with the Afghan forces" in southern and eastern parts of the country ....



*Hekmatyar Stresses Expulsion of Foreign Troops*
Zarghona Salihi, Pajhwok Afghan News, 7 Oct 06
http://www.afgha.com/?q=en/node/1344

Leader of the Hezb-i-Islami Jihadi party Gul Badin Hekmatyar has termed expulsion of foreign forces and formation of a government without participants of Bon Conference the only way to end war in Afghanistan.  A three-page statement issued by Hekmatyar at fifth anniversary of US attack on Taliban, a copy of which is available with Pajhwok Afghan News, stated participants of Bon Conference had inked invasion of Afghanistan.  Representatives of several Jihadi factions except Hekmtyar and Taliban attend the Bon Conference that led to the formation of first interim, transitional and finally elected government of Hamid Karzai ....


*Afghanistan will be ‘third Vietnam’ for US: Hekmatyar*
Daily Times (PAK), 31 Oct 06
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\10\31\story_31-10-2006_pg7_26

Afghanistan will prove a “third Vietnam” for the United States and Afghans will continue their jihad against the coalition forces, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in a four-page statement issued from an undisclosed location on Monday.  Hekmatyar said that he was happy at the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq, which he said showed that the US was being defeated there and in Afghanistan. He said that US President George Bush had compared Iraq with Vietnam and claimed that Afghanistan would “become the third Vietnam for the US after Iraq” ....


*Afghanistan will be third Vietnam for US: Hekmatyar*
IRNA, 31 Oct 06
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0610317851175642.htm

Afghanistan will prove a third Vietnam for the United States and Afghans will continue their jihad against the coalition forces, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar said in a four-page statement issued from an undisclosed location on Monday. According to the Pakistani daily 'Daily Times', Hekmatyar said that he was happy at the deaths of US soldiers in Iraq, which, he said, showed that the US was being defeated there and in Afghanistan ....



*Three German soldiers confess involvement in Afghan skull scandal*
People's Daily Online (CHN), 1 Nov 06
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200611/01/eng20061101_316993.html

Three German soldiers have confessed their involvement in a scandal in which German peacekeepers in Afghanistan were shown in newspaper photos as playing with human skulls, the Luebecker Nachrichten daily reported on Tuesday.  Gen. Christof Munzlinger, the commander of Germany's 18th Armored Brigade, was quoted as saying that the three soldiers "have confessed completely to the case, and have shown remorse over the incident."  He said the soldiers were at a unit in Bad Segeberg in northern Germany, without identifying them ....


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