Articles found 4 August 2006
Hillier reassures troops leaving for Afghanistan
Canadian Press 4 August 2006 Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060804.whilliera0804/BNStory/Afghanistan/home
Trenton, Ont. — The latest Canadian troops heading into an increasingly dangerous mission in Afghanistan are embarking on a worthwhile cause, the country's top soldier said Friday as planes departed for the war-torn region from a military base in eastern Ontario.
Gen. Rick Hillier addressed 140 soldiers at CFB Trenton before they boarded the military plane — one day after four of their comrades died in combat.
“What I said was, this mission is worth while...and you are the right kind of folks to do it,” Gen. Hillier told the media.
“You have the right training, you have the leadership, you have the equipment, you have the preparation and you have the support to go out and do that mission,” the chief of Canada's defence staff said, repeating what he told the departing soldiers in a private meeting.
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Canadians struck again in convoy
TERRY PEDWELL Canadian Press Globe & Mail 4 August 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060804.wafghcan0804/BNStory
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — A Canadian military convoy was rocked Friday by two roadside bombs in southern Afghanistan, the second day running that Canadian soldiers have been targeted by insurgents and a day after Canada suffered its highest-ever number of casualties in the war-torn country.
There were no Canadian injuries or apparent equipment damage. It wasn't immediately clear whether there were civilian casualties.
Friday's dangers came amid revelations from NATO that a Canadian patrol had been the intended target of a deadly marketplace suicide bombing Thursday in nearby Panjwayi that killed 21 Afghans, including children. Five Canadian soldiers were slightly injured in the blast, NATO said.
On Friday, the Canadian convoy was hit by two improvised explosive devices (IEDs), a Canadian military official said.
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The bloodiest day yet
Four soldiers killed, 10 others injured as Taliban target Canadians in a series of attacks
TIM ALBONE AND TERRY PEDWELL Globe and Mail Update 4 August 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060804.wafghan04/BNStory/Afghanistan/home
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN — It was the bloodiest day yet for Canadians in Afghanistan.
Four Canadians were killed and 10 injured Thursday. Three of them died in what one soldier described as a well-planned ambush.
Stealthy Taliban forces had formed a horseshoe around the troops holed up in a tiny schoolhouse surrounded by land mines, then launched a volley of rocket-propelled grenades their way.
As one soldier poked his head out of a doorway, he recalled, a grenade swished by him and scorched his forearm. Turning his head, he watched as the grenade struck a wall and the spray of shrapnel killed three of his comrades.
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Mission poses risks for Tories in Quebec
Public is skeptical of Afghan policy DANIEL LEBLANC 4 August 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060804.TORIESANAL04/TPStory
OTTAWA -- The toll of the Afghan operation has been deadly -- 23 victims so far -- but only one of them has been based in Quebec, Corporal Jason Patrick Warren, who was buried yesterday.
The situation could be very different in a year when the Royal 22nd Regiment from Valcartier, Que., also known as the Vandoos, takes over as the main Canadian force in Afghanistan.
The deployment could have an impact on the timing of the next election, given that the road to a Conservative majority entails the victory of at least a few more seats in Quebec, where the war is unpopular. Will the Conservatives want to go to the polls before then? Will the opposition try to hold off? Can an international issue dominate a federal election?
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THE FALLEN
COLIN FREEZE Shawna Richer and Canadian Press Globe & Mail 4 Aug 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060804.AFGHANFALLEN04/TPStory/
Two summers ago, Corporal Christopher Reid was perched safely atop the world, at a military spy station not far from the North Pole.
On those summer days when the sun never set, he and his fellow soldiers kept the outpost as Canadian as they could. Via a satellite connection, they watched the Calgary Flames make a run for the Stanley Cup.
They celebrated Canada Day with "polar bear" dips in a newly unfrozen lake.
Yet from that isolated outpost, the soldier's thoughts often flew to the heat, dust and danger of far-away Afghanistan, the war-ravaged land where he truly yearned to be
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Bomb attacks rock Canadian convoy in Afghanistan
Updated Fri. Aug. 4 2006 7:44 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060803/afghanistan_bomb_060804/20060804?hub=World
A Canadian military convoy was rocked by two bombing attacks in southern Afghanistan Friday, just a day after four Canadian soldiers were killed.
The convoy was hit by two improvised explosive devices and one civilian vehicle was engulfed in flames on the main highway west of Kandahar city
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Paras died after 'carefully set ambush' brought armoured convoy to a halt
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent (Filed: 03/08/2006)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/03/wafg03.xml
Three soldiers killed in Afghanistan this week were involved in a fierce battle after their vehicles were attacked in "a carefully set ambush" involving heavy weapons and explosives, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday.
The men were part of a convoy of 12 armoured vehicles ferrying supplies to one of the outposts of Paras fighting the Taliban in what is proving to be the highly dangerous northern Helmand province.
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Opposition urges review of Afghan mandate
Shift to heavy-duty combat requires talks with NATO allies, Liberal critic says
JEFF SALLOT and CAMPBELL CLARK AND GLORIA GALLOWAY
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060804.AFGHANCAN04/TPStory/
OTTAWA, CORNWALL, ONT. -- Canada's mission in Afghanistan has turned from peacekeeping to combat and must be "refocused," Liberal defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh said yesterday.
"This has become almost totally a combat mission. And that was not the intention," Mr. Dosanjh said. "We need to sit down with our NATO allies and refocus the mission."
Four Canadian soldiers were killed yesterday in Afghanistan in two separate incidents. Corporal Christopher Jonathan Reid of Truro, N.S., died overnight after a Canadian light-armoured vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. About 10 hours later, three soldiers -- including Sergeant Vaughn Ingram and Cpl. Bryce Jeffrey Keller -- were killed and six were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack in Pashmul, about 25 kilometres southwest of Kandahar. The third victim's name has not been released.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor talked about the national sorrow over the deaths of Canadian troops on foreign soil, but both expressed a resolve to continue the fight.
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Preparing for a Black Hawk Down moment
Jonathan Kay, National Post Published: Monday, March 20, 2006
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=8566c8bc-4fb9-4d1d-98f1-3cad832a5108&p=2
Harper should be laying the necessary groundwork before such a moment arrives. As others have noted on these pages, Canadian NGOs and government agencies are modest to a fault about the good work we're doing in Afghanistan. That must change. Canadians will be more willing to endure casualties if our deployment is seen not as an isolated expeditionary force but as what it is -- the security arm of a broader relief effort.
Second, Harper should reverse course by agreeing to a full Parliamentary debate and free vote on Afghanistan. Even if the biggest push for this is coming from the NDP, which may use the occasion for pacifistic posturing, it's still a good idea.
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Soldiers prepare to replace colleagues overseas
As news of devastating attacks trickles in
Joel Kom, CanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen Friday, August 04, 2006
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=69dc59f2-5283-405a-a67a-70734a0fe2d0
CFB PETAWAWA, Ont. - One has a medallion of the patron saint of soldiers. One carries a four-leaf clover. One tucks in a picture of his family. Another packs one of her husband's old T-shirts.
They're the charms, comforts and reminders of home that Canadian soldiers from this military base will carry with them as they walk along Afghanistan's rough terrain for the next six months, navigating what has become Canada's deadliest mission in recent memory.
Dressed in everything from shorts and T-shirts to baseball caps, sport shirts and jeans, 121 soldiers loaded their duffel bags, metal cases and backpacks Thursday in preparation for a three- to four-day journey, beginning today, that will take them to Kandahar and into the heart of the Canada-led fighting against the Taliban. What they didn't know at the time was that the day was going to be the bloodiest yet for their comrades already in the thick of the battle.
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Britain loses hijack Afghans case
Friday, August 4, 2006 Posted: 1138 GMT (1938 HKT) CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/08/04/uk.afghans.reut/index.html
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- The British government lost a legal battle on Friday over the status of nine Afghans who hijacked a plane, flew it to London and threatened to blow it up if they were denied political asylum.
The Court of Appeal ruled that the government was wrong when it granted the hijackers only "temporary admission" to Britain once the hijack crisis was resolved.
It should have given them "discretionary leave," an enhanced status which entitles them to work in Britain and receive state benefits, and also makes their deportation more difficult.
The government said it was dismayed by Friday's ruling and would toughen its laws in response.
"I am disappointed," Home Secretary (Interior Minister) John Reid said in a statement.
"I continue to believe that those whose actions have undermined any legitimate claim to asylum should not be granted leave to remain in the United Kingdom."
"I intend to legislate at the earliest opportunity to take new powers to deny people in this position leave to remain."
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Seriously, this means war
CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD Globe and Mail 4 Aug 2006
http://www.theglobeandmail.com//servlet/story/LAC.20060804.AFGHANBLATCH04/TPStory/National/columnists
The bleeding was barely stopped when the bleating began.
On the day of Canada's most appalling losses yet in Afghanistan -- four soldiers killed in three separate but linked attacks and 10 injured -- it took but an hour for the open-line radio talk shows in Toronto to fill up with the cries of those who would pull the plug on the mission there, yank the troops home immediately, have the nation revert to its mythical, if cherished, peacekeeping role and go back to that sterling foreign policy of keeping fingers crossed.
I thought of what Lieutenant-Colonel John Conrad, the boss of the combat logistics arm of the Canadian battle group, said not so long ago in Kandahar.
We were talking about the Canadian mission when Col. Conrad said, "Each man and woman has asked, 'Why am I here? Why did I volunteer?' " but most, he guessed, had come to the same conclusion he had. "For all that we're here to help Afghans," he said, "we're also here to protect our country."
It was only later, when I was going through the notes of that conversation, that I realized he was the first person I know to put it so squarely.
If it is a thought that might offer some comfort to the families of the dead -- that their sons did not die only in service of a Biblical-era faraway foreign land where violence is as reflexive as breathing, but also in service to our own -- it might also stand as a reminder that notwithstanding the absence of a formal declaration, Canada is at war.
So are the other seven nations of the now-NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, and so are the Americans and British in Iraq, and so is Israel in Lebanon.
So are the Western democracies which do not have troops in any of these hot spots, but which also prize freedom, opportunity, education, tolerance and diversity.
And so in his way was Tarek Fatah, the moderate Canadian Muslim who this week resigned from the Muslim Canadian Congress, citing threats and a climate of intimidation that led him to fear for his safety and the safety of his wife and children.
The common denominator is thuggery -- whether it is the Taliban yesterday gleefully claiming credit for the spate of attacks that also left 21 Afghan civilians dead and 13 wounded, or Hezbollah launching rockets from private homes, or Mr. Fatah being labelled an apostate by those who know full well the peril that engenders -- and a nihilism so naked it is stunning.
The rocket-propelled grenade attack that yesterday left three Canadians dead, for instance, was launched from a school. In most civilized parts of the planet, schools are places of learning, places for children, places of peace; to the Taliban, and to all those who would keep their fellow Muslims in perpetual poverty and ignorance so that they might be made into martyrs, schools are buildings to be burned down, trashed, defiled and turned into launch pads by those who, if they understand nothing else about the West, understand that Western soldiers, with their regard for education and soft spot for children, must struggle on some level to seriously regard the school as a likely spot to set up an ambush.
Some of the fighters in Afghanistan are hardline Taliban ideologues, and some are drugs bosses and tribal warlords who align themselves out of convenience.
But some are from other countries, fighting for a pan-Islamic cause. The first time I was in Kandahar, last spring, two would-be suicide bombers blew themselves up prematurely in a graveyard: They were from Pakistan, as documents and cellphones retrieved from their bodies proved. When I was in Kandahar last month, in what has become known as the Battle of Pashmul and was also the site of yesterday's attacks, one of the arrested fighters was a Chechen man.
What business does a Chechen have trying to kill Canadians in Afghanistan? Oh yes, I forgot: The glory of Islam.
Mr. Fatah's sin was to be an outspoken liberal in a religion that has increasingly little stomach for it, even in Canada.
His resignation came after he was singled out in a recent e-mail campaign aimed at painting him as an illegitimate voice for Muslims, but he says the threats against him -- including an instance where he was surrounded by a mob of shrieking young Muslim men in Toronto -- go back years. It appears he was particularly unsettled by a June 30 article, written by Mohamed Elmasry, the director of the Canadian Islamic Congress. In the piece, headlined "Smearing Islam and Bashing Muslims, Who and Why," Mr. Fatah was identified, as was my fellow Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, as one of four people who are anti-Islam.
Mr. Elmasry was describing a panel discussion, held in the wake of the arrest of 17 Muslim men in Toronto alleged to be terrorists, at which Mr. Fatah participated; Mr. Elmasry directly accused him of smearing Islam and bashing Muslims, which Mr. Fatah regards "as close as one can get to issuing a death threat, as it places me as an apostate and blasphemer."
Mr. Elmasry had a busy few weeks there: More than a month after I wrote a column about the arrests of the Toronto 17, and after my byline conveniently had appeared from Afghanistan, he devoted an entire article to me in which he described me as having made a name "by writing about Islam and Muslims in a manner that consistently lacks accuracy, fairness and balance." While I was in Kandahar, a reader alerted me that the piece had been picked up by a U.S. website and an Egyptian newspaper: Golly, I wonder what Mr. Elmasry was hoping for with that?
My point is, the war is on. Canada did not declare it, but it has come to our shores as surely as it came to Manhattan's five years ago. Our soldiers are dying for it, in Afghanistan, but they are also fighting for Canadians.
The least we can do -- and we do, in this country, prefer to do the least -- is stiffen our collective resolve, face up to the truth, and recognize that the soldiers' terrible sacrifice is in our name.
Christie Blatchford has reported from Afghanistan on two extended trips, in July and in March and April of this year.
TODAY'S IDIOCY
http://www.members.shaw.ca/nspector4/IDIOCY.htm
Ujjal Dosanjh seems to have forgotten about the mission to kill murderous killers and scumbags:
“Many Afghans today don’t think of us as liberators. Something has gone wrong and that’s why we need to reassess the focus of that mission. If we were winning the hearts and minds of more of the Afghani people, certainly there would be less casualties. There’s no question in my mind,” he said….
“The focus of the mission is seen to be, and is, combat, and I believe that we need to re-evaluate that and that’s in fact the best way of supporting our soldiers that we have sent into harm’s way,” Mr. Dosanjh said. (CanWest)
Lloyd Axworthy, too, must have missed Gen. Hillier’s well-publicized remarks
Is mission working, critics ask (Star)
"We were originally told that we would apply the concept of the 3-D approach in Afghanistan — the application of defence, diplomacy and development," he said. "Now it has become one big `D.'
"The diplomatic and the development? These things have been pushed to the margins," he said.
"That's become the real issue."
Axworthy said Canadians have yet to get a satisfactory explanation from the federal government as to how and why that shift in Canada's Afghan mission occurred.
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Afghan mission under fire
Aug. 4, 2006. 05:14 AM BILL SCHILLER STAFF REPORTER Totonto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1154641811978&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Ottawa—The deaths of four Canadian soldiers and the wounding of 10 others in three separate incidents near Kandahar yesterday have sparked calls from critics for a complete re-examination of Canada's mission in Afghanistan.
"The news is sad, frustrating and troubling," said Peggy Mason, who served as Canadian ambassador for disarmament under the Brian Mulroney government. "What are we doing there?"
The question was blunt and penetrating. Recent public opinion polls show that more and more Canadians are asking themselves the same question.
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NATO escapes two bombs in Afghanistan, 25 Taleban killed
(AFP) 4 August 2006 Khaleej Times
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2006/August/subcontinent_August159.xml§ion=subcontinent
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two bombs exploded Friday near NATO patrols in an area of southern Afghanistan that saw a series of bloody attacks a day earlier, while security forces said they had killed 25 rebels.
The violence further highlighted the dangers facing a NATO force that took command of the country’s volatile south on Monday and which has lost seven soldiers in rebel attacks since then.
However Afghanistan’s US-backed President Hamid Karzai assured his countrymen that a plan was in place to secure war-weary Afghanistan.
The early morning bombs exploded in restive Kandahar province as NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrols passed, but caused no damage or casualties to the force, a spokesman said.
The first destroyed a civilian vehicle and some reports said it may have been a vehicle-borne suicide bomb of the sort that killed 21 people in a crowded bazaar in the same area on Thursday, Major Quentin Innes said.
Separately, the US-led coalition that handed over control of the south to NATO this week said its forces and Afghan troops had killed 25 Taleban “extremists” on Thursday in Helmand province, neighbouring Kandahar.
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Suicide bomber kills 21 in Afghan market
Aug. 3, 2006. 12:24 PM NOOR KHAN ASSOCIATED PRESS Toronto Star
PANJWAYI, Afghanistan (AP) — A suicide bomber in a car blew himself up in a crowded town market in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing 21 civilians near a NATO convoy, officials said.
Thirteen people were injured in the blast, that left a scene of devastation in the heart of the town of Panjwayi in Kandahar province, said provincial government spokesman Dawood Ahmadi.
Some of the victims were children, said Interior Ministry spokesman Yousef Stanezai.
A spokesman for NATO-led Canadian forces in Kandahar, Maj. Scott Lundy, said NATO troops had a patrol moving through area where the blast happened, but no troops were hurt.
“They were close enough to hear the blast,” he said, adding it was impossible to determine if the convoy was the target.
Nasim Jan, a local police official, said it was a suicide attack and blamed the Taliban.
The attack, one of the deadliest bombings in Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001 by U.S.-led forces, came just days after NATO took charge of security in the volatile south from the U.S.-led coalition.
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Schools in Afghanistan under growing attack: UNICEF
Reuters Friday, August 4, 2006; 9:36 AM Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/04/AR2006080400414.html
GENEVA (Reuters) - Schools are increasingly being attacked across Afghanistan and an estimated 100,000 children in the south are shut out of the classroom due to closures, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday.
There were nearly 100 attacks on Afghan schools in the first half of the year, a sixfold rise from the same period in 2005, according to the agency which blamed "unknown insurgents."
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Canberra to strengthen Afghanistan contingent
Cynthia Banham and agencies August 5, 2006
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/canberra-to-strengthen-afghanistan-contingent/2006/08/04/1154198329253.html#
INSURGENTS in southern Afghanistan, where Australian troops are soon to be based, have killed four NATO soldiers, three of them Canadians, just two days after two British soldiers died in the same area.
The attacks came before the Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, said yesterday that the final composition of Australia's provincial reconstruction team to Afghanistan would be announced next week.
It is likely the number of protection forces accompanying military engineers and tradesman will be increased because of fears about deteriorating security.
The attack in southern Afghanistan on Thursday followed the US handover of command to NATO forces on Monday. Canada has lost 23 soldiers in the region since February, while in the past two months Britain has lost nine in the Helmand province, which neighbours the Oruzgan province where Australian troops will be based.
Also on Thursday, a suicide bomber killed himself and 21 civilians. Eight people were also killed on Monday by a car bomb. All of the violence of the past week has occurred within a 30-minute drive of Kandahar, the main southern city.
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Afghanistan: U.N. girls' football
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060803-041500-4668r
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A senior U.N. official presented a trophy to the winners of the first-ever Kabul Girls' Football Competition, a milestone event for young women in Afghanistan.
"Today's competition marks a milestone for young girls in Afghanistan, who just five years ago were not even allowed to attend school, let alone play sports," United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan Ameerah Haq said Thursday, following the match
"Sports provide children of all ages, boys and girls, with opportunities to express themselves, to contribute their opinions, and to become agents for change," she said, adding her hope that "participation in events such as this one will inspire young girls to pursue their dreams, in whatever fields interest them."
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Gen. Pace: 11,000 Troops to be Sent to Afghanistan
August 04, 2006 07:13 AM EST
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/16702.html
by Jim Kouri - WASHINGTON, DC -- During a press conference on Thursday, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the Pentagon will deploy at least 11,000 more US troops to Afghanistan later this year.
However, the announcement did not mention if the troops were additional forces or will replace soldiers for recall. There are currently about 22,000 US troops stationed all-over Afghanistan.
According to the AP, the combat brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, headquarters staff and various unidentified support unit will be shipped from Fort Bragg, North Carolina to Kabul in the fourth quarter of the year.
In a press conference held inside the Pentagon and aired on Fox News Channel and CNN, Gen. Pace said he is optimistic about the peace and stability in the region. Pace has just visited Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"The U.S. contribution has stayed stable and will remain stable," he said.
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Australia considering to send more troops to Afghanistan
August 04, 2006
http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289977.html
The Australian government is considering sending more troops to Afghanistan and Australian Prime Minister John Howard will make an announcement about this next week, Australian Defense Minister told reporters Friday.
Currently, Australia has 300 troops in special forces task group operating separately in Afghanistan's Oruzgan Province. There is also another 100 personnel operating two Chinook helicopters.
"Australia is preparing to send in further reinforcements to cope with the worsening security situation in the region," Defense Minister Brendan Nelson indicated.
"At the moment, apart from Chinook helicopters, we are considering the possibility of increasing our security numbers," he said, adding "we're getting people ready for further deployment to Afghanistan and we believe there is an argument for increasing our numbers in terms of close protection."
Source: Xinhua
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Pakistan hands over 5 buses to Afghanistan
By Our Reporter ISLAMABAD, Aug 3:
http://www.dawn.com/2006/08/04/top18.htm
Pakistan handed over five buses to Afghanistan on Thursday which would be used for educational institutions of the country.
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar presented keys of the vehicles to the Afghan Ambassador Dr Nanguyalai Tarzai at a ceremony held here on Thursday.
On the occasion, Mr Bakhtyar said that Pakistan was committed to help establishing peace and stability in Afghanistan and would extend all possible assistance in that regard.
He said that a strong and stable Afghanistan was in the interest of Pakistan because both the countries were partners in peace, progress and prosperity.
The buses are in addition to the five that were gifted to Afghanistan in April this year. Pakistan has so far handed over 200 trucks, 100 buses and 45 ambulances and would also provide 14 fully equipped medical units to the neighbour country.
Pakistan is also engaged in the development of key infrastructure, health and education sector projects in Afghanistan besides imparting training to a large number of Afghan officials.
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U.S. continues reconstruction effort in southern, eastern Afghanistan
Friday August 04, 2006 (0224 PST) Pak Tribune
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?151469
BAGRAM: Combined Joint Task Force 76 announced the receipt of an additional $17.1 million from Congress to continue needed reconstruction across southern and eastern Afghanistan in direct support of both NATO-ISAF and Coalition mission objectives.
The money will go toward the Commanders Emergency Reconstruction Program, or CERP, a fund to assist Afghans in the short term to rebuild, maintain and construct new facilities, roads and other infrastructure.
Coalition commanders consult with provincial and district governments, as well as tribal leaders and elders, to determine which projects best meet the immediate needs of the Afghan people.
Some of the funds already projected will help build three bridges along the Narray to Kamdesh Road in Kunar and Nuristan provinces, and will help construct roads from Qalat to Mizan and from Deh Afghan to Beylough in Zabul Province.
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Organisation launched to serve destitute women
Friday August 04, 2006 (0224 PST) Pak Tribune
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?151471
KABUL: A women organisation in the name of Association of Business Women was launched with the aim to provide jobs for destitute women.
Addressing the opening ceremony, head of the organisation Sohaila Sharifi said they would provide jobs related to handicrafts and carpet-weaving to some 300 destitute women. The association will pay a specific amount to women for their work.
Besides Kabul, the association will create job opportunities for women in Maidan Wardak, Parwan and Logar provinces.
Chief Executive of the Afghanistan International Chambers of Commerce (AICC) said there were currently ten such associations serving women in the country. Those organisations, he said, had so far employed more than 1,000 women. He also welcomed establishment of the new organisation.
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