Articles found 26 Sept 2006
General Hilliar's speach at Ottawa Red Friday Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFhX7XMoeg
Audio:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Harper.RedFridayRally.Sept.22.06.mp3
Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Rick.Hillier.RedFridaySpeech.Sept.22.06.mp3
CFRA, Ottawa, photo gallery available here
http://www.cfra.com/red-fridays/index.asp?id=8#
Italian, Afghan soldiers killed in bomb blasts
Updated Tue. Sep. 26 2006 10:18 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060925/afghan_killing_060926/20060926?hub=TopStories
Audio: CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman from Afghanistan 4:07
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/2006/09/26/ctvvideologger3_159266339_1159269935_500kbps.wmv&video_link_low=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/09/26/ctvvideologger3_159266338_1159269138_218kbps.wmv&clip_start=00:07:43.86&clip_end=00:04:07.24&clip_caption=CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman from Afghanistan&clip_id=ctvnews.20060926.00163000-00163771-clip1&subhub=video&no_ads=&sortdate=20060925&slug=afghan_killing_060926&archive=CTVNews
At least 20 people were killed in two separate bombings in Afghanistan on Tuesday -- including an Italian soldier killed by a remote control bomb under a bridge near Kabul.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for both blasts.
The first bombing, a suicide blast, went off as foreign troops were passing through Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
Afghan soldiers stationed at the security gate of a provincial governor's home stopped the bomber, who then set off his explosives, killing 18 and leaving at least 17 wounded.
The blast killed several Afghan soldiers and Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca, officials said.
The governor, Mohammed Daoud Safi, was inside the compound and was not injured in the attack.
NATO troops were in the area at the time but none were hurt, a NATO spokesman told reporters.
It's not known if any Canadian soldiers were with the NATO troops.
CTV's Paul Workman, reporting from Kandahar, described the suicide blast as a "very deadly attack."
Speaking to Newsnet Tuesday, Workman said it appeared the targets were "foreign contractors" doing work for the governor.
"We're also speculating this may be tied to Ramadan. The Taliban said it would be stepping up attacks and that it would be a very bloody Ramadan," he said.
It was the deadliest suicide attack in Afghanistan since Aug. 28, when 21 civilians were killed in Lashkar Gah by a bomber targeting an ex-police chief.
Meanwhile, the remote control blast just south of Kabul targeted an armoured personnel carrier.
The attack killed Italian soldier Chief Corp. Maj. Giorgio Langella and a child riding in a car behind the convoy.
NATO said five soldiers were wounded.
"It was the Italians who were targeted this time," Workman told CTV Newsnet.
Taliban-linked militants have stepped up their attacks across Afghanistan the last several months, though attacks in Kabul are still much rarer than in the country's south.
Attacks in the capital are mostly aimed at foreign military troops. On Sept. 8, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. Humvee, killing 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers.
More on link
Last chance for Afghanistan?
POSTED: 1113 GMT (1913 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/afghanistan.lead/index.html
By Paul Sussman for CNN
Adjust font size:
(CNN) -- "We have now left a hard and dark past behind us," declared Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in his inauguration address of December 7, 2004. "Today we are opening a new chapter in our history."
It was a sentiment echoed at the time by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, one of some 150 foreign dignitaries gathered in Kabul to witness Karzai's swearing-in.
"The tyranny has gone, the terrorist enemy is scattered," he proclaimed. "The people of Afghanistan are free."
Two years on, and five years after a U.S. lead coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan and end the country's role as a safe-haven and training ground for al Qaeda, Karzai has arrived in Washington for a summit with Presidents Bush and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
It is a crucial meeting, coming as it does at a time when the optimism of Karzai's inaugural speech is looking ever more forlorn and misplaced.
Crisis and instability
Touted as a showcase of the success Washington's "War on Terror," Afghanistan has become increasingly unstable and crisis-ridden over the last 12 months, with Karzai's power, never broad-based at the best of times, now effectively limited to the capital Kabul and its immediate surroundings (detractors have long dismissed him as "The Mayor of Kabul.")
Elsewhere in the country, and despite the presence of some 41,000 NATO and U.S. troops, the picture is one of spiraling instability and lawlessness. Especially in the south, in provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar, a resurgent Taliban have been inflicting significant casualties on both coalition troops and on a demoralized, underpaid Afghan army.
Civilian casualties have likewise been mounting at an alarming rate -- a suicide bomb attack in Helmand on Tuesday left nine civilians and nine Afghan soldiers dead.
"The Taliban's tenacity in the face of massive losses has been a surprise," admitted Britain's Defense Secretary Des Browne in a recent speech to the Royal United Services Institute in London, "Absorbing more of our effort than predicted and consequently slowing progress on reconstruction."
"At this stage the insurgency isn't a direct threat to Karzai's administration," says Joanna Nathan of the International Crisis Group's Kabul office. "It is, however, getting ever closer to Kabul and deflecting a huge amount of energy, time and resources during what should be a period of hope and rebuilding.
"The fighting has got noticeably worse over the last twelve months, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Violence is unquestionably on an upward trend.
"This is definitely the lowest point in the last five years."
Warlords and opium
The Taliban, however, are just one of a series of hurdles facing President Karzai in his attempts to stabilize and rebuild his country.
More on link
Al Arabiya TV: Taliban says bin Laden alive
POSTED: 1211 GMT (2011 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/taliban.binladen.reut/index.html
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) -- Dubai-based Al Arabiya television on Tuesday quoted a Taliban official as saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was alive and in good health.
The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed Taliban official a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan.
"The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. "The Taliban checked with members who are close to al Qaeda that these reports are baseless."
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was last seen in a video statement aired to coincide with the November 2004 U.S. presidential elections.
A report in French regional daily L'Est Republicain last week quoted a document from the DGSE foreign intelligence service, saying the Saudi secret services were convinced bin Laden had died of typhoid. (Watch how the report has fueled speculation over what exactly happened to bin Laden-- 2:01)
Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had no evidence that bin Laden was dead. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that as far as he knew the Saudi-born militant was alive.
Bin Laden has issued several audio messages in the past two years, the last one in July 2006 in which he vowed al Qaeda would fight the United States anywhere in the world.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to flush out al Qaeda and the government of the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement that supported it after the militant network carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
End
Musharraf rebuts Taliban claims
POSTED: 0952 GMT (1752 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/25/pakistan.afghan.reut/index.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, bristling at allegations his country harbors Taliban rebels, criticized Afghanistan's leader on Monday, saying he was failing to draw people away from the Islamic militants.
Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who are due to meet U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday, have been at odds over Afghan accusations that Taliban leaders are running the insurgency from the city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan.
The Pakistani leader, promoting his new memoir in New York, called the allegations "ridiculous" and said Karzai's government needed to do more to end marginalization of ethnic Pushtun who form the main support base for the Taliban.
"The sooner Mr. President Karzai understands his own country's environment, the easier it will be for him," Musharraf told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He later added: "I have always been saying that I believe President Karzai to be the right person to be president of Afghanistan."
Musharraf said the coalition fighting the Taliban "must take immediate action to wean away the people" by spreading economic development and political representation to Pushtun areas.
"Don't let them join the Taliban and fight a people's war against you," added Musharraf after a speech promoting his autobiography, In the Line of Fire.
In his book, Musharraf wrote that he thought Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was most likely to be close to his original base in southern Afghanistan, where NATO forces are facing fierce resistance from insurgents.
End
Afghan factory weaves symbol of hope
Director dreams of neglected looms spinning uniforms and creating jobs
GRAEME SMITH From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060926.wxafghanfactory26/BNStory/International/home
DAND DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Passing on the highway, a motorist could glance at the rusty gate and the crude painted sign that says "Kandahar Taixtel Mills" and assume this textile factory is just another relic of Afghanistan's ruined dreams.
The bullet-scarred walls, the peeling paint and the smashed windows all suggest an industrial ambition that faded long ago, blasted away by decades of war.
But past the dying trees in the courtyard, through the grand halls filled with mothballed machinery and empty thread spools covered with years of dust, the eerie silence of this massive facility gives way to a loud clatter.
A few of the old Russian cotton looms are still working, churning away in one corner of a building the size of several football fields. The factory isn't dead -- only dormant, barely operating, kept alive by a devoted staff that hasn't been paid in nearly a year.
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The Major's Email: British Harrier Support in Afghanistan, Revisited
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2006/09/the-majors-email-british-harrier-support-in-afghanistan-revisited/index.php#more
DID has written in the past about the British GR7 Harrier II's performance in Afghanistan, so the recent controversy over their performance in the wake a soldier's email deserves attention. Newspaper reports described a leaked email from a British Major serving in Afghanistan, which reportedly said that:
"Twice I have had Harriers in support when c/s on the ground have been in heavy contact, on one occasion trying to break clean. A female harrier pilot 'couldn't identify the target', fired 2 phosphorous rockets that just missed our own compound so that we thought they were incoming RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and then strafed our perimeter missing the enemy by 200 metres."
Nor is that all. He reportedly added that "the US air force had been fantastic", and "I would take an A-10 over Eurofighter any day." The UK MoD responds, and DID discusses the issues....
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Securing the Northern Front: Canada and the War on Terror, Part II
By Hayder Mili
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369755
This is the second in a two part series on Canada and the war on terror.
The information provided by Ahmed Ressam since his arrest in December 1999, sentenced yesterday to 22 years in federal prison for plotting to bomb the baggage area of the Los Angeles International Airport, ultimately led to the exposure of the Montreal network and, more importantly, proved just how active Jihadists have been in Canada. As the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS) have warned since the early 1990s and the public has now become well aware of, Canada was being used as a financial and logistical base for international terrorists seeking to attack the United States. Moreover, far from being limited to Montreal, other Jihadi networks have been active in the country; from Ontario and Alberta, to the westernmost province of British Columbia where, in 1999, Ressam had attempted to cross over into the U.S.
Following 9/11, United States security officials looked across the border, towards Montreal, Québec where Ressam alleged that over 60 trained Jihadists remained. Of particular concern were two Tunisian-born Canadians, Abderraouf Jdey [1] and Faker Boussora [2]. The two had settled in Montreal in the early 1990s, and like a number of local militants, had also attended the Assuna mosque. There, they most likely met with Ahmed Ressam’s recruiter and fellow Tunisian, Raouf Hannachi, before being sent to train in Afghanistan. Jdey was subsequently chosen by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to pilot an airliner in a second wave of suicide attacks supposed to take place following 9/11. [3]
The Al-Kanadi Family
Apart from the Montreal group, there was another major network in Canada headed by an Egyptian-born Canadian man with strong ties to Egyptian Jihadi groups. Killed in a shootout with Pakistani security forces in Waziristan in October 2003, Ahmed Said Khadr funded the deadly November 19, 1995 Egyptian embassy bombing in Islamabad. Khadr, also known as Al-Kanadi (the Canadian), was a high ranking Canadian member of al-Qaeda who had fought the Soviets alongside Osama Bin Laden and personally knew most of al-Qaeda’s command structure, including Ayman Al-Zawhiri and Abu Zubayda.
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Canadian presence in Afghanistan will cost $3.5 billion in 2009
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060921.wbillions21/BNStory/National/home
OTTAWA — Canada's presence in Afghanistan will cost taxpayers more than $3.5-billion by February 2009, says the federal government.
The extension of Canada's military commitment alone to 2009 will cost $1.25-billion, according to a government response to a question by the NDP.
The government has already spent $2.3-billion for the mission between September 2001 and May 2006. A total of $466-million of that amount was used for development aid, the rest for military activities.
In 2003, the Foreign Affairs Department also spent $29-million to open and maintain a temporary embassy in Kabul. A permanent facility will cost $41 million, plus $9.2-million annually for operations.
End
Musharraf 'war-gamed' U.S., concluded Pakistan would lose
PAUL KORING From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060926.wxpakistan26/BNStory/International/home
WASHINGTON — Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, says he contemplated war with the United States in 2001 but opted instead to forsake the Taliban and become President George W. Bush's ally.
"I war-gamed the United States as an adversary," the Pakistani leader wrote in his martially titled memoirs In the Line of Fire, published yesterday. It apparently didn't take the general, then an international pariah for having staged a coup to toppled his country's democratic government, very long to conclude that Pakistan would lose.
"The answer was a resounding no," he wrote, having concluded that the world's most powerful military would wipe out his forces, destroy his nuclear weapons, wreak havoc on Pakistan's threadbare infrastructure, help India seize disputed Kashmir and then turn to his archrival in New Delhi for the support and bases it needed to topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
In the days after suicide hijackings destroyed New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, Mr. Bush warned that countries harbouring or helping terrorists would share their fate.
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Presenter: Secretary Of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai
September 25, 2006 1:30 PM EDT
http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3731
Press Availability with Secretary Rumsfeld and Afghanistan President Karzai
SEC. RUMSFELD: Look at this on a beautiful day. Welcome. Nice to see you all.
Mr. President, the microphone's yours. We're very pleased you're here.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: Thanks very much.
SEC. RUMSFELD: And thank you for coming again.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: Thank you. Good to see you again. Thank you.
SEC. RUMSFELD: We hope your trip to the United States is an excellent one.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: It's beautiful always --
SEC. RUMSFELD: And we brought good weather for you.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: -- especially during the fall, and all the colorful trees.
Secretary Rumsfeld, I'm honored to be in the United States once again, and on such a good day, especially to be meeting with you. And thank you, by the way, for the excellent honor guard. I hope I can get a copy of the national anthem of Afghanistan that you played so nicely, and quite romantic, by the way, it was played.
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Vice Chairman Visits Troops in Afghanistan, Focuses on IED Issues
By Lt. Brenda Steele, USN Special to American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1156
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 24, 2006 – Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Afghanistan earlier this month to meet with U.S. and coalition servicemembers and to assess the many challenges U.S. troops are facing with more sophisticated and increased improvised explosive device attacks
The increase in frequency of IED attacks throughout the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan has the attention of senior leaders as the number of suicide bombers has risen recently during an overall uptick in violence in Afghanistan.
With the establishment of the Joint Improvised Explosive Devices Defeat Organization, the admiral said he is seeing improvements when it comes to locating IEDs before they have a chance to detonate. Ordnance teams are then sent in to defuse and dismantle the devices.
The challenge now is to reduce the level of causalities, he said. “Now we must work harder every day towards reducing our numbers of causalities from these horrible attacks,” Giambastiani stressed.
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Taliban Only Part of Bigger Issue, Afghan President Says
By Samantha L. Quigley American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1161
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2006 – With reports circulating of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said quelling the Taliban is only part of the bigger response needed for a secure and peaceful country.
“It’s not eliminating the Taliban. It’s ending terrorist violence in Afghanistan,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today. “We have defeated (terrorists, but) to defeat them completely, to take them off the agenda, for us that is the purpose.”
President Bush will meet in Washington with Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf later this week to discuss the best way to accomplish this.
Karzai said he believes that cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan is the best way to defeat terrorism in the region.
In an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition,” the Afghan president said he is waiting to see the results of a recent agreement between the Pakistani government and tribal chieftains of Pakistan’s Waziristan province, which borders Afghanistan.
Musharraf said the agreement will help control cross-border movement of terrorists. “Unfortunately, since the agreement was signed, we saw more violence in Afghanistan exactly at the border areas with north Waziristan (in) Pakistan,” Karzai said. “Our governor … was assassinated with a suicide bombing, so we’ll have to really see … if the agreement will hold as signed.”
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Investigation finds suspected prisoner abuse in Afghanistan
Tuesday September 26, 2006 (0226 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155332
LOS ANGELES: An investigation undertaken by a US newspaper has found that US special forces in Afghanistan may have been responsible for the deaths of two detainees in 2003.
The Los Angeles Times said its probe focusing on a 10-member Green Berets team from the Alabama National Guard, has also determined that several other detainees may have been badly beaten or tortured.
One victim, an unarmed peasant, was shot to death while being held for questioning after a fierce firefight, the report said.
The other, an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit, died after being interrogated at the base. Descriptions of his injuries were consistent with severe beatings and other abuse, according to the paper.
A member of the special forces team told The Times his unit held a meeting after the teen?s death to coordinate their stories should an investigation arise.
"Everybody on the team had knowledge of it," the unnamed soldier is quoted as saying. "You just don?t talk about that stuff in the special forces community. What happens downrange stays downrange. Nobody wants to get anybody in trouble. Just sit back, and hope it will go away."
The two fatalities were different from scores of other questionable deaths in US custody because they were successfully concealed, not just from the American public but from the military?s chain of command and legal authorities, The Times said.
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Afghan President Thanks U.S. Troops for Liberating Afghanistan
25 September 2006 By David Shelby Washington File Staff Writer
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=September&x=20060925162149ndyblehs0.3401453
Karzai says Afghan people must confront narco-trafficking problem
Washington – Afghan President Hamid Karzai thanked the U.S. military for liberating Afghanistan from the oppressive Taliban regime and for providing security as the country works to rebuild its institutions and infrastructure.
“[M]y message for the American soldiers in Afghanistan is that they have liberated us from tyranny, from terrorism, from oppression, from occupation into a country that is now moving towards prosperity, that is once again the home of all Afghans,” Karzai told reporters September 25 after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Karzai said that Afghanistan has been transformed fundamentally by the U.S. intervention. “Afghanistan was not the home of all Afghans,” he said. “Today it is. Everybody's back in that country with a parliament, with a constitution, with a market economy, with a free press, with all that.”
He added that the ongoing effort to fight terrorism in Afghanistan is bolstering the security of the entire world.
The Afghan president acknowledged that Afghanistan’s opium trade continues to threaten the country’s development.
“Narcotics is a menace to Afghanistan. It's also an embarrassment to us as a nation. We are ashamed of that terrible product hurting us and hurting young people around the world,” he said.
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Bulgaria must send more troops to Afghanistan: Defence Minister
Sofia (Bulgaria), Sept 26. (AP):
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200609260314.htm
Bulgaria should increase its military presence in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov said on Monday, but added no decision had been made yet.
``Given the complicated situation there, which has become even more complicated in the past weeks and months ... it is extremely necessary that all countries boost their participation,'' Bliznakov told reporters. ``We should take a very serious approach and fulfill our commitments as a (NATO) member.''
Bulgaria, which joined NATO in 2004, currently has some 150 troops in Afghanistan, but Bliznakov said the country was able to send more, without giving numbers.
The Government will decide on the issue after a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Slovenia later this week, Bliznakov said. The final decision must be taken by parliament.
Bliznakov paid a short visit to Afghanistan last weekend, and met Bulgarian soldiers, NATO commanders and Afghan officials.
NATO, which has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan now, has appealed to its members to send up to 2,500 extra troops. NATO's top commander, Gen. James L. Jones, has said reinforcements are needed to pursue the Taliban before the onset of winter enables them to take refuge in the hills.
End
General Hilliar's speach at Ottawa Red Friday Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFhX7XMoeg
Audio:
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Harper.RedFridayRally.Sept.22.06.mp3
Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier
http://www.cfra.com/chum_audio/Rick.Hillier.RedFridaySpeech.Sept.22.06.mp3
CFRA, Ottawa, photo gallery available here
http://www.cfra.com/red-fridays/index.asp?id=8#
Italian, Afghan soldiers killed in bomb blasts
Updated Tue. Sep. 26 2006 10:18 AM ET CTV.ca News Staff
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060925/afghan_killing_060926/20060926?hub=TopStories
Audio: CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman from Afghanistan 4:07
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/2006/09/26/ctvvideologger3_159266339_1159269935_500kbps.wmv&video_link_low=mms://ctvbroadcast.ctv.ca/video/2006/09/26/ctvvideologger3_159266338_1159269138_218kbps.wmv&clip_start=00:07:43.86&clip_end=00:04:07.24&clip_caption=CTV Newsnet: Paul Workman from Afghanistan&clip_id=ctvnews.20060926.00163000-00163771-clip1&subhub=video&no_ads=&sortdate=20060925&slug=afghan_killing_060926&archive=CTVNews
At least 20 people were killed in two separate bombings in Afghanistan on Tuesday -- including an Italian soldier killed by a remote control bomb under a bridge near Kabul.
Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for both blasts.
The first bombing, a suicide blast, went off as foreign troops were passing through Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.
Afghan soldiers stationed at the security gate of a provincial governor's home stopped the bomber, who then set off his explosives, killing 18 and leaving at least 17 wounded.
The blast killed several Afghan soldiers and Muslim pilgrims seeking paperwork to travel to Mecca, officials said.
The governor, Mohammed Daoud Safi, was inside the compound and was not injured in the attack.
NATO troops were in the area at the time but none were hurt, a NATO spokesman told reporters.
It's not known if any Canadian soldiers were with the NATO troops.
CTV's Paul Workman, reporting from Kandahar, described the suicide blast as a "very deadly attack."
Speaking to Newsnet Tuesday, Workman said it appeared the targets were "foreign contractors" doing work for the governor.
"We're also speculating this may be tied to Ramadan. The Taliban said it would be stepping up attacks and that it would be a very bloody Ramadan," he said.
It was the deadliest suicide attack in Afghanistan since Aug. 28, when 21 civilians were killed in Lashkar Gah by a bomber targeting an ex-police chief.
Meanwhile, the remote control blast just south of Kabul targeted an armoured personnel carrier.
The attack killed Italian soldier Chief Corp. Maj. Giorgio Langella and a child riding in a car behind the convoy.
NATO said five soldiers were wounded.
"It was the Italians who were targeted this time," Workman told CTV Newsnet.
Taliban-linked militants have stepped up their attacks across Afghanistan the last several months, though attacks in Kabul are still much rarer than in the country's south.
Attacks in the capital are mostly aimed at foreign military troops. On Sept. 8, a suicide car bomber rammed into a U.S. Humvee, killing 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers.
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Last chance for Afghanistan?
POSTED: 1113 GMT (1913 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/afghanistan.lead/index.html
By Paul Sussman for CNN
Adjust font size:
(CNN) -- "We have now left a hard and dark past behind us," declared Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai in his inauguration address of December 7, 2004. "Today we are opening a new chapter in our history."
It was a sentiment echoed at the time by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, one of some 150 foreign dignitaries gathered in Kabul to witness Karzai's swearing-in.
"The tyranny has gone, the terrorist enemy is scattered," he proclaimed. "The people of Afghanistan are free."
Two years on, and five years after a U.S. lead coalition launched Operation Enduring Freedom to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan and end the country's role as a safe-haven and training ground for al Qaeda, Karzai has arrived in Washington for a summit with Presidents Bush and Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
It is a crucial meeting, coming as it does at a time when the optimism of Karzai's inaugural speech is looking ever more forlorn and misplaced.
Crisis and instability
Touted as a showcase of the success Washington's "War on Terror," Afghanistan has become increasingly unstable and crisis-ridden over the last 12 months, with Karzai's power, never broad-based at the best of times, now effectively limited to the capital Kabul and its immediate surroundings (detractors have long dismissed him as "The Mayor of Kabul.")
Elsewhere in the country, and despite the presence of some 41,000 NATO and U.S. troops, the picture is one of spiraling instability and lawlessness. Especially in the south, in provinces such as Helmand and Kandahar, a resurgent Taliban have been inflicting significant casualties on both coalition troops and on a demoralized, underpaid Afghan army.
Civilian casualties have likewise been mounting at an alarming rate -- a suicide bomb attack in Helmand on Tuesday left nine civilians and nine Afghan soldiers dead.
"The Taliban's tenacity in the face of massive losses has been a surprise," admitted Britain's Defense Secretary Des Browne in a recent speech to the Royal United Services Institute in London, "Absorbing more of our effort than predicted and consequently slowing progress on reconstruction."
"At this stage the insurgency isn't a direct threat to Karzai's administration," says Joanna Nathan of the International Crisis Group's Kabul office. "It is, however, getting ever closer to Kabul and deflecting a huge amount of energy, time and resources during what should be a period of hope and rebuilding.
"The fighting has got noticeably worse over the last twelve months, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Violence is unquestionably on an upward trend.
"This is definitely the lowest point in the last five years."
Warlords and opium
The Taliban, however, are just one of a series of hurdles facing President Karzai in his attempts to stabilize and rebuild his country.
More on link
Al Arabiya TV: Taliban says bin Laden alive
POSTED: 1211 GMT (2011 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/09/26/taliban.binladen.reut/index.html
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (Reuters) -- Dubai-based Al Arabiya television on Tuesday quoted a Taliban official as saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was alive and in good health.
The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed Taliban official a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed bin Laden died last month in Pakistan.
"The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. "The Taliban checked with members who are close to al Qaeda that these reports are baseless."
Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was last seen in a video statement aired to coincide with the November 2004 U.S. presidential elections.
A report in French regional daily L'Est Republicain last week quoted a document from the DGSE foreign intelligence service, saying the Saudi secret services were convinced bin Laden had died of typhoid. (Watch how the report has fueled speculation over what exactly happened to bin Laden-- 2:01)
Saudi Arabia said on Sunday it had no evidence that bin Laden was dead. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said that as far as he knew the Saudi-born militant was alive.
Bin Laden has issued several audio messages in the past two years, the last one in July 2006 in which he vowed al Qaeda would fight the United States anywhere in the world.
The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to flush out al Qaeda and the government of the hard-line Islamic Taliban movement that supported it after the militant network carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
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Musharraf rebuts Taliban claims
POSTED: 0952 GMT (1752 HKT), September 26, 2006
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/09/25/pakistan.afghan.reut/index.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, bristling at allegations his country harbors Taliban rebels, criticized Afghanistan's leader on Monday, saying he was failing to draw people away from the Islamic militants.
Musharraf and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who are due to meet U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday, have been at odds over Afghan accusations that Taliban leaders are running the insurgency from the city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan.
The Pakistani leader, promoting his new memoir in New York, called the allegations "ridiculous" and said Karzai's government needed to do more to end marginalization of ethnic Pushtun who form the main support base for the Taliban.
"The sooner Mr. President Karzai understands his own country's environment, the easier it will be for him," Musharraf told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
He later added: "I have always been saying that I believe President Karzai to be the right person to be president of Afghanistan."
Musharraf said the coalition fighting the Taliban "must take immediate action to wean away the people" by spreading economic development and political representation to Pushtun areas.
"Don't let them join the Taliban and fight a people's war against you," added Musharraf after a speech promoting his autobiography, In the Line of Fire.
In his book, Musharraf wrote that he thought Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was most likely to be close to his original base in southern Afghanistan, where NATO forces are facing fierce resistance from insurgents.
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Afghan factory weaves symbol of hope
Director dreams of neglected looms spinning uniforms and creating jobs
GRAEME SMITH From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060926.wxafghanfactory26/BNStory/International/home
DAND DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Passing on the highway, a motorist could glance at the rusty gate and the crude painted sign that says "Kandahar Taixtel Mills" and assume this textile factory is just another relic of Afghanistan's ruined dreams.
The bullet-scarred walls, the peeling paint and the smashed windows all suggest an industrial ambition that faded long ago, blasted away by decades of war.
But past the dying trees in the courtyard, through the grand halls filled with mothballed machinery and empty thread spools covered with years of dust, the eerie silence of this massive facility gives way to a loud clatter.
A few of the old Russian cotton looms are still working, churning away in one corner of a building the size of several football fields. The factory isn't dead -- only dormant, barely operating, kept alive by a devoted staff that hasn't been paid in nearly a year.
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The Major's Email: British Harrier Support in Afghanistan, Revisited
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/2006/09/the-majors-email-british-harrier-support-in-afghanistan-revisited/index.php#more
DID has written in the past about the British GR7 Harrier II's performance in Afghanistan, so the recent controversy over their performance in the wake a soldier's email deserves attention. Newspaper reports described a leaked email from a British Major serving in Afghanistan, which reportedly said that:
"Twice I have had Harriers in support when c/s on the ground have been in heavy contact, on one occasion trying to break clean. A female harrier pilot 'couldn't identify the target', fired 2 phosphorous rockets that just missed our own compound so that we thought they were incoming RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), and then strafed our perimeter missing the enemy by 200 metres."
Nor is that all. He reportedly added that "the US air force had been fantastic", and "I would take an A-10 over Eurofighter any day." The UK MoD responds, and DID discusses the issues....
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Securing the Northern Front: Canada and the War on Terror, Part II
By Hayder Mili
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369755
This is the second in a two part series on Canada and the war on terror.
The information provided by Ahmed Ressam since his arrest in December 1999, sentenced yesterday to 22 years in federal prison for plotting to bomb the baggage area of the Los Angeles International Airport, ultimately led to the exposure of the Montreal network and, more importantly, proved just how active Jihadists have been in Canada. As the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services (CSIS) have warned since the early 1990s and the public has now become well aware of, Canada was being used as a financial and logistical base for international terrorists seeking to attack the United States. Moreover, far from being limited to Montreal, other Jihadi networks have been active in the country; from Ontario and Alberta, to the westernmost province of British Columbia where, in 1999, Ressam had attempted to cross over into the U.S.
Following 9/11, United States security officials looked across the border, towards Montreal, Québec where Ressam alleged that over 60 trained Jihadists remained. Of particular concern were two Tunisian-born Canadians, Abderraouf Jdey [1] and Faker Boussora [2]. The two had settled in Montreal in the early 1990s, and like a number of local militants, had also attended the Assuna mosque. There, they most likely met with Ahmed Ressam’s recruiter and fellow Tunisian, Raouf Hannachi, before being sent to train in Afghanistan. Jdey was subsequently chosen by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to pilot an airliner in a second wave of suicide attacks supposed to take place following 9/11. [3]
The Al-Kanadi Family
Apart from the Montreal group, there was another major network in Canada headed by an Egyptian-born Canadian man with strong ties to Egyptian Jihadi groups. Killed in a shootout with Pakistani security forces in Waziristan in October 2003, Ahmed Said Khadr funded the deadly November 19, 1995 Egyptian embassy bombing in Islamabad. Khadr, also known as Al-Kanadi (the Canadian), was a high ranking Canadian member of al-Qaeda who had fought the Soviets alongside Osama Bin Laden and personally knew most of al-Qaeda’s command structure, including Ayman Al-Zawhiri and Abu Zubayda.
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Canadian presence in Afghanistan will cost $3.5 billion in 2009
Canadian Press
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060921.wbillions21/BNStory/National/home
OTTAWA — Canada's presence in Afghanistan will cost taxpayers more than $3.5-billion by February 2009, says the federal government.
The extension of Canada's military commitment alone to 2009 will cost $1.25-billion, according to a government response to a question by the NDP.
The government has already spent $2.3-billion for the mission between September 2001 and May 2006. A total of $466-million of that amount was used for development aid, the rest for military activities.
In 2003, the Foreign Affairs Department also spent $29-million to open and maintain a temporary embassy in Kabul. A permanent facility will cost $41 million, plus $9.2-million annually for operations.
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Musharraf 'war-gamed' U.S., concluded Pakistan would lose
PAUL KORING From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060926.wxpakistan26/BNStory/International/home
WASHINGTON — Pakistan's military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, says he contemplated war with the United States in 2001 but opted instead to forsake the Taliban and become President George W. Bush's ally.
"I war-gamed the United States as an adversary," the Pakistani leader wrote in his martially titled memoirs In the Line of Fire, published yesterday. It apparently didn't take the general, then an international pariah for having staged a coup to toppled his country's democratic government, very long to conclude that Pakistan would lose.
"The answer was a resounding no," he wrote, having concluded that the world's most powerful military would wipe out his forces, destroy his nuclear weapons, wreak havoc on Pakistan's threadbare infrastructure, help India seize disputed Kashmir and then turn to his archrival in New Delhi for the support and bases it needed to topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime.
In the days after suicide hijackings destroyed New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon, Mr. Bush warned that countries harbouring or helping terrorists would share their fate.
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Presenter: Secretary Of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai
September 25, 2006 1:30 PM EDT
http://www.defenselink.mil/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=3731
Press Availability with Secretary Rumsfeld and Afghanistan President Karzai
SEC. RUMSFELD: Look at this on a beautiful day. Welcome. Nice to see you all.
Mr. President, the microphone's yours. We're very pleased you're here.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: Thanks very much.
SEC. RUMSFELD: And thank you for coming again.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: Thank you. Good to see you again. Thank you.
SEC. RUMSFELD: We hope your trip to the United States is an excellent one.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: It's beautiful always --
SEC. RUMSFELD: And we brought good weather for you.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: -- especially during the fall, and all the colorful trees.
Secretary Rumsfeld, I'm honored to be in the United States once again, and on such a good day, especially to be meeting with you. And thank you, by the way, for the excellent honor guard. I hope I can get a copy of the national anthem of Afghanistan that you played so nicely, and quite romantic, by the way, it was played.
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Vice Chairman Visits Troops in Afghanistan, Focuses on IED Issues
By Lt. Brenda Steele, USN Special to American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1156
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 24, 2006 – Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Afghanistan earlier this month to meet with U.S. and coalition servicemembers and to assess the many challenges U.S. troops are facing with more sophisticated and increased improvised explosive device attacks
The increase in frequency of IED attacks throughout the southern and eastern regions of Afghanistan has the attention of senior leaders as the number of suicide bombers has risen recently during an overall uptick in violence in Afghanistan.
With the establishment of the Joint Improvised Explosive Devices Defeat Organization, the admiral said he is seeing improvements when it comes to locating IEDs before they have a chance to detonate. Ordnance teams are then sent in to defuse and dismantle the devices.
The challenge now is to reduce the level of causalities, he said. “Now we must work harder every day towards reducing our numbers of causalities from these horrible attacks,” Giambastiani stressed.
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Taliban Only Part of Bigger Issue, Afghan President Says
By Samantha L. Quigley American Forces Press Service
http://www.defenselink.mil/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=1161
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2006 – With reports circulating of a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said quelling the Taliban is only part of the bigger response needed for a secure and peaceful country.
“It’s not eliminating the Taliban. It’s ending terrorist violence in Afghanistan,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today. “We have defeated (terrorists, but) to defeat them completely, to take them off the agenda, for us that is the purpose.”
President Bush will meet in Washington with Karzai and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf later this week to discuss the best way to accomplish this.
Karzai said he believes that cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan is the best way to defeat terrorism in the region.
In an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition,” the Afghan president said he is waiting to see the results of a recent agreement between the Pakistani government and tribal chieftains of Pakistan’s Waziristan province, which borders Afghanistan.
Musharraf said the agreement will help control cross-border movement of terrorists. “Unfortunately, since the agreement was signed, we saw more violence in Afghanistan exactly at the border areas with north Waziristan (in) Pakistan,” Karzai said. “Our governor … was assassinated with a suicide bombing, so we’ll have to really see … if the agreement will hold as signed.”
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Investigation finds suspected prisoner abuse in Afghanistan
Tuesday September 26, 2006 (0226 PST)
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?155332
LOS ANGELES: An investigation undertaken by a US newspaper has found that US special forces in Afghanistan may have been responsible for the deaths of two detainees in 2003.
The Los Angeles Times said its probe focusing on a 10-member Green Berets team from the Alabama National Guard, has also determined that several other detainees may have been badly beaten or tortured.
One victim, an unarmed peasant, was shot to death while being held for questioning after a fierce firefight, the report said.
The other, an 18-year-old Afghan army recruit, died after being interrogated at the base. Descriptions of his injuries were consistent with severe beatings and other abuse, according to the paper.
A member of the special forces team told The Times his unit held a meeting after the teen?s death to coordinate their stories should an investigation arise.
"Everybody on the team had knowledge of it," the unnamed soldier is quoted as saying. "You just don?t talk about that stuff in the special forces community. What happens downrange stays downrange. Nobody wants to get anybody in trouble. Just sit back, and hope it will go away."
The two fatalities were different from scores of other questionable deaths in US custody because they were successfully concealed, not just from the American public but from the military?s chain of command and legal authorities, The Times said.
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Afghan President Thanks U.S. Troops for Liberating Afghanistan
25 September 2006 By David Shelby Washington File Staff Writer
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=September&x=20060925162149ndyblehs0.3401453
Karzai says Afghan people must confront narco-trafficking problem
Washington – Afghan President Hamid Karzai thanked the U.S. military for liberating Afghanistan from the oppressive Taliban regime and for providing security as the country works to rebuild its institutions and infrastructure.
“[M]y message for the American soldiers in Afghanistan is that they have liberated us from tyranny, from terrorism, from oppression, from occupation into a country that is now moving towards prosperity, that is once again the home of all Afghans,” Karzai told reporters September 25 after a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Karzai said that Afghanistan has been transformed fundamentally by the U.S. intervention. “Afghanistan was not the home of all Afghans,” he said. “Today it is. Everybody's back in that country with a parliament, with a constitution, with a market economy, with a free press, with all that.”
He added that the ongoing effort to fight terrorism in Afghanistan is bolstering the security of the entire world.
The Afghan president acknowledged that Afghanistan’s opium trade continues to threaten the country’s development.
“Narcotics is a menace to Afghanistan. It's also an embarrassment to us as a nation. We are ashamed of that terrible product hurting us and hurting young people around the world,” he said.
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Bulgaria must send more troops to Afghanistan: Defence Minister
Sofia (Bulgaria), Sept 26. (AP):
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200609260314.htm
Bulgaria should increase its military presence in Afghanistan, Defence Minister Veselin Bliznakov said on Monday, but added no decision had been made yet.
``Given the complicated situation there, which has become even more complicated in the past weeks and months ... it is extremely necessary that all countries boost their participation,'' Bliznakov told reporters. ``We should take a very serious approach and fulfill our commitments as a (NATO) member.''
Bulgaria, which joined NATO in 2004, currently has some 150 troops in Afghanistan, but Bliznakov said the country was able to send more, without giving numbers.
The Government will decide on the issue after a NATO defense ministers' meeting in Slovenia later this week, Bliznakov said. The final decision must be taken by parliament.
Bliznakov paid a short visit to Afghanistan last weekend, and met Bulgarian soldiers, NATO commanders and Afghan officials.
NATO, which has about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan now, has appealed to its members to send up to 2,500 extra troops. NATO's top commander, Gen. James L. Jones, has said reinforcements are needed to pursue the Taliban before the onset of winter enables them to take refuge in the hills.
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