http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25728-2004Aug23.html


By SADAQAT JAN
The Associated Press
Monday, August 23, 2004; 8:33 AM


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai traveled to neighboring Pakistan for talks Monday on fighting terrorism and economic cooperation.

Karzai was welcomed at Islamabad airport by Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri, Pakistan's Geo television station reported.

The Afghan leader was scheduled to meet later Monday with his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a Pakistani diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Karzai will hold talks with Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain on Tuesday, and meet Kasuri and other senior government officials.

Musharraf and Karzai, key U.S. allies in the war on terror, are both struggling against Islamic militants in their countries.

Ties have been strained by allegations from Afghan officials that Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents stage attacks from Pakistan's western tribal regions.

Pakistan, which has stepped up its campaign against al-Qaida holdouts along the border this year, says it is doing all it can to stop infiltration by terrorists.

The two countries share a long border that runs through rugged mountains and desolate plains and is not clearly marked in places.

Pakistan had supported the Taliban regime but switched sides after the Sept. 11 attacks under fierce pressure from the United States to join the U.S.-led coalition that ousted the hardline Islamic militia from power in late 2001.

Karzai, whose government replaced the Taliban, is still facing a stubborn insurgency that poses a serious security threat to landmark Afghan presidential election scheduled Oct. 9.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22480-2004Aug21.html


By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 22, 2004; Page A22


FULADI, Afghanistan -- Bent over rows of carrots and okra, plucking weeds with callused hands while protectively clutching at their head scarves, the sunburned farm women of this central highlands village hardly seem like subversive figures.

Yet they are cutting a small, revolutionary swath through the deeply traditional and long-isolated region that is the homeland of Afghanistan's Hazara population, an ethnic minority that historically has suffered more hardship and persecution than any other group in the country.

Rural Hazara women have borne a double burden, largely confined to fieldwork and child-rearing in a population that is already relegated to the lowest rung of Afghan society. In some districts of Hazarajat, as the central highlands are informally known, the female literacy rate has traditionally been near zero, and more than 6 percent of pregnant women die during childbirth -- a level higher than in sub-Saharan Africa.

Another casualty of the region's remoteness and chronic deprivation is nutrition. The picturesque river valleys meandering through Hazarajat are blanketed with wheat and potato fields, but farmers grow virtually no other crops. The daily diet of most families consists of bread, potatoes and tea, and U.N. studies have found that nearly one-third of Hazarajat's children suffer from stunted growth.

But Sabera Sakhi, who runs a small social welfare program in Bamian, the region's capital, is trying to promote several changes at once: the economic emancipation of Hazara women, the cultivation of crops no one has grown here before, and the benefits of vegetarian cuisine to a population that survives on starch.

"Traditions here are strong and hard to change, but growing vegetables seemed like a good place to start," said Sakhi, who rented three acres of farmland in April and obtained seeds and financing from a New Zealand military unit that operates a provincial development outpost in Bamian.

To gain local support, Sakhi approached village elders and said she wanted to help women whose husbands had been killed or disabled in fighting during the late 1990s, when Islamic Taliban forces overran Hazarajat, burning houses and destroying fields. She sweetened the proposal by offering each of 20 participants $50 a month to tend plots of cabbage, radishes, squash and other vegetables.

Within months, the women in Fuladi went from being the neediest members of their community to being among the top income earners. They developed farming skills unknown to local men, learned how to prepare and cook vegetables for their children, and discovered their own stamina improving in the process. The changes were radical and, perhaps unavoidably, suspect.

"At first people laughed at us, not to our faces but among themselves when we were gone," said Seema Gul, 27, a mother of six with a shy giggle and a face roughened by hardship. "They saw us bending over and taking stones from the fields. They saw us growing things that were not in our tradition. They said it was shameful for us to register with a [foreign charity]."

The women persevered, grateful for the money and gradually convinced that vegetables were beneficial to their health. One participant said she noticed her blood pressure decreasing; another said she had fewer headaches and felt stronger in the mornings.

Next, Sakhi plans to break another cultural taboo by opening a women's vegetable stall in the Bamian market. The Fuladi women appeared uneasy but excited about the plan, and they laughed nervously when asked to pose for photographs with their produce.

"You can send my picture to the world, but please don't show it in my neighborhood. That would be too shameful," Gul requested, proudly opening her apron full of newly picked cucumbers.

At the national level, Hazaras have tended to be more progressive about women's rights to pursue education and public activities than other, larger Afghan ethnic groups. In Kabul, the capital, and other urban districts, educated Hazara women -- particularly those who have returned from wartime exile in Iran -- are as active as men in civic and political affairs.

Even in the tradition-bound central highlands, Hazara families appear eager to have their daughters become educated, and U.N. officials in Bamian, 20 miles to the east, said that since the collapse of Taliban rule in late 2001, aid agencies have scrambled to build schools and attract qualified female teachers to meet the demand.

"The Hazaras are unusually open-minded about the participation of women. This has emerged because of the community's exclusion from economic and political processes in the past," said Peter Maxwell, the senior U.N. official for the region. "They realize that women and girls are a resource in themselves. You see lots and lots of girls in school, some of them walking one or two hours a day to get there."

But conservative custom and years of warfare -- during which many families fled Hazarajat and schools shut down -- have conspired to keep older girls from higher education. Four months ago, a new university built by the U.S. military opened in Bamian, but officials there said that of 165 initial students, only six were women, because so few girls in the area had been able to complete high school.

Statistics from the recently completed national voter registration drive would appear to suggest that women in the central highlands are also more politically engaged than those of other ethnic groups. Of 528,000 voters who registered in the region, more than half -- 280,000 -- were women, whereas in some southern, ethnic Pashtun areas, as little as 20 percent of registrants were women.

But the numbers turned out to be deceptive. In interviews last week, many Hazara farm women said they had dutifully obtained their new identification cards as their community elders urged, but few understood that they would be voting for a new president in an election, and some did not know that Hamid Karzai is the current president of Afghanistan.

Sakhi, who heads a nonprofit agency called Save the Women and Children of Afghanistan, has also been trying to expose Hazara women to such concepts as human rights, civic association and constitutional law. Last spring she offered a free class in legal and civic issues for 50 women, and she hopes to repeat it in the fall.

"There is no lack of interest, but there are almost no facilities for women," she said. "I have 1,600 women registered for literacy classes but no books. Women are still not allowed to choose their husbands, and there is no place for them to turn when they have problems in their marriages. When we get complaints, all we can do is listen."

Aid experts predict it will take years before Hazara women -- like the region as a whole -- can make up for the entrenched poverty and recent violent predations that have kept Hazarajat in a state of suspended isolation.

But in Fuladi, there are already signs that the pioneering vegetable program is changing timeless community attitudes toward women, agriculture and eating habits. The salaries, and the hard toil of tending delicate crops, have earned the participants respect among village men, a few of whom acknowledged they had come to like eating the newfangled vegetables.

"They give you more energy," said Raja Wali, 30, a man covered in mud from digging a well in the village. Vast fields of potato and wheat stretched up into the hills, with the women's tiny plots of green scattered among them. "I wish we had known about this years ago. I'll see how the women do this year," he added thoughtfully. "If they make money, maybe I'll plant some myself next season."

Any time.

There are a lot of great things happening in Afghanistan and much of the media are not interested in reporting it. From time to time, though, some media actually does bother to report something of the progress being done there or what our Warriors there are going through. I had some great articles regarding the latter and unfortunately I can't find them now.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27014-2004Aug23.html


After Decades of Persecution, Hazaras Have Political, Economic, Cultural Revival

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 24, 2004; Page A10


BAMIAN, Afghanistan -- The pair of majestic Buddha cliff-carvings are still disfigured, vandalized three years ago by Afghanistan's Taliban rulers. But little by little, what remains of the ancient treasures is being restored, with iron rods shoring up their niches and concrete being pumped into cracks across the crumbling stone.

Below, in the lush but impoverished valley that stretches along the cliffs, a political, economic and cultural revival is unfolding among the ethnic Hazara populace that was overrun and driven into the frozen mountains by Taliban forces during the late 1990s.

"This was a ruined place, but now everything is being rebuilt," said Azizullah, 31, a policeman who fled the fighting in 1999. He returned two years ago and has constructed a solid mud house by a stream that rushes past the Buddhas, irrigates acres of golden wheat and quenches flocks of goats festooned with bright ribbons.

"The militias have put down their guns and gone home to their fields," he said. "We have the best security in Afghanistan, and we welcome everyone who wants to visit and help. Our people want only unity and peace, and they ask only for their rightful share in national life."

The ravages of the Taliban are only one chapter in the long, bleak history of discrimination, abuse and slaughter that has afflicted the Hazara ethnic group. *****e Muslims with distinctive Asiatic features, Hazaras are estimated to account for about 20 percent of Afghanistan's population.

A century ago, a rapacious ethnic Pashtun ruler, Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, drove the Hazaras from their homeland, a vast and remote region in Afghanistan's central highlands known as Hazarajat. Several Hazara uprisings were crushed without mercy: Men were tortured and killed, religious leaders were imprisoned and women were carried off as slaves and concubines.

According to a recent history of the Hazaras, Rahman Khan's soldiers were encouraged to devise fiendish punishments. They used horses to draw and quarter Hazara victims, threw them to packs of wild dogs, put red-hot stones inside their clothes and severed their heads and hung them on poles as a warning to other would-be rebels.

For most of the 20th century, the Hazaras languished in poverty and humiliation. In the rural highlands, they were scattered and isolated among inaccessible hills; in urban centers, they were confined to menial servitude and insulted as donkeys.

"The Hazaras were always economically weak and politically excluded," said Qasim Aghar, 53, a Hazara intellectual and educator in Kabul, the Afghan capital, 80 miles west of Bamian. "We were separated by religion and geography. No one ever even tried to build a road to Hazarajat."

During the civil war of the early 1990s, the Hazaras staged a brief comeback, uniting behind a charismatic but ruthless militia leader, Abdul Ali Mazari. But Mazari was killed in 1995 and the Taliban -- a repressive Sunni Muslim movement that abhorred Shiism -- turned against the Hazaras with a vengeance.

Taliban fighters repeatedly attacked Bamian and other towns, driving many poor families to hide in the nearby mountains while more affluent Hazaras fled to Iran or Pakistan. The onslaught culminated in March 2001 with the Taliban's destruction of the Buddha statues, which researchers believe were created between the 5th and 7th centuries. The act shocked the world.

The collapse of Taliban rule in late 2001 gave the Hazaras a new lease on life. In the Bamian area, international aid groups built schools, clinics and houses, drawing waves of displaced families home. This year, Italy began building the first paved road to Kabul, while the U.S. military rebuilt a regional university that its forces had bombed as a Taliban outpost in 2001.

Although Hazarajat is still one of Afghanistan's poorest and most underdeveloped areas, it has several unique factors in its favor. One is security. Unlike many other regions, there are no armed feuds between rival militia bosses and no attacks by revived Taliban forces to deter foreign aid projects and disrupt preparations for the presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 9.

"Extremist and anti-government elements are not at all welcome here," said Peter Maxwell, the senior U.N. official in Bamian. "This has a very beneficial effect on all sorts of activities. People are eager to rebuild their lives, they support the government and they have no time for the kinds of extremism found in other areas."

One recent political development appears likely to benefit the most deprived part of Hazarajat, a region of barren hills and remote villages south of Bamian that U.N. reports call the "hunger belt." Several months ago, the government carved out a new province from that area called Daikundi, which will have its own public services and jobs, sparing residents multi-day journeys to more populated areas.

Moreover, after years of brain drain, the Hazara homeland is beginning to make something of an intellectual and cultural comeback as well.

U.N.-sponsored restoration work on the Buddhas has attracted a trickle of tourists from Kabul -- though most are aid workers on short breaks who do not mind jolting roads and erratic electricity.

Last month, the first cell phone relay station was installed, creating a quantum leap in communications between Bamian and the outside world. Meanwhile, the reopening of the university in March has lured 36 young instructors back from Iran, where many educated Hazaras fled years ago, as well as 165 students to its first-semester courses in teaching and agronomy.

"This university will change everything," said Jafferi Hussain, 28, the campus administrator, sitting in his empty office in the new, bright yellow, two-story classroom building. "We want educated people to come back from abroad, though we don't have enough facilities for them yet." During summer break, he said, all the new teachers rushed to Kabul to get visas to visit their families in Iran.

Still, some Hazaras complain that not enough has been done to help the region, an issue that is sure to dominate the country's first presidential election here. Campaigning will not begin until next month, but voter registration among Hazaras has been higher than among all other ethnic groups, both in Kabul and Hazarajat.

Two senior officials of Hazara origin will figure prominently in the race: Vice President Karim Khalili, the former governor of Bamian province who is one of President Hamid Karzai's two running mates, and Mohammed Mohaqiq, the former planning minister who recently quit Karzai's cabinet to run against him.

At some levels, Mohaqiq appears to have gotten a head start. His posters are affixed to almost every shop in Bamian, and some of his aides and supporters are former Khalili loyalists who jumped ship, complaining that the longtime militia boss had abandoned his needy Hazarajat roots after joining the central government.

But in interviews last week, Hazaras working in fields, shops and aid agency offices around Bamian said their primary concern was electing a national leader who would represent their interests as a religious and ethnic minority without provoking renewed bloodshed.

"This election is very important to us. The Hazara people will still be a minority, but this means we can now be the equal of others," Mohammed Sharif, 33, said while squatting in a potato field at dusk as his children scampered among the neat rows of earth.

Sharif pointed to a range of brown hills to the south, where he said hundreds of families froze to death while fleeing winter attacks by the Taliban. When survivors returned, he said, they found their houses burned and their animals stolen. "We hear on the radio about fighting in other provinces, but we have started again from zero," he said. "We don't want to lose everything again."

Several Hazara professionals seemed disappointment in both major Hazara candidates and expressed concern that the election could fracture along ethnic lines, recreating the divisions that led to civil war and the rise of the Taliban.

Aghar, the educator in Kabul, is one of the founders of the Hizb-i-Wahdat, the main Hazara political party, and said that though it is healthy for Hazaras to be reasserting their identity after years of repression, they should be careful not to let ethnic chauvinism obstruct Afghanistan's progress toward democracy.

"I'm glad to see Hazaras getting involved in the elections, but I'm upset at the reasons behind it," he said. "We have suffered a lot, but we do not need another government based on ethnic politics. We need a government based on cooperation among all ethnic groups."

http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2004&m=August&x=20040823125931ESnamfuaK0.9641535&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html


23 August 2004

OPIC-backed project to produce drinking water, support economic growth

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a U.S. government agency, is loaning a company owned by Afghan-American businessmen $9.2 million to establish a facility in Kabul to produce clean drinking water, carbonated beverages and fruit juices.

According to an August 19 OPIC press release, a loan will be made to ABI Group Ltd. to establish Afghanistan's first locally manufactured beverage facility.

ABI plans to construct and operate the facility in Kabul, which will produce beverages including bottled water, carbonated soft drinks and fruit juices. The water will be pumped from an underground aquifer and purified before distribution, helping Kabul overcome an inadequate municipal water supply.

According to the press release, bottled water and beverages are extremely expensive in Afghanistan because they are currently imported from neighboring countries.

Following is the text of OPIC's press release:

(begin text)

OPIC PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 19, 2004

For further information, contact:
Lawrence Spinelli (202) 336-8690
Timothy Harwood (202) 336-8744

U.S. SMALL BUSINESS USES OPIC LOAN TO ESTABLISH FIRST BEVERAGE MANUFACTORY IN AFGHANISTAN

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A U.S. small business will use financing from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) to establish the first locally manufactured beverage facility in Afghanistan, helping the country both meet a strong demand for clean drinking water and continue its economic reconstruction.

OPIC will provide a $9.2 million loan to ABI Group Ltd., a U.S. small business comprised of Afghan-American businessmen, to construct and operate a beverage manufacturing, packaging and distribution operation in Kabul. ABI will produce beverages for the Afghan market, including bottled water, carbonated soft drinks, and fruit juices.

OPIC President and CEO Dr. Peter Watson said that one of the facility's principal products, high-purity bottled water, will help Kabul overcome an inadequate municipal water supply. The facility will pump water from an underground aquifer, then purify, bottle and distribute it directly to residential and commercial customers. Bottled water and beverages are currently imported from neighboring countries into Afghanistan and are extremely expensive.

"Afghanistan is in the process of reconstructing its economic and physical infrastructure, an important part of which is the provision of clean and safe drinking water such as the kind produced by this project," Dr. Watson said. "OPIC is pleased to work with a U.S. small business on a project that will simultaneously deliver important social benefits and continue the reconstruction of Afghanistan's economy."

OPIC was established as an agency of the U.S. government in 1971. It helps U.S. businesses invest overseas, fosters economic development in new and emerging markets, complements the private sector in managing risks associated with foreign direct investment, and supports U.S. foreign policy. Because OPIC charges market-based fees for its products, it operates on a self-sustaining basis at no net cost to taxpayers.

OPIC's political risk insurance and financing help U.S. businesses of all sizes invest in more than 150 emerging markets and developing nations worldwide. Over the agency's 32-year history, OPIC has supported $150 billion worth of investments that have helped developing countries to generate over 690,000 host-country jobs. OPIC projects have also generated $66 billion in U.S. exports and created more than 257,000 American jobs.

I want to see all I can get on this great success by our military! This forgotten victory is something John Kerry does not want to talk about any more than he wants to talk about his "twenty-nothing" years in the Senate.

I agree. There is so much gretness that has been done by our Warriors over there and few of us know about it.

And that is not how it should be.

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=23964

By Jon R. Anderson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, August 22, 2004


BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Top-level Army trainers are trying to look into a crystal ball to create a work-up package for troops headed to an Afghanistan that doesn’t exist yet.

A 10-man team from the Hohenfels, Germany-based Combat Maneuver Training Center has been dispatched to Afghanistan to figure out the kind of conditions the next rotation of forces into the combat zone might find there.

“We’ve come over here to check out the area so that we can a build realistic and relevant training package for follow-on forces,” said Lt. Col. Knowles Atchison, a senior observer-controller for the training center.

The group will lead the training for the Italy-based Southern European Task Force in coming months as the unit prepares to take over command of the Afghanistan mission from the 25th Infantry Division this spring.

But in a combat zone, a lot can happen in just a few months. Just ask the 1st Infantry Division.

Troops from the 1st ID were at the training center last October for their deployment into Iraq in March. The training in Germany was almost up-to-the-minute, with troops facing scenarios that replicated incidents that had occurred in Iraq the day before.

But by the time troops arrived into the war zone, many complained much of what they’d learned in Germany had become outdated.

Thank you for your service and for fighting for us in Afghanistan.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34580-2004Aug26.html


By EDITH M. LEDERER
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 26, 2004; 5:34 AM


UNITED NATIONS - Pakistan's U.N. ambassador on Wednesday challenged the NATO-led force in Afghanistan to match the 75,000 troops Islamabad has deployed to stop cross-border terror attacks by al-Qaida and Taliban supporters, a growing concern before Afghanistan's landmark election in October.

After listening to appeals from the United Nations, Afghanistan and others to do more to prevent terrorist infiltration, Pakistani envoy Munir Akram got testy and told the U.N. Security Council: "We feel very strongly that we are doing everything we can."

He said it was "unfair" to ask Pakistan to do more when it has taken "lots of political risks and lots of military casualties" in sending a large force to the border and into tribal areas where the British did not venture for 150 years when they ruled the country.

"Cross-border action is a responsibility not only of Pakistan but it is even more the responsibility of Afghanistan and of the international forces which are in Afghanistan," Akram said.

While Pakistan has deployed 75,000 troops, he noted that the 6,500-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, known as ISAF, was being strengthened by only 1,500 soldiers before the Oct. 9 Afghan presidential election.

"Is that the response that is required from the international community, and if the international community asks us to do more, should it not do more itself?," Akram asked. "If the U.N. asks us to do more, should it not ask ISAF at least to match our efforts on the other side of the border?

"These are real and practical issues, and, therefore, I must say that my government is very sensitive to any assertion that we could do more than what we're doing without the help of the international community."

The NATO-led force operates separately from the 20,000-strong mainly U.S. force focusing on tracking down remnants of al-Qaida and the deposed Taliban government, mainly in the border area with Pakistan. The Afghan army now numbers about 13,500.

Akram warned that without "a substantial increase in ISAF's strength and its robust deployment throughout Afghanistan," factional forces will not be disarmed, the central government will not extend its authority, and warlords and criminals will continue to "wreak havoc."

Pakistan initially supported the Taliban regime but switched sides after the Sept. 11 attacks, backing Washington as a U.S.-led coalition of forces drove the hardline Islamic militia from power in late 2001. But thousands of Pakistanis crossed the rugged border with Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban after it came under attack from U.S.-led forces for harboring al-Qaida.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34298-2004Aug26.html

By DENISE LAVOIE
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 26, 2004; 1:33 AM


NEEDHAM, Mass. - Amid the horror, confusion and grief that followed their husbands' deaths in the 2001 terrorist attacks, Susan Retik and Patti Quigley were inundated with kindness.

Family and friends offered love and companionship. Their husbands' employers continued to pay their salaries. Strangers sent flowers, food and cash.

Yet through their grief, the two widows managed to react with kindness themselves, reaching out across an ocean and to a different culture to consider the plight of widows in Afghanistan.

Retik and Quigley were struck by how women, especially widows, were marginalized by the former Taliban regime and by Afghan society in general: They had no life insurance and often no money or property to help them carry on after their husbands' deaths.

"I thought - look at all the support we're getting," said Retik, of Needham. "What must it be like for widows in Afghanistan?"

It turned out that Quigley, who lived in neighboring Wellesley but had never met Retik until several months after their husbands were killed at the World Trade Center, had similar thoughts.

The two began talking about the connection they felt with widows in Afghanistan, the same nation where their husbands' killers had trained and where war raged in the years following the attacks.

Months later, they came up with a plan to raise money for them.

Earlier this year, they created Beyond the 11th, a nonprofit foundation to aid widows in areas touched by conflict, and they plan to mark the third anniversary of the attacks by riding their bikes from New York, where their husbands' lives ended, to Boston, where their final flights began.

"Instead of the cycle of violence and terrorism escalating, if we can on that day show kindness and reach out to other people, what better thing to do on September 11th?" asked Retik.

The two women plan to ride the first 220 miles of the route together, making their way through back roads of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and into Massachusetts, where they hope to be met by another 200 riders for the final 30 miles to Boston. Each rider will represent one of the 202 New Englanders killed in the attacks.

For Retik, 36, and Quigley, 40, the ride is an outgrowth of their friendship, which blossomed even as they coped with a terrible loss. Both women were pregnant when their husbands perished aboard the planes that slammed into the trade center.

Retik and her husband, David, already had two children, Ben, 3, and Molly, 2. She was 7 1/2 months pregnant on Sept. 11. Two months later, she gave birth to a second daughter, Dina.

Quigley and her husband, Patrick, had a 5-year-old daughter, Rachel. A month after the attacks, she gave birth to another daughter, Leah.

The first few months after the attacks were a blur, with family and friends constantly coming and going, piles of mail arriving, dozens of phone calls to answer every day.

By February of 2002, Retik and Quigley began getting together for dinner, sharing their grief and talking to each another in a way no one else could. "There's a point where other people just don't get it," Quigley said.

Quigley came up with the idea for the bike ride. Neither of the women were avid cyclists, but both had kept in shape by running and doing aerobics. They bought bikes together in March and began their training with a 14-mile ride. Since then, they've built up to 50 miles and plan to ride about 100 miles per day by September.

The ride will begin Sept. 9 at the former site of the World Trade Center and end on Sept. 11 at a new memorial in the Boston Public Garden. They are hoping to raise $100,000 for food, clothing, education and job training for Afghan widows and their children.

With less than three weeks to go before the ride, about 75 riders have signed up to do the final leg with Retik and Quigley. The riders have pledged a total of $30,000 so far to help Afghan widows.

"We want to help these women by providing them with the financial aid they need just to survive," Retik said. "But we also want to establish a personal connection between American and Afghan widows to remind both them and ourselves that we are all real people who have suffered terrible and unimaginable losses."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32594-2004Aug25.html

The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 25, 2004; 3:02 PM


LONDON - Six British Harrier jump-jets will be deployed in Afghanistan to assist coalition forces ahead of the country's election this fall, officials said Wednesday.

The Royal Air Force's GR7 jets will be based in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, defense chiefs said in a statement.

It will be the first time that Britain has deployed combat aircraft in Afghanistan, despite its heavy involvement in the U.S.-led coalition that toppled Taliban.

The decision to send the jump jets, famous for their vertical takeoffs and landings, comes as Afghanistan faces a tense period in the run-up to October's election.

The Harriers are expected to spend nine months in Kandahar, providing close air support and reconnaissance for coalition troops.

Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said their deployment underlined Britain's commitment to the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

"The Royal Air Force crews will provide a highly capable and credible force which will contribute to improving the security environment in the region," he said.

Initially, 315 army and air force soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan along with the warplane, but that deployment will later be reduced to 230, officials said.

The first group of British soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan on Thursday, including engineers who will prepare Kandahar airfield for the Harriers, officials said.

The soldiers also will prepare for the arrival of the main British deployment, which is to be operational by the end of September ahead of Afghanistan's national election on Oct. 9.


© 2004 The Associated Press

And they climbed and fought in mountains even higher than those. I am in awe of our Troops. We all should be in awe of them.

Any way of making that pic smaller??

U.S. Army Capt. Cristal Horsch uses a stethoscope to listen as she examines an Afghan child during a Cooperative Medical Assistance mission in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan on Aug. 18, 2004. Task Force 325, Task Force Victory and the Asadabad Provincial Reconstruction Team provided people and animals with medical care. DoD photo by Staff Sgt. Vernell Hall, U.S. Army. (Released)

...........

This is what America does.

Yet America is hated in the world, and the terrorists are adored.

Mountains and more mountains.

Members of the Coalition Joint Task Forces conducted a convoy from Kandahar Airfield to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. An Afghan Land Mine Clearer and his dog is shown searching for mines in area near the convoy. The purpose of the convoy is to gather information to help with the Road Rebuilding Project in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Vernell Hall

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=24047


By Ward Sanderson, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Friday, August 27, 2004


The United States will send a quick response force to Afghanistan to help NATO keep the peace during the presidential election there on Oct. 9.

The force, as described in a release by U.S. Ambassador to NATO Nicholas Burns, will be an infantry company outfitted with light armored and tracked vehicles. The company will be ready to go by late September, and could remain in the capital of Kabul for about three months. It should number around 110 troops.

The United States will also airlift members of a Spanish quick-reaction battalion and an Italian battalion assigned to NATO’s Response Force into the country. A spokesman for the ambassador wasn’t immediately able to say from where the U.S. contributions would be deployed.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had asked NATO for emergency security prior to the elections. At the NATO Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in June, the alliance agreed to assign 10,000 troops to its International Security Assistance Force, which beforehand was 6,500 strong. The U.S. quick response force will join these other NATO troops.

Most of the nearly 18,000 U.S. forces are assigned to Operation Enduring Freedom, the sharper edge of operations in Afghanistan that hunts down terrorists as well as helps in reconstruction.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40861-2004Aug28.html


By PAUL HAVEN
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 28, 2004; 4:22 AM


KABUL, Afghanistan - A renegade Afghan warlord has been arrested and brought to the capital by the central government, just weeks after his troops clashed with militiamen loyal to a powerful regional governor, officials said.

Amanullah, a Pashtun warlord who goes by only one name, was brought to Kabul on Friday from the western city of Herat, said Jawed Ludin, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai. Ludin said Amanullah agreed to the transfer, but officials speaking on condition of anonymity said he had little choice and was essentially being kept under arrest.

"He does not have the freedom to go back. He is in custody," said a senior Afghan official.

Government officials indicated that the move against Amanullah was part of efforts to eliminate private armies that have faced off in several Afghan provinces in recent months, compromising security for Oct. 9 national elections.

Amanullah and Khan swear allegiance to Karzai's government, but both often act in their own interests. Neither has agreed to disarm their troops as part of a slow-going nationwide program to demobilize tens of thousands of private soldiers.

Dozens were killed in fighting that broke out earlier this month between militiamen loyal to Amanullah and those that answer to Herat Gov. Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik strongman who rules the city with an iron fist.

Ludin would not comment on widespread speculation that Khan might be removed from power, but he said the action against Amanullah was one in a series of steps that will unfold in the coming days.

"What happened to Amanullah was part of a wider plan to take all necessary measures to secure long-term stability in the region," Ludin said.

Separately in southern Zabul province, U.S. and Afghan soldiers conducting a sweep arrested 22 suspected Taliban after a firefight in a forbidding mountain area.

No casualties were reported in the fighting, which Gov. Khial Mohammed told The Associated Press broke out on Friday and was continuing on Saturday.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Scott Nelson confirmed operations in Zabul and Ghazni and said 22 Taliban suspects had been arrested.

The fighting between militiamen alarmed Kabul and the United Nations and underscored the need to improve security ahead of the landmark elections. It also prompted U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to call for an urgent increase in international forces in Afghanistan.

At one point, Amanullah's men took a village on a hillside overlooking Herat city, the main population center in the west of the country, the greatest threat yet to Khan's rule.

The men reached a truce after the U.S. military sent warplanes to the region to make clear that further fighting was not acceptable.

Karzai rushed hundreds of troops from the Afghan National Army to an air base in Herat to act as a buffer between the two sides.

In eastern Afghanistan, suspected Taliban rebels opened fire Friday on a convoy of trucks bringing supplies to a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan, killing a driver and injuring his assistant, said Nashin Uddin, an aide to the local Afghan National Army commander in Khost province.

The attack occurred in Mando Zayi district as the convoy made its way to Camp Salerno, one of several smaller forward bases housing coalition soldiers.

Also Friday, one militiaman was killed and two injured when Afghan National Army soldiers opened fire on a car in central Ghazni province, apparently when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, Ghazni Gov. Asadullah Khalid said.

Some 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, and to help ensure security for the presidential elections, which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40652-2004Aug28.html

By NOOR KHAN
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 28, 2004; 2:22 AM


KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - U.S. and Afghan soldiers conducting a sweep in southern Zabul province arrested 10 suspected Taliban after a firefight in a forbidding mountain area, the governor said Saturday.

No Afghan or American soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which broke out Friday and was continuing on Saturday, Gov. Khial Mohammed told The Associated Press.

"This operation was launched to improve security for the people of Zabul province," he said. The U.S. military could not immediately be reached for comment. It was not clear how many American and Afghan soldiers were participating.

Meanwhile, suspected Taliban rebels opened fire on a convoy of trucks bringing supplies to a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan, killing a driver and injuring his assistant, said Nashin Uddin, an aide to the local Afghan National Army commander in Khost province.

The attack occurred Friday afternoon in Mando Zayi district as the convoy made its way to Camp Salerno, one of several smaller forward bases housing coalition soldiers.

Also Friday, one militiaman was killed and two injured when Afghan National Army soldiers opened fire on a car in central Ghazni province, apparently when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, Ghazni Gov. Asadullah Khalid said.

"An investigation has been launched to find out how this incident happened, because the Afghan National Army says it was a misunderstanding," he said.

Some 18,000 U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to hunt down al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, and to help ensure security for landmark presidential elections scheduled for Oct. 9.

The Taliban have vowed to disrupt the elections, and have launched frequent attacks on coalition soldiers, election workers and Afghan voters.


© 2004 The Associated Press

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Afghan President Escapes Attack

Voice of America
Ayaz Gul
Islamabad
16 Sep 2004

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai was forced to cancel a trip to a provincial capital after a rocket hit near the landing site for his helicopter. Afghan authorities say they have detained three people in connection with the attack.

A U.S military helicopter was carrying President Hamid Karzai to the southeastern city of Gardez for his first election campaign appearance when the incident took place.

Witnesses and officials say a rocket fired by unknown insurgents missed the helicopter as it was preparing to land near a school, where hundreds of supporters had gathered to greet Mr. Karzai. The helicopter did not touch down and returned the president to Kabul. There are no reports of casualties.

Speaking to reporters in the Afghan capital, Mr. Karzai played down the significance of the attack. "We were not in the full [aware of the full] picture till we came back and landed in Kabul," he said. "I called the [provincial] governor when I arrived in Kabul and said what was going on, he said nothing; there was just one rocket that came and landed about two kilometers away."

President Karzai dismissed suggestions that his decision to cancel the trip could have disappointed his voters in the region. "No. Not at all, I will be there very soon," he said.

Insurgents linked to the ousted Taleban have claimed responsibility for the attack. The Afghan Interior ministry says that authorities in Gardez, with the help of residents, have detained three suspects in connection with the attack.

Taleban rebels and their al-Qaida allies have vowed to disrupt Afghanistan's first presidential election, scheduled for October 9.

U.S.-backed President Karzai narrowly escaped an assassination attempt two years ago in the southern city of Kandahar. Three people, including the gunman, died in that attack.

Since then, the transitional president has been constantly shadowed by Afghan and American bodyguards.

Five Taliban leaders captured

September 27, 2004

KABUL (AP) - The U.S. military said it had captured more than five Taliban leaders, and confirmed the death of a rebel commander who was released two years ago from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Three U.S. soldiers were wounded, one of them critically, when Afghan insurgents attacked their vehicle with rockets and guns, the American military said Monday.

The American soldiers were hurt when militants attacked the vehicle Saturday morning near Qalat, the capital of the troubled southeastern province of Zabul, U.S. spokesman Maj. Scott Nelson said.

He said the three soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany for treatment. One soldier was in critical condition and the other two were in stable condition.

No further details were provided.

Zabul has been the focus of operations for the 18,000-strong American-led force battling Taliban insurgents and other anti-government militias across the south and east of Afghanistan.

Nelson said U.S. and Afghan forces have captured "more than five" Taliban leaders in operations since Saturday. Three were "medium-value" figures while another was a "higher-level target," he said without identifying them further.

The military also confirmed the killing of Abdul Ghaffar, a rebel commander in the Taliban stronghold of central Uruzgan province.

Afghan officials say that Ghaffar, who died along with two other suspects in a gunbattle Saturday night, rejoined the rebels after being released from Guantanamo Bay.

Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said on Sunday that Ghaffar was captured shortly after the U.S. bombing campaign which pushed the Taliban from power in late 2001, but released about eight months later.

Nelson also said U.S.-led forces had rounded up more than 10 "Taliban facilitators" in the southeast, winning "very significant" intelligence that was helping them track down other rebels and disrupt their operations.

More than 900 people have died in violence across the country so far this year. U.S. and Afghan officials say militants are stepping up attacks in an attempt to disrupt Oct. 9 presidential elections.


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