[Afghan News] June 6, 2012

[یاسمینه]

Afghanistan Faces Deadliest Day for Civilians This Year in Multiple Attacks
By ALISSA J. RUBIN and TAIMOOR SHAH The New York Times June 6, 2012
KABUL, Afghanistan — Violence took the lives of at least two dozen Afghan civilians and possibly many more on Wednesday, making it the deadliest day for Afghan civilians so far this year. The day included a complex suicide attack in Kandahar City and a NATO airstrike that Afghan officials and residents said had killed women and children in eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials and residents.
Last week, the head of the United Nations Afghanistan office, Jan Kubic, said that in the first quarter of this year, civilian casualties had dropped for the first time since the United Nations began keeping statistics in 2007. That positive trend has appeared to be eroding in recent days. Another official in the office, James Rodehaver, said, “One thing we can say is that this has been the deadliest day of the year so far for civilians.”
The civilian deaths said to have been caused by a NATO airstrike took place in rural Logar Province, and for much of the day there were conflicting accounts of what had happened. By evening a NATO spokesman said that international forces and the Afghans had opened a joint investigation.
According to Logar residents, including health workers who received the bodies of the dead, Western Special Operations forces, working with their Afghan counterparts, received word that a Taliban commander was using a civilian home for the night with some of his fighters. The joint force prepared to attack the house. As the forces approached, they came under fire from the Taliban and called in the airstrike, said Din Mohammed Darwish, the spokesman for the governor of Logar.
“The airstrike not only damaged the house that the Taliban occupied, but it also has completely destroyed the adjacent house, which belonged to two brothers, Abdul Qayum and Abdul Bashir,” Mr. Darwish said.
Seven women, 11 children and one man were in the adjacent house, and all of them were killed, according to health clinic workers in Sajawand, the village where the strike occurred.
Zarif Nai Khail, head of Logar Province’s health department, said that at least three others had been wounded.
Initial reporting by NATO found that no civilians had been killed, but that two women had “nonlife-threatening wounds.”
The operation, which took place in Baraki Barak district, an area that has been troubled by the Taliban for more than two years, targeted a Taliban leader who “planned and participated in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces” and who “commands multiple insurgents,” said Lt. Cmdr. James Williams. However, there was no information on whether that leader was killed in the attack, he said.
In Kandahar, two explosions — at least one set off by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle — killed 23 civilians near Kandahar Airfield, one of the largest coalition bases in Afghanistan, according to the Kandahar police chief and witnesses.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the bombing.
Officials said that the target of Wednesday’s attack was a small market and a hotel where Afghan security escorts for NATO supply trucks stopped between escort runs to rest and have tea. The death toll rose to 23 by midday as bodies were recovered, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, the Kandahar police chief, standing at the site as his men picked through the debris. An additional 25 people were wounded, he said.
General Raziq said the attack involved two bombs. People at the scene described a local contraption known as a zarange — a motorcycle with a wagon attached to it — that was packed with explosives and detonated. Some said it was detonated remotely; others said a bomber was riding it.
Then, as people gathered to assist the victims, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle drove into the crowd and detonated explosives.
“The suicide bomber on the motorcycle inflicted heavy casualties, including civilians: shopkeepers and laborers who are working in the small bazaar,” General Raziq said. “And some of those who work as security escorts were killed; we don’t know how many.” The Kandahar governor, Tooryalai Wesa, who was himself the target of an assassination attempt in April, and whose province is the former Taliban heartland, condemned Wednesday’s slaughter.
“The enemy of Afghanistan has once again shown their ugly face, and has brought mourning and grief to people of Kandahar, but Kandaharis will not be deterred by their un-Islamic act,” he said. In northern Afghanistan, a suicide bomber detonated himself in the middle of a bazaar in Maimana, the capital of Faryab Province, usually a relatively calm area, killing at least one civilian and wounding 10, according to the public health department.
And in Paktika Province, a civilian who was traveling with family members was killed along with a child, and four other children were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded in Yahya Khel district, said Mokhlis Afghan, a spokesman for the provincial governor.
Two NATO military force members were killed when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan. The military was investigating the cause but did not rule out the helicopter’s having been shot down. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying that one of their fighters in Ghazni Province had shot it down.
Alissa J. Rubin reported from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar, Afghanistan. Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul, and employees of The New York Times from Mazar-i-Sharif and Khost.

Afghan nominated as ambassador to Britain was accused in US of fraud
Mohammad Daud Yaar, one of President Karzai's inner circle, rated unfit for top UK post by 'victims' who brought civil cas
Luke Harding, and Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 6 June 2012 14.27 EDT
The man who has been nominated as Afghanistan's new ambassador to the UK has been accused in the US of fraud and appears to have landed the job thanks to his contacts with Hamid Karzai's powerful family.
Mohammad Daud Yaar is at present director of economic affairs at the foreign ministry in Kabul, and a key conduit between the Afghan government and donor agencies and embassies.
In 2010 a family of Afghan immigrants accused Yaar, in a civil court in California, of defrauding them. He admits to owing them $100,000.
Officials in Kabul have confirmed that Yaar has been nominated as the ambassador to London. He has yet to take up his post. The Foreign Office says it is unclear when he will arrive and adds that he is not ambassador yet. Yaar denies fraud and says he intends to repay the money.
Afghan sources said Yaar secured the UK job following intense behind-the-scenes lobbying by Mahmoud Karzai, the president's influential brother, whose business activities in Afghanistan are also being investigated in the US.
Yaar spent about 20 years in the US. He lived with Ahmed Wali Karzai (a brother who was killed) in the late 1980s and 90s, when the family ran a restaurant in Chicago. Ahmed Wali shared the business with Mahmoud and another Karzai brother, Qayum.
Yaar's appointment to the high-profile London post is likely to raise questions about alleged rampant corruption and nepotism at the heart of the Karzai administration.
Ahead of the Afghan president's departure from office in 2014, family members have been fighting among themselves for control of the fortune they have amassed over the past decade, the New York Times reported this week.
The feuding within the Afghan elite has intensified as the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of US, British and Nato troops draws nearer. There are fears in Kabul that once the soldiers are gone, and if the west's financial and military support drops off, the country could slip back into civil war.
Many people who have grown rich in Afghanistan are looking for a safe haven abroad for their assets, and often for their families as well.
Yaar returned to the country in 2009. He left the US following the settlement of a civil action against him. The plaintiffs, two Afghan-born brothers, Jamal and Ajmal Staneckzai, claim he "tricked, defrauded and deceived" them over the 2001 purchase of a house in Fresno, California.
Yaar insisted the case, from California's superior court in Contra Costa, was a business deal gone wrong. He vehemently denied fraud.
"If I had committed fraud, why did they settle?" he told the Guardian in his office in a low-rise building inside the sprawling grounds of the Afghan foreign ministry. He added: "It was a business agreement and the other side backed off [from their side of the deal] and went to the courts. They couldn't prove anything."
Yaar said he was planning to pay off the remainder of the money he owed as soon as he could afford it, but his home in California was in negative equity and his small government salary in Kabul did not leave room for savings. He stressed: "My intention was to help these guys to solve their housing problem."
But one of his alleged victims said that Yaar was not a fit person to become ambassador to the UK, let alone hold responsibility in Kabul for big financial issues.
Speaking by phone, Jamal Staneckzai told the Guardian he had wanted to buy a home for his elderly parents, Ghani and Amani, who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet occupation.
Unable to get a mortgage, he and four other families from the close-knit Afghan community in California turned to Yaar for help. Yaar bought a property in 2001 on their behalf, but registered it in his own name. The Staneckzais made regular mortgage payments, with several family friends providing the initial deposit as a loan, he said.
In 2005 the Staneckzais were finally able to get a mortgage. When they asked Yaar to transfer the property to them he refused and sold it to them for $358,900, promising to refund the net proceeds.
Instead, Yaar pocketed the cash, Staneckzai alleges "I was a part-time student at university back in 2001, which is why I couldn't get a loan. We regarded Yaar as a close and respected uncle. He told us, "you guys will pay the mortgage costs and I will transfer everything back to you". Instead he took every dollar from us. He took our equity."
In January 2009 the family's lawyer, Bashir Ghazialam, filed court papers alleging "breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and fraud". In August 2010 he obtained a judgment against Yaar and his wife, Sadia, for $120,000, after the Yaars paid only $10,000 of agreed damages. Asked about the case Ghazialam said caustically: "If this guy becomes ambassador to the UK I might as well give up my law licence."
In Kabul, Yaar denied that the Staneckzais had provided money for the deposit, even though the court claims give details of family friends who say they provided the cash. One friend is Khodaidad Karzai, one of the president's uncles, whom, the Staneckzais say, lent them $5000. Yaar, however, insisted he paid the deposit himself.
Educated, clever, and a fluent English speaker, Yaar has a colourful biography. After graduating he taught economics in Kabul for several years. He fled the country in 1978 after the Soviet-backed government broke up an underground opposition group that he belonged to and which was centred on the university.
The group's members agreed to write letters to foreign newspapers under fake names exposing the atrocities of the Afghan communist regime and its Soviet backers in Moscow.
Surviving members of the group said Yaar was the only one to escape. They suspect they might have been betrayed by a mysterious relative whom Yaar brought to a meeting the day before the arrests began.
"We were holding a meeting in July, and Daud Yaar came and brought a strange man we didn't know. That evening we went to jail," said one surviving member of the group, who asked not to be named. "My view is that [the man] was a spy for the communist government. I was a prisoner for a year and a half. They tortured us and we came close to being hanged."
Yaar said his relative was also later arrested and badly tortured, adding: "I don't believe that he would give me or the others to the military."
Yaar spent 10 years in Germany before moving in 1987 to the US, where he shared a house with the Karzais.
Some sources said he worked before 9/11 as an informal PR adviser to the Taliban's New York representative, Hakim Mujahid. Yaar dismisses this. Of the Taliban, he said: "I think they deceived everybody – they deceived the king, Professor Rabbani. They said they were going to disarm the country but it turned out they were just a bunch of crooks and terrorists."
In California he worked as a part-time economics professor while amassing a property empire that included at least six houses.
Back in Kabul his connections got him a post on the Afghan National Security Council, chaired by Hamid Karzai. He was a key liaison between the council and a UK-funded agency, Adam Smith International.
In 2010 Yaar became the director of economic affairs at the Kabul foreign ministry, a plum job. He now liaises between the Afghan government and western donors on financial issues. British diplomats in Kabul appear unaware of the fraud allegations and have declined to comment.
The appointment follows a year in which the key London post lay vacant as the Afghan government struggled to find a consensus candidate for what is considered one of the most senior and prestigious diplomatic posts.
At one point Yaar was in the frame to become ambassador in Washington. The job eventually went to the deputy foreign minister Eklil Hakimi. Yaar then got London as a consolation prize, one source suggested.
His predecessor in the UK, Homayoun Tanda, struggled to make his mark. US diplomats who met him in 2009 noted that Tanda knew French fluently but could speak only "broken, heavily accented English" and that he "struggled" to communicate. This made it difficult for the Afghan government get its message across to British officials and the media, the US mission in London noted.

Afghanistan and the Karzai connection
Peace there depends on an effective government, and Obama's withdrawal deadline offers an incentive for the Afghan president to get to work.
By Christopher J. Fettweis June 6, 2012 Los Angeles Times
Deadlines concentrate the mind. Without a little extra incentive and pressure, sometimes nothing gets done.
It is a deadline that lies at the heart of one of the most controversial foreign policy decisions that President Obama has made. His announced timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan has drawn fire from many quarters. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others have argued that by making U.S. plans clear, the president is sending the wrong message to the Taliban and complicating efforts to defeat it. Announcing "dates certain" for withdrawal, according to this view, is political, not strategic.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a distinct strategic logic behind the announcement of withdrawal dates.
The difference between the McCain and Obama positions lies in the interpretation of what the main objective is in Afghanistan: Is the United States trying to defeat the Taliban, or to establish a viable national government? McCain clearly thinks it is the former. He is correct that it is a strange strategic decision to communicate our plans to the enemy, if indeed the Taliban was our primary concern.
But the most important factor in Afghanistan — or what strategists sometimes refer to as the "center of gravity" — is not the Taliban but the Karzai government. It is not our enemies who represent the main obstacle to success but our allies.
The Afghan security forces have nearly 350,000 trained men under arms, compared with perhaps one-tenth that number of insurgents. Polling indicates that the people have no love for the Taliban and do not wish to see it return. In other words, the insurgents can kill many people and make life miserable, but they won't bring down the Karzai government. Only Karzai can do that, through mismanagement, endemic corruption and incompetence.
As it stands, Karzai has little incentive to take steps toward better governance. As long as he can count on the support of NATO troops, there is no reason to cooperate with the regional warlords, improve services for his people or try to cut deals with local Pashtun leaders who might be seduced away from the Taliban. He has to make no tough decisions as long as his basic security is assured.
Without a sense of urgency on Karzai's part, the insurgency in Afghanistan is unlikely to go away any time soon. It certainly cannot be permanently defeated as long as it has safe haven across the border in Pakistan. The goal of the United States is not to force the various Taliban groups to surrender but to encourage the ineffective, venal Karzai government to make the kind of adjustments that would allow it to survive on its own. And a deadline is the only way to accomplish that mission.
The Obama administration is thus in an awkward position. It cannot fully explain the strategic logic of its policy without insulting its partners in an undiplomatic, counterproductive fashion. Setting deadlines for withdrawal acknowledges that reality.
It is worth remembering what happened when the Soviet Union attempted to build a nation in Afghanistan. Once Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced in April 1988 that Soviet troops would leave by February, their puppet in Afghanistan, Najibullah, was forced to get serious about governing without friendly foreign troops.
The deadline worked. The Soviets withdrew according to schedule, by which time Najibullah's government had consolidated its position enough to hold on to power far longer than the CIA thought it would. As it turned out, that government outlasted its sponsor's, and collapsed only after the aid spigot from Moscow went dry.
The lesson is this: Although Najibullah was even less popular than Karzai is now and had much stronger opposition, once faced with the certainty of having to stand on his own, he got his act together. Since Western aid will continue after the troops are gone, the post-NATO Afghan government would probably be able to persevere indefinitely.
The Karzai government will never be ready to stand on its own unless it is given incentive to do so. Setting a deadline for withdrawal is the correct strategic choice.
Christopher J. Fettweis, an associate professor of political science at Tulane University, previously taught strategy as an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College.

Airstrike kills 17 Afghan civilians: Officials
PUL-E-ALAM, Afghanistan, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Air raids again Taliban hideout claimed the lives of 17 non-combatants in Logar province 60 km south of capital Kabul on late Tuesday night, local officials said Wednesday.
"In the air strike carried out by NATO-led forces in Sajawand village of Baraki Barak district last night 17 civilians including women and children were killed," district governor Sayed Wakil Agha told Xinhua.
He also stressed that the aircrafts pounded the house of a tribal elder namely Sayed Bashir Akhundzada killing 17 people inside including the house owner Akhundzada.
Head of Logar provincial council, Abdul Wali Wakil also confirmed the incident, saying NATO's bombardment late Tuesday night claimed the lives of tribal elder Akhundzada and 16 others.
Meantime, Logar police chief Raes Khan Sadiq said that air raid occurred while a Taliban commander named Qari Sardar along with his men were inside the house of the tribal elder Akhundzada. As a result of air raid, Qari Sardar along with six of his men were killed, he noted.
On the other hand, the NATO-led troops in a statement released here confirmed the operation in Logar province but rejected harming civilians.
"An Afghan and coalition security force conducted an operation to detain a Taliban leader in Baraki Barak district, Logar province, today. During the operation, insurgents attacked the Afghan and coalition troops with small-arms fire and a grenade. The security force returned fire and requested a precision airstrike. As a result multiple insurgents were killed and the Afghan and coalition security force seized several weapons and a quantity of explosives," the statement stated.
However, the alliance in the statement confirmed injuring two women, saying the security force discovered two women who had sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The security force provided medical assistance and transported both women to an ISAF medical facility for treatment.

Afghanistan: Officials claim NATO air strike kills women, kids at wedding party
June 6, 2012 8:18 AM CBS News
(CBS/AP) KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Afghan officials and residents said a pre-dawn NATO airstrike targeting militants killed civilians celebrating a wedding, including women and children, although a NATO forces spokesman said they had no reports of civilians being killed in the overnight raid to capture a local Taliban leader.
An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies of five women, seven children and six men piled in the back of vans that villagers drove to the capital of Logar province to protest the overnight strike on a house in volatile Baraki Barak district. Raeis Khan Abdul Rahimzai, deputy provincial police chief, estimated that there were 18 bodies in the vans, including women and children. He said seven key local Taliban officials were killed in the strike.
NATO spokesman, Maj. Martyn Crighton said the coalition was aware of the allegations of civilian deaths, but did not have any reports of civilians being killed.
He said troops were trying to capture a Taliban commander and called in an airstrike when they came under fire.
"During the follow-on assessment, the Afghan and coalition security force discovered two women with non-life-threatening injuries," Crighton said in an email. He said both women were taken to a military base for treatment.
"I do not have any operational reporting that would allow me to confirm civilian deaths," Crighton said.
A village elder said a wedding party full of civilians had been blown up in the airstrike.
The head of the local council of Sajawand village, Mohammad Wali, said that a number of families had gathered in a house Tuesday night for a wedding party. An airstrike hit the house about 1 a.m., he said.
"The house is completely destroyed. Everyone is shoveling to try to get the bodies out. Some of the bodies have no legs, no hands," Wali said.
He said he had seen 18 bodies, including men, women and children. He said they were gathering up the bodies to take to the provincial capital as proof that civilians were killed.
Provincial Police Chief Gen. Ghulam Sakhi Roogh Lawanay said there was no wedding party. He said the gathering was a meeting of Taliban commanders in the province.
"It was the senior commanders of Baraki Barak and Logar," he said. "The special forces came with the Afghan forces and killed them," he said.
Meanwhile, three suicide attackers blew themselves up in the largest city in southern Afghanistan Wednesday, killing 22 people and wounding at least 50 others in a dusty marketplace that was turned into a gruesome scene of blood and bodies.
Also in the east, NATO said two service members were killed in a helicopter crash. The coalition did not disclose any other information about the crash, but a senior U.S. defense official at the Pentagon said two American pilots were killed in the crash in Ghazni province. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the crash, said there was no indication of enemy activity in the area at the time. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed in an email that the insurgents shot down the helicopter.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province and the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency.
In the past two years, tens of thousands of U.S.-led coalition troops have flooded Taliban strongholds in the south, and have largely succeeded in boosting security there. But the Taliban have proven resilient, continuing to conduct suicide attacks and targeted assassinations of pro-government figures, opening up new fronts in the north and west and stepping up attacks in the east.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack on innocent civilians, saying it proved the "enemy is getting weaker because they are killing innocent people."

27 insurgents killed in eastern Afghanistan
PUL-E-ALAM, Afghanistan, June 6 (Xinhua) -- A total of 27 Taliban insurgents were killed in an operation carried out by the Afghan forces and NATO-led coalition troops early Wednesday morning in eastern Afghan province of Logar, a provincial government spokesman said.
"Based on intelligence, a unit of Afghan and coalition special operation force, backed by gunships, conducted an operation against a Taliban hideout in Baraki Barak district in wee hours Wednesday, killing 27 armed insurgents," spokesman Din Mohammad Darwish told Xinhua.
He said several foreign armed forces, affiliated with Taliban, were among the killed militants.
Meantime, the NATO-led coalition or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed that several insurgents were killed in Logar province, some 60 km south of capital Kabul.
"An Afghan and coalition security force conducted an operation to detain a Taliban leader in Baraki Barak district, Logar province, today. The leader plans and participates in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces throughout the province,"the ISAF said in a press release issued here.
During the operation, insurgents attacked the Afghan and coalition troops with small-arms fire and a grenade. The security force returned fire and requested a precision air strike, the ISAF release said, adding "As a result of the operation, multiple insurgents were killed and the Afghan and coalition security force seized several weapons and a quantity of explosives,"
"While conducting a follow-on assessment, the security force discovered two women who had sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The security force provided medical assistance and transported both women to an ISAF medical facility for treatment,"
However, the Taliban insurgent group, which announced the launching of a spring offensive from May 3 against Afghan and NATO forces, has not to make comments yet.
Afghan forces and some 130,000 NATO-led ISAF troops have intensified cleanup operations against Taliban and other militant groups throughout the country recently as spring and summer, known as "fighting season" draw near.
Records kept by Xinhua, based on figures released by Afghan Interior Ministry, reveals that more than 360 insurgents have been killed, 108 wounded and nearly 400 others detained since May 1 during military operations across the insurgency-hit country.

NATO: Afghanistan helicopter crash kills 2 troops
June 6, 2012 7:40 AM The Associated Press
(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S.-led coalition says one of its helicopters has crashed in Afghanistan, killing two NATO service members.
The coalition did not disclose any other information about the crash, but a senior U.S. defense official at the Pentagon said two American pilots were killed in the crash in Ghazni province. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose details of the crash, said there was indication of enemy activity in the area at the time.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province and the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency.
Also Wednesday, three suicide attackers blew themselves up in the largest city in southern Afghanistan, leaving 22 people dead at least 50 others injured in a dusty marketplace that was turned into a gruesome scene of blood and bodies, authorities said.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed responsibility for the attack in Kandahar, the capital of Kandahar province and the spiritual birthplace of the insurgency.
In the past two years, tens of thousands of NATO troops have flooded Taliban strongholds in the south, and have largely succeeded in boosting security there. But the Taliban have proven resilient, continuing to conduct suicide attacks and targeted assassinations of pro-government figures, opening up new fronts in the north and west and stepping up attacks in the east.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack on innocent civilians, saying it proved the "enemy is getting weaker because they are killing innocent people."
The explosion occurred about three miles from the main gate of the massive military installation run by the U.S.-led coalition and roughly 500 yards from an Afghan military base.
One suicide bomber detonated a three-wheeled motorbike filled with explosives first, said Rahmatullah Atrafi, deputy police chief in Kandahar province. Then, as people rushed to assist the casualties, two other suicide bombers on foot walked up to the site and blew themselves up, he said.
Eight private security guards were among the 22 killed along a main road on the east side of the city, he said.
Small shops and private security company offices line one side of the road. Large trucks that supply logistics to Kandahar Air Field regularly park along the other side.
The explosions left a bloody scene of body parts, shoes, soda cans, snacks and debris from three shops that were destroyed.
Mohammad Naeem, a 30-year-old shopkeeper, said he was selling soft drinks to a customer when the first blast occurred.
"I dropped to the ground," he said. "When I got up, I looked outside and I heard people shouting for help."
Naeem said he helped his customer, who was wounded, into his shop.
"He was bleeding. I put cloth on his wound to stop the bleeding," he said. "I was busy with that when the other blasts occurred."
Islam Zada, a truck driver, was on the other side of the road having tea near his parked truck when the attack began.
"I couldn't see anything except for fire and dust," Zada said of the scene. "I found a wounded truck driver on our side of the road and went to help him," Zada said. "We gave him some water and when we were talking to him the other blasts occurred."
The number of Afghan civilians killed dropped 36 percent in the first four months of the year compared with last year, according to the latest figures compiled by the U.N. While the trend is promising, the U.N. laments that too many civilians are being caught up in the violence as insurgents fight Afghan and foreign forces.
The U.N. said last month that 579 civilians were killed in the first four months — down from 898 killed in the same period of 2011.
Anti-government forces caused 79 percent of civilian casualties and Afghan and foreign forces 9 percent, according to the U.N. It was not clear who was responsible for the remaining 12 percent.

Hu Jintao sees role for regional bloc in Afghanistan
By Gleb Bryanski and Chris Buckley | Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) - A bloc bringing together China, Russia and central Asian states wants to play a bigger role in Afghanistan, Chinese President Hu Jintao said in an interview published on Wednesday, as group leaders gathered for an annual summit.
But a senior Russian official ruled out any military involvement by Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) members, despite fears instability will spread across the region as most foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.
The future of Afghanistan, struggling to end an insurgency by Taliban militants despite the presence of U.S.-led international forces for more than a decade, is likely to be one of the main issues at the two-day Beijing meeting.
"We will continue to manage regional affairs by ourselves, guarding against shocks from turbulence outside the region, and will play a bigger role in Afghanistan's peaceful reconstruction," Hu was quoted as saying in an interview with China's official People's Daily newspaper.
"We'll strengthen communication, coordination and cooperation in dealing with major international and regional issues," said Hu.
The SCO, founded in 2001, includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran, India, Pakistan and others attend the summits, but not as full members. All have an interest in Afghanistan's future.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is attending as a guest, and his country is due to be granted "observer" status, meaning it can attend SCO meetings but not vote.
On Sunday, Afghan officials told Reuters that China and Afghanistan would soon announce a plan to deepen ties, signaling China's desire to play a role beyond an economic partnership as Western forces prepare to leave.
Karzai said in Beijing the two governments were preparing to sign a preliminary agreement by Friday on the "creation of a strategic partnership".
"Afghanistan will be expanding and strengthening relations with China," Karzai said in a speech to university students.
Karzai also said China, the world's second-biggest economy which shares a short stretch of border with Afghanistan, could "play a very significant role in bringing Afghanistan and Pakistan together towards a cooperative environment in the war on terror and radicalism".
Pakistan, a close ally of China with difficult ties with Afghanistan, is seen as crucial to Afghan stability.
CHINESE CAUTION
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said China would increase cooperation with Afghanistan over resource development, infrastructure, energy and training.
"Events in Afghanistan are of great concern to the security and stability of central Asia," Liu said at a regular briefing.
But China will remain cautious about Afghanistan, edging rather than rushing towards any bigger presence on concern about getting dragged into its security troubles without the lure of extensive energy resources, said Chinese experts.
U.S. officials and legislators have said China could play a bigger reconstruction role through aid and investment.
"I don't think that the U.S. withdrawal also means a Chinese withdrawal," said Zhang Li, a professor of South Asian studies at Sichuan University. "“But especially in security affairs in Afghanistan, China will remain low-key and cautious."
China has mining and other investments in Afghanistan, and its companies would look to more investment if security conditions allowed, said Zhang.
In the interview, Hu did not give details of how the loose SCO security grouping could play a bigger role in Afghanistan.
Kirill Barsky, Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy to the Shanghai group, said the organisation was not planning to become a military union which gets involved in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union fought a disastrous war in the country.
"We are not talking about the Shanghai group assuming responsibility for security in Afghanistan," he told reporters.
The summit will probably issue a document on regional security "against the background of the Arab Spring, as well as the uncertainties about Afghanistan after 2014", said Zhao Huasheng, director of the Centre for Russian and Central Asia Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.
China, Russia and central Asian governments have been wary of anti-government movements across the Arab world inspiring similar challenges against them and their partners.
Afghanistan's neighbors including Iran and Pakistan, as well as nearby India and Russia, have jostled for influence in the country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia, and many expect the competition to heat up after 2014.
India has poured aid into Afghanistan and, like China, has invested in its mineral sector. But China's trade with Afghanistan is small.
In 2011, total two-way trade was worth $234.4 million, a rise of 31 percent on the previous year, and Chinese imports from Afghanistan were worth just $4.4 million, according to Chinese customs data.
In theory, the SCO could be a force for cooperation and cohesion. In practice, however, the disparate and sometimes distrustful members have had trouble drawing together.
China has turned to Central Asia for natural gas, security cooperation and new markets. Its growing economic stake has kindled "complicated" feelings among Russians, who see the region as their traditional "backyard", said Zhao.
(Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI and Sui-Lee Wee and Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Afghan President Karzai hails China as steady partner
BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan is extremely grateful that China has been a steady partner for the country in providing fundamental support during its process of seeking stabilization and progress, said Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Beijing on Wednesday.
When delivering a speech on Afghanistan's foreign policies at the China Foreign Affairs University, Karzai thanked China for being the biggest investor in his country while helping his homeland in lots of other ways.
"The relations we have with the world are among the strongest Afghanistan has ever had," said the president.
Afghanistan has broad relationships not only with its neighbors, but also with Europe and the United States, as the country has signed strategic partnership agreements with many countries including Germany, the United States, Australia and India, said Karzai.
His country is happy in keeping a good equilibrium of understanding and contact, Karzai added.
In particular, being the second largest economy in the world and a neighbor of Afghanistan, China "is high on our agenda" in terms of relationships.
According to Karzai, a memorandum of understanding and a statement between China and Afghanistan will be signed during his visit in China for the creation of a strategic bilateral partnership.
Karzai told the students, "Keep in mind China's expanding role in the world. The burden falls on your shoulders as the next leaders of China to see that the world is more harmonious, more peaceful and more prosperous than it is today."
Speaking of how the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) can contribute to regional security and world peace, Karzai said the body has a very important role to play by way of facilitating exchanges between the countries and organizing security cooperation against terrorism and radicalism.
"In particular, this organization will be a vehicle for preventing negative intervention and turning that into positive cooperation," said Karzai, adding that Afghanistan would be happy to be in the council if the country can be accepted as an observer state to the regional organization.

China, Russia welcome Afghanistan as SCO observer
BEIJING, June 6 (Xinhua) -- China and Russia said they welcome the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's (SCO) inclusion of Afghanistan as an observer state, according to a joint statement issued Wednesday.
The statement was released during Russian President Vladimir Putin's three-day state visit to China, where he also attends the 12th meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the SCO, being held in Beijing from Wednesday to Thursday.
China and Russia support Afghanistan's efforts to build itself into a stable, independent country of peace and development, free from terrorism and drug-related crimes, according to the statement.
The two sides maintain that efforts should be concentrated on improving the existing mechanisms of cooperation -- such as the SCO -- concerning Afghanistan, so as to avoid inefficiencies caused by overlapped mechanisms.
Founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001, the SCO groups China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

SCO Summit Shines Spotlight on Afghanistan
VOA News June 5, 2012
China and Afghanistan are expected to deepen ties when they sign a series of strategic agreements during this week's annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Set to begin Wednesday in Beijing, the SCO meeting will focus on membership expansion and more security and economic collaboration among the members, said Beijing's Foreign Ministry's spokesman Liu Weimin. The current members are China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
"China is looking forward to outcomes including making the SCO a harmonious region," Liu said, adding that the organization will make a formal decision on accepting Afghanistan as an observer member state.
In previous statements, China and Russia have supported Afghanistan's admission, which in the words of a Chinese official "will help the SCO counter terrorism, separatism and extremism."
India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan already have observer status, which allows them to take part in sideline consultations during SCO meetings.
China is also expected to sign a series of strategic agreements that will raise its profile with Afghanistan, following a decade in which Beijing stayed largely on the sidelines of the U.S.-led war against the Taliban.
Raffaello Pantucci, an associate fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at London's King's College, said the shift is driven in part by U.S. plans to begin withdrawing combat forces from Afghanistan. "The realization slowly sinks in that the United States might be off in 2014," he said.
Pantucci said that by admitting Afghanistan as an observer, the SCO member states would be acknowledging the limits of the organization's ability to deal with terrorism in the region. "The SCO perceived that it has not done much, so this is a sort of visible statement saying, 'Yes, we recognize this and we will do more.'"
Beijing regards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a platform for its battle against separatism in the westernmost areas of the Xinjiang region.
In the decade since the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established in 2001, member states have carried out various military and counterterrorism drills, and held regular meetings of foreign affairs, defense and law enforcement officials.
Chen Yurong, a researcher at a leading government think tank in Beijing, said regional stability is the main goal of the SCO but that its member nations mainly build ties through dialogue.
Many Chinese scholars see the organization as an example of "new regionalism," which China is championing as an alternative to what it perceives as Western hegemony.
"The SCO includes countries that, as it is, have no economic clout to speak of, yet they are equal," Chen said.
Some analysts regard the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a more fractured organization, with China and Russia competing for strategic primacy in the region.
Pantucci, who has been traveling in Central Asia and conducted research on Chinese interests and influence in the region, said he noticed a divide between Russia and China's aspirations for the group.
"I think we are beginning to see [from the Russian side] some sort of attempt to push back on the SCO and sort of what it means for Central Asia vis-a-vis Russia."
Pantucci explained that Russia is more interested in promoting organizations where Moscow takes the lead such as the Eurasian Union, an economic group proposed by Putin last fall.
"You are going to create an economic area, which borders with China and includes all the Central-Asian countries," said Pantucci. "This is going to have some serious implications for trade across the borders, because it will immediately erect quite high tariff barriers."
It is still unclear whether the Eurasian Union will be established and whether it will include China, as some Russian scholars have suggested.
Beijing, meanwhile, is expected to continue promoting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization regardless of Russia's stance.
"[The SCO] has done some baby steps in the direction of becoming a regional entity at least," Pantucci said, "but at the moment who has actually put money into this thing is actually the Chinese."
This year Turkey has applied to become a dialogue partner, while India, Pakistan and Iran have for some time been seeking full membership. Iran's application has been denied because of ongoing sanctions levied on the country by the United Nations, while China and Russia have expressed different levels of support for India and Pakistan.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

Why China is likely to get more involved in Afghanistan
For the past decade, China has not played a significant role in Afghanistan. But with NATO starting to pull out, Afghanistan's security will affect neighboring China.
By Peter Ford June 6, 2012 at 8:29 am EDT The Christian Science Monitor
Beijing - As the United States and other Western nations prepare to withdraw their military forces from Afghanistan, China is growing nervous about the prospect of chaos after they have left.
So, after years of standing in the background, Beijing is starting to show signs of closer engagement with its strife-torn neighbor in a bid to ward off disaster, say Chinese and foreign analysts.
When Afghan President Hamid Karzai meets his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao here on Friday, they will raise their countries’ bilateral relations to a “new strategic level,” an Afghan official told reporters in Kabul this week.
Though it is still unclear what that will mean in practice, the step reflects Beijing’s feeling that “it is urgent that China strengthen its relationship with Afghanistan,” says Zhang Li, an expert on South Asia at Sichuan University in Chengdu.
“Afghanistan’s security situation will have a direct impact on China’s security,” he adds. The Western military pullout “clearly presents China with more problems than opportunities.”
China to the plate
Some observers here believe it is time that China stepped up to the plate. “It is not rational to rely on a distant and remote country to provide security for the region,” says Hu Shisheng, an analyst at the China Institute for Contemporary International Relations, referring to the United States. “China has to take more responsibility.”
But after leaving things to the Americans for so long, warn others here, Beijing may not be well placed to exert influence. “We cannot play a significant role because we do not have a sufficient presence in Afghanistan,” cautions Ye Hailin, an Asian affairs analyst at the China Academy of Social Sciences, a government-linked think tank in Beijing.
The one thing China will not be doing as Western soldiers leave Afghanistan is get involved militarily there itself. With scarcely any experience of peacekeeping operations abroad, the Chinese Army “would be stepping into uncharted territory in a potentially very kinetic situation,” points out Raffaello Pantucci, a scholar who follows China’s relationship with Central Asian nations. “It would be a huge jump for them.”
“We are not qualified to play a military game in Afghanistan,” adds Mr. Ye. “Only empires can do that, and neither the British, nor the Soviet Union, nor the Americans have won.”
The security question
Closer ties with Kabul could bring more aid, more infrastructure projects, and more training for Afghan policemen and soldiers, say Chinese observers. That security support, they suggest, could come through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group of Asian nations led by Beijing and Moscow at whose summit here this week Afghanistan is expected to be admitted as an observer.
Beijing is also likely to step up its tentative diplomatic involvement in the Afghan conflict, suggests Professor Zhang, after it hosted a first trilateral meeting with Afghan and Pakistani officials last February that “showed China’s intention of strengthening its influence in Afghan security issues.”
At that meeting, Chinese diplomats reportedly sought to convince the Afghan and Pakistani governments to work more closely together to regain control over their borderlands. Armed Uighur separatists, fighting for the independence of China’s mainly Muslim Xinjiang region, which abuts Afghanistan and Pakistan, are believed to have set up camps in North Waziristan.
“Stability in those tribal regions is of utmost national security importance to China,” says Mr. Hu.
Why China cares
If Western troops leave the Afghan Army and the Taliban still locked in combat, China is worried that the Uighur “East Turkmenistan Independence Movement,” which Beijing regards as a terrorist group, might find refuge in Taliban-controlled zones. Officials here also fear an upsurge of drug smuggling through Xinjiang.
More frightening, though, is the prospect that continued fighting and possible Taliban gains would spill over into Pakistan, China’s closest regional ally. “A disaster in Afghanistan could undermine China’s strategic bulwark in the region,” points out Andrew Small, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Washington who is writing a book about China’s relationship with Pakistan.
At the same time, a security vacuum in Afghanistan could prompt a proxy conflict there between regional rivals India and Pakistan, further complicating China’s position.
“If Afghan troubles spilled into Pakistan, that could turn our alliance into chaos,” warns Ye. “China has the same interest as the Americans in preventing Pakistan from becoming a nest of terrorists.”
Indeed China’s interests in Afghanistan coincide strongly with Western interests, says Mr. Pantucci. “They want a stable, peaceful, prosperous country that they can trade with and build roads through and where they can seek natural resources,” he says. “Stability in Afghanistan would contribute to stability in Central Asia, and that would help Beijing develop Xinjiang, its biggest and poorest province.”
For the past decade, China has not played a significant role in Afghanistan. Its state owned companies have built roads and invested $3.5 billion in a copper mine, but according to the Chinese Embassy in Kabul, Beijing has contributed only $246 million in aid over the past decade; that is less than one-tenth of Japan’s aid, or half of South Korea’s.
Until now, concerns in Beijing about the proximity of NATO bases to Chinese territory have been offset by relief that at least somebody else was dealing with the problem in Afghanistan.
Now, says Zhang, “China has to face the fact that a withdrawal timetable has been confirmed and we have to focus on all the new problems that may crop up.”
In the US, adds Ye, “a lot of people may think that after their military withdraws in 2014, Afghanistan is not their business anymore. We, on the other hand, see 2014 as a very crucial year for Afghanistan, but we don’t see it as the end of anything. We are going to have to live with that.”

Rape Case Tests Afghan Justice
By Frud Bezhan, Noor Mohammad Sahin June 5, 2012 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
It was in the early hours of the morning when a group of armed men stormed through a mud-walled compound and whisked young Lal Bibi away.
After being forced to marry one of her captors the next day in an illegal ceremony, Bibi, who says she's 13, spent the ensuing five days in a dark room being tortured, beaten, and repeatedly raped. Her ordeal ended a week after her capture when she was dumped, bruised and battered, outside her home in a remote village in northern Konduz Province.
Bibi's mother, who did not reveal her name, said she recognized the men as members of the local police. Several of the men, she said, pinned her and her husband down at gunpoint, while the others grabbed Bibi from behind.
"Local police came to my house with weapons and surrounded the house," she said "With orders from the local commander of the police force they dragged [and drove] my daughter away in a pickup truck."
Bibi, who is currently in a stable condition after receiving treatment at a local hospital, says the ordeal began after her cousin sexually assaulted the daughter of a local militiaman.
When the cousin fled the village, settling the score by punishing the alleged rapist was not an option, leaving Bibi vulnerable.
Despite not being involved in the incident, tribal justice dictates that payment, in some material form, be made to the victim's family.
Livestock, money, or a bride is among the acceptable payments.
When a settlement, known as badal, was rejected, Bibi says the wronged girl's father and several other relatives, including the commander of the militia, abducted her on May 17.
'Death Sentence'
Bibi says being raped is the same as a death sentence in Afghanistan, where women must be virgins in order to marry. Often, some families even kill daughters who have been sexually assaulted.
Bibi suggests that she will take her own life if authorities fail to prosecute the men.
"They took me by force," she said. "If I receive justice, that's good, otherwise I'm going to burn and kill myself."
Bibi's mother has also given authorities an ultimatum. She maintains that if the government fails to ensure justice she will kill Bibi in protest.
"Either you deliver us justice, or the blood of my daughter will be on your hands," she said. "Either you burn my daughter yourself, or I will throw petrol over her and burn her to get justice."
Mohammad Sharif Safi, the military prosecutor in Konduz, said an arrest warrant has been issued for about a dozen men, including Mohammad Isah, Bibi's cousin; Khodadad, whose daughter was assaulted and who has been accused of raping Bibi as revenge; Khododad's brother Sakhidad, who was reportedly involved in the kidnapping; and Mohammad Nizami, the commander of the local police unit.
Safi said two of the suspects had been detained but declined to reveal their names. He said the suspects are all members of the Afghan Local Police (ALP), government-sponsored militias that are intended to provide security in remote villages across rural Afghanistan where the Taliban-led insurgency is strongest.
Spotlight On Police
The Afghanistan National Army and National Police are expected to expand to a combined 352,000 personnel this year, but even that force cannot cover remote areas where the Taliban exerts most of its power. The ALP is supposed to help fill that gap as foreign troops prepare to leave by 2014.
Bibi's case has put the spotlight on the controversial ALP, a 13,000-strong force that is divided into some 80 units across Afghanistan.
The force, which has proved successful in some areas in Afghanistan's east and south, has come under increasing scrutiny amid reports of extortion and petty harassment of villagers but also of human rights abuses, including rape, arbitrary detentions, and forcible land grabs.
Safi says Bibi's case is just the latest in a long line of incidents involving the local militia in Konduz, where more than 10 local police have been arrested and charged since 2010, when the initiative was launched.
Bibi's case, which has sent shockwaves through the country, has prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to personally intervene.
During a meeting of the country's national security council on June 3, Karzai ordered the Interior Ministry to arrest the suspects and disarm the police unit in Konduz.
Local Strongmen
In a statement released on the same day, the Interior Ministry confirmed that two men had been arrested in the case, but did not reveal that they were ALP members. It also said that a "young woman" had been "harassed" and not raped.
Karzai has long expressed concern over the ALP units, fearing that local strongmen may use the forces as independent militias. He initially resisted the idea of forming the ALP, which was brought up by Army General David Petraeus in 2010 when he was the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan.
But after Petraeus promised that the Afghan government, under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry, would oversee control of the units, the Afghan president agreed.
But whether Karzai's order that the police unit be disarmed is enough to ensure the woman's safety and see that justice is served is an open question in this remote part of the country, where security is traditionally provided by locals and where the central government holds little sway.
According to political analyst Najib Mahmoud, many ALP units pay little heed to Kabul, with most being under the command of local strongmen, who act independently from the central government.
“In villages, the role of maleks [village leaders] and mullahs is very important," he said. "Warlords and people related to groups that fought during previous wars still control these villages. They have armed people that are associated or related to them. As you can see, they can do anything they want.”

Afghanistan withdrawal fuels fears in neighboring Pakistan
McClatchy Newspapers By Tom Hussain 05/06/2012
ISLAMABAD - The impending withdrawal of U.S.-led NATO combat troops from Afghanistan is raising worries next door in Pakistan, where a growing number of experts are warning that the forces’ departure could reinvigorate a domestic insurgency that Pakistan’s military is barely keeping at bay.
As President Barack Obama winds down U.S. involvement in the war, the Pakistani commentators argue that NATO’s withdrawal will embolden Pakistani militants, perhaps creating a territorial vacuum that will enable the militants to set up bases in Afghanistan from which they could launch operations in Pakistan.
The fears reflect uncertainty about the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan, a vital if deeply troublesome U.S. ally in the region. In recent months, against the backdrop of a seven-month freeze in relations between Islamabad and Washington, the experts are challenging a long-dominant narrative here that blames the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan for Pakistan’s insurgency.
The first to express the changing perception was Ayaz Amir, Pakistan’s leading English-language columnist and an opposition member of Parliament, who wrote in March in The News International: “Those who think that the American presence is the sole cause of militancy are living in a world of their own. . . . Our nightmare will not end. With the American withdrawal, another phase of it, perhaps a more dangerous one, will begin.”
Since then, other commentators have followed suit as 150,000 Pakistani counter-terrorism forces have struggled to keep a lid on domestic militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, an organization that’s separate from but allied with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Already, Pakistani Taliban groups the military evicted in 2009 from the Bajaur and Mohmand tribal areas and the district of Swat have relocated to the neighboring Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nurestan, from which they frequently send raiding parties to attack paramilitary installations, blow up schools and kidnap residents in Pakistan. They also broadcast messages via an FM radio station.
It’s a striking mirror image of the Afghan Taliban’s use of havens in Pakistan’s tribal areas to wage war against coalition forces in Afghanistan, the commentators have noted.
The Pakistani military, convinced that the U.S. inevitably would abandon Afghanistan, has maintained covert relations with Afghan Taliban commanders based on its soil, figuring the policy will help position it as the arbiter of an eventual political solution in Afghanistan, the commentators said. The double-dealing has earned the ire of the U.S. and its NATO partners, which have excluded Pakistan from tentative peace talks with the Taliban, and has encouraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to seek closer ties with Pakistan’s blood rival, India.
In the final years of the U.S. combat presence in Afghanistan, commentators say a nightmare scenario is emerging for Pakistan’s strategic planners. Since the Taliban regime was overthrown in November 2001, the commentators have dreaded the prospect of a strong Afghan administration allied with India, leaving Pakistan with two hostile borders to defend.
Increasingly, they’re calling for a review of Pakistan’s policy on Afghanistan and its approach to relations with the U.S.
The policy “has grabbed us by the throat . . . things can’t continue like this,” Najam Sethi, a newspaper editor, has said on the current-affairs program he hosts on Geo News, Pakistan’s most popular cable channel
The Pakistani military’s operations against militants in the restive tribal areas along the Afghan border, which began in 2009, have produced mixed results.
By last August, the counter-terrorism forces apparently had succeeded in wresting control of most of the Pakistani Taliban’s territory and breaking the insurgents’ command-and-control structure. But the military decided against a fight to the bitter end, reasoning that the predominantly Pashtun insurgents – like their fellow tribesmen who battled Pakistani forces during the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – would never surrender.
Instead, the military leaned on Pakistan’s civilian government and political parties to unveil last October a policy of “give peace a chance,” which sought to exploit divisions among the insurgents in order to restore peace in the tribal areas. Experts said the military assumed that the presence in those areas of Afghan Taliban allies – frequently the target of U.S. drone attacks – would put pressure on the insurgents and keep them off balance.
In January, the Haqqani network, an Afghan militant faction that’s been based in Pakistan since the 1980s, formed a council of Pakistani militants with the declared purpose of persuading the insurgents to stop fighting the military and join the insurgency in Afghanistan. But the idea backfired. The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mahsud, used the lull to reassert his control and replace his peace-inclined rivals with trusted associates who want to continue to fight.
Mahsud has reorganized the insurgency into a guerrilla campaign across the tribal region and adjacent areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The insurgents have extended their reach to major Pakistani cities, where their favored method has been sectarian attacks on Shiite Muslims.
The Pakistani military’s mistake, commentators said, was to believe that the Afghan Taliban would work against their Pakistani counterparts.
“They are, after all, each other’s buddies, comrades in arms who have fought shoulder to shoulder in Afghanistan,” said Saifullah Mahsud, the executive director of the FATA Research Center, an independent research center in Islamabad.
Hussain is a McClatchy special correspondent.

Afghan officials say Taliban poisoned schoolgirls
By HEIDI VOGT and RAHIM FAIEZ | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Afghan government accused the Taliban Wednesday of poisoning schoolgirls by bribing students and workers to sneak toxic chemicals into drinking water or spread it around school grounds, sickening scores. Fifteen suspects have been arrested, officials said.
Government officials said six schools were affected in northern Takhar province in the past three weeks, and though they did not give a total number of girls who got sick, they said one school alone had 125 cases.
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, girls were banned from going to school and women were only allowed to leave their homes with a male relative as an escort. After their 2001 ouster, Taliban insurgents would attack schoolgirls by spraying their faces with acid. However, the group has appeared to tone down its stance against education for girls more recently.
Government officials suggested the alleged plot may also have been aimed at undermining the government's achievements.
President Hamid Karzai called for an investigation and intelligence service spokesman Latifullah Mashal said the intelligence service discovered a conspiracy by militants to try to scare families from sending their children to school.
"They want to create terror and fear among students, especially in the education sector and also in the health sector, which are two of the major achievements of the 10 years of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan," said Mashal.
He said 15 people have been arrested in connection with the school poisonings. Those being held include 12 identified Taliban insurgents, a teacher and a school treasurer and his wife, he said.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid denied any involvement in the poisonings.
"The poisoning of innocent children is against Islamic law. The mujahedeen are not involved in the poisoning of schoolchildren. It is a crime," Mujahid said in an email.
Government officials had previously said it was unclear what caused the series of outbreaks of illness at girls' schools in the province starting about three weeks ago. In at least one case, doctors in the capital city of Taluqan attributed complaints of illness by 125 students to mass hysteria.
But cases continued to mount and seven alleged school poisonings have now been reported in six schools in the province, said Mustafa Rasouli, a spokesman for the provincial government.
He said the insurgents confessed to bribing teachers, school workers and even students to sneak toxic chemicals onto school grounds, Rasouli said.
In two cases, female students were paid 50,000 Afghanis (almost $1,000) to contaminate water tanks at their schools with a toxic powder, Mashal said.
In other instances, conspirators sprayed a sweet-smelling yellow liquid around the grounds of the school, he said.
Officials did not identify any of the toxic substances allegedly used.

Al-Libi death a major blow for al Qaeda
CNN By Paul Cruickshank June 5th, 2012
Abu Yahya al-Libi is universally admired in jihadist circles and among the younger generation of al Qaeda leaders. Charismatic, intelligent, a religious scholar - and with the extra qualification of having escaped from U.S. custody in Afghanistan – his loss is "a cataclysmic blow" to al Qaeda, according to analysts who follow the group.
Al-Libi was the target of a U.S. drone strike this week, a U.S. official tells CNN's Barbara Starr. A U.S. official told CNN's Pam Benson that al-Libi is dead.
In recent years, al-Libi emerged as one of the terrorist network's most important clerics and propagandists, appearing in countless videos. By most accounts, he was effectively al Qaeda's deputy leader. And his Libyan nationality is important to an organization that after the elevation of Ayman al-Zawahiri as leader was vulnerable to criticism it was dominated by Egyptians.
Noman Benotman, a former senior member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who spent significant time with al-Libi in the 1990s, told CNN that his death is a "very serious blow" to al Qaeda because no one else within the group rivals his legitimacy as a religious scholar nor has the credibility in the Arab world to provide Islamic justifications for al Qaeda's global campaign of terrorism.
"Awlaki wasn't even close," said Benotman, referring to Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen last year.
Al-Libi (real name: Hasan Muhamad Qayed) was born in Marzaq in the southwest Sabha province deep inside Libya's interior. As a young man he studied chemistry for one year at Sabha University but, like many young Libyans, was swept up in an Islamic awakening hostile to the Gadhafi regime that arose in Libya in the late 1980s.
As an outlet for their frustration, and a chance to participate in Holy War, al-Libi and his brother, Abd al-Wahab al-Qayed (also subsequently known as Idris), were among the many young Libyans who traveled to Afghanistan to fight jihad against the Soviet-backed government. In 1990 his brother was one of the founding members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which fought a failed campaign to overthrow the rule of Moammar Gadhafi in the mid 1990s.
Benotman, who is now a senior analyst at the Quilliam Foundation in London, first spent time with al-Libi around 1990-1991 in Afghanistan. He recalls that al-Libi was always much more interested in religious learning than fighting.
"He was a very smart guy and hungry to learn about Sharia law," Benotman told CNN.
After a few years in Afghanistan, al-Libi traveled to Mauretania, where he undertook religious studies for two years under well-known scholars, according to Benotman. "He was the best student they had," Benotman said.
Benotman noticed the change in al-Libi when he returned to Afghanistan: "He was a real and serious Sharia student." In the mid-1990s al-Libi moved to Sudan with other LIFG fighters after conditions for Arab fighters became difficult in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Separately, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda also relocated there. Benotman said that al-Libi took no operational role in the coordination of a insurgent campaign the group began against the Gadhafi in Libya around this time.
"He didn't have fighting skills or knowledge of military leadership," Benotman told CNN.
After the Taliban took over much of Afghanistan in 1996, al-Libi settled in Kabul, according to Benotman. Al-Libi's religious views leaned toward the extreme, said Benotman, but he did not subscribe to the ultra-hardline "takfiri" interpretation of Islam that argued for the permissibility of killing those regarded by some Sunnis as "heretical" Muslims - like the Shia.
In late 2001, al-Libi's world was turned upside down when the United States routed the Taliban in Afghanistan. Like many Arab fighters he fled across the border to Pakistan, where he holed up in an apartment block with other militants in Karachi, according to Benotman.
But a Pakistani raid in 2002 led to his arrest and he was quickly handed over to American authorities, who held him in a prison in Kandahar, according to Benotman. He was subsequently transferred to an American detention facility at Bagram air base near Kabul.
It was al-Libi's escape from the prison in July 2005 that shot him to jihadist stardom. His nighttime escape was featured in a subsequent jihadist propaganda video narrated by a fellow escapee, who claimed that as American soldiers patrolled it was al-Libi who cut a wire mesh fence, allowing them to escape and eventually connect with the Taliban fighters in Kabul.
Al-Libi himself appeared in the video in which he alleged the Americans were responsible for severe human rights violations, claiming that when a new prisoner arrived, he would be abused and humilated until "he almost loses his mind."
After some time in hiding in Afghanistan, al-Libi traveled to the tribal areas of Pakistan, which were increasingly becoming a new safe haven for Arab fighters and al Qaeda operatives. His views on jihad were increasingly in line with the terrorist group. In December 2006 he appeared in a video urging jihadists to learn how to make nuclear weapons.
Al-Libi became one of al Qaeda's chief ideologues and propagandists, appearing in numerous recruitment videos in which he cast himself as a sheikh with the legitimacy to issue fatwas.
His eloquent Arabic addresses, several of which were made to groups of fighters sitting crossed-legged outdoors in the tribal areas of Pakistan, were filmed and disseminated online, and won him a significant audience among a radical fringe of young Muslims in the Arab world.
Part of al-Libi's appeal to young Muslims radicalized by the Iraq war was his uncompromising ideology. But there were limits to his radicalism. According to Benotman he was concerned about the negative fallout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's barbaric campaign in Iraq.
In 2008 al-Zawahiri cited a tract written by the Libyan to justify al Qaeda's campaign of terrorism. The tract was titled "Human Shields in Modern Jihad." According to Jarret Brachman, an American academic who has long studied al Qaeda, al-Libi argued that al Qaeda could take on the West only if it engaged "in a fierce war using weapons of mass destruction" and that this would entail Muslim casualties.
As drone strikes began to take their toll on al Qaeda in 2008, killing a number of senior leaders, al-Libi appeared to play a more hands-on military role in the organization despite his lack of combat experience.
Bryant Neal Vinas, a young American from Long Island who was recruited into al Qaeda, testified in a recent court case that during the late summer of 2008 he participated in an expedition to attack a U.S. base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with a group of fighters under the command of al-Libi, whom he described as the "emir" of an al Qaeda outfit based in Lwara, Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
Benotman said that al-Libi's military role should not be exaggerated. "He's not a frontline fighter or someone very capable of military strategy," he told CNN.
Brachman and other counterterrorism analysts came to see al-Libi as a natural successor to bin Laden because of his charisma and religious credentials. In an interview with CNN in 2009, Benotman was sceptical al-Libi would be effective in the top job: "He lacks the management skills of a bin Laden; the ability to see the big picture and think strategically. Hardcore Salafists don't think practically because they believe God will help them through."
By the second half of 2010, as more senior al Qaeda operatives were killed or captured, al-Libi was thrust into a managerial role. But within the al Qaeda hierarchy he was still junior to another Libyan within the group.
Letters recovered from bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad suggest al-Libi developed a working relationship with Atiyah abd al-Rahman, who in mid-2010 took over al Qaeda's day-to-day operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan and became bin Laden's main interlocutor within the terrorist organization until al-Rahman's death in a drone strike in August 2011.
Al-Rahman was known as a strategic thinker but also a pragmatist. In December 2010 he and al-Libi wrote a joint letter to Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, to scold him for the group's indiscriminate killing of Muslim civilians and use of kidnapping, which they said was hurting the jihadist cause in Pakistan. A copy of the letter was subsequently found in Abbottabad.
After the death of al-Rahman, counterterrorism officials believe, al-Libi stepped into his shoes in managing the day-to-day operations of the terrorist network and its relations with affiliates.
Benotman says that like al-Rahman, al-Libi had significant influence with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al Qaeda's North African affiliate, and Al-Shabaab, the network's Somali affiliate. "They respect him, love him, and listen to him," Benotman told CNN. His loss might therefore damage al-Zawahiri's ability to coax the affiliates into following his strategic guidance.
After the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, al-Libi took a lead role in al Qaeda's propaganda efforts to try to turn events to their advantage. Benotman said that it is here and in his justification of al Qaeda's global campaign of attacks that his loss would be most keenly felt. The Libyan cleric was able to describe the stakes arising from the Arab uprising in religious terms more effectively than any other al Qaeda leader, according to Benotman.
Addressing Libyan followers in a wide-ranging video address in December 2011, al-Libi said, "At this crossroads you have found yourselves, you either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah."
With his death, it is possible there may be a backlash by pro al Qaeda forces in Libya. According to several sources, al Qaeda has developed a presence in eastern Libya, where it has recruited and trained several hundred fighters. Last month a previously unknown jihadist outfit calling itself the Imprisoned Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Red Cross in Benghazi.
Al-Libi, in a video released late last year, claimed his own death would not hurt al Qaeda's cause:
"I say to America: Don't have hopes that you are about to defeat al Qaeda. Let al Qaeda be defeated and all their leaders and individuals be killed, and then what? The battle with America today is not with an organization or a group or a sect, but it is a battle with the Ummah of Islam," meaning the global Islamic community.

Aviation Ministry Pushes for Airport in Every Province
TOLOnews.com Tuesday, 05 June 2012
Afghanistan's Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation said that it would like to build more airports in Afghanistan, but without the budget to do so, it is heading to Tokyo with hopes of securing such funding.
Afghan Civil Aviation Minister Daoud Ali Najafi said on Tuesday that the plan to construct more airports was beyond the government's capacity.
However, the Ministry has drawn up a proposal which Najafi will present to potential donors interested in development at the upcoming Tokyo conference.
"It's obvious that the government alone cannot finance the construction of all the airports in the country, but it's part of our long term plan to construct airports in all the provinces," Najafi said.
"Whatever we get from government and the international community we will spend on the airports."
He said that plans for the construction of airports in Khost, Bamyan, Daikundi, Farah, Nimroz, Kunduz and Ghazni provinces are underway.
He also stressed that the Asian Development Bank has shown an interest in helping fund the Afghan airports.
Besides Kabul airport, some international flights are being conducted from Herat, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif airports.
Some experts believe that standardising the airports in the provinces will be beneficial for the provinces they are based in, particularly in decreasing the amount of time spent on travel.

www.afghanistannewscenter.com