Afghanistan News March 18, 2006

March 18, 2006

Bodies of four Albanians found, five Afghan policemen killed
Fri Mar 17, 4:20 PM ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - Afghan police found the bodies of four Albanians the Taliban claimed to have executed a week ago as five policemen were killed in a bomb blast.

The bodies of the men the Taliban said they kidnapped last Saturday were found in an area between insurgency-hit southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid said.

"Today police in search of the four Albanian bodies went to Maiwand district. They found the bodies and on the way back there was an explosion which caused casualties to police," he said.

"One police vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb -- five policemen were killed and three wounded," he said later.

It was unclear if the vehicle that was hit by the blast was the one carrying the Albanian bodies.

A purported spokesman for the Taliban, which was removed from government in 2001 and is now waging an anti-government insurgency, said the Islamist movement had planted the bomb.

The spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, also told reporters last week that the Taliban had abducted the four Albanians and four of their Afghan colleagues in an area between Kandahar and Helmand.

The eight worked for Ecolog, a German cleaning company contracted to US-led forces.

Announcing the abduction, Ahmadi said the kidnappers were awaiting further orders from fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

On Monday he said the Afghans had been released, which was confirmed by Afghan intelligence, and the four foreigners had been killed. Police said throughout the week they could not confirm the men were dead.

Officials said Friday the Albanians had all been shot.

The Taliban government was removed from power in a US-led operation launched when the hardliners did not surrender their ally, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who was wanted for the September 11 attacks in the United States.

In another incident Friday, a former police chief in southern Zabul province was killed when his vehicle was attacked by Taliban fighters, provincial police chief Mohammad Nabi Mullah Khail told AFP.

Police in the province separately arrested six men on suspicion that they were Taliban, he said.

The insurgency, focused in eastern and southern Afghanistan, targets Afghan troops and the roughly 30,000 foreign soldiers here to hunt militants and stabilize the war-torn country to allow sorely needed reconstruction.

Afghans and foreigners working for the government and foreign groups, such as aid workers, or those involved in rebuilding work are among the other targets of the unrelenting violence.

Several foreigners employed in security and reconstruction projects have been kidnapped since the toppling of the Taliban. Some kidnappings have been blamed on Taliban militants and some of those abducted have been killed, including a Briton and an Indian national last year.

The insurgency has become increasingly bloody since it was launched, with Mullah Omar promising in a statement this week an intensified campaign of suicide attacks.

Violence, most of it linked to the Taliban-led revolt but also related to drug trafficking and factionalism, killed about 1,700 people here last year, many of them militants. About 150 have died so far this year.

Nine Afghan police die moving Macedonians' bodies
18 Mar 2006 05:11:33 GMT
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, March 18 (Reuters) - A blast killed nine Afghan policemen as they were bringing back the bodies of four Macedonians kidnapped and killed by the Taliban and dumped in a valley, the Kandahar provincial governor said on Saturday.

Governor Assadullah Khalid had said on Friday five policemen were killed after the bodies of the Macedonians were discovered hidden under brush and sticks in a valley near the border with Helmand province.

"At first, the information we got was five policemen were killed and three wounded," Khalid told Reuters.

"But after the bodies were brought to Kandahar, we found that nine policemen had been killed," he said.

Several police vehicles were returning with the bodies when one was hit by a blast, apparently caused by a mine, he said. Three policemen were wounded.

Violence has increased in Afghanistan in recent months, especially in the south and east, as the Taliban and allied militants step up their battle to oust foreign forces and overthrow the Western-backed government.

The Taliban said they kidnapped the Macedonians, who were working for a services company, on March 11.

A Taliban spokesman later said the four had been executed on the orders of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and their bodies dumped.

"These people had come to Afghanistan at America's behest, therefore they should be sentenced to death," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf quoted the order as saying.

An official at the Ecolog cleaning contractor in Kabul said the Macedonians worked for the company.

In the past, the Taliban have labelled as U.S. spies kidnapped employees of companies and non-government organisations involved in Afghanistan's reconstruction.

U.S.-led forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001 after they refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Stick with mission, envoy urges
Ambassador warns rebuilding will take years
`Very noble cause' to help restore his devastated country
Mar. 17, 2006 - OAKLAND ROSS FEATURE WRITER Toronto STAR
Building a prosperous and stable Afghanistan will require blood, sweat and years, and Canada's role could be vital, especially over the long haul, says the war-weary nation's ambassador to Ottawa.

"If a country is to recover from being a failing state, you need to help it," Omar Samad said in an interview yesterday while visiting Toronto. "It is so critical for a country like Canada to have its troops there. It is equally important for Canada to be in Afghanistan to help us rebuild certain sectors of our society."

The envoy said his government is keen to discuss extending Canada's commitment of development assistance to Afghanistan — pegged at $620 million over seven years — beyond its current limit of 2009.

Canada has 2,200 troops patrolling the countryside around the city of Kandahar, among the most treacherous sections of real estate in the land.

Yesterday, Samad praised Canadian troops and encouraged Canadians to continue supporting their mission in his country, despite early casualties and the grim prospect of more to come.

"It's a very noble cause," he said. The question for Canadians, he said, is whether "to run away from danger while it challenges us or are we going to join with the Afghani people and resist it?"

Canadian troops have already come under attack in the Kandahar region, a hotbed of support for the radical and authoritarian Taliban that ruled Afghanistan until being overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.

While in power, the Taliban were closely linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network, and the two groups continue to share common aims and to co-operate militarily. Both have sought safety in neighbouring Pakistan, using that country's territory as a base for incursions into Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Samad offered a mixed assessment of Pakistan's role in combating the terrorists. "They have done a very good job of tracking down and eliminating the Al Qaeda elements," he said. "We think they can do a better job of denying the Taliban sanctuary, arms, training and support."

Prior to the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan's government openly supported the Taliban and changed its position only under intense U.S. pressure to do so.

This week, Canadian troops stationed in Kandahar fired on and killed an apparently innocent Afghan man in a rickshaw that reportedly strayed too close to a Canadian patrol.
Regrettable as they are, Samad said such tragedies are probably inevitable in wartime and are not likely to imperil Canada's mission in his country.

"The Afghan people are very understanding and very appreciative that troops are there from other countries," he said. "They understand there will be casualties on both sides. Tragic incidents will happen, but the mission has to go on."

Afghanistan has known little but war and disruption since the mid-1970s and Samad said it will take many years for the country to recover from the political, social and economic damage it has suffered.

"The Afghan people are tired of war, tired of living under extremist and intolerant rulers," he said. "But it will take years for a democracy to mature."

In the meantime, he said, it is essential for countries such as Canada to extend their help, by providing military security and by contributing to the huge task of economic reconstruction.

Samad said it will be three or four years before his country's police and military will be capable of countering terrorist insurgents without foreign help and even longer before Afghanistan can do without foreign troops entirely.

Among other challenges is the illicit cultivation of poppies for heroin and opium. Samad sees no easy solutions to the drug trade but said he believes it can be overcome in time, perhaps "up to a decade."

Now 44, the urbane and articulate Samad fled his country in 1980 during its occupation by the Soviet Union and lived in the United States until late 2001, when he went home to help rebuild. He arrived in Ottawa as ambassador in 2004.

Like many other Afghans, Samad is deeply distressed by his country's abiding torment but is hopeful of better times.

"I look forward to the day when Canadians will look at Afghanistan as a tourism destination."

Ambassador says Canada cannot turn its back on Afghanistan now
MONTREAL (CP) - The shooting death of an Afghan civilian by a Canadian soldier was a tragedy but such incidents are bound to be part of rebuilding a country ravaged by war and torn by terrorism, says Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada.

Omar Samad said Friday that the death near a Canadian military checkpoint earlier this week was unfortunate but that he's sure it occurred under difficult conditions.

"This will not deter the Afghan people," Samad told reporters following a speech at McGill University. "This will not deter the international community from being in Afghanistan and accomplishing a much bigger job, and working for a much bigger cause, which is to stabilize this country once and for all and to develop and rebuild this country."

Canadian military officials in Kandahar have said that Nasrat Ali Hassan ignored signals to stop as he approached the checkpoint in his motorized rickshaw on Tuesday night. Military officials say a soldier fired warning shots which ended up killing Hassan, one of three people in the vehicle.

Hassan's family claims there was no warning and a military investigation is under way. Three Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan - two soldiers and a Canadian diplomat - and 25 soldiers have been injured in accidents, roadside bombings and suicide attacks so far this year.

"We may see, and I hope we don't, but we may see more casualties in Afghanistan but we also all have to be ready for that," Samad said.

The deaths have spurred debate back home over Canada's role in the conflict, but Samad told the university audience that international forces have made a commitment to Afghanistan that they can't renege on now.

Two decades ago, the international community that had helped Afghanis defeat the Soviet Union simply walked away and the country became a training ground for terrorists, he said.
"This time, the international community must stay the course," Samad said. "Make sure that you continue this engagement with Afghanistan until Afghanistan can stand on its own two feet," he said. "We don't want foreign troops, your troops or anybody's troops, in Afghanistan forever."

The controversy is far from over. Opposition parties in Ottawa have called for a parliamentary debate on the deployment and one recent poll suggested just 40 per cent of Canadians supported the mission.

The public debate is important, said Sara Silver Slayter, a political science student at McGill. "We shouldn't just assume that they're already there, so we should keep them there," she said after his speech.

"I agreed with the original mission, but I think it's sort of transformed since then out of a peacekeeping mission to peace enforcing, which is a big difference."

Troops treat Afghan town's minor ailments
By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, March 18, 2006
SHAR-E SAFA, Afghanistan — Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment have spent much of the past 12 months trying to show those who don’t obey the Afghan government the error of their ways.

But in spite of being from an outfit that calls itself “The Rock,” the soldiers have a softer side, which was demonstrated Thursday during one of the battalion’s monthly Village Medical Outreach visits.

“It allows us to say thanks for all the support [local residents] have given us,” said Capt. Justin Dauber, who spends most of his time as the battalion’s battle captain.

While past visits have included medical personnel from the 173rd Support Battalion, most of those soldiers have returned home to Vicenza, Italy. So an international contingent that included personnel from Canada and Romania pitched in to help this time. Incoming soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division’s 4th Brigade, along with Afghan National Police and Afghan National Army units, were out in force as well.

In fact, by the time the afternoon rolled around, there were more people in uniform providing security and treatment than there were those seeking it, although the traffic had been heavier earlier in the day.

Dauber said the turnout was a bit lower than he had hoped for. But far more women showed up for treatment than they normally do, he said, and they brought their children.

“It’s most gratifying to help the little kids to give them a good start,” said (Capt.) Darby Silvernail, an Army doctor who, along with Canadian medic Sgt. Susan Paul, treated dozens of women and children.

Silvernail said many of the women she saw complained of coughs “and a lot of aches and pains.”

Having female medics performing the treatment appeared to make the Afghan women feel more comfortable.

Afghan doctors assigned to the ANP and ANA were there for the men. Romanian Lt. Adina Gureu, a dentist, saw more than 40 patients.

U.S. Capt. Oscar Corredor, the only American optometrist in Regional Command-South, said some of those he saw had cataracts and would need surgery later.

“We saw some people who just needed reading glasses,” he said, before pointing to a stack of glasses he was ready to hand out.

Dauber said the military personnel were providing their services free of charge. The local clinic nearby also doesn’t charge, but it’s generally low on medical supplies, so locals have to go to the village pharmacy to buy medication.

Silvernail said it appeared that many of the patients she saw were poor and didn’t get medical attention regularly.

“I think that for most of them, it’s probably been a long time,” she said.

“Or never,” Paul added.

Shar-e Safa, the center of Tarn Wajaldak district in southwest Zabul Province, was the first stop for the medical teams. They were set to visit several other villages in the north of the province over the next week.

Dauber said a veterinarian was also on hand to treat local animals, and mechanics often came along on such visits to repair vehicles that had their own aches and pains.

Afghanistan's foreign minister to visit Fremont
By Lisa FernandezMercury News
The foreign minister of Afghanistan is coming to Fremont tonight to update Afghan emigres on the country's recent developments.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah is scheduled to speak -- in Farsi -- for one hour at the Flamingo Palace, 4100 Peralta Blvd., beginning at 6:30 p.m. The event is free.

Los Angeles-based Afghan consulate spokesman Sayad Ahmadi said he did not know exactly what Abdullah will talk about, just that it will include a status report on Afghanistan. Audience members can ask questions afterward.

Abdullah spent part of this week in Los Angeles and will head to Washington, D.C. Fremont is home to the largest concentration of Afghans in the United States. Anyone with questions should call the consulate at (310) 473-6583 or the Flamingo Palace at (510) 792-9999.

Afghan bandits kill 22 in Iran, as UK, US blamed
Saturday, March 18, 2006 IranMania.com
LONDON, March 18 (IranMania) - Afghan bandits with links to US and British security services have killed 22 people in Iran and seized an unknown number of others in an ambush that also left a senior official critically wounded, officials said, AFP reported.

Police said "a group of armed bandits who crossed the Afghanistan border killed 21 people and injured another seven innocent people driving in their vehicles" between the border city of Zabol and Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan.

The southeastern province's deputy governor general for security, Mohsen Sadeghi, later raised the death toll to 22 and said that, "according to the reports we got, one of the seven injured people is in a critical condition."

A source in the interior ministry told AFP: "Hossein Ali Nouri, the governor of Zahedan and his deputy have been critically wounded and both are in intensive care in hospital."

According to some Iranian news agencies, Nouri and his deputy were shot several times in the chest and abdomen.

The interior ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that "apparently a number of people have been taken hostage.

"Iran is seriously pursuing the case, and that's why the head of police is here to command the search for the bandits," he added.

The officials were returning to Zahedan after attending a ceremony of war commanders in Zabol, the reports added.

"A number of victim's families have told us that their relatives have been taken hostage, but we cannot confirm it yet," he added.

Iran's police commander, Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam, told state television "we have information that the bandits in Sistan-Baluchistan area had some meetings with the British and the American security services.

"These services have dictated plans to the bandits on how to destabilise the area. They are trying to spread disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. This is a terrorist action against innocent civilians," he told reporters upon arriving at Zahedan's airport.

Ahmadi-Moqaddam said the bandits had killed Shiites, who were stopped at a mock checkpoint.

"There is the possibility that the bandits have escaped to Afghanistan since the area is close to the border," he added.

Sistan-Baluchistan, a mostly Sunni Muslim province in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless and is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Some three month ago, a group of Iranian soldiers was kidnapped near the border with Pakistan by a hardline Sunni Muslim group operating in the unruly border area. They were later released.

Iranian officials and media had initially said the kidnappers were bandits, drug traffickers or dissident tribesmen.

Feature: Where government job is a life risk
LASHKARGAH, Mar 17 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The threat of ever-increasing insurgency in southern Afghanistan is forcing Afghan officials to shift to big cities leaving behind their permanent residences in smaller cities, twons and villages.

Helmand is one of the lawless southern provinces where the scourge of insurgency is looming large in the outskirts and Taliban are flagrantly killing and dragging out officials, including teachers, doctors and security personnel from their houses and forcing them to quit their jobs.

Majority of officials having homes in the districts have not met their families for the past three months fearing attacks from Taliban, who have recently distributed night letters warning officials to quit their jobs or face death.

They say visiting their houses is a risky job as Taliban are enjoying clout in several districts and they have killed about 50 government officials, including three district chiefs, two local intelligence chiefs, several police officers, teachers and police constables, over the past four months.

Ghulam Rasul Khan, a police official and resident of the Marja area, said he had not gone to his house for the past two months as stay at hom for him was not free from life risk. "Several of my colleagues have been gunned down inside their houses in the night."

Another official of the intelligence department Mirwais Jan said he did not met his family for the past four months. Mirwais is resident of the Nad Ali district. He said government officials did not side any party. They are serving the people whether it was the government of Taliban, mujahideen or the present one.

Mohammad Zarif, 23, resident of the Sangin district, told Pajhwok, one of his family members had been elected to the provincial assembly. They were threatened by Taliban following which they left the area and were now living in Lashkargah.

"I can't go to Sangin to see my family and am living here for the past two months. My fault is that one of my relatives is a member of the provincial council," lamented Zarif.

An official of the public health department, who wished not to be named, said: "By God, the government has no control in the districts and Taliban are in charge of those areas after the dark falls." How can the government officials go to the their houses in in such a situation, he questioned.

Ghulam Nabi Haqmal, resident of the Ainak area of the Nava district and technician at the Khplawak Radio, told Pajhwok his father had advised him to quit the job. "I have no choice but either to say goodby to the job or abandon my family living in the countryside," he argued.

Sahibzada, resident of the Aab Bazan village of the Grishk district and an employee at the transport department, said an unprecedented number of government officials had been killed by rebels during the existing government. "We can do nothing. Just passing our days at the mercy of God."

On the other hand, a large number of government officials have migrated to Lashkargah for fear of insecurity in their respective areas.

Ajeer Gulab Shah, resident of the Nad Ali district, is one of them. "I shifted to Lashkargah along with my family becuase I received several death threats from unidentified people." He referred to a fresh incident in which armed men gunned down a government official in front of his house in the same district.

The fear further intensified after Taliban distributed night letters in districts and surrounding villages of Helmand threatening officials of dire consequences if they did not quit the government jobs.

One such night letter obtained by this news agency says: "Anyone who gets money from the government or the US, whether he is clergy, grower, officer etc, the mujahideen of the Islamic state willd not spare him and will be punished according to the sharia (Islamic law)."

Asked to comment on the insecurity and harrassment of government officials, provincial Governor engineer Mohammad Daud said the security officials were active and they were killing the miscreants to ensure peace in the province. "They (Taliban) casualty figure is double in each clash with the government forces," contended the governor.

Discussing the lawlessness in the province, security chief Colonel Asadullah Sherzad argued that being a border province, Helmand was vulnerable to terrorist activities. "The government is not sitting with its hands crossed. We are striving hard to maintain security and ensure peace in the province," said the security chief.
Abdul Samad Rohani
Translated & edited by Daud

Afghan family cries for fallen father
The Toronto Star / March 17, 2006 ROSIE DIMANNO
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN-Semem Gul slaps at her face and thrashes at her chest. Her keening rises to a fever pitch, echoing off the crumbing mud walls of the courtyard, spilling into the narrow alleys of Shahidan Chawk, one of the city's most impoverished neighbourhoods.

She is now, because of an unidentified Canadian soldier, a widow in Afghanistan, and there's no worse fate for a woman in this country.

"I don't have a husband! I have nobody to protect me! What am I to do?

"You say sorry? What does sorry mean to me? Will sorry feed my children?"

The youngest of those six children, Shahab, adds his pitiful mewling to the sobbing in the room, where a dozen of Semen Gul's female relatives have gathered, rocking and swaying with grief.

Shahab, only 4 years old, was in the motorized rickshaw when his father, Nasrat Ali, was shot in the chest - a fatal wound, as it turned out -by a Canadian infantryman on patrol late Tuesday night.

The child himself fell out of the small vehicle in the panic that ensued, and there are abrasions on his forehead.

"Is my father not coming home?" the uncomprehending youngster asks a Toronto Star reporter who has been invited into the single-room household, the only journalist the widow has agreed to see.

Shahab's sisters, 11 and 14, weep as they gather the boy in their arms. An older brother, the man of the family now at age 22, looks on, an impotent rage darkening his features.

Nasrat Ali, a poor Shiite who barely eked out an existence making tin pots and pans, had just been buried after his corpse was ritualistically washed by relatives. More than 1,000 mourners had attended the funeral at Amam Bargah mosque — the imam counselled against violence and retribution.Nasrat Ali's photograph, photocopied, has been posted throughout the mosque compound — a handsome man, clean-shaven in what looks like it might have been an official ID, perhaps something from a passport.

"Look, no beard," a relative points out. "Not Taliban, not Al Qaeda. Just Afghan."

Whether justifiable or not, a Canadian soldier has taken the life of what was palpably an innocent civilian, an Afghan who had returned to his country only three years ago after living for nearly two decades in neighbouring Iran. As Shiite exiles, the Ali family fled Soviet occupation, warlords, the Taliban, finally coming home after the U.S.-led coalition put a Pashtun leader in the presidential palace.

They thought it was safe now.

They were tragically wrong.

"I know the Canadians are here to help," says Semen Gul, composing herself, speaking through an interpreter. "I don't hate Canadians. But I can't forgive them. You cannot come to our country and kill us."

The widow is surely entitled to compensation for the loss of a husband and father, aged 45. When pressed, she names a figure: $30,000 (U.S.) "Enough to buy a house and a shop for my eldest son.''

An independent agency, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, is examining the incident to determine whether compensation is merited, and the soldier who fired the fatal shot has been removed from duties pending the outcome.

But what's become obvious is that there are two wildly different versions of the events that transpired at about 11 p.m. Tuesday night, as the Ali family was coming home from dinner at the home of a relative.

Canadian commanders assert that the rickshaw taxi in which the victim was travelling ignored repeated and explicit warnings — shouts, hand gestures and a spotlight trained on the vehicle — to stop, and was shot upon when less than a metre from a patrol parked at the side of the road. They also said the vehicle had blown past an Afghan checkpoint just before approaching the patrol at speed.

Semen Gul and her children insist that's not the way it happened at all.

There were seven people in the rickshaw, she said, six family members (including a daughter-in-law and her baby) and the driver, while oldest son Farid Ahmed followed behind on his bicycle.

The rickshaw, moving slowly — it's maximum speed is 20 km/h — was just coming around the sharp curve of a spoked road that leads into one of Kandahar's major roundabouts, said Gul. From that angle, as the Star confirmed after visiting the scene, the driver would not have seen the parked patrol until it was about 15 metres away.

The Afghan checkpoint, however, is apparently moved in the evenings from the centre of the roundabout to the entry-point of the two roads leading into it, and allegedly all vehicles are checked after 9 p.m.

"I lived for many years in Iran. I know all about police checkpoints," said Gul, 40. "We were not stopped by the Afghans. And there was no warning shot from the Canadians, no shouting, no shots fired in the air, no light shining on us. There was only this sudden gunfire — three shots — and my husband falling out of the rickshaw into the street."

Lieut. Derek Basinger, chief of staff for Task Force Afghanistan, told reporters on Wednesday that a medic on the vehicle had immediately examined the victim, that the wound did not look life-threatening, and that Afghan police quickly arrived, removing Nasrat Ali to hospital.

Gul says the medic didn't come out of the patrol vehicle for 15 minutes, while her husband — still conscious — lay bleeding in the road; that the Canadians troops ignored family pleas that Nasrat Ali be taken right away to hospital. "I was begging, please, take him to the American hospital. They wouldn't do it."

Afghan police, when they finally arrived, put her husband in a second rickshaw for the trip to the hospital, leaving her behind, Gul added.

Nasrat Ali was not armed. There were no weapons or explosives in the rickshaw.

However, threats against multinational troops — particularly in Kandahar province, whence the routed Taliban originally arose — have increased sharply and Canadian troops here are clearly bracing for more attacks from insurgents.

Yesterday, fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar purportedly sent a statement to the Associated Press, promising that a large number of Afghans were signing up as suicide bombers

"This year, with the beginning of summer, Afghan soil will turn red for the crusaders and their puppets and the occupiers will face an unpredictable wave of Afghan resistance," the statement read.

Reminded of the danger for the troops, Semen Gul shook her head.

"You think we are all Taliban or Al Qaeda. Could they have not fired at the tires or the sky? If there had been a warning, we would have stopped, of course, we would have stopped. It would be stupid not to stop.

"They do not have the right to shoot at Afghans. Let them shoot at people in their own country, not here."

Last night, after repeated requests from media, Maj. Scott Lundy, spokesperson for the multinational brigade, made a brief statement essentially re-asserting the military version of events — based on information given by soldiers in the patrol — and refusing to speculate on the divergent recollection of the civilians involved.

"I think it's fair to say there will be some Afghans living in Kandahar city who will be concerned ... It's the normal reaction to a death. As far as we're concerned, it's regrettable. But again, we would hope that the public will understand that there were ... a lot of factors involved and the decision of the crew to take the actions it did, that was done pretty much at the spur of the moment.

"So now we'll let the investigation determine how all of this played out."

Earlier in the day, Maj. Erik Liebert, deputy commanding officer of the Provincial Reconstruction Team — a satellite of Task Force Afghanistan located on the outskirts of Kandahar city, from which the patrol had emerged — said Canadian military authorities would be contacting the victim's family within the next day or so "to express our condolence and possibly arrange for a small gift, if that's appropriate in the cultural circumstances."

The formal mourning period for Nasrat Ali — called a fatha — will conclude tomorrow.

Yesterday afternoon, when the Star's van fell in behind another Canadian patrol travelling through downtown Kandahar, a soldier riding in the back of the vehicle could be seen draining a bottle of water and then pinging the plastic container off the head of a young Afghan male walking along the street.

"You see," an Afghan in the car pointed out. "You see how they treat us?"

Pakistan runs trial bus for Afghanistan
Saturday March 18, 2006 (0102 PST) PakTribune.com, Pakistan
PESHAWAR, March 18 (Online): A first trial bus from Pakistan headed for Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad Friday as the two countries plan to launch a full service from next month to boost mutual trade.

Some 52 Pakistani and Afghan officials and local media teams left northern Peshawar city at 9:30 am and were scheduled to cross the border at Thorkam in about two hours time.

The first trial bus from Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, of which Jalalabad is the capital, arrived in Peshawar on Wednesday.

Under an agreement signed in March 2005 between the two governments, two private transport companies from Peshawar and Jalalabad would run the bus service.

The bus fare from Peshawar to Jalalabad is 300 rupees while from Jalalabad to Peshawar will be 270 Afghanis.

The two countries also plan a bus service between Quetta in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province and Afghan’s southern city of Kandahar.

Plots distributed among returnees in Jawzjan
MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Mar 17 (Pajhwok Afghan News): The government has started distribution of plots to returnees in the Aqchi district of the northern Jawzjan province on Friday.

About 8,000 plots will be distributed among the homeless returnees, who would be settled in the new town of Noorabad. Each family had to submit 2,000 afghanis to get a plot.

Director of the Refugees and Returnees' Affairs engineer Abdul Karim told Pajhwok Afghan News the provincial government was planning to open schools, mosques, health clinics in the proposed new city. It would also be provided with electricity.

He said about 40,000 families had so far returned to the province majority of whom were faced with residential problems.

Contacted for comments, spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Returnees Affairs Hafiz Nadim told this news agency establishment of three cities was under consideration to house returnees in Jawzjan.

He informed that land had been distributed to about 16,000 returnee families in 42 areas of 24 provinces across the country. The 42 areas, where land had been allotted, would be developed as mini cities.

He said a total of 300,000 plots would be distributed among returning families to solve their housing problems in the future.

Naim Qadiri/Mustafa Basharat