This Week in Afghanistan Watch:

• Taliban Down U.S. Helicopter Carrying 17 troops
• U.N. Rep. Jean Arnault Appeals to Security Council
• Putin: Militants Infiltrated Uzbekistan from Afghanistan
• Afghanistan Calls For More Aid from Muslim Countries
• Karzai: September Elections Will Be Held, Despite Violence
• Featured Article: Who are the suicide bombers? Pakistan's answer
  

June 29, 2005

This Week's News:

Enemy Fire a Possible Cause of Helicopter Crash

June 29, (WP) by Pamela Constable, Bradley Graham and Fred Barbash: A large U.S. military helicopter crashed Tuesday afternoon while carrying 17 American troops to reinforce a counterterrorism mission in eastern Afghanistan, U.S. officials confirmed. "Initial reports indicate the crash may have been caused by hostile fire," the military said in a statement this morning…Afghan officials said the CH-47 Chinook helicopter was hit by a rocket while flying over Konar province, near the Pakistani border. A purported spokesman for the Taliban Islamic militia asserted responsibility for the attack….

The incident, the first time a U.S. military helicopter in Afghanistan has been reported shot down since Operation Anaconda in early 2002, underscored the continuing danger to U.S. and Afghan troops from armed anti-government groups, especially the Taliban.

The attack continues a trend of escalating attacks as September's parliamentary elections approach. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, over the past three months 29 U.S. soldiers, 43 Afghan troops and police, and 125 civilians have been killed by insurgents. Coalition forces have killed at least 250 insurgents during this period. According to the Post piece, U.S. commanders are concerned not only with the intensification of militia attacks, but also by allied fighters from al Qaeda. Until recently, foreign fighters were thought to comprise only a small fraction of the insurgency, both in numbers and in capacity, but recent suicide attacks have shown the lethal impact that 'foreign' tactics can have.

In the face of this rising violence, the Afghan government's statement had a dissonance reminiscent of Vice President Cheney's statement that the Iraq insurgency was in its "last throes."
Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Jawad Ludin, told reporters Tuesday that anti-government militias were "very feeble" compared to the growing Afghan security forces.

Ludin's words contradicted those of Jean Arnault, the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, who spoke at the U.N. Security Council on June 24. Arnault said current military operations were insufficient to counter Taliban activities, deteriorating security was interfering with election preparations, and rebels are "demonstrating increased cruelty and blind violence.''

Putin: Militants infiltrated into Central Asia from Afghanistan

MOSCOW, June 29, (PTI): Russian President Vladimir Putin has said his country's intelligence has information about infiltration of militants from bases in Afghanistan into former Soviet Central Asian republics and Moscow has briefed its allies in the region.

"You know that we had intelligence on militants infiltrating (the region) from Afghanistan," Putin said while receiving Uzbek President Islam Karimov at his Novo-Ogoryovo countryside retreat near Moscow last night…."I will not dwell on other aspects of the tragic events of May 12-13, but we can confirm militants did infiltrate from special bases in Afghanistan and concentrated on adjacent territories. Our security agencies confirm this," Putin said. In the early hours of May 13 and the next day, militants launched a series of terrorist attacks in Andijan (Uzbekistan). The authorities said 176 people had been killed and 295 wounded in the clashes.

An Afghan spokesman denied these allegations, saying that the uprising in Uzbekistan was an 'internal affair.'

Afghan Finance Minister: Muslim countries have done little to help

KUALA LUMPUR, June 26 (Pak Tribune): Oil-rich Muslim countries and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) have done little to help reconstruct the war-ravaged Afghanistan, Afghan Finance Minister Anwar Ul Haq Ahady said. The focus of the Muslim community has now shifted to other areas such as Palestine and Iraq, and the financial aid from oil-rich countries have dried up, Ahady was quoted as saying by the Bernama news agency here.

"We all deserve attention and some Muslim countries have the capacity to help but many Arab countries in the Gulf have participated very little in the reconstruction of Afghanistan," Ahady said…The aid given by Saudi Arabia and IDB was mostly in loans, and Kuwait as well as many Muslim countries has yet to give financial support, Ahady lamented.

Ahady criticized IDB of only allocating 70 million US dollars over a three-year period, of which "less than one percent is grants and so far only five percent of the fund has been disbursed." Saddled in grinding poverty and facing a bleak future, Afghanistan would find it tough to repay these loans and IDB has not been favorable in its lending terms, Ahady added.

Afghan Elections a Go Despite Violence; Funding shortfalls loom
KABUL, June 28 (AP) By Daniel Cooney: Landmark legislative elections in Afghanistan will be held as planned in September despite an upsurge in rebel violence…"I would like to emphasize that Afghanistan will not go back ... the progress we have made can never be reversed regardless of how hard the terrorists and the enemies of Afghanistan try,'' spokesman Jawed Ludin told reporters….

Unfortunately , violence is only one obstacle that must be overcome. In his briefing to the Security Council on June 24, Jean Arnault suggested that without additional funding, another postponement of the elections may be necessary. Currently, the U.N.-led election program faces a $78.8 million shortfall, and even if expected U.N. Development Program (UNDP) pledges of $34 million come through, the program would still have a funding gap of $44 million.

Pakistan releases 45 prisoners repatriated from Afghanistan

June 29 (ABC Radio Australia): Pakistan has freed 45 nationals who have been detained for nine months in their home country after their repatriation from jails in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, who were caught in Afghanistan in late 2001 while fighting with the Taliban against US forces, have been released from the main jail in Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

Officials say a further 40 prisoners will be released later this week. Thousands of Pakistanis joined the Taliban after the US launched military strikes against the Afghan regime following the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001.

Earlier this week, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, ordered the release of 17 former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from the jail in Lahore, who alleged they had witnessed the desecration of the Koran at the US detention centre in Cuba.

Who are the suicide bombers? Pakistan's answer
June 17, 2005 (Christian Science Monitor), by Owais Tohid

In four years, 28-year-old Gul Hasan went from laying bricks to recruiting suicide bombers…
How people like Hasan get involved with militant Islam, and what they do to recruit others, are questions of increasing urgency in Pakistan, which has seen a spate of suicide bombings in recent weeks….

"This is a new breed [of militants], as suicide bombings are a post 9/11 phenomenon here," says Fateh Mohammad Burfat, head of the Criminology Department at the University of Karachi. The bombers are "unemployed, illiterate, and belong to poor social strata. [They also] perceive the US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan as hostile acts against the Muslim world.... By suicide attacks, they get a sense of victory in the world and hereafter."…

In a New York Times opinion piece on Tuesday, Peter Bergen, author of "Holy War, Inc.," and Swati Pandey argued that the Islamic terrorists behind many of the attacks against the West are well-educated - not brainwashed youth from madrassahs, or Islamic schools. In a sampling of 75 terrorists involved in attacks against Westerners, they found that 53 percent had attended college - a figure slightly higher than US averages. "[Madrassahs] are not and should not be considered a threat to the United States," the authors wrote. Read the whole article…

Senate Testimony of Ronald Neumann, U.S. Envoy to Afghanistan

In a written to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee statement June 15, Neumann wrote: "If confirmed, I would take to Kabul the benefit of 16 months' experience in Iraq, where I had the privilege of serving this year as Political-Military Counselor to Ambassador Negroponte…In both countries we have seen courageous and bold steps toward democracy that we could not have imagined five years ago…" Read Neumann's full testimony here.

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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