Thanks to a couple of friends of mine (Andrew and UKC) from another forum....


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Up to 30 Afghans killed by allied bombing

Staff and agencies Wednesday February 12, 2003

A number of Afghan villagers, possibly as many as 30, have been killed by allied troops hunting for Taliban hold-outs in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, locals reported today. Mohammed Wali, a spokesman for the provincial governor in the Baghni Baghran district of Helmand, said that air and ground assaults had taken place Monday and Tuesday. The number of civilians killed in the assaults was not clear, he said, but US and Afghan forces had arrested about 50 men suspected of having Taliban links.

At a news briefing today, the US military said Danish F-16s and US bombers dropped guided bombs on an estimated 25 fighters who had taken up combat positions in the Baghni Baghran area, in Helmand province.

At least 12 fighters were taken into allied custody during yesterday's operation, the US military said from its Afghan headquarters at Bagram air force base. Specialists also found and destroyed nine rockets.

However, it was not clear whether the military and Mr Wali were referring to the same operation. The military did not say there were any civilian casualties.

Mr Wali gave no count of civilian deaths, but a villager in the area said as many as 30 people may have been killed. Scores more were injured in two days of allied bombing, he said. Jilani Khan, who runs a money changing business in Baghni Baghran, believed the American forces have been misled into attacking their region on a hunt for fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. He demanded an end to the bombing.

"Americans troops have been provided wrong information that Mullah Omar is leading his forces in the area. There is no truth in this," Mr Khan told the Associated Press. He said US and Afghan troops have cordoned off the area and no one is allowed to go in or out.

Mr Khan said the American troops have told local residents the bombing will not stop until Mullah Omar is handed over. There was no immediate comment from the US.

Mullah Omar ruled Afghanistan as the head of the radical Taliban militia before it was dismantled by a US-led coalition in December 2001. Soon after the Taliban abandoned their stronghold of Kandahar, there were reports that Omar had fled to Baghran area. He was later said to have left the region.

About 13,000 coalition troops are in Afghanistan hunting remnants of the former Taliban regime and the al-Qaida network. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,915224,00.html





World Bank chief issues opium alert

Faisal Islam, economics correspondent Sunday March 16, 2003 The Observer

Opium cultivation has reached record levels in Afghanistan, World Bank president James Wolfensohn warned yesterday. In an exclusive interview with The Observer, Wolfensohn revealed that drugs were now a bigger earner for the Afghan economy than overseas aid. And he stressed that the failure to rid the country of its drug lords and poverty could undermine the West's moral case for invading Iraq.

'We should not forget the experience of Afghanistan is a proving ground for whether the international community can stay the course beside a fragile country as it builds itself up from the aftermath of conflict,' he said.

Wolfensohn said his officials now reckoned that drugs were back up to within 10 per cent of their peak production under the Taliban, and that the price of opium had risen from $100 a kilo to $500. The $1.4 billion (£885 million) proceeds from this industry last year compared with the $1.2 billion international aid that flowed into the country.

Opium was banned by the Taliban in 1999. A mere 1,685 hectares were cultivated the following year, according to the US State Department. However, last year a total of 30,750 hectares were harvested, helping restore Afghanistan to its role as the world's number one exporter of heroin precursors. Three quarters of all European heroin comes from Afghanistan, added Wolfensohn.

The trouble lay with the West's preoccupation with affairs elsewhere. Afghanistan once dominiated our attention. But that has now shifted to Iraq.

'The pattern is a common one,' said Wolfensohn. 'While there is shooting it gets headlines, but when it gets to issues of reconstruction the television crews leave and go to the next spot. There's less publicity and it goes off the radar screen and so the second fundraising is always less good than the first one. In the case of Afghanistan we're in that decline period.'

Wolfensohn will attempt to raise a further $600 million at a meeting of Western donors in Brussels tomorrow. The Afghan government is concerned that existing aid money is bypassing its budget entirely, imperilling the nation-building process.

Wolfensohn added that he hoped war could be avoided in Iraq, but that the World Bank was ready to assist rebuilding, and that funding would be less problematic.

'My guess is that this would not happen with Iraq because of the interest in oil,' he said. 'There is an implicit assumption that reconstruction would be paid for out of its oil, but we have not looked into it yet.'

Afghan prisoners beaten to death at US military interrogation base March 7: Two prisoners who died while being held for interrogation at the US military base in Afghanistan had apparently been beaten, according to a military pathologist's report. A criminal investigation is now under way into the deaths which have both been classified as homicides.

Old warlord threatens Afghan peace February 10: Afghan rebel factions loyal to the Taliban and a fundamentalist warlord have launched a new wave of attacks on aid workers and US forces.

There's loads more like this, but it never gets on TV or radio.

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Afghanistan omitted from US aid budget


Afghans are still struggling to survive



By Michael Buchanan BBC correspondent in Washington

The United States Congress has stepped in to find nearly $300m in humanitarian and reconstruction funds for Afghanistan after the Bush administration failed to request any money in its latest budget.

One mantra from the Bush administration since it launched its military campaign in Afghanistan 16 months ago has been that the US will not walk away from the Afghan people.

President Bush has even suggested a Marshall plan for the country, and the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, will visit Washington later this month.


Washington has pledged not to forget Afghanistan But in its budget proposals for 2003, the White House did not explicitly ask for any money to aid humanitarian and reconstruction costs in the impoverished country.

The chairman of the committee that distributes foreign aid, Jim Kolbe, says that when he asked administration officials why they had not requested any funds, he was given no satisfactory explanation, but did get a pledge that it would not happen again.

'Too early'

A spokesman for the US Agency for International Development, which distributes the money, says the reason they did not make a request was that when budgetary discussions began in 2002, it was too early to say how much money they would need.

Jim Kolbe has expressed surprise at the administration's oversight.

The US will spend over $16bn in foreign aid this year.

The main beneficiaries will be Israel, Jordan and a number of anti-Aids programmes.

However, Mr Kolbe says that should there be a military conflict in Iraq, he believes the US will have to find billions more, not only to help Iraq, but also Turkey, Jordan and Israel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2759789.stm