Afghans raise flag on country's highest peak

KABUL (AFP) – Two Afghan mountaineers have planted their national flag on the country's highest peak, becoming the first Afghans to conquer the 7,492-metre (24,580-foot) Mount Noshaq, organizers told AFP.

"Two climbers reached the summit of Noshaq... where they planted the Afghan flag. They are the first Afghans to do so," said Louis Meunier, one of two Frenchmen with the pair, speaking from their base camp on Sunday.

One of the Afghans, Malang Daria, said ahead of the trip that planting the national flag on the summit would be "a proud moment for all Afghans."

Before starting on their expedition on June 26, the Afghans spent nearly a month training in the French Alps to "learn the necessary techniques... build the whole team and acclimatise to high altitude," said Meunier.

Noshaq is located in the far northeast of Afghanistan in the Wakhan Corridor that connects the country to China. It is part of the legendary Hindu Kush.

Meunier and fellow French climber Jerome Veyret earlier said they hoped the expedition would be a "sign of hope and peace" in the troubled country.

"Maybe it will also inspire other potential travelers to come to the Wakhan," an area untouched by the violence seen elsewhere in Afghanistan, said Meunier.

The expedition made use of about 50 porters to bring provisions to a base camp in this remote corner of the country, which is inaccessible to pack animals.

NATO: Fighter jet crashes at Afghan base

By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Write

KABUL – A Tornado fighter jet crashed inside NATO's largest base in southern Afghanistan on Monday in the second major crash on the base in two days, officials said.

The jet crashed inside Kandahar Airfield during takeoff at 7:20 a.m. Afghanistan time (0250 GMT), said Capt. Ruben Hoornveld, a spokesman for the NATO-led force. The two-member crew ejected and were being treated at the base hospital.

There was no indication that insurgent activity caused the crash, he said, but officials could not immediately say why the plane went down. The jet caught fire and emergency personnel responded.

NATO didn't identify which nation the jet came from, but a U.S. military spokeswoman in Kabul, Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker, said the jet was a Tornado — an aircraft commonly flown by British forces.

The crash happened one day after a Russian-owned civilian Mi-8 helicopter crashed at Kandahar Airfield, killing 16 people on board. Both Kandahar crashes follow a string of deadly aircraft downings elsewhere around Afghanistan in recent days.

Hoornveld said he did not know why two aircraft had crashed in Kandahar in two days.

"Honestly I can't say, but from my personal view it's coincidence," he said.

Afghan police and NATO troops closed down the highway that runs by the base, and emergency personnel cordoned off the crash site and evacuated the surrounding area, Hoornveld said.

The crash of the Tornado is the third aircraft to go down in Afghanistan in three days. A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet crashed early Saturday in central Afghanistan, killing two crew members. U.S. officials say insurgent fire did not bring down the plane.

Last week, Taliban militants downed an Mi-6 transport helicopter in southern Afghanistan, killing six Ukrainian civilians on board and an Afghan child on the ground.

Earlier in July, two Canadian soldiers and one British trooper were killed in a helicopter crash in Zabul province. Officials said that crash did not appear to be a result of hostile fire.

Idaho town prays for return of captured US soldier

By JOHN MILLER, Associated Press Writer

HAILEY, Idaho – Friends and family of an Idaho soldier who was captured in Afghanistan prayed for his safe return Sunday, shaken by the image of the frightened young private in a Taliban video posted online.

Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl, 23, was serving with an Alaska-based infantry regiment earlier this month when he vanished, just five months after arriving in Afghanistan. He was serving at a base near the border with Pakistan in an area known to be a Taliban stronghold.

Bergdahl is from Hailey, a town of about 7,000 people in central Idaho where he worked as a barista and was active in ballet. A sign that hangs in the window of Zaney's River Street Coffee House says "Get Bowe Back," and a message inside asks customers to "Join all of us at Zaney's holding light for our friend."

Sue Martin, owner of the coffee shop, said she knew Bergdahl as a free-spirited young man with blond hair who rode his bicycle everywhere in town and was keen to learn as much as he could about the world.

"He joined the ballet. Then he joined the Army," Martin said in an interview from a room at Zaney's, which has become an impromptu meeting place for friends, acquaintances and the media since the Taliban video was shown around the world. "People have been calling and asking what they could bring to show their support."

Bergdahl's family issued a statement asking people to keep the soldier in their thoughts and prayers, but told The Associated Press they were asking that the media respect their privacy.

Neighbors and others in the community have known for weeks that Bergdahl had been captured, but said the family urged them not to talk about the kidnapping out of fear that publicity would compromise his safety. Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter told the AP that he had been working to keep the soldier's name quiet until it was officially released.

In the video posted Saturday on a Web site pointed out by the Taliban, Bergdahl says his name and his hometown. The Pentagon confirmed his identity Sunday.

"We hope and pray for our son's safe return to his comrades and then to our family, and we appreciate all the support and expressions of sympathy shown to us by our family members, our friends and others across the nation," Bob Bergdahl, the soldier's father, said in a statement issued through the Department of Defense.

The family, described by neighbors as deeply private, lives six miles west of Hailey on a remote gravel county road. The humble home has a metal roof and several outbuildings, and vehicles parked in front. The family has chained and locked the front gate, and a small cardboard sign says: "No visitors."

Neighbors are abiding by the family's wishes not to comment on the record about Bergdahl's capture, but described the 23-year-old as an "adventurous" soul who was educated at home, danced ballet and took part in a sport fencing club, the Sun Valley Swords.

One of the directors of the Sun Valley Ballet School in Ketchum said Bergdahl performed with the group for four or five years until about 2008.

"He's athletic," Jill Brennan said. "He just had a knack for it. He's a wonderful young man."

In the 28-minute video, Bergdahl said he was "scared I won't be able to go home." He said he was lagging behind a patrol when he was captured, which conflicts with earlier military accounts that indicated he walked off the base with three Afghans.

It wasn't clear who initially captured Bergdahl, but the U.S. command in Afghanistan said he was being held by the Taliban and condemned the video as a violation of international law.

"I'm glad to see he appears unharmed, but again, this is a Taliban propaganda video," spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker said. "They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law."

With a shaved head and dressed in a nondescript, gray outfit, Bergdahl was shown eating at one point and sitting cross-legged. He choked up when discussing his family and his hope to marry his girlfriend.

"I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America," Bergdahl said.

The Pentagon identified his hometown as Ketchum, which is about half the size of Hailey and about 12 miles north. His family says he grew up in Blaine County, closer to Hailey.

Hailey is a mix of a working-class community and resort town, just down the road from upscale Sun Valley, a ski resort that's home to celebrities including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks and Sen. John Kerry. Bruce Willis maintains a vacation home in the area and owns local businesses.

Bergdahl is a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

He entered the Army in June 2008 and was trained in Fort Benning, Ga., said Lt. Col. Jonathan Allen, spokesman for Fort Richardson. Bergdahl reported for duty in Alaska in October, and deployed to Afghanistan in February.

In the video, Bergdahl said the date was July 14; it's clear the video was made no earlier because Bergdahl repeated an exaggerated Taliban claim about a Ukrainian helicopter that was shot down that day.

He was interviewed in English and asked his views on the war, which he called extremely hard; his desire to learn more about Islam; and the morale of American soldiers, which he said was low. He was prompted by his interrogators to give a message to the American people.

"Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country," he said.

The circumstances of Bergdahl's capture weren't clear.

On July 2, two U.S. officials told the AP the soldier had "just walked off" his base with three Afghans after his shift. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

On July 6, the Taliban claimed on their Web site that five days earlier a "drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison" and was captured by mujahedeen.

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

Afghans in contact with the Taliban told the AP that the soldier was held by a Taliban group led by a commander called Maulvi Sangin. They said the fighters decided to move him north into Taliban-controlled areas of Ghazni province.

The Afghans spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of arrest or reprisal. It was impossible to independently confirm their information.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the militants holding the soldier haven't yet set any conditions for his release.

Palestinians forced to seek work in Israel

by Joseph Krauss

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Every day they sneak into Israel by the dozens under the eyes of the soldiers at checkpoints -- a stream of Palestinian labourers from the occupied West Bank desperate for work.

"We are always looking for new methods -- if the Israelis crack down on refrigerated lorries we use ambulances, if they start stopping ambulances we use hearses," says Abu Ali, a smuggler who granted a rare interview to AFP on the condition his real name and the name of his village be kept quiet.

Sometimes it's a simple question of timing -- Abu Ali claims he once sneaked 97 workers across in the luggage compartment of a bus because it passed through a checkpoint at dusk, when the sun was in the soldiers' eyes.

The covert commute testifies to the economic despair in the occupied West Bank and calls into question Israel's claim that its controversial separation barrier keeps Palestinians from entering clandestinely.

The vehicles are driven by Israelis, either Jews or Arabs, who are part of smuggling rings that straddle the boundaries of the conflict and often include Jewish settlers, soldiers and bribed checkpoint officials, Abu Ali says.

He charges around 50 dollars per person, but says he pockets less than 10 of it, with the rest paying the other people involved in the ring.

The sheer number of workers using his services has allowed him to build a new three-storey house and made him one of the wealthier residents in his village.

Israeli police have arrested more than 16,000 undocumented Palestinian workers since the start of the year, releasing the vast majority after a few hours, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"Our units respond immediately, number one because of the possibility of terror infiltration. But in a majority of cases the suspects claim they are coming in for work purposes," he says.

Abu Ali insists he would never help an aspiring suicide bomber to enter for fear of being caught by Israeli security forces. "The Israelis catch them before they ever leave the West Bank 95 percent of the time," he says.

The labourers who sneak in can make up to 50 dollars a day at construction sites and factories in Israel, up to four or five times what they would make in the West Bank, where work is scarce.

"The economic situation is so desperate in the Palestinian territories that people are willing to endure all kinds of hardships to enter," says Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.

Long dependent on employment inside Israel and its settlements, the Palestinian economy was sent into a tailspin with the restrictions on movement of goods and people Israel imposed on the West Bank after the second Intifada, which erupted in September 2000.

Before that, some 146,000 Palestinians were working inside Israel or the settlements, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Today, only 45,000 Palestinians have permits to work either inside Israel or in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, the army says.

In 2008, unemployment in the Palestinian territory stood at 20 percent and gross domestic product (GDP) grew by around four percent, according to the IMF.

"The need for work is always going to be greater than the fear of getting caught and what will be done to you," says Michaeli.

Her rights group says border police frequently abuse workers caught trying to sneak in, which Michaeli says is in part meant as deterrence as the legal system cannot handle the large numbers of violators.

"Theoretically you could detain them, but the system would collapse," she says. "The police and the border police develop their own methods to deal with it, and these include violence, humiliation and other unlawful means."

Last month B'Tselem documented an incident in which Israeli border police halted a poorly-ventilated refrigerator lorry packed with more than 60 workers and refused to let anyone out for more than two hours.

"It was horrible," said one man who was involved. "I felt as if I was suffocating and couldn?t breathe. The policemen didn't let anybody go out, and they didn't bring us water, even though we asked repeatedly."

The workers eventually used their cell phones to alert rights groups.

Rosenfeld said authorities investigate all accusations of abuse, but that in the vast majority of cases the smuggled people are quickly sent back to the West Bank.

Workers smuggled into Israel usually stay for a week or two at a time, facing more hardship as they hide from authorities and hope they are not turned in by their employers. Many sleep in abandoned houses, factories, or outside in construction sites.

"They might work for a day or even a week and not get any money. And they make much less than minimum wage" of 3,850 shekels per month (992 dollars, 704 euros), says Roy Wagner of Kav LaOved, an Israeli organisation that runs a hotline for undocumented labourers.

Wagner estimates the number of illegal labourers currently working matches or exceeds the 45,000 who have permits, which are generally given only to older men with children and no record of security-related offences.

And the permits can be revoked at any time.

"There are no transparent criteria and that allows the security services to extort the workers into cooperation," Wagner says. "People lose their permits for things like traffic violations or for reasons they never find out about."

Abid, a tile-worker and former "client" of Abu Ali, recently managed to acquire an entrance permit.

The 44-year-old, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of losing his permit, was arrested more than a dozen times when he was sneaking in but says he had to keep entering in order to support his five children.

Now as a legal worker he makes his way to the checkpoint every morning at 4:00 am to stand in line so he can be at work near Tel Aviv by 8:00.

"I would prefer to enter with the smugglers," he says with a smile. "Now every time I go through I have to get a full-body X-ray. That can't be healthy."

Ban on Al-Jazeera operations in West Bank lifted

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Palestinian authorities on Sunday allowed Al-Jazeera to resume operations in the West Bank, four days after banning the Arab satellite station over a report linking President Mahmoud Abbas to the death of his legendary predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

Correspondent Walid al-Omari said he received a phone call from Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad informing him of the decision.

But Al-Omari said Fayyad told him his government would still press ahead with a lawsuit against the Qatar-based station for alleged incitement.

Last week, an Al-Jazeera talk show hosted an exiled official in Abbas' Fatah movement who alleged the Palestinian leader played a role in the death of Arafat in 2004.

The official, Farouk Kaddoumi, a longtime rival of Abbas, did not present evidence. The incident exacerbated existing tensions between the station and Abbas' Palestinian government, which has long complained that Al-Jazeera sides with its political rivals, the Islamic militants of Hamas.

On Wednesday, the day of the decision, Al-Jazeera employees were seen frantically piling files into black garbage bags and carrying them out with video cameras, computers and other equipment before Palestinian security officials closed the office. Al-Jazeera's Qatar headquarters issued a statement saying the station "has maintained strict, professional journalistic standards."

The Palestinian Authority initially planned on suspending the station's operations while the lawsuit was pending, government official Jamal Zakout said Sunday, but then decided against it, "so it would not be understood that there would be tightening of freedoms because that was not the goal."

At midmorning Sunday, it was not immediately clear whether the station had resumed West Bank operations.

In shutting Al-Jazeera down, Abbas risked picking a fight with one of the most potent shapers of Arab public opinion.

For Al-Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news station, the brief closure represented only the latest clash with a Middle Eastern government. Iraq has expelled it and Saudi Arabia only let it resume work recently after a long ban. Israel has often clashed with the station, but allows it to operate freely.

The 75-year-old Arafat fell violently ill in October 2004 at his West Bank compound. He was transferred to a French hospital where he died several weeks later.

Palestinian leaders have never given a definitive cause of death, and many Palestinians accused Israel of poisoning Arafat. Israel denies the allegations.

Israel rejects US call to halt Jerusalem project

By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM – Israel on Sunday rejected a U.S. demand to suspend a planned housing project in east Jerusalem, threatening to further complicate an unusually tense standoff with its strongest ally over settlement construction.

Israeli officials said the country's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department over the weekend and told that a project being developed by an American millionaire should not go ahead.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in "unified Jerusalem."

"We cannot accept the fact that Jews wouldn't be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem," Netanyahu declared, calling Israeli sovereignty over the entire city "indisputable."

The international community considers Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. Israel does not regard them as settlements because it annexed east Jerusalem in 1967 after capturing it in June of that year.

East Jerusalem is an especially volatile issue because it is the site of key Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites. The Palestinians want the traditionally Arab sector of the city to be the capital of their future state.

"If the Israeli prime minister continues with settlement activities, he will undermine efforts to revive the peace process," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

According to Army Radio, the U.S. has demanded that planning approval for the project be revoked.

The approval, granted by the Jerusalem municipality earlier this month, allows for the construction of 20 apartments plus a three-level underground parking lot.

A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy had no immediate comment.

Settlements have emerged as a major sticking point in relations between Israel and Washington under the Obama administration.

The Palestinians have been encouraged by Washington's insistence that Israel freeze all settlement construction on lands in east Jerusalem and the West Bank that the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Nearly 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to about 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians say the Israeli presence makes it increasingly difficult to establish an independent state in these areas. They have refused to restart peace talks until Israel halts all settlement expansion, something the Israeli government has refused to do.

The east Jerusalem project is being developed by Irving Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in east Jerusalem who purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build apartments in its place.

The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters.

West ignores lessons of Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan

Its Afghan war spelt disaster for the USSR and now Nato is making the same mistakes

Soviet forces lost 15,000 men in their nine years in Afghanistan

Victor Sebestyen

"There is barely an important piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another," the commander said. "Nevertheless, much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centres, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory that we seize."

He added: "Our soldiers are not to blame. They've fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land, where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills."

They could have been the words of a Nato general in the past few days. In fact they were spoken by Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, commander of Soviet armed forces, to the USSR's politburo in the Kremlin on November 13, 1986.

The Soviet forces were in the seventh year of their nine-year war in Afghanistan and had lost about 12,000 men. Akhromeyev, a hero of the siege of Leningrad in the second world war, had been summoned to explain why a force of 109,000 troops from the world's second superpower appeared to be humiliated, year after year, by a band of terrorists.

Akhromeyev explained about the rough terrain, insisted the army needed more resources - including additional helicopters - and warned that without more men and equipment "this war will continue for a very long time".

He concluded with words that sound uncannily resonant today, in the eighth year of Nato's war: "About 99% of the battles and skirmishes that we fought in Afghanistan were won by our side. The problem is that the next morning there is the same situation as if there had been no battle. The terrorists are again in the village where they were - or we thought they were - destroyed a day or so before."

The Soviet campaign in Afghanistan is a largely forgotten war. Few strategists from Russia or the West seem to think anything can be learnt from it. But study Soviet archives and many lessons become clear.

As the world was not watching, the Soviet troops could be brutal, yet massive air raids and the destruction of villages, which killed 800,000 Afghans, did not work. Tactics changed over the years, each time accompanied by a "surge" of new troops that temporarily improved security for the Russian-backed communist government in Kabul.

Much of the fighting was in places that have become familiar to us. Soviet troops were sent on sweeps in the most troublesome areas on the border with Pakistan, through which most of the guerrillas' weapons flowed, and the southern provinces of the country, such as Helmand. As soon as they left their fortified bases, the troops were in danger of ambush from bands of mujaheddin - the army of God.

That war, like today's, was characterised by disputes between soldiers and politicians. As newly revealed Russian documents show, the Communist party bosses ordered the invasion against the advice of senior commanders. This caused continual friction in Moscow for many years.

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, the chief of the Soviet defence staff, and Akhromeyev, his number two, raised doubts shortly before Soviet forces were dispatched on Christmas Day 1979. They suggested to Dmitri Ustinov, the defence minister, that the experiences of the British and tsarist armies in the 19th century should encourage caution.

Ustinov told them to "shut up and obey orders", according to politburo minutes.

Ogarkov went further up the chain of command to Leonid Brezhnev, the party boss. He warned that an invasion "could mire us in unfamiliar, difficult conditions and would align the entire Islamic East against us". He was cut off in mid-sentence.

"Focus on military matters," he was told. "Leave the policy making to us and to the party." Not long afterwards the marshal was fired.

The Soviet troops realised soon after they entered Afghanistan that they had blundered, but Kremlin officials felt trapped. When Mikhail Gorbachev became leader in March 1985 he declared privately that ending the war - "our bleeding wound" - was his priority. But he could not do so for fear of losing too much face. Withdrawing the troops took a further four years as they searched for that difficult prize for armies on the run: peace with honour.

It was an agonising process that marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire and eventually the USSR itself. "How to get out of this racks one's brains," Gorbachev despaired to his fellow Soviet magnates in the spring of 1986. He told his generals later that year: "After all this time we have not learnt how to wage war there."

When the last troops left on February 15, 1989, about 15,000 of their comrades had been killed. It was the only war the USSR lost. To Gorbachev, one vital issue was how to "spin" it correctly. As he wrote to his key aides during the last phase of the retreat, presentation was key: "We must say that our people have not given their lives in vain," he said.