November 8, 2003	Saturday	Ramazan 12, 1424

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KABUL, Nov 7: The Al Qaeda network has stepped up activity along the Afghan-Pakistan border, opening a “second front” to divert US military resources and attention from Iraq, Afghanistan’s interior minister said on Friday.

Ali Ahmad Jalali said some recent attacks on US forces, especially in the east of the country, had been carried out by foreign Al Qaeda fighters, as opposed to native Taliban militia.

Militants killed in clashes on the Afghan and Pakistan sides of the border in recent weeks included Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and Pakistanis, a sign they were from the network of Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, whose fate remains a mystery.

“Al Qaeda, not the Al Qaeda leadership that is concerned only about Afghanistan, but the whole area, the whole region, want to keep another front open in Afghanistan while they fight in Iraq in order to split the attention of the United States,” Mr Jalali told Reuters in an interview.

“Since the war in Iraq, they have been trying to stir up things in Afghanistan.”

US-led forces in Paktika province, which borders tribal areas in Pakistan where Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding, have come under increasing attack in recent months.

In late October the US army said it had killed around 18 rebels in a six-hour firefight near their base in Shkin.

“Most of the attackers...killed were Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks and also Pakistanis, and they are not Taliban,” Mr Jalali said. “They belong to Al Qaeda.”

The US military has also reported signs of increasing activity by Al Qaeda militants near Shkin, but says most of the rebels it encounters in the country are Afghans.

He said Pakistan’s claim to have arrested 500 suspected Al Qaeda and allied fighters since joining the US-led war on terror showed there were probably plenty more at large, both in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

TALIBAN THREAT: Mr Jalali described a “triangle” of militants in Afghanistan, led by renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the northeast, Al Qaeda in the east and the Taliban in the south.

More than 350 people have been killed in Afghanistan in the last three months, including many rebels, US soldiers, Afghan troops and policemen, local aid workers and civilians.

US casualties in Afghanistan have been light compared to those in Iraq, with between 30 and 40 soldiers killed in action and a similar number of “non-hostile” deaths.

Many of the attacks are blamed on the Taliban, also believed to be behind the recent kidnapping of a Turkish engineer working on a major reconstruction project.

The minister said that there was no easy military solution to the militant threat, and the government of President Hamid Karzai, whose influence is weak outside Kabul, must win back the trust of the people. “The people’s trust in government is the key to stability and security,” he said.

One government official, who asked not to be named, said Kabul was open to contact with moderate elements of the Taliban, citing a decree issued by the president this week pardoning eight Taliban militants arrested in the central Uruzgan province.

Former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has already contacted the government, pledging support for Karzai. Officials say he is no longer in US detention but in Kandahar city with some kind of security for his own protection.

Building bridges with moderate Taliban would weaken the resurgent movement, officials explained.

AFGHAN AIRLINE: Afghanistan’s national flag carrier Ariana Afghan Airlines on Friday relaunched the first regular commercial flights between the capital and the main southern city of Kandahar since the ousting of the Taliban two years ago.

Ariana plans to increase the number of flights from one a week, Ariana technical and operations vice president Muhammad Ehsan told reporters at the Kabul airport during a ceremony marking the relaunch of the service.

“In future we will have more flights with the help of our people and international coalition forces,” he said.

Under the Taliban Ariana was forced to suspend international flights due to sanctions and eventually went bankrupt in 2001. US military officials said reopening of Kandahar airport to commercial rather than military traffic was part of its efforts to help the rebuilding of the war-torn country.

Kandahar airport is currently used by the US-led military coalition as its main southern base in its continuing hunt for Taliban and Al Qaeda fugitives who are operating against US-led forces and Afghan government in the south and southeast of the country.—Reuters / AFP