2003 in Afghanistan – Sludge Pump EZG – Slurry Pump EMM
commanders, both loyal to warlord Atta Mohammed. At least two fighters were dead and three others wounded.
In Zer-e-Koh, Afghanistan, seven children were injured when explosives placed inside a bottle blew up.
Lt. Gen. Norbert van Heyst, commander of International Security Assistance Force, said in Kabul, Afghanistan that war inIraq could provide an opportunity for remnant al-Qaida and Taliban forces to try to “destabilize” Afghanistan.
Residents of Khost, Afghanistan found 15 kg (32 lb) of explosives under the seat of a motorcycle. They notified U.S. troops at nearby Chapman Air Base. The device, designed to detonate by radio, was dismantled and there were no injuries.
March 6: A preferential trade agreement was signed in a ceremony in New Delhi, India attended by President Karzai and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The trade pact will enable free movement of goods specified by the two countries at lower tariffs. The volume of trade between the two countries in 2001-02 totaled .89 million. Vajpayee also announced a million grant to rebuild a major road in Afghanistan. Included in the pledge was the third of three 232-seat Airbus 300-B4s to help rebuild Ariana Afghan Airlines.
“The Situation of Women and Girls in Afghanistan,” a United Nations report revealed that intimidation and violence against women continue without resistance Afghanistan. To date, Afghan women worked, studied and even held some government posts, but in more rural areas they continued to be forced into marriages and were victims of domestic violence, kidnapping and harassment.
U.S. military coroners ruled as homicides the deaths in December 2002 of two prisoners at a U.S. base in Afghanistan. The two prisoners died at the makeshift prison in the U.S. compound at the Afghan base north of Kabul. The autopsies found that the men had been beaten, and one had a blood clot in his lung.
At least nine suspected al Qaeda members were killed in an operation by U.S. and Afghan troops in the far west of Afghanistan in the Ribat area, where the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran meet.
March 7: During his 3-day visit of India, President Karzai told a business meeting in Delhi that he hoped India would join an oil pipeline project to ship gas from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan. Later, Mr Karzai flew to the Himalayan town of Shimla, India to pick up an honorary doctorate in literature from his alma mater. Mr. Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal University from 1979 to 1983.
Mortar rounds landed about 2.5 km (1.5 mile) from a guard tower north of Bagram Air Base.
In a small village in Vardak Province, three men armed with AK-47s stopped a U.N. World Food Program vehicle and blindfolded its three Afghan occupants. The robbers stole radio equipment, a satellite telephone and money before fleeing into the mountains on foot.
U.S. soldiers took a 4-year-old Afghan boy from the central Madr Valley to the base for treatment of suspected bacterial meningitis. He was in very serious condition.
U.S. Special Forces near Spin Majid, Afghanistan in Helmand Province detained seven men suspected of planning attacks on coalition forces. They were detained with bomb-making instructions in their possession. U.S. military spokesman Col. Roger King did not say whether they were suspected of being al-Qaida terrorists or supporters of the formerTaliban government.
Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, home minister of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, said two of Osama bin Laden’s sons were wounded and possibly held by U.S. and Afghan troops in Ribat. The White House cast doubt on the report. Later, Zehri would say that he had been misquoted.
A U.S. soldier sustained head injuries in a road accident on in central Bamyan Province was evacuated to Bagram, which serves as the headquarters of coalition forces in Afghanistan. The soldier was in stable condition.
The third explosion in as many days rattled Jalalabad, blowing out windows of a government office but causing no casualties. The bomb was hidden in a sewage drain. A bomb detonated near the office of the World Food Program the previous day. The day before that another exploded near a hospital.
The Republic of Macedonia sent 10 soldiers to be stationed, under German command, in the Kabul.
Fighting erupted on when Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum’s men attacked positions held by supporters ofUstad Atta Mohammad’s Jamiat-e-Islami faction in Pashtoon Kot district, south of Faryab’s provincial capital,Afghanistan. Several people were killed or wounded.
March 8: In Jalalabad, U.S. forces released three Afghans after questioning them at a U.S. detention facility about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. A U.S. helicopter flew them from Bagram to Asadabad. One of the freed men,Saif-ur Rahman, was a border security