New Yorker, Pakistani converge on 9/11's front lines

COMBAT OUTPOST PASHMUL SOUTH, Afghanistan/NORAK, Pakistan — New Yorker Danny Sjursen's Afghanistan war ought to be personal. It's anything but.

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The U.S. Army cavalry captain, from a family three generations deep in the New York City Fire Department, needs two hands to count the friends who died rescuing people from the wreckage of al Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center's twin towers on September 11, 2001.

But too much time and two wars have passed between the day Sjursen, now 28, saw the towers fall while he was a cadet at the West Point U.S. Military Academy.

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"When I see this place, I don't see the towers," he said, sitting inside the wooden walls of the B troop, 4-4 Cavalry Regiment's operations center in Pashmul South. Near the birthplace of the Taliban in Kandahar province, it is still one of Afghanistan's most violent areas for U.S. soldiers.

For him, there is little connection anymore between the war he is fighting and the retribution against the Taliban for harboring al Qaeda that was the original casus belli.

"My family sees it more than I do. They see it dead-on, direct. I'm a professional soldier. It's not about writing the firehouse number on the bullet. I'm not one for gimmicks."

A few hundred kilometers away, his enemy rests by a roadside, just across the Pakistani border. Fida Mohammed's seminal moment in jihad came when he was only 10 years old, from a man he was too young to know much about.

Osama bin Laden's deadly handiwork created excitement in his village in Pakistan. Mohammed, now 20 and a Taliban fighter, recalls people crowding around a man with a newspaper telling of the attacks in New York and Washington.

"Most of them were cursing America," Mohammed told Reuters in his village of Norak, 20 km (12 miles) from the Afghan border. "Very few people said it was not good because innocent people were killed."

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Earlier that day at his madrasa, or religious school, the lesson was simple: the 9/11 attacks were America's punishment "for its crimes," and the beginning of its destruction.

'Jihad, and only jihad'
Over his parents' objections, Mohammed soon began collecting clothes and food from people to help the Taliban.

"My aim is jihad and only jihad, and to defeat the infidels and drive them out of Afghanistan," said the strongly built, bearded Pakistani, who commutes to the war from his village.

Seven years passed before he was old enough to join up as a mujahideen. Even then, he had to sneak away, feigning plans to visit relatives, and his parents caught and tried to stop him.

"I told them in plain terms that jihad has become obligatory on all Muslims and I cannot give it up at any cost. Now I often go to Afghanistan for the jihad," he said.

Sjursen's call to war, too, came from school. He was sparring in boxing class, as a first-year cadet, when someone burst in shouting that the World Trade Center was on fire.

Only the second in his family to get a university degree, he excelled in his high school studies and followed "the old romantic reasons for wanting to be a soldier" to West Point. Suddenly those reasons become more personal.

His father worked across the street, but evacuated quickly. His Uncle Steve went missing for 24 hours, surfaced briefly and then went back into the ruins for five days, Sjursen said.

"He was digging the rubble for Marty," Sjursen said, referring to firefighter Marty Egan, his uncle's best friend who was discovered dead days later.

'Most emotional event'
Cadet Sjursen knew eight firefighters from one station who had died, and even today he can recite the casualty numbers: 343 of New York's 11,000 firefighters, or about 3 percent.

"It was the single most emotional event. You know how it is in a blue-collar neighborhood. I was almost hoping the war would still be going on when I graduated in 2005," he said.

Mohammed took to jihad in Afghanistan in 2008, migrating across the border for attacks and sometimes into Helmand province to pick poppies for pocket money, with the bulk of the profits from the opium sales going to finance the Taliban.

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Barely a year after he joined jihad, he took two bullets in the arm during a firefight with Afghan troops that killed three of his comrades. That was barely a taste of the war.

"Talk of war is very sweet, but the situation on the battlefield is very bitter," Mohammed said, sipping from a glass of water as he recalled how an American helicopter rained death on his comrades a year ago.

He and about 60 other fighters were heading to attack a military post in southern Uruzgan province, when the chopper spotted them and unleashed its cannon. Mohammed and 20 others, lagging behind, dashed for life-saving cover in the bushes.

"There were many childhood friends among the 40 killed and that saddened me. I cried a lot that in just a few seconds so many Taliban mujahideen had been martyred. We collected their body parts with our hands and buried them there," he said.

Sjursen met death in the cauldron of Baghdad in 2006, where he took command of his first platoon during the U.S. surge to stabilize Iraq as it boiled in a bloody sectarian civil war.

"It was a bad time," Sjursen recalled, sitting in front of a bank of three computers inside his command center. "This place has nothing on that. The madness is lacking here."

Three of his men were killed and eight were wounded within the first 90 days of deployment. The wish for vengeance for 9/11 was swallowed by a greater violence.

"I never thought about 9/11 at all because I was too busy dealing with the day-to-day of fighting the civil war," Sjursen said. "It drove that gap between 9/11."

'Farmboys picking up guns'
The troop he commands, one of three in the area, spends its days fending off attacks from the Taliban, who merge into the scrubby farmlands just outside the concrete walls of his camp.

"It's farmboys picking up guns. How do you hate that? What do you do when you turn 15 or 18 here? You fight. Imagine if our country was at war since 1979?" Sjursen said, referring to Afghanistan's almost-constant state of conflict since mujahideen started attacking the occupying Soviet forces.

Marijuana, opium and grape crops and a deeply conservative attitude prevail outside, where Sjursen's troops work to stand up Afghan police and soldiers, a school and local government.

B Troop's base is smack in the middle of the original recruiting grounds of Taliban founder Mullah Omar, and miles further south than Soviet troops ever got.

Like many other Taliban leaders, Mohammed's commander comes from Kandahar. The war is turning in their favor, after a time when foreign troops inflicted heavy casualties, Mohammed said.

"We have restricted Americans and their forces to their bases," Mohammed said. "There is no dearth of Taliban, in whatever number we need. We get them easily."

With the end of 2014 the deadline for all foreign combat troops to pull out of Afghanistan, Sjursen can see an end to his wars. He will enrol for a master's degree later this year.

"We're tourists here. We're going home, but this is their life," Sjursen said.

Mohammed said he has had little time to think about his plans after the war, although he intends eventually to teach -- if the war ever ends. If foreign troops don't leave, Mohammed said: "I will keep up my jihad as long as I'm alive and until I embrace martyrdom."

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Pakistani fertilizer fuels Afghan bombs

MULTAN, Pakistan — The main ingredient in most of the homemade bombs that have killed hundreds of American troops in Afghanistan is fertilizer produced by a single company in Pakistan, where the U.S. has been pushing unsuccessfully for greater regulation.

Enough calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizer for at least 140,000 bombs was legally produced last year by Pakarab Fertilizers Ltd., then smuggled by militants and their suppliers across the porous border into southern and eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. military says around 80 percent of Afghan bombs are made with the fertilizer, which becomes a powerful explosive when mixed with fuel oil. The rest are made from military-grade munitions like mines or shells.

The United States began talks a year and a half ago with Pakistani officials and Pakarab, one of the country's largest companies. But there is still no regulation of distribution and sale of calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

"If you have a host country that has a factory making a substance that ultimately becomes the problem, then that country has to contribute at least half the solution," said Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who led a congressional delegation to Pakistan last week to press army and civilian leaders for action.

U.S. officials say Pakistan and Pakarab have expressed willingness to regulate the fertilizer, which is also widely used in the manufacture of bombs used by insurgents to kill thousands of soldiers and civilians inside Pakistan. They acknowledge the difficulties: 15 years after ammonium nitrate was used in the Oklahoma City bombings, the U.S. government only presented its proposals to regulate it on Aug. 2.

But with the death toll from homemade bombs rising almost daily inside Afghanistan, continuing inaction by Pakistani authorities will add more strain to a U.S.-Pakistani relationship already frayed by allegations that Islamabad is aiding Afghan insurgents on its side of the border.

"This is a test," Casey said. "The key thing now is to see results."

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The only producer of calcium ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Pakistan, Pakarab operates two factories in Punjab province, the country's agricultural heartland.

The largest is on the outskirts of Multan, an ancient city surrounded by thousands of acres (hectares) of mango orchards and cotton fields. A sprawling industrial complex of smoking chimneys, pipes and tanks surrounded by high walls, the 39-year-old facility churns out the chemical 24 hours a day when it's operating.

Lines of trucks wait outside to transport sacks of fertilizer to 2,000 distributors around the country, who then sell it to millions of Pakistani cotton, fruit and wheat farmers.

Around Multan, dealers sit in small shops in front of piled-up sacks of ammonium nitrate and other fertilizer, haggling with farmers. Most say they are aware ammonium nitrate can be used as an explosive, but none has been told to report suspicious purchases.

Pakistani fertilizer producers are not permitted to export to Afghanistan because they are subsidized by the government and their products are meant for domestic use only. But the low price of fertilizer in Pakistan, and a chronic shortage in Afghanistan, has meant that smuggling has long been rife.

The chemical, known as CAN, is often trucked into southern Afghanistan repackaged as a harmless fertilizer. Other times, it's hidden under other goods, often after border guards have been paid a bribe, according to smugglers at the Chaman border and U.S. officials.

One dealer, Mohammad Wassem, told The Associated Press wealthy people with links to the insurgents placed orders for all three fertilizers produced by Pakarab. They sold the two safer varieties domestically, then trucked the ammonium nitrate across the border.

Truck driver Ali Jan said he makes $20 each time he crosses the border with concealed sacks of fertilizer.

"I do not take banned items every time, but I make at least 10 trips a month across the border carrying bags of fertilizer under other stuff," Jan said.

Only a tiny fraction of the trucks that cross the border are searched, said one U.S. official, explaining it would be impractical to stop and search the many thousands of vehicles that cross the border each day.

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Explosives can be made from a range of fertilizers, but it is easy to turn CAN into a bomb. Insurgents either grind or boil the small, off-white granules to separate the calcium from the nitrate, which is mixed with fuel oil, packed into a jug or box and then detonated.

The fertilizer is sold in 110-pound (50-kilogram) sacks, which can be used to make between two and four bombs depending on whether they are targeting vehicles or foot patrols, said Robin Best, an expert at the U.S. military's Joint IED Defeat Organization, who visited the Multan factory in July with a U.S. delegation.

Such bombs, typically buried and detonated remotely or by pressure plates, have killed more than 719 Americans and wounded more than 7,440 since the conflict began in 2001, along with thousands of Afghan troops and civilians. Last year's U.S. death toll — 252 — was as high as the two previous years combined, and 2011 is shaping up to be just as bloody.

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Based on tests of residues at a limited number of blast sites, and seizures of the chemical inside Afghanistan, two U.S. officials told the AP they believe the majority of fertilizer bombs in Afghanistan are made of CAN produced by Pakarab. One said that up to 80 percent of the bombs were made with Pakarab fertilizer. Both asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the data.

Casey, the senator from Pennsylvania, said the U.S. government estimates around 1 percent of Pakarab's annual production made it ways across the border for use in bombmaking. Given that the company produced 350,000 metric tons in 2010, that means enough for at least 140,000 bombs was smuggled across the frontier last year, though an unknown amount was seized by Afghan and U.S. authorities, or stockpiled.

On Aug. 17, authorities in Afghanistan's Helmand province said they seized 200 sacks of ammonium nitrate that had been smuggled from Pakistan. Photos of the sacks, which had been partially buried, showed they were made by Pakarab.

"All of this chemical is coming from the south and the east," said Mohammad Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry. "We want Pakistan to control it."

Executives of Pakarab, a publicly traded company, defended their right to sell what is a legal product well-suited to the soil and weather in Pakistan. They said the company had no way to dispute U.S. and Afghan claims about where its fertilizer is ending up, but noted ammonium nitrate was produced in other countries around the region and that Pakistan also imported it.

"Pakarab will continue to work with both the (U.S. and Pakistani) governments unreservedly," the company said in a statement.

The company added that Washington had provided assurances it had no plans to press for the plants to be closed.

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Most countries have placed restrictions on the sale, purchase and storage of the chemical, and some, including Germany, Afghanistan, Ireland and China, have banned it. Some U.S. states already regulate it, but new federal proposals would require those who purchase and sell it to register with the government and limit its movement across states.

The U.S. is discussing similar kinds of regulations in Pakistan, but acknowledges that enforcement will be difficult in a country where police and government officials are underpaid, lack education and are facing numerous other challenges.

Still, there are signs that Pakistan may not fully understand the problem or lack the ability to address it.

After a meeting with Sen. Casey, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani issued a statement saying the government had already introduced "strict laws" regulating the product, implying that nothing further needed to be done. An army spokesman even maintained there were no longer any factories producing calcium ammonium nitrate in Pakistan, before being corrected by the AP.

"I don't think the magnitude of the problem has been understood," said a U.S. official, who asked not to be named to discuss the issue frankly. "There hasn't been a comprehensive look (by Pakistan) at it. We are having frank discussions. We are taking that as progress."

Casey said he hoped new regulations to control the product could be in place as soon as the end of the fall.

The U.S. has also been trying to get Pakarab to switch to producing a version of the fertilizer that's more difficult to turn into bombs — something scientists have been trying to accomplish since the use of nitrate fertilizers was pioneered by Irish Republican militants in the 1980s.

Last year, executives with the U.S. chemical manufacturer Honeywell traveled to Pakistan to pitch Pakarab on the merits of Sulf-N 26, a fertilizer that combines ammonium nitrate with ammonium sulfate, a fertilizer and fire retardant.

Honeywell unveiled Sulf-N 26 in 2008 in response to security concerns after the Oklahoma City bombing, and bills it as safe as sand when mixed with fuel.

However, tests carried out in the U.S. showed it could still be used in the production of bombs and the project was shelved, according to Pakarab and Best, the expert at the Joint IED Defeat Organization. Honeywell, which said it had not been informed about the tests, disputed that conclusion.

Pakarab is now testing the feasibility of dyeing CAN to distinguish it from other harmless fertilizers at the border.

Such a process has never been tried before. Pakarab said the dyeing initiative was "encouraging."

"The dye is a huge thing. It's the first step that could have a profound impact," Best said.

One concern is whether farmers, most of whom are illiterate and resistant to change, would buy the dyed product, Best said. He said Pakarab was planning a marketing campaign to inform them that its quality remained the same, or possibly better, with the addition of extra chemicals.

While calcium ammonium nitrate accounts for just 10 percent of fertilizer sales across Pakistan, it accounts for most of the fertilizer produced by Pakarab. The company's sales of CAN grew by 20 percent in 2010 from a year earlier, and the company continues to aggressively market it.

Pakarab made $104 million in profit last year, and has hired BNY Mellon to help it become the first Pakistan-based company to sell shares on U.S. stock markets.

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Associated Press Writers Deb Riechmann in Kabul and Matiullah Acakzai in Chaman contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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