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Afghanistan timeline March 16-31, 2003

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Nation-building in Afghanistan

March 21, 2003

  • A new strategy to disarm militias in Afghanistan will be given to President Hamid Karzai by a team of United Nations and Afghan government officials on March 21, when he will announce it to the nation.

March 18, 2003

March 11, 2003

March 10, 2003

March 9, 2003

March 8, 2003

  • One U.S. airman suffered multiple fractures to his right foot after he was struck by a fork lift truck during aircraft-loading operations at Bagram air base, Afghanistan.
  • 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 official in Kunar before he was arrested in December 2002.
  • U.S. troops took part in operations to destroy 800 "bomblets" from a cluster bomb, discovered near Mazar-i-Sharif.
  • An explosion in the Baghrami district of Afghanistan (about 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Kabul) killed an interpreter working for international peacekeepers and lightly injured a Dutch soldier. Both were airlifted from the scene as ISAF troops blocked off the scene of the incident on a street lined by shops and mud houses. The injured man was a 23-year-old corporal with the 11th Air Mobile Brigade. The explosion was detonated by remote control.
  • Several people were killed or wounded in a fresh outbreak of fighting between supporters of Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Tajik commander Ustad Atta Mohammad.
  • Intensifying efforts to capture al-Qaeda members, a patch of some 400 square kilometers around the town of Rabat, Afghanistan was the focus of air and ground operations by Pakistani army and paramilitary forces backed by U.S. CIA communications and tracking experts.
  • Six medics and three other volunteers in charge of logistics, all from Hungary departed for Kabul, Afghanistan, where they will work at a German military hospital and a Dutch surgery unit as part of ISAF.
  • The first Afghan radio station programmed solely for women began broadcasting in Kabul. The first broadcast was called "The Voice of Afghan Women." Director Jamila Mujahed said one-hour radio programs would be broadcast every afternoon in the local Pashtu and Dari languages in Kabul on 91.6 FM.

March 7, 2003

  • During his 3-day visit of India, Afghan President Hamid 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 1 1/2 miles from a guard tower north of Bagram Air Base.
  • United States 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.
  • United States Special Forces near Spin Majid, Afghanistan in the southwestern province of Helmanddetained 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 former Taliban 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 United States and Afghan troops in Ribat. The White House cast doubt on the report. Later, Zehri would say that he had been misquoted.
  • A United States soldier sustained head injuries in a road accident on in central Bamiyan 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, Afghanistan, 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.
  • 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 of Ustad 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 6, 2003

  • A preferential trade agreement was signed in a ceremony in Dehli, India attended by Afghan President Hamid 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 $41.89 million. Vajpayee also announced a $70 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 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 work, study and even hold some government posts, but in more rural areas they continue to be forced into marriages and are victims of domestic violence, kidnapping and harassment.
  • United States 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 5, 2003

March 4, 2003

  • United States special forces found 96 rocket-propelled grenades, five rifles and ammunition after searching a compound in the southeastern border town of Spin Boldak, Afghanistan.
  • Two mortars were fired near Bagram Air Base, but the explosions occurred about a mile (1.5 kilometers) away and there were no injuries.
  • A United States military vehicle struck a four-year-old Afghan boy just west of the southern city of Kandahar, Afghanistan. The boy sustained a severe head injury and was medically evacuated to Bagram Air Base for evaluation. By March 7 he was in stable condition.
  • In Copenhagen, Denmark, two Danish officers faced preliminary charges of negligence in connection with an April 6, 2002 explosion that killed five bomb squad members in Afghanistan.
  • Afghan President Hamid Karzai arrived in Qatar to participate in the summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to discuss the crisis in the Middle East.
  • A U.S. soldier was brought to a hospital facility at Bagram, Afghanistan after being injured when his vehicle rolled over in the central province of Bamiyan. The soldier was in stable condition.
  • Gunmen killed Sher Nawaz Khan, a Pakistani intelligence official, in a border area near Afghanistan. Kahn was riding a motorbike to work in the border town of Wana, 180 miles south of Peshawar. The gunmen followed Khan in a car then shot him repeatedly after knocking him off the motorbike.
  • Qari Abdul Wali, a military commander in the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime said from a hideout near the southern Afghan town of Spin Boldakthe that arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would not weaken the al Qaeda network.

March 3, 2003

  • At 6 A.M., a rocket hit a house in Kandahar, Afghanistan, injuring a man and his wife and causing panic in the area. The wife, Bibi Koh, was in serious condition.
  • U.S. military aircraft scattered leaflets over southern Afghanistan, according to residents in Spin Boldak, Afghanistan. The pamplets offered cash rewards for help in arresting Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri. The leaflets did not say how to collect the money or who to contact to inform on bin Laden.
  • The U.S. military pushed into a new valley in southern Afghanistan in search of fugitive leaders of the ousted Taliban regime. 12 people had been detained over the past three days and more than 60 rifles from two weapons caches were discovered in Baghni valley. One of the weapon caches was found down a well, wrapped in plastic and tied to a rope.

March 2, 2003

  • The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Afghan poverty-stricken families earning money by selling their daughters was on the rise.
  • Germany pulled out its elite KSK anti-terror forces from [[Afghanistan]. The German defense ministry refused to comment on the report.
  • Afghan border guards arrested a Pakistani man, Sayed Wali, in eastern Afghanistan on charges of illegally entering Afghanistan. They accusing him of spying for his Pakistan. He was arrested in the Shinwar district near Torkham.

March 1, 2003

  • Two Afghan government soldiers were woundedin a blast in Kandahar.
  • Thousands of people gathered outside a police station in the Dasht-e Barchi district of Kabul, Afghanistan after claims that a policeman tried to kidnap a woman there. There were also claims that policemen had raped two women. Surrounding the police station, protesters wanted those responsible for the alleged attack to be punished. Protesters also nominated their own candidates to police the district. Some merchants closed shop in solidarity. Police officers were injured by protesters, who attacked them with stones in western Kabul's Dashta-e-Barchi district. Two civilians were also reported wounded. Shots were fired by police.
  • The UNHCR announced that 395,752 Afghans had voluntarily returned home from Iran since a UNHCR joint program with Tehran to the effect began on April 9, 2002. (see details of the UNHCR Afghan repatriation programs)
  • U.S. troops raided the compound of Haji Ghalib, the chief of security for Ghanikhel district of Nangarhar province eastern Afghanistan, arresting him and two others and seizing heavy weapons. Ghalib's son, Mohammed Shafiq, said the U.S. forces also seized missiles, mortars and a large quantity of anti-tank mines during the arrest. The two people detained along with Ghalib were not identified.
  • Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was arrested in a joint raid by CIA agents and Pakistani police in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
  • Armed men fired on a U.S. observation post at the Salerno base in Khost, Afghanistan. U.S. forces returned fire. There were no casualties.
  • Three Afghan soldiers were wounded when their pickup truck ran over a landmine during a routine patrol at Panjwai district, 30 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Kandahar.
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