Car bomb blast kills 95 in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: A car bomb tore through a packed market in Peshawar on Wednesday, killing 95 people and trapping casualties under pulverised shops, in one of Pakistan’s deadliest attacks.

The explosion detonated in a crowded street in the Meena Bazaar of Peshawar, one of the most congested parts of the volatile northwest city, sparking a huge blaze and ending in carnage routine shopping trips for scores of people.

The attack underscored the scale of the militant threat in Pakistan just hours after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Islamabad for three days of talks with political and military leaders.

‘There was a huge blast. There was smoke and dust everywhere. I saw people dying and screaming on the road,’ witness Mohammad Siddique told AFP.

Angry flames leapt out of burning wreckage and smoke billowed in the air as a building collapsed into dust and rubble. Police evacuated panicked residents from the smouldering wreckage and firemen hosed down the flames.

‘It was a car bomb. Some people are still trapped in a building. We are trying to rescue them,’ bomb disposal official Shafqat Malik told reporters.

‘We have received 86 dead bodies, 213 people were injured, we are facing a shortage of blood,’ Doctor Hamid Afridi, head of the Peshawar’s main Lady Reading Hospital told AFP as staff declared an emergency.

A hospital official outside the casualty wing made a public announcement, appealing on people to donate blood as doctors spoke of harrowing scenes.

‘There are body parts. There are people. There are burnt people. There are dead bodies. There are wounded, I’m not in a position to count. But my estimate is that the death toll may rise to 70,’ said Doctor Muslim Khan.

Rescue workers and government officials had warned that casualties were trapped under collapsed shops at the bomb site, where a large blaze, a toppled building and the narrow streets hampered the relief effort.

‘I am counting the dead bodies, 86 are confirmed dead, the injured are more than 200, there are children and women among the dead,’ Mohammad Gul, a police official at the hospital, told AFP.

The area was one of the most congested parts of Peshawar and full of women’s clothing shops and general market stalls popular in the city of 2.5 million.

‘A building structure has collapsed… People are trapped in the fire and buildings. This is the most congested area of the city,’ Sahibzada Mohammad Anees, a senior local administrative official, told a private TV channel.

Peshawar, a teeming metropolis, is a gateway to Pakistan’s northwest tribal belt, where the military is pressing a major offensive against Pakistani Taliban militants blamed for some of the worst of the recent carnage.

Tensions have soared across Pakistan following a spike in violence blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists in which more than 240 people have died this month.

Afghan officials live in fear of Taliban assassins

KABUL: During his two years as a provincial governor in Afghanistan, Arsala Jamal survived four suicide attacks.

Once, a Taliban bomber dressed as a doctor struck as Jamal dedicated a hospital wing. Twice, car bombs slammed into his convoy. Another time, an attacker blew himself up at a funeral Jamal was attending for a fellow governor killed in another blast.

Jamal, 45, escaped harm each time, but he resigned late last year as governor of the eastern province of Khost and moved his family to Canada – a victory for the Taliban and its campaign to intimidate and assassinate Afghan officials.

Assassinations have intensified this year, with more than 100 officials and pro-government tribal elders attacked – half of them fatally. Echoing a strategy of insurgents in Iraq, such killings sow fear, undermine the already weak government and make it difficult to fill official posts with educated and competent Afghans.

‘The Taliban know that if you kill one guy in the government, it discourages another 10 from being in that job,’ said Jamal, who returned to Kabul this year to work for President Hamid Karzai’s re-election.

The campaign of fear is another indication of the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, where a record number of US and NATO troops have also died this year. President Barack Obama must decide whether to send more American troops to a country already in political limbo because of the hundreds of allegations of fraud from the disputed Aug. 20 presidential election.

Top US and NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a confidential assessment that more troops are needed within a year to prevent ‘failure’ in Afghanistan. Even with more troops, McChrystal said the mission would fail unless Afghanistan reverses a ‘crisis of confidence’ in government.

Many Afghans blame the Karzai government for rampant corruption and the revitalized insurgency at a time when most people still lack basic services such as sewer systems and electricity. Reversing those trends is a mammoth task for the next administration, and the assassinations make it much harder. Fear of being targeted also cuts off many officials from the people they are charged with serving. Several district chiefs around Afghanistan told The Associated Press they’ve hired private security but still cannot leave the main towns in their district because insurgents control the countryside.

Even bodyguards, used by some Afghan officials, can offer little protection against bombings. One of the attacks on Jamal’s convoy killed two of his guards along with his driver.

More than 50 Afghan officials and tribal elders have been killed in more than 100 attacks targeting government leaders in 2009, said Sami Kovanen, an analyst with the security consultancy Tundra Group, which tracks violence in Afghanistan.

The Taliban seek to weaken local government authority, Kovanen said. ‘Then they set up their own system of Shariah law and they install their own shadow government.’

In one recent attack, a Taliban suicide bomber killed the country’s deputy intelligence chief, Abdullah Laghmani, and 22 other people as they were leaving a mosque in Laghman province.

‘Once you are in a government position, you have many enemies,’ Jamal said. ‘My daughters couldn’t go to school. The teachers told me the whole school was in danger because of my daughters.’

Sitting in a courtyard garden where caged parakeets chirped and armed guards stood outside, Jamal ticked off on his fingers the assassinations last year in Khost province: one of his district chiefs killed by a bomb, a judge slain by a sniper, another district chief who escaped one suicide attack in 2008 only to be killed by another this year.

Hundreds of local leaders have been threatened. Tribal elder Khaki Jan Zadran said militants from the powerful Haqqani network vowed to kill him last year for serving on Paktia’s provincial council. He left his village five months ago and now stays in the eastern province’s capital, Gardez, living more like a fugitive than an elected official.

‘I don’t stay in one place more than two or three nights,’ Zadran said. ‘And I can’t go back to my village.’

Zadran, 55, is a member of the same Pashtun tribe as militant leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, and both fought against the 1980s Soviet occupation. He was disillusioned by the 1990s Afghan civil war and the Taliban’s harsh rule.

He said he was elected to the provincial council after the Taliban’s ouster in the 2001 US-led invasion, but has been disappointed by the government he is part of, decrying the bribe-seeking by everyone from passport clerks to judges.

‘There is too much corruption. We need to have more honest people in government,’ he said.

Jamal said hiring honest, effective civil servants is difficult because of the decades of war. One of his frustrations as governor was finding people willing to work as district- and village-level leaders, he added. –AP

Pakistan, Taliban still together: Krishna

WASHINGTON: New Delhi has charged that Islamabad’s disruptive role in the Taliban insurgency alongwith aid for the Afghan Taliban provided by Pakistan’s spy agency has complicated the military situation in Afghanistan, with India’s foreign minister asserting ‘they are still together’.

‘They are a tandem,’ External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Krishna asserted that the Pakistan government has been unable to break the ties between its spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Krishna also said India felt ‘vindicated’ after former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said recently that some US anti-terrorism aid had been used to bolster traditional defences against India.

‘We have always been cautioning our friends, the United States, that please, please for heaven’s sake make sure that the aid you are giving to Pakistan is not directed and misappropriated to be used against India, a friend of yours,’ the foreign minister said. -Online

Troops kill six Taliban in Swat as displaced return

PESHAWAR: Troops have killed six militants in the Swat valley, where the government has started bussing home thousands of those displaced by a military offensive, officials said Wednesday.

Officials say the pace of returns to the northwest district has quickened in recent days although many civilians are fearful about security after two months of fierce fighting between government troops and Taliban militants.

‘Six militants were killed when troops retaliated and returned fire after a militant attack on an army checkpost in Kabal town on Tuesday night,’ a military official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

A senior police official in Swat confirmed the incident and said there were no army losses.

On Tuesday, the military reported killings in Swat for the first time in days, announcing that nine militants were shot dead in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan says more than 1,700 militants and around 160 security personnel were killed in operations to crush the Taliban in northwest districts since late April, but the death tolls are impossible to verify independently.

The army launched a massive offensive in late April in Buner and Lower Dir, before focusing the fight on militants in Swat, where the Taliban concentrated a two-year insurgency to enforce sharia law.

Last week, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani unveiled plans to start sending home the nearly two million people displaced by the conflict and said the military had ‘eliminated’ the extremists.

Taliban reject claim about Fazlullah

KHAR: Taliban on Saturday contradicted a government claim that Fazlullah was injured during military operation in Swat.

Maulvi Omar, a self-styled spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, said the top leadership in Malakand had gone underground under a plan.

‘Maulana Fazlullah is safe and the government claim is totally baseless,’ he told local journalists on phone from an undisclosed place.

He said that Taliban leadership was secure and he had talked to Maulana Fazlullah on phone today (Saturday).

Maulvi Omar said that innocent people were being killed in the military operation in North and South Waziristan.

The spokesman said that security forces did not make any gains in South Waziristan, where Baitullah Mehsud was present.

He said that raising lashkars (volunteer force) in Upper Dir district and tribal areas would create a civil war-like situation and warned that Taliban would take action against those who were leading the lashkars.

Taliban, Pakistan at odds over peace deal

.PESHAWAR: A peace deal in Pakistan appeared close to unraveling Monday as authorities threatened to resume military action and armed Taliban patrolled a key town in defiance of a curfew, AFP reported.

Tensions are soaring between the government, which is under US pressure to extend an offensive to crush militants, and Taliban hardliners, who rejected a new Islamic appeals court created in a bid to pacify their brutal uprising.

Analysts said the shaky three-month-old deal — establishing sharia courts in the northwest Swat valley in the hope the Taliban would stop fighting and disarm — was now hanging by a thread.

Authorities slapped a curfew on Swat’s main town Mingora, where witnesses said armed Taliban were openly patrolled the streets in defiance.

‘It is the first time that Taliban have again started armed patrolling in Mingora,’ one resident told AFP.

‘Do not give my name because the Taliban will find me and kill me,’ he said, adding that ‘once again fear is gripping the entire town.’ The government’s decision to sign the February pact, ratified by President Asif Ali Zardari last month, was heavily criticised at home as well as abroad, with critics charging it would merely embolden the Taliban.

Those fears were heightened when Taliban militants moved into neighbouring Buner district.

For 10 days now, military helicopter gunships and ground troops have fought hundreds of armed Taliban who thrust further south and east into the districts of Lower Dir and Buner where the deal also theoretically holds sway.

A provincial cabinet minister from Swat threatened the Taliban with renewed military offensives after they rejected the Islamic appeals court.

Forestry minister Wajid Ali Khan said that Taliban patrols were ‘an open violation of the peace accord aimed at challenging the writ of the government’ in the area.

‘We will try to resolve issues through negotiation, but if they refuse to abide by the peace agreement, the government will have no option but launch an operation against them,’ he added.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan threatened to retaliate and pointed out that the fighters were not signatory to the February agreement.

‘We do not have any agreement with the government. If security forces attack us, we will respond,’ Khan told AFP.

On Sunday, local authorities found two beheaded bodies in Khwaza Khela, an infamous Taliban bastion in Swat, which are believed to belong to two of four paramilitary personnel.

Meanwhile, two soldiers were wounded Monday after militants ambushed their convoy in Kotta village in Swat, a military official said.

‘The peace agreement is almost finished now, because the military operation has been launched and the Taliban have also renewed their attacks,’ northwest affairs expert Rahimullah Yousafzai told AFP.

In Buner, where the military claim to have killed 80 militants in the latest offensive, residents said fighting was ongoing.

‘Intermittent small arms fire and mortars continued overnight,’ Hashmatullah Khan told AFP. ‘There is a curfew break from 10am to 12pm, but hardly anybody has come to the market,’ he said.

Zardari, who is hoping to secure a massive US aid package, will discuss the deteriorating situation with Obama at the White House on Wednesday.

Washington has expressed concern, with President Barack Obama acknowledging Zardari’s government was ‘very fragile’ and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying Pakistan was ‘basically abdicating’ to the Taliban in the area.

The United States sees Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other militants in Pakistan as the biggest terror threat facing the West.

According to the New York Times, the US government is increasingly worried about the vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, and is less willing to accept blanket assurances from Islamabad that the weapons are safe.

Taliban behead two government officials in Swat

MINGORA: Pakistani Taliban have beheaded two government officials in the northwestern Swat Valley in revenge for the killing of two insurgent commanders by security forces, a militant spokesman said on Sunday.

The two government officials were kidnapped and beheaded on Saturday evening in Khuwaza Kheil, a village 18 km north of the valley’s main town of Mingora, said town police chief Danishwar Khan.

Their bodies were dumped beside a road.

‘They beheaded the officers. We’ve sent an ambulance to pick up the bodies,’ Khan said.

Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said the beheadings were revenge for the killing of two low-level Taliban commanders earlier on Saturday.

Taliban, banned outlawed outfits, Al Qaeda make trio: M

ISLAMABAD: Interior Advisor Rehman Malik said Taliban, Pakistani outlawed outfits and Alqaeda have established a triangle.

In an interview to an Arabic channel, Malik stated that Taliban is a face of Al Qaeda in Pakistan. Taliban chief Fazalullah and other leaders are operating under one leadership. All the clues of investigations ended up in Waziristan. The planning of suicide attack at Danish embassy in Islamabad is a proof of it, he added.

Japan to give $5mn aid for Pc

TOKYO: Japan on Tuesday said it would give five million dollars in supplies to Pakistan to help people displaced by conflict as part of aid to be pledged at a Tokyo donors’ meet next week.

Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone said Japan would give 500 million yen (4.97 million dollars) in supplies through UN agencies and the Red Cross.

Japan will invite President Asif Ali Zardari and US regional envoy Richard Holbrooke, along with officials from a dozen countries including China, South Korea and some European states, to its April 17 aid meeting.

The Tokyo meeting aims to stabilise the Islamic world’s only declared nuclear power and is expected to drum up billions of dollars in aid pledges.

‘Stabilisation of Pakistan, which shares a border with Afghanistan and battles against terrorism, will directly lead to peace and stability in the international community,’ said the ministry in a statement.

Pakistan, a frontline US ally in the campaign against Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists, has been wracked by growing violence and economic instability.

Japan, which has been officially pacifist since World War II, relies on economic aid as a key tool of foreign policy and also hosted a major donors’ conference for Afghanistan after the 2001 fall of the Taliban.

Pakistan says Taliban beaten back in border region

KHAR, Pakistan – Pakistan has beaten the Taliban in a major stronghold close to the Afghan border, is close to victory in another and expects to pacify most of the remaining tribal areas before the end of the year, commanders said Saturday.

The upbeat assessment of conditions in the arid, mountainous regions of Bajur and Mohmand follows international criticism of Pakistan for accepting a cease-fire with militants behind a bloody campaign in Swat Valley, just next to the tribal regions.

Many analysts also fear that growing political turmoil between the government and opposition could distract attention from the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban just as Washington wants more concerted action.

The United States and independent analysts have praised the offensive in Bajur, saying it has helped stem the passage of militants from Pakistan into Afghanistan, where violence against American and NATO troops is running at its highest level since the U.S. invasion in 2001.

Pakistan’s tribal regions are believed to be a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders. Foreign governments fear extremists there could be plotting attacks on the West.

Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, commander of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, said the insurgency had been “dismantled” in Bajur after six months of battles between well-armed militants and soldiers backed by tanks and helicopter gunships.

He said 1,600 militants had been killed and 150 civilians had died. Both figures were impossible to verify independently.

“Their resistance has broken down. We control the roads,” he told reporters flown to the northwestern region by helicopter. “They have lost.”

Col. Saif Ullah, commander in the neighboring region of Mohmand, said troops had repelled insurgents from most of the territory and it would soon be cleared.

“There are no more no-go areas. The militants are running away,” he said.

The army took reporters to witness a ceremony marking the victory over the militants conducted by tribal elders and military commanders close to a Bajur town that was the site of a major battle last week. Rows of shops selling household goods and furniture were destroyed, and tanks were parked amid the debris. Residents — most of whom fled before the battle — had not returned to the town in a valley leading to Afghanistan.

American commanders say the Afghan province of Kunar which borders Bajur is still one of the most treacherous areas for their soldiers. The U.S. has earmarked it for some of the thousands of reinforcements being deployed to Afghanistan this year.

Khan said the defeated insurgents were mostly Afghans and Pakistanis, with some Uzbeks and a few Arabs caught in the early days of the offensive.

He said the army had failed to capture any insurgent leaders and that they had most likely fled into Afghanistan. Asked why, he said it was the job of special forces or intelligence agencies — not the army — to capture individual suspects.

Khan said the army had done its job of restoring government rule to the region, predicting military operations in the five of the seven tribal areas under his command “would be over by the end of the year.”

He did not discuss conditions in the North and South Wazirstan regions which are not under his command. Both areas are considered major al-Qaida and Taliban strongholds and are frequently hit by missiles fired by unmanned U.S. aircraft.

The display of Pakistan’s military gains in the area came as it faces criticism for failing to dislodge militants from the nearby Swat region, where troops and insurgents are observing a cease-fire while the commander of the Taliban considers a proposed peace deal. The United States and NATO worry a deal could turn the scenic region into a militant haven.

Political developments in the desperately poor country of 170 million people have also concerned the West.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court banned opposition leader Nawaz Sharif from elected office, triggering violent protests by his supporters. Sharif says he will join demonstrations later this month by lawyers who helped bring down former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf.

Aside from fears the confrontation will undermine the anti-terror fight, it is also raising worries about possible military intervention, a frequent result of political turmoil between civilian leaders in Pakistan.

source : news.yahoo.com

Taliban declare unilateral ceasefire in Bajaur

PESHAWAR: After months of fierce fighting between militants and security forces, the Taliban militants on Monday announced a unilateral ceasefire and secretly signed a peace accord with the government, pledging to remain peaceful.

Following the signing of the accord, in which the government reportedly announced amnesty for the Taliban, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, Taliban commander in Bajaur and deputy leader of the Baitullah Mahsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), announced unilateral ceasefire through his widely listened FM radio on Monday evening.

He directed his fighters to stop fighting security forces and help restore peace to the militancy-torn tribal region as an understanding had been reached with the government. Military spokesman and Director-General ISPR Maj Gen Athar Abbas, when reached on telephone, said they had heard about militants’ announcement of ceasefire but the government had not yet reciprocated.

He said the chief of the Frontier Corps (FC), after discussion with the civilian administration, would decide about government’s stance today (Tuesday) in response to militants’ ceasefire. Official and tribal sources told The News that besides pro-government militant commanders, prominent tribal elders, including Malik Abdul Aziz, Malik Ayaz and Malik Manjapar, helped in peace talks between the government and the Faqir Mohammad-led Taliban in Bajaur.

However, the sources said Political Agent Shafeerullah Khan, two transporters Haji Sarzamin Khan, Haji Muhammad and tribal elder Saz Muhammad played a key role in bridging the gulf between the government and the Taliban.

The sources said after a few rounds of talks between the government and the Taliban through the tribal Jirga, the two warring sides agreed to resolve their major differences through talks instead of fighting.

The sources said senior militant commanders, including Faqir Mohammad and TTP spokesman Maulvi Omar, signed the peace agreement on behalf of the Taliban while Political Agent of Bajaur Agency Shafeerullah Khan, Commissioner of Malakand Syed Muhammad Javed and a few other senior government and military officials inked the truce from the governmentís side.

According to the sources, the government promised to compensate the militants and the tribesmen for their human and material losses they had suffered during the military operation. Faqir Mohammad said 24 of his fighters had been killed in the military operation. He, however, said he had no information about the losses suffered by security forces.

It is interesting to recall here that the government had earlier claimed that more than 1,500 militants had been killed in the military operation launched on August 6, 2008 in Bajaur. Similarly, the two sides promised in the accord to swap prisoners while the government would provide assistance to the displaced tribesmen to return to their homes from various refugee camps in Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda, Mardan and Dir districts.

Also, the government would reinstate all government employees sacked during the operation on charges of having links with the Taliban. The Taliban also agreed to quit their earlier rigid stance of demanding pullout of the Army from Bajaur.

In the peace accord, they agreed not to create any hindrance in the movement and deployment of the Army troops anywhere in Bajaur. In his 40-miniute speech, Maulvi Faqir said: “We and the Army are the same but some selfish people created differences between us. We did whatever we felt was better in our national interests.”

He said they announced ceasefire in the interest of the country and the nation as war was no solution to the conflict. Maulvi Faqir said his men would no more attack the security forces and government installations, particularly schools in Bajaur.

Faqir said they had full trust in the Pakistan Army but said that the rulers should avoid becoming US puppets. He said they would foil all nefarious designs of the enemies of Pakistan and render every sacrifice for protection of the country.

Tribal sources informed The News from Bajaur’s various towns that the news of peace accord between the government and the Taliban generated hopes among the people.

Some of them were seen resorting to festive firing out of excitement over the truce which they hoped would restore peace and normalcy to their war-torn region. The tribal sources said that the longest-ever military operation had weakened militants in Bajaur and they were no more in a position to fight the troops.

Three foreign troops killed in Afghanistan

KABUL: Three soldiers in the US-led coalition helping to fight a Taliban-led insurgency in southern Afghanistan have died after their patrol was hit by a bomb, the US military said late Friday.

The three were killed on Friday in the southern province of Uruzgan, it said in a statement. It did not give their nationalities. “Three coalition service members died of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device during a combat reconnaissance patrol in the Uruzgan province, Friday,” it said.

Many of the troops in Uruzgan — where Taliban have a strong presence — are Australian and Dutch nationals serving with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces.

The latest fatalities take to 39 the number of international troops to lose their lives in Afghanistan this year, most of them in attacks.

source : jang.com.pk

No victory against Taliban soon: Australia

SYDNEY: Australia’s defence minister warned Thursday he did not expect victory against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan in the near future and would not commit more troops unless NATO members did so too.

Warning that Australia’s 1,000-strong contingent was likely to remain in the war-torn country for years to come, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that other countries needed to do more.

“Australia could double its troop numbers tomorrow and without significant additional contributions from others it would make no difference,” he said.

“We have always said this is not about numeric. It’s about ensuring, before we even consider doing more, that those NATO countries, which I believe are under committed, are prepared to do more.”

Fitzgibbon was speaking from Poland where NATO defence ministers were gathering to reassess strategy on Afghanistan as the United States prepares to deploy 17,000 more troops to fight Taliban-led insurgents.

Asked how long Australian troops would remain in Afghanistan, Fitzgibbon replied: “No-one believes we will meet with success any time soon. The reality is we are talking years.

“How many years we don’t know because we don’t yet know how much will there is amongst the NATO partners to achieve success.”

source : jang.com.pk

Talks between Maulana Sufi, Taliban today

SWAT: Maulana Sufi Mohammad, Chief of the Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) would hold talks with Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Maulana Fazlullah for the restoration of peace in Swat.

On Tuesday, Maulana Sufi Mohammad in his address said that the purpose of his Swat’s visit is to restore peace in the area. He said peace is necessary for the implementation of Sharia.

Sufi Mohammad would hold talks with Maulana Fazlullah at undisclosed location in tehsil Khawaza Khel. He would take him into confidence about agreement signed with NWFP regarding implementation of Nizam-e-Adl Regulation in Malakand division.

source : jang.com.pk

U.S.-led forces kill Taliban commander: officials

KABUL: U.S.-led troops have killed a wanted Taliban commander in an air strike in Afghanistan’s southwestern province of Badghis, U.S. and Afghan officials said on Monday.

Violence has reached its worst level in Afghanistan ever since the Taliban, ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, made a comeback in 2005 despite growing number of foreign troops. The Taliban commander, Mullah Dastagir, along with eight other militants were killed in a raid on a village near Turkmenistan’s border on Sunday night, the officials said.

Dastagir was behind a series of attacks in Badghis, including an ambush in which 13 Afghan soldiers were killed last November, they added. Before that ambush, Dastagir had been jailed, but was released by order of President Hamid Karzai, a defence ministry official said. The U.S. military confirmed the air strike and the casualties including Dastagir’s killing. The Taliban could not be reached for comment.

source : jang.com.pk

Russia still haunted by Afghan ghosts

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan haunted by its catastrophic war against Islamists and convinced the trauma harbours lessons for Western forces today.

On February 15, 1989 the last Soviet soldier left Afghanistan, ending a war that Moscow initially saw as a brief incursion to bolster its Afghan supporters but became a protracted and bloody struggle that lasted almost 10 years. The war, which cost over 13,000 Soviet lives and may have killed as many as one million Afghans, led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Islamist Taliban.

source : jang.com.pk

Afghanistan to take part in US review: Karzai

KABUL: US President Barack Obama has accepted Kabul’s request to be part of a major review of US strategy in the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai and a US envoy said Sunday.

Karzai said he asked Obama by letter for Afghanistan to have a role in the review, which is under way amid concerns about worsening security in this country seven years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban regime.

US envoy Richard Holbrooke brought the message to Karzai on Saturday that Obama had accepted, the Afghan leader told a joint press conference. A delegation from Afghanistan chaired by Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta would travel to Washington “and will be working jointly with the US government in the review of the strategy in the war on terrorism,” he said.

Holbrooke arrived late Thursday and met with a range of Afghan officials and politicians, international military commanders and diplomats before holding talks with Karzai late Saturday. He has held similar wide-ranging meetings in Pakistan and is due to continue his tour of the region in India.

source : jang.com.pk

Musharraf says surge in support for extremists

ISLAMABAD: Former President Pervez Musharraf has said that support for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda is increasing in Pakistan. He said terrorism and extremism pose serious threat to the security of the country.

Talking to journalists here, Musharraf said the government would have to effectively deal with extremism and terrorism. The former president said he is being invited from various global think tanks to deliver lectures. Musharraf said he would visit India next week.

Over the continued US drone attacks inside Pakistan, he said there was no tacit agreement or understanding with the US to launch drone attacks inside Pakistan.

source : jang.com.pk

Top US general condemns Kabul attacks

KABUL: The top international military commander in Afghanistan condemned Wednesday a series of deadly attacks on government offices in the capital, as the “barbaric” face of the Taliban.

At least seven Taliban suicide attackers stormed the justice and education ministries and the prisons directorate in attacks that killed at least 19 people and wounded more than 50 others, officials said.

“This attack shows the real face of the Taliban, who have claimed responsibility for this barbaric action,” US General David McKiernan said.

“Once again the Taliban have displayed that they have no respect for Afghan citizens or any desire to see a peaceful future in Afghanistan,” he said, offering sympathies for the “callous and indiscriminate attack.”

McKiernan heads a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force of about 55,000 soldiers from nearly 40 nations. A separate US-led coalition, which focuses on hunting insurgents, also falls under his command.

The general praised the “swift” reaction of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) in dealing with the multiple attacks.

source : jang.com.pk

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

KHOST: A bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday killed two soldiers from the NATO-led force helping to fight an escalating Taliban-led insurgency, a military spokeswoman said.

The blast, similar to scores of others orchestrated by the Taliban against security forces, was on the outskirts of the eastern town of Khost on a road leading to the main US base in eastern Afghanistan.

“Two alliance soldiers were killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and one wounded,” Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Neilson-Green, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told. She could not disclose the nationalities of those killed in the blast but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.

Neilson-Green said it was not immediately clear what kind of device caused the explosion. Khost has seen a rash of suicide attacks over the past few months, most claimed by the Taliban. Afghan police confirmed the blast and also said the cause was not immediately clear. “It was against a coalition convoy,” provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told.

source : jang.com.pk

Two NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan

KHOST: A bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday killed two soldiers from the NATO-led force helping to fight an escalating Taliban-led insurgency, a military spokeswoman said.

The blast, similar to scores of others orchestrated by the Taliban against security forces, was on the outskirts of the eastern town of Khost on a road leading to the main US base in eastern Afghanistan.

“Two alliance soldiers were killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) and one wounded,” Lieutenant Colonel Rumi Neilson-Green, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), told. She could not disclose the nationalities of those killed in the blast but most soldiers in eastern Afghanistan are US nationals.

Neilson-Green said it was not immediately clear what kind of device caused the explosion. Khost has seen a rash of suicide attacks over the past few months, most claimed by the Taliban. Afghan police confirmed the blast and also said the cause was not immediately clear. “It was against a coalition convoy,” provincial police chief Abdul Qayoum Baqizoi told.

Bomb wounds Pakistan Taliban commander: officials

PESHAWAR: A Pakistani Taliban commander and key aide to tribal warlord Baitullah Mehsud was wounded Monday in a bomb attack that killed his driver near the Afghan border, officials said.

A remote-controlled bomb exploded by the side of a road in the Tanga area of South Waziristan, a semi-autonomous tribal district, when Noor Syed Mehsud was passing in a vehicle en route to Jandola village.

“According to reports received here Mehsud was slightly injured, while his driver died in the bomb blast,” a security official in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, told. Another security official confirmed the incident. Preliminary reports attributed the bombing to factional fighting between Baitullah Mehsud’s men and loyalists of Abdullah Mehsud, he said.

Abdullah Mehsud, 32, became leader of Pakistani Taliban insurgents based in South Waziristan in 2004, after Pakistani government forces launched military operations to clear out extremists from the troubled tribal region. He was accused of having links with Al-Qaeda and spent 25 months in the US-run prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba until his release in March 2004. Abdullah was wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan and he blew himself up with a hand grenade in July 2007 to avoid capture by security forces.

Baitullah Mehsud took over command of the Taliban militants after Abdullah and formed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) umbrella group. Pakistan’s former government accused Baitullah of plotting the assassination of ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.

source : jang.com.pk

Karzai calls for reconciliation with Taliban

MUNICH: Afghan President Hamid Karzai called Sunday for a process of reconciliation with the Taliban, and urged foreign forces in his country to do more to halt civilian casualties.

With elections approaching in August, Karzai also denied that Afghanistan was a narco-state or a failed state and insisted that vast progress had been made over the last seven years.

“This is the right time for me to call for a process of reconciliation,” he said at a major security conference in Germany, addressing an audience that included top US and European officials. “We will invite all those Taliban who are not part of Al-Qaeda, who are not part of terrorist networks, who want to return to their country, who want to live by the constitution of Afghanistan and who want to have peace in their country and live a normal life, to participate, to come back to their country.”

Karzai is set to stand again in presidential elections on August 20, but his popularity has waned amid allegations of government corruption, growing opium production and an ever-more tenacious Taliban-led insurgency.

NATO nations and their partners fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan have had mixed reactions to Karzai’s proposals to talk to the insurgents, with many saying they reject talks with militants who have blood on their hands.

source : jang.com.pk

Taliban abduct 9 construction workers in Afghanistan

KABUL: Taliban insurgents abducted nine workers of a private construction company in a raid in western Afghanistan, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

The militants also burnt down rooms housing the employees of the firm along with their equipment in the attack on Tuesday in Robat Sangi district of Herat province, the ministry said in a statement. The workers were constructing a border police post in the area.

source : jang.com.pk

5 Taliban killed in gun battle

KANDAHAR: Afghan and international forces killed five Taliban fighters in an overnight gun battle in southern Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.

Three civilians were killed in violence elsewhere. Taliban militants were also wounded in the clash in Nawa district of Helmand province, but it was unclear how many, said Provincial Police Chief Assadullah Sherzad. He said neither Afghan nor international forces reported any casualties. He did not say what sparked the fighting, which ended in the Taliban’s retreat.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry said three civilians were killed late Monday in eastern Nangarhar province when their minivan was hit by a remote-controlled bomb blast. No explanation was given for the attack, which occurred while the vehicle was headed toward the city of Jalalabad, the ministry said.

In southern Kandahar province on Tuesday, a roadside bomb struck a police patrol and wounded two officers. The bomb went off in the center of Kandahar city, the provincial capital, said provincial Police Chief Matiullah Khan Qateh.

The officers were riding in a police vehicle when the attack occurred, Qateh said. The vehicle was lightly damaged, and two other policemen in it were not hurt, Qateh said. No civilians were hurt.

Leave Afghanistan, Taliban militants tell Obama

KABUL: The insurgent Taliban said Wednesday that US President Barack Obama should learn from the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan and pull his troops out of the country to allow Afghans to decide their own fate.

“We have no problem with Obama,” a spokesman for the extremist Islamist movement told after the inauguration of the new US president. However, “he must learn lessons from (former US president George W. Bush and before that the Soviets,” Yousuf Ahmadi said by telephone. Afghan mujahedeen (holy warriors) drove out Soviet occupiers in 1989 after a 10-year war, which the Taliban says has parallels with its fight against the US-backed Afghan government and its international allies. After a difficult 2008, Washington is expected to send up to 30,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan, shifting the focus from Iraq in its “war on terror”.

source : jang.com.pk

Taliban kill three Afghan police, abduct eight

HEART: Taliban militants stormed a police post near Afghanistan’s western border with Turkmenistan, killing three policemen and abducting eight others, local officials said Tuesday.

The armed insurgents attacked the post in the northwestern province of Badghis late Monday, deputy provincial governor Abdul Ghani Sabir told AFP.

Three policemen were killed in the attack and Taliban took eight other policemen hostage,” he said.

Sabir had no information on any casualties among the attackers.

source : jang.com.pk

No US soldiers killed in Kabul blast: military

KABUL: No US soldiers were killed in a suicide blast in Kabul Saturday and only five were wounded, the US military said, correcting an earlier statement that two troops had died and 12 were hurt.

“Zero US service members were killed and five were wounded,” US military spokeswoman Captain Elizabeth Mathias told foreign news agency.

“We had conflicting initial reports and the (first) information was not as verified as we would like it to have been,” she said.

Afghan officials have said two civilians were also killed and about two dozen wounded in the blast, which was claimed by the Taliban insurgent group.

source : jang.com.pk

Taliban kill two ‘US spies’ in NW Pakistan: official

MIRANSHAH: Taliban militants killed two men in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan after accusing them of spying for the United States, a local official said Monday.

The incident in North Waziristan was the latest in a string of at least 10 similar killings during the past two weeks in the region, known as a stronghold of Al-Qaeda and Taliban insurgents. The bullet-riddled bodies of two brothers, 25-year-old Rehman Rauf Khattak and 30-year-old Asfandyar Khattak, were found early Monday in a market in the town of Mir Ali, the official told. He said the two brothers had been kidnapped a week ago from Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan. “The killers left a note with the bodies saying, “The two men were spying for the US,” the official said. He added that 10-rupee notes had been stuffed into the mouths of the two men, apparently to “tell residents of Mir Ali that they were spying for money.”

source : jang.com.pk

US force kills five insurgents in Afghanistan

KABUL: The US military in Afghanistan said Friday that its forces killed five Taliban insurgents in a raid in the restive south, and confirmed two soldiers killed in a suicide blast were US nationals.

Thursday’s raid in the southern province of Zabul targeted a militant the force said known to have been involved in bomb attacks on civilians and international soldiers. Militants holed up in compound ignored demands to surrender and continued to shoot at the troops, the US military said in a statement. “Having moved the women and children to safety, the force entered the buildings, killing five armed militants and detaining three suspected militants during the operation,” it said.

source : jang.com.pk

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US Advisor urges Obama to help Pakistan against terrorism

WASHINGTON: US National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley has said that Pakistan’s role in the war against terrorism was appreciable.

In a statement he said that Al Qaeda and Taliban were danger to Pakistan. He further said that Pakistan was itself a victim of terrorism and urged upon President-elect Barack Obama to help Islamabad.

source : jang.com.pk

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U.S. says troops kill 32 insurgents in Afghanistan

KABUL (Reuters) – U.S.-led coalition forces killed 32 insurgents in fighting that erupted in a village in eastern Afghanistan following a raid on a hideout of bomb makers, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

The Taliban who lead the insurgency against the foreign troops and the Afghan government, said 15 civilians were killed in the U.S.-led assault.

Violence has surged in recent years in Afghanistan since the Taliban, ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, regrouped in 2005 for driving out the foreign troops and to topple the Western-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

Tuesday’s operation was in a village of Laghman province and targeted a Taliban roadside bomb cell responsible for numerous attacks throughout the region, the U.S. military said in a statement.

“During the operation, as many as 75 armed militants exited their compounds and attempted to converge on the force. Shooting from rooftops and alleyways, the militants engaged Coalition forces with small-arms fire in the village,” it said.

“Coalition forces killed 32 armed insurgents including one female, detained one suspected militant, and destroyed two large caches of weapons, explosives and roadside bomb materials during an operation,” it added.

It did not mention any troop or civilian casualties in the operation.

The Taliban confirmed the U.S.-led operation, but said 15 civilians were killed in the coalition’s raid. The group did not say any thing about its reported losses.

Provincial officials were not immediately available and Reuters could not independently verify either account.

Separately, 11 civilians were killed by a heavy arms fire during a joint operation by NATO and Afghan forces against militants in an area of southern Uruzgan province this week, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

Nine more civilians were wounded in the fire, it added.

A spokesman for NATO-led force in Kabul said he would check the report which put the militants deaths to 12.

In another development, six militants were killed in an operation involving Afghan soldiers and U.S.-led forces in Farah province Wednesday, the U.S. military said.

It said one Afghan and one coalition soldier were wounded during the clash,

Some 5,000 people, nearly 2,000 of them civilians, were killed in violence across Afghanistan last year. The violence comes amid increase in number of foreign troops that stand to nearly 70,000 and will see a boost of up to 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers by summer.

The escalation of violence has created the fear that the country may slide back into anarchy.

source : news.yahoo.com

Australian soldier killed in Afghanistan

SYDNEY: An Australian soldier has been killed in a rocket attack by Taliban insurgents on a base in Afghanistan’s southern province of Uruzgan, the military said Monday.

“Taliban insurgents engaged an Afghan forward operating base with rockets. An Australian element was deployed at the base during this attack,” Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said in a statement.

“The soldier was killed instantly when a rocket exploded in the compound.”

The defence force chief did not name the dead man and gave no further details. The soldier was the eight Australian to die in Afghanistan, where Canberra has about 1,000 troops, up to 300 of whom are special forces stationed in southern Uruzgan province.

A total of about 70,000 international troops are in Afghanistan and more than 290 foreign soldiers lost their lives in the war-torn country last year.

source : jang.com.pk

US readying south Afghan surge against Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The U.S. is preparing to pour at least 20,000 extra troops into southern Afghanistan to cope with a Taliban insurgency that is fiercer than NATO leaders expected.

The new troops will augment the 12,500 NATO soldiers — mainly British, Canadian and Dutch — in what amounts to an Afghan version of the surge in Iraq.

New construction at Kandahar Air Field foreshadows the upcoming infusion of American power. Runways and housing are being built, along with two new U.S. outposts in Taliban-held regions of Kandahar province.

And in the past month the south has been the focus of visiting U.S. and other dignitaries — Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, U.S. congressional delegations and leaders from NATO headquarters in Europe.

For the first time since NATO took over the country in 2006, an experienced U.S. general, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, is assigned to the south.

He says U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, has made the objectives clear in calling the situation in the south a stalemate and asking for more troops, on top of the 32,000 Americans already in Afghanistan.

“By introducing more U.S. capability in here we have the potential to change the game,” Nicholson said.

The Army Corps of Engineers will spend up to $1.3 billion in new construction for troop placements in southern Afghanistan, said the corps commander in Afghanistan, Col. Thomas O’Donovan.

Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and Taliban militants now control wide swaths of countryside. Military officials say they have enough troops to win battles but not to hold territory, and they hope the influx of troops, plus the continued growth of the Afghan army, will change that.

U.S. officials hope to add at least three new brigades of ground forces in the southern region, along with assets from an aviation brigade, surveillance and intelligence forces, engineers, military police and Special Forces. In addition, a separate brigade of new troops is deploying to two provinces surrounding Kabul.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that Afghanistan could get up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in 2009, depending on the security situation in Iraq. Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. military spokesman, said Monday that one ground brigade should arrive by spring, a second by summer and a third by fall.

Nicholson said he expects the U.S. forces to be deployed in Kandahar city and along vital Highway 1, which links Kandahar to Kabul, and in neighboring Helmand province, the world’s largest producer of opium poppies for heroin.

NATO forces are well positioned in three key areas of northern Helmand, said British Lt. Gen. J.B. Dutton, deputy commander of the NATO’s Afghan mission.

“What we have not yet achieved is to join those areas up, so there is a security presence that allows locals to drive safely between those areas. That’s the sort of thing we are going to want to improve,” he said.

Since 2006, the U.S. has concentrated its forces in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, while the south is policed by 8,500 British troops, 2,500 Canadians and 2,500 Dutch.

Their overall commander is Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif — who would also have command of any incoming U.S. forces in the south next year. By the fall of 2010 the top officer in the south will be American.

The infusion of U.S. power risks Americanizing a war that until now has been a shared mission of 41 coalition countries. But Dutton, the British general, suggested there was no choice. “It has to do with national capacity and a number of political considerations in those countries,” he said.

In Canada and many European countries, governments face low public support for keeping troops in Afghanistan combat zones.

Dutton said the British contribution is “significant,” as well as that of Canada, which he noted has lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any other nation.

Nicholson, the U.S. general, said the Canadians have fought “heroically” but simply don’t have enough forces to secure all of Kandahar. The Canadian Embassy declined to comment.

More U.S. troops — 151 — died in Afghanistan in 2008 than any of the seven years since the invasion to oust the Taliban, and U.S. officials warn violence will probably intensify next year.

“If we get the troops, they’re going to move into areas that haven’t been secured, and when we do that, the enemy is there, and we’re going to fight,” said Nicholson, who spent 16 months commanding a brigade of 10th Mountain Division troops in eastern Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007.

That fighting should eventually clear the way for security and governance to take hold, he said.

“If you want to summarize that as it’s going to get worse before it gets better, that’s exactly what we’re talking about,” he said.

___

Straziuso reported from Kabul, and Faiez from Kandahar.

source : news.yahoo.com

US readying south Afghan surge against Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – The U.S. is preparing to pour at least 20,000 extra troops into southern Afghanistan to cope with a Taliban insurgency that is fiercer than NATO leaders expected.

The new troops will augment the 12,500 NATO soldiers — mainly British, Canadian and Dutch — in what amounts to an Afghan version of the surge in Iraq.

New construction at Kandahar Air Field foreshadows the upcoming infusion of American power. Runways and housing are being built, along with two new U.S. outposts in Taliban-held regions of Kandahar province.

And in the past month the south has been the focus of visiting U.S. and other dignitaries — Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, U.S. congressional delegations and leaders from NATO headquarters in Europe.

For the first time since NATO took over the country in 2006, an experienced U.S. general, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, is assigned to the south.

He says U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, has made the objectives clear in calling the situation in the south a stalemate and asking for more troops, on top of the 32,000 Americans already in Afghanistan.

“By introducing more U.S. capability in here we have the potential to change the game,” Nicholson said.

The Army Corps of Engineers will spend up to $1.3 billion in new construction for troop placements in southern Afghanistan, said the corps commander in Afghanistan, Col. Thomas O’Donovan.

Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and Taliban militants now control wide swaths of countryside. Military officials say they have enough troops to win battles but not to hold territory, and they hope the influx of troops, plus the continued growth of the Afghan army, will change that.

U.S. officials hope to add at least three new brigades of ground forces in the southern region, along with assets from an aviation brigade, surveillance and intelligence forces, engineers, military police and Special Forces. In addition, a separate brigade of new troops is deploying to two provinces surrounding Kabul.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that Afghanistan could get up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in 2009, depending on the security situation in Iraq. Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. military spokesman, said Monday that one ground brigade should arrive by spring, a second by summer and a third by fall.

Nicholson said he expects the U.S. forces to be deployed in Kandahar city and along vital Highway 1, which links Kandahar to Kabul, and in neighboring Helmand province, the world’s largest producer of opium poppies for heroin.

NATO forces are well positioned in three key areas of northern Helmand, said British Lt. Gen. J.B. Dutton, deputy commander of the NATO’s Afghan mission.

“What we have not yet achieved is to join those areas up, so there is a security presence that allows locals to drive safely between those areas. That’s the sort of thing we are going to want to improve,” he said.

Since 2006, the U.S. has concentrated its forces in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, while the south is policed by 8,500 British troops, 2,500 Canadians and 2,500 Dutch.

Their overall commander is Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif — who would also have command of any incoming U.S. forces in the south next year. By the fall of 2010 the top officer in the south will be American.

The infusion of U.S. power risks Americanizing a war that until now has been a shared mission of 41 coalition countries. But Dutton, the British general, suggested there was no choice. “It has to do with national capacity and a number of political considerations in those countries,” he said.

In Canada and many European countries, governments face low public support for keeping troops in Afghanistan combat zones.

Dutton said the British contribution is “significant,” as well as that of Canada, which he noted has lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any other nation.

Nicholson, the U.S. general, said the Canadians have fought “heroically” but simply don’t have enough forces to secure all of Kandahar. The Canadian Embassy declined to comment.

More U.S. troops — 151 — died in Afghanistan in 2008 than any of the seven years since the invasion to oust the Taliban, and U.S. officials warn violence will probably intensify next year.

“If we get the troops, they’re going to move into areas that haven’t been secured, and when we do that, the enemy is there, and we’re going to fight,” said Nicholson, who spent 16 months commanding a brigade of 10th Mountain Division troops in eastern Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007.

That fighting should eventually clear the way for security and governance to take hold, he said.

“If you want to summarize that as it’s going to get worse before it gets better, that’s exactly what we’re talking about,” he said.

source : news.yahoo.com

US readying south Afghan surge against Taliban

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Afghanistan’s southern rim, the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace and the country’s most violent region, has for the last two years been the domain of British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers. That’s about to change. In what amounts to an Afghan version of the surge in Iraq, the U.S. is preparing to pour at least 20,000 extra troops into the south, augmenting 12,500 NATO soldiers who have proved too few to cope with a Taliban insurgency that is fiercer than NATO leaders expected.

New construction at Kandahar Air Field foreshadows the upcoming infusion of American power. Runways and housing are being built, along with two new U.S. outposts in Taliban-held regions of Kandahar province.

And in the past month the south has been the focus of visiting U.S. and other dignitaries — Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, U.S. congressional delegations and leaders from NATO headquarters in Europe.

For the first time since NATO took over the country in 2006, an experienced U.S. general, Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, is assigned to the south.

He says U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, NATO’s commander in Afghanistan, has made the objectives clear in calling the situation in the south a stalemate and asking for more troops, on top of the 32,000 Americans already in Afghanistan.

“By introducing more U.S. capability in here we have the potential to change the game,” Nicholson said.

The Army Corps of Engineers will spend up to $1.3 billion in new construction for troop placements in southern Afghanistan, said the corps commander in Afghanistan, Col. Thomas O’Donovan.

Violence in Afghanistan has spiked in the last two years, and Taliban militants now control wide swaths of countryside. Military officials say they have enough troops to win battles but not to hold territory, and they hope the influx of troops, plus the continued growth of the Afghan army, will change that.

U.S. officials hope to add at least three new brigades of ground forces in the southern region, along with assets from an aviation brigade, surveillance and intelligence forces, engineers, military police and Special Forces. In addition, a separate brigade of new troops is deploying to two provinces surrounding Kabul.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month that Afghanistan could get up to 30,000 new U.S. troops in 2009, depending on the security situation in Iraq. Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. military spokesman, said Monday that one ground brigade should arrive by spring, a second by summer and a third by fall.

Nicholson said he expects the U.S. forces to be deployed in Kandahar city and along vital Highway 1, which links Kandahar to Kabul, and in neighboring Helmand province, the world’s largest producer of opium poppies for heroin.

NATO forces are well positioned in three key areas of northern Helmand, said British Lt. Gen. J.B. Dutton, deputy commander of the NATO’s Afghan mission.

“What we have not yet achieved is to join those areas up, so there is a security presence that allows locals to drive safely between those areas. That’s the sort of thing we are going to want to improve,” he said.

Since 2006, the U.S. has concentrated its forces in eastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, while the south is policed by 8,500 British troops, 2,500 Canadians and 2,500 Dutch.

Their overall commander is Dutch Maj. Gen. Mart de Kruif — who would also have command of any incoming U.S. forces in the south next year. By the fall of 2010 the top officer in the south will be American.

The infusion of U.S. power risks Americanizing a war that until now has been a shared mission of 41 coalition countries. But Dutton, the British general, suggested there was no choice. “It has to do with national capacity and a number of political considerations in those countries,” he said.

In Canada and many European countries, governments face low public support for keeping troops in Afghanistan combat zones.

Dutton said the British contribution is “significant,” as well as that of Canada, which he noted has lost more troops per capita in Afghanistan than any other nation.

Nicholson, the U.S. general, said the Canadians have fought “heroically” but simply don’t have enough forces to secure all of Kandahar. The Canadian Embassy declined to comment.

More U.S. troops — 151 — died in Afghanistan in 2008 than any of the seven years since the invasion to oust the Taliban, and U.S. officials warn violence will probably intensify next year.

“If we get the troops, they’re going to move into areas that haven’t been secured, and when we do that, the enemy is there, and we’re going to fight,” said Nicholson, who spent 16 months commanding a brigade of 10th Mountain Division troops in eastern Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007.

That fighting should eventually clear the way for security and governance to take hold, he said.

“If you want to summarize that as it’s going to get worse before it gets better, that’s exactly what we’re talking about,” he said.

___

Straziuso reported from Kabul, and Faiez from Kandahar.

source : news.yahoo.com

Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan’s picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region far from the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.

The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies outside the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.

“You can’t imagine how bad it is,” said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. “It’s worse day by day.”

The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.

Militants began preying on Swat’s lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.

A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called “settled” regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.

The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.

Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat’s 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.

Swat’s militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area’s inefficient judicial system.

Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.

In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.

They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls’ schools.

In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah’s corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.

Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.

The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.

Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.

On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.

“The terrorists’ aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east,” said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.

“The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create.”

Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.

The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.

A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.

The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.

A Swat militant boasted that “we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places.”

“They cannot move independently like us,” said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.

“With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations,” he said. “Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah’s path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad.”

___

Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

source : news.yahoo.com

As Taliban nears Kabul, shadow gov’t takes hold

WARDAK PROVINCE, Afghanistan – Two months ago, Mohammad Anwar recalls, the Taliban paraded accused thieves through his village, tarred their faces with oil and threw them in jail.

The public punishment was a clear sign to villagers that the Taliban are now in charge. And the province they took over lies just 30 miles from the Afghan capital of Kabul, right on the main highway.

The Taliban has long operated its own shadow government in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, but its power is now spreading north to the doorstep of Kabul, according to Associated Press interviews with a dozen government officials, analysts, Taliban commanders and Afghan villagers. More than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion, the Islamic militia is attempting — at least in name — to reconstitute the government by which it ruled Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

Over the past year in Wardak province alone, Taliban fighters have taken over district centers, set up checkpoints on rural highways and captured Afghan soldiers. The Taliban in Wardak has its own governor and military chief, its own pseudo-court system and its own religious leaders who act as judges. Bands of armed militants in beat-up trucks cruise the countryside, dispensing their own justice against accused spies and thieves.

“After night falls, no police drive through here,” the 20-year-old Anwar said, urging an AP journalist to return to Kabul before the militants drove into view.

Two miles down the road, a policeman named Fawad manned a checkpoint, wearing the traditional shalwar kameez robe so he could pretend to be a simple villager in case of a Taliban attack.

“There are more and more Taliban this year,” said Fawad, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. “The people of the villages are not going to the government courts. The Taliban are warning them that no one can go there.”

In a growing number of regions, insurgents have put in place:

• Militant commanders who serve as self-described governors and police or military chiefs of provinces.

• A 10 percent “tax” — a forced payment at gunpoint, Western officials say — on rich families, or donations by poorer families of food and shelter for fighters.

• A military draft that forces fighting-age males to join the Taliban for months-long rotations.

• A parallel judicial system run by religious scholars who impose such punishments as tarring, public humiliation and the chopping off hands.

• The closing of Afghan schools or the forcing of schools to replace science with more religious study.

• Manned Taliban or militant checkpoints to demand highway taxes and search vehicles for government employees or foreigners.

The increasing “Talibanization” is taking place in wide areas of countryside where the U.S., NATO and government of Hamid Karzai don’t have enough troops for a permanent presence. Recognizing this, the U.S. plans to send its newest influx of troops in January into Wardak and Logar, right next to Kabul. Between 20,000 and 30,000 new American forces are scheduled to arrive by the summer.

Some Western officials argue that the rise of a shadow government is nothing more than the return of different emboldened warlords. They suspect militants simply stepped in where they saw a void in areas not reached by the Karzai’s government, and it is still not clear if they have a coherent strategy. U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, has noted deep fault lines between Afghan insurgent groups.

McKiernan said the Taliban is trying not to govern but to intimidate.

In some cases they do try to have shadow governors or court systems, McKiernan said, “but they certainly do not bring with them any incentives to a community, any socio-economic programs, any perks, if you will…”

It’s not clear just how far the shadow government goes. Taliban officials and analysts boast that there are now Taliban shadow governors in almost every Afghan province.

“Three years ago the Taliban had no control in Afghanistan. They were spread too thin. Now they have power. They have soldiers. They have governors, district chiefs and judges. It is a very big difference from what you saw in 2003 or even 2005,” said Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban’s former ambassador to Pakistan.

The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which provides safety information to aid organizations operating in the country, said that by a conservative estimate, anti-government militants operate in more than 35 percent of the country, and that the number is growing.

In 2007 militants attacked foreign troops only in small formations, worried that bombing runs by fighter aircraft would result in huge battlefield losses. But over the last year, that has changed.

Recently, some 300 militants massed for an attack in the Bala Murghab district of Badghis province. About 250 insurgents took part in an attack on a government center in Paktika province in late November. And earlier this year some 200 militants attacked a small U.S. outpost in the east and killed nine soldiers.

An hour’s drive south of Kabul in Logar, the Taliban took over the district of Baraki Barak just before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in September. They rented shops and armed men wandered the streets, residents say.

They ordered barbers with TV sets to throw them away and kicked the satellite dishes on some houses to the ground.

After Friday prayers on the 25th day of Ramadan, Taliban fighters announced they were going to implement sharia law by their conservative and punitive reading of Islam. They warned that anyone working for the government would be considered a spy and killed.

“Everyone with links to the government fled the area,” said a shopkeeper in Baraki Barak who spoke only on condition he wasn’t identified for fear of the Taliban. “The people are very afraid of the Taliban, but if anyone shows any kind of reaction, the Taliban will mark that man and say, ‘You are a spy of the foreigners and infidels.’”

In Helmand province, perhaps Afghanistan’s most militant-infested region, Mullah Mohammad Qassim was appointed as the Taliban police chief last spring. Qassim said each of Helmand’s 14 districts has a Taliban government leader and police chief, and courts across the province implement strict Islamic or sharia law.

The Taliban in Helmand have no relations with Karzai’s government, he said. “We are more powerful than them. Even most of the capital of Helmand is under our control.”

Every week Taliban judges hold court after Friday prayers, said tribal elder Mohammad Aslam from the district of Sangin. In the Kajaki area of Helmand, the site of a large U.S.-funded dam project, militants tax houses with electricity, he said. Trucks using the highways are also taxed.

Aslam estimates that 90 percent of people in Helmand side with the Taliban. Echoing a common complaint of Afghans across the country, Mohammad Aslam labeled the Afghan government “corrupt.”

“No one can trust them,” he said of government officials. “Whenever we have a problem, we go to the Taliban and the Taliban court.”

___

Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

source : news.yahoo.com

Suspected US drone attack in Pakistan kills at least seven Taliban

Suspected US attacks by unmanned drones killed at least seven (some reports claim eight) suspected Taliban members in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan on Monday morning, according to Pakistani officials.

It’s the latest in a series of such air attacks. US officials, citing policy, have refused to comment on most of the strikes.

The attacks are believed to be carried out by “Predator” unmanned aerial vehicles, remotely controlled from CIA. headquarters in the US, targeting Al Qaeda terrorists and Taliban militants from Afghanistan who are hiding out across the border in tight-knit tribal communities.

Pakistan has condemned the attacks as a violation of its sovereignty, and warned that they are counterproductive.

The airstrike came after a US commander on Saturday said Washington will deploy up to 30,000 additional US troops to Afghanistan by the middle of next year, in a mirror of the “surge” strategy that proved effective in Iraq.

Incoming US President Barack Obama has promised to draw down troops in Iraq and increase deployments in Afghanistan, according to The Boston Globe.

Citing local intelligence officials, CNN reported that the attacks in South Waziristan targeted suspected Taliban militants.

Three missiles reportedly targeted vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft guns, according to the sources. One missile missed its intended target and landed near a house.

The dead were suspected Taliban militants, a local intelligence official said.

Another local official said nine other militants were wounded in the attack.

The missile strikes took place Monday morning about nine miles (15 km) from the town of Wana in South Waziristan.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that the attacks started massive fires in two villages and sent residents fleeing in panic. Local residents later told AFP that hundreds of Taliban had gathered near the sites of the attacks for funeral prayers.

The suspected US strikes have continued despite a warning by Taliban militants based in tribal territory last month that any more would lead to reprisal attacks across Pakistan.

A missile attack late last month by a US jet killed Rashid Rauf, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot, as well as an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative, security officials have said.

The Voice of America (VOA) reported that media reports suggest the US has carried out some 30 air attacks in Pakistan this year. “The Pakistani government has publicly condemned the air strikes, saying they undermine Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts,” the VOA reported.

Al Jazeera noted that the attacks came a day after the Taliban killed two Afghan brothers they suspected of being spies for the US.

Pakistani police found the bodies strewn with bullets in an abandoned village in North Waziristan, Khan Zada, a local police official said.

A note signed by the Taliban was left with the bodies. It said that the brothers were from the Afghan city of Khost, near the Pakistan border, and had been abducted and killed.

The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said at a news conference in Kabul on Saturday that the US would potentially double its deployment to Afghanistan by mid-2009, according to AFP.

A total of 70,000 foreign troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban insurgency, AFP said, but violence is on the rise.

This year has been the bloodiest for international forces here since the Taliban fell, with nearly 290 soldiers killed. About 1,000 Afghan troops and police, as well as more than 2,000 civilians, have also been killed in 2008.

In a recent Christian Science Monitor dispatch from Kabul, experts warned that the US is increasingly facing a similar problem in Afghanistan as the Soviets did in the 1980s: attacks on vulnerable supply roads, lack of control of the countryside, and an enemy with hideouts across the border in Pakistan.

From the perspective of Zamir Kabulov, the former Soviet official, President-elect Barack Obama’s proposed troops surge for Afghanistan is not enough….

The Soviets had nearly 400,000 Soviet and Afghan soldiers at their disposal – more than twice what the US and NATO have here – and yet they still failed, he notes.

The coalition’s stretched resources have created an unwanted echo of the worst of Soviet times, Professor Goodson [of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.] says.

In a commentary in Dawn, a Pakistani English-language daily, Muhammad Khakwani said the problems in the north Pakistan tribal areas were aggravated by ill-defined borders.

Whether it is wheat being smuggled, water rights, or militants crossing unchecked, addressing the root causes of the problems always gets complicated by the absence of agreed upon borders….

How can we fence a border when the neighbor does not agree on where to draw the line? We have unofficial agreements with tribal elders regarding the role of our troops from the lawless zone between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This guarantees that the tribal, lawless zone will remain tribal and lawless

Weapons seized from Pakistan’s Red Mosque stolen

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – A large cache of weapons seized after a bloody army raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque last year has been stolen from a police station, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Army commandos stormed the mosque complex in July last year to crush a Taliban-style movement after a week-long stand-off with well-armed militants and their supporters who refused to surrender to authorities after violence erupted outside the mosque.

More than 100 people were killed. Troops recovered weapons in the complex including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 rifles, landmines and hand grenades, and showed them off to reporters after the assault.

The weapons were then stored at a nearby police station but had gone missing, said Interior Ministry spokesman, Shahidullah Baig.

“Over the passage of time, the weapons have been stolen. It did not happen in a day,” Baig said.

Ten policemen, including the head of the police station where the cache had been stored, had been arrested and an investigation had been launched, he said.

Baig declined to say what kind of weapons had been stolen.

The government said the clerics who ran the mosque, Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdul Rashid, had links with al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahri, called for revenge after the assault.

Soon after, the number of suicide bomb attacks, particularly on the security forces and police, rose significantly.