[Afghan News] September 21, 2011

[یاسمینه]

More Afghan leaders to die, Taliban warn
Ben Doherty The Age Australia September 22, 2011.
A DEFIANT Taliban have claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Afghan government's main peace broker, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, and warned more senior political figures would be targeted.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban had assigned two ''articulate and well-trained'' fighters to build contacts with Dr Rabbani, who headed the High Peace Council.
''Both of them were frequently meeting him at his Kabul home and secured trust of Rabbani and his guards. They were telling Rabbani that they would soon bring senior Taliban leadership to the negotiating table with him.''
Dr Rabbani's death is the most severe blow yet to hopes of a negotiated settlement of the Afghan insurgency. He was killed in his Kabul home late on Tuesday by an assassin who had a bomb hidden in his turban.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short his visit to the UN and has returned to Kabul to deal with the worsening security situation.
Dr Rabbani is the fourth key Karzai ally to be assassinated this year, following the deaths of former Oruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan, Kandahar mayor Ghulam Haidar Hamidi and the President's half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, regarded as the most powerful politician in the restive south of the country.
Central Kabul is supposedly protected by a Ring of Steel, a series of 25 heavily fortified checkpoints designed to prevent attacks on key government buildings and international institutions. Twice in a week it has failed abjectly.
Last week, six gunmen fought a 19-hour battle with security forces, attacking Afghan government buildings, the US embassy and the headquarters of NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
Dr Rabbani, regarded as a respected elder in Afghan politics, was president of Afghanistan from 1992 until the Taliban swept to power in 1996. Driven from office and from Kabul, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, a force made up mainly of ethnic Tajiks and
Uzbeks who resisted the Taliban.
Northern Alliance leaders quickly denounced the peace process.
Abdullah Abdullah, a former presidential candidate and Northern Alliance leader, said: ''This is a lesson for all of us that we shouldn't fool ourselves that this group, who has carried out so many crimes against the people of Afghanistan, are willing to make peace.''
Last spring, the Taliban proclaimed they would kill members of the peace council.
''No one took it seriously and they should have, and it is also time for President Karzai to wake up,'' Dr Abdullah said. ''These are the people who he calls his 'dear brothers', they are behind what happened.''
On Tuesday, Dr Rabbani's assassin, a man by the name of Esmatullah, had been invited into his secured Kabul home with an accomplice because they were thought to be emissaries carrying a ''special message'' from the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, a key leadership group in the Afghan Taliban.
The man detonated his bomb as he bowed and hugged Dr Rabbani in greeting, Kabul criminal investigations chief Mohammad Zaher said.
The assassin died. His accomplice has been arrested.
With AFP, NEW YORK TIMES

ANALYSIS-Mixed Taliban messages on killing may show divide
By Michael Georgy
ISLAMABAD, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Competing claims from Taliban spokesmen about the insurgent group's role - or lack of one - in the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani may have exposed divisions in the movement over the high-profile killing.
Rabbani was probably the most senior person to be killed in the decade-long war and, as head of the High Peace Council, had been charged with trying to negotiate with the Taliban.
A Taliban spokesman known to Reuters confirmed three times to a reporter in Pakistan that the insurgent group had carried out the assassination.
However, the group also posted an online denial that it had claimed responsibility, explicitly rejecting Reuters reports.
Security analysts in Kabul said the killing of someone as senior and well protected as Rabbani would be extremely difficult without the resources and credibility of a large Taliban-linked insurgent group.
They also say there is a precedent for the group to issue or deny claims of responsibility for attacks in Afghanistan based on political motives rather than their actual role.
"Claiming or denying or condemning an action is part of the political game, and in some senses it is separate from whether the Taliban actually did or not," said Kate Clark from the Afghanistan Analysts Network.
"When Taliban operations do cause a lot of political harm, they have denied them in the past."
She cited the 2008 killing of labourers going to Iran, when the Taliban said the killers were Afghan National Army soldiers in plain clothes, but Clark said the commander who ordered the killings was called back to Quetta and stripped of his command.
PROBLEMS FOR SOME PEOPLE
Shortly after Tuesday's killing, spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told a reporter in Pakistan by telephone that the Taliban had sent a suicide bomber to target Rabbani.
The spokesman confirmed the insurgent group's role later the same evening and on Wednesday. The telephone number was one he had used previously and his voice was familiar to the reporter.
A senior Taliban commander operating inside Afghanistan also confirmed that claim.
The third time he spoke to Reuters, Mujahid said the names of those responsible that he had at first given were wrong because he had lost contact with the mission sent to target Rabbani.
The Taliban leadership was discussing whether they should provide names of the assassins to the media, he said, hinting at disunity.
"It could create some problems for some people in our movement," he said of releasing the names.
But a message on the Taliban Twitter account @Abalkhi on Wednesday denied that Mujahid had spoken to Reuters and, in an online and emailed statement, the group also accused Reuters of publishing "baseless news".
TREACHERY, UNREST
Rabbani's murder by a man who had ostensibly come to talk about peace -- and appears to have detonated his explosives while exchanging greetings -- may be seen by some as extreme treachery, even in a bitter, no-holds-barred war.
His loss is also a severe blow to hopes of a political solution to the violence, and has already stirred up ethnic tensions and sharpened divisions in Afghan society that in the past splintered into civil war.
Some of his disciples have already sworn revenge.
"Our enemies must know, with the strength of our Mujahideen and soldiers of our martyred leader, we will take revenge," said Atta Mohammad Noor, governor of northern Balkh province. "We won't let the blood thirsty predators escape without revenge."
The Taliban may be considering how their largely Pashtun supporters might be affected by a wave of anger surging through a Tajik community angered by the killing of their most authoritative leader, analysts said.
"They certainly take a moment to assess what the impact of taking responsibility is," said one security expert in Kabul, who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of the situation. "I think they always have that debate." (Additional reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by John Chalmers)

Rabbani's Killing Pushes Peace with the Taliban Further Out of Reach
By John Wendle time.com Kabul Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011
For the second time in a week, Kabul on Tuesday was the scene of a high-profile attack against the Afghan government, with the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the High Peace Council, the body responsible for negotiations with the Taliban. The killing has left many worried that Afghanistan's slim chances for peace have just gotten slimmer. Just as they did when insurgent fighters attacked Afghan government, NATO and U.S. embassy compounds with rockets on Sept. 13, security forces closed the road through the capital's main diplomatic enclave, which runs in front of Rabbani's compound. Green trucks carrying dozens of police officers roared in through the dark, their blue lights flashing silently, accompanying unmarked SUVs full of Afghan men in suits and pakols, the traditional woolen cap worn across northern Afghanistan.
And on Wednesday morning, it is the north of Afghanistan that is in an uproar over the killing of Rabbani — a prominent Tajik Northern Alliance mujahedeen leader and former president who ruled during the country's bloody civil war. "Another alert for the Northern Alliance — wake up and make smarter decisions. You are being kicked out of the game gradually and you guys are still just running around," wrote one Afghan on his Facebook page, commenting on the wave of recent Taliban assassinations of northern leaders. "I do not know what the hell they're waiting for???????," wrote another. Only one other comment on the page voiced a view sympathetic to many in Afghanistan's Pashtun-majority south: "It's not about any specific group, it's a dirt-cleaning mission. We have to get rid of all these killers who halted our growth for decades while their own sons ... got masters [degrees] in [the] West."
The posts show not only the prominent ethnic divisions in Afghanistan, but also growing fears that reconciliation with the Taliban, the job of the now leaderless High Peace Council, has become that much harder. "With this attack, the Taliban sent a clear message that they don't want to reconcile," says Wahid Mujda, a former official in the Taliban government and now an analyst at the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies. He also sees Rabbani's killing as a warning: "It is a clear message to other jihadi leaders that no matter how well respected they are, if they don't distance themselves from the government, they will be assassinated. The Taliban have all the time in the world and they can wait, especially since there is a deadline for the withdrawal of [foreign] troops."
That view was echoed by Shukria Barakzai, a prominent member of parliament, who arrived on the scene just after the attack. Standing under the glare of dozens of TV cameras outside the police cordon around Rabbani's compound, Barakzai characterized the killing as, "a huge blow to the peace process." General John Allen, the American head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan said, "the face of the peace initiative has been attacked."
For many in Afghanistan, the Taliban's targeting of Rabbani was a foregone conclusion. During his term as president, from 1992 to 1996, Rabbani oversaw the brutal civil war between rival warlords — fighting which eventually spawned the rise of the Taliban in the country's Pashtun south that sought and achieved an end to the war. Afghan President Hamid Karzai's appointment of Rabbani to head the High Peace Council was perceived as a way to pull the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance — particularly Rabbani's powerful Jamiat-e-Islami party — into the current peace process. But Rabbani may have simply seen the position as a way to insert himself back into national politics after years away, and also as a way to increase his power — the High Peace Council helps administer a reintegration fund totaling $200 million, according to some estimates. But only a few weeks ago, Rabbani voiced his frustration to the Afghan media that the Taliban would never soften their position.
The assassination — which was carried out by two Taliban fighters carrying bombs in their turbans and posing as insurgents seeking to speak to Rabbani about reconciliation, according to the Afghan press — has not only reaffirmed the Taliban's unwillingness to negotiate until foreign troops leave, but may also spur on an even bloodier civil war after the proposed 2014 withdrawal of those troops.
"After the assassination of Rabbani, more people will listen to anti-Taliban figures who are very critical of the whole peace process," says Haroun Mir, a former advisor to Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud and now a Kabul-based political analyst. "Now that they have been convinced that government forces cannot protect them, they will rely more on their own people and small armed groups, which will create more challenges and problems for the transition process." In a bleak allusion to the likelihood of future violence, Mir adds, "Rabbani's assassination will force Northern Alliance leaders to plan new strategies. Only time will tell what those new strategies will be."
— With reporting by Habib Zahori

Pessimism Fills Kabul During Mourning for Slain Peace Council Chief
By JACK HEALY and ALISSA J. RUBIN The New York Times September 21, 2011
KABUL, Afghanistan — The mourners arrived early on Wednesday morning, streaming into a hastily erected funeral tent here to honor Afghanistan’s latest martyr even as they declared the death of the cause he was killed pursuing: a negotiated peace deal with the Taliban.
As the country reeled from the assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, scores of aging guerrilla fighters, tribal elders, politicians and red-eyed mourners filled the streets, to express the grief and pessimism stirred by his death.
Young men held freshly printed posters of Mr. Rabbani and carried banners that lauded those killed and maimed in years of fighting. Although some offered softer calls for unity and peace, many voiced darker sentiments. One demonstrator shouted that anyone who supported efforts to broker a deal with the Taliban to end a decade of war — Mr. Rabbani’s very cause — was “the enemy of Afghanistan.”
“The people of Afghanistan should now unite to break the jaw of the Taliban,” said Gen. Mohammed Amin, flanked by heavily armed guards.
Mr. Rabbani’s death threatened to exacerbate tensions among Afghanistan’s ethnic groups and further unravel support for the peace process, especially among the Tajik and Hazara ethnic groups from the heavily Pashtun south, who have long been leery of any deal with the Taliban.
The makeup of those who gathered on Wednesday to quietly pay respects for Mr. Rabbani — a Tajik from northern Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province — underlined those divides. Only a handful of mourners were Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.
As President Hamid Karzai cut short a trip to the United States to attend a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, the Afghan government declared three days of mourning and discussed plans to bury Mr. Rabbani on a hilltop not far from the upscale Kabul neighborhood where he was killed at his residence.
The attacker, claiming that he carried a “very important and positive message” from the Taliban leadership in western Pakistan, was ushered into Mr. Rabbani’s heavily guarded home for a meeting on Tuesday night, Afghan officials said. When he leaned in to greet Mr. Rabbani with a hug, he detonated explosives hidden in his turban.
The head of the peace council’s secretariat, Masoom Stanekzai, and three others were wounded in the blast.
The Taliban, which often take almost immediate responsibility for political assassinations and attacks against NATO and Afghan security forces, remained unusually quiet about the attack on Wednesday. In a Twitter posting, a Taliban spokesman denied taking responsibility for the assassination, but said little else about who was behind it.
Almost reflexively, suspicions fell on Pakistan-based militant groups such as the Haqqani network, a fierce adversary of Western forces in Afghanistan that has ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services. American officials blamed the Haqqanis for organizing an assault against the American Embassy in Kabul earlier this month.
“This terrorist attack definitely was organized and planned from outside Afghanistan,” Hanif Atmar, a former interior minister, said of Mr. Rabbani’s assassination.
The peace process had achieved little under Mr. Rabbani, a white-bearded mujahedeen fighter in the 1980s who fled to the north during the Taliban’s rule and returned to Kabul after the Americans swept the Taliban from power in 2001.
A small but growing number of low-level fighters have agreed to rejoin the government in exchange for small stipends and opportunities to work, but few high-level Taliban commanders accepted invitations to negotiate, and some of those who did were unmasked as impostors.
To many of the mourners gathered outside Mr. Rabbani’s home, his assassination was the death knell of a process they had long mistrusted, and sent a clearer message than any Taliban emissary could provide with words.
”They don’t want peace,” said Bashir Ahmad Bezhan, a political analyst and former presidential candidate. “This so-called peace council will not survive. It will not work.”
As he spoke, mourners filed into the funeral tent. Security guards offered the guests a small — if now risky — courtesy. Each man was patted down, but they were not asked to remove or unravel their turbans.
Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

Afghans Protest Killing of Former President
VOA News September 21, 2011
Hundreds of Afghans gathered Wednesday to protest the killing of former Afghan president and peace negotiator Burhanuddin Rabbani at his home in the capital Kabul.
Police say Mr. Rabbani, who served as president from 1992 to 1996, was killed Tuesday by a Taliban suicide attacker who detonated a bomb hidden in his turban.
At least four other people were killed in the blast and one of President Hamid Karzai's key advisors, Masoom Stanekzai, was wounded.
On Wednesday, crowds of mourners carrying pictures of Mr. Rabbani and banners gathered on a street outside of his house, while a string of government officials arrived to pay their respects amid tight security.
A spokesman for Mr. Rabbani's Jamiat-i-Islami party told the French news agency that the leader's funeral would most likely be Thursday or Friday.
NATO officials blamed two suicide bombers for the attack, saying they were feigning a desire to conduct reconciliation talks. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility telling the Reuters news agency that they appointed two articulate and well-trained fighters to build contacts with Mr. Rabbani.
Mr. Rabbani was an ethnic Tajik and head of the Afghan High Peace Council, a government team aimed at seeking a political settlement with insurgents.
Mr. Karzai condemned the assassination Tuesday saying the former Afghan president sacrificed his life for the sake of Afghanistan and peace. He spoke ahead of a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in New York on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting, but cut short his visit because of the attack.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Mr. Rabbani's assassination “in the strongest possible terms.” He said the U.N. remains committed to supporting Afghanistan and its people in attaining peace and stability and to working in close cooperation with them.
In other violence, at least 10 policemen were killed in a bomb attack in southern Ghazni province late Tuesday.
Officials say the police chief for Waghaz District was killed in the attack, which occurred as police were conducting a search operation for militants in an area building.
Also in the south, NATO says two of its service members were killed in an insurgent attack. No further details were released.

Pakistan using Haqqani network to wage 'proxy war' in Afghanistan
Daily Telegraph (UK)
The United States has accused Pakistan's military of using the Haqqani network to wage a "proxy war" in Afghanistan, as officials in Washington ratchet up pressure on Islamabad to take on insurgent groups fighting Nato forces.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency had to sever all ties with the Haqqani militants.
His comments are the latest sign of a tougher, coordinated public line –echoed by Leon Panetta, US defence secretary, and Cameron Munter, Washington's ambassador to Islamabad in recent days – amid frustration at Pakistan's slow progress in moving on Haqqani bases along the Afghan border.
This year has seen relations between the two allies plunge to their lowest point since 9/11, when US officials reportedly warned Pakistan's intelligence director to prepare to be bombed "back to the Stone Age" if it did not go along with America's campaign against the Taliban.
In a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Admiral Mullen said he had raised the matter with his Pakistani counterpart, General Ashfaq Kayani, during a meeting at the weekend.
"We covered ... the need for the Haqqani Network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting," he said.
"The ISI has been doing this – working for – supporting proxies for an extended period of time. It is a strategy in the country and I think that strategic approach has to shift in the future." The US has long suspected Pakistan of maintaining links with the group but such public and strongly-worded accusations have been rare, until now.
Jalalludin Haqqani was once a prized asset of the CIA, receiving cash and weapons via the ISI in the 1980s to fight Soviet forces.
After 9/11 however he forged close links with al-Qaeda and began fighting US forces from his bases in Pakistan.
Today his son, Sirajuddin, runs operations.
They are blamed for a recent bombing attack that wounded 77 US troops at a base in Wardak province.
And last week American officials said they believed the Haqqanis were behind a series of attacks in central Kabul which killed 14 Afghan civilians and police over a 20-hour period.
Such is the frustration that Washington is believed to be considering placing the Haqqani network on its list of proscribed terrorist organisations as it ratchets up pressure.
A US official said the designation had been avoided until now as it would imply Pakistan was a state-sponsor of terrorism.
"The Haqqanis are not listed as a terrorist organisation at the moment. The reason for that is clear. If you call them a terrorist group then there are implications for Pakistan," he told The Daily Telegraph.
"That status could change but it would be a big decision."

Mullen: Troops Must Prepare For More Audacious Taliban Attacks
September 21, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
The head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff said he believes that U.S. and Afghan troops must adapt their tactics to prepare for more audacious attacks by the Taliban.
U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen made the comments at a Washington press conference hours after the head of the Afghan High Peace Council and former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated in a suicide attack in his Kabul home.
It was the fourth significant insurgent attack since June in the Afghan capital. Blame for the first three has been ascribed to the Haqqani Network, a Taliban-allied insurgent group operating from a base on the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The Taliban has refuted reports that it was involved in Rabbani's death.
At the same news conference, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said he agreed with Mullen that the Taliban has shifted to a tactic of assassinations and sieges recently because they are not succeeding on the battlefield.
But he insisted the U.S.-led war effort was making headway.
"The bottom line still remains that we are moving in the right direction," he said. "We have made progress against the Taliban and we can't let some of these sporadic events deter us from the progress that we've made."
Earlier at a think tank event, Mullen told RFE/RL that it's too early to predict what impact Rabbani's death will have on the year-old effort to find a political solution to the conflict:
"Obviously, as the chairman of the High Peace Council, in that regard certainly someone is going to have to step in pretty quickly, because that's a critical part of the entire peace process."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the assassination "will not deter" him from seeking a negotiated settlement to the war.

Analysis: Afghan assassination means Taliban 'want war, not peace'
CNN By Tim Lister and Jennifer Rizzo September 20th, 2011
The assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul – apparently by the very group he was trying to negotiate with – suggests a political solution in Afghanistan remains a distant prospect – and is another reminder of how fragile security is in the Afghan capital, according to analysts and diplomats.
Rabbani was also one of the most prominent Tajiks in Afghanistan, and his killing is likely to aggravate their fears of renewed ethnic conflict with the largely Pashtun Taliban.
It’s not clear whether the Taliban leadership sanctioned the assassination, but that was the immediate assumption of the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, who said it represented “the strategy of the Taliban to assassinate as many leaders as possible.”
Those words were echoed by Gen. John R. Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, who said that “regardless of what Taliban leadership outside the country say, they do not want peace, but rather war.”
Long an enemy of the Taliban, Rabbani was a controversial choice when appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as chairman of the High Peace Council a year ago. A former president of Afghanistan himself, he was forced to flee Kabul when the Taliban took over in 1996, but continued to lead resistance to the regime from his stronghold in Faisabad in northern Afghanistan.
“Politics in Afghanistan tend to be ethnic based,” says Paraag Shukla, an expert on Afghan governance at the Institute for the Study of War. “Rabbani has been a leading figure in the Tajik minority. He was a surprising choice when he was chosen to be a head of this peace council because the Taliban has opposed him in the past because they are Pashtun.”
Even Rabbani himself had expressed distrust of Karzai’s peace overtures to the Taliban. He was quoted in a U.S. diplomatic cable in 2008 as saying many “non-Pashtuns suspect Karzai is pursuing a strategy that sets Pashtuns against the country’s other ethnicities.” He also acknowledged that he had tried to persuade Karzai not to run for re-election.
But Bruce Riedel, Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., says Karzai appointed Rabbani because he had weight and experience and could reassure minorities.
“He was the type of figure if a real negotiation process moved forward, people would say we trust Rabbani – and I think that is why Karzai chose him.”
Even so, it appears Rabbani’s role in the peace process was not very popular in Islamabad. Last month, in an interview with CNN affiliate GEO News, he chided Pakistan for not investing more in the Afghan peace process.
"We feel in Afghanistan that Pakistan still supports the Taliban and several Taliban leaders are living in Pakistan, and Pakistan can encourage them to come to the negotiating table," Rabbani said. “Allowing the Afghan opposition to live in the country is against the spirit of bilateral friendship,” he said.
Rabbani also made it clear he was intent on attracting moderate Taliban to the peace process. "Some others oppose, and can harm, the peace process," he said. That echoes what he told the U.S. ambassador in Kabul at the end of 2008, according to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, when he urged the incoming Obama administration to “require those seeking to reconcile to break off relations with al Qaeda and Pakistan-based sources of support."
Little surprise then that at least among Taliban hardliners he remained the enemy rather than the peacemaker.
How any peace process will be affected by his death is as yet unclear.
“It’s a very serious setback for anyone that was hoping for a peace process," says Riedel of Brookings. "There has always been a huge debate about whether the Taliban was interested in reconciliation, I think we got the answer [today].”
Riedel says the Peace Council had trouble finding anyone to negotiate with. “It has been trying to see if it can find a Taliban that wants to talk to it and there’s been a lot of talks about talks but there hasn’t been much real practical negotiations. We have now seen that there are very powerful forces that don’t want that reconciliation process to go forward.”
Shukla agrees. The High Council “hadn’t really made significant process in the past year. It was a move seen as partly symbolic,” he says. “But it was important in that the government needed an official council that was representative of different minority groups and could be a unified message to insurgents from the government.”
Those minorities are already nervous about being marginalized. “Putting a respected and experienced political figure who was a minority into that position was in part to assuage the fears of a lot of minorities,” Shukla says. Now that figure is gone.
“It will be very hard to find a figure of comparable character that reassures Tajiks and Uzbeks that reconciliation is not a sell-out of their interests,” says Riedel.

China condemns killing of former Afghan president
BEIJING, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- China on Wednesday condemned the suicide bomb attack that killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, former president of Afghanistan.
"We are shocked by the death of Mr. Rabbani and condemn the attack," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said at a regular news briefing in response to a question on the situation in Afghanistan.
Rabbani, who served as chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, was killed in his residence in the capital city of Kabul Tuesday evening.
Hong said that Rabbani made great contributions to advancing the reconciliation process in Afghanistan since taking office as chairman of the council.
The spokesperson also extended condolences to Rabbani's family.
"We hope wholeheartedly that Afghanistan will see peace and stability, as well as national reconciliation and development at an early date," he added.

S. Korea condemns killing of ex-Afghan president
SEOUL, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Wednesday condemned the assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who had been leading a council charged with peace talks with the Taliban.
"The government strongly condemns the suicide bomb attack that targeted Burhanuddin Rabbani, and we wish to extend our deepest condolences to his family and the Afghan people," the foreign ministry in Seoul said in a statement.
"We will join international efforts for peace and stability in Afghanistan," the ministry said, calling the attack an unjustifiable crime against humanity.
President during Afghanistan's 1992-96 civil war, the High Peace Council chief was killed in Kabul by a bomb hidden in a turban.

Australia condemns assassination of former Afghan president
CANBERRA, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday condemned the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, an Afghanistan peacemaker and former president of Afghanistan.
Rudd said Professor Rabbani was dedicated to advancing the peace process, and he was appalled at his murder by those seeking to derail the creation of a stable Afghanistan.
"I am confident this cowardly attack will not deter the vital work being done by the High Peace Council to bring about a peaceful and secure Afghanistan," he said in a statement released on Wednesday, adding that Australia offered its condolences to Prof Rabbani's family, friends and the people of Afghanistan.
Rudd reaffirmed that Afghanistan government could continue to count on Australia's strong support for its efforts to achieve a lasting peace.
Australia also offered its sympathies to the Head of the High Peace Council's Secretariat, Massoum Stanekzai, who was injured in the attack.
A suicide bomber on Tuesday night killed Rabbani at his home in Kabula with bomb concealed in a turban, the Afghan capital.

World Leaders Condemn Assassination Of Former Afghan President Rabbani
September 21, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
World leaders have condemned the assassination in Kabul of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Rabbani, who had been serving as head of an official council trying to negotiate a political settlement to the Afghan war, was killed by a suicide bomber on September 20 at his home in the Afghan capital.
A senior Afghan government official, who requested anonymity, told RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan that it was a top Taliban commander who had requested a meeting with Rabbani, who then blew himself up in the peace negotiator's presence.
However, in an e-mail message on September 21 to RFE/RL, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected reports that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attack.
"We know nothing about this incident and have never talked about this issue with anyone," Mujahid said.
Afghan police said the deadly explosives had been hidden in the suicide bomber's turban.
Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik described as around 70 years old, was president of the Afghan government from 1992-96, preceding Taliban rule, and had been a member of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
Masoom Stanekzai, a senior adviser to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, was reportedly badly injured in the attack. Several others were wounded in the explosion.
Karzai has cut short a visit to New York, where he was to take part in the UN General Assembly, in the wake of the assassination, and an emergency Afghan cabinet meeting is expected to be held on September 21.
Karzai has vowed that the peace process will not be derailed by Rabbani's death.
Karzai spoke alongside U.S. President Barack Obama before the two leaders held private talks on the sidelines of the UN meeting.
"The mission that he had undertaken was vital, Mr. President, for the Afghan people and for the security of our country and for peace in our country," Karzai told Obama. "We will miss him very, very much. I don't think, Mr. President, that we can fill his place easily."
'Tragic Loss'
Obama called Rabbani's killing a "tragic loss" but said it will not deter the United States from helping Afghans create a stable society.
"We both believe that despite this incident, we will not be deterred from creating a path whereby Afghans can live in freedom and safety and security and prosperity, and that it is going to be important to continue the efforts to bring all elements of Afghan society together to end what has been a senseless cycle of violence," Obama said.
The assassination has been condemned by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said Rabbani had "played a vital role" as the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council.
The Pakistani government also moved swiftly to condemn Rabbani's assassination. In a joint statement, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, described the late Rabbani as a "friend."
And in a statement, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that those behind the killing "will not prevail." He said the killers "will not stop the Afghan people from taking their destiny in their own hands [or…] shake the resolve of the international and Afghan partnership."
Lost Faith
Rabbani had led a year-long effort to negotiate a political end to fighting in Afghanistan, with little progress.
In March, Rabbani told Radio Free Afghanistan that he was optimistic about the prospects of negotiating an end to the conflict with the Taliban.
But Kabul-based Afghan analyst Waheed Mozhdah said that since then, Rabbani had lost faith in the insurgent group's willingness to find an end to the war.
"In recent times, Rabbani was very disappointed with the Taliban," Mozhdah said. "He used to say that they are not prepared for peace. He adopted a strong anti-Taliban posture.
"Some of his friends even criticized him for being so scathing about the insurgents while his job as the head of the peace council was to reach out to them. It appeared that he was weary of leading the peace council and was looking to resign from its leadership."
Driven From Leadership
Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, led a powerful mujahedin party during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and then became president of the Afghan government following the Soviet withdrawal.
He was driven from leadership when the Taliban rose to power in the mid-1990s and became the de-facto head of the Northern Alliance. That group filled the power vacuum in Kabul after the Taliban's fall in late 2001.
Human Rights Watch once named Rabbani as one of a number of senior Afghan leaders who may have committed war crimes that killed or displaced thousands of Afghans during the country's civil war in the early 1990s.
In 2007, the Afghan parliament granted a general amnesty for officials accused of crimes during the previous quarter-century of fighting. Legislators said the move would help heal deep national divisions.
Pakistani Protection Criticized
Rabbani's assassination comes just one week after insurgents carried out a 20-hour siege near Western embassies and the NATO compound and three coordinated suicide bomb attacks on other parts of Kabul.
The assault was the third major insurgent attack in the city since June. At least five policemen and 11 civilians were killed.
All those attacks are believed to be the work of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-allied insurgent faction based along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
In the wake of last week's siege, U.S. officials have become increasingly public in their criticism of Pakistan for what they say is its protection of the insurgent network.
"There is evidence linking the Haqqani network to the Pakistani government," the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, recently told Radio Pakistan.
"This is something that must stop. We have to make sure that we work together to fight terrorism, to recognize the common enemy, the people who attack Pakistanis, the people who attack Americans, the people who attack other allies of ours. We have to fight these people. We can't let events like what happened in Kabul take place."
with agency reports

Rabbani On The Urgent Necessity Of Peace Talks
September 21, 2011 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan managed to pose a few questions in March to Afghan ex-President and High Peace Council chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was slain by an assassin posing as a Taliban liaison.
In those comments, Rabbani emphasized the lack of unity within the "Taliban" and the imperative of peace for his war-weary country. Here are some excerpts of that interview:
RFE/RL: When will be you begin direct contacts with the armed opposition?
Burhanuddin Rabbani: The contacts have already begun. Directs talks with the opposition have started, some meetings have taken place, and they continue to date. Letters are being exchanged. But our talks have not yet reached the point that we could publicly announce them....
We try to talk to those in the Taliban's decision-making circles. Our concern is that if we don't start negotiations with the Taliban now, our country might face the risk of another bloody war once foreign troops leave Afghanistan. This risk does exist, and therefore we need to take action to prevent it. The Taliban is not a unified group. We need to identify among the Taliban those [who would negotiate] and tell them, "What are you going to do? Foreigners will leave, you and we will stay, and we should not start another war once again, as happened in the past."
RFE/RL: There are countries who provide all kinds of support to the Taliban. Is there any guarantee that those countries would allow the Taliban to negotiate with the Afghan government?
Rabbani: They have promised that no one would interfere.

Officials: U.S., Pakistan agree to limit American troops
AP 20/09/2011
WASHINGTON - The United States and Pakistan have agreed to limit the number of American troops in that country, amid frayed relations between the two nations and a struggle to repair them, U.S. officials told the Associated Press Tuesday.
The presence of U.S. forces inside Pakistan is highly unpopular there, and became more so following the U.S. military raid inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden.
According to U.S. and Pakistani officials, the new compromise pact slashes the number of U.S. forces allowed in Pakistan to between 100 and 150, nearly half of what it has been in the past. The number of special operations trainers would fall from 140 to fewer than 10.
Allowing any elite trainers to stay suggests a bit of a thaw in the icy relationship. Only a few months ago Pakistan demanded that all the trainers as well as other U.S. forces leave the country.
Officials described the agreement on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. And they said there could be changes to the totals over time.
The pact reflects the volatile nature of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship over the last several years, as Islamabad expresses its ongoing anger with American drone strikes into the country, and fury over the special operations raid that killed bin Laden in May.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered a blunt assessment of the relationship Tuesday, saying he addressed the issue "very strongly" last Friday night with his Pakistani counterpart, Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.
"It was the heart of the discussion, that the proxy connection to the ISI (of) the Haqqanis, working across border, killing our people, killing Afghans, has to stop," Mullen told Pentagon reporters during a press briefing Tuesday. "That's not a new message. But it's one that he clearly understands. And I think it's one we have to keep reiterating."
American officials believe that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, continues to have strong ties to Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants, including the Haqqani network. The Haqqanis are one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan stability, and are responsible for plotting and launching attacks from Pakistan across the border against U.S. and coalition forces.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta added that the Pakistani's have to understand that they must be against all terrorists, not just some.
"Our biggest concern right now is to put as much pressure as possible on the Pakistanis to exercise control from their side of the border," Panetta said Tuesday. "We've continued to state that this cannot happen, we cannot have the Haqqanis coming across the border, attacking our forces, attacking Afghanistan and then disappearing back into a safe haven. That is not tolerable."
Pakistani leaders see the U.S. military actions inside Pakistan as violations of its sovereignty. But U.S. leaders say that unless Pakistan goes after insurgents within its own borders who are attacking and killing American troops, the U.S. will act on its own.
Panetta and other senior U.S. leaders have ratcheted up the rhetoric against Pakistan in recent days, putting verbal pressure on the reluctant government to deal with the Haqqanis.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told her Pakistani counterpart, Hina Rabbani Khar, on Sunday that the Taliban-linked insurgents must be dealt with.
Late last week, Panetta warned that the U.S. will do what it needs to do to stop the Haqqani network attacks on U.S. forces. He would not say whether that means that the U.S. will take new military actions, but there has already been an increase in U.S. drone strikes into Pakistan's border regions.
Panetta's remarks were interpreted as a veiled warning that the U.S. may resort again to unilateral actions against the insurgents. Such criticism, however, may only damage anti-terror cooperation between the two nations, Pakistan's Foreign Minister Tehmina Janjua said.
The Haqqanis have escalated their attacks against Western forces in Afghanistan in recent weeks, including the recent 20-hour assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
Over the past several years, the U.S. has steadily increased funding for its program to train members of Pakistan's Army and paramilitary Frontier Corps, pouring millions of dollars into efforts to boost counterinsurgency efforts against militants in havens along the Afghanistan border.
The program grew from a handful of trainers and spawned plans to set up training centers, as cooperation grew between the U.S., Pakistani and Afghan troops along the border. The training helped improve communications between the allies, and also gave elite U.S. forces better access to the rugged border region dominated by al-Qaeda and its militant allies.
After the bin Laden raid, however, Pakistan demanded that the trainers leave, triggering worries that it would rob the U.S. of the opportunity to build the capabilities of the ragtag frontier corps.

Afghan insurgency leaves over 50 dead in 2 days
By Farid Behboud, Zhang Jianhua
KABUL, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Taliban-led insurgency has been surging constantly in the post-war Afghanistan as more than 50 people including a former president lost their lives over the past two days.
The insurgents fighting Afghan and NATO-led troops organized a suicide attack against Burhanudin Rabban, a former President and the chairman of the government-backed peace body -- High Peace Council at his home on Tuesday and killed him on the spot.
In other subversive activities, the insurgents organized a bomb attack against a contractor in Khost city, the provincial capital of Khost province, some 150 km southeast of Afghan capital city of Kabul, leaving one security personnel dead and injuring nine other civilians Wednesday.
"One killed and nine injured civilian were admitted to Khost city at around 11:00 a.m. local time (0630 GMT) Wednesday," head of provincial health department, Hidayatullah Hamidi told Xinhua.
Militancy has been rampant since May this year when Taliban militants announced to launch spring offensive in the war-battered Afghanistan.
The Taliban outfit has also warned the civilians to stay away from official gatherings, military convoys and centers regarded as the legitimate targets by militants.
The militant group, which warns people against supporting government and foreign troops, often attacks contractors, trucks and oil tankers.
He said the bomb was placed in the vehicle of the service provider named Kamari Khan killing Khan on the spot.
Hours earlier Wednesday, another roadside bomb went off in Nadir Shah Kot district of Khost province, leaving four civilians injured including two children, district administration chief Jamal Nasir told Xinhua.
Two innocent children lost their lives in Logar province Wednesday morning when a roadside bomb planted by Taliban exploded in vicinity of provincial capital Pul-e-Alam, some 60 km south of Kabul at about 09:30 local time (0500 GMT) Wednesday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
"Ministry of Interior of Afghanistan condemns in the strongest terms this act of the enemies of peace and stability and prays for a quick recovery of those injured and expresses its sincere condolences to the families of the victims," the statement said.
In another development, nine personnel of the Afghan National Police (ANP) including the police chief of Waghaz district of the restive eastern Ghazni province were killed Tuesday night when a unit of police attempted to defuse a bomb planted near the government agency building in Waghaz district.
Taliban claimed responsibility.
Earlier Wednesday, the Interior Ministry in a separate statement confirmed that the Afghan police backed by the army and NATO-led force, eliminated 20 insurgents and captured 22 others across the war-ravaged country over the past 24 hours.
Separately, the Afghan police and the army after fierce fighting regain the control of a remote district in the country's eastern Nuristan, some 185 km east of Kabul on Tuesday night.
"Our forces are in Waygal district, they took full control of Waygal district late on Tuesday at about 23:00 local time (1830 GMT) Tuesday, and since now insurgents cannot intimidate people there anymore," Nuristan provincial governor Samim Nuristani told Xinhua.
In Waygal's neighboring Bargi Matal near the border with Pakistan, at least 50 insurgents have been killed and over 20 injured since a clash broke out there Saturday, Samim told Xinhua.
Meantime, a purported spokesman of Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid in talks with local media via cell phone from undisclosed location confirmed the incident, saying some of Taliban fighters have been killed in the fighting in the district and claimed that the Taliban also killed nine Afghan policemen and several foreign troops there in the attacks to gain control of the Bargi Matal district.
However, governor Nuristani said the operation is still continuing in Bargai Matal until the insurgents are removed.

Analysis: Afghan drought conditions could spell disaster
KABUL, 21 September 2011 (IRIN) - The current dry spell sweeping across Afghanistan’s northern, northeastern and western provinces could lead to a large-scale food crisis and the humanitarian community should act quickly to ensure this does not degenerate into a disaster, government and aid officials warn.
"The issue is very serious. Every other year drought or other natural disaster puts millions of people into food insecurity," Abdul Majeed Qarar, spokesman for the Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock Ministry, said.
According to Oxfam, nearly three million people are facing severe food shortages as a result of drought in 14 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Eighty percent of the non-irrigated wheat crop, which people rely on for food and income, has been lost.
“Governments need to wake up to the gravity of this crisis and ensure they are ready to respond before the situation gets worse,” Asuntha Charles, head of Oxfam in Afghanistan, said on 20 September. “Delays will just make things harder for families already struggling to cope… People are reducing the amount of food they are eating and selling what little they have. We still have time to stop this becoming a disaster, but only if we act now.”
Earlier this month, the Agriculture Ministry quoted a much lower figure for those affected, but started distributing assistance to 200,000 families in Sheberghan and Jowzjan provinces.
"Drought has caused a significantly lower cereal harvest this year which, according to initial surveys, will affect the lives and livelihoods of 1.3-1.5 million farmers and livestock owners all over the country,” Mohammad Asif Rahimi, minister for agriculture, irrigation and livestock, said.
Pastures in affected areas, according to Oxfam, have been completely destroyed and the price of animal fodder in the market has quadruped forcing people to sell livestock because they cannot feed them and need money to buy food for themselves.
Preliminary assessments
In July, Oxfam conducted a rapid assessment in the provinces of Badakhshan, Daykundi and Kandahar, and found that about 50 percent of pasture land had little or no grass or other vegetation.
A separate rapid assessment in early July by World Vision in the northwestern provinces of Badghis and Ghor found that lack of rain had seriously undermined the livelihoods of farmers and pastoralists, triggered stress and resulted in negative coping mechanisms like selling available food.
“Interventions around the introduction of improved varieties of seeds and livestock, diversification of funding sources and improved irrigation infrastructure are highly recommended to mitigate these recurring problems,” the assessment noted. “These will empower communities and thus reinforce the sustainability and resilience of households’ livelihoods.”
A more detailed assessment is being done by humanitarian actors across Afghanistan, and a clearer picture should emerge soon, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Afghanistan's average wheat yield on irrigated land ranges from about 2.7 tons per hectare to 3.5, versus only 1.1 tons on rain-fed land. In a normal year, the country produces 4.5 million tons of wheat and imports around one million, according to the Agriculture Ministry. The shortfall of 1.9 million tons of wheat this year means more will either have to be imported or secured from other sources.
Crop production across the country fluctuates because of seasonal natural disasters as well as surges of violence and insecurity.
But chronic emergencies, according to the UN humanitarian coordinator for Afghanistan, Michael Keating, could be avoided if addressed in a timely and sustainable way. In most cases, durable solutions such as drilling water holes, reinforcing existing dams or constructing embankments could ensure adverse situations were mitigated in future.
"Reducing the risk of these disasters is… a development issue requiring urgent attention," Keating said in a speech on World Humanitarian Day.
Conflict - a key factor
But in the face of continuing conflict, it becomes difficult to effectively operate, say observers in Kabul. “Billions of dollars have been sunk into Afghanistan in search of durable long-term solutions, but until the security question is solved, little can be achieved,” an international aid worker told IRIN.
A Food Security Risk Index of 196 countries released on 31 August by Maplecroft, rates Afghanistan number nine. It says the country faces extreme food insecurity and that a major driver of this is conflict and displacement.
Aid workers in Kabul say insecurity has also hindered access to those in need in various provinces of Afghanistan, killed farmers and livestock owners, and disrupted communities that used to be agriculturally productive.
In 2010, 2,777 civilians were killed, a 15 percent increase on 2009. The first six months of this year have been even more deadly, according to the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), with 1,462 civilians killed by mid-July. Some 80 percent of these deaths were attributed to anti-government elements.
“Afghan children, women and men continue to be killed and injured at an alarming rate,” said Staffan de Mistura, special representative of the UN Secretary-General. Improvised explosives and suicide attacks account for nearly half of all the civilian deaths and injuries.
“Even collecting data from some areas can be difficult,” said one NGO field worker in Kabul. “There are places that are so difficult to reach that the only information we get is second or third hand. The situation can be very unpredictable.”
New thinking needed
The complexities of the situation call for new thinking on the part of humanitarians, donors and government, observers say. This fact is not lost on the aid community.
"Afghans throughout the northern part of the country are facing a possible humanitarian crisis as they cope with drought conditions that have resulted in a 100 percent failure of the rain-fed crop in many areas," Keating said on 21 August. "Many households have lost 50 percent of their livestock due to a lack of animal feed and water."
"Humanitarian organizations must do a better job of assessing humanitarian needs, of organizing coordinated responses, of telling the Afghan humanitarian story," he added. "We also seek a continued commitment from donors to provide adequate support for the needs identified, including those related to the current drought situation."
According to NGOs ActionAid, Afghanaid, Concern Worldwide, Oxfam, Tearfund and ZOA Refugee Care, the priority responses should not just focus on immediate humanitarian needs, but also strengthen existing coping mechanisms and build community resilience.
"The international response to this crisis has been slow to get off the ground," the six NGOs said in a joint statement on 31 August. Planned interventions, they argue, should strengthen existing coping and local market structures - or risk exacerbating dependency on humanitarian aid and undermining local businesses.
"There has been limited support for the introduction of drought-resistant crops, for non-agriculture based livelihoods such as livestock, and for off-farm livelihoods," the NGOs noted.
Inadequate attention, they argue, had been paid to natural resource management, resulting in a situation whereby in many of the drought-affected areas, river water was available but not being used for irrigation because the necessary systems were not in place.
"Lessons must be learnt," they added, "if communities are to be assisted not only to recover from this current crisis but to increase their resilience to future shocks and in the long term reduce their dependency on humanitarian aid."

The private worry of US Marines in Afghanistan
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA - Associated Press
FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Afghanistan (AP) — It is a conversation, the military surgeon says, that every U.S. Marine has with his corpsman, the buddy who is first to treat him if he is wounded by an insurgent's bomb.
The Marine says, "'If I lose my manhood, then I don't want to live through it,'" according to Navy Lt. Richard Whitehead, surgeon for 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is fighting in one of the most treacherous combat areas of Afghanistan.
"They ask us not to save them if their 'junk' gets blown off," said Whitehead, using a slang term for genitals. "Usually, we laugh. We joke with them about it. At the same time, you know that you're going to treat them anyway."
This is a world of fear, resolve and dark humor that is mostly hidden from accounts of the human cost of the war in Afghanistan. American troops who patrol on foot in bomb-laced areas know they might lose a leg, or two, if they step in the wrong place. But for young men in their prime, most unmarried and without children, the prospect of losing their sexual organs seems even worse.
Whitehead said: "It's one of the areas we can't put a tourniquet on."
Sangin, the district of southern Afghanistan where the Marine battalion is based, was a Taliban stronghold for years. It has one of the highest concentrations of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in the country. Robust Marine operations in the past year have weakened the insurgency in Sangin, and troops now seek to build up the authority of local government and community leaders.
But elusive fighters routinely strike with booby traps on trails and around patrol bases. Lt. Col. Thomas Savage, the battalion commander, said there was a rough average of five IED strikes, finds or interdictions a day in Sangin, in Helmand province. Estimates vary, but some Marines say roughly one in 10 IEDs hits a target.
Sixteen of the battalion's Marines have died and at least 160 have been injured during a seven-month deployment that ends in October. Of those, about 90 were sent home because of the severity of their wounds, said Whitehead, the battalion surgeon. One lost both testicles, four Marines lost one testicle and two had penis injuries.
The U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany said it has treated 134 servicemen with one or more amputated limbs through July 31 this year, about 80 percent of the number that suffered similar injuries in all of 2010. Ninety of the 134 also had genital injuries, according to the center. Virtually all the troops were injured in Afghanistan.
Several months into the deployment, the Marines in Sangin were issued so-called "blast panties" or "ballistic boxers," British-made underwear made of densely woven silk that ends above the knee. The black garb resembles cycling shorts and can't stop shrapnel, but it protects against infection and the tight fit compresses flesh and offsets the impact of a blast wave, which separates skin from muscle.
"We'll get guys in here with all of the skin on their legs pushed up like a pair of loose pants around their waist," said Whitehead, of Pascagoula, Mississippi. "All that tissue is going to die. With the compression down around their knees, the blast wave stops."
Early on, some Marines complained the heavy underwear was hot and uncomfortable. It is now mandatory clothing, deemed as essential as gloves, helmets, plastic eyewear and other protective gear. Before a patrol, squad leaders check to make sure their men have it on.
A flap hanging from body armor around the torso also offers Marines some protection to the groin, which has major blood vessels. The sweepers, those who lead patrols with a metal detector, wear extra padding that loops between the legs. Some call it a "Kevlar diaper."
One of the first things that Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Richard Erfurth of Portland, Oregon does when he assists an injured comrade is check his groin. If all is well, he will reassure the wounded Marine by saying: "Your junk's still there."
Erfurth says the Marine usually appears relieved and says something like: "Sweet, dude."
This scenario, the medical specialists say, plays out even if an injured Marine has lost a foot or a leg. Troops in areas where IED attacks are common have become so accustomed to the prospect of extreme injury and amputation that a gruesome relativism takes over.
From one perspective, a Marine who loses a foot is lucky because he didn't lose the leg. If he lost the lower part of his leg, he's lucky because he didn't lose the knee, which enables an easier transition to a prosthetic leg. If he lost most of the leg, he's lucky because he still has the other one.
Losing genitals, however, is a "whole new ballgame," said the battalion's chaplain, Navy Lt. David Kim of Mineola, N.Y.
Marine Cpl. Robert Cole of Klamath Falls, Oregon, was blown up twice in this deployment, suffering a concussion both times and falling unconscious for a few minutes in the second attack. In each blast, men near him lost legs.
Cole said a close friend in his platoon lost a testicle as well as his legs in an IED strike in May, and is recuperating in the United States.
"He's dealing better with losing his legs than with losing his testicle," Cole said. He recalled that his friend, in a telephone conversation, paused awkwardly before mentioning his lost testicle. Two months after the blast, however, the injured friend had sex with his wife for the first time and they were both "bragging" about it, according to Cole.
The corporal said he once had tests for possible testicular cancer and that the results came back negative. After grappling with the private fear of losing his testicles, he believes more than ever that there should be open talk of a grievous, deeply personal injury that is often dodged in public discussions about casualties.
The topic has edged into popular culture. A fictional character in a U.S. television series, Sons of Anarchy, is called "Half-Sack" because he lost a testicle while serving in the Marines in the Iraq war.
Marines seem more likely to indulge in macabre humor about losing legs as a way to deflate the anxiety. At Camp Pendleton in California, a Marine scrawled "I am going to miss my legs" on the walls of a portable restroom before deploying to Afghanistan. Some Marines posted photos of their legs or feet on Facebook accounts.
There's a shorthand for the unfortunates now: "double amp," or "triple amp" if they lose an arm as well.
Such injuries are common in Afghanistan because insurgents bury bombs made with small amounts of homemade explosives. During the Iraq war, vast quantities of military-grade ordnance left over from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship were available to the insurgency. So massive bomb attacks there caused what medical specialists described as "total body disruption," instantly killing their targets.
"There's a mass of tissue laying there. ... You can't necessarily identify the head, shoulders," said surgeon Whitehead, a veteran of the Iraq war. "The charges here aren't meant to kill, they're meant to maim."
Dressed only in his protective underwear, tattoos across his torso, Staff Sgt. Rick Meyers of Riverbank, California, relaxed one evening on his cot at Forward Operating Base Jackson, the headquarters of the Marine battalion. He said men under his command don't succumb to fears of devastating injury.
"What is in your mind is making it not happen," he said.

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