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Mosque blast kills 12 in eastern Afghanistan
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Authorities in eastern Afghanistan say explosives transported by suspected Taliban fighters accidentally detonated while they were stopped at a mosque, killing 12 people.
Local official Qasim Desewal said Saturday that four civilians and eight militants died in the blast during evening prayers the night before in Ghazni province's district of Andar.
He said that the Taliban had apparently stopped at the mosque while traveling and the explosives they were carrying went off while they were inside.
The Ghazni explosion was on the same day as Taliban fighters supported by a suicide car bomb attacked a compound for international aid workers in the capital. Kabul police on Saturday raised the siege death toll from two to four, including a 6-year-old child, two compound guards and one policeman.
Aid Groups in Afghanistan Assess Security After Kabul Attack
By NATHAN HODGE And MARGHERITA STANCATI May 25, 2013, 12:01 p.m. ET The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—United Nations agencies and international aid groups in Afghanistan are assessing security after insurgents attacked the compound of a U.N.-affiliated agency Friday, raising concerns about the targeting of humanitarian workers.
U.N. officials and other international personnel remained locked down in their Kabul compounds as of midafternoon Saturday as a precautionary measure following Friday's attack, the latest assault of a spring offensive that has put the Afghan capital on edge.
The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the gates to the compound of the International Organization for Migration. That touched off a prolonged gunbattle between security forces and insurgent gunmen in the city's central Shahr-e Naw neighborhood that raged for over eight hours. According to a statement released Saturday by Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior, a six-year old child, an Afghan police officer and two Nepalese Gurkha security guards were killed in the fighting. At least 14 people were injured, and five insurgent gunmen were killed, in addition to the car bomber.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the intended target in the attack was a Central Intelligence Agency guesthouse. No known CIA facilities exist in the area, though such facilities are rarely publicly disclosed.
A Kabul-based security analyst and former Afghan Ministry of Interior official, Sami Sadat, said Friday's attack showed signs of an enfeebled Taliban.
"The fact that they couldn't tell the difference between a CIA guesthouse and the IOM compound shows that their system of command has been weakened, that it's no longer that effective," he said. "They are increasingly finding it difficult to recruit people to continue fighting, and this has brought disruption among the organization itself."
The IOM compound was badly damaged by heavy gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades and a fire that started at the compound. But Richard Danziger, the IOM's chief of mission in Afghanistan, said the organization would continue its work.
"We are planning on being fully open for business on Monday, depending on any particular security restrictions," he said.
Mr. Danziger said a foreign staff member who was seriously injured in Friday's attack is being treated in Europe, where she remains in critical condition. He praised Afghan police for their swift response: "The police got to the bunker and took our staff out under fire. They got them out and sent them to the Ministry of Interior."
Some 175 people work at IOM in Afghanistan. Most of the staff is Afghan.
A U.N. official said agencies were now re-evaluating their security situation, but added that the international community had expected attacks during the Taliban's spring offensive.
"Let's not try and think we are in a completely new situation from what we had two days ago," the official said. "Sadly enough, we had to expect that something could happen in some form or another."
Some organizations said they weren't changing the way they work. "Security was a big challenge and still it is, but we are here to help the Afghans," said Wahidullah Amani, a public information officer at the U.N. World Food Program in Afghanistan. "We are not changing our operations."
Others said they were waiting for more information on Friday's attack before shifting their security.
"We're watching the situation and waiting to hear more about how others are reacting—and to find out a little bit more about this incident," said Charles Davy, managing director for Afghanaid, an international nongovernmental organization that has worked in Afghanistan for 30 years.
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said preliminary investigations into the attack point to the involvement of the Haqqani network, a militant group with links to al Qaeda. Mr. Sediqqi said Afghan security forces were on high alert as they continue to search for possible affiliates of those behind Friday's attack.
He said he expected more attacks to follow, as the spring fighting season announced by the Taliban hits full swing.
"It seems to us that over the winter they had everything they possibly needed in terms of training, resources and explosives to carry out attacks in Kabul," said Mr. Sediqqi.
Smaller aid groups and nongovernmental organizations often maintain a very low profile in Afghanistan, in contrast to highly visible U.N. agencies. Lawrence Devlin, program manager for Peace Training and Research Organization, an Afghan nongovernmental organization that has a relatively small expatriate staff, said: "We're not really looking to change anything at the moment. Maybe we'll be more wary of going to some of the more high-profile institutions—but we have to wait to see if there are more attacks."
The head of a Kabul-based nongovernmental organization pointed to another worry: Criminal activity directed at foreigners and aid workers.
"The stuff that freaks out NGOs are criminal attacks," he said. "What terrifies us are kidnappings."
The NGO head added, however, that the attack on the IOM was a worrying development. "It confuses us that the IOM were a target somehow, because they are clearly a humanitarian organization; it scares us that the Taliban are considering them a target," he said.
Kabul remained on edge Saturday. The Afghan Interior Ministry said a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up after police surrounded the house where he was hiding in the Hindu Sozan neighborhood. No other casualties were reported in that incident.
In Ghazni province, west of Kabul, bombs placed near a mosque in Andar district exploded prematurely Friday evening, killing four civilians and eight insurgents, and injuring six other civilians, said Andar district Gov. Muhammad Qasim Desiwal. Two days earlier, a local Taliban commander and a bomb-maker were killed when the device they were building exploded, Mr. Desiwal added.
Several observers, however, said the most recent events demonstrated that Afghan security forces were proving more effective and more capable.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony Saturday for students of the American University of Afghanistan, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said: "They [the insurgents] failed. They were annihilated by the Afghan national police's quick reaction force, with no international involvement."
—Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.
Afghan security forces hailed after Kabul attack
By by Emal Haidary Agence-France Presse
The Afghan government on Saturday lauded its security forces for beating back a Taliban assault on central Kabul that left one policeman, two civilians and all four militants dead.
Explosions rocked the city for several hours on Friday after insurgents launched a coordinated suicide and gun attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The effectiveness of Afghan security forces is crucial to the government's ability to defeat the Taliban insurgency as NATO-led troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
The police, army and special forces are being trained up by the international coalition, but there are widespread fears that they will not be able to impose security after 12 years of war.
President Hamid Karzai issued a statement praising the "bravery, devotion and quick action of Afghan security forces who gunned down the terrorists and prevented more casualties."
Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told a news conference in Kabul that the operation had been "a great success".
"The attackers were brainwashed to kill our people... but our forces contained and killed them. There were four attackers with heavy and light weapons."
Sediqqi said one insurgent detonated himself at the entrance of the IOM compound at the start of fighting, which left several buildings destroyed or damaged by rocket-propelled grenades, gunfire and explosions.
"The gunmen moved to four other buildings. The fight continued till 11:00 pm, and the three remaining attackers were killed," he said.
The IOM, a UN-affiliated body that works to improve management of cross-border migration, said that doubts remained whether it was the specific target of the attack.
"It could have been an NDS (National Directorate of Security spy agency) building next door," IOM spokesman Richard Danziger told AFP.
The Taliban claimed the attack was against a guesthouse allegedly used by Afghan and US intelligence staff.
Danziger added that one Italian female staff member badly wounded by a grenade blast was evacuated to Europe overnight.
A total of 17 people were wounded, including seven Nepalese guards and one eight-year-old Afghan boy.
Also on Friday evening, a large explosion inside a mosque in Ghazni province killed eight Taliban and three civilians.
The provincial government said the bomb, hidden in fuel jugs, exploded accidentally when insurgents were praying with villagers.
The continuing threat to Kabul was underlined on Saturday when a suicide bomber killed himself in the south of the city as he was preparing explosives, police said.
Despite the dangers, young volunteers handed out 10,000 neon-pink "peace" balloons to Kabul residents in an art project organised by Yazmany Arboleda, a conceptual artist from New York.
"I tell people that this balloon is to bring a smile to your face," said Nargis Azaryoon, one of the volunteers.
Afghan policemen take positions in a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in Kabul on May 24, 2013. The Afghan government lauded its security forces Saturday for beating back a Taliban assault on central Kabul that left one policeman, two civilians and all four militants dead.
Afghan special forces arrive at the site of a clash between security forces and Taliban fighters in Kabul on May 24, 2013. Explosions rocked the city for several hours on Friday after insurgents launched a coordinated suicide and gun attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Terrorist networks based in Pakistan blamed for Kabul attack
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 25 May 2013, 9:06 pm Khaama Press
Afghan interior ministry on Saturday announced that coordinated attacks in capital Kabul was carried out by Taliban militants in coordination with the Haqqani Network.
The interior ministry urged international community to put pressure on the government of Pakistan to stop supporting insurgent groups in a bid to prevent increased violence in Afghanistan.
Sediq Sediq, spokesman for the interior ministry of Afghanistan told reporters, “The main sanctuaries based on the other side of the border in Pakistan should be destroyed. The interior community should increase pressures on the government of Pakistan specifically on its military so that Afghanistan remains safe from the threats of terrorism.”
According to interior ministry officials at least 3 people including an Afghan police officer were killed and 17 others were injured following the attack on Friday.
The officials futher added at least seven foreign nationals were also among those injured during the attacks.
Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediq also denied Taliban group’s statement which claimed that Taliban fighers had targeted a compound used by Central Intelligence Agency.
He said, “Taliban made the statement since they had no other reason after suicide bombers carried out the attack in residential area and in UN IOM office which is a charitabel organization.”
Taliban group in its statement said dozens of people based in CIA compound were killed following the attack.
Yesterday’s attack in capital Kabul was the second offensive carried out by militants during the past ten days. At least sixteen people were killed and nearly fourty others were injured in a suicide attack in Shah Shahid area last week.
Balloons bring smiles in war-weary Afghan capital
By AHMAD SEIR | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Artists and activists handed out 10,000 bright pink balloons to residents in Afghanistan's war-weary capital on Saturday, bringing smiles to surprised Kabul residents a day after a major Taliban siege on an international compound in the city.
Each balloon contains a written message of peace from volunteers around the world, said Colombian-American artist Yazmany Arboleda, who organized the "We Believe in Balloons" day.
More than 100 Afghan artists and other volunteers were up before dawn Saturday to put the messages inside and fill the balloons with helium. Then they took to the streets of downtown Kabul's riverfront to distribute them to passers-by.
The colorful spectacle clearly delighted many Afghans, even as the war with Taliban insurgents grinds into its 12th year since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban's hard-line regime.
Just the day before, a militant assault in the heart of Kabul killed four people plus the six attackers.
"This brings color to Afghanistan and I want to see my people smiling and happy," said 22-year-old Afghan volunteer Nargis Azaryun as she passed out the balloons. "We hope that by giving away 10,000 pink balloons, we will give this city 10,000 ideas of life beyond war."
Arboleda, who has launched similar events in India, Japan, and Kenya, said the Afghan version is important to allow the world to see the country's people, not just the conflict.
"I see this project as a platform that transforms the single story of catastrophe that the world sees in Afghanistan into multiple narratives that highlight our shared humanity," he said.
UK, Denmark eye visas for Afghan interpreters
Britain, Denmark to finalize relocation plans for Afghan interpreters who worked on front line
By Sylvia Hui, Associated Press Wed, May 22, 2013.
LONDON (AP) -- Britain and Denmark proposed Wednesday to give hundreds of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside their troops the right to settle in the U.K. and Denmark in recognition of the risks they face if they stay in their war-battered homeland.
The plans were welcomed by activists in Britain who had argued the U.K. was turning its back on Afghan interpreters and giving them a worse deal than Iraqis who had worked with British forces.
Britain, which contributes the second-largest number of troops to NATO's operation in Afghanistan after the U.S., is preparing to end its combat role there by the end of 2014. Prominent lawmakers and activists have called for Afghan interpreters to be offered settlement options and criticized the British government for failing to address or account for Taliban reprisals and other dangers.
"The prime minister has been very clear that we should not turn our backs on those who have trod the same path as our soldiers in Helmand, consistently putting their lives at risk to help our troops achieve their mission," a statement from Prime Minister David Cameron's office at Downing Street said Wednesday, referring to the volatile southern Helmand province.
The proposals would allow about 600 interpreters who have worked on the front lines in Afghanistan for more than a year to relocate to Britain on a five-year visa. Those who do not meet the requirement will get a training and education package with the Afghan security forces and wages equivalent to their current salary, or be given 18 months' salary.
"These proposals give them a choice: The opportunity to go on working in Afghanistan, learning new skills and to go on rebuilding their country, or to come and make a new start in Britain," Downing Street said.
In recent months, the Taliban have launched a fierce offensive against the Afghan government they want to overthrow, unleashing a wave of assassinations and bombings. Insurgents have also been attacking police positions around the country, seeking to seize territory and weaken the government before the pullout of most international troops from the country by the end of next year.
The statement appeared to signal a change of heart by Cameron, who earlier this month told reporters he believed most Afghan interpreters should stay in their country to help rebuild after years of conflict.
Those remarks hit a nerve in Britain, coming as tens of thousands of people signed a petition urging immediate asylum for Afghan translators and as lawyers for Afghan interpreters launched a legal bid challenging the U.K. government's decision not to give them the same assistance awarded to Iraqi interpreters.
Iraqis who qualified for assistance were eligible for a one-time package of financial assistance or exceptional indefinite leave to enter the U.K., outside normal immigration rules.
Downing Street said Wednesday that officials are expected to finalize the proposals for Afghan interpreters within days, but British media, quoting government sources, reported that the plans have already been approved.
Some welcomed Britain's move though others raised concerns that many interpreters who do not qualify for the plans may be left in danger.
Rosa Curling, a lawyer representing three Afghan interpreters who launched a court case on the issue, called the announcement a step in the right direction but said limiting the offer to front-line staff would offer no protection to Afghan translators who don't meet that criteria.
"These interpreters remain at risk from threats from the Taliban and to refuse them access to the same resettlement options would be unacceptable," she said.
Officials in Denmark, which deploys forces to Afghanistan under British command, also announced similar proposals Wednesday. Afghans who worked as interpreters for Danish forces in Helmand would be granted visas to Denmark, where they can apply for asylum, Defense Minister Nick Haekkerup said.
"We do not have a judicial responsibility but a moral obligation to help," Haekkerup said.
The minister had no estimate of how many Afghans would be affected.
Denmark is due to pull out of combat operations in Afghanistan in August, leaving 300 soldiers to train Afghan forces.
_____
Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd in London and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.
Police say at least 17 children burned to death after gas cylinder explodes on bus in Pakistan
The Associated Press By Riaz Khan May 25, 2013
Islamabad - At least 17 children were burned to death in eastern Pakistan on Saturday when a faulty gas cylinder exploded on the bus taking them to school, police said.
Police officer Mohammed Rasheed said seven children were also injured in the explosion on the outskirts of the city of Gujrat.
"This is a very sad incident. According to our information, at least 17 children were burned to death," he said. "The school bus caught fire after the blast. We have transported all the victims to a nearby hospital."
Gujrat is about 200 kilometres (120 miles) southeast of the capital, Islamabad.
The accident comes after a pair of suspected militant attacks killed nine people in two different areas of northwest Pakistan on Friday.
In the deadlier of the two attacks, suspected militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a police convoy in Mattani, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the main northwest city of Peshawar, killing six policemen and wounding seven others, said senior police officer Shafiullah Khan.
In the second attack on Friday, a suicide bomber walked up to a vehicle owned by an Afghan religious leader in Peshawar and set off his explosives, killing three people, said police officer Riaz Ali Shah.
The leader, Haji Hayatullah, was not harmed in the attack because he was in a nearby mosque attending Friday prayers. Hayatullah's driver and guard were killed, said Shah.
A passerby was also killed and two others were wounded, said Peshawar police chief Liaquat Ali Khan.
There are more than 1 million refugees in Pakistan from neighbouring Afghanistan.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Khaled Hosseini sets 'And the Mountains Echoed' against Afghan history
A father's decision to give his 3-year-old daughter to a wealthy family in Kabul begins an almost 60-year Afghan history lesson as recounted by the characters in Khaled Hosseini's newest novel.
Los Angles Times By Wendy Smith, Special to the Los Angeles Times May 23, 2013
Although Khaled Hosseini has lived in the United States since he was 15, he remains engaged in the struggles of his native Afghanistan, which he has made palpable for Western readers in two bestselling novels, "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns." His beautifully written, masterfully crafted new book, "And the Mountains Echoed," spans nearly 60 years of Afghan history as it investigates the consequences of a desperate act that scars two young lives and resonates through many others.
The novel opens in 1952, with a man on the eve of a journey telling his son and daughter a story about a villager forced to give his beloved youngest child to a malevolent div (or devil). Saboor is usually authoritarian and uncommunicative, but every now and then he delights 10-year-old Abdullah and 3-year-old Pari with tales of magic beings and far-off lands that temporarily liberate their father's imagination, beaten down by years of grinding labor and poverty.
The children learn the dreadful significance of this particular tale when they arrive in Kabul. Their Uncle Nabi has arranged for Pari to be adopted by his wealthy, childless employers, Suleiman and Nila Wahdati. The terrified girl is whisked away, screaming. Her devastated brother is taken home to their village, forbidden by his father even to cry. But this abandonment shatters Saboor as well; he never tells another story.
Each of the subsequent narratives unfolds from its predecessor, a technique that echoes the classic form of "A Thousand and One Nights." Though the novel is realistic in style, often grim in subject matter, the magic of storytelling infuses it with a tough sort of optimism, a faith that if people can't necessarily wrest happiness from a hard world, they can at least achieve understanding.
The chronology is fragmented and fluid as multiple, intricately interconnected narrators advance their personal stories within the larger drama of Afghanistan's ordeal. After Suleiman is crippled by a stroke in 1955, Nila leaves for Paris, seeking to free herself and Pari from the patriarchal restrictions imposed on Afghan women.
When we see them again in 1974, Nila's lies have erased Pari's past; she has been raised to believe she is this drunken, furious woman's biological daughter, and she doesn't remember her lost brother. Yet all her life Pari has been haunted by "the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence."
Nabi cares for Suleiman through the 1990s civil war and the Taliban's brutal rule, glimpsed in his account through the damage inflicted on the Wahdati home by rockets and looters. After Suleiman dies and bequeaths the house to him, Nabi donates it as a residence for medical personnel caring for injured children in the wake of the Taliban's expulsion.
In 2003, Idris and Timur, cousins who grew up down the street from this building, come to Kabul to reclaim the house their family abandoned during the Soviet invasion. The yawning gulf between these affluent Afghan-Americans and those who could not escape is scathingly revealed after they fly back to San Francisco, where a brief scene reintroduces Abdullah, now the gray-haired proprietor of a kebab house with a daughter named Pari. Promises to arrange surgery for an Afghan child disfigured by a deranged relative slowly evaporate in the California sunshine, though they are ultimately redeemed in an unexpected quarter.
The only chapter as discomfiting as this dissection of moral weakness — and just as good — returns the reader to Pari and Abdullah's childhood village in 2009. Hosseini depicts a boy slowly realizing that his adored father is not the village's benefactor, but a war criminal who has built a mansion on Saboor's land and killed the man with legal title to it. These two stark episodes counterpoint the novel's more numerous and more forgiving portraits of people hard-pressed by circumstance who make mistakes.
Mistakes have irrevocable consequences, as we see in the wrenching final chapter narrated by Abdullah's daughter, Pari, in 2010. Rediscovery of a stolen past can't undo the damage inflicted by fate and chance.
"And the Mountains Echoed" is painfully sad but also radiant with love: the enduring bond of a brother and sister; the irritable but bedrock connection of cousins; the quiet intimacy of master and servant who become friends; the commitment of a doctor and nurse to war's victims. To underscore love's centrality and contingency, Hosseini closes with an image drawn from a dream: a snapshot of bygone happiness all the more precious in retrospect because we know how fragile it is.
Smith is the author of "Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940," which will be reissued in July.
White House adviser on Afghanistan nominated as new US envoy to NATO
Stars and Stripes By John Vandiver May 24, 2013
Sturrgart, Germany - Retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who for the past six years has served as a White House adviser on Afghanistan, was nominated by President Barack Obama on Thursday to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to NATO.
If confirmed, Lute will replace current ambassador Ivo Daalder at the Brussels post, where the focus in the coming year will likely be on crafting drawdown plans in Afghanistan.
Daalder’s departure after a four-year stint as ambassador comes just weeks after the parting of Adm. James Stavridis, the soon-to-retire former NATO supreme allied commander. The two men and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who took over as commander of the international force in Afghanistan, were appointed at roughly the same time by the incoming Obama administration to conduct the NATO-led war.
During Daalder and Stavridis’ tenure, the U.S. surged into Afghanistan as part of an effort by the Obama administration to refocus efforts on the neglected “good war,” which critics say was under-resourced as a result of the military campaign in Iraq. While the U.S. boosted its troop presence in Afghanistan, U.S. officials also urged its European allies in NATO to bump up their troop contributions, getting mixed results in the process.
Now, as NATO shifts from a combat mission to one focused on training Afghan forces to provide for their own security, the question will be whether NATO’s security gains can hold in the years ahead. For Lute, and new SACEUR Gen. Philip Breedlove, the focus will be on pushing ahead with security transition plans while still maintaining enough of a troop presence to keep the training mission on course.
If confirmed, Lute also will serve at a time of instability in other areas of strategic concern for NATO. Chief among them is the ongoing civil war in Syria, where concerns over chemical weapons stockpiles, the growing presence of foreign fighters in the conflict and a widespread humanitarian crisis, threatens to destabilize the region.
Lute, who retired from the Army in 2010, brings more than 30 years of military experience to his new diplomatic post. Last year, Lute was even rumored to be under consideration by Obama for the position of SACEUR, which would have required the unusual step of a return to active duty.
Meanwhile, Daalder will take up a new position later this summer as president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a nonpartisan group focused on international affairs.
Michael Adebolajo's dangerous ignorance about Afghanistan
Al-Qaida's war will not end when Nato forces leave Afghanistan. If anything, terrorist attacks here in Britain could increase
Guardian By Richard Kemp 24 May 2013 13
Michael Adebolajo, the knife-wielding, blood-soaked brute who is suspected of killing Drummer Lee Rigby told passersby he was fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan. If that was the reason for Wednesday's attack on Drummer Lee Rigby, Adebolajo should have travelled to Helmand and started wielding his knife against Taliban fighters. It is they who kill most Muslims in Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations, 81% of civilian casualties were inflicted by the Taliban and their bedfellows in 2012, with only 8% caused by Afghan and coalition forces. This is roughly the pattern of previous years too. The overwhelming majority of the Taliban's victims were the result of deliberate targeting and indiscriminate use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks, some carried out by children.
Adebolajo seemingly has a track record with the group that loudly accused my own regiment, the Royal Anglians, of being child killers and "butchers of Basra" during a march through Luton to honour their return from Iraq in 2010. A regiment that had completed its six-month tour of duty without firing a shot in anger, and had protected many Iraqi Muslims from the depredations of extremist killers.
Of course, Iraq, Afghanistan and the "defence" of their brother Muslims in far-off lands are nothing more than feeble excuses for Islamists who follow al-Qaida's murderous agenda. Al-Qaida's earlier bombing campaigns in the 1990s – during which far more Muslims were killed than the westerners they were targeting – and 9/11 obviously pre-date the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
Their agenda is far wider. It is to remove western presence and influence from Islamic lands, impose fundamental theocratic rule on all Muslim countries and unite them under a restored Sunni caliphate as imagined from centuries past. Al-Qaida does not see this as a short-term project, but one that will be achieved only in generations to come. Its role is to drive inexorably towards this goal by mass killings intended to set community against community, and to gradually undermine the existing order through violence and economic destruction.
Al-Qaida's war will not end when Nato forces leave Afghanistan. Neither will its campaign in Britain. If anything, terrorist attacks here could increase. In Helmand, British soldiers have encountered Taliban fighters with Birmingham accents and bodies with Manchester United tattoos. Many British Muslims have travelled to Afghanistan for jihad. If that option reduces after 2014, some might turn their murderous attentions on their homeland.
That was true of Parviz Khan, a Birmingham man who was prevented from travelling abroad to fight and instead hatched a plot in 2007 to kidnap and behead a British soldier here at home.
Ironically, the rudimentary attack in Woolwich may be the result of increasing success by British and international security forces against Islamist terror networks and cells set up to execute more sophisticated plots. MI5 has thwarted dozens of serious terrorist plans here in the UK since 2001. Only last month, 24 people were convicted of terrorism-related offences in British courts. Al-Qaida Central, whose hand was previously behind many attack plans in Britain, has been sent reeling by wave after wave of highly effective US drone strikes in the Pakistan border areas, and are now in virtual survival mode.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an English-speaking al-Qaida leader, was the inspiration behind many recent terror plots in the UK. It is possible that the Woolwich killers were motivated by his exhortations to Muslims everywhere to launch whatever attacks they could with whatever weapons they had to hand. Though Awlaki's message continues to resonate among his followers, he was fortunately silenced by a US drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
There are unfortunately many more Awlakis out there. The continuing threat from Islamist terrorism shows how urgent it is that the government finds ways of shutting down the preachers of hate both here in Britain and on the internet. These mind-benders, who seek out the compliant and the vulnerable, are every bit as culpable as those who wield the knife or plant the bomb at their behest. We don't yet know whether Rigby's murderers were acting alone, but their attack required little planning, no finance, no support network and no special expertise other than merciless bloodlust. With few opportunities to collect intelligence via planning and communications, these are the most difficult terrorist attacks for our security services to prevent.Yet it seems that both suspects had previously been on MI5's radar. It is not the first time that the activities of those on the periphery of extremism have been disregarded by the security service, only to emerge in serious terrorist plots. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader
of the 2005 London suicide attacks, is a case in point. But the police and security service have to prioritise their operations against finite resources. The Woolwich attack raises the question: is increased funding needed to widen their net in an ever-evolving war on terror that has many decades yet to run?
Fighting by bullet and ballot in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Borhan Osman May 24, 2013
Last week, ten Afghans and six Americans were killed in one of this year's worst insurgent attacks. While the bombing in Kabul raised eyebrows around the world, it was not mainly because of its deadliness, but because of the group behind it -- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami (HIG).
Once one of the biggest players in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, HIG took an active role in the civil war of the 1990s and has since emerged as the second largest insurgent group in Afghanistan. Paradoxically, HIG is also a legal political party, whose members make up the largest voting bloc in parliament and are (at the least) former loyalists to Hekmatyar. Some HIG members even serve as governors, ministers and presidential advisors to President Hamid Karzai. HIG -- the political party -- has publically disassociated itself from Hekmatyar, but many Afghans remain unconvinced, suspecting members of retaining strong attachments to and respect for their charismatic, fugitive warlord leader. Moreover, the militant and political branches of HIG retain a common strand of an Islamist ideology.
However, the story gets more complex as the group's insurgent wing has repeatedly received a ‘red-carpet' welcome in the presidential palace, with Karzai shaking hands with the envoys. Parts of the Afghan press were therefore particularly scathing after last week's bombing, writing such headlines as "The crime of the guests of the Palace." Unlike the Taliban, who refuse to talk to the government, HIG's military wing has embraced direct negotiations with Kabul. It has sent 17 delegations to Kabul over the past three years, though talks were suspended last year. Since then, delegations have only met politicians, including former rivals, and Western generals and diplomats.
HIG stopped its talks with the government in May 2012 to protest the signing of the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. After last Thursday's attack, the group's spokesman told journalists it was in response to the Bilateral Security Agreement the United States and Afghanistan are currently negotiating. One of the key conditions of HIG's February 2012 peace offer has been that Kabul must refrain from signing any deal which allows foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014.
However, at the same time as ordering such a deadly attack, Hekmatyar has been saying positive things about next year's presidential elections and has suggested his party would participate by choosing a candidate to support.
What is one to make of all this?
First, despite Hekmatyar's claims, hostility to U.S.-Afghan security agreements does not seem to be the main driver of the group's continuing armed opposition to the government. A recent HIG communique and interviews conducted by this author with several of the warlord's confidants suggest he is frustrated with the failure of peace talks and also weary of his never-ending, never-winning armed struggle. This has led him to rethink his strategy.
One of the problems for Hekmatyar is that the government's priority in any peace talks is the Taliban, a group which is larger and deadlier. Hekmatyar, as a prize, may simply not be worth the hefty concessions he is demanding, especially since any peace deal with HIG would earn Karzai more animosity than praise from the group's many rivals, who make up a sizeable part of his government, the Afghan armed forces, and the political opposition.
Hekmatyar also faces different generational demands. For older party members who accompanied him from the 1980s through all the phases of the Afghan war, being kept out of the ruling political system yet again was too wearisome to contemplate, especially as the battlefield gave no hope of victory. This is why, says Muhammad Khan, deputy leader of the legal, political HIG party, many chose to "come in from the cold." According to Khan, the party currently has three cabinet ministers and 47 members of the upper and lower houses of parliament. Karzai has also appointed half a dozen "Hezbis" as provincial governors, with more becoming his high-profile advisors and ambassadors. However, younger members of the faction, who make up the bulk of the current HIG foot soldiers and are impressed by Hekmatyar's fiery language against the "Crusaders," believe the jihad must continue until all the foreign forces are out of Afghanistan and an Islamic state is established.
To keep his group intact, Hekmatyar has to keep all of these members happy, both the war-weary old-timers and the battle-hungry youngsters. This means reshaping his vision to include both political engagement in the 2014 presidential election and jihad against the foreign troops. He is trying to simultaneously promote his political aims through militancy and his military aims through politics. This is how last week's bombing and his latest statement (available only in Pashto), made on the 35th anniversary of the communists' coup d'etat, should be understood. In speaking about his new vision, Hekmatyar stated:
With this statement, Hekmatyar made a U-turn, forgetting his previous demand that a full withdrawal of foreign forces was a precondition for accepting the current political order. Now he says there needs to be a drawdown of international forces and elections to be held next year, both events due to happen regardless of HIG's involvement. However, it's worth noting here that he was utterly opposed to the two previous presidential elections, calling them "ridicule[s]" and dramas performed under the wings of "the occupation's fighter aircrafts which aims at rendering a false legitimacy to a puppet government."
To avoid looking like he has blatantly changed his mind, Hekmatyar even started telling a new narrative on the war by now referring to the 2014 withdrawal as the "inevitable defeat of the United States and NATO" and "the imminent victory of the mujahedin."
Hekmatyar has also "threatened" to win an overwhelming majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections in order to gain control of parliament and use its legislative power to expel all remaining foreign forces. In other words, he implies that his military goals could finally be achieved through politics. This mixed vision of completing the "liberation" of Afghanistan through democratic means and boasting of victory while still conducting attacks against the government looks designed to keep the foot soldiers loyal. The violence may also be aimed at getting leverage in negotiations. It is a threat to the government to take HIG and its peace overtures more seriously.
Hekmatyar's explicit approval of, and indeed, his intention to participate in the upcoming election may also be an attempt to retain ownership of the many longstanding associates who have grown weary of war, especially as more and more of them have slipped away from the armed wing to join the political process in Kabul. The latest and probably most important member to do this is Qutbuddin Helal, a former deputy prime minister from the mujahedin government in 1990s, who, until last year, was heading Hekmatyar's negotiation efforts.
According to HIG sources who spoke to this author, Helal has joined the government's reintegration program, allegedly in defiance of Hekmatyar's orders. Helal himself said he had not lost allegiance to Hekmatyar as his amir, but that he was now busy discussing a future political solution to the war with tribal elders and what he called "likeminded" parties. By basing himself in Kabul with such a mission, Helal has set up a new nexus of HIG in the capital, adding to the various other minor "breakaway" groups and heavyweights.
"Once a Hezbi, always a Hezbi," is a modern Afghan saying. Many Afghans believe that whatever name they operate under, even those Kabul-based Hezbis who are working in the government are loyal and will stay loyal to Hekmatyar to the end of their days. This suggests the "Amir's" apparent intention to enter electoral politics could unite all the various political groups, parties, and independent heavyweights who have their roots in HIG but have become scattered during the leader's almost two decade exile from Afghanistan.
However, any comeback, whether in Hekmatyar's own right -- which seems less likely -- or through a political party which explicitly speaks for him, would not be a smooth occurrence. He has bitter enemies among the former mujahedin, particularly from the Jamiat-e Islami group which, among others, fought a bitter civil war in the mid-1990s. Jamiat, a leading faction in the Northern Alliance, has done well in the post-2001 years, with ministers, governors, members of parliament, and a dominating presence in the Afghan security forces. In an attempt to pre-empt their opposition to Hekmatyar's return to politics, his representatives have met many of their old rivals over the past year, but it is unclear what success they've had.
What does seem clear is that Hekmatyar will only take up the government's invitation to insurgents to participate in next year's election if he can give up violence as a means to an end. For now, however, he seems to believe he can best further his party's interests by playing with both bullets and ballots.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Authorities in eastern Afghanistan say explosives transported by suspected Taliban fighters accidentally detonated while they were stopped at a mosque, killing 12 people.
Local official Qasim Desewal said Saturday that four civilians and eight militants died in the blast during evening prayers the night before in Ghazni province's district of Andar.
He said that the Taliban had apparently stopped at the mosque while traveling and the explosives they were carrying went off while they were inside.
The Ghazni explosion was on the same day as Taliban fighters supported by a suicide car bomb attacked a compound for international aid workers in the capital. Kabul police on Saturday raised the siege death toll from two to four, including a 6-year-old child, two compound guards and one policeman.
Aid Groups in Afghanistan Assess Security After Kabul Attack
By NATHAN HODGE And MARGHERITA STANCATI May 25, 2013, 12:01 p.m. ET The Wall Street Journal
KABUL—United Nations agencies and international aid groups in Afghanistan are assessing security after insurgents attacked the compound of a U.N.-affiliated agency Friday, raising concerns about the targeting of humanitarian workers.
U.N. officials and other international personnel remained locked down in their Kabul compounds as of midafternoon Saturday as a precautionary measure following Friday's attack, the latest assault of a spring offensive that has put the Afghan capital on edge.
The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the gates to the compound of the International Organization for Migration. That touched off a prolonged gunbattle between security forces and insurgent gunmen in the city's central Shahr-e Naw neighborhood that raged for over eight hours. According to a statement released Saturday by Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior, a six-year old child, an Afghan police officer and two Nepalese Gurkha security guards were killed in the fighting. At least 14 people were injured, and five insurgent gunmen were killed, in addition to the car bomber.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the intended target in the attack was a Central Intelligence Agency guesthouse. No known CIA facilities exist in the area, though such facilities are rarely publicly disclosed.
A Kabul-based security analyst and former Afghan Ministry of Interior official, Sami Sadat, said Friday's attack showed signs of an enfeebled Taliban.
"The fact that they couldn't tell the difference between a CIA guesthouse and the IOM compound shows that their system of command has been weakened, that it's no longer that effective," he said. "They are increasingly finding it difficult to recruit people to continue fighting, and this has brought disruption among the organization itself."
The IOM compound was badly damaged by heavy gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades and a fire that started at the compound. But Richard Danziger, the IOM's chief of mission in Afghanistan, said the organization would continue its work.
"We are planning on being fully open for business on Monday, depending on any particular security restrictions," he said.
Mr. Danziger said a foreign staff member who was seriously injured in Friday's attack is being treated in Europe, where she remains in critical condition. He praised Afghan police for their swift response: "The police got to the bunker and took our staff out under fire. They got them out and sent them to the Ministry of Interior."
Some 175 people work at IOM in Afghanistan. Most of the staff is Afghan.
A U.N. official said agencies were now re-evaluating their security situation, but added that the international community had expected attacks during the Taliban's spring offensive.
"Let's not try and think we are in a completely new situation from what we had two days ago," the official said. "Sadly enough, we had to expect that something could happen in some form or another."
Some organizations said they weren't changing the way they work. "Security was a big challenge and still it is, but we are here to help the Afghans," said Wahidullah Amani, a public information officer at the U.N. World Food Program in Afghanistan. "We are not changing our operations."
Others said they were waiting for more information on Friday's attack before shifting their security.
"We're watching the situation and waiting to hear more about how others are reacting—and to find out a little bit more about this incident," said Charles Davy, managing director for Afghanaid, an international nongovernmental organization that has worked in Afghanistan for 30 years.
Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said preliminary investigations into the attack point to the involvement of the Haqqani network, a militant group with links to al Qaeda. Mr. Sediqqi said Afghan security forces were on high alert as they continue to search for possible affiliates of those behind Friday's attack.
He said he expected more attacks to follow, as the spring fighting season announced by the Taliban hits full swing.
"It seems to us that over the winter they had everything they possibly needed in terms of training, resources and explosives to carry out attacks in Kabul," said Mr. Sediqqi.
Smaller aid groups and nongovernmental organizations often maintain a very low profile in Afghanistan, in contrast to highly visible U.N. agencies. Lawrence Devlin, program manager for Peace Training and Research Organization, an Afghan nongovernmental organization that has a relatively small expatriate staff, said: "We're not really looking to change anything at the moment. Maybe we'll be more wary of going to some of the more high-profile institutions—but we have to wait to see if there are more attacks."
The head of a Kabul-based nongovernmental organization pointed to another worry: Criminal activity directed at foreigners and aid workers.
"The stuff that freaks out NGOs are criminal attacks," he said. "What terrifies us are kidnappings."
The NGO head added, however, that the attack on the IOM was a worrying development. "It confuses us that the IOM were a target somehow, because they are clearly a humanitarian organization; it scares us that the Taliban are considering them a target," he said.
Kabul remained on edge Saturday. The Afghan Interior Ministry said a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up after police surrounded the house where he was hiding in the Hindu Sozan neighborhood. No other casualties were reported in that incident.
In Ghazni province, west of Kabul, bombs placed near a mosque in Andar district exploded prematurely Friday evening, killing four civilians and eight insurgents, and injuring six other civilians, said Andar district Gov. Muhammad Qasim Desiwal. Two days earlier, a local Taliban commander and a bomb-maker were killed when the device they were building exploded, Mr. Desiwal added.
Several observers, however, said the most recent events demonstrated that Afghan security forces were proving more effective and more capable.
Speaking at a graduation ceremony Saturday for students of the American University of Afghanistan, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said: "They [the insurgents] failed. They were annihilated by the Afghan national police's quick reaction force, with no international involvement."
—Ehsanullah Amiri contributed to this article.
Afghan security forces hailed after Kabul attack
By by Emal Haidary Agence-France Presse
The Afghan government on Saturday lauded its security forces for beating back a Taliban assault on central Kabul that left one policeman, two civilians and all four militants dead.
Explosions rocked the city for several hours on Friday after insurgents launched a coordinated suicide and gun attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The effectiveness of Afghan security forces is crucial to the government's ability to defeat the Taliban insurgency as NATO-led troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
The police, army and special forces are being trained up by the international coalition, but there are widespread fears that they will not be able to impose security after 12 years of war.
President Hamid Karzai issued a statement praising the "bravery, devotion and quick action of Afghan security forces who gunned down the terrorists and prevented more casualties."
Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told a news conference in Kabul that the operation had been "a great success".
"The attackers were brainwashed to kill our people... but our forces contained and killed them. There were four attackers with heavy and light weapons."
Sediqqi said one insurgent detonated himself at the entrance of the IOM compound at the start of fighting, which left several buildings destroyed or damaged by rocket-propelled grenades, gunfire and explosions.
"The gunmen moved to four other buildings. The fight continued till 11:00 pm, and the three remaining attackers were killed," he said.
The IOM, a UN-affiliated body that works to improve management of cross-border migration, said that doubts remained whether it was the specific target of the attack.
"It could have been an NDS (National Directorate of Security spy agency) building next door," IOM spokesman Richard Danziger told AFP.
The Taliban claimed the attack was against a guesthouse allegedly used by Afghan and US intelligence staff.
Danziger added that one Italian female staff member badly wounded by a grenade blast was evacuated to Europe overnight.
A total of 17 people were wounded, including seven Nepalese guards and one eight-year-old Afghan boy.
Also on Friday evening, a large explosion inside a mosque in Ghazni province killed eight Taliban and three civilians.
The provincial government said the bomb, hidden in fuel jugs, exploded accidentally when insurgents were praying with villagers.
The continuing threat to Kabul was underlined on Saturday when a suicide bomber killed himself in the south of the city as he was preparing explosives, police said.
Despite the dangers, young volunteers handed out 10,000 neon-pink "peace" balloons to Kabul residents in an art project organised by Yazmany Arboleda, a conceptual artist from New York.
"I tell people that this balloon is to bring a smile to your face," said Nargis Azaryoon, one of the volunteers.
Afghan policemen take positions in a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in Kabul on May 24, 2013. The Afghan government lauded its security forces Saturday for beating back a Taliban assault on central Kabul that left one policeman, two civilians and all four militants dead.
Afghan special forces arrive at the site of a clash between security forces and Taliban fighters in Kabul on May 24, 2013. Explosions rocked the city for several hours on Friday after insurgents launched a coordinated suicide and gun attack centred on a compound of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Terrorist networks based in Pakistan blamed for Kabul attack
By MIRWAIS ADEEL - 25 May 2013, 9:06 pm Khaama Press
Afghan interior ministry on Saturday announced that coordinated attacks in capital Kabul was carried out by Taliban militants in coordination with the Haqqani Network.
The interior ministry urged international community to put pressure on the government of Pakistan to stop supporting insurgent groups in a bid to prevent increased violence in Afghanistan.
Sediq Sediq, spokesman for the interior ministry of Afghanistan told reporters, “The main sanctuaries based on the other side of the border in Pakistan should be destroyed. The interior community should increase pressures on the government of Pakistan specifically on its military so that Afghanistan remains safe from the threats of terrorism.”
According to interior ministry officials at least 3 people including an Afghan police officer were killed and 17 others were injured following the attack on Friday.
The officials futher added at least seven foreign nationals were also among those injured during the attacks.
Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediq also denied Taliban group’s statement which claimed that Taliban fighers had targeted a compound used by Central Intelligence Agency.
He said, “Taliban made the statement since they had no other reason after suicide bombers carried out the attack in residential area and in UN IOM office which is a charitabel organization.”
Taliban group in its statement said dozens of people based in CIA compound were killed following the attack.
Yesterday’s attack in capital Kabul was the second offensive carried out by militants during the past ten days. At least sixteen people were killed and nearly fourty others were injured in a suicide attack in Shah Shahid area last week.
Balloons bring smiles in war-weary Afghan capital
By AHMAD SEIR | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Artists and activists handed out 10,000 bright pink balloons to residents in Afghanistan's war-weary capital on Saturday, bringing smiles to surprised Kabul residents a day after a major Taliban siege on an international compound in the city.
Each balloon contains a written message of peace from volunteers around the world, said Colombian-American artist Yazmany Arboleda, who organized the "We Believe in Balloons" day.
More than 100 Afghan artists and other volunteers were up before dawn Saturday to put the messages inside and fill the balloons with helium. Then they took to the streets of downtown Kabul's riverfront to distribute them to passers-by.
The colorful spectacle clearly delighted many Afghans, even as the war with Taliban insurgents grinds into its 12th year since the U.S.-led invasion that ousted the Taliban's hard-line regime.
Just the day before, a militant assault in the heart of Kabul killed four people plus the six attackers.
"This brings color to Afghanistan and I want to see my people smiling and happy," said 22-year-old Afghan volunteer Nargis Azaryun as she passed out the balloons. "We hope that by giving away 10,000 pink balloons, we will give this city 10,000 ideas of life beyond war."
Arboleda, who has launched similar events in India, Japan, and Kenya, said the Afghan version is important to allow the world to see the country's people, not just the conflict.
"I see this project as a platform that transforms the single story of catastrophe that the world sees in Afghanistan into multiple narratives that highlight our shared humanity," he said.
UK, Denmark eye visas for Afghan interpreters
Britain, Denmark to finalize relocation plans for Afghan interpreters who worked on front line
By Sylvia Hui, Associated Press Wed, May 22, 2013.
LONDON (AP) -- Britain and Denmark proposed Wednesday to give hundreds of Afghan interpreters who worked alongside their troops the right to settle in the U.K. and Denmark in recognition of the risks they face if they stay in their war-battered homeland.
The plans were welcomed by activists in Britain who had argued the U.K. was turning its back on Afghan interpreters and giving them a worse deal than Iraqis who had worked with British forces.
Britain, which contributes the second-largest number of troops to NATO's operation in Afghanistan after the U.S., is preparing to end its combat role there by the end of 2014. Prominent lawmakers and activists have called for Afghan interpreters to be offered settlement options and criticized the British government for failing to address or account for Taliban reprisals and other dangers.
"The prime minister has been very clear that we should not turn our backs on those who have trod the same path as our soldiers in Helmand, consistently putting their lives at risk to help our troops achieve their mission," a statement from Prime Minister David Cameron's office at Downing Street said Wednesday, referring to the volatile southern Helmand province.
The proposals would allow about 600 interpreters who have worked on the front lines in Afghanistan for more than a year to relocate to Britain on a five-year visa. Those who do not meet the requirement will get a training and education package with the Afghan security forces and wages equivalent to their current salary, or be given 18 months' salary.
"These proposals give them a choice: The opportunity to go on working in Afghanistan, learning new skills and to go on rebuilding their country, or to come and make a new start in Britain," Downing Street said.
In recent months, the Taliban have launched a fierce offensive against the Afghan government they want to overthrow, unleashing a wave of assassinations and bombings. Insurgents have also been attacking police positions around the country, seeking to seize territory and weaken the government before the pullout of most international troops from the country by the end of next year.
The statement appeared to signal a change of heart by Cameron, who earlier this month told reporters he believed most Afghan interpreters should stay in their country to help rebuild after years of conflict.
Those remarks hit a nerve in Britain, coming as tens of thousands of people signed a petition urging immediate asylum for Afghan translators and as lawyers for Afghan interpreters launched a legal bid challenging the U.K. government's decision not to give them the same assistance awarded to Iraqi interpreters.
Iraqis who qualified for assistance were eligible for a one-time package of financial assistance or exceptional indefinite leave to enter the U.K., outside normal immigration rules.
Downing Street said Wednesday that officials are expected to finalize the proposals for Afghan interpreters within days, but British media, quoting government sources, reported that the plans have already been approved.
Some welcomed Britain's move though others raised concerns that many interpreters who do not qualify for the plans may be left in danger.
Rosa Curling, a lawyer representing three Afghan interpreters who launched a court case on the issue, called the announcement a step in the right direction but said limiting the offer to front-line staff would offer no protection to Afghan translators who don't meet that criteria.
"These interpreters remain at risk from threats from the Taliban and to refuse them access to the same resettlement options would be unacceptable," she said.
Officials in Denmark, which deploys forces to Afghanistan under British command, also announced similar proposals Wednesday. Afghans who worked as interpreters for Danish forces in Helmand would be granted visas to Denmark, where they can apply for asylum, Defense Minister Nick Haekkerup said.
"We do not have a judicial responsibility but a moral obligation to help," Haekkerup said.
The minister had no estimate of how many Afghans would be affected.
Denmark is due to pull out of combat operations in Afghanistan in August, leaving 300 soldiers to train Afghan forces.
_____
Associated Press writers Cassandra Vinograd in London and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen contributed to this report.
Police say at least 17 children burned to death after gas cylinder explodes on bus in Pakistan
The Associated Press By Riaz Khan May 25, 2013
Islamabad - At least 17 children were burned to death in eastern Pakistan on Saturday when a faulty gas cylinder exploded on the bus taking them to school, police said.
Police officer Mohammed Rasheed said seven children were also injured in the explosion on the outskirts of the city of Gujrat.
"This is a very sad incident. According to our information, at least 17 children were burned to death," he said. "The school bus caught fire after the blast. We have transported all the victims to a nearby hospital."
Gujrat is about 200 kilometres (120 miles) southeast of the capital, Islamabad.
The accident comes after a pair of suspected militant attacks killed nine people in two different areas of northwest Pakistan on Friday.
In the deadlier of the two attacks, suspected militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a police convoy in Mattani, 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of the main northwest city of Peshawar, killing six policemen and wounding seven others, said senior police officer Shafiullah Khan.
In the second attack on Friday, a suicide bomber walked up to a vehicle owned by an Afghan religious leader in Peshawar and set off his explosives, killing three people, said police officer Riaz Ali Shah.
The leader, Haji Hayatullah, was not harmed in the attack because he was in a nearby mosque attending Friday prayers. Hayatullah's driver and guard were killed, said Shah.
A passerby was also killed and two others were wounded, said Peshawar police chief Liaquat Ali Khan.
There are more than 1 million refugees in Pakistan from neighbouring Afghanistan.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
Khaled Hosseini sets 'And the Mountains Echoed' against Afghan history
A father's decision to give his 3-year-old daughter to a wealthy family in Kabul begins an almost 60-year Afghan history lesson as recounted by the characters in Khaled Hosseini's newest novel.
Los Angles Times By Wendy Smith, Special to the Los Angeles Times May 23, 2013
Although Khaled Hosseini has lived in the United States since he was 15, he remains engaged in the struggles of his native Afghanistan, which he has made palpable for Western readers in two bestselling novels, "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns." His beautifully written, masterfully crafted new book, "And the Mountains Echoed," spans nearly 60 years of Afghan history as it investigates the consequences of a desperate act that scars two young lives and resonates through many others.
The novel opens in 1952, with a man on the eve of a journey telling his son and daughter a story about a villager forced to give his beloved youngest child to a malevolent div (or devil). Saboor is usually authoritarian and uncommunicative, but every now and then he delights 10-year-old Abdullah and 3-year-old Pari with tales of magic beings and far-off lands that temporarily liberate their father's imagination, beaten down by years of grinding labor and poverty.
The children learn the dreadful significance of this particular tale when they arrive in Kabul. Their Uncle Nabi has arranged for Pari to be adopted by his wealthy, childless employers, Suleiman and Nila Wahdati. The terrified girl is whisked away, screaming. Her devastated brother is taken home to their village, forbidden by his father even to cry. But this abandonment shatters Saboor as well; he never tells another story.
Each of the subsequent narratives unfolds from its predecessor, a technique that echoes the classic form of "A Thousand and One Nights." Though the novel is realistic in style, often grim in subject matter, the magic of storytelling infuses it with a tough sort of optimism, a faith that if people can't necessarily wrest happiness from a hard world, they can at least achieve understanding.
The chronology is fragmented and fluid as multiple, intricately interconnected narrators advance their personal stories within the larger drama of Afghanistan's ordeal. After Suleiman is crippled by a stroke in 1955, Nila leaves for Paris, seeking to free herself and Pari from the patriarchal restrictions imposed on Afghan women.
When we see them again in 1974, Nila's lies have erased Pari's past; she has been raised to believe she is this drunken, furious woman's biological daughter, and she doesn't remember her lost brother. Yet all her life Pari has been haunted by "the absence of something, or someone, fundamental to her own existence."
Nabi cares for Suleiman through the 1990s civil war and the Taliban's brutal rule, glimpsed in his account through the damage inflicted on the Wahdati home by rockets and looters. After Suleiman dies and bequeaths the house to him, Nabi donates it as a residence for medical personnel caring for injured children in the wake of the Taliban's expulsion.
In 2003, Idris and Timur, cousins who grew up down the street from this building, come to Kabul to reclaim the house their family abandoned during the Soviet invasion. The yawning gulf between these affluent Afghan-Americans and those who could not escape is scathingly revealed after they fly back to San Francisco, where a brief scene reintroduces Abdullah, now the gray-haired proprietor of a kebab house with a daughter named Pari. Promises to arrange surgery for an Afghan child disfigured by a deranged relative slowly evaporate in the California sunshine, though they are ultimately redeemed in an unexpected quarter.
The only chapter as discomfiting as this dissection of moral weakness — and just as good — returns the reader to Pari and Abdullah's childhood village in 2009. Hosseini depicts a boy slowly realizing that his adored father is not the village's benefactor, but a war criminal who has built a mansion on Saboor's land and killed the man with legal title to it. These two stark episodes counterpoint the novel's more numerous and more forgiving portraits of people hard-pressed by circumstance who make mistakes.
Mistakes have irrevocable consequences, as we see in the wrenching final chapter narrated by Abdullah's daughter, Pari, in 2010. Rediscovery of a stolen past can't undo the damage inflicted by fate and chance.
"And the Mountains Echoed" is painfully sad but also radiant with love: the enduring bond of a brother and sister; the irritable but bedrock connection of cousins; the quiet intimacy of master and servant who become friends; the commitment of a doctor and nurse to war's victims. To underscore love's centrality and contingency, Hosseini closes with an image drawn from a dream: a snapshot of bygone happiness all the more precious in retrospect because we know how fragile it is.
Smith is the author of "Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940," which will be reissued in July.
White House adviser on Afghanistan nominated as new US envoy to NATO
Stars and Stripes By John Vandiver May 24, 2013
Sturrgart, Germany - Retired Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who for the past six years has served as a White House adviser on Afghanistan, was nominated by President Barack Obama on Thursday to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to NATO.
If confirmed, Lute will replace current ambassador Ivo Daalder at the Brussels post, where the focus in the coming year will likely be on crafting drawdown plans in Afghanistan.
Daalder’s departure after a four-year stint as ambassador comes just weeks after the parting of Adm. James Stavridis, the soon-to-retire former NATO supreme allied commander. The two men and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who took over as commander of the international force in Afghanistan, were appointed at roughly the same time by the incoming Obama administration to conduct the NATO-led war.
During Daalder and Stavridis’ tenure, the U.S. surged into Afghanistan as part of an effort by the Obama administration to refocus efforts on the neglected “good war,” which critics say was under-resourced as a result of the military campaign in Iraq. While the U.S. boosted its troop presence in Afghanistan, U.S. officials also urged its European allies in NATO to bump up their troop contributions, getting mixed results in the process.
Now, as NATO shifts from a combat mission to one focused on training Afghan forces to provide for their own security, the question will be whether NATO’s security gains can hold in the years ahead. For Lute, and new SACEUR Gen. Philip Breedlove, the focus will be on pushing ahead with security transition plans while still maintaining enough of a troop presence to keep the training mission on course.
If confirmed, Lute also will serve at a time of instability in other areas of strategic concern for NATO. Chief among them is the ongoing civil war in Syria, where concerns over chemical weapons stockpiles, the growing presence of foreign fighters in the conflict and a widespread humanitarian crisis, threatens to destabilize the region.
Lute, who retired from the Army in 2010, brings more than 30 years of military experience to his new diplomatic post. Last year, Lute was even rumored to be under consideration by Obama for the position of SACEUR, which would have required the unusual step of a return to active duty.
Meanwhile, Daalder will take up a new position later this summer as president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a nonpartisan group focused on international affairs.
Michael Adebolajo's dangerous ignorance about Afghanistan
Al-Qaida's war will not end when Nato forces leave Afghanistan. If anything, terrorist attacks here in Britain could increase
Guardian By Richard Kemp 24 May 2013 13
Michael Adebolajo, the knife-wielding, blood-soaked brute who is suspected of killing Drummer Lee Rigby told passersby he was fed up with people killing Muslims in Afghanistan. If that was the reason for Wednesday's attack on Drummer Lee Rigby, Adebolajo should have travelled to Helmand and started wielding his knife against Taliban fighters. It is they who kill most Muslims in Afghanistan.
According to the United Nations, 81% of civilian casualties were inflicted by the Taliban and their bedfellows in 2012, with only 8% caused by Afghan and coalition forces. This is roughly the pattern of previous years too. The overwhelming majority of the Taliban's victims were the result of deliberate targeting and indiscriminate use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks, some carried out by children.
Adebolajo seemingly has a track record with the group that loudly accused my own regiment, the Royal Anglians, of being child killers and "butchers of Basra" during a march through Luton to honour their return from Iraq in 2010. A regiment that had completed its six-month tour of duty without firing a shot in anger, and had protected many Iraqi Muslims from the depredations of extremist killers.
Of course, Iraq, Afghanistan and the "defence" of their brother Muslims in far-off lands are nothing more than feeble excuses for Islamists who follow al-Qaida's murderous agenda. Al-Qaida's earlier bombing campaigns in the 1990s – during which far more Muslims were killed than the westerners they were targeting – and 9/11 obviously pre-date the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
Their agenda is far wider. It is to remove western presence and influence from Islamic lands, impose fundamental theocratic rule on all Muslim countries and unite them under a restored Sunni caliphate as imagined from centuries past. Al-Qaida does not see this as a short-term project, but one that will be achieved only in generations to come. Its role is to drive inexorably towards this goal by mass killings intended to set community against community, and to gradually undermine the existing order through violence and economic destruction.
Al-Qaida's war will not end when Nato forces leave Afghanistan. Neither will its campaign in Britain. If anything, terrorist attacks here could increase. In Helmand, British soldiers have encountered Taliban fighters with Birmingham accents and bodies with Manchester United tattoos. Many British Muslims have travelled to Afghanistan for jihad. If that option reduces after 2014, some might turn their murderous attentions on their homeland.
That was true of Parviz Khan, a Birmingham man who was prevented from travelling abroad to fight and instead hatched a plot in 2007 to kidnap and behead a British soldier here at home.
Ironically, the rudimentary attack in Woolwich may be the result of increasing success by British and international security forces against Islamist terror networks and cells set up to execute more sophisticated plots. MI5 has thwarted dozens of serious terrorist plans here in the UK since 2001. Only last month, 24 people were convicted of terrorism-related offences in British courts. Al-Qaida Central, whose hand was previously behind many attack plans in Britain, has been sent reeling by wave after wave of highly effective US drone strikes in the Pakistan border areas, and are now in virtual survival mode.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an English-speaking al-Qaida leader, was the inspiration behind many recent terror plots in the UK. It is possible that the Woolwich killers were motivated by his exhortations to Muslims everywhere to launch whatever attacks they could with whatever weapons they had to hand. Though Awlaki's message continues to resonate among his followers, he was fortunately silenced by a US drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
There are unfortunately many more Awlakis out there. The continuing threat from Islamist terrorism shows how urgent it is that the government finds ways of shutting down the preachers of hate both here in Britain and on the internet. These mind-benders, who seek out the compliant and the vulnerable, are every bit as culpable as those who wield the knife or plant the bomb at their behest. We don't yet know whether Rigby's murderers were acting alone, but their attack required little planning, no finance, no support network and no special expertise other than merciless bloodlust. With few opportunities to collect intelligence via planning and communications, these are the most difficult terrorist attacks for our security services to prevent.Yet it seems that both suspects had previously been on MI5's radar. It is not the first time that the activities of those on the periphery of extremism have been disregarded by the security service, only to emerge in serious terrorist plots. Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader
of the 2005 London suicide attacks, is a case in point. But the police and security service have to prioritise their operations against finite resources. The Woolwich attack raises the question: is increased funding needed to widen their net in an ever-evolving war on terror that has many decades yet to run?
Fighting by bullet and ballot in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy By Borhan Osman May 24, 2013
Last week, ten Afghans and six Americans were killed in one of this year's worst insurgent attacks. While the bombing in Kabul raised eyebrows around the world, it was not mainly because of its deadliness, but because of the group behind it -- Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-e Islami (HIG).
Once one of the biggest players in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s, HIG took an active role in the civil war of the 1990s and has since emerged as the second largest insurgent group in Afghanistan. Paradoxically, HIG is also a legal political party, whose members make up the largest voting bloc in parliament and are (at the least) former loyalists to Hekmatyar. Some HIG members even serve as governors, ministers and presidential advisors to President Hamid Karzai. HIG -- the political party -- has publically disassociated itself from Hekmatyar, but many Afghans remain unconvinced, suspecting members of retaining strong attachments to and respect for their charismatic, fugitive warlord leader. Moreover, the militant and political branches of HIG retain a common strand of an Islamist ideology.
However, the story gets more complex as the group's insurgent wing has repeatedly received a ‘red-carpet' welcome in the presidential palace, with Karzai shaking hands with the envoys. Parts of the Afghan press were therefore particularly scathing after last week's bombing, writing such headlines as "The crime of the guests of the Palace." Unlike the Taliban, who refuse to talk to the government, HIG's military wing has embraced direct negotiations with Kabul. It has sent 17 delegations to Kabul over the past three years, though talks were suspended last year. Since then, delegations have only met politicians, including former rivals, and Western generals and diplomats.
HIG stopped its talks with the government in May 2012 to protest the signing of the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement. After last Thursday's attack, the group's spokesman told journalists it was in response to the Bilateral Security Agreement the United States and Afghanistan are currently negotiating. One of the key conditions of HIG's February 2012 peace offer has been that Kabul must refrain from signing any deal which allows foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan after 2014.
However, at the same time as ordering such a deadly attack, Hekmatyar has been saying positive things about next year's presidential elections and has suggested his party would participate by choosing a candidate to support.
What is one to make of all this?
First, despite Hekmatyar's claims, hostility to U.S.-Afghan security agreements does not seem to be the main driver of the group's continuing armed opposition to the government. A recent HIG communique and interviews conducted by this author with several of the warlord's confidants suggest he is frustrated with the failure of peace talks and also weary of his never-ending, never-winning armed struggle. This has led him to rethink his strategy.
One of the problems for Hekmatyar is that the government's priority in any peace talks is the Taliban, a group which is larger and deadlier. Hekmatyar, as a prize, may simply not be worth the hefty concessions he is demanding, especially since any peace deal with HIG would earn Karzai more animosity than praise from the group's many rivals, who make up a sizeable part of his government, the Afghan armed forces, and the political opposition.
Hekmatyar also faces different generational demands. For older party members who accompanied him from the 1980s through all the phases of the Afghan war, being kept out of the ruling political system yet again was too wearisome to contemplate, especially as the battlefield gave no hope of victory. This is why, says Muhammad Khan, deputy leader of the legal, political HIG party, many chose to "come in from the cold." According to Khan, the party currently has three cabinet ministers and 47 members of the upper and lower houses of parliament. Karzai has also appointed half a dozen "Hezbis" as provincial governors, with more becoming his high-profile advisors and ambassadors. However, younger members of the faction, who make up the bulk of the current HIG foot soldiers and are impressed by Hekmatyar's fiery language against the "Crusaders," believe the jihad must continue until all the foreign forces are out of Afghanistan and an Islamic state is established.
To keep his group intact, Hekmatyar has to keep all of these members happy, both the war-weary old-timers and the battle-hungry youngsters. This means reshaping his vision to include both political engagement in the 2014 presidential election and jihad against the foreign troops. He is trying to simultaneously promote his political aims through militancy and his military aims through politics. This is how last week's bombing and his latest statement (available only in Pashto), made on the 35th anniversary of the communists' coup d'etat, should be understood. In speaking about his new vision, Hekmatyar stated:
With this statement, Hekmatyar made a U-turn, forgetting his previous demand that a full withdrawal of foreign forces was a precondition for accepting the current political order. Now he says there needs to be a drawdown of international forces and elections to be held next year, both events due to happen regardless of HIG's involvement. However, it's worth noting here that he was utterly opposed to the two previous presidential elections, calling them "ridicule[s]" and dramas performed under the wings of "the occupation's fighter aircrafts which aims at rendering a false legitimacy to a puppet government."
To avoid looking like he has blatantly changed his mind, Hekmatyar even started telling a new narrative on the war by now referring to the 2014 withdrawal as the "inevitable defeat of the United States and NATO" and "the imminent victory of the mujahedin."
Hekmatyar has also "threatened" to win an overwhelming majority in the 2015 parliamentary elections in order to gain control of parliament and use its legislative power to expel all remaining foreign forces. In other words, he implies that his military goals could finally be achieved through politics. This mixed vision of completing the "liberation" of Afghanistan through democratic means and boasting of victory while still conducting attacks against the government looks designed to keep the foot soldiers loyal. The violence may also be aimed at getting leverage in negotiations. It is a threat to the government to take HIG and its peace overtures more seriously.
Hekmatyar's explicit approval of, and indeed, his intention to participate in the upcoming election may also be an attempt to retain ownership of the many longstanding associates who have grown weary of war, especially as more and more of them have slipped away from the armed wing to join the political process in Kabul. The latest and probably most important member to do this is Qutbuddin Helal, a former deputy prime minister from the mujahedin government in 1990s, who, until last year, was heading Hekmatyar's negotiation efforts.
According to HIG sources who spoke to this author, Helal has joined the government's reintegration program, allegedly in defiance of Hekmatyar's orders. Helal himself said he had not lost allegiance to Hekmatyar as his amir, but that he was now busy discussing a future political solution to the war with tribal elders and what he called "likeminded" parties. By basing himself in Kabul with such a mission, Helal has set up a new nexus of HIG in the capital, adding to the various other minor "breakaway" groups and heavyweights.
"Once a Hezbi, always a Hezbi," is a modern Afghan saying. Many Afghans believe that whatever name they operate under, even those Kabul-based Hezbis who are working in the government are loyal and will stay loyal to Hekmatyar to the end of their days. This suggests the "Amir's" apparent intention to enter electoral politics could unite all the various political groups, parties, and independent heavyweights who have their roots in HIG but have become scattered during the leader's almost two decade exile from Afghanistan.
However, any comeback, whether in Hekmatyar's own right -- which seems less likely -- or through a political party which explicitly speaks for him, would not be a smooth occurrence. He has bitter enemies among the former mujahedin, particularly from the Jamiat-e Islami group which, among others, fought a bitter civil war in the mid-1990s. Jamiat, a leading faction in the Northern Alliance, has done well in the post-2001 years, with ministers, governors, members of parliament, and a dominating presence in the Afghan security forces. In an attempt to pre-empt their opposition to Hekmatyar's return to politics, his representatives have met many of their old rivals over the past year, but it is unclear what success they've had.
What does seem clear is that Hekmatyar will only take up the government's invitation to insurgents to participate in next year's election if he can give up violence as a means to an end. For now, however, he seems to believe he can best further his party's interests by playing with both bullets and ballots.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com