Taliban Hint At Softer Line In Talks With Afghan Leaders

After years of deriding Afghanistan’s government and army as corrupt tools of Western occupiers, the Taliban have begun publicly airing a softer vision for the country’s future, with senior insurgent leaders saying the militants are willing to govern alongside other Afghan factions and even to adopt the current American-financed army as their own.
That message was delivered over the past few days by Taliban envoys during private meetings with Afghan officials and opposition politicians near Paris, according to officials close to the talks, and the softer approach has been echoed in recent interviews with Taliban figures loyal to the group’s nominal leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar. Together, it is the furthest that the Taliban’s senior leadership has gone to express in some official way that the group would be willing to operate as a mainstream Afghan political faction rather than aiming to return as conquering rulers after the end of the NATO combat mission in 2014.
But with the Taliban there are always questions.
The group is increasingly divided by power struggles, according to some Western officials and Afghans close to the Taliban, and there has sometimes seemed to be a disconnect between conciliatory statements from the top and the aggression of field commanders. As well, Afghan and American officials trying to open peace talks with the Taliban have long struggled with whether any offer of compromise could be seen as legitimate or just tactical maneuvering to gain public support.

Still, the new statements offer the tantalizing prospect of a Taliban leadership that is ready to talk, even if many of its aims are out of line with the Afghan government and its Western allies.
That willingness may be in part because of a still-unfolding feud at the group’s top levels, according to recent interviews with a senior Taliban commander and another Afghan man close to the group. Those two men, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say that the Taliban’s hard-line military commander, Mullah Abdul Quyyum Zakir, a former detainee at the American detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, is being pushed aside in favor of more moderate rivals.
Mullah Zakir is seen as a fighter with little vision for finding a way to peacefully end the war, and he faces growing criticism over a series of setbacks in recent years at the hands of coalition forces whose raids are said to have cut deeply into the ranks of the group’s field commanders.
Many of the surviving field commanders have openly complained that Mullah Zakir is unwilling or unable to aid their fight, the two men said. As a group, those lower-level figures still hold sway in the Taliban: their unhappiness at learning the Taliban’s leadership was engaged in a nascent peace process with the United States this year helped scuttle that effort.
Vying to replace Mullah Zakir is the Taliban’s logistics chief, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who also serves as Mullah Omar’s second deputy. He is considered a relative moderate within the movement, the men said.
In one indication that Mullah Mansour holds the upper hand, it was a pair of his loyalists — Shahabuddin Delawar and Muhammad Naim — who represented the Taliban at the conference outside Paris on Thursday and Friday, said the Afghan man close to the Taliban.
At the conference, and in interviews, Taliban officials offered a vision of a Taliban ready to govern again, but in harmony with the current Afghan government structure, even if they still hate President Hamid Karzai and his allies. The senior Taliban official said, for instance, that the militants would be willing to offer a general amnesty to those who have fought against them, allowing the continuation of the current army and national police force that the United States has spent $39 billion to build and supply. The militants also envision retaining many of the government institutions the West put in place.
In an obvious attempt to answer some of the harshest criticism of the group’s brutal rule from 1996 through 2001, the envoys said that in a new Taliban-led government, women would have the chance to go to school in “an Islamic way,” according to the text of a speech the envoys delivered in France that the Taliban sent to news organizations on Saturday.
The senior Taliban official, in a recent interview, said the shift had the backing of Mullah Omar and it reflected a growing understanding among the movement’s leaders that as Afghanistan has changed, so must they.
“We realize we cannot run Afghanistan without the support of educated people, and we will not be tough as we were,” the senior Taliban official said.
But persuading Afghans — especially those of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic groups who suffered heavily at the Taliban’s hands — that the group might abandon its autocratic and brutal ways is a tall order. Gen. Atiqullah Baryalai, a prominent member of the Northern Alliance that battled the Taliban in the 1990s and that now makes up the core of Afghanistan’s political opposition, characterized the Taliban’s overtures as “propaganda.”
Although he said it was positive that the Taliban were showing a willingness to talk, he added: “I don’t think the Taliban are honest with what they said there in Paris. It is more about publicity, and about avoiding progress.”
The Taliban do appear willing to go only so far in reaching out to current rivals. In the speech delivered in France, the Taliban envoys bluntly declared: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — the Taliban’s formal name for itself — “is a legitimate fact. It is still the legitimate government.”
As well, some of the group’s central demands still appear to be no-go propositions for Mr. Karzai’s government and American officials. The Taliban still demand that all Western military forces, even advisers, leave Afghanistan after the formal end of the Western military mission in 2014. The group also demands that the country’s Constitution be rewritten along strictly Islamic lines. The current Constitution recognizes Islam as the primary arbiter of the country’s laws, and Afghan and American officials have said they are willing only to see it amended, not rewritten.
The Taliban also appeared to reiterate their refusal to negotiate with Mr. Karzai’s government, and they said that they would consider the scheduled elections in 2014 meaningless because the country would still be under foreign occupation.
“These elections, laws and administrative affairs were designed based on foreigners’ demands,” according to the envoys’ statement.
But, at the same time, it does appear that the Taliban are backing off a demand that they negotiate solely with the United States, and they appear increasingly open to working with other political groups to run the country.
“Mullah Omar has frequently insisted that we do not seek a monopoly on political power, and we want a government of all Afghans in our beloved country,” the Taliban statement said.
There was no immediate reaction from the Karzai administration to Saturday’s statement. A senior Western official who works in Kabul said that the Taliban “do seem like they are inching toward where the international community and the Afghan government would like to see them.” But, the official cautioned, “I think it is always smart to not be too optimistic. This is a slow process.”

Security forces kill 5 Uzbek terrorist in encounter in Peshawar

Terrorists hid in a newly constructed house in Pawka village where police found 7 bombs, after 6 hour encounter police & security forces killed 7 terrorists . Two terrorist died after using explosive suicide jackets.

Tattoo seen on back of a terrorist killed today in Peshawar. TTP had accepted the responsibility for the attack.

Time to identify the real enimies.

 

Taliban Says Bombers And Spies Forced French Retreat

A network of informers, exploitation of popular dissent and the ability to strike at vulnerable moments helped hasten the end of France's combat mission in Afghanistan, according to a Taliban commander.
French troops rolled out of Kapisa province on Tuesday, ending one of the largest NATO combat missions in Afghanistan two years early, 10 months to the day since Afghan soldier Abdul Sabor shot dead five French colleagues.
The Taliban regularly take credit for "green-on-blue" attacks, but while Sabor's links to insurgents have never been confirmed, his actions left a profound impact on French troops on the ground and political will at home.
France entered Kapisa province and its neighbouring Surobi district in Afghanistan's northeast in 2007. Home to mafia, Taliban, and Hezb-e-Islami fighters with a toxic hatred of "invaders", they were in for a rough welcome.
"(The French) were not aware of the ground conditions. When there is a direct fight, we know exactly how to trap our enemies in the mountains, just like we did with the Soviets," says Bilal, a Taliban commander in Kapisa.
In August 2008, shortly after arriving in Surobi, 10 soldiers were killed in an ambush. At the time, it was the deadliest ground attack suffered by NATO in Afghanistan.

Seen as working for the Americans, whose invasion brought down the 1996-2001 Taliban regime, the French quickly lost any goodwill they once enjoyed among mujahedeen for charity work in the 1980s.
On top of the homemade bombs, ambushes and suicide attacks, the rebels claim to control a large network of informers, including Afghan soldiers working with NATO who support the Islamist uprising in secret.
"As soon as the French were moving in Kapisa or Surobi, we were aware of it," said Bilal, who claims to have up to 200 men at his disposal.
A Taliban exile speaking to AFP in Pakistan confirmed the same thing.
"We have informers inside bases everywhere," Bilal added. If they wanted a suicide bomber they called a specific number to inform central command.
The bomber would then arrive.
"Nobody knows where he comes from. It's our master weapon," said Bilal.
The rate of French fatalities quickly escalated. There were three in 2007, 11 in 2008 and 2009, 16 in 2010, 26 in 2011 and 10 so far in 2012, the majority in Kapisa.
The insurgents, whom the Afghan army estimates in Kapisa to number 250 in winter and 500 in summer, were on paper overwhelmed by the 2,500 French soldiers.
But in Paris, politicians worried about the bloodshed and started to discuss early retreat. Opponents thought it too risky to alienate their allies.
Others argued it made perfect financial sense against a backdrop of the euro crisis (the Afghan mission cost 500 million euros, or $642 million) in 2012.
After a suicide attack killed five soldiers on July 13, 2011, the French were told to stop going deep into the countryside. By autumn, Bilal says they "stayed in their bases and rarely went to towns".
Then Afghan police and soldiers stepped up attacks on NATO colleagues, although it remains unclear how many were directly dispatched by the Taliban.
"We sometimes identify soldiers who could potentially carry such attacks. We contact them through their family and convince them," said Bilal.
Shortly after Sabor shot five French colleagues out jogging on a military base, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy announced that French soldiers would withdraw in 2013, a year earlier than the deadline set by NATO.
In May, his successor Francois Hollande brought the date forward to 2012.
The French army says it had "no suspicion" of an insurgent infiltration.
But some facts remain troubling.
Such as the suicide bomber who killed four French soldiers on June 9, apparently lying in wait and blowing himself up as soon as the French soldiers got out of a vehicle only moments after arriving in a village.
The French are committed to development projects in Kapisa until 2016, and apparently the rebels do not rule out accepting them back.
"We're expecting France to contribute to peace and stability in the region, but with no strings attached. The end of combat doesn't meant we are going to cut all links," said Hezb-e-Islami spokesman Ghairat Baheer.

Pakistani Taliban to target media organisations: Report

Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakimullah Mehsud has issued special directives to operatives for taking action against international and national media organizations in different cities of Pakistan, reports BBC Urdu.
An official of the interior ministry, on the condition of anonymity told BBC that agencies recorded a telephonic conversation between Mehsud and a Taliban operative Nadeem Abbas alias Intiqami where the former was giving directives to the latter on taking action against media organizations.
Mehsud, according to the interior ministry, was directing Abbas to target media organizations and personnel  in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi and other cities who were criticizing the Taliban for attacking Malala Yousufzai.
The Taliban have been targeted with severe criticism and condemnation for attacking the 14-year-old child activist by Pakistan and other countries.
After listening to the conversation the government has directed all media organizations, especially international media organizations to tighten security around their offices and has directed concerned authorities to do the same for these organizations.

The Taliban have threatened media organizations through emails and telephonic conversations as well.
The government has directed authorities to station heavy contingents of police in areas where there are important media organizations and if need be, they can request the government for stationing Frontier Constabulary (FC) too.

Taliban Will Face a Very Strong Afghan Force in 2014: NATO

Undeterred by the recent spurt in insiders attacks in Afghanistan, NATO has said Taliban will miscalculate the situation if they think their situation will be better by the end of 2014, because they will be faced with a very strong and capable Afghan security force.

"They will not be in a stronger position. When we (will) stop our combat mission, a very capable Afghan security force will take over. We are building up the number of Afghan security forces and by 2014, we will have 352,000 Afghan forces. And more importantly, quality-wise they will be very capable," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.

In an interview to popular Charlie Rose show of PBS News, Rasmussen said he was very "impressed" by seeing Afghan forces in action during his last visit to the country.

Asserting that NATO's security transition in Afghanistan remains on track and there is no change in its strategy, Rasmussen said NATO has outlined a clear roadmap for a gradual handover of responsibility to the Afghan security forces.

"We have 50 countries in our ISAF coalition -- 28 NATO allies and 22 partners -- and we have agreed on a roadmap according to which we will gradually hand over lead responsibility to the Afghans," he said.

He stressed that the attacks will not derail its strategy in Afghanistan, but termed them as matter of "great concern."


"People ask, and legitimately so, why is it that we send trainers to help the Afghans and they turn their weapons against the very same trainers? These insider attacks threaten to undermine trust and confidence between foreign troops and Afghan security forces," he said.

NATO commanders on the ground have introduced some temporary measures to prevent the attacks under which NATO forces will not conduct joint operations with Afghan security forces, Rasmussen said.

"But these are prudent and temporary and I would expect these joint operations to be resumed as soon as the situation allows. And the timetable is still realistic, despite these temporary measures," he said, adding that he expects joint operations to be resumed as soon as the situation allows.

"The fact is that we continue partnered operations at the level of battalions and above. So basically, we continue the strategy to train and educate Afghan security forces. There's no change of strategy," he said.

On Pakistan, he said relationship with Islamabad is a bit problematic due to unresolved issue regarding stepping up fight against terrorist in border region of the country.

"The border region is really a big challenge. Whenever we engage with the Pakistani government and military, we encourage them to step up fight against terrorists and extremists in the region. It remains an unsolved problem," Rasmussen said.

He, however, pressed for a strong partnership with Pakistan find a solution to these border issues.

The United States lost hope of reaching an agreement with the Taliban

American civilian and military leaders say they have almost abandoned the idea to get one day a peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The New York Times reports that world leaders will work to prepare the ground for Afghans to reach a peace agreement between them after the bulk of coalition forces have left the country in 2014.

"I do not see it happen in the next two years (peace agreement). This is a very strong enemy, and I will not tell you it is not. It is a constant battle, and it will be for many years to come. "Said a senior officer of the coalition.

The inability to properly negotiate with the Taliban leadership emphasizes the low gains of the coalition, and especially during the upsurge in the number of U.S. troops arrived in 2009. While additional troops were able to reclaim several territories occupied by the Taliban, they failed to launch the coup de grace.

The Obama administration, however, consider a prisoner exchange to reopen negotiations which stopped abruptly in March.

A few days ago, a researcher signed a report / story of the end of the mission and wrote that if nothing was done, the Taliban would regain control of much of the country once foreign troops have left the area 2014.

Since their takeover of the country between 1994 and 1997, the Taliban had to change their entire political strategy during the U.S. invasion of 2001. The strict application of Sharia law with many taboos (film, television, dance, boxing, etc.)., The Taliban have become the protectors of poppy cultivation and rural life have waived the prohibition music and the compulsory wearing of beards.

Afghanistan bans Pakistan newspapers over Taliban support

Afghanistan has moved to block the entry of all newspapers from Pakistan, saying they serve Taliban militants.

In its order, the interior ministry said the newspapers "are a propaganda resource of the Taliban spokesmen" and has ordered police forces in east Afghanistan to confiscate all copies.
The latest move comes amid increasing tension between the two countries.
Afghanistan has urged Pakistan to immediately stop shelling in the border province of Kunar.
The Afghan interior ministry order focuses specifically on blocking entry of the papers at Torkham, a busy border crossing.
It authorises police to impound Pakistani newspapers in the three eastern provinces of Nangarhar, Kunar and Nuristan.
Referring to the reasons for the move, the ministry said news in the Pakistani newspapers "is not based in reality and it is creating concerns for our countrymen in the eastern provinces Afghanistan".
'Sensitive issue'
Correspondents say that cross-border violence has become a highly sensitive issue in Afghanistan, where many are wary of Pakistan's historic ties to the Taliban.
At a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul said the attacks had killed dozens of civilians.
The UN says around 4,000 people have been displaced due to cross-border shelling.
Last month, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, agreed to send a joint military delegation to examine the shelling across their border.
Islamabad says that the violence is being carried out by Pakistani Taliban fighters sheltering in Afghanistan, who have infiltrated the border to resume attacks on its security forces.
Pakistan says it is only targeting militants who flee from their territory and try to seek a safe haven in Afghanistan.

Taliban Shifts To High-Profile Strikes, Killings

As U.S. and NATO forces have evicted insurgents from a broad swath of southern Afghanistan, senior Taliban commanders have shifted toward a new battlefield strategy, one less focused on reclaiming lost territory and more on winning the next phase of the 11-year-old war.

U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Taliban commanders, driven by a combination of desperation and savvy, have started assigning more of their suicide fighters to conduct audacious attacks against prominent targets across the country, including the U.S. Embassy and well-fortified NATO bases.

Insurgent leaders, they say, have redoubled a campaign to assassinate key Afghan government and security officials who are likely to play leadership roles in the country once foreign troops depart. And by happenstance or meticulous planning - U.S. military officials are not sure which - the Taliban has managed to kill numerous Western troops by joining the ranks of the Afghan army.

"The Taliban are fighting a political war while the United States and its allies are still fighting a tactical military war," said Joshua Foust, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who has worked in Afghanistan and is now a fellow with the American Security Project. "We remain focused on terrain. They are focused on attacking the transition process and seizing the narrative of victory."

The impact of the strategic shift, which has occurred gradually over the past year, has been profound. The high-profile assaults and assassinations have prompted new doubts among Afghans about the ability of their government and security forces to keep the insurgents at bay once NATO's combat mission ends in 2014. The infiltration of the security forces led the top allied operational commander in Kabul on Monday to order extraordinary new restrictions on joint patrols and other missions, a move that strikes at the heart of the U.S. and NATO strategy to operate in closer partnership with Afghan soldiers.

U.S. officials said the new rules, which require high-level approval for partnered operations, also resulted from concern about possible attacks on American and NATO forces by Afghan troops enraged by reports of a controversial anti-Islam video produced in the United States. The officials said the operational commander will probably ease the restrictions in coming days if tensions over the video subside.

"Protecting the force for the moment protects the mission and the campaign later," said a senior U.S. official in Kabul, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal military decision-making.

The official said the pause in joint operations also will enable allied forces to implement new protection measures intended to defend against insider attacks resulting from Taliban infiltration, which account for about a quarter of all "green on blue" killings. Fifty-one foreign troops have been killed in insider attacks this year.

U.S. commanders have urged the Afghan Defense Ministry to take more aggressive actions to vet its troops for possible links to the Taliban. Until recently, the ministry resisted placing officers from the country's intelligence service in army battalions to ferret out insurgents in the ranks.

It is not clear to U.S. military and intelligence officials whether the Taliban had long-standing plans to place sleeper agents within the Afghan security forces. If it did, some have wondered why the Taliban did not activate them sooner.

Regardless of how long the plans may have been in the works, U.S. officials think that Taliban leaders quickly sought to seize an opportunity to undermine confidence in the NATO mission. The infiltration was relatively easy, the officials said, because the Defense Ministry did little vetting, in part because of pressure from the American military to grow the Afghan army as quickly as possible.

The Taliban "made a decision at a senior level" to sneak into the security forces, said Alex Strick van Linschoten, an Afghanistan-based researcher who has co-written two books about the Taliban. "There wouldn't be so many of them if this wasn't officially sanctioned policy."

Senior military officers said new force-protection measures will probably reduce the number of deaths from such attacks, but they acknowledged that insider assaults will remain a danger on the battlefield, just as roadside bombs are. "It's not going to stop," one U.S. general said. "But we're not going to let these attacks get in the way of what we need to do."

American commanders are fond of citing data that they think show major progress against the Taliban: From Jan. 1 to Aug. 31, enemy-initiated attacks dropped 5 percent compared with the same period last year; makeshift-bomb detonations have fallen 15 percent. Large parts of the south that once were teeming with insurgents now are relatively stable, although small bands of Taliban fighters continue to attack U.S. forces and reassert themselves, but with less vigor than a few years ago.

Even the southern city of Kandahar, once a key Taliban battleground, has been free of major attacks over the past few months, save for an audacious attempt to assassinate the provincial police chief with a 400-pound bomb packed into a fuel truck.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called the insider attacks a "last-gasp effort" by the Taliban. Speaking during a visit to Beijing, he said the insurgents are trying "to create chaos because they have been unable to regain any of the territory that they have lost."

U.S. commanders have offered a similar reaction to the Taliban's other attempts to assert itself. Although the assassination campaign has claimed several key figures, including former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and police commander Daoud Daoud, Afghan government officials are still coming to work and performing their jobs. And, the commanders note, the high-profile assaults have usually been tactical failures that have resulted in most of the attackers being killed.

Even suicide bombings, horrific as they are, do not bring life to a halt in Kabul or other cities. On Tuesday morning, the Hezb-i-Islami militant group, which has not been a major player in much of the recent violence, asserted responsibility for a suicide car bombing near the Kabul airport that killed 12 people, nine of them foreigners working for an air-charter company serving the U.S. Agency for International Development. A few hours later, traffic clogged nearby roads.

"The attacks give the perception that all of Afghanistan is like this, when that couldn't be further from the truth," the senior U.S. official in Kabul said.

One of the most significant Taliban attacks occurred Friday, when 15 well-trained insurgents clad in U.S. Army uniforms breached the perimeter of a large NATO air base in southwestern Afghanistan.

They made it all the way to the flight line, where they killed two U.S. Marines, including a lieutenant colonel who commanded an aviation squadron, and destroyed six AV-8B Harrier jets and other equipment worth an estimated $200 million. The attack, which constituted the greatest single loss of allied materiel in the war, took out 7 percent of the Marine Corps' overall fleet of combat Harriers.
"It's a wake-up call," the U.S. general said. "They're saying, 'Hey, we're still here.' "

By demonstrating "the ability to strike at will against heavily guarded fortifications," Foust said, "it shakes confidence, and it obscures the coalition's metrics. Overall Taliban attacks may be down, but it doesn't look that way to the Afghans - or the American people."

To some military officials and independent analysts, the Taliban's strategic shift suggests not just an adaptable adversary but greater involvement in the planning of attacks by elements of Pakistan's intelligence service, which have long aided the Taliban.

Most of the recent high-profile attacks in Kabul, and many of the assassinations of senior Afghan leaders, have been conducted by fighters from the Pakistan-based Haqqani network. The officials and analysts see signs that the Haqqanis may be working more closely with the principal Taliban faction, led by the movement's reclusive leader, Mohammad Omar.

The attack on the NATO base over the weekend "outstrips the ability of Mullah Omar to coordinate all of it," said Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War who tracks the Haqqani network. "Clearly there's someone in the background pulling the puppet strings."

So far, shifts in the Taliban's strategy have not led the White House to halt troop reductions - all of the surge forces are scheduled to depart by the end of this month, leaving about 68,000 U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan - but the pattern of violence could affect how the winner of the presidential election chooses to adjust troop levels next year.

Regardless of how that decision plays out, the Taliban does not appear headed for defeat anytime soon. Large stretches of southern and eastern Afghanistan still remain in the grip of Omar's faction or the Haqqanis, and incipient peace talks with the Afghan government do not appear to have gained traction.

"They know they're not in a terrible place," Dressler said. "They can lose every tactical battle, but they're trumping it by winning the strategic narrative and the waiting game."

Insurgents Posed as U.S. Troops to Strike at NATO Air Base

Insurgent fighters wearing U.S. Army uniforms breached the defenses of the main British-run air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday. Firing guns and rockets and apparently triggering suicide vests, the attackers killed two U.S. Marines and damaged or destroyed several hangars and fueling facilities. Before they were all killed or captured, the insurgents also managed to destroy six U.S. Marine Corps jet fighters and “significantly” damage two others, landing a shocking blow against NATO air power in the region.

The attack on Camp Bastion, in restive Helmand province, came after the Taliban vowed to take revenge for the release by a mysterious U.S. filmmaker of an inflammatory, albeit amateurish, movie mocking the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The insurgent group had also threatened to kill or capture the U.K.’s Prince Harry, who recently deployed to Camp Bastion as an Apache helicopter pilot. The prince “was never in any danger,” NATO’s International Security Assistance Force stated.

The assailants’ true motives are impossible to verify. In any event, the attack underscores the Afghan insurgency’s boldness and striking power in the waning years of the U.S.-led NATO intervention.

The assault began “shortly after 10:00 p.m.” when “approximately 15″ insurgents — organized in three teams and wearing American uniforms — “penetrated at one point of the perimeter fence” and “executed a well-coordinated attack against the airfield,” according to ISAF. The Harrier jump jets destroyed or damaged in the assault had been parked out in the open on the flightline, the alliance stated.

The Harriers reportedly belonged to Marine Attack Squadron 211, based in Yuma, Arizona. VMA-211 had shifted its Harrier jump jets to Bastion from nearby Kandahar in July, in order to better support the British troops and Marines operating from Bastion. Harrier squadrons typically deploy with 10 jets, meaning all but two of VMA-211′s planes are now out of action. Despite this, ISAF unconvincingly insisted there would be “no impact to ground or air operations from Camp Bastion.”

Startlingly, the six destroyed Harriers represent no less than 1/15th of the Marines’ entire inventory of the versatile, vertical-landing jets. The F-35B version of the stealthy Joint Strike Fighter is slated to replace the Harrier over the next 15 years.

Nine NATO personnel — eight military and one civilian — were injured in addition to the two Marines who died. One of those killed was from VMA-211, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. Base defenders killed 14 of the attackers and captured one. “This information is subject to change as new details become available,” ISAF warned.

The Bastion attack is not the first time insurgents have targeted NATO aircraft. Last month a rocket damaged an Air Force C-17 cargo plane assigned to carry Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey on his Afghanistan tour. Two maintainers were injured in that strike. And in 2005 a rocket barrage aimed at Kandahar Air Field destroyed a British Harrier and damaged another.

Nor is Friday’s attack the first perpetrated by insurgents disguised as U.S. troops. In 2010, following a spate of such attacks, the Pentagon ordered the Army to begin treating stocks of uniforms as “sensitive”and remove them from “pilferable” ground resupply convoys moving through Pakistan. “There is evidence that the enemy is using pilfered out-garment uniform items to gain a tactical advantage,” the Pentagon warned.

It’s unclear to what extent that advantage factored into the Bastion attack. In any event, the death and destruction wrought on a heavily-defended NATO base by just 15 determined attackers is a chilling reminder of the insurgency’s enduring potency.

U.N. Says Taliban Raised $400 Million Last Year

The Taliban raised about $400 million last year from sources that included donations, taxing local economies and extorting money from such targets as drug dealers, cellphone operators and aid projects, a U.N. report on the militant Islamist group said.


The report to the U.N. Security Council by the sanctions monitoring team said that about $275 million of that income reached Taliban leadership and the rest was collected, spent or misappropriated at the local level.

Sharifs on TTP hit list, says secret report

Several leading politicians, including Pakistan Muslim League –Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif, are on the potential hit-list of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), according to an intelligence report circulated among law enforcement agencies.

Also appearing on the list are Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Fakhar Imam and the head of the Shia Ulema Council Pakistan Allama Sajid Naqvi. The report, citing plans of TTP Punjab’s commander Matiur Rehman and his associates, also spoke of terror plots being hatched by the group in Punjab. For instance, it warned of a possible suicide attack on the police force in order to free their jailed comrades who were implicated in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009.

One of the suspects in the attack, Qari Waqas, who is imprisoned in Kot Lakhpat Jail, is said to be in constant touch with the TTP, providing them with the dates of the court hearings. The alleged attack is likely to be carried out while the police would be taking him to the court hearing.
The report stated that the group was also involved in kidnapping wealthy businessmen, in particular those from the Ahmadi community in Lahore.
Another intelligence report revealed that members of the TTP were planning attacks on prominent Shia leaders residing in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad and surrounding areas. Prominent hotels, VIPs, foreigners and other sensitive locations in the twin cities and Lahore are also on the targeted list.
Terrorists are also alleged to be preparing for a strike in retaliation for any military operation launched in North Waziristan Agency.

US puts Haqqanis on terrorists list, no impact on Pakistan

The United States on Friday designated the Haqqani network a foreign terrorist organisation but said the action will have no impact on Pakistan.
The State Department also said that they have “no plan, whatsoever, to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism.”
State Department officials told a briefing in Washington that Pakistan had been informed of the intended move “at least weeks before the decision was announced, if not more.”
And the Pakistani government expressed no reservations or objection to the US decision, the officials said.
In a statement issued by her office, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:
“Today, I have sent a report to Congress saying that the Haqqani Network meets the statutory criteria of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). This action meets the requirements of the Haqqani Network Terrorist Designation Act of 2012 (P.L. 112-168). Based on that assessment, I notified Congress of my intent to designate the Haqqani Network as an FTO under the INA. I also intend to designate the organization as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity under Executive Order 13224.

The consequences of these designations include a prohibition against knowingly providing material support or resources to, or engaging in other transactions with, the Haqqani Network, and the freezing of all property and interests in property of the organization that are in the United States, or come within the United States, or the control of U.S. persons. These actions follow a series of other steps that the U.S. government already has taken against the Haqqanis. The Department of State previously designated key Haqqani Network leaders under E.O. 13224, and the Department of the Treasury has designated other militants with ties to the Haqqanis under the same authority. We also continue our robust campaign of diplomatic, military, and intelligence pressure on the network, demonstrating the United States’ resolve to degrade the organization’s ability to execute violent attacks.
I take this action in the context of our overall strategy in Afghanistan, the five lines of effort that President Obama laid out when he was in Afghanistan in May: increasing the capacity of Afghan security forces to fight insurgents; transitioning to Afghan security lead; building an enduring partnership with Afghanistan; pursuing Afghan-led reconciliation; and putting together an international consensus to support peace and stability in the region. We will continue to work with both Afghanistan and Pakistan to move these efforts forward and build a more peaceful and secure future.”

Foreign intelligence services bankrolling terror: Report

                       CIA, RAW and Afghan agencies’ hand seen in funding banned outfits in the country.
Pakistani intelligence agencies have alleged that their American, Indian and Afghan counterparts are financially supporting banned militant outfits in the country.
The contents of a circular issued to law enforcement agencies by the interior ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell (NCMC) revealed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) are funding Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Punjabi,  Asmatullah Moavia, Ghulam Rabbani and Qari Kamran factions through Afganistan’s Riyast-i-Amoor-o-Amanat-i-Milliyah (RAAM) and National Directorate of Security (NDS).
The banned outfits are planning attacks on sensitive installments across the country, including Police Elite Force and Counterterrorism Department Headquarters in Lahore, the circular further revealed. Reconnaissance of potential targets is already being conducted and potential suicide attackers have been earmarked by the groups, it added.
Following the reopening of Nato supply lines in Pakistan and reports of a planned military operation in North Waziristan, TTP commanders Waliur Rehman and Hakeemullah Mehsud have joined hands to mount an intense retaliation, the circular stated.
Possible terrorist attacks
According to an intelligence report, the terrorists, in collaboration with NDS, have planned attacks on the Allama Iqbal International Airport and Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Base in Lahore, and the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad using explosives-laden trucks.

Another report revealed two terrorists who survived the Kamra incident are currently in Lahore with suicide jackets as well. Another, allegedly Uzbek, suicide bomber is also present in the city. Likely targets for the terrorists include the police Inspector General’s (IG) Complex, Capital City Police Officer’s (CCPO) office, Punjab Civil Secretariat, police stations and training institutes, law enforcement personnel and foreign missions.
Yet another report, dated August 12, 2012, revealed TTP’s Qari Aslam group dispatched two would-be suicide attackers from Bhakkar to Lahore to target Shia and Ahmadi gatherings in the city at an opportune time.
The Asmatullah Moavia faction, meanwhile, has been tasked with killing and abducting high-profile officials in Lahore and targeting military and security check posts at University Road, Peshawar, the circular added.
The TTP has also dispatched an 18-member terrorist group to attack high-profile military and civil officers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. They may resort to killing or abducting the officers, the report stated. Miscreants are planning attacks on the Benazir Bhutto International Airport as well.
The interior ministry has placed law enforcement agencies in the twin cities on high alert following the notification.
An attack on the Pakistan Ordnance Factory (POF) Wah has been planned by militants with ties to the Bajaur Agency. According to intelligence reports, the attackers are likely to enter the factory through Gate 1. Allegedly, reconnaissance has already been carried out.
The Hakeemullah Mehsud faction, meanwhile, is targeting the Pak Arab Oil Refinery Company (Parco) situated at Qasba Gujjar, between Dera Ghazi Khan and Muzaffargarh. At the same time, the Sheikh Yasin group is planning an attack on the Risalpur Garrison, reports claimed.
Source

Afghan Human Rights Commission Defends Khalid Appointment

The Afghan government-linked Independent Human Rights Commission (IHRC) said Saturday that it was confident of Asadullah Khalid's appointment as the country's next intelligence chief after an international human rights organisation called for him to be dropped because of his history of using torture.

The IHRC commissioner, himself appointed by President Hamid Karzai, said Khalid's past had already been investigated, but he did not discuss what the findings were.
"Regarding Mr Khalid, there were complaints about him when he was the governor of Kandahar, but the Independent Human Rights Commission reviewed the complaints in coordination with Khalid himself," IHRC commissioner told TOLOnews.
"For the time being, the Human Rights Commission urges Mr Khalid or anyone else who will hold this position to stay committed to upholding human rights and the law, to consider all the national and international human rights regulations, and avoid any kind of violation."

Khalid, currently Minister for Border and Tribal Affairs, is expected to be appointed head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security (NDS) after Rahumatullah Nabil was stood down by President Hamid Karzai on Tuesday.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement Friday urging the Afghan government to drop Khalid and instead appoint someone with a more exemplary record.
"The NDS is desperately in need of reform to end its use of torture," HRW Asia director Brad Adams said in the statement. "President Karzai should use the appointment of a new NDS chief to demonstrate his commitment to ending torture by choosing someone whose integrity and commitment to human rights is above reproach."
Khalid has previously held positions as provincial gover
nor of both Kandahar and Ghazni and reportedly had a private prison in Kandahar from 2005 to 2008.
HRW said there were credible allegations that Khalid used torture at the jail, including beating and electric shocks, which was later reported by the UN and local human rights activists. He has also been accused of corruption and high-level involvement in drug trafficking, all of which he has denied.
Regional journalist and commentator Ahmed Rashid said in an opinion piece in Pakistan's Financial Times that the appointment of Khalid, who is both one of Karzai's confidantes and who has long history of relations with the US, is set to present an aggressive stance towards Pakistan.
Describing it as a "startling change" from Nabil, Rashid explained that Khalid has a history as "a fiercely anti-Taliban former governor of Kandahar" and that he had faced several assassination attempts from the Islamists.
"He always blamed the attempts on Pakistan's military Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Mr Khalid and the ISI hate each other with a vengeance," Rashid said.
Rashid did not personally condone the choice, but
suggested Khalid's appointment made sense for Karzai and his allies.
"Both Kabul and Washington are pleased with this new anti-Taliban mood, but also fearful of losing political control in key provinces bordering Pakistan to a new kind of people power that refuses to accept a government mandate. Under Mr Khalid the NDS will surely be entrusted with making sure that these movements are turned around to kick out the Taliban but embrace the government," he said.
Khalid's appointment will become part of Karzai's wider cabinet shake-up which will see a number of key positions changed.

Officials Split Over Haqqani Network

Some say terrorist label could be a hurdle to new peace talks with Taliban

Just days before a congressional deadline, the Obama administration is deeply divided over whether to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist group, with some officials worried that doing so could complicate efforts to restart peace talks with the Taliban and undermine already-fraught relations with Pakistan.

In early August, Congress gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 30 days to determine whether the Haqqani group, considered the most lethal opponent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, meets the criteria for designation — a foreign organization engaging in terrorist activity that threatens U.S. citizens or national security.

If she says it does not, Clinton must explain her rationale in a report that is due to Congress on Sept. 9. Acknowledgment that the group meets the criteria, however, would probably force the administration to take action, which is strongly advocated by the military but has been resisted by the White House and some in the State Department.


Senior officials have repeatedly called the Haqqani network the most significant threat to the U.S. goal of exiting a relatively peaceful Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and have accused Pakistan of direct support for its leadership. The network has conducted a series of lethal, high-profile attacks against U.S. targets.

In recent weeks, the military has reiterated its call for Pakistan to prove its counterterrorism commitment by attacking Haqqani sanctuaries in its North Waziristan tribal area. The CIA has escalated drone attacks on Haqqani targets, including a strike last week that administration officials said killed the son of the network’s founder and its third-ranking official.

But just as there are reasons to designate the network a terrorist group, there are several factors weighing against the move, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the administration’s closed-door deliberations.

Those factors include a tenuous rapprochement with Pakistan that led in early July to the reopening of vital U.S. military supply lines into Afghanistan; hopes that the autumn end of this year’s Afghan fighting season will bring the Taliban back to the negotiating table after the suspension of talks in March; and a reconfigured U.S. offer on a prisoner exchange that could lead to the release of the only U.S. service member being held by the militants.

After a White House meeting last week in which President Obama’s top national security advisers aired divergent views, Clinton is said to remain undecided as aides prepare a list of options. She has avoided taking action on the issue since assuring lawmakers late last year that she was undertaking a “final” review.

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have long argued that labeling the Haqqani group a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a relatively short list of about four dozen entities that does not include the Taliban — is one of the most important steps the administration could take to win the war.

In a series of meetings and video conferences with Washington, Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has said he “needs more tools” to fight the Haqqanis and asked specifically for the designation, one administration official said.

A recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point called the Haqqani network “an efficient, trans­national jihadi industry” that has “penetrated key business sectors, including import-export, transport, real estate and construction in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arab Gulf and beyond” and could be effectively undermined by designation as a terrorist organization.

Designation is “a key first step toward actively targeting the group’s international financial activity and support network,” according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats unit. The unit is headed by Frederick W. Kagan, a leading counter­terrorism adviser to the U.S. military in Afghanistan and to Allen’s predecessor, current CIA Director David H. Petraeus.

But others in the White House and State Department argue that the designation would be largely for show and would have little substantive effect.

Individual Haqqani leaders have already been designated as terrorists, and U.S. entities are prohibited from dealing with them. Separate designations, by the Treasury Department or the United Nations, or under an existing executive order, could achieve the same result as adding the network to the far more prominent State Department list.

Drawing a line between the Haqqanis and the Taliban will only make peace negotiations harder, said a second U.S. official who opposes designation. Administration policy “heavily depends on a political solution,” this official said. “Why not do everything we can to promote that? Why create one more obstacle, which is largely symbolic in nature?”

These officials fundamentally disagree with the assessment that the Haqqanis are a separate entity from the Taliban and are irreconcilable, and argue that the military is using the Haqqanis as an excuse to mask its own difficulties in the war.

For its part, Pakistan’s powerful military insists that it has no preference in what one senior officer called “an internal matter for the United States to decide.” But while it denies U.S. charges of complicity with or control over the Haqqanis, there is little doubt the Pakistanis are closest to the Haqqani group within the Taliban organization, and they have pressed for its inclusion in any peace negotiations.

“From our point of view, reconciliation has to be very broad-based,” the military official said. “The Haqqanis are not an individual entity. . . . They’re a part of the conversation, whatever that is.”

Although intelligence assessments differ in degree and the groups appear operationally independent to some degree, the Haqqani organization is generally considered to be one of three sub­groups under the overall leadership of Taliban chief Mohammad Omar and the top-level council he heads in Quetta, in southern Pakistan.

Talks between U.S. and Taliban officials that began in late 2010 were suspended in March when the militants charged that the Americans had altered the terms of a potential prisoner swap in which five Taliban members held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be exchanged in two groups for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held since 2009 by the Haqqanis.

Underlying the stated reason for the suspension, U.S. officials believe that the Taliban is split on many levels over the talks — between field commanders and Pakistan-based leaders, between different factions and among individuals vying for power in a future Afghanistan.

But Haqqani provision of a proof-of-life video of Bergdahl, delivered through Taliban negotiators in February 2011, as well as a public profession of fealty to Omar by the Haqqani leadership in September, convinced some officials that a deal with one was tantamount to a deal with the other.

In June, the Americans transmitted a new offer to the Taliban, through the government of Qatar, in which Bergdahl’s release would come with the release of the second Guantanamo group rather than the first. They do not expect a response until after the end of the summer fighting season.

Twin suicide attack on Nato Afghan base kills 12

Ten civilians and two police were killed and dozens more were wounded Saturday in a Taliban twin suicide attack targeting a US-run military base in central Afghanistan, officials said.
The first bombing was carried out by a militant on foot, followed by a huge blast from a truck bomb that destroyed much of a local bazaar near the military outpost in Wardak province’s Sayedabad district, police said.
“The number of wounded is so high that it can hardly be counted. Lots of people have been wounded and much of the Sayedabad bazaar has been destroyed,” Wardak police spokesman Abdul Wali told AFP.
Ghulam Farouq Mukhlis, the provincial public health director, told AFP that at least 43 civilians were admitted to local hospitals. Ten people were evacuated to the capital Kabul for “serious injuries”, Mukhlis added.
A Western military official close to the Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) who spoke anonymously told AFP that two Isaf soldiers were wounded in the blasts.
“There were no Isaf fatalities,” an Isaf spokesman told AFP separately, confirming the twin blast.
Shahidullah Shahid a spokesman for the provincial administration confirmed the attack, describing the truck-bombing as “massive”.

“A suicide bomber on foot detonated near the gate of the base in Sayedabad, Wardak province, opening the way for a truck suicide bombing that followed him,” Shahid told AFP.
Sayedabad is an insurgency-plagued region and the base there was attacked in a truck bombing in September last year. More than 80 people, about 50 of them US soldiers, were wounded in that attack.
A witness said a small bazaar near the base, which is located along a highway that links capital Kabul to the southern province of Kandahar, was “totally destroyed” by Saturday’s explosion.
Afghan and Western troops blocked the road after the blasts for more than an hour, causing traffic jams along the busy highway, the witness, who refused to give his name, told AFP. “They were huge explosions, very big,” he said.
Many civilians work on or near Nato bases and bazaars.
Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban insurgents, claimed responsibility for the attack in a text message to AFP.
The United Nations says 1,145 civilians were killed and 1,954 wounded in the war in the first six months of this year, with the world body blaming 80 per cent of the deaths on insurgents.
Nato has some 130,000 troops in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban’s decade-long insurgency alongside government forces.
Most of the Nato troops are set to withdraw by the end of 2014 in a US-designed transition process that will put Afghan security forces in charge of security for their war-battered country.
The process is already under way with security responsibilities of about half of the Afghan population transferred to the local security forces.
The Taliban have stepped up their attacks in recent months as part of efforts by the insurgency to undermine the transition process.

Obama administration divided over designating Haqqani network as terrorist group

Just days before a congressional deadline, the Obama administration is deeply divided over whether to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist group, with some officials worried that doing so could complicate efforts to restart peace talks with the Taliban and undermine already-fraught relations with Pakistan.
In early August, Congress gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 30 days to determine whether the Haqqani group, considered the most lethal opponent of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, meets the criteria for designation — a foreign organization engaging in terrorist activity that threatens U.S. citizens or national security.

If she says it does not, Clinton must explain her rationale in a report that is due to Congress on Sept. 9. Acknowledgment that the group meets the criteria, however, would probably force the administration to take action, which is strongly advocated by the military but has been resisted by the White House and some in the State Department.
Senior officials have repeatedly called the Haqqani network the most significant threat to the U.S. goal of exiting a relatively peaceful Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and have accused Pakistan of direct support for its leadership. The network has conducted a series of lethal, high-profile attacks against U.S. targets.

In recent weeks, the military has reiterated its call for Pakistan to prove its counterterrorism commitment by attacking Haqqani sanctuaries in its North Waziristan tribal area. The CIA has escalated drone attacks on Haqqani targets, including a strike last week that administration officials said killed the son of the network’s founder and its third-ranking official.
But just as there are reasons to designate the network a terrorist group, there are several factors weighing against the move, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the administration’s closed-door deliberations.
Those factors include a tenuous rapprochement with Pakistan that led in early July to the reopening of vital U.S. military supply lines into Afghanistan; hopes that the autumn end of this year’s Afghan fighting season will bring the Taliban back to the negotiating table after the suspension of talks in March; and a reconfigured U.S. offer on a prisoner exchange that could lead to the release of the only U.S. service member being held by the militants.
After a White House meeting last week in which President Obama’s top national security advisers aired divergent views, Clinton is said to remain undecided as aides prepare a list of options. She has avoided taking action on the issue since assuring lawmakers late last year that she was undertaking a “final” review.
U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have long argued that labeling the Haqqani group a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a relatively short list of about four dozen entities that does not include the Taliban — is one of the most important steps the administration could take to win the war.
In a series of meetings and video conferences with Washington, Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has said he “needs more tools” to fight the Haqqanis and asked specifically for the designation, one administration official said.A recent report by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point called the Haqqani network “an efficient, trans­national jihadi industry” that has “penetrated key business sectors, including import-export, transport, real estate and construction in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arab Gulf and beyond” and could be effectively undermined by designation as a terrorist organization.
Designation is “a key first step toward actively targeting the group’s international financial activity and support network,” according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats unit. The unit is headed by Frederick W. Kagan, a leading counter­terrorism adviser to the U.S. military in Afghanistan and to Allen’s predecessor, current CIA Director David H. Petraeus.
But others in the White House and State Department argue that the designation would be largely for show and would have little substantive effect.
Individual Haqqani leaders have already been designated as terrorists, and U.S. entities are prohibited from dealing with them. Separate designations, by the Treasury Department or the United Nations, or under an existing executive order, could achieve the same result as adding the network to the far more prominent State Department list.
Drawing a line between the Haqqanis and the Taliban will only make peace negotiations harder, said a second U.S. official who opposes designation. Administration policy “heavily depends on a political solution,” this official said. “Why not do everything we can to promote that? Why create one more obstacle, which is largely symbolic in nature?”
These officials fundamentally disagree with the assessment that the Haqqanis are a separate entity from the Taliban and are irreconcilable, and argue that the military is using the Haqqanis as an excuse to mask its own difficulties in the war.
For its part, Pakistan’s powerful military insists that it has no preference in what one senior officer called “an internal matter for the United States to decide.” But while it denies U.S. charges of complicity with or control over the Haqqanis, there is little doubt the Pakistanis are closest to the Haqqani group within the Taliban organization, and they have pressed for its inclusion in any peace negotiations.
“From our point of view, reconciliation has to be very broad-based,” the military official said. “The Haqqanis are not an individual entity. . . . They’re a part of the conversation, whatever that is.”
Although intelligence assessments differ in degree and the groups appear operationally independent to some degree, the Haqqani organization is generally considered to be one of three sub­groups under the overall leadership of Taliban chief Mohammad Omar and the top-level council he heads in Quetta, in southern Pakistan.
Talks between U.S. and Taliban officials that began in late 2010 were suspended in March when the militants charged that the Americans had altered the terms of a potential prisoner swap in which five Taliban members held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be exchanged in two groups for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier held since 2009 by the Haqqanis.
Underlying the stated reason for the suspension, U.S. officials believe that the Taliban is split on many levels over the talks — between field commanders and Pakistan-based leaders, between different factions and among individuals vying for power in a future Afghanistan.
But Haqqani provision of a proof-of-life video of Bergdahl, delivered through Taliban negotiators in February 2011, as well as a public profession of fealty to Omar by the Haqqani leadership in September, convinced some officials that a deal with one was tantamount to a deal with the other.
In June, the Americans transmitted a new offer to the Taliban, through the government of Qatar, in which Bergdahl’s release would come with the release of the second Guantanamo group rather than the first. They do not expect a response until after the end of the summer fighting season.

Pakistan army kills 18 militants as fighting rages

Pakistani security forces killed 18 Taliban militants on Thursday in Bajaur region, a military official said, in the fourth straight day of fighting which has cast doubt on the effectiveness of crackdowns on militant groups.
Pakistan’s military, one of the largest in the world, has launched a series of offensives against the Taliban over the past few years in Bajaur and other parts of the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt in the northwest near the Afghan border.
On Wednesday, Taliban militants attacked an army post and killed eight soldiers in the South Waziristan tribal region.
Military sources said four soldiers have been killed in the Bajaur fighting and several went missing.
Pakistan has said military operations have severely weakened the militants, and their fighters have been cleared out of Bajaur and other regions along the porous border.

The military, which has declared victory in those areas, said the militants killed on Thursday included two commanders from the Taliban branch that controlled the Swat Valley, before an army offensive cleared the group from there in 2009.
Their presence in Bajaur underscores how militants simply melt away when the military steps up pressure and turn up elsewhere to press on with their violent campaign to topple the US-backed government.
The commander who led the Taliban in Swat, Fazlullah, fled to Afghanistan and has been orchestrating cross-border raids against Pakistani security forces, sending hundreds of fighters at a time to stage deadly ambushes and attacks on army posts.
This month, militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons fought their way into one of Pakistan’s largest air bases in a brazen challenge to the nuclear-armed country’s powerful military.
Pakistan’s Taliban, who are close to al Qaeda, allied with the Afghan Taliban and seen as the biggest security threat to Pakistan, claimed responsibility for that assault.

500lb bomb Dropped To Wipe out Taliban - Kunar Afghanistan

500lb  bomb Dropped To Wipe out  Taliban - Kunar Afghanistan

Double 500 lb JDAM used to wipe out a Taliban Bunker by US Air Force. Really close ones.
HUGE EXPLOSION- debris hit troops from miles away The Whole Valley was Shakin

US troops escape criminal charges for incidents that outraged Afghanistan

Burning of Qur'ans and urinating on corpses in Afghanistan led to allegations against six US army soldiers and three marines

Six US army soldiers and three marines escaped criminal charges but received administrative punishments for mistakenly burning Qur'ans and urinating on the corpses of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, US military officials said Monday.


US military leaders widely condemned the incident revealed earlier this year. The Qur'an burning triggered riots and retribution killings: two US troops were shot by an Afghan soldier and two US military advisers were gunned down at their desks at the interior ministry.
The soldiers were disciplined for the burning of Qur'ans earlier this year at a US base in Afghanistan, and the marines were punished for their participation in a video that showed them urinating on Taliban corpses.

Discipline against a Navy sailor in the Qur'an burnings was dismissed, and the Marine Corps said it would announce discipline against additional Marines in the urination case at a later date.
The exact punishments were not disclosed on Monday but could include demotions, extra duty or forfeiture of pay. They could also stall any future advancement and end the military careers of the nine.
Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said Hamid Karzai's office would review the decisions. News of the punishments came late at night in Afghanistan.
The religious books and other materials were thrown into a pit used to burn rubbish at Bagram air field, a major US base north of Kabul.
US officials said the holy books were pulled out by Afghan workers before they were destroyed. President Barack Obama later apologised to Karzai for the incident.
The urination video, which came to light in January and appeared on YouTube, showed four marines in full combat gear urinating on the bodies of three dead men. On Monday, the Marine Corps revealed that there were also photographs taken at the time. In the video, one marine looks down at the bodies and says, "Have a good day, buddy."
The unit involved fought in the southern Afghan province of Helmand for seven months before returning to its home base in North Carolina last September.
The Marine Corps said one marine pleaded guilty to urinating on the Taliban soldiers and posing for a photograph. Another marine pleaded guilty to wrongfully videotaping the incident and posing for a photograph and a third pleaded guilty to failing to report the mistreatment of human casualties and lying about it.
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