Click: one stop shopping for the AfPak Channel's coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden (FP).

Event notice: tomorrow at 6:30pm EST in New York, Peter Bergen will discuss what's next for al-Qaeda (Asia Society). The event will also be webcast. Bergen will write an account of the search for bin Laden, tentatively titled The Manhunt (NYT).

Corrections for the record

The White House, revising its initial account, said yesterday that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was not armed when he was killed in a U.S. operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan early on May 2, and did not use his wife, who did not die in the raid, as a human shield (NYT, Tel, Politico, Guardian, CNN, Post, AFP, AJE, Post). The White House said bin Laden "resisted" when a team of Navy SEALs burst into the upper floors of the Abbottabad compound, and died "almost certainly -- from a bullet to the head." U.S. officials said the commandos carrying out the operation expected bin Laden would be killed, rather than captured, though Obama administration counterterrorism chief John Brennan said he could have surrendered "if he did not pose any type of threat whatsoever" (CBS, Reuters, LAT).  [[BREAK]]

In addition to bin Laden, the SEALs carried off a trove of computers, hard drives, and digital storage devices that American intelligence analysts are now combing over for clues about the location of al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, other terrorists, and ongoing plots (WSJ, Independent, Times, CBS, CNN, Post, Politico). Officials said when bin Laden was found in the Abbottabad compound, he was not trying to destroy data, and "It appears they were more interested in fighting their way out than destroying anything."

The White House is currently debating whether to release photographs of bin Laden's body, which administration spokesman Jay Carney described as "gruesome" (CBS, CNN, Post). The U.S. has also heightened security measures at public spaces across the country in anticipation of attacks designed to prove al-Qaeda is still relevant and potent following the death of its leader (NYT, WSJ). The NYT's survey of books to read about al-Qaeda is available here (NYT).

Friends or foes?

Pakistan's foreign ministry released a sharp statement yesterday criticizing the Abbottabad raid as "unauthorized unilateral action," and Pakistani officials continued to reject claims that the Pakistani military or intelligence services knew bin Laden was living in the military garrison city some 40 miles from the capital (NYT, Dawn, WSJ, ET, Post, Guardian, DT, AP). C.I.A. chief Leon Panetta, who summarized, "Either they're involved or incompetent," said Pakistan was not told in advance about the raid because "they might alert the targets," and the first time Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari learned bin Laden was dead was reportedly from a phone call from U.S. president Barack Obama at 1:15am local time the morning of the operation (Time, FT, The News, LAT, Post, Time). Obama administration officials have demanded that Pakistan provide information about the compound, witnesses, and bin Laden's relatives who survived the raid.

Pakistan's foreign ministry also said that the relatives, including a 12 or 13 year old daughter who reportedly saw her father killed by U.S. forces, would be returned to their countries of origin after being interrogated by Pakistani intelligence (WSJ, Reuters, McClatchy). Bin Laden's wife, who was wounded when she "rushed one of the U.S. assaulters," has been identified as Amal Amhed Abdul Fatah, his youngest wife and supposed favorite (ABC, The News). One of bin Laden's neighbors in Abbottabad was arrested several hours after the raid and the owner of the land on which the compound was built has also been detained, while other residents continue to profess surprise that bin Laden was living in their midst (AFP, ET, AP, FT, Post, NYT, ABC). One neighbor said that when children playing in nearby fields lost a ball inside the compound, the owners gave them money for a new one rather than let them retrieve it.  

In cities across Pakistan yesterday, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the front organization for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, held funeral prayers for bin Laden (DT, ET, Reuters). The head of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, an anti-Shia militant organization, and other Islamist leaders condemned the raid as a violation of Pakistani sovereignty and called bin Laden a martyr (ET). Analysts are debating the impact of bin Laden's death on al-Qaeda and its affiliates, including its active Yemeni branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Reuters, Times).

Across the border

After "nearly two days of unusual silence," the Taliban in Afghanistan questioned the news of bin Laden's death, generating debate among analysts, Taliban fighters, and government officials about the significance of the group's response (AP, McClatchy, Reuters, WSJ, Pajhwok). A spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry said Pakistan should have known bin Laden was living near a military academy, and called into question Pakistan's ability to protect its nuclear arsenal (Reuters, AP).

Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports that although challenges remain, some U.S. officials are trying to use the death of bin Laden "to accelerate a negotiated settlement with the Taliban and hasten the end of the Afghanistan war," with one commenting that this "is the beginning of the endgame in Afghanistan. It changes everything" (Post). Nearly half of Americans surveyed say they are more confident in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan following bin Laden's death, and Obama saw a jump in his approval ratings after the Abbottabad raid (Post, NYT).

And a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan's Ghazni province reportedly killed up to eight private security guards with the Watan Risk Management company (AP, Pajhwok).

Credit where it's due?

Gary Faulkner, the sword-wielding Osama bin Laden hunter, said he will ask the U.S. government for a portion of the $27 million reward (ABC, Fox, Greeley Tribune). Faulkner asserted, "I had a major hand and play in this wonderful thing, getting him out of the mountains and down to the valleys... Someone had to get him out of there. That's where I came in."

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The Afghan government has beefed up security and put in place all security measures to deal with possible revenge attacks by militants in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. troops, spokesman of Defense Ministry General Zahir Azimi said on Wednesday, Xinhua reported.

The death of Osama bin Laden will raise the inevitable question: What are we still doing in Afghanistan? The answer, of course, is that the mission in Afghanistan is about something bigger and more ambitious than eliminating Al Qaeda’s leaders—most of whom, in any event, are probably living in Pakistan, as bin Laden was when the United States finally tracked him down. No, the mission in Afghanistan isn’t about killing Al Qaeda members. It’s about stabilizing the country so that it can never again serve as the hotbed of extremism that it was until 2001, with all of the attendant national security and human rights problems that resulted.

But that in turn raises other questions: Is it worth prolonging a war that has stretched on for nearly ten years for that broader goal? And perhaps the most difficult question of all: Even if that goal is worth fighting for, is it actually achievable? 

Over the past few years, a consensus has formed in Washington that the answer to that last question is a resounding no. For years, war in Afghanistan has been portrayed as a hopeless failure. The government in Kabul, we have been told, is corrupt and predatory. The Afghan army is a mess. Tribal loyalties trump national loyalties. The Taliban is gaining in strength.

All of this rendered a decision made by President Obama last autumn rather odd—at least on the surface. Obama had long promised that American troops would begin leaving Afghanistan in the summer of 2011. As Vice President Joe Biden had explained: “In July 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.” But then, over the course of a week in November, the White House announced a major reversal of course: A large-scale troop presence would remain in Afghanistan for an additional three years, until 2014.

Only a handful of journalists seemed to realize the magnitude of the news. For its part, The New York Times characterized the new approach as “a change in tone,” a curious label for several more years of war.

But while Americans barely seemed to notice, people in Kabul certainly did. In December, a few weeks after Obama’s announcement, I met with Hedayat Amin Arsala, a courtly senior minister in the Afghan government and a confidant of President Hamid Karzai. We were seated in a basketball-court-sized office adorned with a massive chandelier in a nineteenth-century building in central Kabul. Arsala had been dismayed by Obama’s initial plan to begin withdrawing in 2011. “I was not very happy with it,” Arsala recalled, choosing his words carefully. “It gave the impression to the opposition that if they stick to their guns a little longer, they might be able to succeed after that.” Arsala, reflecting the views of many Afghans both inside and outside the government, expressed relief that Obama was now reversing himself. In fact, he hoped the American president would go even further, and hammer out a long-term agreement with Afghanistan so that American troops could remain in the country into 2015 and beyond. “Between now and 2014, we will be working on this together with the United States,” he told me. A range of other American and Afghan officials confirmed that such an agreement is currently being worked on.

Then came this month’s killing of Osama bin Laden—and while Americans rejoiced, many Afghans were, according to the Times, worried that the successful operation would hasten the departure of American troops. “This should not be used as a justification for premature withdrawal,” warned one former Afghan official.

What is going on here? First, Obama had concluded that a war which was widely believed to be failing was in fact still worth prosecuting. Then, Afghans had made it known that they were relieved the United States would be sticking around. Now, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, they were reminding the United States that they expected it not to renege on this promise. Is this a case of a stubborn American president—unwilling to admit defeat, egged on by Afghan allies—doubling down on a completely failed enterprise? Or is it possible that the Afghanistan war is actually succeeding?

 

Major Jim Gant of the Army Special Forces is a rangy, intense Pashto speaker with tattoos of Chinese characters on his right arm. Like many of his fellow Special Forces officers in the field, Gant sports a shaggy beard and wears an Afghan scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. He has been at the forefront of an unlikely transformation in counterinsurgency tactics, so much so that he’s been nicknamed “Lawrence of Afghanistan.” Gant’s rise to prominence started in late 2009, when he published a paper on the website of Steven Pressfield, a novelist and military veteran. The article was called “One Tribe at a Time,” and it drew on Gant’s experiences as a Special Forces team leader working with a Pashtun tribe—the Taliban’s historical base is among the Pashtuns—in eastern Afghanistan in 2003. Based on his experiences, Gant advocated that small units of autonomous Special Forces embed with Pashtun tribes and train them to fight the Taliban.

While most policy papers languish on desks or hard drives unread, Gant’s paper ricocheted around the upper echelons of the military. It even reached General David Petraeus, who called the paper “very impressive, so impressive, in fact, that I shared it widely.” After that, the Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, stepped back from “door-kicking” missions and instead began to advise and build up local forces. In what the U.S. military has termed “Village Stability Operations,” members of the Special Forces now live among the Pashtun tribesmen in remote areas where insurgents once had unfettered freedom of movement. The goal is to help train community militias, known to the U.S. military as Afghan Local Police (ALP). At present, the government of Afghanistan has authorized 10,000 ALP militiamen; American officers believe that the number will eventually rise to something more like 24,000.

Getting the ALP approved by Kabul required a significant concession from Hamid Karzai, who had feared that arming tribal militias might rejuvenate the warlordism that has plagued Afghanistan since the early 1990s. To address Karzai’s concerns, the ALP is administered by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, and everyone admitted to the program has to submit to biometric scans. On the ground, militia candidates are vetted by local village councils.

This December, at a base near Kabul, I bumped into Gant at a meeting with some senior Special Forces officers. Gant said he was pleased with the progress and noted that in the Pashtun language the community forces are known by the word Arbakai, a traditional term for forces that secure their own area. “The Taliban are very threatened by this,” Gant said. “It’s taking their safe haven away.” Other experts I spoke with affirmed that the community policemen have created “security bubbles” that didn’t exist before.

If Gant’s approach sounds familiar, it should. That’s because it draws on the same principles as the counterinsurgency tactics that worked for Petraeus in Iraq. Ultimately, the effort in Afghanistan will either succeed or fail based on the counterinsurgency practices, like Gant’s, that Petraeus has put in place. I recently got to see Petraeus—who took over the Afghanistan mission last year, and has just been nominated by Obama to head the CIA—in action during a briefing at the International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Kabul. When he walked into the briefing room, it was precisely 7:30 a.m., and a bevy of generals and a couple dozen staff officers immediately stood up. He hurriedly motioned for them to sit down and images began to be projected onto screens around the room. Some screens showed the weather in various parts of Afghanistan, others the numbers of American soldiers recently killed, and others maps of insurgent activity. Over secure videoconference lines, commanders from around Afghanistan gave status updates about their sector of the war, with Petraeus alternately quizzing, cajoling, and complimenting them. The only interruption came toward the end of the briefing, when a scuffle broke out over a recalcitrant goat. A group of officers had dragged the hapless animal, a Navy mascot, into the room in honor of the upcoming Army-Navy football game. “Thanks fellows,” said Petraeus, sounding slightly impatient. “That was really cute.”

Counterinsurgency is often misunderstood as being mostly about winning “hearts and minds”; and, as Gant’s program shows, there’s certainly an element of that. But, at the most basic level, it’s really a set of common-sense precepts about how to avoid being hated while simultaneously applying well-calibrated doses of violence—that is, killing people. The importance of killing to counterinsurgency is an unpalatable truth that often gets disguised with Orwellian neologisms such as “kinetic operations,” but Petraeus clearly understands that reaching “hearts and minds” goes only so far on its own.

As a result of stepped-up operations, many of the Taliban’s longtime safe havens in Helmand and Kandahar have been eliminated, according to the U.S. military. Of course, the Pentagon has reason to give optimistic reports; but I was struck to see that the International Council on Security and Development, an organization long critical of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, is also echoing this assessment, based on its own on-the-ground research.

Meanwhile, operations by Delta Force and Navy Seals have decimated the ranks of mid-level Taliban commanders. This March, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that, in a typical three-month period, 360 insurgent leaders were killed or captured. (According to a number of observers, the average age of Taliban commanders has dropped from 35 to 25 in the past year.)

On the administrative front, Petraeus has managed to put a stop to particularly senseless policies. At its worst, the Afghanistan conflict has been sustained partly by a contracting system under which U.S. funds take a perverse path from Afghan contractors to Taliban leaders. That is, a fair portion of the money paid out by Washington for a given project, such as the construction of a road, has made it into the pockets of insurgents in exchange for not attacking that road. Petraeus has put in place new contracting guidelines to try to tame this problem.

Petraeus also appears to be making progress in standing up an effective Afghan National Army. Currently, the army is the most well-regarded institution in the country, with approval ratings over 80 percent. While Tajiks are overrepresented in the officer corps, and Pashtuns from the south of the country are grossly underrepresented among the rank and file, overall, the army is ethnically balanced, retention rates (while hardly stellar) are rising, pay rates went up two years ago to $140 per month for a raw recruit (the average yearly income in Afghanistan is less than $400), and the army is on track to reach its November 2011 end-strength goal of 171,000.

 

But will all these changes in military strategy actually lead to long-term victory in Afghanistan? Unfortunately, anyone observing the country learns to live with alternating feelings of hope and despair. As heartened as I often felt when seeing the military progress, I found the corruption of key Afghan politicians to be deeply depressing. More significantly, the war is exacting a steep cost in American lives. Since Obama took office, some 890 American soldiers have died in Afghanistan. That’s around 60 percent of the total who have died there since the war began in the fall of 2001.

Most of the eastern provinces remain infested with insurgents, as do provinces near Kabul such as Ghazni. The so-called “reintegration” process, in which Taliban foot soldiers lay down their arms and reenter their communities, is largely moribund. Data from Indicium Consulting shows that incidents involving insurgent IEDs, small arms fire, rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks have more than doubled in recent years, from around 8,000 in 2008 to more than 17,000 in 2010. Efforts at striking deals with the Taliban have led nowhere. The most promising discussions occurred last year between the Karzai government and senior Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour—except that “Mullah Mansour” turned out to be a crafty Quetta shopkeeper who had spun a good yarn about his Taliban credentials in order to make some quick money. Meanwhile, official meetings held between Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in places like the Maldives to discuss “reconciliation” have produced nothing. One sardonic Afghan official offered me a simple reason for why the parties had agreed to meet for negotiations. “Everybody wanted to go to the Maldives,” he said.

When I was in Kabul, I asked a small group of leading American counterinsurgency experts if they could think of a case in which an insurgency was defeated under circumstances like the ones we see today in Afghanistan—where insurgents enjoy a safe haven, the government is corrupt, and a third-party military force is intervening on the side of the corrupt government. The experts could not think of a single example. I found just as little solace in How Insurgencies End, a rigorous RAND study, published last year, of 89 insurgencies fought around the world since World War II. Insurgents who have enjoyed a sanctuary have won almost half the conflicts where there was a clear victor. In countries with less than 40 percent urbanization, insurgents have won about three-quarters of the time. And pseudo-democracies, such as Afghanistan, have a particularly poor record of defeating insurgencies, because they neither have the stomach for total repression nor the capacity to offer accountable government. They lose about 85 percent of the time.

Then there is Pakistan, which has, to put it mildly, not always been a helpful player in Afghanistan. The Pakistani army has long sought a pliant Afghan state on its western border to balance its Indian neighbor to the east—a doctrine known as “strategic depth”—and it believes the Taliban served this purpose fairly well. Today, Pakistan’s economy is in bad shape: Its inflation rate hovers around 15 percent, and annual growth has fallen from 7 percent to 2 percent, which cannot remotely sustain what will be in 2015 the world’s fifth-largest population. Simultaneously, Pakistan is spending an astonishing 17 percent of its budget on defense and only 3 percent on education. All of these indicators are bad news for Pakistanis, but they’re also bad news for Afghans: In the long run, an unstable Pakistan means an unstable Afghanistan, since the border between the countries is basically ungovernable, and extremists can so easily drift back and forth. 

And yet, against this parade of depressing facts, one must balance some other realities. It helps to begin with some historical context. For all of Afghanistan’s problems, the country has come a long way since I first began visiting it almost two decades ago. I first came to Kabul in 1993, when it was a patchwork of vicious ethnic militias fighting block-to-block, Mogadishu-style. Prime Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was routinely unleashing barrages of hundreds of rockets that had an unfortunate habit of landing on the heads of innocent Kabul civilians rather than on his enemies. I saw boys as young as ten fighting alongside the militiamen. Travel at night anywhere at all was out of the question, and brigands of all kinds roamed the countryside kidnapping and thieving at will. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans died, and even more fled the country.

I next visited the country in 1997, a year after the Taliban had seized power. The streets were now quiet, and all women were covered from head to foot. Fierce, black-turbaned Taliban “vice and virtue” enforcers roamed around the cities, enforcing their ordinances in fast-moving pickup trucks, stopping to harass, beat, or arrest men whose beards were of improper length or women whose feet were visible. One day, I saw a man crumpled on the street as a Taliban enforcer beat him with a stick. The man had failed to pray at the appointed hour. Days in Taliban Afghanistan passed unbearably slowly. There was nothing to do, no place to go. There were no sounds of music, no films, no entertainment. The economy was in free fall. Kabul was a ghost town, with only 500,000 inhabitants left. The rest had fled. Streets were nearly devoid of cars. My only glimpses of women were when they flitted through the empty streets like wraiths dressed in blue burkas. When I stayed in Kabul in the winter of 1999, I was the only guest in the only functioning hotel in town, an Intercontinental that had long ceased to have anything to do with the brand. There was no heat or hot water, nor were there any telephones. I was lucky to have one of the few rooms with windows that remained intact from the war. When I visited Taliban cabinet officials, we would sit shivering in unheated rooms in their ministries while they told me what a misunderstood man Osama bin Laden was.

Today, Kabul has three million inhabitants. There are restaurants and bars and social venues—and people are friendly. (Among journalists, the guilty secret is that working in Kabul today is sort of, well, fun.) A decade ago, 9 percent of Afghans had access to basic medical care. Today, 85 percent do. Under the Taliban, about one million kids (almost none of them girls) were in school, whereas now about seven million children are being educated (more than one-third of them girls, with the proportion rising). Before the U.S. occupation, a telephone system barely existed in Afghanistan. Today, one in three Afghans has a cell phone. Afghans once had access to no media outlets apart from the Taliban’s Voice of Sharia radio network. Now there are, in the words of the BBC, “scores of radio stations, dozens of TV stations and some 100 active press titles.” More than five million Afghan refugees have returned home. Kabul has becom so crowded with cars and people that the city’s pollution is statistically more lethal than the war.

Afghanistan’s economy is also booming. Thanks to the improvements in security provided by the United States and NATO, GDP growth between 2009 and 2010 was a strong 22 percent. That’s just the start. According to a thorough study released earlier this year by the Pentagon, an estimated $900 billion worth of mineral deposits is waiting to be unearthed in Afghanistan, including enough lithium to make the country a world leader in raw materials for batteries. The Chinese have already paid $3 billion for the rights to a copper mine near Kabul, and last year JP Morgan put together a $50 million deal for a gold mine in northern Afghanistan. No wonder, then, that 70 percent of Afghans told pollsters for the BBC late last year that their country is now going in the right direction. (By comparison, in a New York Times/CBS News poll released in April, 70 percent of Americans said the United States is going in the wrong direction.) It’s also why Afghans give surprisingly high marks to the U.S. military, even after nearly a decade of often bungled occupation: 68 percent favorable, according to a BBC/ABC poll released in January 2010. (By contrast, a 2007 BBC/ABC poll in Iraq found that only 22 percent of Iraqis supported the U.S. military presence in their country.)

It’s true that overall security has deteriorated recently in Afghanistan, but much of that is due to stepped-up military operations. This is what happened at the start of the surge in Iraq. Afghanistan also remains a safer place than countries such as Russia or Mexico, where political conflict and criminal violence kill proportionately more people. Residents of New Orleans are five times more likely to be murdered today than Afghan civilians are likely to be killed in war.

Even the unhappy RAND study on the success of insurgencies contained some encouraging findings. One of the most important is that when a government has a significant force superiority ratio (9:1 or greater), it “correlated strongly with success” in defeating insurgents. The projected end strength of the Afghan army and police is 375,000, and the Taliban is around one-tenth of this size. That’s not including all of the outside military forces that are also involved on the side of the Afghan government. What’s more, according to the RAND study, “[c]ontrary to conventional wisdom, insurgents do not win by trying to simply outlast the government. In fact, over the long run, governments tend to win more often than not.” While the long run can be all too long—it took more than four decades for the Colombian government to effectively defeat the FARC—the fact remains that time is working against the insurgents, especially with the new lengthening of the U.S. commitment.

 

Although the White House’s pledge to remain in Afghanistan appears to be firm, calls to pull out have been increasing. One striking example of the new emerging consensus came out earlier this year, when George W. Bush’s ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, wrote in Foreign Affairs that “Washington should accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south and east”; he advocated de facto partition of Afghanistan as “the best available alternative to strategic defeat.” The plan was merely the most extreme expression of a now-common sentiment amongst the U.S. foreign policy establishment: Let’s just get it over with.

Partition or withdrawal sound simple and alluring; but Blackwill and others don’t seem to fully grasp the problems with such proposals. For one thing, with whom would we negotiate a partition? The so-called “moderates” in the Taliban reconciled with the Afghan government long ago. The remaining Taliban fighters have splintered into several groups, each more extreme than the next. And why would the Taliban honor their side of the bargain? Deals between the Pakistani government and the Taliban in Waziristan and in Swat were merely preludes to the Taliban establishing brutal “emirates,” regrouping, and then moving into adjoining areas to seize more territory.

The human costs of partition or withdrawal would be horrific. When the Taliban took control of the Pakistani tourist destination of Swat between 2008 and 2009, they imposed a reign of terror, beheading policemen and leaving their bodies to rot in public, burning down schools for girls, and administering public lashings to women accused of adultery.

And, finally, there are the strategic costs. Yes, Osama bin Laden is dead, but Al Qaeda still exists, and there is no reason to believe that a reconstituted Taliban government would be any less hospitable to Al Qaeda than the Taliban rulers of the 1990s. After September 11, Mullah Omar lost everything to protect bin Laden, and since then he has said nothing to distance himself from that fateful decision.

Of course, just because it would be preferable to succeed in Afghanistan does not mean we actually can. But, when I look at the hopeful signs that are starting to emerge from the country, and when I consider these indicators in tandem with the likely consequences of a hasty exit, I do think the wise choice now is for the United States to stay. In war, perceptions tend to lag behind reality by a considerable distance. In Afghanistan, our efforts were widely thought of as successful for several years after things had clearly begun to deteriorate on the ground. Today, it appears that we have the opposite problem: improvements on the ground that are widely dismissed amid a narrative of defeat.

Staying in Afghanistan isn’t the politically obvious decision: The war is going to remain controversial, and it’s going to be criticized from both the left and the right. Arguably, it could even imperil Obama’s reelection. Still, the president has made his choice and he appears to be sticking with it. This, I am convinced, is good for Afghanistan. One day, I hope, we’ll also realize that it was good for the United States.

 

Peter Bergen is a contributing editor for The New Republic and the author of The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda. This article originally ran in the May 26, 2011, issue of the magazine.

 

U.S. President Barack Obama announced last night that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been killed in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan by U.S. forces. For a full roundup of news related to his death, see a special brief by Katherine Tiedemann (AfPak).

A bloody new start

The Department of Defense on Friday issued an optimistic report on the state of the war in Afghanistan, citing "tangible progress" against the Taliban and improvements in local security in the country's south, and saying that the momentum of the Taliban had been largely blunted (WSJ, Post). The report was issued just a day before the Taliban announced the start of their spring offensive, which began Sunday and promised stepped up attacks against U.S. military and Afghan government targets, while promising to take care to protect civilians (NYT, AFP, AP, Reuters, LAT). Yesterday, a suicide bombing reportedly perpetrated by a 12-year old boy in Paktia province which killed four, including both civilians and the head of the Shkin district council, Shir Nawaz Khan (NYT, AFP, Tolo, Tel, Reuters). At least 11 people have been killed so far in the fresh wave of attacks, which included a shooting and bomb placed on a bicycle in Ghazni province, a shooting targeting an Afghan soldier in Kandahar, and an attack on NATO troops in Logar province that reportedly killed three children (Daily Times, AFP, CNN, Tel, AJE, Reuters, LAT). Five children were also injured by a mortar round in Kunar province, though the origin of the shell is unknown (Pajhwok).

Afghanistan's justice ministry announced Sunday that Afghan authorities had arrested 15 people in relation to last week's massive prison break at Kandahar's Sarposa prison, including the head of the prison, an assistant and several security guards who were on duty at the time of the breakout (AFP). The country's justice minister, Habibullah Ghalib, also said that the nearly 500 escaped Taliban prisoners fled the prison through its main gate, rather than through a tunnel as has been reported (Tolo).

Four stories round out the Afghanistan news: Jane Perlez looks at the construction of the Gardez-Khost road, which is expected to ultimately cost the United States $176 million, or around $2.8 million per mile, and part of which is already in disarray (NYT).The Canadian Press examines the efforts of the Canadian military to build a 15-km gravel road through Panjwai district in Kandahar, one of the most turbulent parts of Afghanistan (Canadian Press). The Afghan Parliament on Saturday approved the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which will begin construction in 2012 and is likely to finish in 2014 (ET). And the U.S. Air Force said this weekend that the sophisticated surveillance drone named "Gorgon Stare" has been deployed over Afghanistan (Post).

The beat goes on

German security forces arrested three men in the cities of Düsseldorf and Bochum on Friday, two of Moroccan and one of Iranian descent in relation to an alleged al-Qaeda-linked terrorist plot to engage in a large-scale bomb attack in Düsseldorf (WSJ, CNN, Deutsche Welle, FT, NYT). The plot, which police say was in its final stages of planning, reportedly involved at least one man recruited by al-Qaeda and trained in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, and involved some direction from a "high-level" al-Qaeda operative (NYT, Deutsche Welle).

And Saba Imtiaz traces the history of Karachi as an operating base and transportation hub for al-Qaeda central before and after 9/11 (ET).

Talks about talks

Denying reports last week that Pakistan had encouraged Afghanistan to move away from its alliance with the United States, Pakistani ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani announced Saturday that the three countries would hold trilateral talks this month to work on ending the war in Afghanistan (Dawn). U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Amb. Marc Grossman will reportedly meet tomorrow in Islamabad with Pakistani foreign secretary Salman Bashir.

The Times reports that the United States, limited by the lack of capacity in Pakistan's civilian government and wary of corruption, has disbursed less than $200 million of the $1.5 billion per year Kerry-Lugar aid bill, focusing on projects in out-of-the-way places that have still yet to be completed in full (NYT). The AFP reports on Pakistan's fiscal woes, fed in large part by the fact that only 1.9 million Pakistanis, out of a population of nearly 180 million, paid taxes last year (AFP). And Pam Constable notes the growth in Islamic banking in Pakistan (Post).

Gimme fuel, gimme fire

Unidentified attackers near Attock, about 40 miles from Islamabad, killed four Pakistani police in an attack on a police post before attacking a NATO fuel convoy, destroying up to 14 vehicles (Geo, ET, Daily Times, AFP).

Two people have been killed by a landmine in Kurram agency, as the Express Tribune reports that the insurgent Haqqani Network has warned Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan leader Hakimullah Mehsud not to disrupt a fragile truce in Kurram brokered in part with Haqqani help (ET, ET). Up to 13 cars were burned in Karachi this weekend as supporters of the Muttahida Qaudi Movement (MQM) mourned a senior member of the party, Liaquat Qureshi, who was assassinated Friday (Dawn, Daily Times). And Pakistani police broke up a crowd that was marching to attack a church in the eastern city of Gujranwala on Saturday, after two Qurans were burnt in the city (AP).

Musical journey

Pakistani musical prodigy Usman Riaz is the subject of a new short film showcasing his talent and particular style of guitar playing, playing it as a part-string, part-percussion instrument (Newsline). Riaz, 20, deferred his admission to Boston's Berklee School of Music to explore Pakistan's music and culture scene.

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Airmen from here helped airmen in the Afghan National Army Air Corps get off the ground and take control of maintaining Afghan national security.

The Yokota AB Airmen were tasked to package and ship 15 sets of propellers, three blades per set, to the ANAAC for their growing fleet of C-27A Spartans.

The propellers came from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in Kisarazu, Japan. United States Forces Japan officials purchased the blades from the Japanese Ministry of Defense to donate them to the Afghan military.
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The unraveling 

 

On a trip to Afghanistan before heading to Islamabad today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen said the U.S.-Pakistan relationship "cannot afford...to come apart," and said he would again raise the issue of the Pakistani intelligence service's support for the militant Haqqani network with Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (Reuters, AJE, The News, AP, Dawn, AFP). Mullen and Kayani reportedly have a good relationship. The Pakistani military is said to be trying to shore up ties with the Afghan government as the eventual U.S. withdrawal draws closer, "to ensure a central role in a negotiated settlement of the conflict" (Reuters).[[BREAK]]

 

Earlier today, suspected militants blew up a market in the Ferozkhel area of Orakzai agency in northwest Pakistan, and Pakistani security forces said 80 militants surrendered in Mohmand, where the military has been carrying out operations recently (ET, The News). The government of Sindh has extended the special powers of Pakistan's Rangers in Karachi for another three months in light of the ongoing targeted killings in the southern city (ET, The News).   

 

Montana's attorney general has launched an investigation into the Central Asia Institute, Greg Mortenson's charity, following the 60 Minutes report calling into question some of the facts of the best-selling Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools and spending by the charity (AP). The attorney general's office oversees nonprofits operating in Montana. Bonus AfPak Channel reads: Three cups of B.S. and Cup half empty.  

 

Renegades 

 

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry said earlier today that the Taliban fighter who shot and killed two people inside the Defense Ministry earlier this week was not a member of Afghanistan's security forces, though he was wearing an Army uniform (AP). Afghan security forces are stepping up efforts to train personnel to identify possible Taliban infiltrators and disgruntled soldiers, and so far French and U.S. forces have trained 220 Afghan soldiers in counterintelligence (AP). Intelligence officers say they have recorded 20 incidents since March 2009 in which someone wearing an Afghan military uniform -- whether a member of the security forces or an infiltrator -- killed coalition forces. British military commanders say they are expecting a change in Taliban tactics this summer to "large-scale, spectacular" attacks (Guardian).    

Greg Jaffe has today's must-read describing how Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the "primary author of the U.S.-Afghan war plan" who first arrived in Afghanistan in 2007, is being passed over for the leadership of the U.S. and NATO command in Afghanistan after Gen. David Petraeus steps down later this year (Post). In Washington, "Rodriguez is seen as a savvy fighter but a so-so salesman;" Lt. Gen. John Allen, "who played a key role in turning the Sunni tribes against the Iraqi insurgency but has never served in Afghanistan," is believed to be the current front-runner for the top Afghanistan job.  

 

A "safe part" of the troubled Kabul Bank has been attached to Afghanistan's Ministry of Finance, according to the governor of Afghanistan's Central Bank, Abdul Qadeer Fitrat (Pajhwok). And the mother of the Jordanian suicide bomber who targeted a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan in December 2009 said Jordanian security forces had arrested her other son, Ayman Balawi, in a sweep late last week of more than 100 members of the ultraconservative Salafi sect, which is banned in Jordan (AFP, AP).  

 

"Vote for me: I'm rich, and I've done jihad!"

 

The Wall Street Journal profiles Aman Mojadidi, a 40-year-old, Florida-born Afghan artist who has become the "leading agent provocateur of the nascent Afghan art scene" as he campaigns against Afghan government corruption and excess (WSJ). In his "first big attempt at performance art," in 2009 Mojadidi bought an Afghan police uniform, set up a fake checkpoint outside Kabul, and gave away "reverse bribes" to drivers, along with apologies if the drivers had ever been forced to pay off an Afghan cop in the past.

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Boston Globe

Afghan army says ministry attacker was outsider The Associated Press KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The man who launched a deadly attack from inside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry this week was not a soldier but an insurgent who managed to sneak past the ministry's security, officials said. The Taliban have claimed that the ... The frog in the waterGlobalPost (blog) Around the worldLubbockOnline.com all 314 news articles »

The man who launched a deadly attack from inside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry this week was not a soldier but an insurgent who managed to sneak past the ministry's security, officials said.

Read the Transcript: to.pbs.org In other news Monday, a gunman in an Afghan army uniform killed at least two people inside the Afghan Defense Ministry in Kabul. The attack was the latest in a series that killed 16 people since Friday. In Iraq, suicide bombers detonated two car bombs that killed at least nine people [...]

A suicide bomber who infiltrated into the Afghan Ministry of Defence on Monday was gunned down before detonating his explosives, officials said. The suicide bomber first opened fire killing two Afghan National Army soldiers and wounding 7 others, Zahir Azimi, a spokesman for Ministry of Defence told TOLOnews. According to reports a senior bodyguard of [...]

This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for homeland security news and information.

Suicide Bomber Attacks Afghan Ministry of Defense

A Taliban militant opened fire inside the Afghan Defense Ministry on Monday, killing two Afghan soldiers in the latest daring attack inside a government or military installation.

An insurgent draped in explosives stalked the halls of the Ministry of Defense yesterday and opened fire on guards in the third major security breach at an Afghan base within the week, according to Afghan officials and witnesses.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For the second time in three days, a Taliban suicide bomber in an Afghan army uniform on Monday penetrated a supposedly secure Afghan military facility, the latest evidence that military and government supporters are at risk even inside the most heavily guarded locations.

(ChinaPost.com.tw) - An apparent Taliban infiltrator wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing at least two soldiers before he was gunned down in the third deadly breach of security in Afghanistan in less than a week.

Globe and Mail

Taliban attack signals focus on infiltrating security forces Christian Science Monitor An Afghan military official, right, walks past by a gate of the Defense Ministry in Kabul, Afghanistan, April 18. An alleged Taliban sleeper agent opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing at least two soldiers before he was gunned down ... Uniformed gunman kills 2 Afghan soldiers in Defense MinistryLos Angeles Times 2 killed, 7 injured in suicide attack on Afghan Defense MinistryXinhua Two Killed In Attack On Afghan Defense MinistryRTT News International Business Times -RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty -CNN International all 2,608 news articles »

KABUL, Afghanistan — An alleged Taliban sleeper agent opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing at least two soldiers before he was gunned down in the third deadly breach of security in Afghanistan in less than a week.

The threat within

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a shooting attack inside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry in Kabul earlier this morning, in which aman wearing an Afghan National Army uniform opened fire and killed two soldiers before being gunned down (AP, AFP, Pajhwok, WSJ, Post, NYT). A spokesman for the insurgent group said the targets were Afghan defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and the visiting French foreign minister, Gerard Longuet, who was not inside the ministry at the time. Six Afghan policemen were killed in a roadside bombing in Ghazni today (AP). On Saturday, another Taliban attacker wearing an Afghan military uniform detonated his explosives inside Forward Operating Base Gamberi, in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman, killed five American and up to seven Afghan soldiers (CNN, FT, Tel, AFP, McClatchy, NYT, AFP, Tolo, Post). Also Saturday, three NATO troops were killed in two separate bombing attacks in the south (AP, LAT). And an ongoing clash between Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami fighters in Maidan Wardak continued over the weekend (Pajhwok). [[BREAK]]

 

Military sources tell the Post that in the three "most insurgent-ridden districts" in southern Afghanistan -- Zhari, Arghandab, and Sangin -- "the Taliban is commencing a summer fighting season with less control and influence of territory in the south than it had the previous year" for the first time since the war began (Post). The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime predicted in a report released todaythat less opium will be cultivated in southern Afghanistan this year, though foresees a "strong increase" in cultivation in the north and northeast (AP, UNODC-pdf). 

 

The Afghan government and international donors spend barely $10 per person every year on health care, according to a new study released yesterday, and the other $31 per year spent on health comes from Afghans themselves (Reuters). 

 

Served with a grain of salt

 

An investigation by 60 Minutes aired last night calls into question the veracity of some claims made by Greg Mortenson, the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, including whether he was kidnapped by the Taliban in the 1990s, the timing of his first visit to the remote Pakistani village of Korphe, andwhether he is personally benefiting from the millions of dollars that have been donated to his charity (CBS). One of the men who appears in a photograph of Mortenson with his alleged kidnappers is Mansur Khan Mahsud, the research director of a think tank in Islamabad and author of several research reports on militancy in Pakistan's tribal regions (NAF). Mahsud said his family treated Mortenson as an "honored guest" in Waziristan, and speculated that Mortenson wrote the kidnapping account "to sell his book" (CNN, CBS). Mortenson,who denied 60 Minutes' interview requests, offered a qualifier to the timing of his stay in Korphe, said he stands by the information in the books, and via a spokesman said he is suffering from hypoxia and heart problems (CNN, NYT, Bozeman Daily Chronicle). An extended response is available from Mortenson's foundation, the Central Asia Institute (CAI-pdf).

 

Special relationships

 

Afghan and Pakistani leaders agreed to upgrade the efforts of a joint peace commission initially set up in January following a visit by Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, spy chief Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha,and Army head Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to Kabul over the weekend (NYT, Reuters, BBC, APP, ET). Gen. Kayani also said earlier today that no more military operations will take place in Baluchistan without the permission of the provincial government, and announced that 5,000 Baluch recruits will join the Pakistani Army later this month (Dawn). 

 

The New York Times and AP analyze the current nadir in U.S.-Pakistani relations, and the NYT notes that American officials say that "the Americans have been coaxing the Afghan and Pakistani leadership to talk to each other, but not at the cost of keeping the United States out of the loop, or of concocting solutions that are against American interests" (NYT, AP). Dawn reports that the Pakistani federal government has decided to block NATO supply lines to Afghanistan on April 23 and 24, in keeping with a Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf plan to stage a protest against drone strikes in the tribal areas (Dawn). Bonus AfPak Channel read: Arif Jamal on U.S.-Pakisan relations.  

 

The bodies of eight young men were found in fields near the Pakistani town of Attock over the weekend, and authorities say terrorism was not involved (DT, AP). Some one million Pakistanis have been displaced by ongoing clashes between Pakistani military forces and militants in the country's northwest, and Lashkar-e-Islam leader Mangal Bagh has fled to Afghanistan according to the rival militant group Ansar-ul Islam (AP, ET). 

 

Just hope we can win a game

 

Afghanistan earned its first victory in the ongoing South Asian Association Regional Cooperation Baseball Cup yesterday after beating Nepal 19-11 (Pajhwok). The team had previously lost to Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 

 

KABUL, Afghanistan — An apparent Taliban infiltrator wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing at least two soldiers before he was gunned down in the third deadly breach of security in Afghanistan in less than a week.The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying insurgents planned the attack to coincide with a visit of the French defense minister who they believed was inside the compound. French officials said the minister, Gerard Longuet, was not inside the ministry during the attack.It was not immediately clear whether the assailant — who was wearing a vest rigged with explosives — was an enlisted soldier or an insurgent who had managed to slip past ministry security disguised in the military uniform. The vest did not explode.“It is difficult to say at this time if he was an infiltrator or a real soldier,” said Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi. “Many soldiers and officers come to the ministry daily to bring reports and perform their daily duties. An investigation is needed to find out if he was enlisted or not.”Azimi had previously said the attacker was an Afghan soldier but he later corrected his statement to say all that was certain was that the assailant was wearing an army uniform.It was the third deadly attack inside an Afghan or international installation in four days, giving weight to warnings that this year’s spring fighting season is likely to be particularly bloody.On Saturday, an Afghan soldier working as a Taliban sleeper agent turned on his colleagues, killing five NATO service members, four Afghan soldiers and an interpreter. A day earlier, a suicide bomber dressed as a policeman blew himself up inside the Kandahar police headquarters complex, killing the top law enforcement officer in the restive southern province.Insurgents have long disguised themselves in the uniforms of Afghan security forces to launch attacks. But increasingly over the past year, enlisted soldiers and police have turned on their NATO and Afghan colleagues — sometimes because arguments have inflamed tensions or because of an alliance or sympathy with the Taliban.The turncoat attacks have come as Afghanistan ramps up recruitment of soldiers and policemen so they can take the lead in securing their nation by the end of 2014, adding more than 70,000 police and soldiers last year in an effort to reach 305,000 troopers by the end of this year.These recruits are supposed to be vetted by past employers or at least village elders. Even with those policies in place, there’s often a dearth of information about new enlistees.Monday’s shootout occurred at the door to the compound’s main office building, where the minister and other high-ranking officials have offices. The assailant began firing at soldiers at the door, killing two before being shot dead, Azimi said. He said there were no additional attackers.French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet was not inside the ministry when the attack occurred, said Lt. Col. Eric de Lapresle, a spokesman for French forces in Afghanistan.Azimi said that Longuet met with Defense Minister Rahim Wardak later in the day as scheduled, inside the Defense Ministry compound.Longuet arrived Sunday and had been meeting with French troops in the east. Some 3,850 French troops are deployed in Afghanistan as part of the NATO mission.French defense officials wouldn’t comment on the attack except to say Longuet wasn’t there at the time. “We don’t comment on Taliban declarations,” French military spokesman Thierry Burkhard said.“We are always very vigilant with the measures of precaution taken” for travels in Afghanistan, he said.France assures its Afghan partners of its “determination to remain committed at their sides in the fight against the plague of terrorism,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said in an online briefing Monday.The shooting comes the same day that a roadside bomb in eastern Ghazni province killed six policemen who were in a vehicle during a patrol in Jaghatu district, said provincial Police Chief Gen. ZirawerZahid.All six policemen inside the vehicle were killed in the explosion, which occurred about 6 miles (10 kilometers) west of the provincial capital, Ghazni city, he said.Elsewhere in the east, a protest against the arrest of a mullah in Parwan province turned violent with protesters and police shooting at each other — killing at least one person, officials said.The demonstration started over the arrest of a local mullah overnight in Charikar, the provincial capital, said provincial Police Chief Sher Ahmad Maladani. Armed men in the crowd started shooting and police struggled to regain control, Maladani said.At least one man has been confirmed dead from the melee at the main hospital in Charikar, said hospital director Abdul Khalil Farhangi. He said most of the injuries are bullet wounds and five people were in comas. One police officer was among the wounded, along with three children, Farhangi.The mullah, Sayed Ahmad, was arrested by Afghan and NATO forces late Sunday along with two others, said Abdullah Adil, an Afghan police official who coordinates with NATO in Parwan.The two others were released, by Ahmad continued to be held Monday because of suspicions that he has links to insurgents, Adil said.

A man wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire inside the Defense Ministry today, killing at least two soldiers before being gunned down himself. A Defense Ministry spokesperson first called the attacker an Afghan soldier, then backtracked; he may have been a Taliban infiltrator, the AP reports. The Taliban claimed...

A gunman dressed in a military uniform entered the Afghan defense ministry compound in Kabul Monday fatally shooting two national army staff members, according to ministry officials.

An Afghan military spokesman says at least two soldiers were killed and seven others injured in an attack inside the country's Defense Ministry.

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Middle East

• Yemeni protest leaders are travelling to Saudi Arabia to meet with Gulf leaders to discuss a timetable for President Ali Abdullah Saleh's departure. 
• Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said his country's state of emergency should be lifted next week.  
• Egypt's former prime minister, interior minister, and finance minister will face trial on corruption charges, officials say. 

Asia

• An insurgent dressed as a soldier killed two at the Afghan defense ministry in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Afghan and French defense ministers. 
• A leaked U.N. report finds that Sri Lanka targeted civilians during its offensive against the Tamil Tigers in 2009.  
• China raised banks' reserve requirements in an effort to tackle inflation.

Africa

• Incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan is reportedly leading in Nigeria's presidential vote.
• An army mutiny in Burkina Faso has spread to four cities. 
• Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye was arrested, one week after he was shot in the hand. 

Europe

• Spanish police seized a record amount of bomb-making materials from suspected ETA hideouts. 
• An anti-Euro party made gains since Sunday's Finnish election, potentially imperiling a bailout plant for Portugal. 
• France blocked a train carrying recently-arrived Tunisian migrants from Italy.  

Americas

• Cuban President Raul Castro has called for term limits for the country's top political positions.
• The police chief in the Northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas has been replaced after the discovery of 145 bodies in mass graves.  
• Chile is planning to exhume former President Salvador Allende as part of an investigation into his death. 

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan army soldier opened fire in the Defense ministry on Monday, killing two ministry personnel and wounding seven others, a ministry spokesman said.

msnbc.com

AfPak Daily brief: Taliban infiltrator opens fire inside Afghan defense ministry Foreign Policy By Katherine Tiedemann, April 18, 2011 Monday, April 18, 2011 - 8:35 AM Share The Taliban claimed responsibility for a shooting attack inside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry in Kabul earlier this morning, in which a man wearing an Afghan National Army ... Uniformed gunman kills 2 Afghan soldiers in Defense MinistryLos Angeles Times 2 killed, 7 injured in suicide attack on Afghan Defense MinistryXinhua Two Killed In Attack On Afghan Defense MinistryRTT News RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty -CNN International -GlobalPost all 2,940 news articles »

KABUL — At least one attacker opened fire inside the Afghan Defense Ministry on Monday, killing two people after evading layers of security and penetrating to the heart of the country’s security apparatus, Afghan officials said.

An apparent Taliban infiltrator wearing an Afghan army uniform opened fire today inside the Defense Ministry, killing at least two soldiers before he was gunned down in the third deadly breach of security in Afghanistan in less than a week.

A Taliban spokesman says the attacker tried, without success, to assassinate the Afghan and French defense ministers. The assailant is killed before he can detonate explosives.

An insurgent dressed as an Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing two soldiers in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Afghan and French defense ministers, officials said.

At least one would-be suicide bomber infiltrated the Afghan Defense Ministry headquarters on Monday and killed at least two soldiers, a ministry spokesman said.

Afghan official says soldier opens fire inside the Afghan Defense Ministry; deaths reported

By HEIDI VOGT An Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the country's Defense Ministry, killing an unknown number of people, a ministry spokesman said.The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry says an Afghan soldier has opened fire inside the ministry compound, killing an unknown number of people.

One person was killed and at least three others injured when a suicide bomber dressed in a military uniform detonated his explosive device inside the Afghan Defense Ministry building in Kabul on Monday, a ministry press service official said.

An Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the country's Defense Ministry, killing an unknown number of people, a ministry spokesman said.

Afghan police men and officials stand close to a damaged police vehicle at the scene of a suicide car bomb explosion on the out skirts of Kabul, Afghanistan on Thursday, April 14, 2011.

A suicide bomber wielding an AK-47 and wearing an Afghan army uniform tried to enter the country's Defense Ministry on Monday, killing two soldiers and injuring at least seven others, NBC News reported.

A Taliban spokesman says the attacker tried, without success, to assassinate the Afghan and French defense ministers. The assailant is also killed.

An insurgent dressed as an Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the Defense Ministry, killing two soldiers in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Afghan and French defense ministers, officials said.

An Afghan soldier opened fire on Monday inside the country's defence ministry, killing an unknown number of people, a ministry spokesman said. According to AFP the French defence minister, who is ...

KABUL (Reuters) - An Afghan army soldier opened fire in the Defense ministry on Monday, killing two ministry personnel and wounding seven others, a ministry spokesman said.

The Guardian

Bombing at Afghan Defense Ministry marks third attack inside an Afghan base in ... Washington Post KABUL — At least one bomber evaded layers of security and penetrated to the heart of Afghanistan's security apparatus on Monday, blowing up within the Afghan Defense Ministry compound in Kabul, ... Gunman in soldier's uniform attacks Afghan Defense MinistryLos Angeles Times Suicide Bombers Attack Afghan Defense MinistryNew York Times Afghan soldier opens fire at Defense MinistryThe Associated Press RIA Novosti -RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty -Philippine Star all 2,383 news articles »

Several militants, some believed to be wearing suicide vests, infiltrated the Afghan government’s heavily fortified Defense Ministry headquarters on Monday and seized hostages, according to initial reports. A doctor at Kabul's military hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it had received three dead and seven wounded Afghan soldiers.

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the country's Defense Ministry, killing an unknown number of people, a ministry spokesman said.

An Afghan soldier opened fire Monday inside the country's Defense Ministry, killing an unknown number of people, a ministry spokesman said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry says an Afghan soldier has opened fire inside the ministry compound, killing an unknown number of people.

DEVELOPING: Ministry says an Afghan soldier opened fire inside compound, killing unknown number of people

• Car Bomb Kills Nine in Baghdad
• Pakistanis Flee Violent Areas Near Afghan Border

A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry says an Afghan soldier has opened fire inside the ministry compound, killing an unknown number of people.

previous news was posted at 12:38 Some suicide bombers targeted Afghan Defense Ministry on Monday, local media reported.

A suicide bomber attacked soldiers at an army base in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday morning, the ministry of defense said.

Five coalition and four Afghan soldiers were killed Saturday when a suicide bomber disguised in an Afghan army uniform detonated a vest packed with explosives. According to Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, the explosion that was claimed...

Town Hall

Afghanistan to look into missing medicine Washington Post AP KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Afghanistan Defense Ministry said Sunday it will investigate missing US-donated medicines and ... US medicines for Afghan soldiers disappearTMCnet all 106 news articles »

KABUL, Afghanistan – The Afghanistan Defense Ministry said Sunday it will investigate missing U.S.-donated medicines and pharmaceutical supplies meant for its army and police.

A statement said that the ministry will asses and investigate how much is missing from the $42 million worth of medical goods the U.S. has donated this year.

The statement came after Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak told The Associated Press last week that an investigation had been launched into the issue, and that Surgeon General Ahmad Zia Yaftali had been removed from his post as part of the inquiry. Three officials from the country's top medical facility, Dawood National Military Hospital in Kabul, were fired, he said then.

It's unclear just how much has disappeared from the medical goods the U.S. has donated this year. U.S. officials say they do not account for the supplies after delivering them to the Afghans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101226/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_missing_medicine