Nato attacked after border meeting

A Nato soldier has been killed and four wounded in an attack by "unknown assailants" in Pakistan after meeting counterparts in the country to discuss calming tensions between Afghan and Pakistani forces, a Nato statement has said. The meeting was held on Monday after border clashes on Sunday between Afghan and Pakistan killed at least 12 people.

"One Isaf service member was killed and four Isaf service members wounded when they were ambushed by unknown assailants near Teri Mangel, Pakistan, after leaving a border meeting," the statement said on Monday, referring to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). [More]


Comment:

This is mostly just an update of the previous post, though I'm not sure whether it clears things up or just makes them even more confused.

It's interesting that the Afghan emissary's account of the incident differs, significantly, from the official accounts of the two parties involved. Barring unforeseen events (which are almost certain to occur), it appears to me that the nascent Afghan government may be attempting to foment ill will between Pakistan and America. While this would be a good thing (a milestone of development, sort of like when your teenager crashes your car for the first time), it would be preferable if it were to assert its growing sense of independence in a way that did not involve alleging that one nuclear power had committed an act of war against another.

Pakistan-Afghan fighting 'ends'

Afghan and Pakistani officials say their army forces have stopped fighting a day after border clashes broke out, with at least 12 reported dead. A Pakistani military spokesman and the Afghan interior ministry disputed claims made on Monday by Afghan officials that battles continued for a second day in Afghanistan's southeastern Paktia province.

"There was no clash today. The things are very much under control. There is no cause of concern," Major General Waheed Arshad, a Pakistani army spokesman, said. Sunday's fighting was the worst outbreak of violence between the neighbouring countries in years.

"Eight policemen and four civilians have been killed since yesterday," Sami-Ul Haq Badar, an Afghan army general, said on Monday.

US deaths

Despite the end to the army battles, reports have emerged that two US soldiers were killed on Monday in Pakistan's northwest Kurram region. US and Pakistani army soldiers had met to discuss moves to bring a lasting end to the clashes between the armies of Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to an Afghan government spokesman. "At the meeting, a Pakistani officer rose up and fired at US soldiers, resulting in the deaths of two soldiers and wounding of two others," Zahir Azimi, an Afghan defence ministry spokesman, told Reuters. He said US soldiers had returned fire, killing several Pakistani troops. Major General Waheed Arshad of the Pakistan army said it was unclear what had happened in the incident. "We don't know who fired. We have ordered an inquiry. We have cordoned off the area," he said.

Border posts

According to Afghan officials, Sunday's fighting erupted between after Pakistani forces took some areas in a border region in Paktia. Pakistan said paramilitary forces retaliated after Afghan troops started "unprovoked firing" on border posts in the Kurram tribal region in northwest Pakistan. Afghanistan said thousands of civilians joined government forces in fighting Pakistani troops after two Afghan children were killed.

Tense relationship

Relations between the neighbours have deteriorated badly in recent months. Afghanistan says Pakistan is not doing enough to stop Taliban insurgents operating from the Pakistani side of the disputed border. Pakistan, the main backer of the Taliban before the September 11 attacks in the US, says the root of the Taliban problem is in Afghanistan. Pakistan is building a fence along parts of the border, disputed since Pakistan's creation in 1947, in an attempt to stop infiltration by Taliban fighters. Afghanistan opposes fencing a border it has never recognised.


Comment:

This is bad. Let's hope that this incident spurs both sides to improve relations and ensure this does not happen again.

Via Al Jazeera.

Taliban military commander killed

Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's chief military commander, has been killed in southern Afghanistan according to government officials. James Bays, Al Jazeera's correspondent, was shown a body the authorities said was Dadullah's on Sunday morning.

The body was shown to media in the governor's compound in Kandahar.

A sheet was removed from the body up to the knee to show that part of one of the legs was missing. Dadullah lost a leg fighting Soviet forces in the 1980s.

An Interior Ministry statement said Dadullah was killed in fighting with security forces in Helmand's Girishk district on Saturday night.

Officials from Nato and the US-led coalition could not confirm it and Bays says a Nato source had told him privately that there was still some confusion over the reports but that they did believe the body was Dadullah.

Bays said the Taliban was still confused over whether Dadullah had been killed. Some sources had confirmed the body was his while some others said it was another military commander who also happened to only have one leg. A Taliban spokesman had earlier rejected the government's claim labelling it "propaganda".
Standing next to the body Bays said that although he had never met Dadullah face to face, the corpse was either him or someone bearing a striking resemblance to him.
Television stations interrupted routine broadcasting to give breaking news of the killing.

'Commander of commanders'

Dadullah is the most important rebel commander to be killed since the Taliban was driven from government by a US-led coalition in late 2001, the Afghan intelligence department said. Asadullah Khalid, the Kandahar provincial governor, said Dadullah was killed "in an operation carried out based on very accurate information." Sayed Ansari, the Intelligence agency spokesman, described him as the "biggest Taliban commander ever killed." "He was the commander of commanders," he said. Dadullah was known as the key military strategist in Taliban and was said to be close to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the fugitive Taliban supreme commander. He has bragged to the media about having thousands of men at his command, including hundreds of suicide bombers.

Comment:

Gotcha.

While it's a pity that he wasn't captured alive (see a previous post in the Dungeon), this is an immeasurably great victory for the Coalition. Moreover, it looks as if he was killed by the Afghan military, which speaks well of their growing competency. Hopefully this victory will persuade the Afghan parliament to let us continue on our mission, and hopefully it means we deserve to.

Via Al Jazeera.

Afghan leaders urge Taliban truce

Outraged by the rising number of civilian deaths, Afghan legislators have approved a bill calling for a truce and talks with the Taliban. The bill passed on Wednesday says military action should be used only in self-defence and calls for a date to be set for the withdrawal of US-led and Nato troops.

The move came as news emerged of US air strikes in Helmand province, southwest of the capital, Kabul, where at least 21 civilians were killed as US and Nato forces went after Taliban fighters. "Twenty-one civilians, including women and children, were killed," the governor of Helmand said. [More]


Comment:

So, it has finally come to this. Who would have thought, back in 2001, that Osama would end up getting away with it? Who would have thought that the mightiest nation on the face of the earth would take so long to defeat a single civilian that it would overstay its welcome and be forced to leave? Who would have thought that we would fail?

I remember, in 2002, walking home from school, seeing the newspaper still in the driveway, and reading that fateful headline stating that Bush had accused Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction. I remember feeling my heart sink, an almost sickening sensation, and thinking, "This is the beginning of the end." We were on the verge of victory, and then the president abandoned his promise and set off on a quixotic quest of his own. Five years have gone by, and still Osama walks free. If this bill passes, he will die free as well.

And even if it doesn't pass, what then? It would be nice if we could quadruple the size of our forces there, send the fatigued and the strained home to recuperate, fully equip our army with the latest technology, as we once would have done. But we cannot. Our soldiers are in Iraq, there are no reinforcements, there is no left over funding. The right wing has accused the left of being defeatist, of wanting to surrender. In reality, it is President Bush who surrendered when he pulled our forces out of Afghanistan without capturing bin Laden. He left enough to maintain a stalemate, but a person who chooses stalemate over victory has given in and given up.

It figures that it should have worked out like this. America was to great a nation for any outside force to defeat it. It took one of our own to bring us to our knees.

More:
Afghan Legislature Passes Bill To Open Talks With Taliban
Afghan Bill Calls for Talks With Taliban

US troops admit abusing Iraqis

Almost one in ten US combat troops deployed in Iraq have mistreated a civilian, according to a new survey conducted by an army mental health advisory team. The report, released on Friday, also found that less than half of the soldiers and marines surveyed would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent Iraqi.

"Soldiers with high levels of anger, who had experienced high levels of combat or who screened positive for mental health symptoms were nearly twice as likely to mistreat noncombatants," Major General Gale Pollock, the acting army surgeon general, told reporters at a press conference.

The most common mistreatment reported by soldiers and marines was that of insulting non-combatants in their presence, the report said. The survey showed that 55 per cent of US army soldiers, and only 40 per cent of marines, would report a fellow serviceman for killing or injuring an innocent non-combatant. The survey, which shows increasing rates of mental health problems for troops on extended or multiple deployments in Iraq, was the first to include questions on ethics and ethical training. As such, the report stresses the findings cannot be compared "with any other group of military personnel".

[More]


Comment:

Oh, boy. This is exactly what I've been saying all along. I'd been planing on finding some statistics on the relation between longer/multiple tours of duty and mistreatment of civilians, but I hadn't expected it to be this bad. We simply cannot expect to bring peace to either of these two countries unless we stop making them want to kill us. The full report will be posted in the Documents section.

U.S. Official: Libyan Behind Afghan Attack During Cheney Visit

KABUL, Afghanistan — A Libyan Al Qaeda commander was likely behind the suicide bombing that killed 23 people outside the main U.S. base in Afghanistan during a February visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, a U.S. military official told The Associated Press.

Abu Laith al-Libi, who was featured in an Al Qaeda video last week, is believed to have trained bombers at terror camps, including one busted by U.S. forces in the eastern province of Khost in 2005, said Maj. Chris Belcher, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

Cheney was deep inside the sprawling Bagram base at the time of the attack and was not hurt, but the bombing added to the impression that Western forces and the shaky government of President Hamid Karzai are vulnerable to assault by Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.

"Our information suggests that Abu Laith al-Libi was the terrorist who planned the Feb. 27 suicide bomb attack at Bagram Airfield," Belcher said.

"We have information that the planning of this attack was falsely attributed to Usama bin Laden by (Taliban commander) Mullah Dadullah, in order to boost the morale of bin Laden's followers worldwide, in an attempt to reassure those followers that bin Laden is not ill or dead," he said. [More]

Comment:

I thought that seemed a little suspicious. I am slightly skeptical of Maj. Belcher's explanation, though. How is a lie so transparent that even most invertebrates aren't fooled supposed to boost morale? Is Dadullah's opinion of his followers' intelligence really that low? And who in their right mind would hire someone named "Belcher" to be their spokesman?

Al-Qaeda denies death of Iraq chief

An al-Qaeda-linked group has denied that Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has been killed. The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq said in an internet statement on Tuesday that al-Masri, also known as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, was alive and safe.

Iraq's government had said that al-Masri had been killed either by rivals in al-Qaeda or by Sunni tribesmen. "The Islamic State in Iraq assures the Islamic nation about the safety of Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, may God save him, and that he is still fighting the enemies," the group said.

Earlier, the Iraqi authorities said they were investigating reports that al-Masri had been killed in a battle within his own group. Iraq's interior ministry said on Tuesday it had received intelligence information on al-Masri's apparent death, and that Iraqi security forces were not involved.

"Some information ... needs confirmation, but this information is very strong," said Brigadier-General Abdel Karim Khalaf, interior ministry operations director. "The clashes took place among themselves. There were clashes within the groups of al-Qaeda. He was liquidated by them." Khalaf said al-Masri was apparently killed in a battle near a bridge in the town of al-Nibayi, north of Baghdad. He said that Iraqi authorities did not have al-Masri's body. Another interior ministry source said al-Masri had been killed. [More]


Comment:

Well now, isn't this interesting. Al-Masri may not have had the celebrity of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, nor his criminal genius, and his attempted establishment of an "Islamic State in Iraq" defies comprehension, but he nevertheless succeeded quite well in maintaining the savagery¹ Zarqawi had created. If he his dead, let us hope that his replacement is to him what he was to Zarqawi.

More importantly, though, if he is dead this will be the second time I know of that al-Qaeda has murdered one of its own². I will have to watch closely as events unfold.

¹As defined by Abu Bakr Naji.
²See here.