8 Killed In Kabul Suicide Bombing,Official

Zardari Reaches Kabul For Karzai Inauguration

KABUL: President Asif Ali Zardari flew into Kabul Wednesday to attend the inauguration of his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai for a second five-year term in power, Karzai’s office said.

Security was tight in and around Kabul as “foreign guests” including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived to attend the ceremony, scheduled to take place at the presidential palace on Thursday.

“Pakistan’s President His Excellency Asif Ali Zardari just arrived,” Hamid Elmi, a presidential palace official told a foreign news agency.

“Other guests are arriving and others are expected to arrive tomorrow,” he said, without giving further details.

Karzai was declared the winner of August 20 fraud-tainted elections after his rival Abdullah Abdullah withdrew from a run-off vote.

‘Delhi And Kabul Supporting Insurgency In Balochistan’

QUETTA : India and Afghanistan are supporting an insurgency in Pakistan’s Balochistan, trying to bolster the leadership of separatists fighting the Pakistan government, a top security commander said on Saturday. “A lot of evidence of Indian involvement through Afghanistan is there, supporting the separatist movement,” Major General Salim Nawaz, Inspector General of the Frontier Corps in Balochistan, told Reuters in an interview at his headquarters here.

Nawaz said the separatists were not very strong, as they did not have enough foot soldiers or a proper command. “The foreign element, especially the element there in Afghanistan, is trying hard to create more leadership,” he said. Brahamdagh Bugti, the grandson of Nawab Akbar Bugti, killed in late 2006, lives in Afghanistan and is regarded as one of the main Baloch separatist leaders.

Nawaz said proof of Indian involvement had been provided. “The proof has been given at various levels … photographs have been provided,” he said. He did not elaborate. On Thursday, a bomb attack on the India embassy in the Afghan capital killed 17 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility, but many in India also see the hand of Pakistan, which considers Afghanistan a fallback position in the event of war with India.

The Indian government has not blamed Pakistan, which condemned the attack. Nawaz denied US accusations that the Taliban leadership was based in and around Quetta, saying the United States was looking for an excuse for the difficulty it was facing with an intensifying Taliban insurgency.

“These allegations have been levelled in the past,” he said. “They had been dying a death, but lately they have started again. In my view, whatever is happening in Afghanistan, if they are not succeeding, there has to be some escape route.” The United States had handed over no information to back up its assertion regarding the Taliban “Quetta shura”, or leadership council, he said.

“If they have any evidence – which they have not given us a bit of until this moment – they should share it with us. Pakistani forces are quite capable of sorting them out,” he said. Nawaz said it was impossible for Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar to go unnoticed. “If he has to move, or if their leadership has to move, they have to move with some paraphernalia, they need to make some arrangements,” he said.

8 US Troops Die In One Of Worst Afghan Battles

KABUL: U.S. forces Suffered one of their bloodiest days in eight years of war in Afghanistan with eight soldiers killed when their remote outposts were overrun by hundreds of Taliban militants, officials said Sunday.

The dawn raid on Saturday saw militants sweep down a hillside from a mosque and a village in eastern Nuristan province, to attack two posts in the mountainous border region Which is a haven for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The U.S. forces called in air-strikes to repel the attack, in a fight that lasted into the night, the International Security Assistance Force said, describing it as a “a pretty tough fight”.

“Coalition forces Repelled Effectively the attack and inflicted heavy enemy casualties while eight Isaf and two ANSF (Afghan National Security Force) service members were killed,” it said.

Colonel Randy George, commander of Task Force Mountain Warrior in the area, said: “This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought Bravely together.”

Photo A Taliban spokesman that 30 foreign and Afghan troops were killed and that they captured the police chief of Kamdesh district as well as 30 Afghan National Army soldiers.

Nuristan’s governor, Badar Jamaluddin, said the Taliban took hostage 13 police officers and two Afghan journalists from a radio station established with U.S. help. Five Taliban were killed, he added.

Isaf still plans to withdraw from the area as part of a redeployment of troops for the forthcoming winter and a strategic Afghan Realignment of forces to more populous areas in the east, a media officer said.

Eastern Afghanistan has seen an escalation in violence recently as Taliban-linked militia spread their footprint beyond their southern traditional powerbase.

The London-based International Council on security and development think-tank estimates the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 80 percent of Afghanistan.

Mariam Abou Zahab, from the Center for International Studies and Research (CERI) in Paris, said: “The Taliban are in a strong position. They want to show that they are everywhere.”

Like in the south and the east, fighting between militants and international forces has now become a daily occurrence.

Suicide Attack Kills Nine In Afghanistan

Kabul, A suicide car bomb blew up on Monday outside a US military base in eastern Afghanistan, killing nine civilian labourers, as the country marked Independence Day under the shadow of extremist attacks.

The blast, claimed by the insurgent Taliban, did not penetrate the base in the town of Khost, while security forces were able to prevent a second suicide attack moments later, the US-led coalition and Afghan officials said.

It came amid massive heightened security as Afghanistan marked Independence Day, commemorating its final defeat of the British army in 1919.

Kabul was locked down with 7,000 police on patrol and checkpoints at nearly every city centre intersection and main entry points into the capital.

President Hamid Karzai’s annual Independence Day address in the stadium was called off with no explanation, while the defence ministry kept under wraps a smaller commemoration due later in the day.

A spokesman for the insurgent Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said it carried out the suicide attack in Khost, 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the border with Pakistan.

The US-led coalition said insurgents detonated the device outside the base and that nine Afghans were killed and 13 wounded, according to first reports.

A secretary to the Khost governor, Mohammad Bilal, gave the same same toll. “It was a suicide car bombing against the gates of the Salerno camp,” he said.

“Moments later a second car bomber came and wanted to detonate his bombs. Police identified him and opened fire on him,” Bilal added.

He said the attacker was able to escape into the crowd and security forces destroyed the second bomb. “They wanted to disturb Independence Day.”

The dead and wounded were labourers who had been waiting to enter the base for work, provincial government spokesman Khaibar Pashtun said.

Reacting to the suicide bombing, Karzai said in a statement that by killing “innocent civilians on Independence Day, the terrorists showed their hostility to the freedom of Afghan people.”

The Al-Qaeda-linked Taliban were driven from power in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

However they were able to regroup, some of them taking refuge in Pakistan, to launch a snowballing insurgency which military officials say is attracting more Arab, Pakistani and other Muslim fighters.

The coalition and separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force helping Afghanistan fight the extremists issued a rare warning of a “heightened security threat based on credible intelligence reporting.”

“These reports indicate that the enemies of the people of Afghanistan intend to attack civilian, military and government targets during Afghan independence celebrations,” a statement said.

UN staff was told to stay at home while other international personnel were told to restrict their movements.

“Staff are working at home as precaution,” UN spokesman Aleem Siddique told AFP.

The capital has suffered a series of attacks in recent weeks.

The education minister escaped a roadside bomb Saturday, while two separate blasts in the city this month have killed two foreign soldiers and about seven Afghans.

The last major parade in the capital Kabul, on April 27, was disrupted when militants opened fire on a stage where Karzai, ministers, diplomats and other senior officials were seated.

Karzai survived but three people as well as three of the attackers — said to be from the Taliban militia — were killed.

Obama Visits Afghan To Tour War Zone

Kabul, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama arrived in Afghanistan on Saturday, the first stop on a campaign-season tour of war zones, a spokesman said.

Less than four months before the general election, Obama’s first visit to Afghanistan, with a subsequent stop in Iraq, was rich with political implications, although the Illinois senator flew as part of an official congressional delegation.

Rival John McCain has criticized Obama for his lack of time in the region, and the Republican National Committee had a running ticker tallying the more than 900 days since his last visit to Iraq.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama arrived in Kabul early on Saturday.

“I look forward to seeing what the situation on the ground is,” Obama told a pair of reporters who accompanied him to his departure from Andrews Air Force Base on Thursday.

“I want to, obviously, talk to the commanders and get a sense both in Afghanistan and in Baghdad of, you know, what the most, their biggest concerns are, and I want to thank our troops for the heroic work that they’ve been doing,” he said before his flight overseas.

Obama advocates ending the US combat role in Iraq by withdrawing troops at the rate of one to two combat brigades a month. But he supports increasing the military commitment to Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been resurgent and Osama bin laden is believed to be hiding.

On his trip, Obama intends to meet with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President. He recently chided Karzai and his government, saying it had “not gotten out of the bunker” and helped to organize the country or its political and security institutions.

Also on his itinerary is a meeting with Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi leader. On the campaign trail, Obama has said one benefit of withdrawing US troops is that it would pressure al-Maliki to shore up his government as well.

Nonetheless, he said he did not plan to reiterate those messages in person. “I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking, and I think it’s very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a US senator,” he said. “We have one president at a time.”

In a speech this week, Obama said the war in Iraq was a distraction, unlike the fighting in Afghanistan.

“This is a war that we have to win,” he said. “I will send at least two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, and use this commitment to seek greater contributions — with fewer restrictions — from NATO allies.

“I will focus on training Afghan security forces and supporting an Afghan judiciary, with more resources and incentives for American officers who perform these missions.”

By contrast, his opposition to the war in Iraq — and call for an end to the US combat role — helped him overcome his rivals in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Lately, his efforts to explain how he will use what he learns from US commanders to refine his proposals have brought charges from Republicans and complaints from Democratic liberals that he seems to be shifting his Iraq policy toward the political center. But Obama maintains his basic goal of ending the US combat role soon remains unchanged and that he’s always said the US withdrawal must be done carefully.

Suicide Blast Hits Indian Embassy In Kabul; 7 Dead, 19 Injured

Kabul, A suicide car bomb blast hit the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding 19 others, officials and Afghan media said.

“The Kabul ambulance services alone evacuated seven dead and 19 wounded, but this is not the final figure,” Health Ministry spokesman Abdullah Fahim said.

The bomb that went off in a car just after 8:30 am sent plumes of brown smoke into the air and was heard across the central city.

Gen Mohammad Zahir Azimi, the spokesman for the Defense Ministry, says five people were killed at the scene, while two others succumbed to their injuries at the hospital.

Taliban insurgents have vowed to step up their campaign of suicide bombings this year to overthrow the pro-Western Afghan government and drive out foreign forces.

The Indian Embassy is directly opposite the Interior Ministry, but the bomber struck the embassy side of the street where dozens of people were waiting in line for visas.

Smoke was coming from the scene of the blast. Police cordoned off the area as ambulance crews carried away several wounded. US troops were also at the scene.

India has close relations with the Afghan government and is funding a number of large infrastructure projects.

Afghan officials have repeatedly accused Pakistan of secretly aiding the hardline Islamist Taliban militia, a charge Pakistan denies.

NATO Deaths In Afghanistan Pass Iraq

Kabul, Militants killed more US and NATO troops in Afghanistan in June than in Iraq for the second straight month, a grim milestone capping a run of headline-grabbing insurgent attacks that analysts say underscore the Taliban’s growing strength.

The fundamentalist militia in June staged a sophisticated jailbreak that freed 886 prisoners, then briefly infiltrated a strategic valley outside Kandahar. Last week, a Pentagon report forecast the Taliban would maintain or increase its pace of attacks, which are already up 40 percent this year from 2007 where US troops operate along the Pakistan border.

Some observers say the insurgency has gained dangerous momentum. And while June also saw the international community meet in Paris to pledge $21 billion in aid, an Afghanistan expert at New York University warns that there is still no strategy to turn that commitment into success.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has noted that more international troops died in Afghanistan than in Iraq in May, the first time that had happened. While that trend — now two months old — is in part due to falling violence in Iraq, it also reflects rising violence in Afghanistan.

At least 45 international troops — including at least 27 US forces and 13 British — died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 US-led invasion to oust the Taliban, according to an Associated Press count.

In Iraq, at least 31 international soldiers died in June: 29 US troops and one each from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. There are 144,000 US troops in Iraq and 4,000 British forces in additional to small contingents from several other nations.

The 40-nation international coalition is much broader in Afghanistan, where only about half of the 65,000 international troops are American.

That record number of international troops means that more soldiers are exposed to danger than ever before. But Taliban attacks are becoming increasingly complex, and in June, increasingly deadly.

A gun and bomb attack last week in Ghazni province blasted a US Humvee into smoldering ruins, killing three US soldiers and an Afghan interpreter. It was the fourth attack of the month against troops that killed four people. No single attack had killed more than three international troops since August 2007.

“I think possibly we’ve reached a turning point,” said Mustafa Alani, the director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “Insurgents now are more active, more organized, and the political environment, whether in Pakistan or Afghanistan, favors insurgent activities.”

US commanders have blamed Pakistani efforts to negotiate peace deals for the spike in cross-border attacks, though an initial deal with militants has begun to fray and security forces recently launched a limited crackdown in the semiautonomous tribal belt where the Taliban and al-Qaida operate with increasing freedom.

For a moment in mid-June, Afghanistan’s future shimmered brightly. World leaders gathered in Paris to pledge more than $21 billion in aid, and Afghan officials unveiled a development strategy that envisions peace by 2020.

But the very next day, the massive and flawlessly executed assault on the prison in Kandahar — the Taliban’s spiritual home — drew grudging respect even from Western officials.

US Ambassador William Wood said violence is up because Taliban fighters are increasingly using terrorist tactics that cause higher tolls, but that there’s no indication fighters can hold territory. He said June had “some very good news and a couple cases of bad news.”

“The very good news was Paris. There were more nations represented, contributing more than ever before,” Wood told the AP.

The scramble after the jailbreak to push the Taliban back from the nearby Arghandab valley was the other big plus, Wood said. The Afghan army sent more than 1,000 troops to Kandahar in two days.

“Although Arghandab got major press for being a Taliban attack, the real news in Arghandab was that the Afghans themselves led the counterattack, deployed very rapidly and chased the Taliban away,” Wood said.

The worst news, Wood said, was the prison break, and the possible involvement of al-Qaida.

“The Taliban is not known for that level of complex operation, and others who have bases in the tribal areas are,” he said.

Alani agreed: “The old Taliban could not do such an operation, so we are talking about a new Taliban, possibly al-Qaida giving them the experience to carry out this operation.”

Days after the prison attack, an angry President Hamid Karzai threatened to send Afghan troops after Taliban leaders in Pakistan, marking a new low in Afghan-Pakistan relations.

Contributing to the increased death toll is an increase in sophistication of attacks. US Maj Gen Jeffrey J Schloesser, the top commander of US forces here, said this month that militant attacks are becoming more complex — such as gunfire from multiple angles plus a roadside bomb. Insurgents are using more explosives, he said.

Mark Laity, the top NATO spokesman in Afghanistan, said troops are taking the fight to insurgents in remote areas and putting themselves in harm’s way. One or two events can disproportionally affect the monthly death toll, he said.

“Sometimes it is just circumstance,” Laity said. “For instance you can hit an IED and walk away or not, and what has happened this month is that there’s been one or two instances that there’s been multiple deaths.”

The agency’s count found that some 580 people died in insurgent violence in June, including around 440 militants, 34 civilians and 44 Afghan security forces. More than 2,100 people have died in violence this year, according to the news agency count, which is based on figures from Afghan, US and NATO officials.

Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at NYU, said the Paris conference shows a strong international commitment to Afghanistan, but he said there is still no strategy for longterm success.

“Let’s focus on the essentials: creating a secure environment for Afghanistan and Pakistan to address their problems and for the international community to eliminate al-Qaida’s safe haven,” Rubin said. “We haven’t been getting there, and we are not getting closer, pledges or no pledges.”

Sex Trade Thrives in Orthodox Afghanistan

KABUL: The girl was 11 when she was molested by a man with no legs. He paid her $5. And that was how she started selling sex.

The girl is now 13, and her features have sharpened into striking beauty. She speaks four languages — Pashtu, Dari, the Urdu she picked up as a refugee in Pakistan and the English she learned in a course in Kabul. She is the breadwinner in her family of 10. She does not know what a condom is. She has not heard of AIDS.

Afghanistan is one of the world’s most conservative countries, yet its sex trade appears to be thriving. Sex is sold most obviously at brothels full of women from China who serves both Afghans and foreigners. Far more controversial are Afghan prostitutes, who stay underground in a society that pretends they don’t exist.

Customs meant to keep women “pure” have not stopped prostitution. Girls are expected to remain virgins until their wedding nights, so some prostitutes have only anal sex.

Police make two to three prostitution arrests each week, according to Zia ul-Haq, chief investigator in the interior ministry’s department of sexual crimes. They are often the casualties of three decades of brutal war and a grinding poverty that forces most Afghans to live on less than $1 a day.

“Prostitution is in every country that has poverty, and it exists in Afghanistan,” says women’s rights activist Orzala Ashraf. “But society has black glasses and ignores these problems. Tradition is honor, and if we talk about these taboos, then we break tradition.”

It’s hard to know how many other women in Afghanistan are prostitutes because of the extreme secrecy around the issue. A University of Manitoba report last September estimated about 900 female sex workers in Kabul.

Taliban Free 1,100 Prisoners

KABUL: Taliban rebels tore down a jail in Afghanistan, killed prison guards and freed more than 1,100 inmates on Friday in an attack described by authorities as their “most sophisticated” so far. Afghan and international troops launched a desperate hunt on Saturday but none of the fugitives has been found so far.

The Taliban said 400 of its own fighters escaped when the rebels attacked the facility in the southern city of Kandahar on Friday night, blasting it open with suicide bombs before shooting the guards.

Afghan authorities put the number of prisoners who fled one of the country’s biggest jails at 886, more than 380 of whom were Taliban.

The rebels said they spent two months planning the attack, which deputy justice minister Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai said was their most sophisticated yet, and which came as four troops with US-led forces were killed in the south.

“A massive operation is underway to find the escaped inmates. The Afghan security forces are searching for them within the city and along the main and secondary roads,” Hashimzai said. None of the escaped inmates has been caught yet, he added.

“Afghanistan national security forces and ISAF forces have cordoned off the area to re-establish security and recapture the escapees,” general Carlos Branco, a spokesman for Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said. “More than 1,100 prisoners were able to escape.”

A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said over phone the rebels used suicide bombs and detonated a bomb-laden water tanker.

“First we exploded two suicide attacks and then our mujahideen riding motorcycles entered the prison and killed the remaining guards. We successfully freed all prisoners, he said.

He added that the escaped fighters had reached “safe destinations”.