90 percent Afghans dont know about 9/11

Helmand is the province which has been hit hard by the war between US troops and insurgents.

When the pictures of 9/11 were shown to the youth, none of them knew about it.

When the same pictures were shown to some tribal leaders, they wondered and showed ignorance about the incident. They said Afghanistan even didn’t possess even donkeys, how could they attack US buildings.

They complained that US said it came to help us, but it destroyed the whole country. They hold US responsible for their plight. According to a survey 92 percent Afghans don’t know why the US invaded Afghanistan.

Pakistan is Centre of Terrorism Activites: Mullen

Breaking News: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen has said that Pakistan is centre of terrorism activities and proper action is vital to end terrorists places from the country.

The top US military officer says coalition forces are continuing to make significant progress against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but is warning there is likely to be more violence this year in many parts of the country than in 2010.

Mullen says local towns are beginning to reject Taliban fighters and the insurgents are losing ground. He is losing and I have every confidence that he will continue to lose so long as coalition and Afghan forces increase their presence and their pressure on his operations and improve their own capacity, he said.

The admiral says he was not surprised that China tested the countrys first radar-evading stealth bomber this week, but says he cannot understand why Beijing continues to invest in expensive weapons that could be targeted against America.

British intelligence promoted Taliban impostor: report

KABUL: British intelligence agents were responsible for promoting an impostor who they believed was a senior Taliban commander key to the Afghan peace process, the Times newspaper reported Friday.

Intelligence agents paid the man several hundred thousand dollars, convinced he was a senior commander with the authority to negotiate with senior American and Afghan officials on behalf of the insurgents.

It is now believed that he was either a minor Taliban figure or simply a con-man.

A senior Afghan government official told the newspaper: “British intelligence was naive and there was wishful thinking on our part.”

British intelligence agency MI6 believed it had contacted Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, an ex-Taliban government minister and second to Mullah Omar in its leadership. They flew him to Kabul on numerous occasions.

Afghan officials told

Seven Afghan police killed in Taliban raid

At least seven policemen were killed and one wounded during an insurgent attack in southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, an official said on Wednesday.

The militants attacked a police checkpoint in the Khas Uruzgan district late Tuesday night, Uruzgan governor Haji Khodai Rahim told AFP.

Rahim said that seven policemen were killed and an eighth had gone with the insurgents in the wake of the overnight attack, raising fears of an inside job.

“This was a plot,” Rahim said.

“The eighth soldier who was on guard, had links with Taliban, he directed the militants into the check point.”

One soldier was also seriously wounded in the overnight attack.

A spokesman for Taliban, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, said their fighters killed eight policemen and seized weapons from all those who manned the checkpoint.

Taliban attack on Afghan post repelled, 30 killed

International forces in Afghanistan Saturday fought off a Taliban attack on a combat post in a remote and mountainous region bordering Pakistan, killing more than 30 insurgents, NATO said.
Insurgents attacked the post from all directions using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms fire, NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement. Five ISAF soldiers were injured, it said.
The incident took place at 1.30 am Saturday (2200 GMT Friday) in Bermal district in Paktika province, which borders Pakistan’s lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
The coalition forces called for air weapons team and close-air support during the engagement. A coalition aircraft engaged an insurgent firing position with three precision-guided munitions, it said. The air weapons team also engaged a large number of insurgents near the outpost, it said, adding: Initial operational reporting indicates more than 30 insurgents were killed in the failed attack on the outpost.
The five wounded soldiers continued fighting, it said. None were killed. The proximity of the combat post to the border hints at the possibility the insurgents had crossed from Pakistan, where the Taliban’s leadership council is believed to be based. The insurgency in Afghanistan is now in its 10th year since the Taliban’s regime was overthrown in the US-led invasion in late 2001.
Remote border regions have proven particularly volatile in recent years. NATO said Saturday that two of its soldiers died in separate attacks in the volatile south of Afghanistan, where the insurgency is concentrated. One died in an insurgent attack on Friday, the other in a similar incident on Saturday. The nationalities of the soldiers were not revealed, according to policy.The total number of foreign soldiers died in the war this year reached at 609, as compared to 521 for 2009. NATO and the United States have more than 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, many of them deployed to the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand in a major counter-insurgency push.

NATO says 15 insurgents killed in Afghan south

KABUL: NATO said Monday that at least 15 Taliban militants were killed in southern Afghanistan in clashes and an air strike.

Troops raided a compound in Baghran district of Helmand province looking for a senior Taliban commander allegedly overseeing and guiding all Taliban military actions in the province.

In clashes at the property, Afghan and NATO troops killed four insurgents, said the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), although there was no immediate confirmation that the commander was among the dead.

The military said soldiers destroyed the compound after discovering a bomb-making factory and that the property had been booby-trapped with bombs.

ISAF said an air strike then killed 11 militants who attacked ground troops as they were preparing the leave the area.

The deputy head of Helmand provincial council, Haji Fazel Barry,

US may provide $2bn security aid to Pakistan: Hillary

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced on Friday the Obama administration would seek $2 billion in foreign military assistance for Pakistan, saying Washington had no closer ally in the struggle against insurgents.
Announcement of the military assistance, which would be delivered over five years from 2012 to 2016, came at the formal opening session of the third round of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue, a series of bilateral meetings that began on Wednesday. Clinton said President Barack Obama’s administration would ask the U.S. Congress to approved the military assistance to complement the $7.5 billion in civilian projects it already has approved.
She said that Pakistan is facing a number challenges but America will help the country in these difficult times. She said that floods put negative impact on the economy of Pakistan and affected 2 million people.
In a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Hillary said that with the cooperation of international community and Pakistan government, steps are being taken to help the flood-hit people. She said that Pakistan is the key ally in the war against terrorism.
On the occasion, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said it was time to counter naysayers who argue that Islamabad’s heart is not in the fight against the insurgents. Prophets of doom are back in business, painting doomsday scenarios about our alliance, he said. They are dead wrong.
Qureshi said that Pakistan wants long-term relations with the US. He said that President Obama wants peaceful resolution of Kashmir dispute. He said that Pakistan and US should work together to restore peace in Afghanistan.
The strategic dialogue is organized into 13 working groups, ranging from water and agriculture to communications and defense.

Somali PM Sharmarke steps down

Somalias Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke resigned Tuesday after a month of disagreements with President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed.
President Ahmed’s UN-backed government is battling Islamist group al-Shabab for control of the capital, Mogadishu. Sources said that his squabbling with the prime minister has hampered the fight against the insurgents. Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke has been under intense pressure to resign for some months. He said he had been unable to work with the president.Sharmarke and Sharif have clashed over a number of issues including a new constitution for Somalia. The resignation comes as violence continued in Mogadishu.In the latest incident, a lone gunman tried to force his way into the presidential palace Monday night, according to the director of communication of the president, Abdirashid Khalif.The gunman, who had a grenade and a rifle, was shot dead by security guards, Khalif said.

Afghan withdrawal won’t be a ‘hand-off’: Petraeus

KABUL: The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan from next July will begin with a general ‘thinning out’ of forces rather than any large-scale drawdown, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces said on Tuesday.

Critics say U.S. President Barack Obama’s strategy to begin pulling out troops has backfired, sending a signal to the Taliban that the United States was preparing to wind down at a time when U.S. and NATO forces were suffering record casualties.

It has also alarmed Afghan leaders, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai last week saying the Taliban threat has not been eliminated and any timeline for withdrawal would only “invigorate” the insurgents.

U.S. commanders have since tried to allay fears the timeline would not represent a wholesale departure.

The withdrawal timetable however is certain to come under close scrutiny in a White House

Two US soldiers missing in Afghanistan: NATO

KABUL: Two American soldiers are missing in eastern Afghanistan, NATO said on Saturday, hours after reporting that five US troops had been killed in bomb attacks.

The missing soldiers left their compound late Friday “and did not return”, a statement from NATO”s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said, amid reports one of them may already be dead.

Their vehicle had been recovered in Logar province, south of Kabul, an official said.

“Nobody has been found but there are reports that there may be a casualty and that the body has been removed from the scene,” a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

All reports were unsubstantiated, he added. ISAF said a road and air search had been launched.

A Taliban spokesman denied the insurgents were behind the disappearance of the soldiers, though earlier in the day he had contacted media outlets with detailed descriptions of the soldiers and the equipment they were carrying.

Speaking to media by telephone from an undisclosed location, the Taliban”s eastern Afghanistan spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said: “So far, we are not aware of it and cannot confirm this”.

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