Afghan officer fires on NATO troops, kills several

A veteran Afghan military officer opened fire on foreign forces Wednesday after a dispute at the Kabul airport, killing several NATO troops, Afghan and coalition officials said.

It was the newest in a spate of deadly occurrences that have happened inside government or military installations, a preferred target of Taliban rebellious.

The Taliban claimed blame for the attack, other than Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the gunman was an Afghan military pilot who "open fire on foreigners after a disagreement."

The pilot was killed in the shooting, which happened inside a flair used by the Afghan Air Force, Azimi said. NATO did not make known the number or nationalities of the casualties pending announcement of their families. The airport is home to the NATO Air Training Command.

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This Kandahar break-out is a real blow for the allies in Afghanistan

The real meaning of the audacious break-out of prisoners from a Kandahar jail lies in the fact those more than 100 Taliban commanders are supposed to be in the middle of the escapees. These are not the top-ranking members of the leadership who run overall plan – most of whom remain safe in Pakistan – but the crucial mid-level militant who lead groups of between 50 and a few hundred fighters.

One of the most significant lessons learned by US forces in Ira>Iraqq was the utility of target such men. Thinning their ranks not only eliminate enemies who cause casualties on a daily basis and disrupts units on the ground but has imperative consequences for insurgent movements as a whole. If adequate numbers of them are killed, a gap begins to come into view between the calculated leadership and the foot soldiers.

Two problems that the Taliban upper authority has always wrestled with is the course and the discipline of its fragmented and often discrete fighting force.

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Taliban break more than 450 out of Afghan prison

Taliban militants dug a drawn out tunnel subversive and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, the majority of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and rebellious said Monday.

The immense overnight jailbreak in Afghanistan's second-largest city underscores the Afghan government's lifelong weak point in the south despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. Kandahar city, in particular, has been a focus of the worldwide shot to establish a strong Afghan government existence in former Taliban strongholds.

The 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison has been part of that plan. The ability has undergone security upgrades and makes tighter procedures following a brazen 2008 Taliban assault that freed 900 prisoners. Afghan government officials and their NATO backers have frequently said that the prison has vastly enhanced security since that attack.

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Afghan, NATO forces brace for spring offensive

Afghanistan – Ten loud bangs that rocked Kandahar one day last week actually signal good news on the front line of the war next to the Taliban.

The explosions one each 30 minutes from 10 a.m. awaiting 2:30 p.m. Were from Afghan and grouping forces blowing up more than 6,000 pounds of Taliban AK-47s, bomb-making tackle, homemade concerned and rocket-propelled grenades.

Finding and tear down the insurgents' weapons in Kandahar prefecture, the family home of President Hamid Karzai and the origin of the Taliban, is just one way Afghan and coalition forces are tiresome to make it hard for the militants to launch a burly unpleasant in the spring.

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Afghan, coalition forces target Kandahar attack network facilitator

Afghanistan – Afghan and coalition armed forces detained more than a few suspects as they targeted a Taliban ad hoc explosive device launch pad during a security operation in Kandahar region Dec. 15.

Cleverness reports point to the targeted person has ties to the Zharay IED network. He collects and distributes IEDs, weapons and provisions supporting terrorist activities all through multiple areas in Kandahar to comprise Panjwa’i district.

The joint security team under arrest the think after Afghan forces used a loudspeaker to call the inhabitants out of the building quietly before they searched for the human being who operates in the Panjwa’i quarter. The security team under arrest the individuals quietly based on initial puzzled at the picture.

The joint security team conducted the maneuver in the hours of darkness to decrease the risk to local citizens. Nix women or children were distress or detained during this operation.

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Afghan, Coalition Forces Stop Insurgent Attack in Afghanistan

Afghan and alliance forces yesterday disrupted a Taliban plot to carry out suicide bombings in Afghanistan’s Helmand region, military officials reported.

Troops were penetrating for a Taliban leader and suicide-bomb launch pad in the province’s Kajaki district. Insurgent opened fire as the troops approach, and Afghan and coalition forces eventually killed numerous armed insurgent. More than a few of the dead insurgents’ bodies were completely shaved and possessed poems. Official said those individuality among Taliban operatives point to they were planning a suicide attack.

Officials from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force established the identity of a Taliban leader captured Dec. 10 in Khost county. The Taliban leader is reportedly accountable for coordinating attacks on Afghan and coalition troop’s right through the prefecture.

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Taliban suicide bomber kills 6 US and 2 Afghan troops in south

A Taliban suicide bomber killed six US soldiers and two Afghan troops in a suicide attack today that under attack a newly recognized outpost in a region of Kandahar recognized as the "heart of darkness." The Taliban claimed it approved out the attack.

The suicide bomber detonate a minibus packed with explosive at the gate of a small war outpost manned by US and Afghan troops in the town of Sangsar in the district of Zhari in Kandahar county. The suicide bomber was able to get past Afghan soldiers who were manning the outer boundary.

The blast level the wall of a mud-brick home where the US and Afghan troops were building a new base in the village, according to The New York Times. The construction collapsed on the soldiers, killing them and cutting more than a dozen US and Afghan troops.

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Father-in-law of disfigured Afghan teen arrested

Afghanistan – The father-in-law of a youthful Afghan woman who said her nose and ears were sliced off to chastise her for running away from her violent husband has been arrested, the Afghan heart Ministry said Wednesday.

The woman, Aisha, gain worldwide concentration when she come into view on the Aug. 9 cover of Time periodical.

Beneath orders from a Taliban commandant acting as a judge, she was disfigured last year as penalty for fleeing her husband's home, according to Time's story in August and extra accounts.

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US embassy cables: 'Reviewing our Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy'

A number of teams of US Special Forces soldiers have been clandestinely fixed with Pakistani military forces in the ethnic belt, helping to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida armed forces and co-ordinate drone strikes, the embassy cable reveal.

The numbers concerned are small – just 16 soldiers in October 2009 – but the deployment is of enormous political significance, described in a cable that provides an extraordinary glimpse into underground American operations in the world's most violent al-Qaida hotbed.

The first American Special Forces group of four soldiers was deployed to an old British colonial fort in the northern half of the tribal belt in September 2009, helping Frontier Corps paramilitaries to carry out armaments strikes on a rebellious base.

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Taliban briefly overrun east Afghanistan district

The Taliban temporarily overran an area seat in eastern Afghanistan, torching administration buildings and capture police officers after an intense fight, officials said Monday.

The government was back in manage of Ghazni province's Khogyani district headquarters a few hours later, said center Taliban Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary, who did not have any in sequence on casualties.

Narrow police Chief Mohammad Yasin, who wasn't there during the harass, said government buildings were capture and set on fire.

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Petraeus: NATO Pressure Forcing Taliban to Seek Peace

The leader of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan says alliance progress in recent months has congested Taliban advances in most of the country, and is put force on even senior leaders of the group to seek a peace deal with the Afghan administration.

Universal Petraeus has spoken of progress in specific parts of Afghanistan previous to, but now he says that in the last three-to-six months Afghan troops and his international forces have changed the situation in most of the country.

"I think the Taliban momentum has, as I noted earlier, been overturned in many areas and definitely under arrest in the bulk of the country," said Petraeus. "I wouldn't say all parts.

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Afghan peace council chief: Taliban ready to talk

A previous Afghan president who heads a new calm council said Thursday that he's persuaded the Taliban are prepared to negotiate peace.

Burhanuddin Rabbani told reporters in Kabul the Taliban have not totally discarded the idea of negotiating a nonmilitary resolution of the war.

"They have some circumstances to start the negotiations process. It gives us hope that they want to talk and discuss," Rabbani said.

"We are taking our first steps," he said. "I consider there are people among the Taliban that have a message that they want to talk. They are prepared.".

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Pakistan says it is key to Taliban peace talks

Pakistan's prime minister said Tuesday that calm talks stuck between the Afghan administration and the Taliban cannot be successful without Islamabad's help, a prompt of the influence the country has because of its chronological ties with the group.

The tapping about talks has picked up in new days, fueled in part by Afghan President Hamid Karzai's corroboration that his government has had informal deliberations with the Taliban on secure peace in Afghanistan "for quite some time."

Pakistan has obtainable to facilitate peace talks previously, except Afghanistan is believed to be suspicious of its motives. Pakistan helped the Taliban grab power in Afghanistan in the 1990s and many of the group's senior commander, including leader Mullah Omar, are supposed to be based along Pakistan's rugged border with Afghanistan.

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Afghan President launch Peace Council

Karzai has released an inaugural session of a peace committee aimed at reconciling with the Taliban and other militant groups, as the war in Afghanistan enters its 10th year.

The first conference of the 70-member council took place Thursday on the ninth centenary of the start of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. The group includes former Taliban officials, former presidents, and civil and spiritual leaders.

At the conference, President Karzai called on the Taliban to use the chance to join in bringing peace to Afghanistan. The government has urged insurgents to renounce aggression and respect the constitution.

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Taliban set preconditions for formal peace talks

Taliban administrators have busy in periodic, discreet contacts with Afghan and U.S. officials for months but are reluctant to move to formal peace negotiations until the U.S. agrees to a schedule for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, according to a Pakistani cleverness official and members of a newly formed Afghan calm council.

The White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama ropes attempts by the Afghan government to open calm talks with Taliban leaders, but still wants the rebellious to give up violence and their support of al-Qaida.

Though, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the United States was not taking part in any such talks. "This is about Afghanistan," he said. "It has to be done by the Afghans."

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2 explosions rock southern Afghan city, killing 8

Afghanistan – Two explosion rocked Kandahar on Tuesday, the next night of lethal explosions in the southern Afghan city where U.S. and Afghan armed forces are ramping up operations in areas long held by the Taliban.

At least eight people were killed and one more 22 were wounded by a car bomb and a second, lesser blast in the city, said Zelmai Ayubi, spokesman for the local governor of Kandahar. The target of the explosion remains unclear, but he says Afghan police were among those injured.

On Monday night, three explosions, very soon minutes apart, killed four Afghan police officers in Kandahar. Also Monday, a former region chief, Habibullah Aghonzada, was gunned down by assailant as he prayed at a packed mosque.

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Eastern Afghan official killed in bombing

KABUL, Afghanistan – The deputy governor of a volatile eastern Afghan province was killed by a suicide car bomber Tuesday, along with 5 others, police said.

The explosion occurred when the official was driving in Ghazni city toward his office, said Ghazni province Police Chief Zarawar Zahid. The bomber rammed into one of the vehicles in the two-car convoy, sparking a large blast.

All of those in the convoy were killed, including Deputy Gov. Khazim Allayar, his adult son, his driver, and 3 bodyguards, Zahid said. 12 people nearby were wounded, he added.

Afghan government officials are prime targets for the Taliban and other insurgent groups that have instituted an assassination campaign against people who work with either the Afghan government or NATO forces.

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US: Dead in Afghan chopper crash were all American

KABUL, Afghanistan – All 9 troops killed in the worst helicopter crash for the coalition in Afghanistan in 4 years were Americans, the Pentagon has confirmed without providing further information on why the aircraft carrying Navy special forces went down.

NATO said there were no reports of enemy fire in a rugged area in the Daychopan district of Zabul province, where the crash took place on Tuesday. But Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi told The Associated Press by telephone that insurgents shot down the helicopter.

The Taliban often exaggerate their claims and sometimes take credit for accidents.

The U.S. Defense Department released the identities of the troops late Wednesday, saying 4 were with the Navy special forces — 3 of them Navy SEALS — and the rest were soldiers.

Fort Campbell spokesman Rick Rzepka said that the five soldiers were assigned to the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade.

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Afghan officials say too early to judge election

Afghan establishment said Monday it was too early on to judge the soundness of the country's parliamentary ballot in spite of observers' reports of widespread deception in the vote that was to help merge its shaky democracy.

Also Monday, Britain's military hand the U.S. responsibility for a unsafe district in southern Afghanistan that has been the prospect of some of the bloodiest fighting connecting British troops for the past four years.

In spite of Taliban rocket strikes and bombings, Afghans voted on Saturday for a new assembly, the first election since a fraud-tainted presidential vote last year that cast doubt on the legality of the embattled government.

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Newly Disclosed Documents Shed More Light on Early Taliban Offers, Pakistan Role

Terrorist news: U.S. government papers obtained throughout the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and newly posted on the website of the George Washington University National Security Archive shed some extra light on talks with the Taliban prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as well as with regard to the frequent Taliban offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, and the role of Pakistan previous to and after the attacks.

One of the newly released State Department papers, from March 2000, notes that a planned “gas pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Multan, Pakistan figured importantly in discussions” about the mutual goal flanked by the U.S.

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