NEWS ABOUT TALIBAN

 

Disgusted by the insurgency’s relentless brutality, more than 1,000 fighters have walked away in recent months.

Taliban fighters surrender.

At a dark, unheated village Madrassa near Peshawar, Pakistan, Mullah Yahya spends his days studying the Quran and begging God’s forgiveness for the horrors in which he once took part. Until a few months ago, he belonged to a Taliban unit operating in and around the Afghan town of Marja, led by a commander whose ruthlessness had earned him the nickname “Saddam.” But late last summer, Yahya finally quit the Taliban, together with a dozen other fighters and even Saddam himself. The commander and some of his men joined a U.S.-backed militia in the Marja area—where Saddam was killed by a Taliban IED just a few weeks ago. Yahya and others abandoned the war altogether. “I’d like to delete my past from my memory,” says the black-bearded 28-year-old, huddled in two coats against the madrassa’s indoor chill, to a visiting a news reporter. “I’m worried about how Allah will treat me for what I have done.”

Vote recounts that could throw doubt on the legitimacy of Afghanistan's parliament are under way in 10 provinces even as the legislature starts work with its newly elected speaker, election officials said Monday.
Afghanistan's parliament  one of few checks on the administration of President Hamid Karzai  was finally inaugurated in late January after months of investigations and debate over allegations of widespread fraud during the polling. But continued questions about who was rightfully elected could undermine the lawmakers' authority as they start trying to pass laws and the impending budget.

NATO says three of its service members have been killed in Afghanistan.The international military coalition said one service member was killed on Tuesday in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan and the other two died in a bombing in the east on Monday. It did not provide the victims' nationalities or any other details.
NATO typically waits for the relevant national authorities to confirm deaths of service members.
The death Tuesday was the first in March. A total of 68 NATO service members were killed this year, including 36 in February.
Last year was the deadliest year of the nine-year Afghan war for the international forces, with 701 killed.

27th February

War in Afghanistan News reports provided by ISAF Joint Command.  Operations are reported in the following provinces:  Kandahar and Helmand.
With operations from only two provinces being reported, there is no lack of activity.  12 insurgents, and multiple Taliban facilitators were arrested/detained.  In  Zharay district of Kandahar a  Taliban leader recently returned from Chaman, Pakistan, in preparation for the spring fighting season was captured.

Afghan National Security and International Security Assistance Forces targeted a Taliban leader responsible for orchestrating large scale suicide attacks throughout southern Afghanistan and detained several suspected insurgents during a security operation in Kandahar City, Kandahar province, yesterday .

The Taliban leader is actively involved in planning and coordinating suicide-improvised explosive device attacks on Afghan National Army and coalition forces. The targeted leader is subordinate to the provincial military leader who ordered his return to Afghanistan from Pakistan to carry out attacks. He was involved in the suicide attack at the Kandahar City police headquarters Feb. 12 that killed several Afghans and wounded numerous others.
Coalition forces followed leads to a targeted compound where they called for the occupants to exit the buildings before conducting a search. Several suspected insurgents were detained after initial questioning at the scene.


Afghan National Security and International Security Assistance Forces today, confirmed the capture of an insurgent leader responsible for improvised explosive devices attacks in Uruzgan province.The detained insurgent is suspected of being the head of a Baluchi IED cell responsible for attacks on Afghan and coalition forces in Baluchi Valley, Uruzgan province.



(This picture have nothing to do with what's written above, i submitted it because its a very touching and true picture.)

Nato accused of killing 50 civilians in air strikes

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has accused Nato troops of killing more than 50 civilians in a troubled province of eastern Afghanistan. 

Mr Karzai's statement followed comments by Fazilullah Wahidi, provincial governor of Kunar province, alleging US-led Nato forces had killed up to 63 people, including women and children in air strikes on suspected rebels.

Mr Karzai said: "about 50 civilians have been martyred during international military forces operations in Ghaziabad district in Kunar province."

Nato said they would investigate the allegations.

"We are conducting an immediate assessment of these allegations and will report our findings," said US Army Colonel Patrick Hynes in a statement.

Taliban suicide bomber kills 30 in attack on government office

A Taliban suicide bomber killed at least 30 people and maimed dozens when he blew himself up amidst a crowd queuing for identity documents at a government office.

The morning blast in the northern province of Kunduz took the death toll from a recent wave of attacks on government buildings and security forces to over 100.

Witnesses said the Kunduz bomber detonated in a waiting area as people queued outside a district office in Imam Sahib to collect new identity cards and paperwork.

“There are wounded and dead all over the floor in the hospital,” a man called Mohammad Ismail told reporters. “There are bodies with their chopped-off hands or legs next to them in the hospital. It’s a disaster... you can hear screams everywhere.”

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it had targeted a recruitment centre for the Afghan army.

Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president, denounced the bombing as “un-Islamic.” The American embassy in Kabul said it demonstrated “yet again the terrorists’ cowardice and complete disregard for human life”.

Afghan war costs USD 300 mn a day

Yep, thats what you pay tax for.

The withdrawal of American troops from Iraq will allow for a reduced US defense budget in 2012 but the war in Afghanistan still costs the United States close to 300 million dollars a day.

Under the Pentagon's proposed budget, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will drop to USD 117.8 billion for fiscal year 2012, a reduction of 41.5 billion from the previous year.

As the US war effort winds down in Iraq, the budget sets aside USD 10.6 billion for "Operation New Dawn," with the remaining 50,000 US troops there due to withdraw by the end of 2011.

Spending for the Afghan mission calls for USD 107.3 billion, down slightly from the last budget, which requested USD 113.5 billion.

President Barack Obama has vowed to start a withdrawal in July of the roughly 97,000 troops now in Afghanistan.

The budget released on Monday offered no insight into the scale of the planned drawdown, with the Pentagon's budget document assuming an average of 98,250 troops on the ground by the end of 2012. 

One child each day killed in Afghan war

One child a day is being killed in the Afghan war as both the Taliban and government forces recruit and exploit them according to a United Nations report. 

Militants are employing children as suicide bombers or to plant explosives, while killing scores through the indiscriminate use of roadside booby traps and bomb attacks.

The Afghan police have also recruited boys as young as 12 into their fight against insurgents, according to a report which underlines the grim toll of the war on children.

Fighting in the first half of 2010 killed at least 176 children and wounded 389, in an increase of more than half from the previous year.

The real number is likely far higher, but difficult to measure because so much fighting takes place in areas made impenetrable by rebels.

The report by Ban Ki-moon, UN general secretary, said there were "grave violations and abuses committed against children" and called on all sides to do more to protect them.

 

Afghanistan: 4,000 British troops set for biggest battle with Taliban

Four thousand British troops are preparing to take part in the largest military offensive against the Taliban since the Afghanistan invasion in 2001.

 

The strike force, composed of British, US and Afghan troops, will storm into some of the most dangerous areas of central Helmand in a series of daring raids — the biggest since the first Gulf war — as part of Operation Moshtarak.

The offensive, the start date of which is being kept secret, will dwarf last summer’s Operation Panther’s Claw in which 10 British soldiers were killed and more than 100 injured.

The mission is designed to “break the back” of the Taliban in Helmand but commanders warned that casualties could be the highest of any operation in the eight-year war. Senior officers believe that there is a “real risk” that British forces could lose a Chinook helicopter laden with troops in the assault and warned the public to “steel itself” for casualties.

Gen Sir David Richards, the Chief of the General Staff, said casualties were inevitable. “One has to be prepared physically to drive the insurgents out,” he said.

The battle for the Taliban heartlands in central Helmand will be the first significant test of the strategy proposed by Gen Stanley McChrystal, the American commanding the Afghanistan operation, for achieving success

23rd January, Afghanistan

 The Danger of Afghanistan


In four years there, the British had lost more than 100 soldiers, about a third of all their nation's losses in the war.

In four months, 24 Marines with the Camp Pendleton-based Three-Five have been killed.

More than 140 others have been wounded, some of them catastrophically, losing limbs and the futures they had imagined for themselves.

The Marines' families have been left devastated, or dreading the knock on the door.

"We are a brokenhearted but proud family," Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly said. He spoke not only of the battalion: His son 1st Lt. Robert Kelly was killed leading a patrol in Sangin.

The Three-Five had drawn a daunting task: Push into areas where the British had not gone, areas where Taliban dominance was uncontested, areas where the opium poppy crop whose profits help fuel the insurgency is grown, areas where bomb makers lash together explosives to kill and terrorize in Sangin and neighboring Kandahar province.

The result? The battalion with the motto "Get Some" has been in more than 408 firefights and found 434 buried roadside bombs. An additional 122 bombs exploded before they could be discovered, in many instances killing or injuring Afghan civilians who travel the same roads as the Marines.

Some enlisted personnel believe that the Taliban has developed a "Vietnam-like" capability to pick off a platoon commander or a squad or team leader. A lieutenant assigned as a replacement for a downed colleague was shot in the neck on his first patrol.

At the confluence of two rivers in Helmand province in the country's south, Sangin is a mix of rocky desert and stretches of farmland where corn and pomegranates are grown. There are rolling hills, groves of trees and crisscrossing canals. Farmers work their fields and children play on dusty paths.

"Sangin is one of the prettier places in Helmand, but that's very deceiving," said Sgt. Dean Davis, a Marine combat correspondent. "It's a very dangerous place, it's a danger you can feel."