Britain pledges 300 extra troops and USD 10 million to Afghanistan to assist carrying out the country's next year presidential elections.
After coming back from a visit to the region over the weekend, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told British lawmakers that the UK troops would be sent to the southern province of Helmand to boost the forces fighting Taliban in the area.
He claimed that British troops helped the Afghan army and police to 'spread the rule of law' to 'empty places' that support terrorism. However, Brown failed to specify if the UK forces would be sent to Afghanistan at the same time the US plans a major surge.
The increase brings the number of the British troops deployed in Afghanistan from just over 8,000 to 8,300.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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#2
If they are there to napalm the opium fields then they are welcome. If they are there to continue the wheel-spin farce then they can go home and wait - looks like 4 years - for the heavy bombers to do the work they should have finished by Sept 18, 2001.
Posted by: Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 ||
12/16/2008 15:01 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Quite the backseat driving from someone who's not in the US.
Kabul has closed security firms that were illegally working in Afghanistan, calling them a threat to the security conditions in the country.
Some of the security firms that worked without a legal permit were forced to close, Ali-Shah Paktiaval, a Kabul police official said on Monday, BBC Persian reported. The official said some members of the firms, mostly foreigners, were arrested for further investigation adding that the Afghan government believes they have been involved in insurgent attacks and kidnappings across the country.
Paktiaval refused to disclose the number of the firms or the detainees.
Most of the firms operating in Afghanistan are American institutions and their staff carry machine guns and grenades. Last year, Kabul government declared that no security firm was allowed to work in Afghanistan and that only army and police forces were allowed to carry weapons.
Currently, dozens of security firms are active in Kabul and other Afghan cities and most of them are foreign institutions.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Afghan government believes they have been involved in insurgent attacks and kidnappings
The government is correct, if what they mean by "involved" is actually "defending against."
#3
no security firm was allowed to work in Afghanistan and that only army and police forces were allowed to carry weapons.
Coming soon to an Iraq near you. But it matters little. Under the SOFA agreement, foreign contractors and military personnel accused of crimes in Iraq, will at some point be tried in Iraqi courts of law.
#6
Agreed. But much as I admire Blackwater, unconstrained or unaccountable growth of mercenary forces is not a good trend for civilization. See, for instance, Italy (whose 14th century condottieri were the predecesors to the Mafia). Or the tribes that eventually brought down Rome. And lots of other precedents throughout history.
#7
Michael Yon wrote about this a few weeks ago. This seems to be more about the corruption of the central government than it does about groups actually providing security. It is not a good sign. Karzai's government is rotten.
A joint Afghan-NATO operation in a volatile region in the country's dangerous south has killed 40 Taliban, including the Taliban's leader in that region, a government official said on Monday.
The operation in the Nad Ali and Murja districts of Helmand province began on Thursday and continued through Monday, said Dawood Ahmadi, spokesman for Helmand's governor. Ahmadi said that 40 Taliban had died in the operation, though he said that government officials had recovered only seven bodies, which were given to tribal elders for burial. Ahmadi said the government knows that another 33 fighters were killed through intelligence sources. Commander James Gater, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, confirmed that a joint operation in Helmand was under way. He said he had no casualty figures he could release.
Among the dead was Mullah Salim, a Taliban leader who was the head of the their council in the two districts, Ahmadi said. The councils, also called shuras, are sometimes referred to as shadow government structures that operate separately from the Afghan government. Afghan officials admitted that they had little control in many areas of northern Helmand, a poppy-growing region that is heavily infiltrated by the Taliban.
Troops: Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday around 300 extra troops had been sent to Afghanistan to bolster NATO forces fighting the Taliban in the south of the country. "The defence secretary and I have decided on advice from the defence chief, to approve until August, including the period of preparation for the Afghan elections, an increase in the number of British troops deployed to Afghanistan from just over 8,000 to around 8,300," Brown told parliament. The extra 300 British troops were alluded to by government and military sources when Brown travelled to Afghanistan.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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(AKI) - Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped three German citizens 60 kilometres from the capital, Sanaa, news reports said on Monday citing unnamed security officials. One of the three Germans works for a United Nations agency in Yemen, Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya reported.
Armed Yemeni tribesmen from the Kumaim clan seized a German man and two German women near the town of Radaa in Baidha Province, Al-Arabiya said.
The German man is the father of the two German women and was accompanying them on a trip, according to Al-Arabiya.
Foreigners are often seized in Yemen as tribes try to resolve differences with the central government. Most have been released unharmed.
Sometimes the kidnappers demand a ransom and on other occasions they seek the release of jailed relatives in exchange for freeing the hostages. This was the case when tribesmen held two Japanese women in May for less than a day.
A German diplomat and his family was abducted at gunpoint by Yemeni tribesmen and held for five days in December, 2005. The family was freed unharmed after Yemen's government and tribal mediators reportedly agreed to arrest five men from a rival tribe involved in a vendetta against the kidnappers.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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An NHS doctor has been convicted of plotting to bring chaos and murder to London and Glasgow Airport by setting off massive car bombs.
A jury at Woolwich Crown Court found Bilal Abdulla guilty of plotting the home-made bomb attacks in 2007. Another NHS doctor, Mohammed Asha, was cleared of helping Abdulla and a second attacker, Kafeel Ahmed.
Ahmed died following the Glasgow attack on 30 June 2007, a day after he and Abdulla had attacked London's West End.
Prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told the jury the men had been intent on "committing murder on an indiscriminate and wholesale scale" in attacks that would occur without warning, spreading panic among the public.
This article starring:
Bilal Abdulla
Mohammed Asha
Posted by: john frum ||
12/16/2008 10:04 ||
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PARIS -- French police found a package of explosives at the Printemps department store complex in central Paris on Tuesday, a spokeswoman at Paris police headquarters said.
The spokeswoman, Mélanie Leprettre, said a warning about the explosives had been sent Tuesday morning to the French news agency Agence France-Presse, which alerted the police.
A previously unknown group demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan claimed to have planted the explosive devices. Officials said that five sticks of dynamite had been found.
An editor at AFP, André Birukoff, said the news agency had received an earlier warning that an attack on Printemps was imminent. He said that one of AFP's journalists had received an anonymous telephone call on the morning of Dec. 10 warning that there would soon be an explosion at the department store. The caller broke off before identifying himself or giving any other information.
Employees said that the store had been on high alert for several days.
The discovery of the explosives at the height of the Christmas shopping season threw the area into confusion, with traffic backed up as the police cordoned off streets around Printemps. The store, on the elegant Boulevard Haussmann in the heart of one of the French capital's main shopping districts, is packed with shoppers and tourists at this time of year.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, speaking from the eastern French city of Strasbourg, said in a live television statement that the devices had no detonators attached. He said that the French police were analyzing the devices, and he called for calm and vigilance.
Security agents at the scene said the explosives had been discovered in a rest room on the third floor of the Printemps men's store, one of three Printemps buildings in the complex. All three stores were evacuated.
In its statement to AFP, a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front said that it had planted several bombs in the Printemps men's store that would go off if not removed by Wednesday. The statement called for the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan. It added: "Send the message to your president that he needs to withdraw his troops from our country (Afghanistan) before the end of February 2009, or else we will act again in your capitalist department stores, and this time with no warning."
France has about 3,000 troops deployed with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.
French news reports said that the French intelligence services had no previous knowledge of the group.
Guards at the entrance to Printemps said they had received the order to evacuate the store at 11:20 a.m. and that the evacuation had taken about 15 minutes. They declined to say how many people had been evacuated.
A spokeswoman at Galeries Lafayette, the other large department store complex on Boulevard Haussmann, said that the Paris flagship store was visited by about 200,000 shoppers a day during the Christmas season.
Within about an hour of the evacuation, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie and Mayor Bertrand Delanoë were both at the scene, where the normally packed boulevard was empty of vehicles other than bomb squad vans that had been sent in, looking eerily out of place against the backdrop of colorful Christmas lights.
"For the moment, we have found sticks of dynamite in just one location," Ms. Alliot-Marie told reporters. She said that the kind of dynamite found was "relatively old."
Outside Printemps, there was not panic but frustration among shoppers and tourists huddled outside and impatient to resume their shopping.
"Well, I'll just have to come back later, then," said Eleanor Deshayes, 29, when informed that the department store had been evacuated due to a bomb alert.
By 1 p.m. the police were removing barriers and traffic began flowing again. Printemps saleswomen, who had been shivering in near-freezing temperatures after evacuating the store in their shirtsleeves, prepared to return to their sales counters. Shortly after 2 p.m., two of the Printemps stores reopened but the men's unit remained closed.
Public concern about the French military presence in Afghanistan has been growing since the deaths of 10 soldiers there in a Taliban ambush in August.
The ambush, in which 21 others were wounded, was the bloodiest against French forces since a 1983 attack in Beirut killed 58 soldiers.
Mr. Sarkozy has strongly defended France's role in Afghanistan alongside its Western allies as part of the fight against terrorism and for the rights of Afghan women.
But his promise in April to commit additional French troops, which brought the commitment to nearly 3,000, was not popular.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/16/2008 09:59 ||
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#1
"For the moment, we have found sticks of dynamite in just one location," Ms. Alliot-Marie told reporters. She said that the kind of dynamite found was "relatively old."
That, and the fact that they called AFP immediately to ensure that they got on the news, points to leftists instead of Islamists.
#4
solution: add department stores to France's ethnically sensitive NO-GO shariah zones.
Reminder: Bush-the-genius challenged France on the restrictions of veiling in public facilities.
Posted by: Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 ||
12/16/2008 14:50 Comments ||
Top||
#5
A few observations:
1) There were some errors in the French used in the letter. Not ordinary orthographic errors (French orthography is very trivky) but the kind no
person grown in France would ever make except if on
purpose. For instance they say one toilet (and in the masculine) when in French it is either feminine (when you wash yourself) or automatically plural (when you refer to that room the English call "the gents" or "the ladies"
2) They warned, that is unusual for sialmic terrorits
3) There were bombs in women's toilets and the letter tells about need to unmount the flush. So, either it was a woman with tools and time
in her hands or, it was cleaning personel
4) The letter ends with "Long life to Free Afghanistan". That is, not cursing against infidels, nothing about the Umma. And while Islamists use to seethe about infidels occuppying "Muslim" land, they never talk of nations (Afghanistan) or of freedom
My diagnostic: rich white kids playing revolution and, like Jand Fonda and similar scum, ready to help whatever genocidal scum in order too sjake their boredom.
#6
The letter doesn't have blatant orthotographic errors but the syntaxic ones are huge. Given that French orthography is far harder than syntax I believe the authors grew in France and are trying to pass for Afghans.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2008 (Reuters) Vice President Dick Cheney said on Monday the military prison at Guantanamo Bay could not be responsibly closed until the U.S. war on terror is over and he defended the practice of subjecting detainees to simulated drowning during questioning.
Cheney, in an interview with ABC News, said he was aware of the interrogation tactics used again Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, including the practice of waterboarding, which simulates drowning.
Asked if he thought, in hindsight, any of the tactics went too far, Cheney said, I dont. Questioned about whether he thought the reported use of waterboarding on Mohammed was appropriate, Cheney replied, I do.
The vice president was asked when the United States could responsibly close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was set up to hold detainees in President George W. Bushs war on terror launched after September 11.
Well, I think that that would come with the end of the war on terror, Cheney said, adding no one knows when that might be.
In previous wars, weve always exercised the right to capture the enemy and then hold them until the end of the conflict.
The same basic principle ought to apply here in terms of our right to capture the enemy and hold them, Cheney said, noting that in many cases the captives home countries did not want them back and no other nation was willing to take them.
The vice president said Bush and many other people would like to close Guantanamo Bay but other issues had to be addressed first.
That includes, what are you going to do with the prisoners held in Guantanamo? And nobody yet has solved that problem, Cheney said.
#4
Duh, only Bush-the-genius believes there is a war on terror. anyone with working brain cells believes that we are defending against islamofascist aggression.
Duh, what do you say Michael Totten-the-genius? Bushies need your tunnel vision logic.
Posted by: Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 ||
12/16/2008 14:55 Comments ||
Top||
#6
anyone with working brain cells believes that we are defending against islamofascist aggression.
Actually, we are waging an aggressive war against Islamofascist would-be aggressors, Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505, which he whom you call "Bush the genius" started by driving Al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2002, stage two of which was the conquest of Iraq in 2003 (the pacification of which is nearly complete now, clearly demonstrated by the Iraqi response to that hysterical, shoe-hurling boor), with quiet side ventures into Africa, Asia, and Hispanic America.
Personally, I wouldn't characterize President George W. Bush as a genius, rather merely brilliant and duty-bound on the order of America's first president -- and with an equally poor grasp of salesmanship, I'm afraid. But no doubt you see things in the man beyond my own simple understanding.
#7
A poor grasp of salemanship no doubt, but he does seem to have a long range plan. Most people cannot see the forest for the trees even when Bush tells them again and again that it will be along war and we'll drain the swamp, etc, etc.
I mean the Arab world is now raising up a shoe thrower as a hero. Bin Laden is mostly forgotten as a loser. We've gone a long way towards discrediting their idiology. Its too bad Obama is unlikely to really prosecute the conflict the way it needs to be.
SRINAGAR: Claiming that it had no relationship with the Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Tuesday said it would request the UN Security Council to delink it from the organisations and "assured" the world community that its struggle was confined only to Kashmir.
And then their lips fell off ...
If you can't trust Lashkar-e-Taiba, who can you trust?
"The Security Council Sanction Committee was constituted under resolution 1267, which covers only those individuals and entities that are associated with Taliban and Al-Qaeda but Lashkar-e-Taiba has no relations with both organizations," said a statement issued by its spokesperson Dr. Abdullah Ghaznavi."We have our own agenda to liberate Kashmir from Indian occupation and it is a legitimate cause."
"Hey, careful! Those are our lips on the floor!"
The UN Security Council placed financial sanctions on four members of the outlawed militant group as well as the charitable organisation, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, that Indian and US officials say serves as LeT's financial front. Included in the new Security Council blacklist announced last week are Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of the LeT, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, its chief of operations, and two finance officials Haji Mohammad Ashraf and Mahmoud Ahmed Bahaziq.
"We would request the media that renewal of sanctions against LeT on Dec 10 has nothing to do with Mumbai attacks. There is no mentioning of Mumbai attacks by the Sanction Committee in its decision against LeT one must not assume that Security Council acted against Lashkar-e-Taiba because of Mumbai attacks," the statement said.
"Pure as the driven snow!"
"Security Council already has de-listed a number of entities and individuals from its list and we hope our case will be studied carefully and without any kind of emotional blackmailing form India."
"The LeT once again wants to assure the world community that our struggle is confined only to Kashmir and we are fighting only against Indian armed forces. The propaganda by Indian government that we have 'global' objectives has no base."
A day earlier, the LeT denied British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's charge that it was responsible for the Mumbai terror attack and also said the lone terrorist captured alive was not a member of its outfit.
This article starring:
ABDULLAH GHAZNAVI
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Posted by: john frum ||
12/16/2008 10:46 ||
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#1
the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Tuesday said it would request the UN Security Council to delink it from the organisations and "assured" the world community that its struggle was confined only to Kashmir.
#4
PAKISTANI DEFENCE FORUM/OTHER > TALIBAN VOW MORE ARMED RESISTANCE, VIOLENCE IFF NATO INCREASES ITS TROOPS LEVELS + PEACEFUL NON-VIOLENCE NOT VIOLENT SEPARATISM: A NEW KASHMIRI WEAPON AGZ INDIA!?, + JIMMU KASMIR SOVEREIGNTY WILL HAVE NEGATIVE RIPPLE EFFECTS IN INDIA's, PAKISTAN's OTHER WARRING REGIONS [J-K isn't only about J-K, nor even India-Pak].
* TOPIX > ETHNIC NATIONALISM AND SELF-DETERMINATION ON THE RISE IN THIRD WORLD: USEFUL TOOLS FOR OR AGAINST MLITANCY?
Kathmandu: Nepal's home ministry Monday rejected the claim by a Pakistani lawyer that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist to have been captured alive after the Mumbai attack last month, was arrested in Kathmandu in 2005 and handed over to the Indian authorities. "We have no such information," home ministry spokesman Nabin Kumar Ghimire told IANS. "We're of the opinion that Paks tell whoppers just to keep in practice, even though they're not very good at it.
The denial came after a Pakistani lawyer, C.M. Farooque, claimed that Kasab had gone to Kathmandu "before 2006" on a business visit when he was arrested by Nepal police and handed over to India. "He wuz there in '38, too. I seen him!"
The lawyer also claimed that nearly 200 Pakistanis were held along with Kasab in a secret detention place so that they could be used to serve some "ulterior designs" later. "That detention center is not only secret, it's top secret! No matter how hard you search for it, you ain't gonna find it!"
According to the lawyer, he filed a case in Nepal's Supreme Court asking for their release. The case, according to Farooque, is still being heard with a hearing scheduled later this month when he would be visiting Kathmandu to argue on behalf of his clients. "The people arrested in Nepal had gone there on legal visas for business but Indian agencies are in the habit of capturing Pakistanis from Nepal and afterwards implicating them in the Mumbai-like incidents to malign Pakistan," the lawyer alleged.
However, Supreme Court documents showed that in February 2007, the Pakistani lawyer had asked Nepal's apex court to free two Pakistanis, Asif Ali and Walid Sajjad, who had been reportedly arrested from a hotel in Kathmandu in 2005.
Indian officials dismissed the lawyer's allegations as "gibberishnonsense sheer propaganda."
"Kasab's parents in Pakistan have acknowledged him as their son and media reports from Pakistan established that he was recruited from there by the Lashkar-e-Taiba to take part in the Mumbai attacks," a senior official said on the condition of anonymity. "It's also been established that the attackers came by boat from Pakistan. And their pictures were shown on the teevee...
"Obviously, the Pakistani lawyer's allegations are sheer propaganda trying to indicate that Kasab came from India."
Posted by: john frum ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Rawalpindi police have detained only one activist of Jamaatud Dawa (JD) during crackdown on the proscribed Jihadi outfit, whose 39 activists still remained untraced.
According to an official report on the crackdown seen by Daily Times, after a ban on the outfit was pronounced on suspicion of its involvement in Mumbai attacks, the police sealed JD's five offices in Rawalpindi City, Jhelum and Attock.
Forty JD activists were named in the report, whereas the police had succeeded in arresting only Col (r) Nazir from his residence in Chaklala Scheme III for three months. The report said 13 JD activists belonged to Rawalpindi City, 12 Jhelum, 11 Attock and four Chakwal. In Rawalpindi, it said, the police sealed a JD office being run in Madressa Markaz Khudaibia Chakra in Westridge area and the other on Jamia Masjid Circular Road. In Jhelum, the police sealed Central JD Office. Central JD Office was also sealed in Attock in the limits of City Police Station. A police official said noose had been tightened around them and they would soon be arrested. He said the police and other law enforcement agencies were sharing intelligence and plainclothes officials were also keeping an eye on the sealed offices.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Here's an idea how they can trace their untraced Jihadi heroes...
Two Taliban were killed and another three injured in security forces' operation in Bajaur Agency on Monday, officials said.
The two Taliban were killed in shelling and mortar fire by helicopter gunships in Mamoond tehsil of the agency. Locals said the gunships targeted Taliban hideouts in various areas of Mamoond after a pause of 10 days.
Local sources said the Taliban had begun digging trenches in Tanai and Omarai areas of Mamoond to stop the security forces advance towards their positions.
Hundreds of families in the two areas have moved to safer places fearing clashes between troops and the Taliban, the sources said.
The security forces have fortified their positions and set up a number of security checkposts in Nawagai tehsil. A 50-member Levies team has also been deployed in the area.
The Taliban in Swat killed three people while three others were lashed for allegedly selling narcotics. The Taliban beheaded two followers of rival cleric Pir Samiullah in Gwalerai area of Matta tehsil. The Taliban had killed Samiullah in a clash on Sunday and had taken 25 of his followers hostage.
In Totano Bandai area of Kabal tehsil, police recovered an unidentified body. Officials said the person had been shot to death.
The Taliban publicly lashed three men in Charbagh teshil after accusing them of selling narcotics, locals said.
Meanwhile, one man was killed and three others abducted by the Taliban in Kotki area of Hangu district, police said. Officials said the Taliban stopped a vehicle on the GT Road near Kotki. Out of the five men who were coming from Orakzai Agency, the Taliban killed Riaz Ali on the spot, injured Mukhtiar Ali and kidnapped the other three men identified as Shoaib Ali, Gul Hassan and Sher Ali.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Taliban publicly lashed three men in Charbagh teshil after accusing them of selling narcotics
The poor fellows didn't realize the first rule of drug dealing: don't intrude on the Capo's turf. The Taliban don't take kindly to competition.
#2
shelling and mortar fire by helicopter gunships
why don't we get to put mortars on our choppers?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/16/2008 8:23 Comments ||
Top||
#3
why don't we get to put mortars on our choppers?
It's got something to do with the laws of aerodynamics, Frank. Helicopters don't fly very well after their main rotors have come apart. Not to mention the holes it puts in the cargo compartment.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/16/2008 11:53 Comments ||
Top||
#4
81mm Mortar rotor Mechanical Interrupter gears ..... Right wing republicans and Bush simply refuse to fund them!
#6
I was LOLing as I typed the comment - picturing some tool trying to mortar from the open doorway and timing the blades... ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/16/2008 16:45 Comments ||
Top||
#7
It would be easy to fokker it up for sure. Still it's a concept worth looking into. Especially if the MortarHawk can be made deh stealthy and be made in West Va.
Pakistani truckers are refusing to haul vital supplies to NATO and US forces in Afghanistan because of mounting attacks along the main route, a transporters' association said Monday.
Pakistani troops recently began escorting convoys through the Khyber Pass to the border to protect them from Taliban ambushes. Western military officials insist their Afghan operations are not at risk.
President of Khyber Transport Union Shakir Khan Afridi told Daily Times that transporters would not continue supplying goods to NATO. He cited US strikes in the Tribal Areas as the reason behind the decision, and said the Taliban had stepped up attacks on transporters amid a surge in US attacks.
Shakir said that tribal transporters were not safe on the main route from Karachi to Torkham. He said the supply could be restored if the US assured Pakistan that missile strikes in the Tribal Areas would stop immediately.
Shakir said members using some 3,500 trucks and trailers were boycotting carrying military supplies.
The manager of the Port World Terminal, where a recent attack took place, confirmed a shortage of trucks, but said he was trying to persuade the transport firms to return.
A senior political administration official told Daily Times supplies to NATO could be sent through the Khyber Pass as AP reported that a convoy of 191 vehicles carrying supplies crossed into Afghanistan on Monday.
NATO: A spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan played down the boycott threat, and said it did not deal with Afridi's association. Government assurance: Meanwhile, the NWFP government has assured transporters that their convoys would be provided full security.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
#1
He said the supply could be restored if the US assured Pakistan that missile strikes in the Tribal Areas would stop immediately.
#7
Duh, so persist with the US isolation of India. Bush-the-genius doesn't know that India has a border with Afghanistan.
Posted by: Jitch Protector of the Nebraskans3505 ||
12/16/2008 14:53 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Through J&K? Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire.
In any case it'd be a rather tenuous link. a disputed territory; far from any seaport. It'd also be about as stable as the Pakistan routes at this point.
#11
At a place where I used to work, we had an IT guy from India. After 9/11 he didn't much like that we went through Pakistan to get to Afghanistan. He too wanted us to go through India.
Not that he was right, but he was just one of a bazillion Indians that would like India to have a stronger relationship with the US. In long term, it's not difficult to imagine that partnerhsip could well outproduce our relationship with Pakistan.
So sure, stengthening our alliance with India is likely a great idea. Not an original one by any definition, but still great. And also one that doesn't help the immediate situation in the slightest.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
12/16/2008 17:09 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Some atomic carpet bombing of the area would do wonders
Unidentified assailants blew up a railway track near Machi Randi, some 20 kilometres from Noshki on Monday, police said. Police said a portion of the Quetta-Taftan railway track was damaged when a device planted there earlier exploded. Local administration and Pakistan Railways officials reached the site soon after the incident and have started efforts to repair the damage.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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A US missile strike in Pakistan's tribal region near the border with Afghanistan has killed at least two people and injured three more.
The missile struck the house of a local tribesman late Monday in the troubled North Waziristan tribal region.
"A missile fired by US forces killed two people outside the town of Miranshah in North Waziristan tribal district," a regional security official said.
Some of the injured are reportedly in serious condition and the toll may rise even further.
It was not immediately clear if the missile was fired from a drone or fired by US forces deployed across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have seen a rising frequency in missile attacks launched by US drones and forces. More than 400 people - among them suspected militants as well as civilians - have been killed in the attacks in the tribal belt.
The strikes have increased tensions between Islamabad and Washington and have triggered anti-American sentiments among the Pakistani people.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
(AKI) - A suicide bomber killed at least five police officers and injured 13 others on Monday at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.The blast took place at the checkpoint in the Khan Dhari area, located west of the city.
In a separate incident, a female suicide bomber is reported to have knocked on the door of Ahmed Khamees, a prominent local commander of a volunteer Sunni militia and blew herself up, killing him. The attack took place in the area of Tamiya, north of Baghdad.
Also on Monday in the district of Sinjar, near Mosul, unidentified gunmen stormed the house of a family of the minority Yazidi sect and killed seven people.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Iraqi Insurgency
At least two Iraqi civilians have been killed as a bomb planted in a car exploded in south of Mosul, an Iraqi security official said.
"An explosive device was detonated inside a civilian car in al-Shoura district in southern Mosul. As a result, two civilians were killed," the source - speaking under the guise of anonymity - told Voices of Iraq on Monday.
The source added security forces have launched a through investigation into the incident, as the motive behind the attack remains obscure.
Despite some recent security gains, Mosul, the capital city of Iraq's Nineveh province still remains restive and volatile. The city is situated some 396 km (250 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
Explosions, rampant throughout war-battered Iraq, claim civilian lives and leave many others wounded almost every day.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Seven members of a family from the ancient Yazidi religious sect were gunned down in their home as violence continued in Iraq on Monday in the wake of US President George W. Bush's farewell visit. Police in Sinjar, a town near the Syrian border, said the three women and four men who died were killed by a group of armed men, though the mayor said.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Undercover Israel Defense Forces troops early Tuesday morning killed a top Islamic Jihad militant in the West Bank city of Jenin. 20-year-old Jihad Nawahda, one of the militant group's top commanders, had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces and released a few months ago.
Palestinian witnesses said the undercover troops shot at Nawahda while he was outside a coffee shop in the village of Yamoun, near the West Bank town of Jenin. Troops surrounded the coffee shop and shot at the militant when he tried to flee arrest. Security sources said he died on the way to hospital.
An IDF spokeswoman said troops had gone to arrest the militant, who was suspected of plotting to carry out attacks in the Jenin area. The troops opened fire at him as he tried to flee arrest, the spokeswoman said. IDF soldiers frequently raid militant hideouts in the West Bank, although lethal confrontations have been rare in recent weeks.
In a statement, the Israeli army said troops arrested 22 Palestinian militants in raids in the West Bank overnight.
In response to the killing, Islamic Jihad militants fired three rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. No one was wounded. "Our rockets will not stop and it will be like the rain over all the Zionist towns around the Gaza Strip," said Abu Hamza, an Islamic Jihad spokesman.
#2
We've all seen the photos, sinse. The Palestinians start training as toddlers, which means they know how to look macho and dangerous from a very young age... as opposed to our troops and the Israelis, who start later but actually become dangerous.
#5
In Israel they actually did end malaria by draining the swamps, .5MT. To this day my father won't kill a mosquito biting him until it starts to fly off, because the risk was real during his youth. Not to mention it's an awful lot easier to get a bunch of people with strong backs to dig drainage ditches and plant willow trees than it is to create enough infertile males to swamp the market.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown threw his weight Monday behind an Arab League appeal to US President-elect Barack Obama to give added urgency to the Middle East process. Speaking after talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad - and before talks with Israel's interim Premier Ehud Olmert on Tuesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Terrorists Seperatist insurgents shot dead six people including a village chieftain in Thailand's violent Muslim-majority south, police and relatives said on Tuesday.
Three village defence volunteers were gunned down by militants as they entered a marketplace on their motorbikes in troubled Narathiwat province on Tuesday, police said. The victims were two men, aged 51 and 43, and a 42-year-old woman. A fourth villager was injured by a stray bullet and taken to hospital.
On Monday night, a 50-year-old village head was killed at his Narathiwat home after eight armed militants broke in and opened fire, his wife said. A 39-year-old former security guard was shot dead on the street and his four-year-old son shot in the leg earlier that evening in the same province, police said. The child remains hospitalised in a serious condition.
In Yala province, a 46-year-old former policeman was killed on Monday in a drive-by shooting.
Sri Lankan security forces captured another key village from Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday after heavy fighting as the air force kept up bombing more guerrilla targets, the defence ministry said.
Troops took control of the village of Ampakamam after hours of heavy fighting, the ministry said, adding that the area had been used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) as an administrative hub.
Troops moved into the area as soldiers in the neighbouring Kilinochchi district were trying to take control of the town of Kilinochchi, where the Tigers maintain their political headquarters.
The air force carried out several bombing sorties over Kilinochchi on Monday after an intense bombing drive over the weekend, the ministry said.
Last week, the military said it was within "kissing distance" of the town, but heavy rebel resistance and monsoon rains had slowed the army offensive.
Both sides have claimed inflicting heavy losses in the recent battles. However, it is not possible to verify casualty claims by either side as independent reporters and aid workers are banned from the north.
War zone: Human Rights Watch (HRW), meanwhile, said on Monday Tamil Tigers, under unrelenting military pressure, have increasingly subjugated Tamils with forced military service or labour and kept them trapped in the war zone.
In a new report based on eyewitness accounts from Tamils in the northern war zone and from aid workers, the rights watchdog said the LTTE's "treatment of the very people they say they are fighting for is getting worse".
"The LTTE claims to be fighting for the Tamil people, but it is responsible for much of the suffering of civilians," Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's Asia director, said in a statement.
The military has made more progress against the rebels in the past year than at any other time in the 25-year war.
Only about 1,000 people have been able to flee the war zone, which the LTTE claims as a Tamil homeland, since March. The LTTE used to force those who wanted to go to leave a family member as guarantor of their return, the report says.
"But now they stop everyone, saying, 'We are fighting for the people, but the people have to stay with us,'" the report quotes a humanitarian worker as saying.
The report says all men aged 18-45 must go through two weeks of compulsory military training, and that LTTE fighters increasingly are recruiting at schools and may be reversing a trend of falling recruitment of fighters under the age of 18.
Instead of now requiring each family to submit one person to service, the LTTE sometimes requires two or more, it says.
The trapped civilians -- which aid groups say number 230,000 -- provide a ready force "for future forced labour and recruitment of fighters", the report says. That includes building the mazes of trenches and bunkers near the battlefront.
"In doing so, the LTTE is unlawfully seeking to use the presence of the large civilian population in areas under its control for military advantage," the report says.
Defence analyst Iqbal Athas said the Tigers had several reasons to keep civilians nearby, first of which was the fact that the LTTE takes its food from aid supplies sent to the north.
"It is their source of food supply. It is their shield against isolation that will make them an easier target for the military," he said.
The government -- itself long on the receiving end of criticism from rights watchdogs it accuses of imbalance -- has repeatedly accused the LTTE of using civilians as human shields, to prevent the military from using superior air and firepower. "We have been saying it for a very long time. So Human Rights Watch saying it doesn't make it any more or less credible but the fact is, it reflects the reality," said Rajiva Wijesinghe, secretary of disaster management and human rights.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Maybe Human Rights Watch would be happy if the Sri Lankan army started to train their guys how to hug Mario's boys to death?
#2
I'm a "map guy" - I want to see a map of an area I'm reading about. This is the best one I've found so far. You can click on any portion of the large map, and a small-scale map of the clicked area shows up on the right. So far, I haven't been able to find any of the small villages mentioned in recent articles, but I'll keep looking.
Sri Lanka seems to be deadly serious about eliminating the LTTE completely. The Tamil leadership is losing the war on all fronts, including the support of the people. It's all over except for the final battle or two.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/16/2008 15:07 Comments ||
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Iran says its naval security forces have confiscated ten oil tankers smuggling 4,600 tons of Iranian fuel out of the Persian Gulf.
A Hormozgan Province security official, Ahmad Moradi, said on Monday that out of the ten tankers seized in the Persian Gulf over the past year, eight have been registered as foreign vessels with foreign crew on board.
According to the Iranian official, an Emirati-registered tanker laden with 300 tons of crude oil was intercepted by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf last week.
Moradi added that fuel smuggling has increased by 232 percent compared to last year's figures, which amounts to 4,600 tons.
Iran is OPEC's second-largest exporter after Saudi Arabia, and is the fourth-largest exporter of crude oil in the world after Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Norway.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#5
Mighty small tankers. Took ten of them to carry one day's worth of production from a good well (30,000 BOPD is actually a very good well, but about what we aim at for our home runs.).
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A joint Afghan-NATO operation in a volatile region in the country's dangerous south has killed 40 Taliban, including the Taliban's leader in that region, a government official said on Monday. 
(AKI) - Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped three German citizens 60 kilometres from the capital, Sanaa, news reports said on Monday citing unnamed security officials. One of the three Germans works for a United Nations agency in Yemen, Arabic satellite TV station Al-Arabiya reported. 
An NHS doctor has been convicted of plotting to bring chaos and murder to London and Glasgow Airport by setting off massive car bombs.
PARIS -- French police found a package of explosives at the Printemps department store complex in central Paris on Tuesday, a spokeswoman at Paris police headquarters said.
Kathmandu: Nepal's home ministry Monday rejected the claim by a Pakistani lawyer that Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist to have been captured alive after the Mumbai attack last month, was arrested in Kathmandu in 2005 and handed over to the Indian authorities. "We have no such information," home ministry spokesman Nabin Kumar Ghimire told IANS.
Rawalpindi police have detained only one activist of Jamaatud Dawa (JD) during crackdown on the proscribed Jihadi outfit, whose 39 activists still remained untraced. 
Two Taliban were killed and another three injured in security forces' operation in Bajaur Agency on Monday, officials said. 
A US missile strike in Pakistan's tribal region near the border with Afghanistan has killed at least two people and injured three more. 
(AKI) - A suicide bomber killed at least five police officers and injured 13 others on Monday at a checkpoint outside the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.The blast took place at the checkpoint in the Khan Dhari area, located west of the city.
Undercover Israel Defense Forces troops early Tuesday morning killed a top Islamic Jihad militant in the West Bank city of Jenin. 20-year-old Jihad Nawahda, one of the militant group's top commanders, had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces and released a few months ago. 
Sri Lankan security forces captured another key village from Tamil Tiger rebels on Monday after heavy fighting as the air force kept up bombing more guerrilla targets, the defence ministry said.
Iran says its naval security forces have confiscated ten oil tankers smuggling 4,600 tons of Iranian fuel out of the Persian Gulf. 
