THE general in command of the Afghan National Army soldier who murdered Lance Corporal Andrew Jones does not believe the killer was a Taliban infiltrator. If he was, the recruit would have killed more Diggers.
"But he threw away his weapon and ran," Brigadier General Abdul Hamid said. Or he just may have wanted to live...
Corporal Jones was gunned down by an Afghan soldier after leaving his accommodation at a forward base in the Baluchi-Chora Valley.
Incoming Defence Forces chief David Hurley confirmed the ANA soldier, named as Shafidullah Gulamoon, fired four shots from the watchtower, killing the army cook before climbing a fence and running into the night.
It was an update that corrected the ADF's initial belief that the men had argued while both were on the watchtower.
As the manhunt stretched into a fifth day, General Hamid pledged to not rest until the fugitive was captured, saying: "We are sad this has happened but if he doesn't reach Pakistan he'll be captured."
He said any Afghan soldier who caught the killer would be rewarded with cash and gifts. He did not want Australia to provide any reward money.
The pledge came as the body of army pilot Lieutenant Marcus Case, killed in a helicopter crash on the same day Lance Cpl Jones died, was flown home.
Also yesterday, slain Digger Brett Wood, 32, was farewelled with full military honours in Sydney.
Sergeant Wood was killed and two others seriously wounded by a bomb in southern Afghanistan on May 20. A guard of honour formed outside St Andrew's Cathedral as Sgt Wood's widow Elvi was surrounded by military and political leaders, including Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who paid their respects to the highly decorated commando.
At his headquarters at Camp Hero adjacent to the Coalition's sprawling Kandahar air base, General Hamid said the other Afghan soldier on duty with Gulamoon had used the offender's M-16 carbine to fire at him as he fled.
General Hamid, who commands the ANA's 205th Hero Corps, said the tragic incident raised serious questions about the ANA recruiting process.
"I worry about this, but it is difficult to check the background of every recruit," he said. The general offered his heartfelt condolences to Lance-Cpl Jones' family and to the Australian people.
General Hamid said the counter-insurgency campaign was pressuring the Taliban and in the past two months more than 100 former insurgents in the Chora Valley had joined the government side.
[Tolo News] NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the style of the American pants... allies are committed to reducing civilian casualties in the war in Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton ... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another Chateaubriand ... has said on Wednesday.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has promised that NATO forces will make efforts to reduce civilian casualties in the Afghan conflict.
Hillary Clinton was speaking at a joint news conference with Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota when she brought up
the issue of the warning by Afghanistan's Caped PresidentHamid Maybe I'll join the Taliban Karzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtun face on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... against NATO air strikes. homes.
The comments came after Afghanistan's Caped President Hamid Karzai recently warned that NATO air strikes that end up killing civilians will no longer be tolerated.
President Karzai said he had always stressed that the war against terrorism should be taken to terrorist sanctuaries and that NATO should stop attacking Afghan homes and villages.
Mr Karzai warned that if air strikes on Afghan homes did not stop, NATO would be viewed as an occupying force.
Mrs Clinton has said NATO is committed to reducing civilian casualties, but she stressed that the Taliban had cause most deaths within local populations.
"I would only underscore that that stands in stark contrast to the indiscriminate killing, the suicide kaboom, the IED's, the improvised bombs that are used by the bully boyz without regard for any human life," she has said.
She has said the incident would be thoroughly investigated, but added that it would remain a tragic fact that some civilian casualties would be inevitable in such a conflict.
Isaf has also said in a statement recently that coalition troops would make all necessary measures to reduce civilian casualties, but also expressed concern that Talibs were using civilians as human shields.
President Karzai issued his warnings against NATO after fourteen civilians including children were recently killed in a NATO air strike in southern Helmand province.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under:
#1
Cannot a single day pass without hearing from this tiring, dispicable munt? As if eight years of listening to Slick wasn't enough.
#2
The administration in its infinite wisdom decided to let State take the lead in the War Kinetic Military Action on WoT Anthropomorphic-Caused-Disasters. Hence HRC's pronouncements.
Figure helicopters-on-the-roof in Kabul in two years.
#3
They promise to reduce Afghan Casualties. Given how their promises to reduce deficit and unemployment turned out---if I was an Afghan, I'd be very, very nervous.
#6
Afghani Civilian, someone who's rifle has been picked up before the press arrives,
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/03/2011 12:01 Comments ||
Top||
#7
Far be it from me to defend our Secretary of State (remind me again how she got that job?), but I wonder how much of this is boilerplate proforma tut-tut, tsk tsk, while we go on with business as usual. Someone has to say "Nice doggie!" while the others throw rocks and 500 lb bombs.
[Tolo News] A senior aide of a top military official in Ministry of Defence was found to have a hand in an attack on the Ministry, a source with knowledge of the issue told TOLOnews on condition of anonymity.
Officials in Afghan Defence Ministry only confirmed that the attacker was taken inside the ministry by a vehicle belonging to a high-ranking official.
Suicide attacks targeting key military institutions, including defence ministry and the military hospital in Kabul caused widespread concerns about enemy infiltration in Afghan cops.
Some experts claim that a high-ranking official in defence ministry has a hand in the incident and the jacket wallah was taken inside the ministry compound by his senior aide.
"In defence ministry attack an army soldier named Habibullah, senior aide of the commander for deputy defence minister, cooperated with the attacker to get inside the ministry compound and to kill some of our personalities," Political Analyst Jawid Kohistani said.
But officials said a driver of a high-ranking official took the man inside and now the driver is on the run.
"As I said before defence ministry attacker is Atiqullah from south eastern Afghanistan and was living in London. He came to Afghanistan from London and then was taken to Northern Wazoo for training," Defence Ministry Spokesman Gen. Zaher Azimi said. "Then he was taken into the ministry by a driver of an official while the official was not aware of the process."
The other day National Directorate of Security announced that six accomplices of defence ministry attack, including his brother have been jugged.
"The jugged individuals were aware of the suicide kaboom plan in advance, but they have yet to confess on how the attacker was taken inside the ministry," National Directorate of Security front man, Lotfullah Mashal, said.
Officials said investigations into defence ministry incident are still in progress and around ten people have been set to sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, in a pestilential prison with a life-long lock in connection with the incident.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] French writer Bernard Henri Levy said he delivered a message on Thursday from Libyan rebel leaders to Israel's premier saying they would seek diplomatic ties with Israel if they came to power.
Levy told Agence La Belle France Presse he passed on the verbal message from Libya's National Transitional Council during a 90-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
"The main point was that the future Libyan regime would be moderate and anti-terrorist and will be concerned with justice for the Paleostinians and security for Israel," Levy said.
"The future regime will maintain normal relations with other democratic countries, including Israel," he added.
Levy, who helped engineer La Belle France's recognition of Libya's decampedgling rebel authority, visited the rebel-held Libyan city of Misrata last weekend.
He said on Thursday that Netanyahu "did not appear surprised" at the content of the Libyan message.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
I think they're operating on a "promise them anything" basis...
#2
"The main point was that the future Libyan regime would be moderate and anti-terrorist and will be concerned with justice for the Paleostinians and security for Israel,"
Does that mean you plan to take the Paleostinians into Libya for a home there? That truely would be Justice!
#3
Two possibilities---not necessarily mutually exclusive.
(i) They're really, really desperate.
(ii) We know Bernard Henri lives in alternate reality.
Abdelhafid Roka further underlined that such groundless assertions were being propagated by the despotic Kadhafi regime and its henchmen with the glaring aim of tarnishing the image of the national transition council in the eyes of the fervent supporters of the legitimate Palestinian cause in the Arab world and elsewhere."
#5
Two possibilities---not necessarily mutually exclusive.
(i) They're really, really desperate.
(ii) We know Bernard Henri lives in alternate reality.
I don't think Levy is lying. Arab leaders, however, have this habit of saying diametrically opposed things to different people.
[Al Jazeera] North Korea has released a scathing blow-by-blow account of a secret meeting held last month between officials of the two neighbouring Koreas, where the South "begged" and offered "envelopes of cash" for a series of three presidential summits over the next year.
An unidentified front man for North Korea's powerful National Defence Commission said on Wednesday that bigwigs from both Koreas met in Beijing on May 9 for the secret meeting.
He named three South Korean officials from the presidential office, the intelligence service and the unification ministry who "humiliated themselves" in trying to "seduce" the North to agree to presidential summits.
The covert talks reportedly occurred on the same day that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announced in Berlin, his willingness to invite his North Korean counterpart to the March 2012 nuclear summit if Kim Jong Il says he would give up his nuclear weapons program.
"If the Lee traitor group wills to improve inter-Korean relations, they should not have insulted us with such "Berlin offer" nor played theatrics by divulging information about the private meeting," he said.
"We will do all we can to ensure peace, unification and stablity on the Korean peninsula but we will no longer deal with the Lee Myung-bak traitor regime," the North Korean front man said.
The South's unification ministry called the commission front man's comments a "deeply regrettable ... unilateral claim that distorted our sincerity".
The presidential Blue House did not comment on the North Korean statement.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's "puppet regime" has repeatedly pleaded since April for a secret meeting to discuss possible talks to overcome recent deadly festivities and improve inter-Korean relations, the KCNA state news agency quoted the commission front man on Wednesday.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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[Dawn] The US and Pakistain are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.
The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another John Quincy Adams ... presented the Paks with the US list of most-wanted terrorism targets, US and Pak officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Paks have been reluctant to attack, US officials said.
It's one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after US forces tracked down and killed al Qaeda criminal mastermindthe late Osama bin Laden ... who is currently warming his feet by the fire with Hitler and Himmler... during a secret raid in Pakistain last month.
But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Paks say the US has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.
US officials say they need to see the Paks target Death Eaters they've long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pak tribal areas while attacking US troops in Afghanistan.
All those interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The US and Pakistain have engaged in a diplomatic stare-down since the May 2 raid, with the Paks outraged over the unilateral action as an affront to its illusory sovereignty and the Americans angry to find that bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years in a military town just 35 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
The US deliberately hid the operation from Pakistain, recipient of billions in counterterrorism aid, for fear that the operation would leak to thugs.
A series of high-level US visits has aimed to take the edge off. Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistain, and CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell met with intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha last month. Last week, the secretary of state and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, held a day of intensive meetings with top Pak military and civilian officials.
After that outreach, Pakistain allowed the CIA to re-examine the bin Laden compound last Friday. Pakistain also returned the tail section of a US stealth Black Hawk helicopter that broke off when the SEALs blew up the aircraft to destroy its secret noise- and radar-deadening technology.
The CIA has also shared some information gleaned from the raid, and Pakistain has reciprocated, US and Pak officials said Wednesday.
The investigative team will be made up mainly of intelligence officers from both nations, according to two US officials and one Pak official.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
It's one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after US forces tracked down and killed al Qaeda criminal mastermind the late Osama bin Laden
#2
The US and Pakistain are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.
go after the ISI?
/yes, I'm cynical
Posted by: Frank G ||
06/03/2011 12:02 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Hmmmmmm...do we have people who actually have eyes in the back of their heads to staff this squad?
[Dawn] A prominent Pakistain journalist may have been tortured to death for exposing growing links between the country's intelligence agencies and gunnies who appear to be infiltrating every state institution, a leading human rights ...which often intentionally defined so widely as to be meaningless... activist said on Thursday.
Saleem Shahzad, who worked for Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online, disappeared from Islamabad on Sunday. His body was found in a canal two days later with what police said were torture marks.
Zohra Yusuf, head of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistain (HRCP), added to intense speculation that the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), one of the most powerful institutions in a country with a weak civilian government, may have had a hand in the death of Shahzad, a father of three.
"We don't have any conclusive evidence. But the circumstances seem to point to state security agencies because there have been other cases where journalists have been picked up. It's a very disturbing trend," she told Rooters.
"Perhaps he was being tortured to reveal his sources and his contacts. He could have died in the process."
Pakistain is the world's most dangerous country for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, and Shahzad was one of the most high profile Pak journalists to be killed so far.
Pak authorities deny any collusion with turbans. The ISI rejected suggestions of its involvement in Shahzad's murder and criticised the media for jumping to that conclusion.
Analysts have not ruled out the possibility that gunnies kidnapped and killed Shahzad. He wrote extensively about al Qaeda and other groups.
Human Rights Watch ... dedicated to bitching about human rights violations around the world... , however, said Shahzad, 40, had voiced concern about his safety after receiving threatening telephone calls from the ISI and was under surveillance since 2010.
Before he was killed, Shahzad had been investigating the alleged ties between turban groups and Pakistain's powerful security establishment, an issue that was put in the spotlight after the killing of the late Osama bin Laden ... who went titzup one dark and stormy night... in Pakistain in May.
The military and ISI were deeply embarrassed by the discovery of the al Qaeda leader in a garrison town about a two-hour drive from Islamabad and angered by the fact that he was killed in a secret U.S. raid.
US officials said they did not inform the Pak authorities for fear that their plans be compromised, and both Washington and Islamabad said bin Laden must have had a support network that enabled him to hide in Abbottabad for many years.
A brazen turban attack on a key naval airbase in Bloody Karachi a few weeks ago also bore the hallmarks of an inside job, and security officials said an a sacked navy officer and his brother had been tossed in the calaboose in connection with the assault.
Before his death, Shahzad had written a story claiming the al Qaeda had attacked the PNS Mehran base after the failure of negotiations with the military to release two naval officials accused of turban links.
Yusuf said she was worried that gunnies appear to be gaining ground in various state institutions, which would further destabilise the nuclear-armed South Asian nation afflicted with weak governance, a stagnant economy and lack of development -- conditions that can encourage disillusioned young men to join groups like the Taliban or al Qaeda.
"It seems that now every institution has been infiltrated (by turbans). It's been a slow process, it's been happening gradually," she said. "These are very dangerous developments."
Yusuf said human rights activists also have to tread cautiously in Pakistain, where she says extrajudicial killings are on the rise, especially in regions such as Baluchistan where security forces are fighting a low-level insurgency.
"In Baluchistan itself we lost two of our activists," she said. "One was picked up last December by security agencies and his body was recovered in April this year. In March again this year another of our activists was rubbed out."
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistain estimates over 1,000 people, mostly political opponents of the government and Baluch nationalists, have gone missing over the last 10 years.
The commission had named dozens of missing people in a Supreme Court petition that holds intelligence agencies responsible for their fate, Yusuf said. "The Supreme Court summoned them. They have appeared a few times and said they don't know. Sometimes they don't appear at all."
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
#1
Bush & Cheney are responsible - they're two of the five worst people in history (I saw it in an Arkansas kids yearbook.)
[Dawn] PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Müslim League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... rejected on Wednesday what he termed a 'unilateral commission' set up by the government to investigate the Abbottabad operation and said it was tantamount to 'humiliating' parliament.
Talking to news hounds after offering condolences to ten family of navy officer Yasir Abbas who was killed during the terrorist attack on a base in Bloody Karachi, Mr Sharif said the government should have consulted the leader of opposition before setting up the commission.
"According to the resolution unanimously adopted by parliament, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... was required to consult the leader of opposition. It is an insult to parliament and the leader of the opposition who kept waiting for the consultation."
He said Leader of Opposition in National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had written a letter to the prime minister on the constitution of the commission but he did not receive a reply.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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Lebanon's al-Akhbar newspaper reported that the group organizing the "Naksa Day" march on Israel's border has decided to postpone it following pressure by Washington on Beirut. A source told the newspaper that similar marches planned in Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank, may also be cancelled.
The decision to delay "Naksa Day" events was made on Thursday night. An official with Islamic Jihad in Lebanon conveyed a similar message, announcing that "after the Palestinian forces learned about the current situation in Lebanon we're leaning towards cancelling the marches planned for Sunday along the borderline with Palestine."
"The organizers are expected to make an official announcement in the next few hours, clarifying the reasons for the cancelation and deciding upon alternative steps they might take to ensure the marches and parades take place in all of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon," he said.
Al-Akhbar claimed that the main reason behind the delay was due to pressure from the US embassy via Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman.
The group organizing the "Naksa Day" march say they do not intend to create a crisis within the borders of Lebanon. They stressed that holding the march is a "sacred value" but that the timing is flexible. A Palestinian official in Lebanon said, "If we won't be able to head towards the border on Jun 5, then we'll try to do it on any other date."
Another official was gleeful, saying: "It will leave the Israeli enemy in a state of suspense and anxiety."
Meanwhile, Lebanon's al-Safir newspaper quoted Palestinian sources claiming preparations for the marches in Syria are still on. These sources said the Sunday march from Damascus will be much bigger than the one on "Nakba Day."
The report also stated that Syrian authorities have yet to say whether the demonstrations events are legal.
[Iran Press TV] Iran's diminutive PresidentMahmoud Short Round Ahmadinejad has appointed former head of Iran's Physical Education Organization Mohammad Ali-Abadi as the caretaker for the Ministry of Oil.
"Considering your commitment, knowledge, and useful executive experience, and in accordance with Article 135 of the Constitution of the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran, and based on this decree, you [Ali-Abadi] are appointed as acting oil minister," read the presidential directive issued on Thursday.
In March, Ahmadinejad relieved Welfare Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, Minister of Mines and Industries Ali Akbar Mehrabian and Oil Minister Massoud Mirkazemi of their duties according to the 53rd Article of the Fifth Five-Year Development Plan.
The Iranian government plans to merge the ministries of Roads and Transportation with Housing and Urban Development; Energy with Oil; Industries and Mines with Commerce; and Welfare and Social Security with Labor and Social Affairs.
According to Iran's Fifth Five-Year Development Plan (2010-2015), the Iranian government is obliged to reduce its ministries form 21 to 17 to officially improve the efficiency of state administration.
Ahmadinejad had temporarily assumed the responsibilities of the oil ministry following the dismissal of Mirkazemi.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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[An Nahar] The United States has informed parties involved in the formation of the government that it had "vetoed" giving Hizbullah and its allies four main portfolios, al-Liwaa daily reported Thursday.
The newspaper said that the vetoed ministries include the interior, defense, justice and telecommunications portfolios.
According to the report, the four ministries "should not be granted to personalities from the new (parliamentary) majority" or those with close ties to it.
However, The journalistic equivalent of the teenager's whateverHowever... the U.S. embassy denied the report.
Embassy Spokesman Ryan Gliha told Naharnet that "the U.S. considers the makeup of Leb's government to be strictly a Lebanese decision."
"We call on all parties in Leb to protect the government formation process from any external interference," he said.
"The U.S. believes that the international community will assess its relationship with any new government of Leb based on the makeup of the next cabinet, its ministerial statement and the action it takes in regard to the Special Tribunal for Leb and Leb's other international obligations," Gliha added.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
The Al Liwaa daily newspaper is considered a supporter of the March 14 alliance.
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.
Hillary Clinton
Wazoo
North Korea
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Nawaz Sharif
Mahmoud 
