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| Afghanistan |
| NATO: Taliban commander among 10 killed in strike |
| 2009-03-23 |
| KABUL (AP) - NATO killed a senior Taliban commander and nine other suspected militants in southern Afghanistan, while the coalition and its Afghan allies suffered an equal number of deaths in separate attacks in the same area, officials said Monday. Senior Taliban commander Maulawi Hassan and his associates were killed Saturday when troops attacked an isolated compound in the Kajaki area of southern Helmand province, NATO said in a statement, adding there were no civilians involved."Maulawi Hassan was a senior insurgent figure in northern Helmand, and his influence extended into western Oruzgan," the statement said. Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban insurgency, which has made a comeback in the last three years following the group's initial defeat by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. Afghan and coalition forces have stepped up operations against militants in southern Afghanistan, and the U.S. plans to send thousands of additional soldiers there this year. On Monday, Afghan police and intelligence agents detained five Taliban militants in Oruzgan, including the group's senior commander for the province, Mullah Azizullah, said police officer Wali Jan. The militants were stopped in Arzo district while driving from the city of Quetta in neighboring Pakistan, Jan said. Well fancy that... Quetta is believed to be a safe-haven for many senior Taliban leaders, including the group's supreme leader, Mullah Omar, according to Afghan officials. Pakistan denies the claim and says Omar is in Afghanistan. Also Monday, Taliban fighters ambushed a police patrol in southern Kandahar province's Spin Boldak district, killing eight officers and wounding another, said Sahib Jan, a police officer. On Sunday, a rocket slammed into the main NATO military base in the south, killing a contractor and wounding six others. Kandahar airfield, the nerve center for the alliance's war effort in southern Afghanistan, has been hit by many rockets in the past but Sunday's death was the first in such an attack, another NATO statement said. Also Sunday, two NATO soldiers were killed in a "hostile incident" in the same region, a third NATO statement said, without releasing the soldiers' nationalities or the exact location of the attack. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #6 Thanks for the info, tw. That, to me, is one of the (many) problems with Islam. There is no central, guiding authority. So one imam can say "Death to the infidels" and another can, with a straight face, claim that Islam is a religion of peace. If you point the conflict out to either of them, they can both claim to be experts on the Koran and the hadiths, and both claim to be right. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-03-23 20:35 |
| #5 Interesting etymology, tw. But, as Shakespeare said, a doofus by any other name... |
| Posted by: SteveS 2009-03-23 16:19 |
| #4 I googled: "Maulawi", "Maulavi" and "Maulana" are all three the same person, idea, and concept. They come from the Arabic word "maula", which means "leader, master, lord", and "Maulana" means "Our leader, lord, or master". It is a term generally used for a learned man or a scholar of Islam. Ideally, a trained Mullah (from the Farsi) will have studied Islamic traditions (hadith), and Islamic law (fiqh). They are often hafiz, i.e. have memorized the Qur'an. However, uneducated villagers often recognize a literate Muslim with a less than complete Islamic training as their "mullah" or religious cleric. Mullahs with varying levels of training lead prayers in mosques, deliver religious sermons, and perform religious ceremonies such as birth rites and funeral services. They also often teach in a type of Islamic school known as a madrasah. This triumvirate of knowledge is applied mostly in interpreting Islamic texts (ie. the Quran, Hadiths, etc.) for matters of Shariah, ie Islamic law. The term is most often applied to Shi'ite clerics, as Shi'a Islam is the predominant tradition in Iran. However, the term is very common in Urdu, spoken throughout Pakistan, and it is used throughout the Indian subcontinent for any Muslim clergy, Sunni or Shi'a. Muslim clergy in Russia and other former Soviet republics are also referred to as mullahs, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shi'a. The term is seldom used in Arabic-speaking areas, where its nearest equivalent is shaykh (implying formal Islamic training), imam (prayer leader; not to be confused with the Imams of the Shiite world), or `ālim (plural `ūlamā') (scholar; see ulema). In the Sunni world, the concept of "cleric" is of limited usefulness, as authority in the religious system is relatively decentralized. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-03-23 15:50 |
| #3 Do we get the feeling that the neighbors aren't happy with the Talibs moving in? We're getting awfully good location intel on these guys. |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-03-23 15:10 |
| #2 One little, two little, three little Taliban. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-03-23 13:10 |
| #1 So, police officer Wali Jan stopped him. ID'd him. Then gave the ok for the drone atack? Sounds pretty eficient to me. |
| Posted by: Richard of Oregon 2009-03-23 12:35 |