[Dawn] Afghanistan's head of intelligence was maimed in an liquidation attempt claimed by the Taliban on Thursday just months after he took office as Kabul seeks to navigate the impending departure of NATO...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
combat troops.
Asadullah Khalid, who heads the National Directorate of Security (NDS), was injured in an attack by a visitor in a spy agency guesthouse in the upscale Kabul district of Taimani, security sources told AFP.
Khalid was rushed into surgery but his life was not in danger, presidency front man Aimal Faizi told AFP.
President Hamid
Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai
... 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
Pashtunface 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...
visited the hospital where surgeons "assured the president that he is stable and his injury is not life threatening", the front man said.
There were earlier conflicting reports on Khalid's condition, with some officials saying he was seriously maimed in the stomach and the head. The Taliban claimed he was in a coma after one of its fighters carried out a suicide kaboom.
Afghan officials were also tight-lipped on the nature of the attack. Police said Khalid was maimed by a grenade. Afghan security sources said the visitor, who had been searched before being allowed into the guesthouse, was killed in the kaboom.
There were also unconfirmed reports from senior Afghan government officials that it had been a suicide attack.
Karzai strongly condemned the "cowardly" attack by terrorists, his front man said.
The Taliban claimed that one of its jacket wallahs targeted Khalid.
"As a result of a suicide attack carried out by hero mujahedeen Hafiz Mohammad inside a guest house, a large number of intelligence officials were maimed," Taliban front man Zabihullah Mujahid said in an email to AFP.
"Intelligence chief Asadullah Khalid was the primary target and according to our information is in a coma," he added.
The NDS plays a crucial role in the fight against the Taliban, who have been waging an insurgency since being ousted from power by the 2001 US-led invasion for harbouring al Qaeda leader the late Osama bin Laden
... he's rotten though not quite forgotten...
after the 9/11 attacks.