#1
Since the Durand line treaty between Afghanistan and the British Raj has actually expired, he would be sending troops into what Afghans consider their own territory, not across a valid border.
Posted by: john frum ||
06/15/2008 10:54 Comments ||
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#2
Somewhere in the near future, I see a #8 can whoop-ass being opened up on the Talibunnies! I wonder how they will like having the the Coalition trained Afghan Army coming for their blood?
#3
Well, the "peace deal' pakistain made with the taliban in the tribsl regions is a sort of backhanded "you're on your own." Mainstream pakistan will always be more fixated on the border with India and will mainly squawk when the Afghan border heats up...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
06/15/2008 12:10 Comments ||
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#7
Karzai is in "the mouse that roared" category. Pakistan has China feeding it weaponry and a coastline. Afghanistan has the US feeding it via Pakistani land routes and no coastline. Pakistan has a population of 165m. Afghanistan has maybe 32m. Pakistan doesn't get most of its budget via international aid. Afghanistan does. Brave talk from the Mayor of Kabul.
#9
ZF, you may have a point but if Pakistan can't handle the Pashtun, Taliban and AQ I suspect they won't be eager to fight the Afghan Army on their own ground if there are some focused incursions.
Afghan and coalition forces killed more than 15 insurgents and captured five while searching for militants who escaped in a daring jail-break last week, the U.S. military said Sunday. Officials have not yet confirmed whether the insurgents who were killed or captured in the Saturday raid in Kandahar province were part of the nearly 400 Taliban militants who escaped from a Kandahar prison on Friday. A U.S. military statement said the insurgents, who were holed up in a farming compound west of Rawonay, fired at troops who then retaliated with an air strike.
Authorities continued to search for the escaped prisoners Sunday. Afghan security forces have said looking for them will be tough in some areas, if not impossible in others. The Taliban is entrenched in the region, which is replete with militants' hideouts. The militants may have gone to two regions of Kandahar province with a large Taliban presence -- Maiwand and Zherai districts.
The incident, President Hamid Karzai told reporters Sunday, "is indicative of the challenges we still have, indicative of the weakness that we still have. Therefore it's all the more reason for us to work harder and to keep building Afghan institutions and Afghan intelligence and be a lot more steadfast in our resolve in confronting terrorism."
A roadside bomb exploded near a US Humvee in western Afghanistan on Saturday, killing four Marines in the deadliest attack against US troops in the country this year, officials said.
The bomb in the western province of Farah targeted Marines who were helping to train Afghanistan's fledgling police force, said US spokesman Lt. Col. David Johnson. One other Marine was wounded in the attack.
A huge manhunt was under way today for at least 870 fugitives, including 390 Taliban militants, who were sprung from Kandahar's main prison in an audacious assault last night.
An investigation has been launched to find out whether any government officials were involved in the commando-style attack by several dozen Taliban fighters.
Oh, you think ...
None of the prisoners had yet been tracked down, the deputy justice minister, Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai, told Reuters. "It was a very unprecedented attack and, together with foreign forces, an operation has been launched to track down and arrest the prisoners," he said.
The police chief of Kandahar province, Sayed Agha Saqib, said 390 Taliban prisoners were among the 870 inmates who fled the prison during the attack late Friday.
I wouldn't be too eager to take those 390 prisoner again ...
A Nato spokesman put the number of fugitives at around 1,100. "We admit it," Brigadier General Carlos Branco said. "Their guys did the job properly in that sense, but it does not have a strategic impact. We should not draw any conclusion about the deterioration of the military operations in the area. We should not draw any conclusion about the strength of the Taliban."
Prison staff said the assault began when a tanker full of explosives was detonated at the Sarposa compound's main entrance, wrecking the gate and a police post and killing the officers inside. A short time later, a suicide bomber travelling on foot blasted a hole in the back of the prison.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked the prison, and claimed militants had been planning the assault for two months. "Today, we succeeded," he said, adding that the escaped prisoners were "going to their homes".
Funny how we never quite figure out which phone booth Qari is using ...
Witnesses said rockets were fired at the prison during the 30-minute battle. A local politician said 15 policemen were killed in the storming of the prison and subsequent clashes.
Today, security forces were checking vehicles and motorcyclists on key roads in Kandahar, Afghanistan's second largest city. Some houses were searched where authorities suspected some escapees had hidden, residents said. Nato-led troops were supporting the Afghan security forces in cordoning off the area in the hunt for the prison inmates, said an alliance spokesman in Kabul.
Dozens of police and army soldiers were deployed outside the badly damaged prison. A pile of rubble lay where two towers of the jail had collapsed.
Wali Karzai, the president of Kandahar's provincial council and the brother of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, said the prison held about 350 suspected Taliban fighters. "There is no one left," he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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(SomaliNet) Somali gunmen have shot and killed one World Food Program (WFP) drivers in southern Somalia, the United Nations' food agency says.
The World Food Program In a statement issued in neighboring Kenya, says driver Hassan Abdi was killed shortly after dawn Thursday near a village called Lego. The killing of Abdi was the third slaying of a WFP-contracted driver in the war-torn Somalia this year. WFP said the driver was part of a convoy of trucks carrying 362 tons of relief food to Bay and Bakool regions.
Denise Brown, WFP Somalia's Deputy Country Director condemned attacks on personnel and trucks delivering "lifesaving food" to hungry Somalis.
Too bad you think we Americans are so ucky, we might be able to help ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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#2
Sometime in the spring of 1944, a British staff officer left an outline of the Operation Overlord plans on a London cab. The patriotic cabbie turned them in.
Since this was the UK and not Stalinist Russia, the officer was not shot out of hand. He ceased to be a staff officer, however, or indeed an officer of any kind.
#3
Just how badly does Gordon Brown and his fellow travellers in Britain want to lose the war on terror?
While some British troops are engaged in the War, everything I read leads me to believe Britain is not. In fact, I believe Britain is lost. We will know for certain at Elizabeth's succession, which, fortunately may be decades off.
#4
I smell something "fishy" here. Two sets of documents and both sets turned in to media organizations rather than being returned to the authorities. This is all too coincidental to be accidental in my opinion.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 15:48 Comments ||
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#8
I'm thinking this is a deliberate plant. Whether genuine or not remains to be seen. Maybe the MI-6 is trying to tell the British people something that they can't because their leaders won't let them.
Russia's volatile north Caucasus has experienced one of its worst eruptions of violence in months with at least eight people killed in a series of attacks across the region, officials have said. The Kremlin is struggling to contain a mix of Islamist groups, separatist fighters and organised crime in the north Caucasus.
The latest violence included a blast in the Ingushetia region that killed four people, a remote-controlled bomb in neighbouring Dagestan that killed one man and a rebel raid in Chechnya that killed at least three. All of the attacks took place over a two-day period, officials said on Friday.
In Nazran, the biggest city in the Ingushetia region, four people were killed on Friday in an explosion that destroyed a grocery store, emergency services said. Police said they suspected an accidental gas blast, but a local interior ministry official said the explosion was deliberate. The destroyed building housed a liquor shop and the owner had previously received threats from armed groups who demanded he stop selling alcohol, the official said.
"There was a blast and black smoke pouring out," Ruslan, a 39-year-old Nazran resident who was passing the building at the time of the incident, said. "People were running away in panic... some were covered in blood."
In neighbouring Chechnya late on Thursday, at least 25 armed men raided the village of Benoi-Vedeno, killing three locals and setting several houses on fire, Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying. An internet site with ties to the separatist movement said the men had killed 11 armed people linked to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Moscow president.
In Dagestan, a remote-controlled bomb killed a jogger in a park in the capital, Makhachkala, local police said.
AMARA, Iraq - Iraqi forces backed by US troops have poured into the southern Shia stronghold of Amara in a fresh offensive to drive militiamen out of the violence-wracked city, security officials said on Saturday. Large numbers of heavily armed soldiers have taken up positions in and around the city ahead of an operation that local police said would target 'outlaws'.
'Many Iraqi and American troops are everywhere inside and outside Amara waiting for the start of the security operation,' a local police official told AFP. 'The operations will target outlaws.'
An AFP reporter confirmed large troop movements in the city that lies close to the porous border with Iran and that US-led forces believe is a major conduit for weapons. US military spokesman Sergeant Brooke Murphy refused to provide details, but said the military drive was being led by Iraqi security forces.
British troops transferred security control of Maysan province of which Amara is the capital to Iraqi forces in April 2007, but the province, and Amara in particular, has witnessed intense Shia infighting. Iraqi media reports say security in the city has improved over the past few months but that many Shia militiamen are believed to be hiding out in the city of around 350,000 people.
The reports say a large number of militiamen sought refuge in Amara after fleeing the main southern port city of Basra where Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched a military assault in March.
Sadr's movement said it has offered support to the Iraqi forces in Amara in a bid to avoid an upsurge in violence. 'We have expressed to the committee of the Shia coalition that we work with, that we are able to cooperate with them in order to make the operation succeed,' Sadr's spokesman Salah al-Obeidi told AFP.
"Please don't kill us!"
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Another passified City...NOT!,
The Brit Chain of Command Ordered SOFT Watch Lessons there!
Fatah members in the Gaza Strip appealed to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas over the weekend to work toward ending Hamas's "campaign of abduction, intimidation and terror" against them.
In a letter to Abbas on the first anniversary of Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, the Fatah members complained that the Islamic movement was continuing to target them despite the PA president's recent initiative to end the dispute between the two parties.
"We urge you to move quickly to end the criminal and terrorist actions of the Hamas militias against the sons of Fatah," the Fatah representatives wrote. "These militias are continuing to kidnap and torture our members in the Gaza Strip despite your initiative." Running out of wasabi powder
TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Lebanese forces detained more than 10 people on Saturday after gunmen fired at an army patrol near a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, a security official said.
Local Paleo hardboyz flexing their muscles and doing a little gunsex ...
The attack which caused no casualties took place in Qobbeh, a predominantly Sunni district on the northeastern edge of the port city of Tripoli, the official said. "There was an exchange of fire, but there were no injuries," he said adding that 10 people were arrested after the incident near the Palestinian refugee camp of Beddawi.
More people were detained as about 100 men and boys from the area took to the streets, burning tyres and blocking off roads, in protest at the initial arrests, an AFP correspondent said. The army intervened to reopen the roads, another security official said, adding that all those detained were released, apart from three people suspected of involvement in the shoot-out.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/15/2008 00:00 ||
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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.
Afghan and coalition forces killed more than 15 insurgents and captured five while searching for militants who escaped in a daring jail-break last week, the U.S. military said Sunday. Officials have not yet confirmed whether the insurgents who were killed or captured in the Saturday raid in Kandahar province were part of the nearly 400 Taliban militants who escaped from a Kandahar prison on Friday. A U.S. military statement said the insurgents, who were holed up in a farming compound west of Rawonay, fired at troops who then retaliated with an air strike.
(SomaliNet) Somali gunmen have shot and killed one World Food Program (WFP) drivers in southern Somalia, the United Nations' food agency says. 
AMARA, Iraq - Iraqi forces backed by US troops have poured into the southern Shia stronghold of Amara in a fresh offensive to drive militiamen out of the violence-wracked city, security officials said on Saturday. Large numbers of heavily armed soldiers have taken up positions in and around the city ahead of an operation that local police said would target 'outlaws'.
TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Lebanese forces detained more than 10 people on Saturday after gunmen fired at an army patrol near a Palestinian refugee camp in the north of the country, a security official said.
