Articles found September 27, 2008
Attackers gouge out Afghan man's eyes
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Armed assailants attacked a man and gouged out his eyes in front of his family during a gruesome assault in southern Afghanistan, officials said Sunday.
The man, Sayed Ghulam, is recovering in a hospital in the country's largest southern city, Kandahar.
Ghulam, 52, said three armed men knocked on his door in the Sangin district of Helmand province late Thursday. After he opened the door, they punched him in the face, put the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle in his mouth and gouged out his eyes with a knife in the presence of his wife and seven children.
"I was crying, along with my children and wife, who was screaming for help, but they didn't listen," Ghulam told The Associated Press from his hospital room in Kandahar.
Ghulam, a farmer who said he raises wheat and popcorn, said he does not know why he was attacked. "I don't have any enemies. But they were not letting me talk. They put the AK-47 in my mouth and they were punching me."
Daoud Ahmadi, the spokesman for Helmand's governor, blamed Taliban fighters for the attack, saying that the militants often kill innocent Afghans.
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Salmonbellies take lacrosse to Afghanistan
Kent Gilchrist, Canwest News Service Published: Friday, October 24, 2008
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VANCOUVER -- By this time next week the Canadian troops in Kandahar should be playing box lacrosse under the lights in what will surely be a first for Afghanistan.
Lacrosse is, of course, Canada's national summer sport and even if it isn't summer over there it's darn hot. That's why they play things like ball hockey at night. It can get up to a toasty 40 in the mid-day sun. It's also what makes this such a wonderful story. Sports provide distractions from the heat and stress of putting their lives on the line the war-torn environment.
"It was a no brainer," said Dan Richardson, the president and general manager of the Western Lacrosse Association's New Westminster (B.C.) Salmonbellies who recently returned from Brampton, Ont., where they lost the Canadian senior lacrosse championship to the more experienced Excelsiors 4-0.
The Bellies may have lost the Mann Cup, but they've gained a legion of new fans in a truly unlikely place. Not only do the troops have the Salmonbellies to thank for getting 30 brand new sticks and 50 balls - courtesy of Warrior Lacrosse, the manufacturer - but they'll be wearing New Westminster team T-shirts and pinnies (those armpit shirts in different colours to differentiate teams).
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Canadian soldiers rely on contacts, own instincts to assess Afghan security
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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Dozens of smiling children skipped along behind the heavily armed Canadian soldiers as they walked slowly through Kandahar's dusty streets and muddy lanes, some trying out their hesitant English, some limited to a shy "hello" and a wave.
One of the soldiers, sweating in in full battle dress, glanced around with a wry smile.
"It isn't always this friendly. When we drive LAVs (Light Armoured Vehicles) down this road, we get pelted with rocks. Just pelted."
And that sums up the difficulty of trying to assess what's really going on in Kandahar's labyrinthine streets.
A patrol from Camp Nathan Smith, the centre of Canada's development efforts in the provincial capital's rapidly growing outskirts, set out this week to walk the roads and mud-walled alleys around their base in an effort to find out how their neighbours feel about security, development and the local government.
"It's difficult, there's no doubt," sighs Capt. Jean Breton of the Toronto Scottish Regiment, who's learned to balance what he's told with what he sees around him.
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Turkish govt says 3 Turks kidnapped in Afghanistan
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Three Turkish citizens working on a communications project in Afghanistan have been kidnapped, Afghan and Turkish foreign ministry officials announced Saturday.
The Turkish nationals were kidnapped in the eastern province of Khost on Thursday, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta told a joint news conference Saturday with visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan.
Afghan intelligence officials and the provincial governor were working to resolve the issue, Spanta said, adding that the three were believed to have been abducted by a criminal gang.
Turkish foreign ministry officials in Ankara did not reveal the identities of the kidnap victims or more details about the incide
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Myriad militant groups operate on Pakistan border
By The Associated Press – 1 day ago
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Key militant groups that operate in Pakistan's violent northwest. While all are anti-U.S., only some are anti-Pakistan.
TEHRIK-E-TALIBAN
Leader: Baitullah Mehsud
An umbrella organization that embraces several Taliban-style groups, including the Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, a violent affiliate of al-Qaida with close ties to its No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri. Declared war on Pakistan in 2007 after its military operation against religious students holding a siege at the Red Mosque in Islamabad. Strong in Bajaur tribal region. Blamed for most attacks in Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
ANTI-MEHSUD TALIBAN GROUP
Leaders: Gul Bahadar, Maulvi Naseer
This group has promised not to attack Pakistan. Pakistan praises the group for killing hundreds of Uzbek al-Qaida fighters earlier this year, but Washington says the group sent fighters over the border into Afghanistan to attack U.S. forces. Washington wants Pakistan to shut Nasser down.
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Sisters in arms
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Bryan Patterson October 26, 2008 12:00am
NEVER before have Australian servicewomen been closer to harm's way. In Afghanistan and Iraq they are in the line of fire.
GENDER is irrelevant on the bloody battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Any soldier, male or female, is a target in a war with no frontlines and no safe zones.
In theory, women in the Australian Defence Force are barred from frontline combat zones.
Our women in Afghanistan and Iraq - about 100 serve there with the ADF - find that amusing, in a bittersweet sort of way.
Day after day, they face physical and emotional crisis that would test the steel of any soldier.
They have come to know that there’s no hiding from the roadside bombs, incoming mortars and sudden armed attacks. Death can be a second away for any soldier under the new, blurred rules of war.
Most of our men and women in the war zones regard the front line in Afghanistan and Iraq as anywhere outside the base camps. In reality, anywhere can be a combat zone, no matter what sex you are.
Last June, Sarah Bryant, a British intelligence officer, was on a secret counter-terrorism mission in Helmand province in Afghanistan when she was killed along with three reserve members of the Special Air Service when their armoured Land Rovers were hit by a roadside bomb. She was 26.
Married to a fellow intelligence officer, Ms Bryant’s main work in Afghanistan involved monitoring Taliban telephone and walkie-talkie communications.
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EURASIA INSIGHT
ARE THEOLOGICAL TENSIONS DISTANCING TALIBAN FROM AL-QAEDA?
Jeffrey Donovan 10/26/08 A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL
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Is this end of a beautiful friendship?
The Taliban and Al-Qaeda have enjoyed a long alliance in Afghanistan. Their relationship, based on a seemingly shared brand of severe and militant Islam, even survived the US-led toppling of the Taliban in 2001, which came after leader Mullah Omar famously refused to turn over to the Americans his Al-Qaeda ally, Osama bin Laden.
To this day, that relationship endures. But will it last? Rifts and tensions between the Taliban and Arab Al-Qaeda, as well as vastly different Islamic traditions, suggest that a basis for separation exists. Whether it occurs could determine whether peace negotiations between the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Taliban foes ever get off the ground.
Afghan Muslim traditions, including the Taliban, are culturally and historically distinct from Al-Qaeda’s Saudi-rooted Salafist Islam, says Francesco Zannini, an expert on modern Islam. In that sense, the two Sunni movements have always been awkward bedfellows.
"The whole Indian subcontinent, including Afghanistan, still lives an Islam that is profoundly rooted in local customs," says Zannini, author of the recently published "Islam In The Heart Of Asia: From The Caucasus To Thailand." "So they have always found themselves ill at ease with the strictly Arab Wahhabist doctrine and the entire Salafist movement."
With the Afghan war worsening, NATO officers and political leaders have made it clear that the seven-year conflict won’t be resolved militarily.
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U.S. might employ special forces strategy in Afghanistan
Peter Spiegel / Los Angeles Times
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WASHINGTON -- In a sign the U.S. military is scaling back its goals in Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials are weighing controversial proposals to send additional teams of highly trained special operations forces to narrowly target the most violent insurgent bands in the country.
The proposals are part of an acknowledgment among senior brass that a large-scale influx of conventional forces is unlikely in the near future because of troop commitments in Iraq. It also reflects the urgency to take some action to reverse recent setbacks in Afghanistan.
The idea of sending more special forces has intensified the debate over the best way to fight the Afghan war. As security worsens in the country, many military leaders are concluding that an Iraq-style troop "surge" and counterinsurgency plan would not work because of the country's rugged geography and a history of resistance to rule from Kabul, the capital.
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