Recently in Afghanistan Category

Where's the outrage? Imagine if this effort and ingenuity had been put toward something constructive over the past 10 years. But you don't get 72 virgins for building roads and sewers. "Civilian deaths in Afghanistan at highest level in a decade," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, February 4:

The number of civilians killed in the conflict rose eight per cent last year to reach 3,021 – with more than three-quarters caused by attacks from the Taliban-led insurgency.

The findings that on average more than eight Afghans a day are being killed are at odds with Nato assessments that violence is falling.

Deaths from suicide attacks rose more than 80 per cent to 431 over the year.

The number of suicide attacks did not rise, but "the nature of these attacks changed, becoming more complex, sometimes involving multiple suicide bombers, and designed to yield greater numbers of dead and injured civilians" the report found.

The worst was an attack outside a Kabul shrine in December that killed at least 56 and wounded 195 when a bomber detonated in a crowd of Shia worshippers celebrating the Ashura holiday. That attack was claimed by Pakistan-based militants.

The biggest single killer of civilians was homemade landmines often dug into roads, tracks and paths to target Nato or Afghan troops, but detonating indiscriminately.

The United Nations said on average 23 such bombs were found or blew up each day, killing 967 civilians during the year.

Numbers of civilians killed by Nato troops or by Hamid Karzai's forces fell slightly to 410.

Taliban leaders last year repeatedly called on their fighters to do more to protect civilians and threatened punishment to those who failed.

Such pronouncements have had little effect on the bloodshed, however.

"The continued high rate of civilian casualties by anti-government elements suggests that statements and proclamations alone neither resulted in improved protection of civilians nor minimised civilian casualties," the UN report said.

Women and children were increasingly caught up in the violence, accounting for 30 per cent of deaths in the last half of the year....

It won't be the Afghan government that fills the security vacuum. As became the template for the decade to follow in other countries, the U.S. greatly underestimated the Afghan population's support for the Taliban, for Sharia, and for jihad for the sake of imposing it. That is in large part because the U.S. greatly underestimated the content of Sharia, accepting a sugar-coated, vapor-ware Sharia -- what is at best an academic, drawing-board conception of what Sharia, could, would, or should be according to agenda-driven apologists, and at worst an outright lie -- as what it really has been in practice all these centuries.

"Taliban "poised to retake Afghanistan" after NATO," by Hamid Shalizi and Mirwais Harooni for Reuters, February 1:

KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw, raising the prospect of a major failure of Western policy after a costly war.

Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, confirmed the existence of the document, reported on Wednesday by Britain's Times newspaper and the BBC.

But he said it was not a strategic study.

"The classified document in question is a compilation of Taliban detainee opinions," he said. "It's not an analysis, nor is it meant to be considered an analysis."

Nevertheless, it could be interpreted as a damning assessment of the war, dragging into its 11th year and aimed at blocking a Taliban return to power.

It could also be seen as an admission of defeat and could reinforce the view of Taliban hardliners that they should not negotiate with the United States and President Hamid Karzai's unpopular government while in a position of strength.

The U.S. military report could boost the Taliban's confidence and make its leaders less willing to make concessions on demands for a ceasefire, and for the insurgency to renounce violence and break ties to al Qaeda.

But Britain's Kabul Ambassador William Patey wrote on his Twitter feed that "if elements of the Taliban think that in 2015 they can take control of Afghanistan they will be in for a shock." He did not say if he was referring to the document.

Hours after the Times report, the Afghan Taliban said that no peace negotiation process had been agreed with the international community, "particularly the Americans."

More on this story.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that prior to any negotiations, confidence building measures must be completed, putting pressure on Washington to meet demands for the release of five Taliban in U.S. custody.

The hardline Islamist movement also said it had no plans to hold preliminary peace talks with Afghanistan's government in Saudi Arabia, dismissing media reports of talks in the kingdom.

The U.S. military said in the document that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) security agency was assisting the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces.

Reasserting control over the country would be more difficult a second time for the
Taliban, however, with Afghan police and soldiers expected to number about 350,000 beyond 2014 and some foreign troops likely to remain, including elite forces.

Just days ago, it had sounded like this plan had faltered when the Taliban refused to agree to a cease-fire before starting talks. These are no small fish, either; some are prominent detainees considered "high-risk." It is less clear from this report whether their release would be part of a quid-pro-quo exchange of actions for actions, or closer to earlier reports that spoke of nebulous "confidence building" measures and appeared to offer U.S. actions in exchange for pledges from the Taliban.

"US confirms possible release of Taliban from Gitmo," by Ann Gearan and Kimberly Dozier for the Associated Press, January 31:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday that the United States may release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks.

Meanwhile, Afghan officials told The Associated Press that a plan to give Afghanistan a form of legal custody over the men if they are released satisfied their earlier objection to sending the prisoners to a third country.

Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper told Congress Tuesday that no decision had been made on whether to trade the five Taliban prisoners, now held at Guantanamo Bay as part of nascent peace talks with the Taliban. He and CIA Director David Petraeus did not dispute that the Obama administration is considering

transferring the five to a third country.

U.S. officials and others had previously spoken only vaguely, and usually anonymously, about the proposal to send the prisoners to Qatar, a Persian Gulf country that has asserted a central role in framing talks that might end the 10-year war in Afghanistan. The lead U.S. negotiator trying to coax the Taliban into talks had also publicly acknowledged the possibility of a release, but said there was no final decision.

The prisoners proposed for transfer include some of the detainees brought to Guantanamo during the initial days and weeks of the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. At least one has been accused in the massacre of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan, according to U.S. and other assessments, but none are accused of directly killing Americans.

"I don't think anybody harbors any illusions about it, but I think the position is to at least explore the potential for negotiating with them as a part of this overall resolution of the situation in Afghanistan," Clapper said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

The Obama administration has recently embraced the possibility of negotiation with the Taliban much more openly, saying that although they remain cautious they are also encouraged that the militants may be ready to bargain. Peace talks, if they come to pass, would include the elected Afghan government and, at least at the outset, representatives of the U.S. government. With nearly 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a war and development budget in the billions of dollars, the U.S. remains the largest power broker in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai supports a prisoner release as a means to build confidence among the Taliban militants that talks are worthwhile, but he had balked at the U.S.-backed plan to send them to Qatar instead of home to Afghanistan. That plan appeared to undercut his authority and offend Afghan sovereignty, Afghan officials said. Karzai yanked his ambassador from Qatar, saying Qatar had not kept him properly informed....

Racing to surrender. "LEAD: US Afghan envoy confirms talking to Haqqani insurgents," from DPA, January 22 (thanks to Wimpy):

Kabul - The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan on Sunday confirmed a meeting with the Haqqani insurgent group, as signs of a dialogue between the United States and rebels continue to grow.

'We had one meeting with Haqqani network,' Marc Grossman told a news conference in Kabul.

His remarks come after US and the Taliban militants confirmed preliminary talks for opening an liaison office for the Taliban in the Qatari capital of Doha - increasing speculation of an end to the decade-long bloody insurgency in this war-torn country.

'I think, from the Afghan prospective anyway, this is an inclusive process but we will have to see what turns out,' Grossman said, after a two days trip to Afghanistan.

'I am looking forward to the Taliban being clear about breaking ties with international terrorism, denouncing it, distancing them salves from it.'

Grossman however did not say when and where the meeting with the Haqqani network took place.

The Taliban are demanding the release of captives held at the US prison camp at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay.

'We haven't made any decisions and it's no surprise to any of you that this is an issue in the Unites [sic] States of law. We have to meet the requirements of our law,' Grossman said, referring to the demand.

'No decision has been made about this,' he said.

President Hamid Karzai on Saturday said that he personally held a meeting with another insurgent faction, Hezb-i-Islami, recently....

Give guns to large numbers of people with no durable sense of loyalty to unbelievers, whom they have been brought up since childhood to despise and to be prepared to fight, and there's going to be some unfriendly "friendly fire." That much should be obvious, but it is too politically incorrect to acknowledge.

Western policy in the Muslim world has been a "trust fall" writ large. "Afghanistan’s Soldiers Step Up Killings of Allied Forces," by Matthew Rosenberg for the New York Times, January 20:

KABUL, Afghanistan — American and other coalition forces here are being killed in increasing numbers by the very Afghan soldiers they fight alongside and train, in attacks motivated by deep-seated animosity between the supposedly allied forces, according to American and Afghan officers and a classified coalition report.

A decade into the war in Afghanistan, the report makes clear that these killings have become the most visible symptom of a far deeper ailment plaguing the war effort: the contempt each side holds for the other, never mind the Taliban. The ill will and mistrust run deep among civilians and militaries on both sides, raising questions about what future role the United States and its allies can expect to play in Afghanistan.

Underscoring the danger, a gunman in an Afghan Army uniform killed four French service members and wounded several others on Friday, according to an Afghan police official in Kapisa Province in eastern Afghanistan, prompting the French president to suspend his country’s operations here.

The violence, and the failure by coalition commanders to address it, casts a harsh spotlight on the shortcomings of American efforts to build a functional Afghan Army, a pillar of the Obama administration’s strategy for extricating the United States from the war in Afghanistan, said the officers and experts who helped shape the strategy.

The problems risk leaving the United States and its allies dependent on an Afghan force that is permeated by anti-Western sentiment and incapable of combating the Taliban and other militants when NATO’s combat mission ends in 2014, they said. [...]

But the most troubling fallout has been the mounting number of Westerners killed by their Afghan allies, events that have been routinely dismissed by American and NATO officials as isolated episodes that are the work of disturbed individual soldiers or Taliban infiltrators, and not indicative of a larger pattern. The unusually blunt report, which was prepared for a subordinate American command in eastern Afghanistan, takes a decidedly different view. The Wall Street Journal reported on details of the investigation last year. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.

“Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” it said. Official NATO pronouncements to the contrary “seem disingenuous, if not profoundly intellectually dishonest,” said the report, and it played down the role of Taliban infiltrators in the killings.

The coalition refused to comment on the classified report. But “incidents in the recent past where Afghan soldiers have wounded or killed I.S.A.F. members are isolated cases and are not occurring on a routine basis,” said Lt. Col. Jimmie E. Cummings Jr. of the Army, a spokesman for the American-led International Security Assistance Force. “We train and are partnered with Afghan personnel every day and we are not seeing any issues or concerns with our relationships.”

The numbers appear to tell a different story. Although NATO does not release a complete tally of its forces’ deaths at the hands of Afghan soldiers and the police, the classified report and coalition news releases indicate that Afghan forces have attacked American and allied service members nearly three dozen times since 2007. [...]

... “U.S. soldiers’ perceptions of A.N.A. members were extremely negative across categories,” the report found, using the initials for the Afghan National Army. Those categories included “trustworthiness on patrol,” “honesty and integrity,” and “drug abuse.” The Americans also voiced suspicions about the Afghans being in league with the Taliban, a problem well documented among the Afghan police.

“They are stoned all the time; some even while on patrol with us,” one soldier was quoted as saying. Another said, “They are pretty much gutless in combat; we do most of the fighting.”....

Now when will the United States follow suit? Probably not as long as Barack Obama is President; after all, these attacks are happening with increasing frequency, and yet after every one, U.S. officials affirm our commitment to keep training these jihadis-in-waiting.

"France deplores 'assassination' of troops as it threatens to pull out of Afghanistan," by Ben Farmer and Henry Samuel in the Telegraph, January 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

France has suspended all operations with the Afghan army and threatened to withdraw its forces early from the country after an Afghan soldier shot dead four French troops.

Alain Juppé, France's foreign minister, said the unarmed soldiers had been victims of an "assassination," and President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered an immediate review of security for troops training Afghan soldiers.

The killings during a training exercise at the Gwan military base in Kapisa province followed a similar attack last month when an Afghan soldier shot and killed two members of the French Foreign Legion.

Friday's attack wounded a further 15 and brought the total French death toll in the Afghan campaign to 82. The Afghan attacker was captured alive.

Scores of Nato troops have been shot dead in recent years by their Afghan partners raising fears of widespread Taliban infiltration and underlining the tense relations on the ground between the allies.

Gérard Longuet, defence minister, and the army's chief of staff are due in Afghanistan to investigate recruitment policy in the Afghan army, Mr Sarkozy said.

"If we are not satisfied with the level of security, we will draw the consequences," he said. "I will go so far as to order an early withdrawal of our troops. We are there as friends of the Afghan people. We cannot accept that an Afghan soldier fires on French troops."...

Sahar Gul's other option would have been jail, though police sent her back to her abusers. About 80% of the 115 or so girls known to be in Afghan jails are there for the "moral crime" of running away from home. It is a sick society where one can only hope to choose one form of punishment as sanctuary from another.

Many of those who resist enhanced legal protections for women will invoke Sharia. Above all, Allah has made striking (yes, striking) disobedient women lawful in Qur'an 4:34. The letter and spirit of that verse continue to cause and rationalize untold suffering.

"Tortured Afghan child bride slowly recovering," from Agence France-Presse, January 17 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

KABUL — The Afghan child bride who was tortured in an attempt to force her into prostitution is slowly recovering but is still hardly able to speak, a nurse told AFP during a visit to the girl's bedside Thursday.

Sahar Gul, 15, who was burned and beaten and had her fingernails pulled out was found last month in the basement of her husband's house in northeastern Baghlan province, where she had been locked in a toilet for six months.

"Since the past few days, Gul can walk very slowly, she can eat and talk in a frail voice," said nurse Latifa Mirzad at the Wazir Akbar Khan hospital, as the bruised and battered girl looked on silently.

"She is hardly able to speak of her ordeal but sometimes she says in a weak voice 'my father in-law and mother-in law have beaten me'."

Gul's case was taken directly to President Hamid Karzai by a delegation from the Afghan Women's Network on Wednesday.

"The president assured his full support to strictly punish the perpetrators of the crime against Sahar Gul so that nobody can commit such a crime in the future," said the network's Lema Anwari.

Karzai pledged in a statement after the delegation's visit to take action against the "cowardly" perpetrators of violence against women.

The president said that he always took measures as soon as he heard about cases of violence against women, and would continue to take the issue seriously so that the culprits were brought to justice.

When? Sahar's husband was reported to be serving in the Afghan National Army. Why can't they find him?

According to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.

The intrepid mujahedin, showing how manly they are by outsourcing suicide bombings to children. "Afghan boy suicide bombers tell how they are brainwashed into believing they will survive," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, January 13:

The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest.

Blindfolded and rigged with his explosive payload, the boy, who was about 13, was driven to his target in the Afghan city of Kandahar, after being plucked from the streets of Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan. Minutes before he was due to execute the attack, however, Abdul realised the lies of his recruiters seeking to turn him into a human bomb.

"When I opened my eyes, I saw it was a very black thing they wanted me to do," he later recalled.

"I began to cry and shout. People came out of their houses and asked what was wrong. I showed them I had something in my vest. Then they were scared too and called the police who took the bombs off me."

Afghan security officials say that Abdul's story is not unusual. In the past year, insurgents have used a wave of child suicide bombers, some as young as 10, on the ruthless assumption that small boys can pass through checkpoints and security cordons more easily than men.

A senior Afghan intelligence official estimated that more than 100 had been intercepted in the past 12 months, including 20 from the Kandahar area in the south. The insurgents seek to exploit the innocence of their recruits and turn it into a weapon.

What they really want is to place NATO forces in a situation where they have to decide between dying in a bombing and using force to stop the bomber. The propaganda mill would then say that NATO forces fired on a child.

The largely illiterate boys are fed a diet of anti-Western and anti-Afghan government propaganda until they are prepared to kill, he said. But the boys are also assured that they will miraculously survive the devastation they cause.

"The worst part is that these children don't think that they are killing themselves," said the official. "They are often given an amulet containing Koranic verses. Mullahs tell them, 'When this explodes you will survive and God will help you survive the fire. Only the infidels will be killed, you will be saved and your parents will go to paradise'."

Throughout the war against the Soviet invaders in the 1980s, and the civil strife that followed, Afghan fighters of all factions rejected suicide attacks as cowardly and unIslamic.

The tactic was adopted only after 2001, learned from Arab jihadists who had used it to devastating effect in Iraq.

The first Afghan suicide bomber is believed to have been a man called Hafez Abdallah, who in 2004 threw himself on a military Jeep and detonated mortar bombs strapped to his body. Suicide bombs hidden in vehicles or sewn into vests have since been widely employed.

The Taliban denies using children as bombers, pointing out that its battlefield code forbids any military use of pre-pubescent boys. One Taliban facilitator from northern Afghanistan told The Daily Telegraph: "All our bombers are men and they are all volunteers. We never use boys."

But Nato and Afghan security officials said the tactic has been widely adopted. Child bombers had been used by the Haqqani network, an insurgent group aligned to the Taliban. [...]

And Pakistani intelligence.

Gul Khan, who looks no older than 10, said his father had insisted he go to a madrassa in Pakistan run by a man called Maulawi Sher Jan.

"Each day they were preaching that we would tie bombs on to our bodies and attack foreigners in Afghanistan," he said after escaping and being arrested on the border.

"They told us the bombs would not kill us, only the Americans would die and you can come back to us."

Many of the captured boys have been pardoned, but others remain in Afghanistan's child jails. Once in custody, they often retract their televised confessions, justice officials in Kandahar said.

Three convicted child suicide bombers, seen by The Daily Telegraph, all said their confessions had been false and they were wrongly convicted. Haji Abdul Haq, the juvenile prosecutor for Kandahar, denied pressure had been placed on them and said they were often caught wearing bomb vests. "They confess at first, but when their families reach them, they change their minds," he said.

The only ones who might be surprised by this are in Washington, and they won't listen anyway. "Afghan Taliban says peace talks 'don't signal end to Jihad,'" from ANI, January 12 (thanks to Twostellas):

Islamabad, Jan 12 : Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents have said that their support for peace talks does not mean a surrender from Jihad, and have vowed to continue their armed struggle.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said the militants had been fighting for the past 15 years to establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan "in accordance with the request of its people".

"It is for this purpose and for bringing about peace and stability in Afghanistan that we have increased our political efforts to come to mutual understanding with the world in order to solve the current ongoing situation," Mujahid said in an emailed statement.

"But this understanding does not mean a surrender from Jihad and neither is it connected to an acceptance of the constitution of the stooge Kabul administration," he added....

As I have said many times in the context of many similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist. This is yet more fruit of the unwillingness to make even a cursory attempt to take that fact into account.

And every few weeks (the last time was December 29), I find the paragraph above in the archives and post it again.

"Afghan Soldier Shoots Americans, Killing One," by Graham Bowley and Sharifullah Sahak in the New York Times, January 9 (thanks to David):

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan soldier turned his gun on American military personnel while they were playing volleyball at a camp in southern Afghanistan, killing one and wounding three others before being fatally shot, the Afghan police said on Monday.

It was the third time in just over two weeks that a man wearing an Afghan Army uniform attacked NATO personnel. In the earlier cases, the Taliban claimed responsibility, although there was no immediate claim in this case that the Afghan soldier had Taliban sympathies.

The attack took place on Sunday afternoon in Qalat, the capital of Zabul Province. The Afghan soldier approached the volleyball game and appeared to watch the soldiers play before opening fire with an M-16 assault rifle, said Ghulam Jilani Farahi, deputy police chief of Zabul Province. Another American soldier who heard the firing shot and killed the attacker, he said.

The coalition released a brief statement Sunday saying that a service member “was killed today in southern Afghanistan apparently by a member of the Afghan National Army.”

Afghan soldiers have repeatedly shot NATO counterparts in recent years, and there is concern among NATO and Afghan commanders that insurgents may be infiltrating the ranks of the Afghan security forces....

No kidding, really? Or maybe the Afghan recruits just love jihad. But political correctness forbids any consideration of that.

The Taliban wants them sent to Qatar so they are not detained in Afghanistan. Of course, they'll all just take up shuffleboard wherever they're released. No security issues there.

The U.S. has "agreed in principle" to release high-ranking Taliban prisoners from Guantánamo Bay in what has appeared so far to be an exchange of concrete American actions for pledges from the Taliban. "Taliban 'want US prisoners sent to Qatar'," by Joris Fioriti for Agence France-Presse, January 6:

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents have demanded in negotiations with the US that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay be transferred to Qatar, an Afghan government spokesman said Friday.

But President Hamid Karzai's government objects strongly to the move and wants the prisoners sent directly to Afghanistan, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP.

The Taliban announced this week that they planned to set up a political office in Qatar, a move seen as a precursor to peace talks with Washington.

At the same time, the hardline Islamists demanded the release of prisoners from the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- but the statement did not specify where they should be sent.

Karzai was told by the US about the demand that they should go to Qatar shortly before the Bonn conference on Afghanistan in December, Faizi said.

"Several meetings had taken place between the Americans and the Taliban. It was something discussed between the two sides.

"But that day, when the Americans talked to Karzai, it was the first time that they talked about the transfer of the prisoners to Qatar."

Faizi said his government was in favour of a release of Guantanamo prisoners, "but we don't want them to go directly to Qatar -- our government is strongly against it".

Karzai's government is concerned about being sidelined in the negotiations towards possible peace between the Taliban and the US, and Faizi stressed that it wanted "an Afghan-led transition".

"You can't send them directly to Qatar because it would be a breach of our sovereignty, of the Afghan laws or of the constitution. Afghanistan is an independent nation, you know.

"You can't do anything you want with our citizens without informing the Afghan government. The prisoners should be sent to the Afghan government first.

"We agreed on the opening of an office for the Taliban in Qatar, but never on the transfer of the prisoners to that country." [...]

Afghan analyst and former Taliban official Waheed Mujhda said that if released Taliban prisoners were repatriated to Kabul they risked being detained by the government, which is why the movement was pressing for them to be sent to Qatar....

Her other option would probably have been prison. Up to 350 woman and about 114 girls are known to be locked up for "moral crimes" in Afghanistan. Among the girls, "80 per cent are serving sentences for either running away from home or extramarital sex."

As was the case with Gulnaz, the rape victim finally pardoned from a sentence for adultery (after agreeing to marry the man who raped her), there are undoubtedly others like the girl in this story, Sahar Gul, inside and outside of jail.

"Tortured Afghan child bride had been sent back to in-laws," by Jon Boone for the Sydney Morning Herald, January 3:

A 15-year-old Afghan girl who was nearly tortured to death by her husband and his family attempted to escape from her attackers more than four months ago but was sent back home by local authorities, it has emerged.

Sahar Gul, a child bride married off to a soldier called Gulam Sakhi who then tried to force her into prostitution, is being treated for horrific injuries in a hospital in Kabul after she was rescued last week.

During her ordeal several of her fingernails were ripped out with pliers and one of her ears was badly burned by an iron. Her husband is now on the run, and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been arrested.

Her case has caused uproar in Afghanistan and Hamid Karzai, the country's President, has vowed that those responsible would be punished.

But disturbing new details about how the local community and authorities responded to her abuse has highlighted the ambivalence many Afghans have over how far women should be able to exercise the most basic of legal rights.

"She ran away to her neighbour's house and told them that her husband was trying to make her become a prostitute," said local community leader Ziaulhaq. " 'If you are a Muslim, you must tell the government what is happening to me,' she told them."

The locals said they did take the case to the authorities. When the police arrived Sahar's mother-in-law tried to fight them off, screaming all the while that her son had "bought" the girl who therefore had to do what she was told.

She appeared to be alluding to the dowry paid by Sakhi's family, a sum thought to be about $4000.

Locals say the family simply promised to stop hurting her. Ziaulhaq also alleged that bribes were paid to government officials to hush up the affair.

Although she emphatically denied money was paid, Rahima Zarifi, the women's affairs chief in Baghlan province, said she could not remember the details of the case, or why Sahar was sent back home.

The abuse resumed and continued for months until a male relative visited. When he found the girl, who had been starved in a locked basement for weeks, Sahar was almost unable to speak.

Fauzia Kufi, an MP who campaigns on women's issues, said that even then local authorities attempted to resolve the abuse through "traditional means".

"Basically they wanted the relative to sit down with his sister's abusers and work out an agreement," she said.

Kufi also claims there was strong pressure not to publicise the case.

"Many people don't take these sorts of crimes seriously and don't think it should be reported," she said.

"Even the local authorities have blamed the department for women's affairs for not trying to solve it locally between families in the traditional way."...

Awwww. More on this story. It is unfortunate that it does not look as if anyone (least of all Pakistan) is pressing for a military advantage while the group is floundering; the CIA has suspended drone strikes as of last month. It would appear that this is an opportunity that is being allowed to pass. "Exclusive: Pakistan Taliban commanders 'at each other's throats'," by Chris Allbritton for Reuters, January 3:

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani militants have held a series of meetings aimed at containing what could soon be open warfare between the two most powerful Pakistani Taliban leaders, militant sources have said.

Hakimullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and his deputy, Wali-ur-Rehman, were at each other's throats, the sources said.

"You will soon hear that one of them has eliminated the other, though hectic efforts are going on by other commanders and common friends to resolve differences between the two," one TTP commander said.

Any division within the TTP could hinder the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda's struggle in Afghanistan against the United States and its allies, making it more difficult to recruit young fighters and disrupting safe havens in Pakistan used by the Afghan militants.

Despite multiple reports of the Rehman-Mehsud split, Rehman told Reuters on Tuesday there was no problem between the two.

"There are no differences between us," Rehman said.

The TTP, formed in 2007, is an umbrella group of various Pakistani militant factions operating in Pakistan's unruly northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan.

It has long struggled with its choice of targets. Some factions are at war with the Pakistani state while others concentrate on the fight against the United States and its allies in Afghanistan.

There has been a noticeable decrease in militant attacks in Pakistan, but there continue to be random acts of violence across the country.

Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban commanders are asking the TTP to provide more men for the fight in Afghanistan and are looking to smooth over the dispute between Mehsud and Rehman.

Taliban sources said Rehman had ordered his fighters to kill Mehsud because of his increasing closeness with al Qaeda and its Arab contingent.

Mehsud's former deputy has also alleged the TTP chief received money from Pakistan's arch-rival, India, to kill a former Pakistan spy agency official acting as a mediator between the Pakistani Taliban, Afghan insurgents and the Pakistani government.

The reported enmity between Mehsud and Rehman is not the only conflict within the TTP ranks.

Mehsud has a long-standing feud with militant commanders Maulvi Nazeer in South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan, both of whom have non-aggression agreements with the Pakistani military.

Mehsud's men have also fought with the militia under the control of Fazal Saeed Haqqani, the former TTP head in the Kurram tribal region. He has accused Mehsud of killing his commanders and innocent people and kidnapping for ransom.

Haqqani, who is close to the militant Afghan Haqqani network, broke away from the TTP last year.

A pamphlet distributed by militants in North Waziristan this week announced the formation of a council to try to resolve the conflicts.

"All jihadi forces have jointly, on the recommendation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, formed a five-member commission which will be known as the Shura Muraqba," the pamphlet said, using the term by which the Afghan Taliban describe themselves.

"The Shura Muraqba will be working to resolve differences and problems between mujahideen."

It said that any mujahideen -- or holy warriors -- found to have committed an "unlawful" killing or kidnapping would be punished under Islamic law. It is likely any attack on a fellow mujahideen commander would be considered "unlawful."

"All mujahideen should respect the decisions of the council that has been set up," a senior commander of the Haqqani faction in Kurram said....

Islamic spokesmen in the West constantly assure us that Islam respects women -- I was not too long ago in a somewhat riotous debate with the Imam Moustafa Zayed on just that topic. And so it is extremely odd that in Afghanistan, a country where virtually everyone is Muslim, most Afghan men seem to misunderstand this important principle, and treat their women shabbily. Probably they misunderstand this Qur'an passage as providing some justification for wife-beating: "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them" (4:34).

"Afghan woman cuts off father-in-law's private part," from AFP, December 31, 2011 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

An Afghan woman cut off her father-in-law's penis with a knife after he tried to have sex with her, a doctor in eastern Afghanistan's Ghazni province said on Saturday.

"One day when the husband was away from home he attempted to have sex with his daughter-in-law and she cut off his penis with a knife," the doctor from a private hospital in Ghazni said on condition of anonymity.

The man went for treatment at the private hospital but was sent on to the capital Kabul for specialist treatment, he added. The incident took place two weeks ago but has only just come to light.

According to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

The earlier report we posted on "confidence building measures" noted that the U.S. "has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai."

According to that account, we could be pledging American actions -- big, risky ones -- in exchange for words from the Taliban. What could possibly go wrong? After all, the Taliban don't want Fazl and the other detainees back in Afghan custody just to visit: in Afghan custody, they stand to benefit from any number of "sudden" security lapses and inside help, as has occurred in the massive Kandahar prison break last year.

"U.S. mulls transfer of Taliban prisoner in perilous peace bid," by Mark Hosenball, Missy Ryan and Warren Strobel for Reuters, December 29:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is considering transferring to Afghan custody a senior Taliban official suspected of major human rights abuses as part of a long-shot bid to improve the prospects of a peace deal in Afghanistan, Reuters has learned.

The potential hand-over of Mohammed Fazl, a 'high-risk detainee' held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison since early 2002, has set off alarms on Capitol Hill and among some U.S. intelligence officials.

As a senior commander of the Taliban army, Fazl is alleged to be responsible for the killing of thousands of Afghanistan's minority Shi'ite Muslims between 1998 and 2001.

According to U.S. military documents made public by WikiLeaks, he was also on the scene of a November 2001 prison riot that killed CIA operative Johnny Micheal Spann, the first American who died in combat in the Afghan war. There is no evidence, however, that Fazl played any direct role in Spann's death.

Senior U.S. officials have said their 10-month-long effort to set up substantive negotiations between the weak government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban has reached a make-or-break moment. Reuters reported earlier this month that they are proposing an exchange of "confidence-building measures," including the transfer of five detainees from Guantanamo and the establishment of a Taliban office outside of Afghanistan.

Now Reuters has learned from U.S. government sources the identity of one of the five detainees in question.

The detainees, the officials emphasized, would not be set free, but remain in some sort of further custody. It is unclear precisely what conditions they would be held under.

In response to inquiries by Reuters, a senior administration official said that the release of Fazl and four other Taliban members had been requested by the Afghan government and Taliban representatives as far back as 2005.

The debate surrounding the White House's consideration of high-profile prisoners such as Fazl illustrates the delicate course it must tread both at home and abroad as it seeks to move the nascent peace process ahead.

One U.S. intelligence official said there had been intense bipartisan opposition in Congress to the proposed transfer.

"I can tell you that the hair on the back of my neck went up when they walked in with this a month ago, and there's been very, very strong letters fired off to the administration," the official said on condition of anonymity....

As I have said many times in the context of many similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist. This is yet more fruit of the unwillingness to make even a cursory attempt to take that fact into account.

And every few weeks (the last time was November 10), I find the paragraph above in the archives and post it again.

"Rogue Afghan soldier kills 2 French soldiers," by Ernesto Londoño for the Washington Post, December 29 (thanks to D.):

KABUL — A man wearing an Afghan army uniform fatally shot two French service members in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, military officials said, the latest in a string of similar attacks that the Taliban claims to have masterminded.

Hours later, a roadside bomb killed 10 Afghan police officers in southern Helmand province, an attack that authorities said was among the deadliest against Afghan security forces this year.

“It was the work of the enemies, the Taliban, who have suffered a defeat in face-to-face fighting and only resort to planting mines like these," said Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand’s governor.

Doesn't Dawood Ahmadi know that the Taliban aren't the enemy? Joe Biden said so!

The two attacks marred what has been a relatively quiet winter in Afghanistan, a season during which violence tends to ebb because the snow and cold temperatures limit mobility.

Still, sporadic attacks continue, including the suicide bombing outside a funeral in northern Afghanistan on Sunday that killed 20 people, including a member of parliament.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the shooting of the French soldiers in a statement, which said a rogue soldier named Ibrahim joined the “puppet army” for a “specific purpose.” The statement said Ibrahim shot the French troops on a base in Kapisa province.

“He was shot and martyred by the invaders in exchange of fire,” the Taliban statement said....

The Taliban don't want this so they can visit. They know that in Afghan custody, they stand a good chance of seeing the detainees escaping or being released outright. Failing that, they can attempt to organize a prison break of their own, which they did in Kandahar "with inside help."

"Exclusive: Secret U.S., Taliban talks reach turning point," by Missy Ryan, Warren Strobel and Mark Hosenball for Reuters, December 19:

(Reuters) - After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.

As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody.

It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Words from the Taliban must not be accepted as a "confidence-building measure," especially not in exchange for substantive action taken by the U.S. or NATO.

The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the complications: U.S. troops are drawing down and will be mostly gone by the end of 2014, potentially reducing the incentive for the Taliban to negotiate.

Still, the senior officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity to share new details of the mostly secret effort, suggested it has been a much larger piece of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy than is publicly known.

U.S. officials have held about half a dozen meetings with their insurgent contacts, mostly in Germany and Doha with representatives of Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban's Quetta Shura, the officials said.

The stakes in the diplomatic effort could not be higher.

Failure would likely condemn Afghanistan to continued conflict, perhaps even civil war, after NATO troops finish turning security over to Karzai's weak government by the end of 2014.

Success would mean a political end to the war and the possibility that parts of the Taliban - some hardliners seem likely to reject the talks - could be reconciled.

The effort is now at a pivot point.

"We imagine that we're on the edge of passing into the next phase. Which is actually deciding that we've got a viable channel and being in a position to deliver" on mutual confidence-building measures, said a senior U.S. official....

Savagery. And yet the world community is much more upset about the chimera of "Islamophobia" than it will ever be about this. "Taliban cut nursing woman’s breast, asked others to eat pieces: UN-backed report," from the Press Trust of India, December 16 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Islamabad : Pakistani Taliban fighters cut the breasts of a woman who was breastfeeding her child and asked other women to eat the pieces, in a gory incident highlighted in a report on the abuse of women in the militancy-hit tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

The incident occurred when five militants walked into a house and saw the woman breastfeeding her child, The Express Tribune quoted the report titled ‘Impact of crisis on women and girls in FATA’ as saying.

The report, released by the human rights organisation “Khwendo Kor” (Sisters’ Home in Pashto) with financial support from the UN, is based on case studies of women from the tribal belt living in camps set up in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for people displaced by militancy.

Women in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are more susceptible to abuse in a post-conflict scenario, whether or not they are part of the conflict, the report says.

Another revelation is that women in camps were forced to have sex in exchange for food and non-food items. Girls and widows were at greater risk of such abuse.

“A security officer forced me to have sex in exchange for cooking oil and pulses when I was collecting food at the main entrance of the camp,” a 22-year-old woman in Jalozai camp is quoted as saying.

The surveys conducted at relief camps at Nahqai and Jalozai showed that women were uncomfortable going to toilets because men constantly lurked around.

The report said there was also an increase in “honour killings” in which women who were raped were murdered because rape was considered a disgrace to the family....

Similar proposals have been floating around for some time, and have included not only Turkey, but Qatar, as discussed below. Such measures carry a major risk of granting the Taliban a veneer of false legitimacy, an undeserved upgrade in international standing, and a tool to buy time by going through the motions of overtures toward peace talks, while continuing to fight and plot attacks. "Afghans propose Saudi, Turkey for Taliban liaison office," from Middle East Online, December 15:

KABUL - Afghan authorities on Thursday named Saudi Arabia or Turkey as the best places to set up a Taliban liaison office abroad to enable peace talks to end a devastating 10-year insurgency.

President Hamid Karzai convened a top level meeting, the outcome of which is not binding, to discuss how to move forward with a peace process derailed by the assassination of his peace envoy, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September.

The meeting came one day after Afghanistan announced it had recalled its ambassador to Qatar in protest at being left out of talks in which the United States discussed plans for the Taliban to open an address in Qatar.

"The participants of the meeting insisted that the address created for the opposition should be inside Afghanistan," Karzai's office said.

"But if the situation does not allow this, the office should be established in an Islamic country, preferably in Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

"The participants also asserted that the fighting and violence against the people of Afghanistan should stop before the peace talks start.

"It was also decided in the meeting that no other countries should interfere in this process without the agreement of Islamic republic of Afghanistan."

The meeting at the presidential palace involved high-ranking government officials, including the first vice president and foreign minister, former Mujahedeen commanders, members of the peace council, and Rabbani's son, Salahuddin.

They agreed the Taliban address should be established "for the sole purpose of peace talks", the statement added.

The US has discussed plans for the Taliban to open an address in Qatar by the end of the year to allow the West to begin formal peace talks.

Jihadist gratitude, and another victory for hearts-and-minds initiatives. "Saviour of 2,000 Afghans who saved a baby's life executed by the Taliban," by Rebecca Evans in the Daily Mail, December 15 (thanks to Wimpy):

A British doctor shot dead by the Taliban was part of a humanitarian mission that had helped 2,000 Afghans, an inquest heard yesterday.

Dr Karen Woo was executed alongside nine other aid workers after they tried to cross a mountain river in August last year.

The 36-year-old, who was due to get married a fortnight later, suffered ‘catastrophic’ injuries from two gunshot wounds in the attack.

Shortly before her death she had helped to save the life of a baby boy who was struggling to breathe.

Her team had been halfway through a 120-mile, three-week expedition in the northern Nuristan Province when they were ambushed....

After more international embarrassment at the delay of her release, Gulnaz is out of jail. But there remain about 350 women and up to 112 girls known to be locked up for "moral crimes." "Afghan woman, imprisoned over rape, is free," from MSNBC, December 14:

An Afghan woman who said she would marry her rapist in order to get out of jail, where she was serving a 12-year sentence for having sex out of wedlock, has been freed, her lawyer said Wednesday.

Kimberly Motley, the woman's American lawyer, told NBC News that she was released from prison late Tuesday.

"Gulnaz is relieved, and trying to slowly figure out her next step," Motley said of the woman, who goes by only one name.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai pardoned her last week after she said she would marry her rapist - her cousin's husband.

In an interview with NBC News last week, Gulnaz said she had agreed to the marriage "even though I can't look at him."....

Gulnaz is not out of jail, even after the absurd exercise of having to be pardoned for being raped. Apparently the jail has not received the official pardon order, and to make matters worse, the rapist's father is attempting to intimidate her with repeated visits while she waits. An update on this story. "Afghan rape victim still in jail despite pardon: lawyer," from Agence France-Presse, December 12:

An Afghan woman who was jailed for adultery after being raped remains in prison more than 10 days after President Hamid Karzai ordered her release, her lawyer said on Monday.

Gulnaz, who has already served two years in prison after a relative raped her at her home, should have been released within 48 hours and there was "no good reason" for her to remain behind bars, Kimberley Motley said.

Her case highlights the poor state of women's rights in Afghanistan, 10 years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban who were notorious for their harsh laws against women.

Following an outcry over her situation, Karzai called a meeting where judicial officials decided to pardon her, presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP on December 1.

Hundreds of women and girls as young as 12 remain in jail for so-called "moral crimes." Gulnaz' pardon was a face-saving move, not reform, and for those prisoners, nothing has changed.

But the officials also advised that Gulnaz should marry the man who attacked her, due to fears she could be in danger if released because of the stigma surrounding her attack in ultra-conservative Afghanistan.

Motley said there were no conditions set on Gulnaz's release and she would need time to decide what to do. But she also voiced concern that her client was being visited in jail by her attacker's father.

"She's still locked up and there's no good reason for it," Motley said. "Since the president has announced that he is going to issue a pardon she continues to be visited by the attacker's father.

"That's not appropriate. It's very disturbing. He's not a blood relative."

Gulnaz has been raising the child she had by her attacker in a prison cell in Kabul.

"She's anxious to leave and to be free. She's anxious to know what's going on," Motley said.

"She was told by the committee she would be released within two days."

Given the institutions they are dealing with, they would have needed to specify which two days.

Officials said the order had been sent to the ministry of justice but was being processed through various offices.

"We have already sent out the pardon letter. It does take a while until the cycle and process is finished," a presidential spokesman said.

"We have not officially received the pardon order, but we know it is on its way," ministry of justice spokesman Farid Ahmad Najeebi said.

"It takes a while until it reaches us because it has to go to the president's public affairs department, and several other offices before it reaches us. But we are expecting it soon."...

Remember that the prison is in Kabul, where the government is. This document is not meandering out to Herat or Mazar-e-Sharif. Even so, it seems ridiculous that a fax or phone call could not speed the process along. Rather, it is likely a question of priorities.

International embarrassment for Afghanistan got one rape victim, Gulnaz, pardoned, although she will still marry the man who raped her.

It is good to see reporting that focuses on those who are left behind after Gulnaz' pardon. Hundreds of women and girls remain behind bars not only for "moral crimes," but for what would be understood in countries where Sharia is not enforced (formally or informally) to be other people's moral crimes, including rape, forced marriage, and domestic violence.

These women's "crimes" often boil down to having somehow been found out of place, and therefore, forfeiting their right to protection. The legal deck is stacked against them to encourage them to choose to be prisoners in their own homes. Even the supreme court is against them, as noted in the report below.

Meet the new Afghanistan, same as the old Afghanistan -- only, this one smiles at the West while prosecuting rape victims. "Afghanistan's women languishing in prisons 10 years after fall of Taliban," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, December 4:

Figures disclosed to The Daily Telegraph show that half of the country’s jailed women — about 350 — have been sentenced for “moral crimes”. For girls aged 12 to 18 in prison, the figure rises to four-fifths.

The latest United Nations figures estimate that the women’s prison population has risen to 600, up from 380 two years ago.

A further 114 girls aged 12 to 18 are locked up, of which 80 per cent are serving sentences for either running away from home or extramarital sex, an Afghan justice official said.

The situation is predicted to get worse after a recent Supreme Court ruling that a woman who flees her home and goes anywhere other than the police or a close relative should be locked up as a precaution against illicit sex and prostitution.

The ruling has meant the number of women jailed has risen steadily.

The figures emerged as diplomats gathered in Bonn to review ten years of intervention in Afghanistan and make new pledges as Nato combat troops complete a withdrawal by 2015.

Western countries including Britain have poured tens of millions of pounds into the Afghan justice system and the women are often held in prisons built with international aid money.

But the lofty declarations made a decade ago in the same city to help women repressed by the Taliban have not, according to activists, been fulfilled.

The Afghan justice system remains heavily stacked against women in a deeply socially conservative culture.

Human Rights Watch, which has interviewed more than 50 female prisoners for a forthcoming report on the issue, found women who had tried to flee arranged marriages, beatings and husbands who had forced them into prostitution, only to be then prosecuted.

Heather Barr, the organisation’s Afghanistan researcher, said: “It’s devastating that these cases not only continue, but seem to be increasing ten years after what was supposed to be a new beginning for Afghan women.

“These cases call into question what progress has really been made for Afghan women and what type of future lies ahead for them as the international community departs.”

Many of the women said they were happy in prison because they were temporarily protected from vengeful relatives threatening murder to erase the stain left on their family’s honour. [...]

Human Rights Watch said the two biggest girls’ prisons, in Kabul and Herat, were almost exclusively populated by inmates convicted of moral crimes.

There is more.

Gulnaz will still marry the man who raped her. Public pressure and embarrassment for Afghanistan at least got her out of jail, but the fact remains that half of Afghan women who are in jail are there for alleged "moral crimes."

There are many more like Gulnaz who are still behind bars, and unfortunately, there will be many more like her in Afghanistan in the future.

An update on this story. "Afghan rape victim freed from jail, to marry attacker," by Usman Sharifi for Agence France-Presse, December 1:

The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has ordered the release of a woman who was jailed for adultery after being raped -- but she now faces having to marry her attacker, officials said.

The move came after some 5,000 people signed a petition for the release of the woman, named Gulnaz, who has served two years in prison after a relative raped her at her home. She has been raising the child she had by her attacker in a prison cell in Kabul.

The case again highlights the poor state of women's rights in Afghanistan, 10 years after a US-led invasion ousted the Taliban who were notorious for their harsh laws against women. [...]

Following the outcry over Gulnaz's case, Karzai called a meeting where judicial officials decided to pardon her, said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.

But the officials also said that Gulnaz should marry the man who attacked her, due to fears she could be in danger if released because of the stigma surrounding her attack in Afghanistan.

She consented to the union, Faizi said.

"She agreed to the marriage but only if his (the attacker's) sister marries Gulnaz's brother," the spokesman added, explaining that this was a way to try and ensure Gulnaz was not attacked by the man in future.

Faizi insisted that her release from prison was not dependent on her agreeing to marry her attacker.

Violence against women in Afghanistan appears to be increasing rather than decreasing, despite billions of dollars of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.

Some 87 percent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage, according to figures quoted in an October report by the charity Oxfam....

This account supports a senior Western official's statement that the airstrikes were a defensive measure, and suggests another case of curiously close proximity between jihadists and Pakistani military posts. U.S. officers reportedly also believed the Pakistani military was providing cover for jihadists in a firefight in late October, along with other recent allegations of jihadists' operating in the sight of the Pakistani military.

Once again, this may have been a tragic accident. Or jihadists may have tried to draw fire in the direction of Pakistani bases to create an incident. Or, it may have been the inevitable outcome of collaboration between Pakistan and its jihadist clients, and recent reports such as the ones linked above make the last scenario all too plausible. "Afghan officials: Fire from Pakistan led to attack," by Rahim Faiez and Sebastian Abbott for the Associated Press, November 27:

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan officials claimed Sunday that Afghan and NATO forces were retaliating for gunfire from two Pakistani army bases when they called in airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, adding a layer of complexity to an episode that has further strained Pakistan's ties with the United States.

The account challenged Pakistan's claim that the strikes were unprovoked.

The attack Saturday near the Afghan-Pakistani border aroused popular anger in Pakistan and added tension to the U.S.-Pakistani relationship, which has been under pressure since the secret U.S. raid inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden in May.

Pakistan has closed its western border to trucks delivering supplies to coalition troops in Afghanistan, demanded that the U.S. abandon an air base inside Pakistan and said it will review its cooperation with the U.S. and NATO.

A complete breakdown in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan is considered unlikely. Pakistan relies on billions of dollars in American aid, and the U.S. needs Pakistan to push Afghan insurgents to participate in peace talks.

Afghanistan's assertions about the attack muddy the efforts to determine what happened. The Afghan officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said it was unclear who fired on Afghan and NATO forces, which were conducting a joint operation before dawn Saturday.

They said the fire came from the direction of the two Pakistani army posts along the border that were later hit in the airstrikes.

NATO has said it is investigating, but it has not questioned the Pakistani claim that 24 soldiers were killed. All airstrikes are approved at a higher command level than the troops on the ground....

Here is the problem: even at face value, the statement is vague and non-committal, but while those words would mean one thing in the American legal system, they mean quite another in Afghanistan. Officials surely believed they were properly applying the law and upholding Gulnaz' "rights." The question becomes: whose law is being applied? Sharia is enshrined as the highest law of the land in Afghanistan according to the current constitution.

Women like Gulnaz who make allegations of rape may be expected to produce four witnesses in accordance with the Qur'an's standards for proving a sexual crime (24:13), or they run the risk that all they have done is admitted to having sex.

The ridiculous burden of proof for establishing the crime of rape is a major reason why Gulnaz and so many others like her are in jail. Indeed, half of the women in Afghan jails are there for "moral crimes." Communities in Afghanistan are enforcing Sharia, and Kabul will not contradict them.

An update on this story. "Nearly 5,000 sign petition calling for release of Afghan rape victim," by Nick Paton Walsh for CNN, November 27:

Kabul (CNN) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai received a petition Sunday with nearly 5,000 names endorsing a plea for the immediate release of a rape victim who has been jailed because of her attack and is being forced to marry her rapist.

Kim Motley, a lawyer for 21-year-old Gulnaz, said the palace received the petition, which gathered 4,751 names in just over 48 hours, on Sunday afternoon. The petition comes with an official plea for clemency addressed to the president, who has the power to immediately pardon Gulnaz, currently in jail for adultery because her attacker was married at the time of the attack.

Gulnaz was sentenced to 12 years after the attack as her rapist was married though that term was recently reduced to three years.

Gulnaz's plight gained international attention when the European Union blocked the broadcast of a documentary made about her ordeal saying that it would further jeopardize her safety.

Gulnaz was raped two years ago by her cousin's husband but did not immediately report the attack, fearing reprisals from elements of Afghanistan's conservative society. Yet she conceived a child from the rape, and went to police after showing signs of pregnancy.

She is now raising the daughter in jail and has agreed to marry her attacker in order to be released and legitimize her daughter. She also fears attack from her rapist's relatives, something he denies is a risk.

A spokesman for the attorney general, Rahmatullah Naziri, told CNN last week that her sentence had been reduced to three years, leaving about a year to serve. He explained that while the original sentence for adultery was reduced, she had failed to report her rape quickly enough and would have to serve further time in jail for that offense.

No trial, apparently; just another alleged crime and more prison time tacked on.

The U.S. State Department, while not explicitly calling for Gulnaz's release, said in a statement Thursday: "Gulnaz's situation is one no woman should have to face. Our heartfelt condolences go out to Gulnaz and her young daughter. We expect Afghan prosecutors to properly apply the law while also upholding Gulnaz's rights."

To land a gig like that, are they sure he has been miraculously cured of his "misunderstanding" of Islam? He does not sound terribly remorseful below in spite of hitting a few talking points. In fact, it sounds like he is bragging. More on this story. "Insurgent commander who planned bomb attacks that 'blew soliders to bits' is granted amnesty," by Ben Farmer for the Telegraph, November 27 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Maulawi Noor ul Aziz estimates he ordered or took part in hundreds of attacks on Afghan and Nato forces during his decade as an insurgent commander. As a senior rebel leader in the Nad-e Ali district of Helmand during some of that time, many of his targets were likely to have been British troops.

Yet the commander has been welcomed and granted amnesty by the Afghan government under a British-funded scheme to undermine the Taliban by coaxing fighters away from the battlefield and reintegrating them into society.

Maulawi Noor ul Aziz became the scheme's greatest success yet when he and 80 of his men defected to the government in April 2011, when he was then "shadow" governor of the northern province of Kunduz - in charge of the Taliban's own clandestine administration.

Rather than face trial for his role in the insurgency, he has been given a government job as acting head of Kandahar's department for Hajj and Islamic Affairs.

He told The Sunday Telegraph he had decided to leave the war against Hamid Karzai's government and its foreign backers because his country had seen enough fighting.

He said: "Fighting does not lead to peace or prosperity anywhere in the world. We have to use this chance for peace." The Afghan Taliban had also come too heavily under the influence of Pakistan he believed.

"There are people in the Taliban who do not want to kill their own people on the orders of strangers. They wish to join this government, to join their own people, to live together, but those Taliban are under the control of strangers. If they have the opportunity, I am sure they will switch sides like me."

Maulawi Noor ul Aziz, who is originally from the Panjwayi district of Kandahar, said he had joined the Taliban movement as soon as it formed in 1994. "I have been in many battles in the past 10 years since our government was overthrown by the foreigners."

As he rose through the ranks he directed ambushes and improvised bomb attacks against the Afghan and Nato forces in Kandahar, Zabul and Helmand provinces.

"I was a commander of fighting and I cannot tell you how many were killed, or injured. The fighting was often at a distance. Maybe in our struggle our mines and bullets killed some government forces and foreigners.

"Also, I was very busy with battle planning and making mines and ambushes. I did not myself participate a lot in the face-to-face fighting as much as I would have liked to."

He said his most successful attack came when he and his men had sown a field in Nad-e Ali with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) rigged up to a command wire, to target regular foreign patrols which passed through.

As they waited, they were surprised to see a Nato Chinook helicopter land in the field instead. He and his band detonated their bombs from 400 yards away as foreign soldiers disembarked from the aircraft.

"All the bombs went off. Some of the foreigners were blown to bits and some were wounded. We were very happy with the result. I have done hundreds of these missions," he said. [...]

Critics of the scheme have warned that too few of those defecting are actual insurgents, and that it is failing to undermine the rebels in their southern heartlands.

"Of around 30,000 insurgents, only eight per cent have reconciled so far - and 99 per cent of them are not from the south," said Hanif Atmar, former interior minister.

"Frankly speaking, it does not work. The eight per cent that are reconciled, most of them are not genuine insurgents, particularly not from the regions that matter."

"A more troubling explanation would be that insurgents in the area were operating under the nose of Pakistani security forces." It could be a tragic accident, but unfortunately, there is also ample precedent for such allegations.

An update on this story. "Nato air attack on Pakistani troops was self-defence, says senior western official," by Jon Boone for the Guardian, November 26:

An attack by Nato aircraft on Pakistani troops that allegedly killed as many as 28 soldiers and looks set to further poison relations between the US and Pakistan was an act of self-defence, a senior western official has claimed.

According to the Kabul-based official, a joint US-Afghan force operating in the mountainous Afghan frontier province of Kunar was the first to come under attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, forcing them to return fire.

The high death toll from an incident between two supposed allies suggests Nato helicopters and jets strafed Pakistani positions with heavy weapons.

The deadliest friendly fire incident since the start of the decade-long war also prompted Pakistan to ban Nato supply trucks from crossing into Afghanistan and to issue an order demanding the US quit the remote Shamsi airbase, from which the US has operated some unmanned drone aircraft.

A spokesman for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was "highly likely" that aircraft which had been called into the area to provide "close air support" to troops on the ground was responsible for causing casualties among the Pakistani soldiers.

For their part, a statement by the Pakistani military claimed that it was they who were attacked first, forcing them to respond to Nato's "aggression with all available weapons".

According to Pakistani officials the 40 or so soldiers stationed at the outposts were asleep at the time of the attack. Government officials said the two border posts that were attacked had recently been established to try to stop insurgents who use bases in Afghanistan to attack Pakistan from crossing the border and launching attacks.

Afghan intelligence say the US-Afghan force was conducting operations against suspected Taliban training camps in the area.

The vagueness of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is one potential, and relatively innocent, explanation for the incident. Drawn up by the British Raj in 1893, there is little agreement on where the so-called Durand Line actually falls, meaning troops from either side of the border can wander into the neighbouring country without realising it. One senior military official said that, in places, rival maps have discrepancies of "multiples of kilometres – sometimes as much as five kilometres".

Much of the fighting in Afghanistan is conducted by guerrillas based a short distance inside Pakistan. Nato forces are not allowed to cross the border and militants sometimes fire artillery and rockets across the line from locations close to Pakistani army posts.

And yet both sides have worked hard to try and minimise any confusion. The attack happened just a day after John Allen, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, met with Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, to discuss enhanced co-operation on the border.

But a more troubling explanation would be that insurgents in the area were operating under the nose of Pakistani security forces. Many Afghan officials believe Pakistan helps the Taliban with cross-border operations.

Edrees Momand of the Afghan Border Police said that a US-Afghan force in the area near the Pakistani outposts detained several militants on Saturday morning.

"I am not aware of the casualties on the other side of the border but those we have detained aren't Afghan Taliban," he said, implying they may have been Pakistani or other foreign national Taliban operating in Afghanistan....

You can't buy love, but British authorities, with the full support of NATO, are trying to rent it for a monthly payment. You'll want to read this one sitting down. "Taliban paid £100 a month to stop fighting," by Sean Rayment for the Telegraph, November 26:

Members of the Taliban who give up their fight are being paid £100 a month and will be allowed to keep their guns in a new initiative to end the insurgency.

The “reintegration” programme, which has the full support of Nato, is intended to keep them from attacking troops from the International Stabilisation and Assistance Force (ISAF).

Those who have attacked and killed British forces are also effectively given an amnesty, which means they will never be put on trial.

The amnesty extends to all Taliban fighters, including those who have taken part in atrocities, such as murdering children, beheadings and hanging women.

The agreement is part of a policy signed by the British Government in which insurgents are being allowed to “walk off the battlefield” and enter a “reintegration” scheme.

Are you still sitting down? Good:

Taliban joining the programme are not interrogated but instead are asked to complete a questionnaire explaining their reasons for joining the insurgency.

The truth is stranger than Monty Python. It would only befit the general surrealism of the situation that the Ministry of Silly Walks and the Kilimanjaro expedition jointly administer the questionnaires. ("Will both of you be surrendering?")

The strategy has been designed to encourage rank and file Taliban to stop fighting and instead return to their communities with “dignity and honour”.

More than 2,700 insurgents have been reintegrated into mainstream Afghan society since October 2010, with 800 now described as “showing interest in leaving the Taliban”.

Of those, about 90 are from Helmand, where nearly 400 British troops have been killed and more than 5,000 injured.

The reintegration policy has already produced some startling results. In northern Afghanistan, about 900 former Taliban have left the insurgency and violence has decreased by 30 per cent.

What happens when the dough dries up, or someone gets a better offer?

But it is not without risk. Maj Gen David Hook, the director of the Joint Force Integration Cell in Kabul, admitted in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph that the programme would be difficult for many British families to accept but insisted that reintegration was vital if peace was to be achieved.

The British general, who previously served as a commander in southern Afghanistan, said he saw some horrendous examples of Taliban brutality, which he said he would have “personally found difficult to forgive”.

The general confirmed that even if the insurgent who murdered five members of the Grenadier Guards battlegroup at a check point in Nad e’Ali in November 2009 entered the scheme, he would not be prosecuted. “This is an Afghan process which the international community signed up to,” said Maj Gen Hook.

It's an Afghan process, but it's not Afghan money.

“My role is to support the Afghans in that process. This idea of forgiveness has been agreed by the international donors and the UK has given £6.5  million and helped design the programme to deliver peace at the local level.

“We accepted large numbers of IRA back into our own society because we wanted peace in Northern Ireland and I don’t see it any different in Afghanistan.”

Really?

The plight of the woman in this report, Gulnaz, first came up in this story, in connection with an EU documentary that was at the time deemed too dangerous to the women featured in it (or perhaps too politically damaging) to be shown. That story also revealed the fact that half of the women in Afghan jails are there for "moral crimes."

Gulnaz herself is a victim of Sharia, and particularly of the demand for four witnesses to support the allegation of a sexual crime, as stipulated in Qur'an 24:13. A woman alleging rape must produce four witnesses, or invite charges of adultery.

Sharia is enshrined in the Afghan constitution as the highest law of the land, thereby hard-wiring the entire society against reform: any proposed legal reforms will go against Sharia as it has been practiced for centuries. And so, here we are. And there is Gulnaz.

"Afghan woman's choice: 12 years in jail or marry her rapist and risk death," by Nick Paton Walsh and Masoud Popalza for CNN, November 22:

Kabul (CNN) -- The ordeal of Gulnaz did not simply begin and end with the physical attack of her rape. The rape began a years-long nightmare of further pain, culminating in an awful choice she must now make.

Even two years later, Gulnaz remembers the smell and state of her rapist's clothes when he came into the house when her mother left for a brief visit to the hospital.

"He had filthy clothes on as he does metal and construction work. When my mother went out, he came into my house and he closed doors and windows. I started screaming, but he shut me up by putting his hands on my mouth," she said.

The rapist was her cousin's husband.

After the attack, she hid what happened as long as she could. But soon she began vomiting in the mornings and showing signs of pregnancy. It was her attacker's child.

In Afghanistan, this brought her not sympathy, but prosecution. Aged just 19, she was found guilty by the courts of sex outside of marriage -- adultery -- and sentenced to twelve years in jail.

Now inside Kabul's Badam Bagh jail, she and her child are serving her sentence together.

Sitting with the baby in her lap, her face carefully covered, she explains the only choice she has that would end her incarceration.

The only way around the dishonor of rape, or adultery in the eyes of Afghans, is to marry her attacker. This will, in the eyes of some, give her child a family and restore her honor.

Incredibly, this is something that Gulnaz is willing to do.

"I was asked if I wanted to start a new life by getting released, by marrying this man", she told CNN in an exclusive interview. "My answer was that one man dishonored me, and I want to stay with that man."

Tending to her daughter in the jail's cold, she added: "My daughter is a little innocent child. Who knew I would have a child in this way. A lot of people told me that after your daughter's born give it to someone else, but my aunt told me to keep her as proof of my innocence."

Gulnaz's choice is stark. Women in her situation are often killed for the shame their ordeal has brought the community. She is at risk, some say, from her attacker's family.

We found Gulnaz's convicted rapist in a jail across town. While he denied raping her, he agreed that she would likely be killed if she gets out of jail. But he insists that it will be her family, not his, that will kill her, "out of shame."

Whether threatened by his family or hers, for now, jail may be the safest place for her.

Shockingly, Gulnaz's case is common in Afghanistan.

CNN asked a spokesman for the prosecutor to comment on the case. The reply was that there were hundreds such cases and the office would need time to look into it.

But Gulnaz's plight has found international attention because of a dispute between the European Union and a team of documentary makers hired to report on women's rights in Afghanistan.

The documentary makers filmed a lengthy report on Gulnaz and other women, showing her talking openly about her fate. They showed the film to the EU, who were paying for it as part of a project on female rights here. After viewing it, the EU decided to spike the project.

The EU said it was concerned about the safety of the women in the film: they could be identified and might face reprisals. The filmmakers however suspect -- citing an email leaked from the EU delegation -- that the EU might also be motivated by its sensitive relationship with Afghan justice institutions, since he film shows the Afghan justice system in a very unflattering light.

The leaked email says: "The delegation also has to consider its relations with [Afghan] Justice institutions in connection with the other work that it is doing in the sector."...

Nobody wanted to be on the pimp committee. Everything else had to wait.

As observed here, there is a noteworthy obsession with prostitution in many Islamic communities, where it is often threatened as the consequence of this or that reform in favor of women's rights. Never mind those "temporary" Islamic marriages, of course. That's different.

"Loya jirga: Afghan elders reject 'pimp's number 39'," from BBC News, November 17:

Officials at a meeting of elders in Kabul changed a committee's number after delegates rejected 39 because of an Afghan belief that the number is associated with pimps.

Delegates at the gathering, or loya jirga, convened by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divided into 40 groups to consider Afghan-US relations.

41 is the new 39:

Elders refused to take part in group 39 until its number was changed to 41.

The number is held as a mark of great shame across Afghanistan.

Correspondents say some believe the taboo started because a pimp had 39 on his vehicle number plate. But others say it dates from an old way of calculating numbers called "Abjad".

Many delegates at the loya jirga voiced their fervent opposition to being part of committee 39, one attendee told the BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.

''One delegate said: 'I don't want to return to my area and be called a pimp. I don't care if it is true or not, but people out there believe in it. Look no one wants to have a vehicle with number plate 39. And yet, you want me to be in 39?''' the member said.

But there were some who saw the outcry as an unnecessary diversion from more important matters.

"It is sad to see delegates raise such issues at such an important meeting. We have more important things to deal with," one delegate from northern Afghanistan said.

"But when I raised it, everyone else told me to shut up. Everyone said, they didn't want to be called [a pimp] or their children and family members harassed in streets, schools and neighbourhoods. So than a committee 41 was established,'' the delegate continued.

Officials at the loya jirga said they never expected this to be a sticking point at the gathering, which is considering reconciliation with the Taliban as well as future Afghan-US relations.

''We needed 40 committees and we created 40. But a special solution was found for a 'special problem','' the official said.

In June, vehicle licensing officials in Afghanistan said that new registration plates with the number 39 were stacking up because of the Afghan aversion to the number.

Local officials blamed the Taliban, but "neighbours did not help or inform the authorities on time." This report follows the revelation that half of the women in Afghan jails are there for "moral crimes," and below, it would appear that local clerics have launched a paranoid witchhunt against "adultery."

"Afghanistan mother and daughter stoned and shot dead," from BBC News, November 11 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The officials blamed the Taliban, who they said had accused the women of "moral deviation and adultery".

The police said two men had been arrested in connection with the murder.

The attack was only 300m from the governor's office in Ghazni city, which is on a list of places to be transferred to Afghan security control.

Taliban grip

The incident happened on Thursday in the Khawaja Hakim area of Ghazni city, where the family lived.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says it is close to the governor's office, the police chief's office and a Western-backed Provincial Reconstruction Team.

Security officials said armed men entered the house where the young widow lived with her daughter and took them out to the yard, where they were initially stoned and then shot dead.

"Neighbours did not help or inform the authorities on time," an official said.

Officials said a number of religious leaders in the city had been issuing fatwas (Islamic religious edicts) asking people to report any one who was "involved in adultery".

In October last year, a woman accused of murdering her mother-in-law was killed by the Taliban in Ghazni.

Ghazni has seen an upsurge in violence in recent years.

Strategically located on the route between Kabul and Kandahar, the province was once a centre of trade.

Ghazni city is on the list for the second tranche of areas to be transferred from Nato to Afghan control but critics say the government is struggling to secure it.

"Amnesty International says it is important to "lift the lid on one of Afghanistan's most shameful judicial practices." That shameful practice is part of Sharia, under which four witnesses must support allegations of a sex crime. Thus, a woman making accusations of rape opens the door to charges of adultery if she has not obtained the necessary witnesses, in accordance with Qur'an 24:13.

Such a rule may not be officially on the books yet, but Sharia is enshrined as the highest law of the land in Afghanistan, and the constitution says nothing can go against it. It is already being enforced in practice, and any prospective reforms will come up against protests in the name of protecting the integrity of Islamic law.

"A decade after the Taliban were overthrown, Afghan women are still waiting for justice," because of fantasy-based policy-making that proceeded on the assumption that a moderate state would more or less fall into place once the Taliban were moved out of the way. Moreover, there certainly appears to have been the assumption that "real" Sharia would be a vast improvement over "Taliban" Sharia. That is also the fruit of politically correct, fantasy-based policy.

"EU censors own film on Afghan women prisoners," by Orla Guerin for BBC News, November 10:

The European Union has blocked the release of a documentary on Afghan women who are in jail for so-called "moral crimes".

The EU says it decided to withdraw the film - which it commissioned and paid for - because of "very real concerns for the safety of the women portrayed".

However, human rights workers say the injustice in the Afghan judicial system should be exposed.

Half of Afghanistan's women prisoners are inmates for "zina" or moral crimes.

A statement from the EU's Kabul delegation said the welfare of the women was the paramount consideration in its decision.

No official from the delegation was prepared to be interviewed about the film.

No new dawn

Some of the women convicted of "zina" are guilty of nothing more than running away from forced marriages or violent husbands.

Human rights activists say hundreds of those behind bars are victims of domestic violence.

Amnesty International says it is important to "lift the lid on one of Afghanistan's most shameful judicial practices".

The documentary told the story of a 19-year-old prisoner called Gulnaz.

After she was raped, she was charged with adultery. Her baby girl, born following the rape, is serving her sentence with her.

"At first my sentence was two years," Gulnaz said, as her baby coughed in her arms. "When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn't do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?"

Stories like hers are tragically typical, according to Heather Barr, of Human Rights Watch, who is carrying out research among Afghan female prisoners.

"It would be reassuring to think that the stories told in this film represent aberrations or extreme case," she said. "Unfortunately that couldn't be further from the truth."

She has interviewed many women behind bars, who were victims twice over - abused by their husbands, or relatives, and then by those who were supposed to protect them.

"You hear the story again and again of women going to the police and asking for help and ending up in prison instead," Ms Barr said.

A decade after the Taliban were overthrown, Afghan women are still waiting for justice, campaigners say.

Ms Barr said: "It's very important that people understand that there are these horrific stories that are happening now - 10 years after the fall of the Taliban government, 10 years after what was supposed to be a new dawn for Afghan women."

For many that new dawn has not come, but for Gulnaz there is now the hope of freedom.

Her name is on a list of women to be pardoned, according to a prison official, but as she has no lawyer, the paperwork has yet to be processed.

Gulnaz's pardon may be in the works because she has agreed - after 18 months of resisting - to marry her rapist.

"I need my daughter to have a father," she said.

As I have said many times in the context of many similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist. This is yet more fruit of the unwillingness to make even a cursory attempt to take that fact into account.

And every few weeks (the last time was October 29), I find the paragraph above in the archives and post it again.

"Rogue Afghan soldier shoots three Australians, two Afghans," by Dylan Welch for the Sydney Morning Herald, November 9 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

A rogue Afghan soldier who opened fire on Australian and Afghan troops with a grenade launcher and automatic rifle, wounding five - including three Diggers - is on the run after fleeing after the attack.

Defence Force chief General David Hurley announced an Australian operation involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been launched to hunt down the soldier, who escaped in a vehicle after the shooting.

The attack is the second by an Afghan soldier on Australians in less than two weeks, and the third this year.

But Prime Minister Julia Gillard said this morning that Australians would continue to train Afghan National Army soldiers, despite the damage to relations.

"These attacks corrode trust," she said in Melbourne. "I'm very conscious that this attack, coming so soon after the dreadful attacks of October 29, will work to cause Australians to question our mission in Afghanistan and the trust we have in Afghan National Army soldiers."...

Let's hope so!

The executive director for the Australia Defence Association, Neil James, cautioned against drawing larger strategic trends from the latest incident - particularly suggestions that Australia should now withdraw from Afghanistan.

"I'm not sure this shows that we should withdraw - this is actually part of our withdrawal plan," he told this website.

"I think what a lot of people aren't grasping [is that] at the end of the day this is an Afghan civil war, the Afghans have to take over from the international forces.

"The only way that can occur is if they're brought up to a certain standard, and the only way they can do that is if they're trained and mentored.

"Everyone's looking for the magic bullet here and there isn't one. You can mitigate against this risk, but you can't completely eliminate it. You have to do this task."

He also said this incident should not lead to an outpouring of anger against the Afghan forces, who were doing a good job under difficult conditions.

"The majority of the Afghans that we're training are just as angry and embarrassed about this as the Australians are," he said.

"As one Afghan veteran said to me recently, people should take comfort from how infrequently these things happen."...

Yeah, that is so comforting!

"Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You've got to be kidding me … I'm sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you're telling me, 'I don't really care'?"

Exactly. Here we have one U.S. official willing to tell the truth about a leader who has openly said he will side with our enemies and has threatened to join the Taliban in the past, and he gets fired.

Fantasy-based policymaking ruthlessly enforced: "U.S. General Fired for Verbal Attack on Afghan Leader," by Justin Fishel for FoxNews.com, November 5 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

A top U.S. general in Afghanistan was fired Friday for making disparaging remarks about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government.

Maj. Gen. Peter Fuller, deputy commander of the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, made the remarks in an interview with Politico that was published Thursday.

Fuller told Politico that major players in the Afghan government are "isolated from reality." Fuller reacted angrily to claims from Karzai that Afghanistan would side with Pakistan if it were to go to war with the United States.

Fuller called Karzai's statements "erratic," adding, "Why don't you just poke me in the eye with a needle! You've got to be kidding me … I'm sorry, we just gave you $11.6 billion and now you're telling me, 'I don't really care'?"

Gen. John R. Allen, the commander of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), released a statement Friday saying Fuller was to be relieved of his duties, "effective immediately."

"These unfortunate comments are neither indicative of our current solid relationship with the government of Afghanistan, its leadership, or our joint commitment to prevail here in Afghanistan", Allen said.

"The Afghan people are an honorable people, and comments such as these will not keep us from accomplishing our most critical and shared mission-bringing about a stable, peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan."...

Good luck with that. Fuller will be proven right, and you will be proven foolish.

"You can teach a man how to fish, or you can give them a fish," Fuller said. "We're giving them fish while they're learning, and they want more fish! [They say,] 'I like swordfish, how come you're giving me cod?' Guess what? Cod's on the menu today."...

"The U.N. attributed 80 percent of the civilian deaths to insurgents and others fighting against the Afghan government."

Where's the outrage about that? But Omar also manages to blame the victim, saying "civilians also need to keep themselves safe from attacks, such as staying away from U.S. troops on patrol."

"Taliban chief asks militants not to harm civilians," from the Associated Press, November 4:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar says his fighters need to protect Afghan civilians from harm so that the insurgency can maintain good relations with the population.

The death of civilians is on the rise in the 10-year-old war between the Taliban and Afghan and U.S.-led coalition forces.

The U.N. says the number of Afghan civilians killed rose 15 percent in the first half of this year.

The U.N. attributed 80 percent of the civilian deaths to insurgents and others fighting against the Afghan government.

Omar posted his message Friday on the Taliban's website ahead of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice.

Omar says civilians also need to keep themselves safe from attacks, such as staying away from U.S. troops on patrol.

As of last month, Pakistan had decided not to undertake an operation against the Haqqanis for the time being, likely hoping to continue delaying until right around the time the ski slopes open in Jahannam.

Speaking of unpleasantly elevated temperatures, the U.S. has reportedly rewarded Pakistan's intransigence by "warming" to the idea of negotiating with the Haqqanis. An update on this story. "Haqqani network sends message with Kabul attacks," by Rod Nordland for the New York Times, October 30:

Kabul, Afghanistan - Every bomb, they say, has a return address.

When car bombs blew up in West Beirut, or explosions cut down worshipers in Sadr City mosques, survivors generally knew who was to blame, and more or less why — even when no one claimed responsibility.

So, too, with the suicide car bomb that on Saturday delivered the worst blow that NATO forces have suffered yet in Kabul, smashing into an armored bus full of troops and killing 13 foreigners, most of them Americans, and at least four Afghans.

The Taliban immediately took credit, but Afghan and American officials here strongly suspect that, more specifically, it was the fearsome Haqqani faction, whose fighters have proved better trained and organized than many Taliban, and which in recent months especially has focused its attacks on military targets rather than civilian ones.

The message the Haqqanis are sending — to the world and, especially, to the Afghan public — is that they are willing and able to kill foreign troops. And with the Haqqani bombs comes a particularly troublesome return address: Pakistan, where the group is based.

One Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity under diplomatic ground rules, said it was clear that if the Haqqanis were behind the attack, the militants were reacting to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent trip to Pakistan. During the visit, she again demanded that the government do something about the Haqqanis, whose bases are in the Pakistani territory of North Waziristan.

"No one goes to this much trouble if they don’t think you’ll get the message," the diplomat said.

An Afghan political analyst, Haroun Mir, agreed. "These are planned attacks in response to the pressure from the United States on Pakistan against the Haqqani network," Mir said. Beyond that, he added, "the Pakistanis are sending another message, too: They are not willing to abandon their support of the Taliban."

Brig. Gen. Carsten Jacobson, the spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, said Sunday in an interview that many of the so-called "spectacular" attacks in Kabul in recent months had been clearly linked to the Haqqani network. He described the group as "a criminal clan, like a Sicilian family clan, who are into criminal activity of all types, drug dealing, smuggling as well as insurgency." He added that it had been badly hit by coalition raids and arrests this year.

Lutfullah Mashal, the spokesman for the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence service, said about the bombing on Saturday: "Usually these things are the Haqqani network. Kabul is their area of operation, and all the signs and indications point to the Haqqani network." [...]

Since the summer, there has been a string of such attacks in the Kabul region, most characterized by complex assaults using suicide bombers or multiple attackers and acting on considerable intelligence about the target. [...]

On Thursday, another complex attack was launched in Kandahar on the Provincial Reconstruction Team, a largely American group that is helping to distribute aid money as part of the war effort.

Afghan officials have blamed all of those save the Rabbani assassination directly on the Haqqanis.

The attacker was from the Taliban. You know, the group whose leader the Secretary of State just invited to negotiations, saying that his involvement was crucial for the prospects for peace. More fruit of the Obama Administration's fantasy-based policymaking regarding Islam: "13 Americans Said to Be Among Killed in Kabul Attack," by Rod Nordland and Sharifullah Sahak for the New York Times, October 29 (thanks to Bill):

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 13 American soldiers were among more than 20 people killed when a Taliban suicide car bomber attacked an armored NATO shuttle bus in Kabul on Saturday, a Western military official confirmed.

It was the worst loss of life among American troops in the capital in several years.

The attack on the bus, known as a Rhino because of its heavy armor, took place in front of the American University on a route often traveled by military trainers from NATO bases in downtown Kabul to the Kabul Military Training Center. At least eight civilians were reported among the dead, including three Afghan police officers and two children.

A military dog was also killed, the military official said.

That will please the followers of the man who "ordered the killing of dogs," such that his followers "would send (men) in Medina and its corners and we did not spare any dog that we did not kill, so much so that we killed the dog that accompanied the wet she-camel belonging to the people of the desert." -- Sahih Muslim 3811

A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility, saying that a suicide bomber named Abdul Rahman Hazarbos drove a truck with 1,500 pounds of explosives into a bus carrying foreign military trainers, killing all aboard. He claimed 25 NATO soldiers were killed in all.

As I have said many times in the context of many similar incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist. This is yet more fruit of the unwillingness to make even a cursory attempt to take that fact into account.

And every few weeks (the last time was September 26), I find the paragraph above in the archives and post it again.

And yet the dhimmi dim bulbs in the intelligence community in Washington are busy making sure that none of their teaching materials offend terror-linked Islamic supremacist groups in the U.S. This latest mass murder in Afghanistan is the fruit also of their witless useful idiocy and political correctness. They have done nothing and are doing nothing to equip American personnel in Afghanistan with any understanding of why this might happen, so as to allow them to guard themselves against it. And so the death toll of willful blindness, fantasy-based policymaking and politically correct falsehoods about Islam continues to mount.

"13 Americans Said to Be Among Killed in Kabul Attack," by Rod Nordland and Sharifullah Sahak for the New York Times, October 29 (thanks to Bill):

[...] In addition, three Australian NATO soldiers were killed on Saturday by an Afghan soldier who turned his weapon on them, Afghan officials said....

The attack on the Australians took place in the Nish District of Kandahar Province, at a forward operating base used by Australian troops to train the Afghan National Army. Gen. Abdul Hameed, the commander of the Afghan National Army’s 205th Corps, said an Afghan Army trainee opened fire on his Australian trainers, killing three of them as well as an Afghan interpreter. At least nine others were wounded, General Hameed said, seven of them Australians.

“We don’t know the cause of this shooting yet, and we are investigating,” he said.

Yes, it's a total mystery!

“The soldier was not new, the first phase of his training was completed and he was in the second phase of his training.”...

In Khost, unknown gunmen opened fire on a car Friday night, killing four of the occupants, all of them drivers for NATO supply vehicles, said Col. Zeyarat Gul Azans, spokesman for the Khost police chief.

Also on Saturday, a young female suicide bomber on foot attacked government offices in eastern Asadabad city, wounding four, according to the chief of security for Kunar Province, Abdul Sabor Allayar. Guards at the Afghan intelligence service spotted the woman, who was wearing a burqa, and shot her to death before she could get close enough to cause much harm, he said.

Capitulation. But who cares, right? The Twin Towers are down, already. Quit your complaining. "Washington ready to negotiate with Mullah Omar," by Dean Nelson for the Telegraph, October 28 (thanks to Wimpy):

Washington is ready to negotiate with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and now regards his involvement as crucial to the prospects for peace in Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton has said.

Her comments been taken as a significant shift in American policy from moves to divide the Taliban-led insurgency and isolate Mullah Omar, the man who sheltered Osama bin Laden as he plotted the September 11 attacks, to an acknowledgement of his leadership.

It follows the disclosure earlier this month that American officials had met leaders of the Haqqani Network, the powerful Taliban faction blamed for some of the most devastating attacks on American and Nato forces in Afghanistan, including last month's attack on the US embassy in Kabul in which seven were killed and 19 wounded.

Earlier this week the faction's commander Sirajuddin Haqqani warned Washington that only the Quetta Shura, led by Mullah Omar, could negotiate a peace deal and that his fighters would not be divided from its leadership.

In an appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mrs Clinton said the United States would continue to "fight, talk and build" in Afghanistan and Pakistan to "test whether these organisations have any willingness to negotiate in good faith"....

Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst Arif Rafiq said Mrs Clinton's comments marked a significant change. "Hillary Clinton's public statements prior to the recent Pakistan visit noted a desire to split Quetta Shura elements from Mullah Omar. I think they [now] recognise that though talks have yet to yield tangible dividends, attempts to split the Taliban have failed," he said.

No kidding, really?