Afghanistan Violence Heats Up

1 NATO-led Coalition Soldier Dead; Police Kill 10 Suspected Taliban

(AP)  Insurgent attacks in southern Afghanistan left one NATO-led coalition soldier dead and wounded seven others Sunday, while police killed 10 suspected Taliban militants who struck a government compound, officials said.

The soldier was killed in the southern Helmand province, a NATO statement said. It did not provide details on the clash or give the soldier's nationality.

Separately, another NATO soldier and six Afghan troops were wounded when mortars hit their base in neighboring Kandahar province early Sunday, the statement said. The soldiers were evacuated to a military medical facility for treatment.

Meanwhile, a large number of militants attacked the Musa Qala district compound in Helmand on Saturday, sparking a clash with police that left 10 insurgents dead, said Ghulam Nabi Malakheil, provincial police chief.

The militants left the dead bodies alongside seven AK-47 assault rifles, five rocket-propelled grenades and two heavy machine guns, he said. There were no police casualties.

On Sunday, attackers fired four rockets targeting west Kabul, said district police chief Gen. Zalmai Oryakail. One landed near the district police station but injured no one, and another one damaged a house, he said.

Kabul has been spared most of the violence that has engulfed Afghanistan's south and east, but a series of bombings and attacks on NATO-led peacekeepers has rattled the nerves of its citizens.

Afghanistan is experiencing its worst violence since the late-2001 ouster of the Taliban regime for hosting al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. More than 1,600 people, mostly militants, have died in the past four months, according to an Associated Press tally of violent incidents reported by U.S., NATO and Afghan officials.

Armed men ambushed a bus transferring 30 prisoners from Kandahar to Kabul on Sunday, killing one prison official and wounding one policeman, said Noor Mohammad Paktin, police chief of Zabul province.

After escaping briefly following the attack in southern Zabul province, police and soldiers managed to capture all those that fled and took them to Kabul, Paktin said. It was not clear who the prisoners were.

Meanwhile Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said "it is clear" that militants are using Pakistan to infiltrate Afghanistan.

"I think that Pakistan has done an awful lot in going after al Qaeda, and it's important that they don't let the Taliban groups be organized in the Pakistani side of the border," Abizaid told reporters in Bagram, site of the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

However, Abizaid said he "absolutely does not believe" accusations of collusion between Pakistan's government and the resurgent Taliban rebels or other extremists.

Afghanistan has repeatedly criticized Pakistan for not doing enough to prevent Taliban militants and other rebels crossing the poorly marked border.

Pakistan, a former Taliban supporter but now a U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, says it does all it can to tackle insurgents and has deployed 80,000 troops along the frontier.

On Saturday, Canadian troops mistakenly killed a policeman and wounded six other people, including four other police, a NATO statement said.

The armed plainclothes police were shot after they did not heed troops' orders to stop as they approached a Canadian checkpoint in a speeding, unmarked vehicle in Kandahar province's Zhari district, the statement said.

Two other civilians were injured later when the Canadian troops fired at their speeding scooter near the same checkpoint, the statement said. No Canadian troops were reported injured.

Afghan officials were not immediately available for comment.

[ronniehm]

Oh yeah, and 9/11.

[long_rider]

To those who don%u2019t understand what is going on in Afghanistan, there two things to keep in mind DRUGS, and OIL.

Prior to the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban had destroyed all of the poppy fields, and farmers were planting wheat. After the Taliban were removed the farmers went back to planting poppies once again.

The second reason for our presence in Afghanistan is oil. There is a huge oil reserve in an area north of Afghanistan (forgot the name of the country). There is a plan to build a pipeline from this country down through Afghanistan to the ocean. This oil will be sold to China; hence China will be dependant on those who control the oil.

The contract to build and maintain the pipeline was awarded to (guess who) Halliburton. Does that name ring a bell? You can guess about the names of the people behind all of this.

By the way, Viet Nam was all about drugs. We could not go into Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand because we would be bombing and wrecking the drug trade, and maybe kill some of our CIA representatives in the process. You never saw drug sniffing dogs around Air America planes, the dogs would get high.

[drgoodwin12]

This is another example of the Bush admininstrations failed policies. The resurgence of the Taliban over the last several months proves we left Afghanistan (in a large military presence) to soon. We allowed the Pakistani goverment to prevent us from following the Taliban and Al Queda in their country.Just like we did in Vietnamm,preventing our military to pursue the V.C. into Cambodia,Laos and Thailand. The Taliban have came back more fiercefull than ever.We instead went to Iraq for reasons that never were perfectly clear.Yes Saddamm was a menace to his own people but so is N.Korea's leader,China's leaders and the list goes on and on.We made Iraq into a part of the war on terror by invading,destabilizing it's lousy goverment and thought for God knows what reason that Afghanistan after almost 30 years of wars would just become a peaceful country.This is total misunderstanding of the people of Afghanistan. There are vast area's that are tribal and in tune with a world that is a couple hundred years behind modern civilization.Expect more violence and the possibly the overthrow of the goverment.

[jms_cheung]

It's important that the present Afghanistan violence will not turn into chaos like the current Iraq. It will as long as the terrorists and Talibans/Osama are actively killing the Coalition forces... While it's true that the Pakistan's government is against global Islamist terrorism like the Talibans, the cold REALITY is that the STRONGHOLDS of these terrorists are now rooted in thousands of Islamic `madrasahs' (religious schools) and mountain-hideouts! The only solution is to go HUNTING for these srongholds in Afghanistan and BLASTS the hell out of them...and insists that Pakistan army do the same...only then there will be real peace for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.