U.S. drug war in Afghanistan is failing, report says

CNN.com

By Evan Perez

Afghan farmers work in their poppy field in Khogyani District of Nangarhar province in April, 2013. A report says the U.S-led drug war in Afghanistan is failing badly.

America's drug war in Afghanistan is failing badly, a U.S. government watchdog says in a new report.

Afghan farmers are growing bumper crops of opium poppies -- an unprecedented 209,000 hectares in 2013 -- even though U.S. agencies spent $7.6 billion to stop narcotics production in the nation.

Afghanistan is the source of 80% of the world's illegal opium, the U.S. government says, yielding $3 billion in sales in 2013, up from $2 billion from the previous year.

U.S. authorities say a big chunk of that money funds Afghanistan's insurgency and terrorism.

As NATO winds down its war effort in the nation, the trend would appear to bode ill. Since 2002, the chief factors that appear to have caused temporary drops in poppy production were crop disease and high prices for wheat, an alternative crop for farmers, according to the report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

"The recent record-high level of poppy cultivation calls into question the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of those prior efforts," the report says. "Given the severity of the opium problem and its potential to undermine U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, I strongly suggest that your departments consider the trends in opium cultivation and the effectiveness of past counternarcotics efforts when planning future initiatives."

The report says last year's 209,000-hectare record surpasses the previous high of 193,000 hectares of opium poppies grown in 2007. The report relies on figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs on Crime.

The report says that areas that were once models for successful counterinsurgency and counternarcotics efforts are now booming poppy producers.

The report cites Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, which the United Nations declared "poppy-free" in 2008 but saw a fourfold increase in opium poppy production between 2012 and 2013.

The inspector general sent the report to the State, Defense and Justice departments, which fund anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan.

The State Department called the findings "disappointing" and blamed the increase in opium poppy production on shifts in the Afghan government's own security efforts.

The Pentagon asked the inspector general to remove Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel from receiving the report because the military plays a secondary role to other U.S. government agencies in thwarting drug production in Afghanistan.

"In our opinion, the failure to reduce poppy cultivation and increase eradication is due to the lack of Afghan government support for the effort," Michael Lumpkin, assistant secretary of defense, wrote to the inspector general.

"Poverty, corruption, the terrorism nexus to the narcotics trade, and access to alternative livelihood opportunities that provide an equal or greater profit than poppy cultivation are all contributors to the Afghan drug problem."

Afghanistan opium production hits record despite billions spent to combat trade

worldnews

AP Photo / Rahmat Gul

By Aarne Heikkila, Producer, NBC News

KABUL – Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2013 – despite nearly $7 billion spent by the U.S. to combat the problem, according to a sobering United Nations report out Wednesday. 

Propelled by strong demand and an insurgency that has become more hands-on in the trade, cultivation of opium poppies, which are processed into heroin, rose 36 percent, amounting to 209,000 hectares.

Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer – last year accounting for 75 percent of the world's heroin supply. This is despite more than a decade worth of international efforts to persuade poppy farmers to switch to other crops such as wheat.

"The narcotics issue in Afghanistan acts as a virus festering on a low immunity system of governance," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime representative for Afghanistan. "The region and international community share responsibility in this."

Poppy cultivation, historically concentrated in the southern and western parts of the country, has spread to the north, which had been largely poppy-free. Two provinces, Faryab and Balkh, are noted in the U.N. report to have lost their poppy-free status.

At $160 to $200 for one kilogram of dry opium, compared to 41 cents for one kilogram of wheat, farmers are making a strictly economic decision when they decide to go into the trade, said Shafeek Seddiq, president of the Afghanistan Justice Organization.

"If farmers are being offered no other financial alternatives, no services, no way out of poverty, they're going to continue to go back to planting poppy every time," Seddiq said.

With 60,000 U.S. forces left in Afghanistan – down from a peak of 100,000 – insurgents have fought hard to reclaim lost ground in poppy producing areas and have used opium production to help finance terrorism, security analysts say. 

"The drug economy plays a direct role in severely destabilizing the region," said Wadir Safi, political science professor at the University of Kabul. "Poppy crop sales make it increasingly difficult for the Afghan government to establish control in an ever-increasing part of the country and opium continues to make its way to neighboring countries and Europe."

Bin-Laden 'Mentor' Runs For President In Afghanistan

breitbart

Kabul (AFGHANISTAN) (AFP) - Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a former Islamist warlord who trained the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, enters Afghanistan's presidential election race, triggering alarm among Western diplomats.  

US Drone Strike Kills Taliban No. 2 In Pakistan

Business Insider

REUTERS/U.S. Air Force/Lt Col Leslie Pratt

A MQ-1 Predator drone

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike killed the number two of the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan region on Wednesday, three security officials said, in what would be a major blow in the fight against militancy.

The drone strike killed seven people, Pakistani security officials said, including Taliban deputy commander Wali-ur-Rehman, in the first such attack since a May 11 general election in which the use of the unmanned aircraft was a major issue.

Wali-ur-Rehman had been poised to succeed Hakimullah Mehsud as leader of the Pakistani Taliban, a senior army official based in the South Waziristan region, had said in December.

"This is a huge blow to militants and a win in the fight against insurgents," one security official told Reuters, declining further comment.

The Pakistani Taliban are a separate entity allied to the Afghan Taliban. Known as the Tehreek-e-TalibanPakistan (TTP), they have launched devastating attacks against the Pakistani military and civilians.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan told Reuters the group did not have "confirmed reports" that Wali-ur-Rehman had been killed. He declined further comment.

Drone casualties are difficult to verify. Foreign journalists must have permission from the military to visit the Pashtun tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Taliban fighters also often seal off the sites of drone strikes immediately so Pakistani journalists cannot see the victims.

"That the Taliban are remaining silent and neither denying or confirming the news is itself peculiar," said Saleem Safi, a Pakistani expert on the Taliban. "But if this news is true, then the Pakistan army has the U.S. to thank."

The security officials and Pashtun tribesmen in the northwestern region said the drone fired two missiles that struck a mud-built house at Chashma village, 3 km (2 miles) east of Miranshah, the region's administrative town.

They said seven people were killed and four wounded.

FOREIGN MINISTRY DENOUNCES DRONES

"Tribesmen started rescue work an hour after the attack and recovered seven bodies," said resident Bashir Dawar. "The bodies were badly damaged and beyond recognition."

The Pakistan government had yet to confirm Wali-ur-Rehman's death.

A U.S. drone killed Pakistani Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud in 2009. There had been several reports that his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed the same way but they turned out to be untrue.

But the Foreign Ministry again denounced drones in general on Wednesday.

"The government has consistently maintained that the drone strikes are counter-productive, entail loss of innocent civilian lives, have human rights and humanitarian implications and violate the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law," it said.

U.S. President Barack Obama recently indicated he was scaling back the drone strike program, winning cautious approval from Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. fight on militancy.

North Waziristan is on the Afghan border and has long been a stronghold of militants including Afghan Talibanand their al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban allies.

Prime Minister-elect Nawaz Sharif said this month that drone strikes were a "challenge" to Pakistan's sovereignty.

"We will sit with our American friends and talk to them about this issue," he said.

Obama's announcement of scaling back drone strikes was widely welcomed by the people of North Waziristan, where drones armed with missiles have carried out the most strikes against militants over the past seven years, sometimes with heavy civilian casualties.

The strike also coincided with the first session of the newly elected provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the former Northwest Frontier Province.

Former cricketer Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf party won most seats in the assembly and denounced the strike, saying Obama had gone back on his word.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-drone-strike-kills-taliban-no-2-in-pakistan-2013-5#ixzz2UmzNESDx

US Marines pack up in Afghanistan as Taliban wages spring offensive

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Afghan President Karzai Wants More CIA Money

War News Updates

The Afghan leader Hamid Karzai told reporters Saturday that money delivered by the C.I.A. was “an easy source of petty cash.” Mohammad Ismail/Reuters 

Karzai Says He Was Assured C.I.A. Would Continue Delivering Bags of Cash -- New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

The C.I.A. money, Mr. Karzai told reporters, was “an easy source of petty cash,” and he suggested that some of it was used to pay off warlords and power brokers.

The use of the C.I.A. cash to pay those people has prompted criticism from many Afghans and some American and European officials who complain that the agency, in its quest to maintain access and influence at the presidential palace, financed what is essentially a presidential slush fund. The practice, the officials say, effectively undercut a pillar of the American war strategy: the building of a clean and credible Afghan government.

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CIA 'Ghost Cash' Effect: Is US main source of Afghan corruption?

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Karzai accuses U.S. and Taliban of conspiring to keep troops in Afghanistan

worldnews

Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo / Dept. of Defense via AFP - Getty Images

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel speaks with Afghan president Hamid Karzai during a private meeting in Kabul.

By Mirwais Harooni and Phil Stewart, Reuters

KABUL —Afghan President Hamid Karzai ratcheted up his criticism of the United States on Sunday, marring a debut visit by the new U.S. defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, and highlighting tensions that could undermine Washington's strategy to wind down the unpopular war.

A day after two Taliban bombings killed 17 people, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of colluding to convince Afghans that foreign forces were needed beyond 2014, when NATO is set to wrap up its combat mission and most troops withdraw.

"Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come," Karzai said in a speech.

"In fact those bombs, set off yesterday in the name of the Taliban, were in the service of Americans to keep foreigners longer in Afghanistan."

It was one of several inflammatory comments by Karzai and his government on Sunday and follow weeks of efforts by the Afghan leader to curtail U.S. military activity in Afghanistan, including a call to kick American special forces out of an important province. U.S. commanders see special operations forces as key to the end-phase of the conflict.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel responds to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's statements in which Karzai accused the U.S. and Taliban with working together.

Hours after Karzai's speech, Hagel said he spoke "clearly and directly" about the comments during his first meeting with the Afghan leader since becoming U.S. defense secretary on February 27.

Hagel appeared at pains to be respectful of Karzai and avoid sharp criticism, but he told reporters that any collusion between the U.S. and the Taliban "wouldn't make a lot of sense."

The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Joseph Dunford, was more categorical.

"We have fought too hard over the past 12 years, we have shed too much blood over the past 12 years, we have done too much to help the Afghan security forces grow over the last 12 years to ever think that violence or instability would be to our advantage," Dunford told reporters travelling with Hagel.

Of Karzai's remarks, he added: "I'll let others judge whether that's particularly helpful or not at the political level."

Still, politics will be key over the next several months, as the United States and NATO allies work to carry out their strategy of pulling out their troops and decide how large a residual force to leave behind after 2014.

NATO defense chiefs meeting in Brussels last month discussed keeping a combined U.S. and allied force of 8,000-12,000 in Afghanistan, focusing on training Afghan troops and countering the remnants of al Qaeda, the Pentagon has said.

Any deal for a follow-on force, which Washington says must include immunity for U.S. troops, would need Karzai's blessing.

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ABUSING STUDENTS? TALIBAN TALKS?

Karzai has a history of making incendiary statements that exasperate Washington but the nature and awkward timing of his latest remarks about the United States were exceptional.

He also alleged on Sunday that the Taliban and the United States had been holding talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on a "daily basis," further fuelling his suggestion that Washington and the militants were working at common purposes.

"I told the president that it was not true," Hagel said. "The fact is any prospect for peace or political settlements - that has to be led by the Afghans."

The Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied that negotiations with the United States had resumed.

Karzai's government also alleged that U.S.-led forces and Afghans working with them were abusing and arresting university students. Karzai issued an executive order banning foreign troops from entering all education institutions.

Hagel and Karzai were meant to have appeared together at a joint news conference on Sunday evening. But, in a reminder of the threats posed by the resilient insurgency, U.S. officials said it was canceled because of security concerns.

Hagel was about a kilometer away and within earshot of a Saturday morning suicide attack outside the defense ministry that killed nine people. He was meant to have met his Afghan counterpart there this weekend but the venue was later changed.

Hagel's visit coincided with the passing of a deadline imposed by Karzai for U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province accusing them of overseeing torture and killings.

U.S. forces have denied involvement in any abuses.

Hagel has sounded hopeful that a deal could be reached on their continued deployment but acknowledged no breakthroughs were made in his talks with Karzai.

It was unclear how Hagel's trip would be viewed by U.S. Republicans who bitterly fought his nomination to become defense chief, portraying him as soft on Iran and questioning his judgment.

Hagel at times appeared sympathetic to the stresses of political life that Karzai must endure.

"I know these are difficult issues for President Karzai and the Afghan people. And I was once a politician," Hagel said. "So I can understand the kind of pressures - especially leaders of countries - are always under." 

Missing Soviet war veteran found living in Afghanistan 33 years after combat

worldnews

Soviet war veteran Bakhretdin Khakimov went missing in action 33
years ago, but has now been found living under the name Sheikh Abdullah
and working as a healer. Alexander Lawrentjew / dpa via AP

By Reuters

MOSCOW — A Soviet war veteran reported missing in action during fighting in Afghanistan 33 years ago has been found living as a local healer in the province of Herat, news agency Ria reported.

The soldier, who was rescued by Afghans after being wounded in the first months after the Soviet Union's invasion in 1979, was tracked down by a Moscow-based group of war veterans.

A native of the former Soviet Central Asian state of Uzbekistan, he now goes by the name of Sheikh Abdullah and has adopted the local dress and profession of the healer who nursed him back to health.

The deputy head of the Afghan war veterans' committee said Abdullah, whose given name is Bakhretdin Khakimov, mostly had forgotten the Russian language and never tried to contact his relatives after suffering severe head trauma in the fighting.

Alexander Lavrentyev, who met with Abdullah in Herat last month, said the veteran, who was 20 when he went missing, still bore the scars of his injury. His face is creased by a nervous tic and his hand and shoulder shake.

"He was just happy he survived,'' Lavrentyev was quoted by Ria as saying at a presser in Moscow on Monday.

The committee says it has found 29 of 264 soldiers still listed as missing from the bloody decade-long conflict. It said seven of those it contacted chose to stay in Afghanistan.

Some 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting that followed the Soviet Union's incursion to support a communist vassal government in Kabul against Islamist mujahideen fighters armed by the United States.

Karzai expels US special forces from key Afghanistan province

 

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Prince Harry: I killed Taliban's fighters [Interview before leaving Afghanistan]

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US-Afghanistan: First time tragedy, second time farce

foreignpolicy

By Kori Schake

It is striking how closely the Obama administration is following the Iraq withdrawal playbook in Afghanistan. There are numerous and important differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, but President Obama is making the exact same policy choices to "wind down" the war in Afghanistan that he made in Iraq. And in both cases, it amounts to writing off the war.

The Obama administration hasn't had a strategy in either war, it has had a military strategy. In both cases, that military strategy produced military gains; in both cases those military gains were ephemeral because advances were in no way supported by political or economic lines of operations to consolidate and capitalize on our military success. The State Department's grand plans for the transition to civilian activity in Iraq are in ashes. If there was a "civilian surge" in Afghanistan, it was completely ineffectual.

In both cases President Obama had a political strategy grounded in the belief that leaders in those countries would not make the politically difficult choices needed unless faced with the imminent end of our support. Thus the timeline-driven exit in both cases. In Iraq, it resulted in a mad scramble for political control: the stalemate over Parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Maliki using the apparatus of the state to punish political adversaries. That mad scramble has been underway in Afghanistan and the region since President Obama announced in December 2009 our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and most evident in the hedging choices of the government of Pakistan, without whose collaboration our strategy could not succeed.

In both cases President Obama doubted the efficacy of a surge of troops: on Iraq he insisted the surge couldn't work, on Afghanistan he set a time limit and reportedly told military commanders this was all they were getting. If they couldn't produce a victory in that time, he would wind down our involvement.

In both cases, President Obama publicly declaring our withdrawal created a political dynamic in which leaders had strong incentives to make us look pushed out; otherwise they would look abandoned, weakening them domestically. Thus Maliki's resistance to immunity for American soldiers; thus Karzai's cavalcade of anti-American statements and actions. Their resistance feeds into the president's belief that they are undeserving of our sacrifices, and best left to their own fates instead of coached and set up to be successful. President Karzai said after meeting President Obama that "numbers [of American troops] aren't going to make a difference in Afghanistan." Expect President Obama to give that theory a test.

In both cases, our exit bore no connection to achievement of our objectives. In Iraq the timeline was supposed to allow for a stable political transition. Manipulation by Maliki of the outcome of spring 2010 Parliamentary elections seized up politics in Iraq for a year and a half while our drawdown proceeded apace and Generals Odierno and Austin disavowed any connection between our withdrawal and political fracture. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration has trumpeted building security forces that can undertake the crucial work Americans have been doing. The December 2012 Pentagon report on Afghan security forces concluded that only 1 of 23 Afghan brigades can operate without our support. If achieving our objectives mattered to President Obama, that information should prompt a serious review of our timeline -- and extend it. Instead, he has accelerated our disengagement.

In both cases, the military advised more troops, more time, and broader objectives than the president accepted. It is the job of military leaders to provide the president their best military advice -- but warfare is a political undertaking, and the military cannot be expected to decide how much national effort to put toward the wars we are fighting. It is above their pay grade. We elect presidents to do that, and only they truly have the span of authority to make the trade offs between defending our country and other important endeavors. But that means blame for the outcome also belongs with the president and not the military leaders.

In both cases, President Obama instituted an end to military operations more than a year before the withdrawal of our military forces. In Iraq it was the August 2009 "end of combat operations;" on Friday, President Obama announced U.S. forces in Afghanistan would this spring limit themselves to supporting Afghan operations; by 2014 they will be limited to training Afghan forces. This effectively ends the practice of counterinsurgency. We will no longer protect Afghans, be dispersed throughout the country, or operate alongside Afghan military units. We're shrinking back onto a couple of large military bases that will protect us against attack ... and also against having an accurate intelligence picture to fuel those counterterrorist operations.

In both cases, President Obama has carried out the policies in slow motion, allowing months of news coverage about pending changes and options considered, such that when policies are implemented, they don't seem like news. Opponents have a harder time mobilizing support when there isn't an actual policy to counter, and by the time there is a policy, the public feels like they've heard this all before. It's the frog boiling strategy: make it happen slowly enough that we'll hardly notice.

Executing the Iraq playbook in Afghanistan will replicate the squandered Iraq gains in the war President Obama argued needed to be fought because he was "convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan" as it was not in Iraq. Does President Obama genuinely expect a different outcome? Does he no longer believe the dire stakes that prompted his Afghanistan surge are at issue? Does he believe achieving our objectives is not worth the price? Does he believe America can buffer itself against a chaotic and dangerous world? Does he believe the wars he has prosecuted as commander in chief are unwinnable? If so, why has he allowed them to exact the terrible toll of lives lost?

Obama, Karzai discuss US presence in Afghanistan

Obama, Karzai endorse 'Taliban office,' agree to speed military transition

foxnews

Foxnews

President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday endorsed the opening of a "Taliban office" in a third-party country to "facilitate" reconciliation talks -- just one plank of the post-war plan the two leaders discussed during Karzai's visit to Washington. 

The two also agreed to speed up slightly the schedule for moving Afghanistan's security forces into the lead across the country, with U.S. troops shifting fully to a support role by spring rather than summer. 

The capabilities of the Afghan army are "exceeding initial expectations," the two said in a joint statement released after their private White House meeting and working lunch and in advance of a joint news conference. 

"The transition is well underway," Obama said at a joint press conference Friday. He stressed that the U.S. is still on course to bring the war "to a responsible end" by the end of 2014, handing full responsibility for security over to the Afghans by that point. 

Until then, Obama said U.S. troops will still be fighting but will, by spring, put the Afghans in the lead. 

"The nature of our work will be different, we will be in a training, assisting advising role," Obama said, adding U.S. troops will still be in "harm's way." 

While the two sides work out the specifics of the U.S. troop drawdown -- and how many troops, if any, might remain after 2014 -- Obama and Karzai also formally endorsed the opening of a "Taliban office" in Qatar. 

Obama said the purpose would be to facilitate talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. 

Obama nevertheless said that the Taliban have been driven out of their strongholds in most major cities. 

In their statement, the leaders said they discussed the possibility of a continued U.S. troop presence beyond December 2014, when the U.S. and allied combat mission is to end. But they did not settle on any specifics. Obama, asked by a reporter about what that footprint might look like, said he was still gathering recommendations from the Pentagon. 

The U.S. now has 66,000 troops in Afghanistan. 

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have proposed keeping 6,000 to 15,000 U.S. troops after 2014 to continuing pursuing terrorists and training Afghan security forces. But the White House, which tends to favor lower troop levels than the generals do, says Obama would be open to pulling all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. 

"We wouldn't rule out any option," Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said earlier this week. "We're not guided by the goal of a certain number of U.S. troops in the country. We're guided by the objectives that the president set -- disrupt, dismantle, defeat al-Qaida." 

Friday's meeting was the first between Obama and Karzai since November's U.S. presidential election. Heading into his second term, Obama is shaking up his national security team, including key players who deal with Karzai and the war. 

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are both expected to leave their posts within weeks. The president nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as the nation's top diplomat and former Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., to lead the Pentagon. 

Both Kerry and Hagel are likely to favor a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces. 

After Karzai met Thursday with Clinton and Panetta, the Pentagon chief offered an upbeat assessment of the war's progress. 

"After a long and difficult path, we finally are, I believe, at the last chapter of establishing an Afghanistan, a sovereign Afghanistan, that can govern and secure itself for the future," Panetta said. 

The U.S.-led NATO coalition is aiming to turn all combat missions over to Afghan forces by the end of this year. The 66,000 U.S. forces still there are already turning over territory or handing off many combat missions to the Afghans. 

Still, the war's endgame is punctuated with uncertainty, beginning with doubts about whether the Afghan government can build legitimacy by credibly serving its population. Also in question is whether Afghan security forces will be capable of holding off the Taliban after international forces leave. 

Panetta told a news conference that he and Karzai had laid the groundwork for the Afghan leader's White House meeting. 

"We made very good progress on, you know, the kind of equipment that we would try to make available to them," to enable the Afghans to not only secure their borders but also prevent a Taliban takeover, Panetta said. 

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the same news conference that U.S. and Afghan officials are developing a common assessment of threats Afghanistan is likely to face in the future. Conclusions from that study will help determine the full range of Afghanistan's military requirements, he said. 

Karzai was greeted at the Pentagon by a ceremonial honor guard, and at a photo-taking session in Panetta's office, the Afghan leader said he could assure the American people that his country "will not ever again be threatened by terrorists from across our borders" -- an allusion to the al-Qaida leaders hiding in Pakistan. It was from Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida operatives plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/11/obama-and-afghan-president-karzai-to-meet-to-discuss-ending-war/?test=latestnews#ixzz2HhHF8Yvn

EE.UU. considera la posibilidad de retirar todas las tropas de Afganistán

Woman in Afghan police uniform kills NATO contractor

Security Clearance 

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By Masoud Popalzai

A woman in an Afghan police uniform shot and killed a NATO contractor in the Kabul police headquarters early Monday morning, authorities said.

Officials have not yet confirmed whether the woman was indeed a member of the Afghan police force, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry. She was arrested.

The victim was a civilian contractor for ISAF who was working as an adviser to Afghan police, said Major. Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force.

If the shooter is confirmed to be an Afghan policewoman, the incident will add to the rising number of insider attacks by Afghan soldiers and police officers. Keep reading >>

INTENSE VIDEO: U.S. Troops Caught In Taliban Ambush

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Afghanistan The Unknown Country (Full Documentary)/ BBC

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Karzai: US, NATO behind ’insecurity’ in Afghanistan

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Analysis: How Afghanistan
has changed under Karzai

British soldier in Afghanistan gives birth at base attacked by Taliban

naharnet.com

By Ian Johnston, NBC News

A British soldier serving in Afghanistan has given birth to a baby boy at a NATO compound attacked by the Taliban just a few days earlier, the U.K. government confirmed Thursday.

The child was born Tuesday at a field hospital in Camp Bastion in the war-torn Helmand province, the government said in a statement.

The mother, a gunner with the Royal Artillery, arrived in Afghanistan in March after the child was conceived, a U.K. spokeswoman confirmed. The woman only discovered she was pregnant and about to give birth when she complained of stomach pain.

On Friday night, two U.S. personnel were killed and several others wounded in an attack on the adjoining Camp Leatherneck. The Taliban has also promised to do everything it can to kill the U.K.'s Prince Harry, who is based at Bastion.  More >>