Blasts across Afghanistan target Shi’ites, 59 dead

Men stand near clothes and shoes belonging to victims of a suicide attack, outside a hospital in Kabul December 6, 2011. A suicide bomber attacked a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Kabul on Tuesday killing at least 48 people in unprecedented sectarian violence a day after Afghanistan's Western allies pledged long-term support once their troops leave.

A suicide attack killed dozens of Shi’ite Muslims at a crowded Kabul shrine yesterday, and four others died in a smaller blast in a key northern city, in the worst sectarian violence Afghanistan has seen since the fall of the Taliban.

The Kabul bomb was the deadliest in the capital since 2008, and punctured any lingering sense of optimism from a conference on Monday where Western allies made firm but not specific promises to support Afghanistan after troops leave in 2014.

Afghan bombs kill 78 in two days, Karzai cancels UK visit

 
President Hamid Karzai during his visit to his German counterpart Christian Wulff at the presidential Bellevue palace in Berlin December 6, 2011.



A roadside mine killed 19 civilians and injured another five when it exploded in the southern Afghan province of Helmand today, the provincial government said.

The blast came a day after rare sectarian attacks in three Afghan cities killed 59 people, and refocused attention on the fragile Afghan security situation.

Karzai to confront Pakistan over Kabul attack

Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacts during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after a meeting at the chancellery in Berlin, Dec. 6, 2011.

Obama planning next steps in Afghan drawdown

US President Barack Obama delivers remarks on education at the University of Colorado in Denver on October 26, 2011

The White House has asked the Pentagon for initial recommendations for the US troop presence in Afghanistan in 2014, a first step in planning the final US drawdown there despite a bleak security outlook.

Sources familiar with the discussions said President Barack Obama’s top aides have asked for scenarios for 2014. As part of that process, the Pentagon must look at troop levels for 2013 ― suggesting deeper withdrawals beyond the removal, by next September, of the 33,000 surge troops Obama deployed in a bid to turn around the flagging decade-old conflict.

“Planning for troop levels in 2013 and 2014 is now in a preliminary phase,” said Bruce Riedel, the former CIA officer who chaired the review of Afghan policy Obama ordered when he took office in 2009 and retains close White House ties.



Obama and allied leaders committed last year to turning security in Afghanistan over to Afghan control by 2014. And on a trip to Asia last week, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Gen. John Allen, the commander in Afghanistan, was developing a plan to gradually withdraw US forces.

But it has not been previously reported that the White House requested detailed planning to see that goal through.

The efforts to chart the course out of Afghanistan come as the White House takes decisive steps to end the bloody, costly wars that defined the decade following the September 11 attacks and refocus on an ailing US economy and the 2012 election.

Last month, Obama announced he was pulling remaining US troops from Iraq by the end of this year.

Regarding Afghanistan, the White House has not publicly announced its plans beyond the September 2012 drawdown of the surge troops.

“The President will make decisions on the size and shape of our post-September 2012 presence at the appropriate time, in consultation with our Afghan and NATO partners,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.

Even as the Obama administration presses ahead with its drawdown plans, security remains troubling on the ground and the Afghan government remains perilously weak and corrupt.

A plan to aggressively shrink a US force that will be about 68,000-strong in October 2012 will not sit well with the Pentagon, which wants to hold on to a larger force for as long as possible as it seeks to make security gains permanent.

The Pentagon claims to have driven Taliban insurgents out of many of their southern strongholds. But the United Nations says overall violence is at its worst since the start of the war 10 years ago, despite the presence of more than 130,000 troops in a NATO-led force.

On Saturday, a suicide car bomber killed 17 people in Kabul, including 13 troops and civilian employees of the NATO-led forces, the latest bold attack in the Afghan capital that deepened questions about security.

Beyond 2012 drawdown

While the Obama administration will focus in coming months on pulling surge forces ― General Allen must submit by April a detailed plan for the 23,000 soldiers to be withdrawn between January and the end of September 2012 ― it is now actively looking beyond that date. A decision does not appear imminent.

“We’ve repeatedly said that the nature of the drawdown after the surge troops come home will be conditions-based. No decisions have been made,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said, without directly addressing the White House request.

A senior defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that officials were “working through various scenarios on what the contours of a post-2014 strategic relationship with Afghanistan might look like.”

Still, the official said, “it’s too early to draft up firm or specific force drawdown plans for 2013 and 2014 when the leaves have barely started to fall in late 2011.”

Yet Obama’s intentions to curtail the US military footprint overseas seem clear. Making the surprise announcement last month that Washington would abandon efforts to secure an extended troop presence in Iraq, Obama repeated his claim that the “tide of war is receding.”

“When I took office, roughly 180,000 troops were deployed in both these wars,” Obama said. “By the end of this year that number will be cut in half, and make no mistake: it will continue to go down.”

The desire to bring the Afghan war to an end is shared by Washington’s NATO partners, who are wrapped up in their own fiscal crises and likewise plan to bring their troops home.

“The issue is very simple. You stay, you lose. You leave, you lose,” a European official said recently.

Post–2014 presence?

The early planning appears linked to efforts to conclude a strategic partnership deal with the shaky government led by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which the administration hopes to seal with an international conference to be held in Bonn, Germany, in early December, or by year’s end.

“We’re going to get that done,” a US military official said on condition of anonymity. “The Afghans are going to ask us to stay and I think we will.”

That agreement is not expected to define how many troops would stay beyond 2014 to help bolster Afghan forces, but would likely commit both sides in principle to a US military presence that would be negotiated in detail in a subsequent “Status of Forces” agreement.

“I think it will outline the broad types of things that US forces will do,” the official said.

James Dobbins, a former White House official, said Obama’s decision on a final drawdown schedule would be based on suggestions from his military advisors.

“(Similar troop) decisions have been hotly argued, but it wasn’t like the Bush administration where decisions were made before commanders were consulted,” Dobbins said.

Yet many security experts voiced worries that the drawdown would be defined by a Washington-driven timeline at the expense of judgments made on the battlefield.

“The idea that as of today in 2011 that you could plot out a trajectory for a troop withdrawal seems to be divorced from the conditions on the ground,” said Daniel Markey, an expert on Pakistan and Afghanistan at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“That said, you would have to expect that this administration would have to make preliminary plans.”

The administration’s ambitions reflect not just mounting public weariness with the war and its giant costs, but also growing exasperation with Pakistan, which Washington accuses of backing insurgents fuelling violence in Afghanistan.

While Obama will take such factors into account before announcing a decision on the next drawdown steps, which could come at a NATO summit in Chicago in May or before, changes will be unlikely once the president settles on a drawdown schedule.

News of the drawdown plans is likely to intensify worries in Kabul that, despite the repeated US pledges of a long-term presence, the Afghan government will be left in the lurch.

Western officials “believe that much progress has been made and is being made for a successful transition to proceed, and will stick to the actual 2014 timeframe. We believe that realities on the ground indicate something else,” one senior Afghan official said on condition of anonymity.

“If enough progress is not made, and 2014 is just seen as a date to leave, we will face serious problems.”

Obama to unveil Afghan troop cut plan tomorrow

President Barack Obama is finalising his decision on how many US troops to withdraw from Afghanistan starting next month and will announce his plan tomorrow, a US official said yesterday.

Obama (picture) will lay out a blueprint for bringing home thousands of troops in the initial phase of a military drawdown and also unveil a broader withdrawal strategy for the remainder of the 30,000 extra “surge” troops he ordered deployed in late 2009, the official said.






But the president was still deliberating on the exact numbers and pace of the troop reduction as he faced growing pressure from Congress and US public increasingly weary of the nearly 10-year-old war.

Obama’s decision comes at a critical time as he eyes his 2012 re-election prospects and lawmakers from both parties, seeking to reduce federal spending, are anxious to curtail what has become a costly and unpopular US military intervention.

Obama’s challenge is to strike a balance between military leaders seeking to limit any reduction in combat forces and White House advisers pressing for a withdrawal large enough to placate his own Democratic party’s anti-war wing and a growing number of Republicans.

Obama has only said the initial withdrawal will be “significant” but has not said publicly what that would entail. Some US officials have privately estimated that could mean 3,000 to 5,000 troops at first and an equal number by the end of the year.

But Defence Secretary Robert Gates, backed by the Pentagon brass, has urged a more modest drawdown out of the 100,000 US troops now in Afghanistan, warning that a faster withdrawal could jeopardise hard-won gains on the ground against the Taliban.

Despite warning, Karzai knows US is an ally, says Gates

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recognises that the United States is a friend and ally even as he warns that civilian casualties in Afghanistan risk making US-led troops appear to be an occupying force, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday.

Gates, who spoke to reporters in Hawaii while en route to an Asian security conference, was reacting to Karzai’s statement yesterday that raids on Afghan homes in pursuit of insurgents are “not allowed” and his threat to take action if a spate of civilian casualties does not stop.

Karzai expressed anger over Nato air strikes on Sunday in southern Helmand Province that killed at least nine people, most of them small children.



“This is a continuing challenge that we face in the kind of war that we are fighting in Afghanistan,” Gates told reporters, when asked about Karzai’s comments.

“I think joint investigations of these incidents, when they happen, are important so that we can mutually figure out what exactly happened and what, if anything, went wrong,” he said.

Gates noted that General David Petraeus, the head of Nato-led forces in Afghanistan, had a good dialogue with Karzai and that 80 per cent of civilian casualties in Afghanistan are caused by the Taliban.

“The Afghan people have put up with 30 years of war and I think President Karzai is reflecting the pain and suffering the Afghan people have had to endure,” Gates said.

“But at the same time I think he also recognises, and the Afghan people do, that we are their ally, that we are their friend and we are trying to help them develop the capability to protect themselves so that the Afghan people can see an end to this kind of conflict.”

President Barack Obama plans in July to start a gradual drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan.

White House spokesman Jay Carney earlier yesterday reiterated US regret for civilian casualties and said the United States would continue its efforts to reduce them in coordination with Nato and Afghan officials.

“We do not operate in a vacuum in that country and will continue to work with President Karzai on this important issue because we take very seriously his concerns and we share them,” Carney told reporters in Washington.

Fearing power vacuum, Russia cosies up to Afghanistan

Still haunted by its own disastrous war in Afghanistan, Russia is tiptoeing back into Kabul’s affairs ahead of a gradual withdrawal of Nato troops that could leave a dangerous power vacuum in what was once a traditional sphere of influence.

Moscow has refused to send troops to the war, which is becomingly increasingly unpopular as it drags into its 10th year, but it has backed drug raids, and increased support for Nato and local forces. It has also showed interest in business deals as it vies to boost its clout in Afghanistan.

Russia has welcomed Afghan President Hamid Karzai twice in the past 12 months, where he directly asked his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev for help with security.





Long indirectly involved in Afghan affairs through supporting foreign operations, Russia is now pursuing ‘independent engagement’, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on Afghanistan and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

‘Russia’s primary objective is to avoid having civil war, instability and leakages into Central Asia and into Russia itself,’ Felbab-Brown told Reuters from Washington.

Moscow has also been courting Pakistan, seen as instrumental to peace plans in Afghanistan, where some 15,000 Soviet soldiers died fighting mujahideen insurgents before pulling out in 1989.

Russia agreed last year to expand on a transit deal to allow Nato to take armoured vehicles through its territory. It had already allowed the military alliance to ship food and fuel.

An agreement to supply the United States with 21 military helicopters is also expected to be completed by year-end.

‘Russia certainly does not want America to remain in the region,’ said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs. ‘At the same time, there is also the concern that the US departure, particularly a swift one, will make the situation much more difficult’.

Moscow also hopes to be involved in several economic projects, including a proposed gas pipeline and hydroelectric power facilities in Kabul. Russia has said it would rebuild Soviet-era infrastructure, which it built in the 1950s-1970s, if the international community footed the bill.

Violence, uncertainty

Despite escalating violence, Washington and Nato have pledged to begin a gradual security transition from July as part of a plan that will see all foreign combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

Experts say the first transition phase — to begin in seven areas — is more about symbolism than substance, but agree the handover is still crucial to determining the readiness of Afghan forces.

Violence last year hit its worst levels since US-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government in late 2001, but Washington and its allies have backed Karzai’s peace plan, which includes negotiations with Taliban-led insurgents.

However, there is still little idea how that plan will work and the likelihood of more political uncertainty looms.

Still wary of a country at the heart of the ‘Great Game’ — the historic rivalry between Britain and Russia during the 19th and 20th centuries, Moscow is now also driven by its fear of growing Islamism.

Russia is afraid the troop drawdown will allow militants to filter into the oil and gas-producing mainly Muslim countries of ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Last month the head of a Russia-dominated regional security bloc, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), warned member states that Afghan insurgent activity was already spreading to the bordering Central Asian countries.

‘This is one of the main destabilising factors presenting a real threat to collective security in the Central Asian region,’ the CSTO’s Nikolai Bordyuzha said in Moscow.

Moscow is so alarmed, security sources and analysts say, that it is in talks with Tajikistan — whose southern border with Afghanistan is long and porous — to send up to 3,000 Russian border guards to protect the country from a spillover of violence.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan also border Afghanistan.

‘It is possible we could see a resurgence of the Taliban, and the Islamist movements in Central Asia might be emboldened by this,’ said Gemma Ferst from the London-based Eurasia Group.

Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, homegrown Islamist movements now exist in all Central Asian countries, Ferst added, and links to the international radical community have already been established.

Uphill battle

Russia also has worries closer to home.

The Kremlin is waging an uphill battle with Islamist insurgents in its mainly Muslim North Caucasus region, underpinned by Soviet-era deportations and two separatist wars in Chechnya since 1994.

Potential chaos in Afghanistan after foreign troops leave could encourage Russia’s rebels, who are bent on carving out an independent Islamic state and stage near-daily attacks across the North Caucasus.

Escalating their campaign, they also said they carried out the suicide bombings that killed a total of 77 people in Moscow’s busiest airport in January and on the Moscow metro last year.

‘There are fears that (violence) might reverberate into the North Caucasus, and how moral encouragement from Afghanistan could fuel salafism and separatism there,’ said Felbab-Brown, referring to the ultra-conservative branch of Islam that the Caucasus rebels follow.

Afghan militants have openly supported the North Caucasus in the past: the Taliban government recognised Chechnya as independent in 2000 and even set up an embassy in Kabul.

Russia’s crippling drugs crisis and a looming HIV/AIDS epidemic have also reignited Moscow’s interest in Afghan intervention. A quarter of all Afghan heroin reaches Russia through Central Asia, making it the largest per capita user in the world with up to 3 million addicts.

Though Russia has vowed repeats of a joint raid with the US last year, in which they destroyed four drug labs and a tonne of heroin near the Afghan border with Pakistan, it also disagrees with its Cold War foe over local drug output.

‘The drug trade feeds into militant activity, which poses a risk for Central Asia, and this is of course something that motivates us,’ said anti-drugs tsar Viktor Ivanov, referring to Russia’s desire to destroy poppy crops.

The United States has said eradicating poppy plantations would push disgruntled Afghan farmers into insurgents’ hands.

Al Qaeda No.2 Zawahri most likely to succeed bin Laden

Al Qaeda's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri speaks in an image taken from video footage released on April 29, 2006

Egyptian-born doctor and surgeon Ayman al-Zawahri is al Qaeda's second-in-command expected to succeed Osama bin Laden following his killing in a firefight with U.S.forces in Pakistan.

Zawahri has been the brains behind bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, and at times its most public face, repeatedly denouncing the United States and its allies in video messages.





In the latest monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group last month, he urged Muslims to fight NATO and American forces in Libya.

"I want to direct the attention of our Muslim brothers in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and the rest of the Muslim countries, that if the Americans and the NATO forces enter Libya then their neighbours in Egypt and Tunisia and Algeria and the rest of the Muslim countries should rise up and fight both the mercenaries of Gaddafi and the rest of NATO," Zawahri said.

Born into an upper-class family of scholars and doctors in an upscale Cairo neighbourhood, the cerebral Egyptian in his late-50s is second after bin Laden on the FBI "most wanted terrorists" list.

Both bin laden and Zawahiri eluded capture when U.S.-led forces toppled Afghanistan's Taliban government in late 2001 after al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. cities.

But on Sunday bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces and his body was recovered, U.S. President Barack Obama said. There was no word on Zawahri.

Bespectacled, with grey hair and a grey beard, Zawahri won prominence in Nov. 2008, when he attacked then U.S. President-elect Obama as a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe black slaves loyal to white masters.

In a subsequent video, in Sept. 2009, Zawahri returned to the attack on Obama, saying he was no different from his predecessor George W. Bush.

"America has come with a new deceptive face ... It plants the same dagger as Bush and his predecessors did. Obama has resorted to the policies of his predecessors in lying and selling illusions," said Zawahri, clad in white robe and turban.

Like bin Laden, Zawahri has long been thought to be hiding along the rugged Afghan-Pakistan border. The last video of Zawahri and bin Laden together was broadcast by al Jazeera on Sept. 10, 2003. It showed them walking in mountains, calling for jihad and praising the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"BRAIN TO THE BODY"

Analysts have described Zawahri as al Qaeda's chief organiser and bin Laden's closest mentor. "Ayman is for bin Laden like the brain to the body," said Montasser al-Zayat, a lawyer in Cairo who once represented Zawahri.

In a video after the Sept. 11 attacks, Zawahri called them a "great victory" achieved "thanks to God".

He has not always been so ebullient.

As U.S.-led forces drove out the Taliban in 2001, Afghan sources described him flying into a fury at the nonchalance of Taliban fighters playing badminton behind the front lines while U.S. bombs rained from the skies.

Zawahri and bin Laden met in the mid-1980s when both were in

the Pakistani city of Peshawar to support guerrillas fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, and worked closely thereafter. But the alliance was not Zawahri's first foray into militancy.

Born in 1951, he was the son of a pharmacology professor and

grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of the most important mosques in the Muslim world.

He graduated from Egypt's most prestigious medical school in 1974 and did a second degree in surgery. By then he was involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, a non-violent group seeking the creation of a single Islamic state.

When the militant Egyptian Islamic Jihad was founded in 1973, he joined. When members posed as soldiers and assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, he was among 301 people arrested

He went on trial but was cleared. He did, though, spend three years in jail for having an unlicensed pistol. On his release, Zawahri made his way to Pakistan where he worked with the Red Crescent treating fighters wounded in the Afghan war.

Taking over the leadership of Jihad in Egypt in 1993, he was a key figure in a campaign in the mid-1990s to set up a purist Islamic state there, in which more than 1,200 Egyptians died.

In 1999, an Egyptian military court sentenced Zawahri to death in absentia. He has also been indicted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Days after those bombings, he telephoned a Pakistani reporter, denying responsibility, but urging Muslims to "continue their jihad against the Americans and Jews".

An hour later, U.S. cruise missiles hit al Qaeda's Afghan training camps. Both bin Laden and Zawahri escaped injury.

Zawahri's wife, Azza, and three daughters were reported killed in a bombing strike on the Afghan city of Kandahar, the stronghold of the Taliban, in early December 2001.

Zawahri has appeared regularly in a series of video or audio

messages since then, criticising the U.S. war in Iraq, praising

the Taliban and the suicide bombers who attack London in 2005 and urging Muslims to help victims of an earthquake in Pakistan.

He has occasionally shown he is aware of criticisms by Muslims who dislike the group's indiscriminate violence.

"SEIZE A STATE"

In a 2005 letter to Iraq al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Zawahri suggested it was time to end beheadings of captives and start acting as more of a political leader in anticipation of the eventual U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

In 2008, Zawahri held an unprecedented question and answer session online with al Qaeda sympathisers who repeatedly questioned him over the group's killings of civilians in Iraq.

Zawahri in his responses denied killing innocents, and said that if any died in attacks it was through error or necessity, for example if they were being used as human shields

Zawahri has repeatedly called for al Qaeda to seize control of a state, a goal the group has never come close to despite its alliance with Afghanistan's late 1990s Taliban rulers.

"Confronting the enemies of Islam and waging a jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on Muslim territory that raises the banner of jihad and rallies Muslims around it," he wrote in a 2001 essay, Knights Under The Prophet's Banner.

"If we do not acheive this goal, our actions will be nothing more than small scale harassment."

Kandahar jail governor detained after mass breakout

General Dastgir points to the way out — one at a time — at the time the jailbreak was discovered on 25 April, 2011.

The governor of the Afghan jail where hundreds of insurgents this week escaped through a tunnel built by the Taliban has been detained along with several top aides, an intelligence source told Reuters today.

General Ghulam Dastgir, who headed the high-security Sarposa jail where almost 500 fighters escaped along a dirt shaft fitted with lights and air pipes, was led away in handcuffs following a preliminary investigation, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Also detained were eight others including Dastgir’s deputy governor and several senior prison managers, he said.

A spokesman for Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of southern Kandahar province where the jail was located, confirmed several detentions at the prison, but declined to name anyone.

“A number of people were detained because they neglected their duties,” the spokesman said.




Several police from stations located around the prison on the outskirts of Kandahar city had also been dismissed for sleeping when they should have been on patrol as the escape took place under cover of darkness, he said.

Afghanistan’s government has launched a full investigation into the breakout, the second in three years at the jail, which Karzai’s chief spokesman said had exposed serious holes in the country’s security preparedness.

In 2008, about 1,000 prisoners including Taliban fighters escaped after a truck bomb blew open the jail gates. That mass escape quickly led to a surge in fighting.

Two UN staff beheaded and five others murdered in protest against U.S. pastor who burnt Koran

*Koran burning pastor says 'The time has come to hold Islam accountable'
*U.N. sources say final death toll could rise as high as 20
*Taliban behind attacks, reports suggest
*Demonstrators at the burnings take place across the Middle East
*One of the dead is a 53-year-old female Norwegian pilot
*Mastermind behind attacks - a known militant - arrested say Afghan police
*Afghan authorities suspect insurgents blended into protesters
*Norwegian, Romanian, Swedish and Nepalese nationals among those killed

At least seven United Nations staff were murdered - two by beheading - after extremists stormed their compound in northern Afghanistan today.

According to reports, protesters in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif beheaded two U.N. guards, seized their weapons and began shooting those inside the compound after a demonstration against Koran burnings in the U.S. turned violent.

Reports emerged tonight that the Taliban had claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were part of a campaign of violence in the run up to presidential elections.

The bloodshed is the worst attack on the U.N. in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

 Firebrand: Pastor Terry Jones threatened to burn a koran last year and carried the threat out last month

Victim: The first named victim is 53-year-old Norwegian pilot Lt. Col Siri Skare who was working as a UN military advisor in the country

 Protest: Thousands of protectors flooded the streets of Mazar-i-Sharif chanting anti-American slogans before the violence broke out

Controversy: U.S. Pastor Terry Jones, pictured last September, gained worldwide attention after he planned to burn a Koran

At least four Afghan workers were also killed and officials fear the total death toll could rise to 20.

The rampage began when over a thousand protesters flooded into the streets after Friday prayers where they heard reports about the Koran burnings in America last month.

After slaying the guards, the armed mob scaled the compound's blast walls before setting fire to a guard tower and several other buildings.

An Afghan police source, who asked not to be named, said the chief of the mission in the city was wounded but survived.

Among those murdered were Norwegian, Romanian, Swedish and Nepalese nationals. Two were decapitated, it is understood.

And tonight pastor Terry Jones, the man many hold responsible for instigating the wave of protests, remained defiant over his decision to hold the Koran burning, saying it was time for 'Islam to be held accountable'.

He said: 'We must hold these countries and people accountable for what they have done as well as for any excuses they may use to promote their terrorist activities. The time has come to hold Islam accountable.

'Our United States government and our President must take a close, realistic look at the radical element Islam. Islam is not a religion of peace.

'We demand action from the United Nations. Muslim dominated countries can no longer be allowed to spread their hate against Christians and minorities.

'They must alter the laws that govern their countries to allow for individual freedoms and rights, such as the right to worship, free speech, and to move freely without fear of being attacked or killed.'

They were protesting at last week's ceremonial burning of a copy of the Koran at a church in Florida.

The controversial pastor triggered international outrage last year when he urged Americans to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

He relented following an intervention by President Obama but on March 21 he and pastor Wayne Sapp finally carried out their threat.

After Sapp set fire to the text, he let it burn for ten minutes.

Mohammad Azim, a businessman in Mazer-i-Sharif, said that before the violence, clerics with loudspeakers had driven around the city in two cars to invite residents to the protest.

As the violent mobs dissipated this evening, reports of the UN dead began to trickle in.

The Norwegian Defence Ministry said one of the victims was Lt. Col Siri Skare, a 53-year-old female pilot.

A Swede and four U.N, guards from Nepal were also killed. The nationality of the seventh victim has not been released.

According to Afghan officials it looks increasingly likely that the attacks were carried out by insurgents who had blended into the angry crowds.

This evening Afghan police said they had arrested the suspected mastermind behind the attack.

Rawof Taj, deputy police chief in Balkh province, said this evening he was one of more than 20 people arrested after the violence.

Taj said the suspected mastermind was from Kapisa province, a hotbed of the insurgency about 250 miles south east of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Staffan De Mistura, the top UN representative in Afghanistan, was heading to Mazar-i-Sharif to handle the matter personally.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Nairobi that the attack was 'outrageous and cowardly'.

The worst previous attack was in 2009 in an insurgent assault on a guesthouse where UN staff were staying. Five UN staffers were killed and nine others wounded.

In October 2010, several militants were killed when they attempted to ambush the UN compound in Herat dressed in burkas worn by women.

General Daud Daud, commander of Afghan National Police in several northern provinces, said those killed included five Nepalese guards who were working for the UN and two other foreigners employed at the complex.

A UN spokesman confirmed that workers had been killed at the mission, but he said the situation on the ground was still confusing and it was difficult to 'ascertain facts'.

The deaths are a major setback for the U.N. and international forces who want the Afghan government to take control of its own security by 2014.

Only last week President Hamid Karzai said the city of Mazar-i-Sharif would be one of the first areas handed over to Afghan control this year.

Simmering anger at the burnings finally erupted across the Middle East today.

Thousands of demonstrators marched through the western Afghan city of Herat.

There, protesters burned a U.S. flag at a sports stadium and chanted 'Death to the US' and 'They broke the heart of Islam'.

Around 200 also protested near the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Both protests remained relatively peaceful.

Demonstrations against the Koran burning also took place in Pakistan today.

Women representing the Working Women Welfare Trust marched through the streets of Karachi voicing their anger against Pastor Jones.

Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement calling the burning a 'crime against a religion'.

He denounced it as a 'disrespectful and abhorrent act' and called on the U.S. and the UN to bring to justice those who burned the holy book and issue a response to Muslims around the world.

He also said Mazar-i-Sharif would be one of the first parts

 Fight: It appears guards at the U.N. compound fought back injuring Afghan's who attacked the base

 Hysteria: Preachers rode around after Friday prayers encouraging the population to join protests directed against foreign forces in the country

 Suspects: Afghan officials suspect those who attacked the base were insurgents who had blended into the angry crowd before carrying out the violence

Waste in US Afghan aid seen at billions of dollars

File photo of a US. soldier from 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion during an early morning patrol in Zhari district in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan on November 22, 2010.


Waste and fraud in US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said yesterday.

Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of US assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.”

“There are no controls in place sufficient enough to ensure taxpayers’ money is used for the (intended) purpose,” said Fields, whose independent office was created in 2008 to energize oversight of what US auditors have described as a giant, poorly coordinated aid effort that has sunk some US$56 billion (RM180 billion) into Afghanistan since 2002.

Of that sum, some US$29 billion has gone to building up Afghanistan’s nascent security forces, many of whose members cannot read and are just learning to shoot.




Another US$16 billion has gone to trying to develop this poor country, where life expectancy is just 45 years and only 28 per cent of people are literate, and to strengthening governance, said Fields, a retired Marine Corps major general.

Experts believe it will take years to build an effective government that can provide basic services in Afghanistan, where corruption and the lack a functional justice system have driven many villagers into the arms of the Taliban.

Efforts to bolster Afghanistan’s weak central government and in many cases its dysfunctional local leadership took centre stage last week when a White House review of the nine-year-old war reported some military success but cautioned there was more to be done on improving governance and curbing corruption.

President Barack Obama is under pressure to show results in Afghanistan in the first half of 2011 so he can start bringing US troops home in July.

US and Nato partners hope Afghan forces will be able to take control by the end of 2014 as the West looks to curtail its involvement after nine years that at the present level of effort costs US taxpayers at least US$113 billion a year.

More than 700 foreign troops have been killed in 2010, the most violent year since the Taliban was toppled in 2001. Afghan casualties are far higher.

US reconstruction activities are a major component in an even bigger outside assistance effort involving dozens of donor countries and hundreds of aid groups large and small.

Field’s office, known as Sigar, described in a report issued this fall a ‘confusing labyrinth’ of agencies and contractors in that aid effort.

British aid worker had ESCAPED Taliban captors and was in foetal position when elite troops detonated grenade

A British aid worker who died during a botched raid on the compound where she was being held hostage had escaped her captors and was hiding when a U.S. grenade killed her.

Linda Norgrove was cowering in a foetal position when troops detonated the deadly grenade.

Now an elite U.S. commando is facing disciplinary action over the death of the 36-year-old after it emerged he failed to tell his commanding officers he had used a grenade.


* Soldier faces disciplinary action after failing to reveal grenade was used
* Troops did not spot hostage even though they had night-vision goggles
* U.S. commanders watched the horror unfold on big screens at mission HQ
* Miss Norgrove's body arrives back in Britain on military plane

Tragic: Aid worker Linda Norgrove had worked in South America and the Far East before Afghanistan

American officials initially claimed Miss Norgrove had been killed when one of her Taliban captors detonated a suicide vest.

But after reviewing footage captured on the Navy Seals' helmet cameras the U.S. was forced to apologise for the fatal blunder.

Now sources in Kabal and London have revealed new details about the raid which was ordered after intelligence suggested Miss Norgrove was about to be passed up the terrorist chain.

The soldier who is believed to have killed Miss Norgrove was part of the crack Seal Team Six, which abseiled into the target compound in the early hours of Saturday.

Six insurgents holding Miss Norgrove were killed in the fierce gun battle that followed.

But it is now claimed the Seals did not see one of the Taliban drag the aid worker out of a hut or Miss Norgrove break free, even though they were wearing night-vision goggles.

Reviewing video images of the raid, their commander saw one soldier hurl the grenade into the compound four seconds before a blast killed Miss Norgrove.

The troops involved in the assault - in the remote, mountainous Korengal Valley - were asked if any of them had used a fragmentation grenade and one confessed.

A family friend of Miss Norgrove’s parents John, 60, and Lorna, 62, said: ‘It seems they almost rescued Linda and it makes it even more painful that it went so tragically wrong at the point when they were on the verge of freeing her.’

Miss Norgrove's body was flown back to Britain today.

A spokeswoman for RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire said the remains of the 36-year-old was brought to the base by military plane.

However it is likely to be several more days before they will be released to her family because of post mortem tests.

The Scottish Government has said that under current legislation any inquest into her death will be held in England. Scotland has no powers to hold a Fatal Accident Inquiry into a death abroad.

A funeral on the Isle of Lewis is expected sometime next week.

Prime Minister David Cameron was today meeting General Petraeus at Downing Street and although the meeting was planned before Miss Norgrove died the failed operation will be top of the agenda.

On Monday an ashen-faced Mr Cameron confirmed it was likely Miss Norgrove died due to friendly fire. He said he would replay the circumstances leading up to the green light for the operation ‘100 times’ in his head.

Although Mr Cameron has been keen to blame terrorists rather than U.S. troops for the death, military sources have raised concerns about the training the team had for hostage situations.

The Prime Minister, who has already spoken with the general and US president Barack Obama about the incident by telephone, said yesterday that the picture was still 'unclear' about how the hostage situation had ended.

He added: 'It is an impossibly difficult decision to make about whether to launch a raid and try to free a hostage.

'In the end we must all be clear: the responsibility for Linda's death lies with those cowardly, ruthless people who took her hostage in the first place.'

Asked if he had considered using British special forces to try to rescue Miss Norgrove, Mr Cameron said: ‘Of course I asked a huge number of questions.’ But he insisted it would have been ‘quite unorthodox’ for him to overrule commanders on the ground and insist on British special forces undertaking the rescue in an area known by U.S. forces.

Originally from Sutherland in the Scottish Highlands, Miss Norgrove was working for the U.S. firm Development Alternatives Inc in the east of Afghanistan when she was seized by militants in Kunar province on September 26.

Action was taken after reports that Miss Norgrove was soon to be moved to another, secret location.

The first intelligence suggesting Miss Norgrove’s whereabouts – a few buildings surrounded by a perimeter wall – had come from U.S. pilotless drones. She had reputedly been moved after being seized on her way to open a new water project.

An experienced aid worker who had served in South America and the Far East, she had been travelling in the region wearing a burqa to disguise the fact that she was a Westerner in this insurgents’ stronghold.

Her parents John and Lorna Norgrove have said they believe launching the raid was the right thing to do.

THE DEADLY DAWN MISSION: HOW DARING RAID TO FREE AID WORKER ENDED IN DISASTER

Miss Norgrove was seized with three Afghan colleagues, all of whom were soon released. She soon became the subject of frantic negotiations between British agents and local tribal leaders.

Nato forces had also received ‘hu-mint’ – human intelligence from local, paid spies – confirming the hostage’s location in the Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous and lawless places in Afghanistan.

Disturbing intelligence suggested she was about to be smuggled over the border to an even more lawless area in Pakistan, where she would be held to ransom or used as a bargaining chip.

‘It was clear from very early on that the level of threat was very high that she would be moved from the very bad people who were holding her to even worse people across the border in Pakistan,’ said a senior security source.

‘The last thing we wanted was for her to be passed into the hands of Al Qaeda. It was agreed that if there was an opportunity to mount a special forces mission we should do so.’

The plan was to attack the hideout at night before the insurgents rose for dawn prayers.

Dressed in black, wearing night-vision goggles and carrying automatic weapons and grenades, a small band of Navy Seals – the U.S. equivalent of the SAS – were informed that over their earpieces that the situation was a ‘go’.

When the raid began Miss Norgrove is believed to have been sleeping in a separate mud-floored room with women and children.

First, a small party of men – the ‘forward extraction’ unit – crept into the compound on foot. Snipers were deployed to pick off anyone attempting to flee.

With the forward team in place, back-up arrived in helicopters and abseiled down ropes into the compound.

The Seals then sprinted to the building where Miss Norgrove was being held, as 150 other U.S. troops surrounded the compound.

Using Colt M4A1 automatic rifles and grenades, five Navy Seals were engaged in a vicious fire-fight as they attempted to get to the hostage. She was being guarded by at least eight terrorists.

Despite the fierce Taliban resistance, the Seals managed to fight their way towards the Miss Norgrove’s building. And then, with six Taliban gunmen already dead, one of the Seals threw a grenade through the door.

When the Seals entered the room, they found Linda Norgrove. She was still alive, but had terrible injuries caused by the grenade blast. Although she received medical attention it was too late to save her.

Meeting: David Cameron talks with US Army General David Petraeus, second left, during their meeting in 10 Downing Street this afternoon

Hostage: Miss Norgrove died during raid

Grief: Miss Norgrove's parents Lorna and John want clarity about events surrounding their daughter's death

Afghan teenager whose mutilated face shocked the world unveils her new image

An Afghan teenager who was horribly mutilated by her husband under Taliban rule was all smiles as she unveiled her new prosthetic nose for the first time.

Aisha, 19, shocked the world when she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine to lift the veil on the plight of many women in Afghanistan.

Yesterday, she bravely faced the public wearing a prosthetic nose - one that gives her some idea of how she will look after having reconstructive surgery.

Facing reality: Aisha's photo was on the front cover of Time Magazine in August 2010

Recovering: Aisha has received counselling following her traumatic experiences

She went before the TV cameras to receive the Enduring Heart award at a benefit for the Grossman Burn Foundation - the Los Angeles-based organisation that paid for her surgery.

She was given the award by California first lady Maria Shriver.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife told the audience: 'This is the first Enduring Heart award given to a woman whose heart endures and who shows us all what it means to have love and to be the enduring heart.'

Aisha, whose surname has not been revealed, replied: 'Thank you so much.'

When Aisha was 12, her father promised her in marriage to a Taliban fighter to pay a debt. She was handed over to his family who abused her and forced her to sleep in the stable with the animals.

When she attempted to flee, she was caught and her nose and ears were hacked off by her husband as punishment.

'When they cut off my nose and ears, I passed out. In the middle of the night it felt like there was cold water in my nose.

'I opened my eyes and I couldn't even see because of all the blood,' she told CNN reporter Atia Abawi.

Left for dead in the mountains, she crawled to her grandfather's house and her father managed to get her to an American medical facility, where medics cared for her for ten weeks.

They then transported Aisha to a secret shelter in Kabul and in August she was flown to the U.S. by the Grossman Burn Foundation to stay with a host family.

This month, she had a prosthetic nose fitted at the non-profit humanitarian Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in California as part of her eight-month rehabilitation.

Dr Peter H Grossman said they hoped to give Aisha a more 'permanent solution'.

This could mean reconstructing her nose and ears using bone, tissue and cartilage from other parts of her body.

Dr Grossman's wife Rebecca, the chair of the Grossman Burn Foundation, said Aisha was just one of the thousands of women who are treated with appalling harshness.

She said: 'Aisha is reminded of that enslavement every time she looks in the mirror. But there are still times she can laugh. And at that moment you see her teenage spirit escaping a body that has seen a lifetime of injustice.'

The UN estimates that nearly 90 per cent of Afghanistan's women suffer from some sort of domestic abuse.

However, the Taliban have released a statement rejecting this.

'The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan rejects this fabrication by the Americans, who are publishing these lies to divert attention of the people from their clear and disgraceful defeat,' said a spokesman.

'In sacred Islamic law, cutting off human ears and noses whether the human is alive or dead is illegal and prohibited.'

New beginning: Aisha has a prosthetic nose fitted using a special adhesive. She will eventually have reconstructive surgery

Brave: Aisha, 19, pictured wearing a type of prosthetic nose often used by film actors. Her nose and ears were hacked off by brutal in-laws after she was promised in marriage aged 12

Recovering: Aisha has received counselling following her traumatic experiences

Facing reality: Aisha's photo was on the front cover of Time Magazine in August 2010

Driver killed and two dozen Nato fuel tankers are torched as gunmen launch sixth attack on stranded Afghan convoy

Gunmen killed a driver today and torched more than two dozen stranded tankers carrying fuel from Pakistan to Nato troops in Afghanistan.

It was the sixth attack on convoys since Pakistan closed a key border route almost a week ago after a Nato helicopter attack left three of its troops dead.

Last week's closure of the Torkham crossing along the fabled Khyber Pass has left hundreds of trucks stuck on the country's highways, causing a bottleneck heading to the one route into Afghanistan from the south that has remained open.

Fiery hell: Helpless Pakistani firemen can do nothing to stop the blazing tankers in the latest strike against convoys heading for Afghanistan to supply Nato troops.

Inferno: A Pakistani firefighter gestures to his colleagues to stay back after militants burned a convoy of oil tankers carrying fuel to Nato troops in Afghanistan and killed a driver

Gunmen in Pakistan attacked and set fire to 20 trucks transporting supplies to Nato troops

An unidentified number of gunmen in two vehicles attacked the trucks as they sat in the parking lot of a roadside hotel on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province. The tankers were on their way to the Chaman crossing.

At least 25 were destroyed by fire that spread quickly from vehicle to vehicle.

Of the six attacks on convoys bringing supplies in from the port city of Karachi since the Torkham closure, four were on trucks heading to that crossing and two were travelling to Chaman.

The convoys bring fuel, military vehicles, spare parts, clothing and other non-lethal supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan.

It was unclear who was behind the latest attack, but the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for similar assaults on Nato supplies, including one before dawn on Monday that killed four people.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said an investigation into the helicopter attack was expected to be concluded later today and that he believed the row between the allies could be sorted out soon.

Morrell emphasized that the Torkham closing had not caused fuel problems for NATO troops.

He said:'We don't suspect it will, even if this were to last into the future. But we really do have a sense we're making progress and this can be resolved soon.'

Hundreds of supply trucks still cross into landlocked Afghanistan each day through the Chaman crossing in southwestern Pakistan and via Central Asian states.

Pakistan is still the fastest and cheapest way to get goods to Afghanistan, and trouble with other routes in the past makes it even more vital.

Uzbekistan evicted U.S. troops from a base that was used to ferry supplies into Afghanistan, and last year Kyrgyzstan threatened to do the same, though it has since backed down.

The events have exposed the frequent strains in the alliance between Pakistan and the U.S. but Morrell downplayed the possibility of any lasting effects.

He said:'There are incidents which create misunderstandings, there are setbacks, but that does not mean the relationship - this crucial relationship to us - is in any way derailed.'

In addition to ensuring safe passage for NATO supplies, the U.S. needs Pakistan to help target Taliban and al Qaeda militants who stage cross-border attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan.

In return, Pakistan receives billions of dollars in military and civilian assistance that help keep its economy afloat.

Even if the border is reopened, underlying tensions will remain in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, especially over Pakistan's unwillingness to go after Afghan Taliban militants on its territory with whom it has strong historical ties and who generally focus their attacks on Western troops, not Pakistani targets.

The Pakistani military says it is too busy fighting militants at war with the state to expand its list of targets.

Meanwhile, a bomb exploded inside a home in the northwestern town of Bannu on Wednesday, killing one person and wounding two others. Bannu is near the North Waziristan tribal region, home to a range of Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

Destroyed: A Pakistani driver surveys his burned out truck carrying oil for Nato forces in Afghanistan, after they were attacked near Quetta

Fiery hell: Helpless Pakistani firemen can do nothing to stop the blazing tankers in the latest strike against convoys heading for Afghanistan to supply Nato troops

Aflame: A Pakistani firefighter vainly tries to hose down the convoy of tankers set ablaze by militants