KABUL: The US-led force in Afghanistan said Tuesday it had killed a militant leader who was linked to the kidnapping and killing of two American sailors late last month.

The sailors were kidnapped after leaving a military base in Logar province, south of the capital Kabul, in late July, and their bodies were found separately days later.

The Taliban later claimed responsibility for their deaths.

“An Afghan and coalition security force killed Bilal, a highly active Taliban facilitator responsible for improvised explosive device and indirect fire attacks against Afghan civilians and Afghan and coalition forces,” a statement from Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said.

“The facilitator had direct ties to the Taliban network involved in the recent kidnapping and murders of two US Navy sailors,” it said.

“It is currently unknown what role, if any, Bilal played in the kidnapping,” the statement added.

There are close to 150,000 international, mainly US troops based in Afghanistan, fighting an insurgency headed by the Taliban since the 2001 fall of the Islamic militants from power.

General David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, who famously exploited rifts within Iraq’s Sunni insurgency to turn around a losing US-led war there, says a new policy on reintegration and reconciliation with the Taliban was “fairly imminent.”

Pointing to his experience in Iraq, the General who replaced Stanley McChrystal, added that he thought “there is a prospect for reconciliation with some of the groups.

“You know, ultimately we had to face the question in Iraq of, ‘Will we sit down across the table with people who have our blood on their hands?’” And the answer was yes,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said in an interview.

But, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” there is “every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.

Petraeus took command of U.S. forces in Kabul following the sacking of his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal.

He now has less than a year to show results in Afghanistan where what he described as a “Pashtun insurgency” operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan has exposed the weakness of the government in Kabul and the NATO-led force backing it.

Petraeus drew attention to vulnerabilities in the insurgency, noting it was “not some kind of monolithic Taliban enemy” but rather a syndicate of insurgent groups that are not subservient to each other.

These include the Afghan Taliban in the south, the Haqqani network in the east, the Hezb-e-Islami led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the Pakistani Taliban, and smaller numbers of Al-Qaeda and Uzbek fighters.

“What is interesting is that the Taliban leads from the rear, as we would say. The Taliban leads from Pakistan,” the general said. “And by the way, the rank and file is just catching on to this.”” We actually see discussions among them, chatter among them, conversation, wondering where their senior leaders are, and wondering why Mullah Omar hasn’t set foot back in Afghanistan or even been heard from now in months and months and months.””But the senior leaders don’t come in and share hardship and risk with their troopers on the ground, they send messages. They do it by cell phone, or what have you, and that is actually going to be a problem for them.”Citing the case of a pregnant woman who was flogged and then killed, Petraeus suggested the Taliban’s brutal treatment of civilians was also hurting it.

“What they have done is really quite egregious, particularly in the context of the religion and in the context of the normal codes of conduct.

”Petraeus acknowledged, however, the daunting obstacles facing the NATO-led mission — insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan, weak government in Kabul and an intimidated populace that will shift allegiances to survive.

Irshad Salim
New York

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW BELOW: Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan discusses the Afghan War, the floods in Pakistan, ISI and Kayani on Charlie Rose Show.

Holbrooke says Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani is a powerful political factor in his country. Kayani was in Bangladesh during the 1971 war, Holbrooke added.

“He (Kayani) is an enormously powerful political factor in the country. And we have extensive discussions with him,” Holbrooke told the popular Charlie Rose Show in the Aug 12 interview.

“General Kayani, first of all, he’s a very powerful person and a very important factor in the equation,” he says. “He was head of the ISI. He also went to Fort Leavenworth Command and Control College and is proud to say he is a member of the Fort Leavenworth Hall of Fame (in Kansas). Among general officers I’ve known, he’s a remarkable strategic thinker. He’s very smart,” Holbrooke said in response to a question.

Holbrooke, as Obama Administration’s point man for Afghanistan and Pakistan and civilian counterpart of Gen Patreus of Centcom, also talked about the floods.

Holbrooke said the flood is an economic catastrophe, a political catastrophe and “it has huge implications for U.S.”

According to him there are five groups fighting US, Nato and the rest. Two are from Pakistan – the Pakistani Taliban and the LeT (Lashkar-e-Toiba). Holbrooke alludes to Haqqani group supporting the al Qaeda and harboring bin Laden.

WATCH HOLBROOKE INTERVIEW on Charlie Rose Show:

By Ali K Chishti

Daily Times has learned of a massive conspiracy to destabilize Karachi, Pakistan’s only economic hub by none other than various jihadi groups which only recently decided to regroup and reorganize themselves courtesy of Qari Zafar of the TTP to launch a series of high-profile killings and bomb blasts.

Previously, Daily Times was the first publication in Pakistan to break the story that the assassination of an MQM legislator, Raza Haider, was the work of Qari Zafar of the TTP which resulted in killing of more than 95 people in various targeted killings and organized attacks in Karachi.

“But bigger players have just joined in Karachi,” a Western intelligence source stationed abroad confirmed.

Daily Times could confirm al Qaeda presence in Karachi, which is understandably very upset with the counter-terrorism moves by the government, which is yielding results and significantly, denting al Qaeda’s leadership and operational capabilities inside Pakistan.

Only recently, a drone attack killed one of their top commanders and number three, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid aka al-Masri, and this is not their only concern.

Interestingly, for a precision attack on a certain target anywhere, a sim-like chip has to be fixed at the spot for the missile from the drone to hit the target, which could only be possible if someone fixed that chip. So human intelligence is something the CIA operational panel rallies up which leads to the conclusion that ISI who already has a vast network of operatives and assets inside FATA is closely working with its American counterpart to “hound and destroy” at least, al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Daily Times could confirm that the “Quetta Shura” which consists of the top leadership of the Afghan Taliban, headed by Mulla Omar, from an unknown place in Pakistan and whose at least nine out of 18 leaders had been arrested to this date, has cut ties with al Qaeda, leaving al Qaeda and Arab militants inside Pakistan no choice other than to join the TTP. The “Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan is milking money from al Qaeda too for providing safe-havens and working as sub-contractors too,” another Western diplomat stationed in Afghanistan confirmed.

According to various counter-terrorism officials who spoke to Daily Times confirmed that “there’s a plan which was revealed by the recently-captured terrorists to launch a 26/11 Mumbai style fidayeen attack similar to ones happening in Lahore inside Karachi”.

Another plan which is being discussed is to target the second-tier leadership of the MQM, the ANP, the Sunni Tehreek and the PPP at the same time to create “fitna” which is so much embedded in al Qaeda’s ideology to provoke sentiments. The whole idea of course is to somehow engage the Pakistan Army in various cities and especially in Karachi and the plan, “almost succeeded” said one source. (Daily Times)

HERAT: The Taliban publicly flogged and then executed a pregnant
Afghan widow by emptying three shots into her head for alleged
adultery, police said on Monday.

Bibi Sanubar, 35, was kept in captivity for three days before she was
shot dead in a public trial on Sunday by a local Taliban commander in
the Qadis district of the rural western province Badghis.

The Taliban accused Sanubar of having an “illicit affair” that left
her pregnant. She was first punished with 200 lashes in public before
being shot, deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Mohammad Sayeedi
told AFP.

“She was shot in the head in public while she was still pregnant,” Sayeedi said.

The execution is a grim reminder of the Taliban’s harsh six-year rule
from 1996 to 2001 in Afghanistan. The radical extremists staged public
stonings or lashings of those found to have committed adultery or sex
outside marriage.

The then-Taliban government would also chop off the hands and feet of
those accused of theft and robbery.

Local Taliban commander Mohammad Yousuf carried out the execution,
Sayeedi said, before the woman’s body was dumped in an area under
government control.

The man who allegedly had an affair with Sanubar has not been punished.

Head of Badghis provincial council Mohammad Nasir Nazaari confirmed
the execution and said the Qadis district is entirely under Taliban
control.

The deputy head of the religious council for western Afghanistan,
Mohammad Kabaabiani, said the execution ran counter to Islamic
principles.

Head of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission in western
Afghanistan, Abdul Qadir Rahimi, condemned the killing.

“Any such trial is unacceptable and is a violation of human rights.
All trials must take place in an authorised court observing every
single measure of justice,” said Rahimi.

Since their ouster in 2001, the hardline Taliban militants have
executed many people they accused of spying for foreign forces,
including at least one woman who was shot dead in Kandahar.

The insurgents last year publicly executed a young couple accused of
eloping in Nimroz province with a firing squad in front of a mosque.
(AFP)

Pakistani Talk Show Front Line with Kamran Shahid discusses President Zardari’s offer of talks with the Taliban and its consequences. Did Zardari take all the stakeholders on board? Are the Taliban ready for talks? Guests: Siddiq al Farooq (PML-N), Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi (PPP), Siraj-ul-Haq (Jamaat Islami), Sen. Haji Muhammad Adeel (ANP)

Lt. Gen (R) Asad Durrani

A soldier can do better than dying on the battlefield in pursuit of paradise — he can send his adversary to hell. That was, at least once, the unofficial American doctrine. Diplomats too occasionally despatch each other to hell; the British traditionally in a manner that makes the adversary look forward to the journey. The subtlety was lost on Pakistan.

Though often persuaded to go to hell, the country keeps turning back from the brink. The British prime minister decided that the time for diplomatic equivocation had passed and this enfant terrible had to be told, in no uncertain terms, that it was playing a “double game”. We were not amused, and can now be blamed for “double standards”. Earlier, we had applauded David Cameron when he fired the first shot from his double-barrel: blaming Israel for turning Gaza into a prison. It was more than a diplomatic gaffe. For him, it could be politically fatal. We should make amends and encourage the young prime minister to carry on catching the bulls by their horns.

It is not that I wish him more trouble with Israel or with his political opponents. I also acknowledge that we may at times be in serious trouble. If you must convey a piece of your real mind about your nemesis, it is better done with a preamble; like “how highly we admire him/her”. And just in case you had no idea about the status of a case in your charge, “it is under our active consideration” would save many a blush.

I still believe we would be better served with some straight talk, Pakistan more than others.

If we were to wish the Taliban in Afghanistan – our best bet to get the region rid of the US-led alliance – all the luck, anyone believing in stating things as they are would be highly impressed. If we added that since many of our troubles began with their arrival, we were now willing to facilitate their departure, some of them would jump at the offer. And just in case we did not have the courage to convey that a number of groups targeting us were sponsored by our so-called allies, we could always leak an odd document to Wikileaks. It would be nice if countries like China, Russia and Iran also expressed their discomfiture with Nato’s meddling with the New Great Game.

The Brits would be delighted. They would dump all the debris of the last decade on the senior partner, hang some of its poodles now under trial (like they used to execute generals and admirals who lost wars in faraway places), and make up with their old friends, the Afghan tribesmen. The Americans could benefit too. They will finally get a chance to get even with the “Big Money” that has run the country to bankruptcy, mortgaged its future to China, and created the most expensive war machine in the world that routinely loses to ragtag warriors in this postmodern warfare. And who knows, India may also concede that the real reason it was dragging its feet on reconciliation with Pakistan was that the price for peace exceeded the cost of the status quo.

On second thought, this conversion to the true faith does not seem like a good idea. It would deprive us of the fun in conducting international relations, of running with the hare and hunting with the hound and letting our emissaries run wild in the pursuit of refining diplomatic doublespeak.

In due course, Mr Cameron too will give up his new-found enthusiasm for calling a spade a spade, at the latest, when a former US defence secretary, William Cohen, reminds him of the lesson he learnt from an illustrious British diplomat, Lord Robertson: “Now that you have joined the circus, learn to ride on two horses.” When the prime minister was admonishing us for looking “both ways”, his Indian hosts should have recalled what their own “showman of the century” taught them about life: “It is a circus, in which one must move and look in all directions.” Double-crossers!

(The writer served as director-general of the ISI from 1990-92. His op-ed first appeared in the Express Tribune)

(The views of the authors and the commentors do not reflect those of PKonweb. PKonweb reserves the right to remove or edit comments that are posted)

Ahmed Rashid

Over the past 32 years, Afghans have fought a series of wars to keep their country together. For all the machinations of great powers and neighbouring states, no Afghan warlord or leader has ever succumbed to outside pressure for partition.

The war in Afghanistan just got more complicated with the release of secret military files by the Wikileaks website – a big embarrassment to the US, Nato and Pakistan. Yet despite their damaging content, the leaks should not distract from some powerful positive elements that have helped Afghanistan to survive in the past.

Afghanistan has been a nation state since 1761 – a good deal longer than four of its immediate neighbours (Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan). Even though Afghanistan has suffered severe internal wars and coups, falling victim to the entire gambit of 20th-century ideologies, the country and its people have shown remarkable resilience.

The latest attempt to suggest partition comes from an American, Robert Blackwill, a former official in the Bush administration and former US ambassador to India. Mr Blackwill wrote recently in the FT that as the US cannot win the current war in Afghanistan, it should consider a de facto partition of the country, handing over the Pashtun south to the Taliban and propping up the north and west where Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras live. Such a partition, he writes “is now the best that can realistically and responsibly be achieved’’.

Really ?

Not a single Afghan will ever support such a demand. In 1988-89, as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the KGB tried hard to convince the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum to create a buffer state to protect Soviet central Asia from the Mujaheddeen. Gen Dostum described to me how he gruffly refused.

In the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, Iran tried to persuade its Shia and Hazara protégées to create a Shia corridor linking western and central Afghanistan with Iran. Afghan leaders turned Iran down. In the mid-1990s some of Tajikistan’s leaders tried, and failed, to persuade the Afghan Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud to build a Greater Tajikistan.

In 1996, when the Taliban captured Kabul but initially failed to take the north, Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) suggested that the Pashtun group create their own state in the south. The Taliban refused, despite their dependence on the ISI.

Twenty years ago, Gen Dostum told me that the first Afghan who suggests partition would have his throat slit. Before the attacks of September 11 2001, Taliban leaders told me the same thing. The same holds true today.

The first thing to note is that Afghanistan’s ethnic mix is extremely complex, with millions of Pashtuns living in the north amidst the Uzbeks and Tajiks. Likewise, the south has its fair share of non-Pashtuns. Partition could lead to worse horrors than witnessed at India’s division in 1947. Mr Blackwill blithely writes that “small islands of non-Pashtuns in the south and east would be an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence”.

Moreover, abandoning the south would betray those Pashtuns who have resisted the Taliban. Partition would relegate the Pashtuns to pariah status, ignored and forgotten except when the US finds it necessary – as Mr Blackwill suggests it sometimes will – to send in the drones.

Such a policy would seriously undermine Afghanistan by fuelling inter-ethnic war. It would endanger Pakistan, encouraging some of the 40m Pashtuns in Pakistan to link up with their 15m Afghan Pashtun brothers and forge an extremist ethnic state that gives refuge to terrorists.

The tragedy of the Bush administration was that for too long after September 11 all Pashtuns were treated as the enemy, and the south and east of Afghanistan became a free-fire zone for US forces. Only recently, under President Barack Obama, has there been a decisive attempt by the US and Nato to woo the Pashtuns and also to strengthen those Pashtun tribes, peoples and women who have been resisting the Taliban all this time.

In Pakistan, several thousand moderate Pashtuns have been gunned down by the Pakistani Taliban. They too need to be bolstered and supported as the Pakistan army is now, finally, belatedly trying to do.

Afghans and Pakistanis have seen the bloody results of 20th-century partitions – not only in India but also Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Yugoslavia, even Pakistan, with the separation of East Pakistan in 1971. To play around now with the borders of a region beset with extremism, terrorism and ethnic conflict would be to throw a match on a ready-made bonfire.

Yes, the situation in Afghanistan is critical, the war against the Taliban is being lost and western forces want to pull out soon. However, the only solution is dialogue between the genuine Taliban leadership, Kabul and Washington for a power-sharing deal at both the centre and in the provinces.

Mr Obama needs to move quickly. The region cannot wait for his December policy review or General David Petraeus’s attempts to inflict defeat on the Taliban before talking to them. The US and Nato must open talks with the Taliban now, forge a regional consensus among Afghanistan’s neighbours for such talks, provide Afghanistan with a long-term nation-building commitment, and slowly transfer power to the Afghan army and police. Talk of partition should be relegated to the dustbin of history.

(The above article first appeared in the Financial Times. The writer’s book, Taliban, has just been updated and reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication)

(The views of the author and the commentors do not reflect those of PKonweb. PKonweb reserves the right to remove or edit comments that are posted.)

Pakistani Talk Show Views On News with Dr. Shahid Masood discuss the dynamics of Karachi violence. Who, When and how of the forces behind these Karachi killings. Is it ethnic, sectarian or both? What about the land and drug mafia? Where do the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) fit in? How does all these play out in the turf battle? Guests: Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi (PPP), Col (R) Syed Tahir Hussain Mashhadi (MQM), Syed Haider Ali Shah (ANP), Maulana Mohammad Ahmed Ludhianvi (Jamaat Ahle Sunnat formerly SSP), Haider Abbas Rizvi (MQM)..

Afghan Taliban captured a NATO plane in Kunduz province north of Afghanistan Wednesday morning, a local official said but declined to be named, The Nation reported today.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed that the militants captured a reconnaissance plane in Qalai Zal district at around 9am local time, reports said.

An official with NATO-led forces in Kunduz province also reportedly confirmed the incident.

“A reconnaissance UAD plane made emergency landing in Yangariq area of Qalai Zal district this morning,” Lieutenant Colonel Weber told Xinhua. However, he did not say if there were any crews inside the plane.

Meanwhile, Syed Ibrahim Turkman, police chief of Qalai Zal district, in talks with Xinhua confirmed that Yangariq area is in the control of the Taliban militants.

This is the first time that Taliban insurgents captured a NATO plane over the past nine years.

The militants on Friday captured two U.S. soldiers in Logar province 60 km south of Afghan capital Kabul.

One of the soldiers has been killed by the insurgents while efforts for the recovery of the other have been continuing in parts of Logar and Ghazni provinces.