Warlords are using threats to pressure municipal officials to fraudulently prepare ownership documents for the lands that they have already grabbed in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province, the mayor of Pul-i-Khumri protested.
In a BBC interview, Siraj Haqqani denied that the Haqqani network is responsible for killing Burhanuddin Rabbani, or is receiving aid from Pakistan’s ISI—but asserted that he’s been approached by the US to join the Afghan government.
In the wake of Burhanuddin Rabbani’s assassination, Afghan President Hamid Karzai says trying to talk peace with the Taliban is futile, that the real power behind the insurgents is Pakistan, and that Afghanistan’s best option is to negotiate with Islamabad.
A soldier with the US Army was sentenced for his role in murdering an unarmed teenage Afghan civilian in Kandahar province last year. Pvt. Andrew Holmes of the 5th Stryker Brigade was sentenced to seven years in prison as part of a plea deal.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi took credit for the massacre of 25 Shi’ite pilgrims, members of the Hazara minority, headed from Pakistan to holy cities in Iran. Sunni militants are escalating attacks on the Hazara, who were targeted for genocide in Taliban Afghanistan.
Barack Obama mourned the death of the war criminal Burhanuddin Rabbani as a “tragic loss.” The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) decried Rabbani as leader of the “Northern Alliance mafia” made up of “millionaire rapists.”
Pakistan announced the arrest of top al-Qaeda leader Younis al-Mauritani along with two other operatives. The arrests, in the city of Quetta, were hailed as the fruit of cooperation between Pakistan’s ISI and the CIA—despite recent friction over drone strikes.
Some 300 militants crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan’s territory and stormed seven security checkpoints along the Durand Line, leaving several troops dead. Suicide attacks and NATO air-strikes in Afghanistan meanwhile killed several civilians.
A new report from the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism finds one US drone strike occurs every four days in Pakistan, and that the attacks have killed as many as 775 civilians, including 168 children, since 2004.
A woman and seven young children were killed in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province when a NATO patrol called in an airstrike against insurgents firing on them from a mud compound, local officials said.
A suicide bomber struck Kandahar’s historic Red Mosque during a mourning ceremony for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s slain half-brother, regional strongman Ahmed Wali Karzai, killing the province’s leading cleric.
Pakistan publicly called a halt to US drone flights from Shamsi airbase near Quetta—yet drone strikes in Pakistan’s border regions have continued, presumably from other bases in Pakistan, or from the CIA base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
