Ahmed Wali Karzai—half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the de facto ruling warlord of Kandahar—was assassinated by a close associate at one of his five mansions by a senior commander of his own security detail.
White House plans to draw down the 30,000 “surge” troops in Afghanistan come with a Pentagon program to expand an anti-Taliban self-defense militia force by 30,000—including former insurgents who share the Taliban ideology.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged for the first time that the US had opened preliminary talks with members of the Taliban as part of an effort to end the war in Afghanistan.
As the Taliban launch a series of audacious attacks within Pakistan, media commentators in the country increasingly see the hidden hand of CIA, Mossad or Indian intelligence behind the movement’s growing reach.
NATO air-strikes in Helmand and Nuristan provinces left scores of civilians dead, local officials said. The outrage comes amid reports that the US has opened secret talks with the Taliban.
At least 11 people were killed and more than 80 injured as a protest demonstration sparked by a deadly US raid erupted into clashes with security forces in Taliqan, capital of Afghanistan’s northeast Takhar province.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the deadly double suicide blast at a paramilitary base in the northwest, calling it revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Aid groups fear a power vacuum that will make their work in the country untenable after Afghan police and army troops replace foreign forces, a process slated to begin this summer and be complete in December 2014.
Afghan lawmakers approved the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, which will pass through Herat and Kandahar. Reports referenced an unnamed “American firm” that will help build the line.
Rows of marijuana plants were found along with cabbages and potatoes on the border wall of the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed—while his Taliban allies stone people to death for smoking or growing.
Osama bin Laden was apparently killed in a US Special Forces raid on a mansion in Abbottabad, a military garrison town just 100 kilometers outside Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, and supposed nerve-center of the counter-insurgency.
NATO’s claim that a senior al-Qaeda leader was killed in an air-strike follow a dramatic Taliban jailbreak in Kandahar and other embarrassing reversals for the alliance in Afghanistan.
