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- Ex-Taleban media leader defects
- Karzai unharmed in Taliban rocket attack
- Afghan operations kill 157 insurgents
- 30 Taliban, 2 Afghan police killed in 14-hour battle
- Afghan police still weak link in effort to secure Afghanistan
- Taliban bury top military commander
- Prince Harry training for Afghan mission
- Afghan Midwives Target High Infant Mortality
- Govt officials linked to precious stone smuggling
By Charles Haviland BBC News, Kabul Saturday, 9 June 2007
The former head of broadcast media for the Taleban has arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and is likely to join the Western-backed government there.
There has been no immediate comment from the government.
The Taleban and a former mujahideen commander who brokered the deal have confirmed the defection.
Under Afghanistan's Islamist Taleban government, from 1996 to 2001, Ishaq Nizami was well-known as head of the television and radio directorate.
In practice there was only radio and Mr Nizami, who never had a military role, made regular broadcasts in support of the Islamic movement's leader, Mullah Omar.
'Brainwashed'
After the US-led invasion of the country, which led to the overthrow of the Taleban authorities, he disappeared from public view and stopped having a media role with the Taleban, who started fighting an insurgency.
He has now resurfaced in Kabul, according to the man who brokered the deal, former mujahideen commander Sadeq Mohammand.
Local media quoted Ishaq Nizami as saying he respects Afghanistan's new constitution and will encourage other Taleban to join the government of President Hamid Karzai.
A spokesman for the Taleban has confirmed the defection and accused Mr Nizami of being brainwashed.
Several dozen former Taleban leaders, including their former foreign minister, have returned to Kabul under a national reconciliation process.
It is not yet clear how much influence, if any, Mr Nizami will have in bringing about other similar defections.
Some people who worked in media under the Taleban in Kabul have said that he worked to protect some of the country's music and film archives, despite the ban on both art forms at the time.
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Karzai unharmed in Taliban rocket attack
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban guerrillas made a failed attempt to kill Afghan President Hamid Karzai with a rocket attack on Sunday, narrowly missing a building where he was giving a speech, Taliban and the government said.
Rockets fell several hundred meters from the government building southwest of Kabul and some of the audience began to flee, but Karzai urged them to stay and finished his speech, a government official and a witness told Reuters.
"Terrorists and enemies of Afghanistan fired three rockets towards the speech venue of Hamid Karzai and the firing of the rockets did not cause any interruption in the program of the president...," the palace said in a statement after Karzai concluded his trip.
No one was hurt and Karzai, who has already survived two assassination attempts in recent years, was whisked away after his speech under heavy security, a witness said.
Several helicopters operated by Western forces, part of Karzai's security arrangement, were hovering above the site of the meeting at the time of the strike, he added.
A Taliban spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said the Taliban knew that Karzai would be attending the meeting in Andar district of Ghazni province and they fired 12 rockets.
Karzai has been leading Afghanistan since the Taliban's removal from power by U.S.-led forces in 2001, but his critics call him "mayor of Kabul" because they feel his power does not extend beyond the capital, which is fortified by foreign troops.
The government official said the president's visit to Ghazni was a routine provincial trip, though the area has seen repeated recent clashes between Taliban and Western and Afghan troops.
Karzai usually travels under tight security by his U.S.-trained Afghan bodyguards and foreign forces.
Conflict has been worsening in Afghanistan, with more than 5,000 people killed in the past 17 months, the bloodiest violence since the Taliban's ouster.
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Afghan operations kill 157 insurgents
Sun Jun 10, 7:52 AM ET
KABUL (AFP) - Afghan army-led operations supported by NATO troops killed 157 Taliban militants in the past 10 days, with six Afghan soldiers also dead, the defence ministry said Sunday.
The army this month launched four operations in southern and southeastern Afghanistan aimed at clearing the area of militants fighting for the extremist Taliban movement that was toppled from government nearly six years ago.
"In all four operations 157 enemies were killed, 23 enemies were arrested and six Afghan army soldiers were martyred," defence ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Azimi told a press conference.
The total included 27 militants killed in the past 24 hours in Zabul province.
"The enemy had grouped in the area. NATO forces bombed them and 27 of them were killed," Azimi said.
Taliban militants are in control of four districts in southern Helmand province, military officials say. The Afghan government and NATO forces took back control of the province's Sangin district a few months ago.
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30 Taliban, 2 Afghan police killed in 14-hour battle
Sun Jun 10, 5:17 AM ET
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) - Taliban insurgents attacked a western Afghan district sparking a 14-hour battle which resulted in the death of 30 militants and two policemen, officials said Sunday.
Twenty-seven "enemy elements" were killed separately in the southern province of Zabul, the defence ministry said. Authorities had already announced the deaths of a British soldier and a senior police general Saturday.
About 200 fighters from the ultra-conservative Taliban attacked a district of Badghis province Saturday afternoon. The fighting continued until Sunday morning, provincial police chief Mohammad Ayob Niazyar told AFP.
"Thirty Taliban were killed in the battle and their bodies are at the battle site now. Unfortunately two police were also martyred in the fighting," he said.
The attack was in Murghab district, about 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the border with Turkmenistan.
About 150 militants were killed in two days of fighting in the district in 2003, when rebels apparently tried to capture the area.
On Saturday the rebels set ablaze the district headquarters and the district municipality buildings, the police chief said.
"Now we are in total control of the district. The fighting is over and it is calm now," he added.
Spanish troops with NATO's International Security Assistance Force based in Badghis said they were not involved in the operation.
Western Afghanistan has been relatively peaceful compared to the southern and southeastern parts of the country, where Taliban attacks on Afghan and foreign forces occur almost daily in the summer.
But attacks have increased in the north and west this year, with a series of deadly suicide bombings and battles that have left scores dead.
Meanwhile, in four operations under way in the south, "157 terrorists were killed and 23 were arrested in the past 10 days. Six ANA (Afghan National Army) soldiers have also been martyred," defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told reporters in Kabul.
In London, the ministry of defence announced a British soldier was killed in the southern province of Helmand Saturday when his patrol came under Taliban attack. Four others were wounded.
Also in the south, a deputy provincial police chief was shot dead by men on a motorbike late Saturday in kandahar after he left a barber shop, police said.
General Mohammad Daud Saleh was the most senior policeman to be killed in the province, which has seen a handful of similar assassinations.
Afghan and US military officials said Saturday that 11 policemen and more than a dozen Taliban were killed in clashes in the previous 24 hours.
The Taliban rose from Kandahar in the early 1990s to take control of government by 1996. They were removed in 2001 by a US-led coalition that remains in the country hunting down militants.
The increased Taliban militancy has hampered the Western-backed reconstruction intended to rebuild Afghanistan after more than two decades of war and conflict.
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Afghan police still weak link in effort to secure Afghanistan
By Stephanie Levitz
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (CP) - A wide grin breaks under Abdullah's coarse black beard, his eyes twinkling as he hoists a paper certificate into the dry dusty air of Kandahar and shouts: "I will serve proudly, my country Afghanistan."
Raucous applause greets his vow, repeated over and over by graduates of an in-service training program for the Afghan National Police run by Canadians at the Provincial Reconstruction Team base in Kandahar.
The eyes of the 23-year-old turned serious when he's asked why he's chosen to join a profession where officers are routine targets. A Canadian official estimates the death toll is 24 Afghan police officers for every Afghan soldier killed in the fight against the Taliban.
"It is for my country, my family, my people," Abdullah, who like many Afghans uses one name, said through an interpreter.
"If others are prepared to sacrifice themselves for Afghanistan, why shouldn't I?"
Baby steps is a description often applied to reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. The training wheels are starting to come off the Afghan National Army, but the police force in Kandahar is still struggling by on a tricycle.
"It was impressive to see the quality of the Afghan forces," said Col. Mike Cessford, the deputy commander of Canada's troops in Afghanistan. "We were running into quite well trained, quite well equipped, quite well prepared Afghan army personnel."
But the police forces are falling well behind, Cessford said.
"We are the second line of battle," said Gen. Esmatullah Alizai, the chief of police for Kandahar province.
"We face the same problems, but we don't have the same resources."
Afghan police are paid less, trained less and given less equipment than their Afghan army counterparts.
But the police are on the front lines of the fight against the agile and determined Taliban insurgency just the same, controlling checkpoints and running patrols.
Last month, at least 11 police officers were killed in Kandahar province - one of them an 18-year-old who was beheaded, his body left in a school yard.
Undaunted, the police are opening a new station in one of Kandahar city's most volatile districts within weeks.
Substation 9 sits high atop the Kankala mountain, providing a clear view of routes into and out of Kanadhar. Conceived and built by Afghans, it was a project managed and paid for by Canadians from the PRT.
Officers will sleep and work there; many have said they don't feel it is safe to return home after working.
Nargis, 32, said she lies to her neighbours when they ask her what she does, saying she's a school teacher rather than a police officer involved in searching female suspects.
"It is a very risky job," she said.
"During operations I hide my face with a burka because if I will be recognized I will be killed."
The station's structure also reinforces the challenge facing Afghan police.
"Unlike in Canada, where we are not worried about drive-by rocket attacks, the building had to be designed for that," said Sgt. Roger Foucault of 1 Engineering Support Unit who oversaw the project.
The station is the first of nine that will be either rebuilt or refurbished with the support of the PRT. A completely new building costs about $250,000.
Providing a safe work space should be