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Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense forces
By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 10, 2010
KABUL - As he takes charge of the war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has met sharp resistance from President Hamid Karzai to an American plan to assist Afghan villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own.
Death toll in Pakistan bombing exceeds 100
By Haq Nawaz Khan and Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 10, 2010; 2:37 AM
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- The death toll in a massive suicide bombing climbed to more than 100 victims Saturday, as authorities continued to search mounds of rubble for survivors.
It's fun to kill in Afghanistan, says top US commander
Independent By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent Saturday, 10 July 2010
The US military, still recovering from the shock of the sacking of General Stanley McChrystal, its top commander in Afghanistan – is facing fresh problems over revelations that another top commander declared that it was "fun to shoot people" in Afghanistan.
Turncoat Afghan soldier kills 3 British troopers, wounds 4 in attack on base, then flees
By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan soldier killed three British service members with gunfire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the dead of night, a betrayal that highlights the difficulties in rapidly building up Afghan security forces so that foreign troops can go home.
War of Words in Afghanistan
CBS.com - Politics By Mandy Clark July 9, 2010
Thousands of fresh American troops are heading for Kandahar, but what it is that they will be doing is hard to say.
For The U.S., Cat And Mouse In The Taliban Heartland
NPR By Tom Bowman July 9, 2010
The American soldiers at Combat Outpost Ashoque, in the Taliban heartland of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, joke that gunfire from the insurgents' AK-47s is their alarm clock.
Taliban faction supplying intelligence to Afghan government: report
The Nation - International Saturday, July 10, 2010
Taliban leaders in Baghlan and Kunduz provinces have been located after tip-offs from militants in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami group an Afghan general has said.
Afghan insurgent group denies selling out Taliban
Reuters By Sayed Salahuddin Sat Jul 10, 2010
KABUL - An Afghan insurgent group rejected on Saturday reports that it was providing intelligence on the Taliban to the government and foreign troops.
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Gen. Petraeus runs into resistance from Karzai over village defense forces
By Joshua Partlow and Karen DeYoung Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 10, 2010
KABUL - As he takes charge of the war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has met sharp resistance from President Hamid Karzai to an American plan to assist Afghan villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own.
A first meeting last week between the new commander and the Afghan president turned tense after Karzai renewed his objections to the plan, according to U.S. officials. The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense programs is a key part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, and Karzai's stance poses an early challenge to Petraeus as he tries to fashion a collaborative relationship with the Afghan leader.
Senior U.S. officials say that the United States would like to expand the program to about two dozen sites across Afghanistan, double the current number, and are hoping to overcome Karzai's concerns. But the issue is delicate to many who fear that such experiments could lead Afghanistan further into warlordism and out-of-control militias.
The U.S. initiative was developed under Petraeus's predecessor, ousted Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, although Petraeus has been a strong supporter of such programs. When Petraeus commanded the Iraq war, U.S. forces partnered with tens of thousands of civilian guards, including former insurgents, who fought against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Despite his tensions with other U.S. officials, McChrystal formed a close working relationship with Karzai. The question of whether Petraeus can replicate that bond remains a significant uncertainty hanging over the war effort.
"We always have long meetings and many arguments," said a senior Afghan official who was present at Karzai's meeting with Petraeus. "We always try to teach our foreign partners how to deal with a situation like this. We Afghans know better than you."
In his first week on the job, Petraeus has met with Karzai three times and discussed many topics. But on at least one issue, the village defense forces, the general has run into resistance from Karzai. The policy would give the United States and the Interior Ministry authority to pursue a variety of programs, including expanding the pilot projects that give uniforms and salaries to villagers trained by U.S. Special Operations forces.
The Afghan official said Karzai is wary of creating "a force that will be viewed as a private militia."
"We should be empowering the community in a way that doesn't risk future stability," the official said. "We are not looking for a solution only for our sake. We try to find solutions for the sake of the U.S. and Afghanistan."
A senior U.S. military official described the initial Petraeus-Karzai meeting on July 3 as a "forthright" discussion of "concerns and needs" on both sides and said Petraeus and his staff came out of it feeling that it was valuable for getting a clear firsthand sense of Karzai's views.
At a subsequent dinner in Kabul attended by Petraeus, Karzai, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and others, Karzai asked Petraeus to revisit the idea of the village defense, which Petraeus and Karzai plan to discuss at a meeting Tuesday. Petraeus is attempting to quickly respond to Karzai's concerns point by point, U.S. military officials said.
Some of Karzai's concerns are "understandable," a senior military official said. "There are potential downsides with these, and safeguards are needed," the official said. "That's what we're working with our Afghan partners to ensure."
When Karzai initially objected to the initiative, his skepticism was shared by his then-interior minister, Hanif Atmar, and by U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry. But Atmar has since been fired, and U.S. officials said that Petraeus's arrival has changed the dynamic between the civilian and military sides of the U.S. effort. While it was not made explicit in President Obama's offer or Petraeus's acceptance of the command, officials said that the general's stature, and the perilous state of the war, have clearly positioned him as the senior member of the U.S. team.
Attempts to recruit villagers to fight the Taliban have emerged in many forms in Afghanistan. One effort called the Village Stability Program (formerly Local Defense Initiatives), run by U.S. Special Operations forces, has been tested in places such as the volatile Argandab Valley of Kandahar. But without Karzai's approval of the policy, the spread of the program would be limited.
Another iteration, the Afghan Public Protection Police, is intended to provide an Afghan government structure over the armed villagers and salaries paid by the Interior Ministry. This program is intended to eventually envelop programs run by the U.S. Special Forces, as Afghans take more control of security in the country.
A plan for local defense forces was expected to be endorsed Thursday at a large coordinating meeting in Kabul of Afghan officials and military and civilian representatives from donor countries, to pave the way for formal introduction at an international conference in Kabul in 10 days. But while the concept was supported, it was not officially endorsed as some at the meeting wanted clarification on how it would work, according to three participants.
"It's a very well-thought-out concept, which is aimed at protecting civilians and enabling and empowering the local people to gather behind the law," said Vygaudas Usackas, the European Union special representative in Afghanistan. "The concern which we had as the European Union is to see a clear chain of command [within the Interior Ministry] so it doesn't become a separate militia."
DeYoung reported from Washington. Staff writer Rajiv Chandrasekaran, also in Washington, contributed to this report.
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Death toll in Pakistan bombing exceeds 100
By Haq Nawaz Khan and Joshua Partlow Saturday, July 10, 2010; 2:37 AM
PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN -- The death toll in a massive suicide bombing climbed to more than 100 victims Saturday, as authorities continued to search mounds of rubble for survivors.
Local officials raised the casualty count from Friday's bombing to 102 dead and 115 wounded, making it Pakistan's deadliest attack of the year, the Associated Press reported. The bombing targeted government offices and a prison in Pakistan's volatile tribal borderlands.
The blast tore through a large crowd, including disabled people who were at the government center in the Mohmand Agency to collect wheelchairs, Pakistani officials said. The agency is part of the northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
Dozens of shops and buildings buckled, and a barrier wall at the prison collapsed, freeing several insurgents, a Pakistani intelligence official said.
The attack showed the resilience of insurgents along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a rugged region that is the main refuge for Taliban and al-Qaeda militants still willing to strike at government installations despite a stepped-up military campaign by the Pakistani army.
The army has failed to defeat insurgents in Mohmand after years of fighting.
Ghulam Rasool, the deputy political administrator of Mohmand, told local reporters that the blast had targeted his office but that he was not there at the time and was unharmed. Other officials said four policemen were among the dead.
One bomb was transported on a motorcycle, officials said, and the AP reported that a second bomb exploded nearly simultaneously.
Some officials described the prison as the primary target. A political officer in the region told local reporters that about 25 prisoners, including four insurgents, fled the prison when its main gate and a portion of the boundary wall caved in.
"The target was mainly the prison in Yaka Ghund, to release some of the arrested militants," the intelligence official said.
Partlow reported from Kabul. Khan is a special correspondent.
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It's fun to kill in Afghanistan, says top US commander
Independent By Kim Sengupta, Defence Correspondent Saturday, 10 July 2010
The US military, still recovering from the shock of the sacking of General Stanley McChrystal, its top commander in Afghanistan – is facing fresh problems over revelations that another top commander declared that it was "fun to shoot people" in Afghanistan.
A video of General James Mattis making his comments was yesterday spreading through the Muslim world at a fraught time in Afghanistan for the US and it's Western allies. General Mattis has been named as successor to General David Petreaus as head of US Central Command. General Petraeus is moving to Afghanistan after McChrystal's sacking over derogatory remarks made about President Obama to Rolling Stone magazine. But General Mattis has yet to be confirmed by the US Senate. The general led the controversial US military assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.
The comments which have come back to haunt him were made at a leadership seminar in 2005. He said: "Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know it's a helluva hoot. I'll be right up front with you. I like brawling. You go into Afghanistan, you get guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil ... guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway. So it's a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them."
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, said that the remarks were made five years ago and General Mattis had learnt his lesson. But one senior American officer serving in Kabul, said: "This is not what we want to see happen after a very difficult time in the campaign. But we don't think the Senate will block his appointment.
"The fact is people in the forces tend not to speak like bishops. We'll have to make clear to Afghans that what he was talking about related to the Taliban, who oppress women, and certainly not Afghans and Muslims as a whole."
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Turncoat Afghan soldier kills 3 British troopers, wounds 4 in attack on base, then flees
By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- An Afghan soldier killed three British service members with gunfire and a rocket-propelled grenade in the dead of night, a betrayal that highlights the difficulties in rapidly building up Afghan security forces so that foreign troops can go home.
The soldier fled after carrying out the attack in southern Afghanistan early Tuesday, leaving his motive unclear. But the Taliban claimed that he was a militant sympathizer who was taken in by insurgents after the assault - one which could further weaken support in Britain for an unpopular war that has now taken the lives of 317 Britons.
In London, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the killings as "appalling" but insisted the attack should not change NATO's strategy of working alongside the Afghan army. Four other British service members were wounded in the attack on a base in Nahr-i-Saraj district of Helmand province that is home to members of the 1st Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles.
It was the second time in eight months that an Afghan turned against British troops partnering with local security forces. In November, an Afghan policeman killed five British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand.
Afghan police in the past have also attacked American soldiers and their own police stations, though such intentional attacks are rare.
Still, Tuesday's attack comes at a time when the international coalition is ramping up training of Afghan soldiers and policemen so they can ultimately take responsibility for securing and defending the nation. The speed with which Afghan security forces are growing - the allies set an interim goal of expanding the Afghan army from 85,000 in 2009 to 134,000 troops by October 2011 - has raised concerns about infiltration by the Taliban and the professionalism of the recruits.
It remained unclear how long Tuesday's attacker had been enlisted in the Afghan National Army, whether he plotted the assault with others and what motivated him to carry out the killings - which Britain's Ministry of Defense called a "suspected premeditated attack."
Lt. Col. James Carr-Smith, spokesman for the coalition task force in Helmand province, said: "We believe these were the actions of a lone individual who has betrayed his NATO and Afghan comrades. His whereabouts are currently unknown, but we are making strenuous efforts to find him."
There were few details about how the attack unfolded.
The British Defense Ministry said the Afghan soldier used "a combination of weapons."
He fired a grenade from a shoulder-mounted launcher at British soldiers inside a base control room, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zaher Azimi said.
In a message posted on its website, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi said the Afghan soldier first opened fire with a machine gun on "soldiers who were sleeping" at the base about 1 a.m., according to a translation of the message by SITE Intelligence Group. The Taliban claimed eight British soldiers died, not three as the Afghan government and international coalition reported.
The Taliban said the soldier then "fired inside the enemy base," causing a blaze that destroyed ammunition and weapons. The message said the "heroic soldier" fled to a known Taliban location where he was received by insurgents, "who appreciated his work and took him to a safe place."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai sent a letter of apology to the British government. Afghan Army Chief of Staff Gen. Sher Mohammad Karimi expressed regret and pledged to capture and prosecute the attacker. "The loss of any of our coalition partners affects us deeply," Karimi said.
Cameron has said he wants the country's 10,000 troops out by the time of Britain's next election, which must be held by 2015. Support for the war, initially strong, has fallen as the casualty rate has increased among troops based in Helmand, a center of the Taliban insurgency.
"This is not typical of the Afghan National Army," Cameron said. "This is a rogue element. ... We must not let this change our strategy of building up the army, building up the government of Afghanistan."
The attack came one day after NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned that waning political support for the war could encourage the Taliban to carry out even more attacks on coalition forces.
"The Taliban follow the political debate in troop-contributing countries closely," Rasmussen said Monday in London, where he was meeting with Cameron.
Lt. Gen. Nick Parker, deputy commander of the NATO-led forces, said that while it was important not to draw too many conclusions before a full investigation is conducted, the attack represents a "really serious breach of trust."
"Our Afghan partners have got to look very carefully at what's happened and they've got to reassure us that they are doing everything they can to minimize it happening again," Parker said.
Still, Parker said the vast majority of Afghan security forces were "real, genuine partners" and that partnering the forces is a key to the eventual exit of foreign forces. "We have got to transfer security responsibility to the people whose country this is and if we don't do that, we're not going to succeed in our mission," he said.
Mark Moyer, research director of Orbis Operations, a counterinsurgency consultancy in McLean, Va., said he did not think the incident would have a major impact on the partnering strategy.
"Our commanders generally recognize the great value of working alongside Afghan soldiers, who can interact with the population and collect information better than Americans can," Moyer said. "These incidents are very small in number given the tens of thousands of foreign troops who are partnered with Afghan forces."
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Associated Press Writers Kay Johnson, Rahim Faiez and Amir Shah in Kabul and David Stringer in London contributed to this report.
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War of Words in Afghanistan
CBS.com - Politics By Mandy Clark July 9, 2010
Thousands of fresh American troops are heading for Kandahar, but what it is that they will be doing is hard to say.
The military insists this isn't an offensive or a battle, or even an operation. They prefer to call it "Hamkari," a local word meaning co-operation.
It is only the first phase in the larger, erm, event (I would say operation but, you know ) dubbed Omeed, or Hope.
Yes, Hope. No "Operation Hope," just Hope.
When I first came to Afghanistan, military missions had names like Operation Champions' Sword or Tip of the Spear — now we're at Hope? Is that's all that's left in the Afghanistan mission?
It's hard to fire up the troops with a battle cry that comes down to "Keep your fingers crossed."
We journalists are now left without a verb to hang Hamkari on. One photographer started a list of military-approved verbs. So far he has: Process, initiative, objective. My colleague, Ben Plesser, invented one we're more comfortable with: the "noffensive."
This war of words is no laughing matter. The U.S. military is sending more and more troops into Afghanistan, but insists on portraying every mission as an Afghan initiative, despite the fact the Afghan government has no initiative. It's no secret that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's family has deep seated, shall we say, "interests" in Kandahar that might be interrupted if law and order were to take hold here.
So, American planners here started torturing words to make a military offensive sound like neighborhood barbecue.
I'm writing this from Kandahar's police station number 6, an isolated sun-baked building where an American military police squad spends a few days every week living in bare, hot rooms and eating out of a box.
They're here to mentor the Afghan police, which sounds hope-ful, but they are patrolling the streets of Kandahar, the Taliban's hometown, where things can get "offensive" pretty quickly.
There are more American troops in Kandahar than ever before. They are here to take back this town from the Taliban. No one expects the Taliban to lay down their guns and a get in the spirit of Hamkari.
What's going on in Kandahar is an offensive — possibly the most critical offensive in Afghanistan since the battle of Tora Bora.
By declaring that the word offensive is, itself, offensive, military and civilian planners have demonstrated the conflicted nature of the mission here.
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For The U.S., Cat And Mouse In The Taliban Heartland
NPR By Tom Bowman July 9, 2010
The American soldiers at Combat Outpost Ashoque, in the Taliban heartland of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, joke that gunfire from the insurgents' AK-47s is their alarm clock.
Sure enough, just after 8 a.m. on Thursday, the alarm went off for a unit of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, based at the small outpost.
Automatic weapons fire rattled. Soldiers jumped from their cots and raced outside, many wearing shorts and flip-flops, together with their helmets and weapons.
Bullets ripped into the sandbags of the guard tower, kicking up puffs of sand. One bullet tore through the plywood covering a window in the command post, showering the room with splinters and then biting a chip from the concrete wall.
Running For Cover
The bullet just missed Capt. Dan Luckett's head. He held a spent AK-47 round, as curved now as a talon.
"This is my round. 'Cause this one had Capt. Luckett written all over it," he said. "I've got pieces of wood from that f - - - - - - thing down my shirt."
Outside, under a camouflage canopy, soldiers ran for cover while others climbed ladders to the guard towers. Still others were on radios calling for air support.
Suddenly, a Kiowa attack helicopter swept in low and fired a rocket toward the Taliban position, leaving a rush of air and a trail of smoke.
The soldiers at the outpost let out a brief cheer, but there was no time to celebrate. The Taliban insurgents resumed their shooting.
The Americans returned fire with heavy machine guns and grenade launchers.
After about 20 minutes, the skirmish was over.
Hunting The Taliban
But that wasn't the end of it. A sergeant ordered the men to put on their combat gear for a patrol to search for evidence of the enemy.
They moved out, headed for a tangle of grapevines where the Taliban like to hide and fire from. Leading the patrol was Capt. Brant Auge, a West Point graduate from Mississippi.
"We will go to where we saw people before, but with the trench lines all they do is keep their heads down and move and you can't see 'em. They're probably going to be gone by the time we get there," he said.
With helicopters buzzing overhead, the troops sidestepped the coils of razor wire that protect the entrance to the outpost. They trudged down a dirt road, just as two farmers ambled toward them.
'Nobody Saw Anything'
Speaking through a translator, the Americans asked the farmers if they saw anyone in the fields. No, the farmers responded.
"Nobody saw anybody, huh?" Auge said. He hears that often, as villagers are wary of the American soldiers.
The soldiers turned from the road and descended into the field, deep into the grapevines, their helmets bobbing up and down like turtles above the vegetation.
They trudged toward a hut, about a quarter-mile into the field. Farmers once used the building to store their harvest. Now it's something of a Taliban fort.
There is talk that these huts are ringed by land mines. Even the farmers now stay away from them.
Lt. Clay Hammer reminded the captain that they should be careful. "How close should we get to it?" he asked.
"Pretty damn close," Auge responded. He was hoping to look inside the hut for any evidence of the attack — wounded or dead Taliban, a trail of blood, or at least some shell casings.
An Elusive Enemy
As they neared the grape hut, the patrol waded through an irrigation ditch. The hut, one-story tall and made of adobe, had small windows and was as worn as a sand castle.
Its walls were pockmarked with holes by fire from the helicopter attack.
Auge poked his head inside. "I'm going to look through the window to see if we see any shell casings," he said.
But inside there was only hay, and no sign of any Taliban. That's normal, Hammer said.
Auge said that the Taliban probably would have taken any dead or wounded with them. But he added, "I think they take the bodies with them. But they're not going to pick up shell casings or anything like that. So, if we haven't found it, that just tells me that we haven't identified the actual location they were firing from."
Battling In The Grapevines
There have been about nine such attacks in the past six weeks, and it's usually the same drill.
The Taliban use the grapevines and the mud walls as a way to blunt the Americans' sophisticated surveillance and weaponry.
"As soon as they start taking fire, they can get down behind these walls and move all the way from here down to the wadi [gully] line and never be seen," he said.
This time, after nearly two hours of patrolling, no evidence was found. Auge and his men headed back to their outpost, grunting as they climbed over 6-foot-high walls in the vineyards.
Auge knows there will be more Taliban attacks.
"What they want to do is make us scared to come out, where we don't leave the compound," he said.
But the Americans continue to leave the compound on patrols. And for the most part, the Taliban continue to slip away.
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Taliban faction supplying intelligence to Afghan government: report
The Nation - International Saturday, July 10, 2010
Taliban leaders in Baghlan and Kunduz provinces have been located after tip-offs from militants in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami group an Afghan general has said.
Hizb-i-Islami, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is one of three main insurgent factions battling Hamid Karzai and his international backers and had been loosely aligned with the Taliban.
However, fighters from the former allies clashed in the northern province of Baghlan in early March and dozens of fighters from Hizb-i-Islami sought government protection.
The faction further distanced itself from the Taliban by sending a delegation to Kabul to deliver a 15-point peace proposal to Hamid Karzai. The plan was not accepted, but both sides described the discussions as positive.
General Murad Ali Murad, commander of the Afghan 209th Corps in northern Afghanistan, said: "We get intelligence on the Taliban's whereabouts and movements, especially their commanders, from members of Hizb-i-Islami." "The flow of intelligence is working very well. It really helps us eliminate those who pose a serious security threat," he told Reuters.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is one of the foremost and most divisive figures in recent Afghan history.
After leading the largest anti-Soviet resistance faction during the 1980s, with hundreds of millions of dollars of US support channelled through the Pakistan government, his faction was renowned for its brutality in the brutal civil war following the Soviet withdrawal.
He fled the Taliban to Iran, but returned to take up arms against Hamid Karzai in 2002.
The Baghlan clashes were said to be prompted by Taliban encroachment and taxation in a region previously considered a Hizb-i-Islami stronghold.
Hekmatyar's men had since begun turning in Taliban rivals for money and revenge Afghan security forces said.
Nato has reported a string of assassinations of Taliban leaders in Baghlan in recent months.
On May 14, Mullah Ruhullah, the Taliban shadow governor for Baghlan, and his deputy were killed. His immediate successor, Mawlawi Jabbar, died in an air strike only a fortnight later and two further successors have been captured. (The Telegraph)
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Afghan insurgent group denies selling out Taliban
Reuters By Sayed Salahuddin Sat Jul 10, 2010
KABUL - An Afghan insurgent group rejected on Saturday reports that it was providing intelligence on the Taliban to the government and foreign troops.
General Murad Ali Murad, commander of Afghan troops in the north, told Reuters that Hezb-i-Islami fighters had tipped-off government and U.S. forces, revealing locations of key Taliban figures there.
"This is part of the propaganda war by the government, foreign troops and those trying to create differences among us," said Haroon Zarghoun, a spokesman for Hezb, which is led by former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.
"Anyone doing such work is an apostate and is certainly not a Hezb member," Zarghoun told Reuters by phone from an undisclosed location.
Hekmatyar's Hezb is one of three major insurgent groups fighting government and foreign forces in Afghanistan -- mainly in the east and pockets of the north.
STRONGHOLDS
The other two, both seen by NATO as bigger threats, are the Taliban, with strongholds in the south, and the Haqqani network, based mainly in the southeast.
Ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 the Taliban have re-grouped in their traditional heartlands, but are also now spreading to parts of the north.
However the group has lost a number of commanders in the north in operations by Afghan and foreign troops in recent months which senior Afghan officials said were the result of Hezb fighters selling them out.
While Hezb shares some of the aims of the Taliban, it has led a largely separate insurgency. Earlier this year, Taliban fighters pushed into Hezb-i-Islami strongholds in the north, leading to clashes between the two groups.
Both groups later played down the clashes, but Murad said Hekmatyar's men -- who came off worse in the fighting -- were now seeking revenge and were passing on information about their Taliban rivals.
Several Taliban commanders, including the deputy shadow governor of Kunduz and a shadow district governor, have been killed in the last three months, NATO has said, some by air strikes as they drove through a remote desert and others as they met in a field.
Under NATO rules of engagement, such air strikes would require troops to follow strict procedures for positively identifying the insurgents. This in turn would be heavily dependent on reliable intelligence and could suggest such information came from within the insurgency.
Increased localised squabbling could signal divisions in the insurgency after Hezb-i-Islami distanced itself from the Taliban earlier this year when it sent a delegation to Kabul to meet President Hamid Karzai.
While the talks ended without breakthrough, Hezb said it would consider negotiating with the government as long as foreign forces withdrew within a specified timeframe.
The Taliban have always insisted no talks can take place until all foreign troops leave.
(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by David Fox)
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