KABUL (AP) — U.S. coalition troops detained four suspected al-Qaida members during a raid in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, while a roadside bomb in the south killed a NATO service member, officials said.
The U.S.-led troops captured the four in the city of Khost, close to the border with Pakistan, the coalition said in a statement.
"The suspects are believed to be associated with an al-Qaida leader who has been responsible for recruiting Kuwaiti and Pakistani extremists for fighting in Afghanistan, threatening to strengthen al-Qaida's presence, namely in the eastern provinces," the statement said.
The U.S. military did not identify the suspects or the leader mentioned.
Militants launched numerous coordinated attacks against government buildings and the main U.S. base in Khost this month. Militants operating in the area fall under the command of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an insurgent leader believed to be operating out of Pakistan's tribal areas. The area is considered the likely hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
Teams of Taliban have also hit government centers in Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand's capital in the last year, demonstrating increasing sophistication in their attacks. Military analysts have said such assaults are a result of training by Pakistani militants and al-Qaida fighters.
President Barack Obama has identified the elimination of militant sanctuaries in Pakistan as critical if America is to crush al-Qaida and turn around its faltering Afghan war effort.
In southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed a NATO service member Saturday, the military alliance said in a statement.
It did not identify the victim's nationality. NATO follows a policy of waiting for the relevant country to announce the nationality of dead troops.
More than 40 countries contribute forces to the conflict in Afghanistan under NATO's banner. A number of nations have troops serving in the south, including Britain, the United States, Canada, Denmark and Australia.
Obama has ordered an additional 21,000 troops into Afghanistan, the majority of which will be heading south where the Taliban is strongest.

Kabul (AP): Eight Taliban fighters are dead after battling U.S. coalition troops in southern Afghanistan.

The coalition says two of its troops and three Afghan policemen were also wounded during Monday's clash in the southern province of Uruzgan. They were undergoing medical treatment and were in stable condition.

The troops were on patrol when Taliban fighters attacked them with small arms fire and heavy machine-guns.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of new American troops will join the fight this year.

President Barack Obama hopes the new troops can turn the tide of the Taliban successes in the last three years.

American public support for the Afghan war will dissipate in less than a year unless the Obama administration achieves "a perceptible shift in momentum," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview.

Mr. Gates said the momentum in Afghanistan is with the Taliban, who are inflicting heavy U.S. casualties and hold de facto control of swaths of the country.

The defense chief has been moving aggressively to salvage the war in Afghanistan, signing off on the deployments of 21,000 American military personnel and recently taking the unprecedented step of firing the four-star general who commanded all U.S. forces there. Mr. Gates, speaking in his cabin on an Air Force plane, said the administration is rapidly running out of time to turn around the war.

"People are willing to stay in the fight, I believe, if they think we're making headway," he said. "If they think we're stalemated and having our young men and women get killed, then patience is going to run out pretty fast."

Mr. Gates, a Bush administration holdover, also waded into the debate over the Guantanamo Bay prison and Bush-era antiterror tactics. He said critics of the Obama administration's plans to close Guantanamo and move some prisoners to the U.S. were guilty of "fear-mongering."

"If people begin to absorb the fact that we've got several dozen very dangerous terrorists in our jails right now...maybe a little greater perspective would be brought to the issue," he said.

Colin Powell, a former secretary of state and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in Republican administrations, on Sunday told CBS News's "Face the Nation" that he had lobbied former President George W. Bush to close the facility and that Mr. Bush had wanted to close it but "couldn't get all the pieces together."

Mr. Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said government interrogators should be limited to the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual and barred from using harsher methods.

"We have as high a motive to get information that will prevent attacks on our soldiers as anybody does," he said of the military. "And yet we find the methods that we use are sufficient."

The defense chief sided with Mr. Obama in his debate with former Vice President Dick Cheney, who defended the Bush administration's interrogation tactics and criticized the president in a speech last week. "Having been in this business a long time, I think that you never can underestimate the power of American values," Mr. Gates said.

The interview comes as Mr. Gates is trying to fundamentally change how the military prepares for and fights its wars. Mr. Bush brought him in to calm the waters in late 2006 after Donald Rumsfeld's contentious reign. Some predicted an unremarkable and fairly short tenure, but three years later, Mr. Gates has become one of the most powerful defense chiefs in decades. He has cut billions of dollars in high-tech weapons systems and fired a raft of high-ranking generals and senior Pentagon officials.

Mr. Gates also is driving the armed services to drop their traditional preoccupation with conventional wars and focus on counterinsurgencies like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter is now Mr. Gates's top priority. Earlier this month, the defense chief made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan and fired Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander there. Several senior officers have complained privately that Mr. Gates was wrong to fire Gen. McKiernan without specific cause.

In the interview, Mr. Gates said the move reflected lessons learned in Iraq. When the Bush administration decided to implement a new counterinsurgency strategy there, Mr. Gates ousted Gen. George Casey, who was then the Iraq commander.

With the Obama administration recently unveiling a new Afghanistan strategy, Mr. Gates said it made sense to put new commanders in place there as well. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a veteran of the military's secretive special-operations community, will assume overall command in Kabul. Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, one of the Army's top experts on counterinsurgency, will run day-to-day operations.

Mr. Gates also said Iran was harming U.S. interests in Afghanistan by sending weapons to the Taliban and other armed groups. He expressed particular concern that Tehran might step up its shipments of explosively formed penetrators, powerful roadside bombs capable of punching through even the strongest armor.

At the suggestion of some of his staff, Mr. Gates has begun referring to himself as the "secretary of war," saying that shows he and his department have no higher priority than the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The reality is we have two major wars going on and I feel that very strongly," he said. "That's what makes me impatient."

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad hosted a three-way summit on Sunday between President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan, to discuss mutual regional interests between the three bordering countries.
This is a first of its kind meeting held in Iran that included just leaders from the three countries. Political observers view this meeting as Iran’s attempt to take the lead as a regional power.
At the conclusion of the meeting between the three leaders, the countries signed an agreement, called the Tehran Statement, committing to fight Islamic extremism and to take steps to clamp down on drug smuggling between the countries.
Iran has long detested the drug trade arising out of Afghanistan and this document may serve to at least open up dialogue about the subject. Iran is also no friend to the Taliban, which may prove helpful to Afghanistan and Pakistan, as they battle a resurgence of Taliban sponsored Islamic extremism within their borders.
President Ahmadinejad in his statements praised the success of the meeting in opening up a dialogue for cooperation between the three countries. Ahmadinejad also took the chance to attack the United States, by noting those western nations and “others who are alien to the nations and culture of our nations.
Ahmadinejad wanted to make clear that the three countries could solve their own unique problems without having to rely on the West.
With the Taliban and drug smuggling violence a common enemy, alliances in this region may be shifting. Previously, religious difference kept the three countries apart. Pakistan would align itself only with other Sunni Muslim states and avoid Iran as a strict Shiite Muslim state.
The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan now recognize that there are bigger problems to solve.

A roadside bomb struck a car in Zabul Province in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing four civilians, said Jalani Khan, a provincial police official. He blamed the Taliban for planting the bomb. An operation on Monday by American-led forces against a Taliban commander in Helmand Province, also in the south, killed three men and wounded a woman and a child, the military said. It did not say whether the men were armed militants or civilians.

During his recent visit to Washington, President Hamid Karzai extolled the virtues of a democratic society. But before we get all giddy over participatory democracy in Afghanistan, consider the recent, savage and brutal attack on noted disabled Afghan journalist, Abdul Ahmad Mohammad Yar. This gratuitous, overt act of violence in order to silence political opposition would indicate therefore that in Afghanistan democracy is illusory, selective and for the elite few.

Mohammad Yar was one among a number of poets that had gathered for a reading, during an intermission, he busied himself among the attendees distributing brochures relating to the candidacy of Dr. Ashraf Ghani.

In Karzai’s pretend democracy, and without warning, a number of plain-clothed intelligence agents seized Mohammad Yar and began to beat, kick, and verbally abuse him. During the altercation his crutches were taken and used to bludgeon him to the ground.

Eyewitnesses to the incident have named Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president’s brother, as an accomplice, assisting the other government assailants.

What precipitated the incident? What was the crime for which Mohammad Yar was so savagely beaten by government agents?

His crime was the exercising of his democratic rights: the right to support, and the right to campaign for a candidate of his choice. But in Karzai’s world, a world in which election results are assured prior to election-day, a world in which election results/votes are based on bribes, beatings, threats and intimidation. Mohammad Yar had therefore to be silenced.

During the melee, uniformed national police were in attendance but took no action to stop the beating.

Government interference in the workings of a free-press is commonplace in Karzai’s (pretend to be democratic) Afghanistan. And the case of Mohammad Yar is but one such example. In 2005, there were 40 attacks on journalists including 2 murders, several cases of abduction, assault and imprisonment. Those whom with courage and dedication to ethics in journalism, reveal and expose the crimes of Afghanistan’s elite do so at great peril.

A free and independent media is the only window into the activities of government…those who often in secret and in the name of democracy commit crimes and visit horror upon their constituents in their quest of power and riches.

Bruce G. Richardson 5/23/09