The powerful blast, for which the Taliban claimed responsibility, killed seven Afghan civilians and wounded 91 more. The bomb went off outside NATO headquarters just after 8:30 Saturday morning, the beginning of the Afghan workweek. It sent a plume of smoke visible around Kabul and knocked out glass windows more than 500 feet away.

The attackers managed to get past at least one police checkpoint to enter a zone that includes the NATO compound and the US Embassy. Insurgents appear to be targeting the capital to create high-profile shocks seen around the country, the aim being to sow doubt about the safety of turning out to vote Thursday.

“No one can guarantee our lives if we take part in the elections,” says Sher Mohammad Faqiri, a driver who works near the scene. His colleague, Noor Sherzai, helped carry three wounded people off the street. “This is the safest area in Kabul. I don’t know if I will attend elections.”

The nation’s security forces have developed a three-tiered strategy for securing approximately 7,000 voting centers on Thursday. The plan is that police will check voters as they enter, while Afghan National Army forces stand as backup. The final backstop will be NATO forces, which will be based some distance away, but close enough to respond rapidly. But it is unclear if each polling station will actually have that level of protection.

While these three forces are supposed to be in close coordination, an incident at Saturday’s blast calls that into question. About an hour after the blast, the police chief charged with securing the elections in Kabul arrived on scene. Gen. Sayed Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada, whose regular job is as chief of the criminal investigation department with the Kabul police, stepped under a security cordon tape stretched across the scene. An investigator at heart, he first bent down to pick up a small scrap of paper he saw lying on the street and looked it over.

When he rose, he was intercepted by representatives of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He explained who he was, but got the response: “We don’t care who you are; now it’s under control of ISAF.”

“That’s just atrocious COIN [counterinsurgency],” says Tim Lynch, an Afghanistan-based security expert referring to counterinsurgency. “You’ve got a new general here talking COIN. And in the manual they have written themselves, it would absolute mandate close coordination with that guy.”

Mr. Lynch adds that the execution of this car bomb was superior to previous insurgent efforts in Afghanistan.

Across the country, there’s doubt that every voting center will be able to open, given the insecurity. The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan estimates that 14 of the country’s 368 districts will be too insecure to send independent election monitors. An additional 130 fall into a questionable category.

Most of these troubled districts lie in the Pashtun-dominated south and east of the country. While Kabul has enjoyed relative security, the city police understand that the Taliban will be targeting it in an effort to undermine the image of the election in the eyes of the world.

Bomb in Kabul targets NATO headquarters, near US Embassy

Early years and personal life

Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun of the Popalzai clan of the Durrani tribe, was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He comes from a family that were strong supporters of the former king, Zahir Shah. He has six brothers and one sister. Karzai is well-versed in several languages, including his mother-tongue Pashto, as well as Persian, Urdu, Hindi, English and French.

From 1979 to 1983, Karzai took a postgraduate course in political science at Himachal Pradesh University in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. He then returned to work as a fund-raiser by supporting anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet intervention for the rest of the 1980s. After the fall of Najibullah’s Soviet-backed government in 1992, he served as Deputy Foreign Minister in the government of Burhanuddin Rabbani.

In 1999, Hamid Karzai married Zeenat Karzai, an obstetrician by profession who was working as a doctor with Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. They have a son born in 2007 named Mirwais.

Former Taliban supporter

When the Taliban emerged in the 1990s, Karzai was at first one of their supporters but later he broke with them and refused to serve as their U.N. ambassador. However on August 20, 1998, after an attempt by the United States to kill Osama bin Laden with a cruise missile, Karzai said,

He lived in exile in Quetta, in Pakistan where he worked to reinstate the Afghan king, Zahir Shah. His father, Abdul Ahad Karzai, was assassinated, presumably by Taliban agents, on July 14, 1999, and Karzai swore revenge against the Taliban by working to help overthrow them. In 2001, Hamid Karzai worked closely with the Ahmad Shah Massoud to help gather support for the anti-Taliban movement.

On February 11, 2005, in an interview with the Oxford International Review, Karzai criticizes the role the U.S. played in empowering the Taliban to take control in Afghanistan. He claims he spent many years before the 9/11 attacks warning embassies about the threat, but the West failed to respond, an act of “neglect, selfishness and short-sightedness.”

President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

After winning a democratic mandate in the 2004 election and removing many of the former Northern Alliance warlords from his cabinet, it was thought that Karzai would pursue a more aggressively reformist path in 2005. However, Karzai has proved to be more cautious than was expected.

Ever since Karzai’s new administration took over in 2004, the economy of Afghanistan has been growing rapidly for the first time in many years. Government revenue is increasing every year, although it is still heavily dependent on foreign aid.

On September 20, 2006 Karzai told the United Nations General Assembly that Afghanistan has become the “worst victim” of terrorism. Karzai said terrorism is “rebounding” in his country, with militants infiltrating the borders to wage attacks on civilians. He stated, “This does not have its seeds alone in Afghanistan. Military action in the country will, therefore, not deliver the shared goal of eliminating terrorism.” He demanded assistance from the international community to destroy terrorist sanctuaries inside and outside Afghanistan. “You have to look beyond Afghanistan to the sources of terrorism,” he told the UN General Assembly, and “destroy terrorist sanctuaries beyond” the country, dismantle the elaborate networks in the region that recruit, indoctrinate, train, finance, arm, and deploy terrorists. These activities are also robbing thousands of Afghan children of their right to education, and prevent health workers from doing their jobs in Afghanistan. In addition he promised to eliminate opium-poppy cultivation in the country, which helps fuel the ongoing insurgency. He has repeatedly demanded that NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces take more care when conducting military operations in residential areas to avoid civilian casualties, which undermine his government’s already weak standing in parts of the country.

In a video broadcast on September 24, 2006, Karzai stated that if the money wasted on the Iraq War was actually spent on rebuilding Afghanistan, his country would “be in heaven in less than one year”. In May of 2007, after as many as 51 Afghan civilians were killed in a bombing, Karzai asserted that his government “can no longer accept” casualties caused by the US and NATO operations.

Links

• Official Site: Office of the President | Hamid Karzai Speeches
• Wikipedia: Hamid Karzai Overview
• Election Updates : Hamid Karzai

It said the coalition troops were on a patrol with Afghan security forces, but did not give any further details.

Some 38,000 U.S. troops are currently serving in Afghanistan alongside another 30,000 from 40 other mostly NATO nations.

Around half the U.S. troops serve under a NATO-led force, while the rest operate under a U.S.-led coalition. Almost all troops in the coalition are American.

Many coalition troops are involved in training and mentoring Afghan security forces, especially in the south and east of the country where the Taliban insurgency is strongest.

President Barack Obama last week ordered 17,000 more U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan to reinforce mainly British, Canadian and Dutch forces in south of the country who are locked in a stalemate with the Taliban insurgents there.

Commanders predict violence will rise in Afghanistan this year as the new troops venture into new areas of the south and try to enforce security ahead of presidential polls on Aug. 20.

Blast Kills 4 U.S. Troops, Afghan Civilian

The announcement follows a deal struck last week between a radical cleric and authorities that brings Sharia law in return for an end to the insurgency.

The Taleban have been assessing that deal and Tuesday’s move followed a meeting under the group’s leader in the region, Maulana Fazlullah.

The scenic valley of Swat has long been blighted by militant violence.

‘Goodwill gesture’

“Today the shura (consultative council) met under Maulana Fazlullah and decided to hold a ceasefire for an indefinite period,” Taleban spokesman in the region Muslim Khan was quoted by the news agency AFP as saying.

“We are releasing all prisoners unconditionally. Today we released four paramilitary soldiers and we will release all security personnel in our custody as a goodwill gesture,” he said.

A previous 10-day truce announced by the militants was set to expire on Wednesday.

The cleric, Sufi Mohammad, who is also Maulana Fazlullah’s father-in-law, has been mediating between the government and the militants.

On Monday, he urged the militants to end the patrolling of streets and to allow the government to set up the Islamic courts they have been fighting for.

Swat has been the scene of bloody clashes between militants and government forces since November 2007. Officials say more than 1,200 civilians have been killed in fighting.

The Taleban have also destroyed nearly 200 schools, most of them for girls, during a sustained campaign against secular education in Swat.

An earlier peace agreement broke down in mid-2008.

The BBC’s Barbara Plett in Islamabad says there is concern that this peace deal will also not last, with some analysts believing the Taleban want to control territory, not just amend the legal system.

Earlier this month, the North West Frontier Province government signed an agreement with Sufi Mohammad’s proscribed Tanzim-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) for the implementation of a Sharia justice system in Swat.

Sufi Mohammad, who opposes militancy, led thousands of TNSM workers into Swat to set up a peace camp there and to start talks with Maulana Fazlullah.

Preconditions

The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan, who was recently in Swat, says the militants are now likely to close their checkpoints in the region as the first step towards the new justice system.

On Monday, the TNSM announced 10 preconditions for its successful implementation.

These included the evacuation of all schools and hospital buildings by the army and an end to all security checks that hamper the movement of people.

The TNSM has called on the government to station troops away from civilian areas.

The group has also called on both sides to release the prisoners they are holding and asked the government to call back to duty the policemen and paramilitary soldiers who were suspended due to desertion or absence from duty.

It urged the government to compensate families that suffered human and material losses and called on thousands of displaced people to return to their homes.

Taleban Swat truce ‘indefinite

But in an interview with Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Obama also said military means alone would not solve the problem.

U.S. officials have said Washington and its allies are not winning in Afghanistan, more than seven years after toppling the Taliban for giving sanctuary to al Qaeda leaders responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

The extra 17,000 troops will increase the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by more than 40 percent.

“This increase is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, which has not received the strategic attention, direction and resources it urgently requires,” Obama said in a statement.

But in an interview with CBC Television ahead of a visit to Canada, Obama said: “I’m absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan, the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region, solely through military means.

“We’re going to have use diplomacy, we’re going to have to use development, and my hope is that in conversations that I have with (Canadian) Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper that he and I end up seeing the importance of a comprehensive strategy.”

The new forces will include a Marine expeditionary brigade of some 8,000 troops and an Army brigade of 4,000 soldiers equipped with Stryker armored vehicles, the Pentagon said.

“The decision was communicated to the Pentagon yesterday. The orders were signed today,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters traveling with Obama in Denver.

The extra forces will go to southern Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO troops have struggled to hold territory against an increasingly bold Taliban insurgency.

TROOPS BOOSTED

The forces are part of an anticipated build-up that could expand the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan to 60,000 troops, from a current 38,000.

As well as American forces, there are also some 30,000 troops from NATO nations attempting to stabilize Afghanistan.

“There is no more solemn duty as president than the decision to deploy our armed forces into harm’s way,” Obama said. “I do it today mindful that the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan demands urgent attention and swift action.”

U.S. officials say Taliban safe havens over the border in Pakistan are a major asset for insurgents.

The announcement comes while the White House is still conducting a broad review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

The deployment provides two of three extra combat brigades requested by the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Army General David McKiernan.

The units had originally been scheduled to go to Iraq.

Obama has pledged to pull out all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months, but commanders are pushing for a slower withdrawal, warning that security gains are fragile.

Both Democrats and Republicans welcomed Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican defeated by Obama in last November’s presidential election, described the situation in Afghanistan as “dire.” But he also called on Obama to spell out a clear strategy.

“There still exists no integrated civil-military plan for this war — more than seven years after we began military operations,” McCain said. “A major change in course is long overdue.”

(Additional reporting by David Morgan in Washington, Caren Bohan in Denver and Randall Palmer in Ottawa; Editing by David Fox

Obama orders 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan | Reuters

Fourteen wounded civilians were taken to the nearby Emergency Hospital and one died on the way, hospital officials said.

Six U.S. troops were also wounded by the blast, but none were killed, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Afghanistan said.

A U.S. military statement said previously that two U.S. troops were killed and 12 wounded, but the spokesman said the statement was erroneous.

The bomber struck on a road lined with high concrete blast barriers that runs between the German embassy and Camp Eggers, the headquarters of a U.S. unit that trains the Afghan army and police. The presidential palace and United Nations headquarters in Afghanistan lie immediately behind Camp Eggers.

A spokesman for the U.S. force based at Camp Eggers said three soldiers had been evacuated to a military hospital at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of Kabul.

There were no Germans hurt at the embassy, a spokeswoman said.

Relatives of the dead gathered outside the Emergency Hospital. A middle-aged woman was beating her head and screaming that her son had died. Another man was crying and said his son had also been killed.

Taliban militants, fighting to overthrow the Western-backed Afghan government and drive out foreign troops, have launched hundreds of suicide attacks in the last two years, but most of the victims are Afghan civilians.

While Taliban influence has spread from their traditional heartlands in the south and east to areas closer to the capital, there were fewer attacks inside Kabul last year than in 2007 with many more police checkpoints throughout the city.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to make Afghanistan a foreign policy priority after he comes to office on Tuesday and is expected to approve the doubling of U.S. troops in the country from the 30,000 at present.

Kabul: Suicide bomb rocks German embassy, U.S. base – Nachrichten English-News – WELT ONLINE

The general, Fazaludin Sayar, one of four regional commanders, was in charge of the entire west of the country.

His helicopter, an Mi-17, hit bad weather in the morning and went down in the Adraskan District of Herat Province, the Defense Ministry said. All 12 others aboard also were killed, it said. The helicopter had been headed to a neighboring province, Farah.

All of the bodies were brought to Herat, the provincial capital, said Rauf Ahmadi, a police spokesman.

In a telephone call to a reporter in southern Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, asserted that militants had shot down the helicopter.

But a Defense Ministry spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi denied the report, saying the area of the crash had no insurgent activity.

The helicopter was flying low because of bad weather when it hit a mountain, he said.

After years of neglect, the Afghan Army’s aging helicopters are in bad shape. Forbidding mountainous terrain, lack of roads coupled with insurgent attacks on ground convoys have prompted the local and international authorities to rely heavily on the use of helicopters and other aircraft for movement.

In the deaths of the two British soldiers, the British Defense Ministry said they were killed during an operation against insurgents near Geresh in Helmand Province.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of additional troops from the United States are expected to join the fight this

More than 600 al Qaeda-linked militants attacked a paramilitary force camp and two checkposts in the Mohmand region, to the north of the city of Peshawar, Saturday night killing six soldiers and wounding seven, the force said.

Security forces pushed back the militants, who had attacked from the direction of the Afghan border, killing 40 of them in hours of fighting, the paramilitary force said. There was no independent verification of the toll.

Pakistani forces fired artillery at militant hideouts in mountains above two villages Monday, said a senior government official in Mohmand, Meraj Khan.

“Heavy firing is going on in the mountains but we don’t have any details of casualties yet,” Khan told Reuters.

Mohmand is to the south of the Bajaur region, also on the Afghan border, where Pakistani forces have been involved in heavy fighting with militants since August.

The military has said more than 1,500 militants have been killed in Bajaur but there has been no independent verification of that estimate.

The campaign in Bajaur has been coordinated with U.S. forces across the border, in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, in an effort to squeeze the militants out. Some of the militants in Mohmand are suspected to have come from Bajaur, Khan said.

Another official in Mohmand, Syed Ahmed Khan, said extra soldiers and equipment, including tanks and armoured personnel carriers, arrived at a military camp in Ghalanai, the region’s main town, Monday.

The United States and Afghanistan have for years been urging Pakistan to do more to tackle militants operating out of lawless enclaves on the Afghan border which no government has ever controlled.

Pakistan has had about 100,000 troops on its western border with Afghanistan although it recently withdrew “limited numbers” because of tension with India after a militant assault on the Indian city of Mumbai in November.

Pakistani troops pound militants in northwest mountains – International Herald Tribune

The bomber hit the U.S. patrol on a busy street in Kandahar province’s Maywand district, said district chief Naimatullah Khan. American victims were taken away by helicopter, Khan said, but he could not provide a number.

Army Col. Jerry O’Hara, a U.S. military spokesman, confirmed that U.S. casualties occurred but said he could not give further details.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said two of its soldiers died in the blast, but it did not provide nationalities. U.S. soldiers serve as part of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, claimed responsibility for the blast in a phone call to an Associated Press reporter in southern Afghanistan.

The blast came at a time when the U.S. is rushing 20,000 American troops into Afghanistan to combat a Taliban insurgency that has sent violence to record levels.

U.S. officials have warned that the violence will probably intensify. More U.S. troops died in the Afghan conflict in 2008 than in any other year since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

The independent website icasualties.org puts the number last year at 157.

The attack also followed an allegation from Afghan President Hamid Karzai that clashes between U.S.-led troops and insurgents left 17 civilians dead this week.

The U.S. military says all 32 people killed in the fighting were militants.

In a statement Thursday, Karzai said the civilians were killed during clashes between U.S.-led troops and insurgents in the eastern province of Laghman on Tuesday.

Karzai accused the insurgents of using civilians as human shields but also criticized international forces.

The U.S. military, however, said all those killed were militants involved with a bomb-making cell.

“We held [a meeting] with local government officials after the operation, and all local Afghan leaders confirmed that all 32 killed in this operation were hostile militants,” said O’Hara, the spokesman.

Bomb hits U.S. patrol in Afghanistan – Los Angeles Times

The body of local tribesman Shahjir Khan, 25, was found early Tuesday dumped in the central market of Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal district, a security official told AFP.

A note found with Khan’s body said he had been hanged because he had spied on Taliban activities and passed information to the United States, the official said.

The bullet-riddled body of an Afghan refugee identified as Akram Khan was found late Monday near the village of Sarobi, some 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Miranshah, with a similar note, he said.

Militants have killed dozens of local tribesmen and Afghan refugees on charges of spying, mainly for the Pakistani government or US forces operating across the border in Afghanistan.

Elsewhere, Taliban militants in Mohmand tribal district late Monday kidnapped an 11-member jirga, or peace delegation of tribal elders, from neighbouring Bajaur tribal district, a local administration official said.

The official said the elders were snatched during a mission to urge the Taliban not to fire rockets on Khar, the main town in Bajaur, where troops have been fighting militants since early August.

Regional administration deputy chief Iqbal Khattak confirmed to AFP that the kidnapping had taken place but gave no further details.

In the village of Mamoond, also in Bajaur, Taliban militants set fire to the homes of four tribal elders for backing the Pakistani government, residents said.

Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas have been wracked by violence since hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda rebels sought refuge in the region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan toppled the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.

AFP: Taliban kill two US ‘spies’ in Pakistan: official