Taliban "On Brink of Defeat"

Four Canadian soldiers and an Afghan interpreter were wounded Monday in two separate incidents in southern Afghanistan, according to the Canadian Forces.

While all five are expected to survive, one soldier was "very seriously" wounded and two others "seriously" wounded, army spokesman Maj. Jay Janzen said in a release. The interpreter is in good condition.

The most seriously wounded Canadian will be flown to Germany for further treatment at the American hospital in Landstuhl.

None of the soldiers' names will be released, said Janzen.

The troops were on routine patrols in Zhari district where the Canadians have recently conducted operations to disrupt bomb-making operations by the Taliban.

In the first incident, troops were attacked with small arms fire and one soldier was wounded.

At about the same time, three Canadian soldiers on foot patrol were injured when a roadside bomb detonated. This incident caused the most serious injuries.

Janzen described the attacks as retaliation for the gains made by Canadian soldiers against the Taliban.

Canada has about 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them based in Kandahar province.

Insurgents have recently stepped up attacks against Afghan and foreign troops in an attempt to weaken the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Since 2002, 82 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have been killed in Afghanistan.

Parliament recently approved an extension to the Afghan mission, which had been slated to expire next year. The approval came after other NATO countries promised to provide more troops and extra equipment.

The presence of Canadian troops, diplomats and development workers is now assured until July 2011.

Violence has increased around Afghanistan the last two years, even as more and more international troops have poured into the country.
More than 1,500 people have died in insurgency related violence this year, according to an Associated Press count.

Presided over by Lord Conrad Black, the Canadian media mogul who gave up his citizenship to become a British aristocrat, the Hollinger combine is a particularly muscular tentacle of the neocon media octopus, and its demise would mark a great setback for the War Party.

Although he still remains the single biggest shareholder, Black was forced to step down as CEO, along with two other confederates, after a company investigation found that he took $7.2 million in unauthorized pay. This is not counting millions in payments to Black's front companies, for "management services," while the company's stock fell in the face of rising media stock prices. Minority stockholders are up in arms. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating, widening its probe to include an examination of the financial shenanigans indulged in by members of Hollinger's board, who rubberstamped the abuse and misuse of investors' money. Steven Pearlstein, writing in the Washington Post, has a particularly clear-eyed take on the matter:

"It's amazing the coincidences you find digging into Hollinger International, the publishing empire that includes Chicago's Sun-Times and London's Daily Telegraph and is quickly slipping from Conrad Black's control.

Pakistani Taliban Vows Attacks in Afghanistan, Seek Peace in Pakistan

By Barry Newhouse
Islamabad
24 May 2008

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Pakistan's top Taliban commander is vowing to continue fighting U.S. and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan, even if he signs a peace deal with the Pakistani government. VOA's Barry Newhouse reports from Islamabad that fugitive commander Baitullah Mehsud spoke to a group of journalists, who were invited to his compound in the country's South Waziristan tribal region.

Baitullah Mehsud said clashes between the Taliban and Pakistan's army in the past year have harmed both Islam and Pakistan. He called for an immediate end to the fighting.

But Mehsud indicated that any peace agreement in Pakistan would have no bearing on attacks against NATO and U.S. forces across the border in Afghanistan, vowing to continue what he called the "jihad in Afghanistan".

A top Pakistani military spokesman declined to comment on Mehsud's statements when contacted by VOA.

Pakistani officials have pursued talks with militant groups, arguing that President Pervez Musharraf's military campaign against the militants in the last year only escalated the conflict. Officials are pursuing a peace deal, offering prisoner exchanges and troop withdrawals from Taliban strongholds in exchange for pledges from militants to halt attacks.

U.S. officials have expressed concern that peace deals with Taliban fighters will better allow them to stage attacks in Afghanistan, similar to the failed peace deals that President Musharraf struck with the groups less than two years ago.

On Friday, Maulvi Omer, a spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, claimed that the new peace agreements are different.

He said that both the Pakistani government and the Taliban have learned a lot from the past, and, this time, the two sides should resolve the problem. He said, reaching an agreement is in the interests of both the government and the Taliban.

Pakistan's new government, led by the Pakistan People's Party, is supporting peace talks with Mehsud, even though he remains a top suspect in the killing of party leader Benazir Bhutto. In recent days, party leaders said they will ask the United Nations to investigate her December assassination.

Mehsud, who has denied he was involved in Bhutto's killing, told reporters that he would not cooperate with any U.N. investigation.

Bring it on.

May 24, 2008 ·
In Afghanistan, NATO-led troops say recent peace agreements between the Taliban and the government of neighboring Pakistan are already having a negative impact on security on the Afghan side of the border.

NATO officials say over the past three to four weeks, Taliban attacks along Afghanistan's eastern border have jumped from 60 to 100 incidents a week.

A spokesman for the NATO-led coalition in Kabul says the spike in insurgent attacks is the result of decreased activity by the Pakistani army on the Pakistan side of the border.

There, the Pakistan government has been negotiating cease-fire agreements with Taliban militants. Islamabad hopes to bring an end to more then a year of bloody fighting in the country's troubled border regions.

On Saturday, Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander in Pakistan, called for an end to the war with the Pakistani government. But, he told journalists, Islam does not recognize frontiers. Jihad in Afghanistan will continue, he said.

That's an ominous warning to the shaky Western-backed Afghan government and to the NATO-led force of some 70,000 foreign soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan.

NATO's top commander, Gen. John Craddock, says he worries about the border with Pakistan.

"If the safe haven is not taken away," he says, "whenever the insurgents are under duress, then they can leave, reconstitute and come back at the time of their choosing."

Pakistani blast kills 6 outside embassy

Dozens injured in attack near Danish offices
By Mubashir Zaidi and Laura King, Los Angeles Times | June 3, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A car bombing that killed at least six people and wounded dozens of others near the Danish Embassy yesterday raised fears that Al Qaeda-linked militants might be moving to fill a void left by other Islamist fighters seeking truces with Pakistan's new government.

The powerful blast occurred in an upscale neighborhood just outside the gates of the embassy, which has been the target of protests over caricatures of the prophet Mohammed published in Danish newspapers. It was the second bombing in less than three months to target foreigners or foreign interests in the Pakistani capital.

The explosion, which could be heard across much of the normally tranquil city, shattered windows in the embassy building, left a deep crater in the road outside, and wrecked dozens of vehicles parked nearby.

Most embassy personnel were no longer working in the building because of protests early this year after Danish newspapers reprinted the 2005 cartoons. The dead included two policemen, a janitor at the Danish mission, and passersby, authorities said.

The force of the blast, which came during lunch hour, twisted the embassy's heavy metal gates and knocked down a section of the wall surrounding the building.

Recently, Ayman Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al Qaeda, had urged followers to strike at Danish targets over the offending cartoons. The blast, coming after weeks of relative calm in Pakistan, suggested that the government may be vulnerable to such attacks even if it can make peace with local elements of the Taliban.

Pakistan's ruling coalition, led by the party of Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who was assassinated, condemned the attack. But officials said they would not be deterred from conducting negotiations with Islamic militants based in Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border and elsewhere in the country's volatile northwest.


Those negotiations have resulted in accords with some smaller militant groups but not with Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the main umbrella group of Pakistani Taliban. Pakistani authorities and the CIA have blamed Mehsud, who is thought to have links to Al Qaeda, for masterminding the Dec. 27 assassination of Bhutto, a charge he has denied.

Until now, groups like Mehsud's have cited the policies of the Pakistani government as a pretext for carrying out attacks. Yesterday's bombing suggested that wider Western interests could also be targeted.

US officials have been giving the recently elected leadership time to establish control, even as it makes overtures to extremist groups in the tribal regions.

"This is still a new civilian government," said Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, speaking at a security conference in Singapore last weekend. "We need to give them time to gain an appreciation of the range of challenges that they face and the nature of the challenge there in the northwest."

But privately, Defense Department officials acknowledge some disagreement within the Pentagon over whether to press the new government to move more aggressively against Al Qaeda-linked fighters. Some officials have expressed concern about recent intelligence reports that suggest Al Qaeda is regaining its capabilities to strike outside South Asia.

The US Embassy urged American nationals to exercise caution when moving about in the capital after yesterday's blast, which damaged two nearby diplomat residences.

The force of the explosion was so strong that the engine of the car in which the bomb was believed to have been planted was flung more than 100 feet. The nearby office of a United Nations-funded group was evacuated, and more than 30 of its employees sustained cuts from flying glass.

and i would add that it's a little early to declare the party over.

Afghan war to drag on for 10 years: Australian military chief"I would say it's an endeavour that will last at least 10 years," the head of the defence force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston told a parliamentary committee.

Taliban rebels still control large parts of the southern Uruzgan province where most of Australia's 1,000 troops are deployed, Houston said, despite some successes by special forces units.

Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, meanwhile, said at least 10,000 more troops were needed to fight the rebellion but they were unlikely to be provided by European nations.

About 70,000 troops provided by the United States and NATO countries are helping Afghan forces against the Taliban, who were ousted in a US-led invasion in 2001.

"I am of the view that we need at the very least an additional 10,000 troops in Afghanistan and to be frank I don't see any Europeans who look likely to put up substantial numbers any time soon," Fitzgibbon told the national AAP news agency in an interview.

"I fear it will fall to the US to do a lot on the military front and I sense a willingness on their part to do so. But, of course, they have enormous concurrency issues. They are overstretched."

Fitzgibbon ruled out Australia committing more troops to Afghanistan.

"We are the largest non-NATO contributor. We are the 10th largest contributor overall and we are just not prepared to do more while ever we are of the view that there are others that could be doing more," he said.

"Just as importantly, we simply don't have the capacity."

The Taliban were ousted in an invasion led by the United States in late 2001 after the Islamic rebels refused to hand over Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Their insurgency left 8,000 people dead last year, most of them rebels. This year, 70 foreign soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, according to an AFP count.