Daily brief: 10 aid workers murdered in Afghanistan

By Andrew Lebovich, August 9, 2010 Monday, August 9, 2010 - 8:55 AM Share

Unspeakable

Gunmen in the remote Badakhshan province in northeastern Afghanistan killed 10 members of a medical assistance team at the end of a three-week mission to provide eye care to isolated parts of neighboring Nuristan province (LAT, AP, VOA, NYT, WSJ). The team worked for the International Assistance Mission (IAM), which has been in operation in Afghanistan since 1966, and was returning from Nuristan when gunmen with "red dyed beards" came across them, took their possessions, and shot ten of them, including six Americans, one German, one Briton, and two Afghans. A Taliban spokesman claimed credit for the attack, saying the group were proselytizers and spies, charges that the group's director in Kabul denied vehemently (CNN).

The attack showed not only the decreasing level of security in places once considered secure like Badakhshan, but also the growing threat to aid workers in Afghanistan (Wash Post, CNN). The IAM, whose teams contain doctors with decades of experience in Afghanistan and who travel unarmed and with no escort, has vowed to continue its operations in the country (Wash Post). However, as a result of the attack some non-governmental organizations are considering changing their practices, and contemplating negotiating safe passage for teams with insurgent groups (Guardian).

A 48-year old widow this weekend in northwestern Badghis province was reportedly given dozens of lashes before being executed in public by the Taliban (Reuters). In Ghazni province police found the beheaded body of a parliamentary candidate abducted by the Taliban 18 days ago (AFP). According to a new report from Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission more than 1,300 civilians were killed in Afghanistan last year, with 68 percent of those deaths caused by the Taliban (RFE/RL). And this morning three combat outposts in southern Afghanistan reportedly came under attack from insurgents (Reuters).

Building tension

In another sign of friction with the United States Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for private security companies to be disbanded, saying that Afghan security forces were up to the task of protecting buildings and foreigners working in Afghanistan (Reuters). There are believed to be 30,000-40,000 private security guards in Afghanistan, though many are owned by Afghans with links to government figures, as well as relatives of Karzai (WSJ).

Al Jazeera reports that a senior adviser to Karzai told them the government has begun negotiations with some members of the Taliban, and that some fighters have already left the insurgency (AJE). And a spokesman for the website WikiLeaks told reporters that despite pressure the group would continue publishing classified documents, while the New York Times has a profile of Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused of leaking documents including the video that came to be known as "Collateral Murder" to the site (AP, NYT).

Bleak outlook

Pakistani authorities are saying that as many as 14 million people have been affected by massive flooding throughout the country, with more rains falling this weekend and forecast for the coming days (BBC, AP, Dawn, AJE). Food prices across the country skyrocketed as deadly landslides struck northwestern Pakistan, while in Sindh province one dam has been breached and two of the world's largest dams, the Tarbela and the Margla, are reaching their maximum water capacity (BBC, AJE, ET, BBC, Dawn). The top U.N. official in charge of the humanitarian response to the flooding, Martin Mogwanja, said this weekend that Pakistan could need up to $1 billion to rebuild destroyed parts of the country, including the enormous infrastructure toll the flooding has exacted (CNN, VOA). Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani this weekend admitted that the catastrophe had gone "beyond [Pakistan's] capacity" to handle (ET, Daily Times).

Pakistan's army has reportedly rescued up to 100,000 people from flooding, and its efforts have earned it praise in contrast to the civilian government's perceived confused response to the crisis (McClatchy, Reuters). Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has received intense criticism for going ahead with a trip to the U.K. and France as the crisis continues to unfold, and one protester at a Zardari rally in Birmingham threw a shoe at the president (VOA, AP). And aid organizations with links to militant groups like the Taliban continue to expand their aid effort, as the Falah-e-Insaniat foundation, allegedly linked to the banned Jamat-ud-Dawa, claims to be providing food to 100,000 people a day (AP, FT, Wash Post).

Uneasy truce

Prime Minister Gilani arrived in the troubled city of Karachi on Friday to condemn the outbreak of violence there and hold talks with the city's leading political parties, including the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP) (AFP). Leaders from the MQM and ANP as well as the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP) held a peace march on Sunday in Karachi to urge an end to the targeted killings that have wracked the city (ET). And sectarian violence continues in Faisalabad, where last month riots broke out after two Christian brothers were killed by an unidentified attacker (NYT).

The U.N. and United States on Friday designated the Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI) a terrorist organization, along with its commander Mohamed Ilyas Kashmiri (ToI, AP, NDTV). HUJI is blamed for multiple attacks in India and Pakistan, as well as for working with al Qaeda and sending fighters to the Taliban in Afghanistan; Kashmiri also allegedly worked with David Coleman Headley on a plot targeting a Danish newspaper that ran a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad (AFP).

And a British couple of Pakistani origin has been killed in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province in a supposed "honor killing" after their daughter expressed her wishes to back out of an engagement with a local man (Tel, Independent, BBC).

Flashpoint

More than 500 people are missing after flash floods in Indian-administered Kashmir, and 300 foreign tourists are stranded in one afflicted part of the region (AP, Reuters, VOA). Kashmiri separatists this weekend rejected an Indian offer for talks (AJE, AFP). And Indian authorities on Monday reinstated a the curfew that had been lifted only the day before, after a protester hospitalized after clashes last week died overnight (Dawn, AP, Tel).

Snake doctor

In Afghanistan,which has one doctor for every 10,000 people, one in the north stands out for his use of homeopathic remedies based on snake and scorpion venom (AP). Despite official doubts about his effectiveness, the doctor says his remedies have treated many suffering from skin diseases and epilepsy, and hundreds go to his clinic for treatment.

Sign up here to receive the daily brief in your inbox. Follow the AfPak Channel on Twitter and Facebook.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFPAK, AFGHANISTAN, AFPAK CHANNEL, AFPAK DAILY BRIEF, DISASTERS, PAKISTAN, TALIBAN, TERRORISM, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

(2)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

MARTY MARTEL

9:56 AM ET

August 9, 2010

The sun in the sky, WikiLeak leaks, Canadian Ambassador

As long as US government and news media continue to ignore Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/10, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/10 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/10 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘, problems faced by US Afghan mission will continue to not only persist but compound.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line. This is where rubber meets the road for the famous General.

As Matt Waldman reported, “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US aid to bankrupt Pakistan finances the death of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its own troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Pakistan has denied presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil umpteen times and just recently Adm Mike Mullen repeated in Islamabad that Osama is hiding in a very secure place in Pakistan.

The most breath-taking part of this sordid saga is that US is NOT holding Pakistan responsible for sheltering, protecting and supporting Haqqani’s HQN network and Mullah Omar’s QST network all these years while those networks have been causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers ever since 2002 even though Pakistan was SUPPOSED to have joined US fight against same Taliban back in 2001!

Can American CIA not know what Matt Waldman knows? How come Obama administration is continuing Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan with such incriminating evidence against Pakistan’s double game? How can US mission in Afghanistan succeed if Obama administration continues to ignore such Pakistani duplicity like Bush had done it before Obama? How long will US continue to evade what is as obvious as a ’bright sun’ in the sky on a summer day?

CEOUNICOM

5:25 PM ET

August 9, 2010

We approve of your return to "mollycoddling"...

...and abandonment of, "Bamboozling", which is not nearly as memorable.

Plus, you got the formula back on track = the last paragraph is where it goes! I was worried you had permanently revised your script. God forbid you should ever be accused of originality.

Seriously "marty", you'd think we'd all already know these points. I mean, you may have noticed there is a whole magazine here full of these little factoids. Repeating them ad nauseam every day, on every post, in exactly the same way is not adding to the information flow in any way.

Challenge to "Marty" = If you can write a slightly new version of your pamphlet *every day* for at least a week, I'll stop bothering to make fun of you. I'm not even asking for new material - just revise them slightly when you repost the stuff. Oh, I know you already do delete a sentence sometimes here and there.... I mean, try actually connecting your comment to the post above each time. Just like one original and relevant sentence at the beginning... then you can copy/paste your redundant screed. It would be so refreshing. Just one sentence. You always pride yourself on being the first post on every thread; just give us ONE SENTENCE that isn't repetition of the same thing, and it would make you 80%.... well, no, more like 50% less irritating. Is that so much? Even crazy A.Khan/Lal Qila attempts wit and repartee from time to time (albeit like a petulant 4yr old)... you are more like a crazy person on the street ranting at the lightposts who no one pays any attention to anymore. You have to realize that a little variety is what pays off in the end. Just a tad. Come on sport, you can do it!

The funny part is that if you (as you seem) are indeed an Indian propaganda hack, you would probably find other people bringing up all these points all on their own without your help. Ironically, your monotonous contribution does nothing but make people bored with the whole issue. Again, the law of diminishing returns my friend. You need to have an ideation session with your minders, and perhaps consider refreshing the whole trolling strategy. A brand makeover as it were.

Good luck with that BTW.

As for the killings of the aid workers.... I do wonder what the Lal Qila machine has to say. He shed a crocodile tear for Sufis, once, before ranting about the Hindoos are to blame for everything. But what about unarmed old men and young women being shot for trying to provide medical care to Afghans? Or women whipped and shot for having relationships with men? "All is fair in war" he sometimes says... but this is not part of any war. This is exactly what they'd be doing (especially) if no one were "occupying" afghanistan. These are the Pashtun 'freedom-fighters' he thinks should be allowed to rule half of Afghanistan. I do wonder what it would take to make him actually disavow these thugs. It seems nothing if not things like this. But his silence on all these issues is telling of his cowardice; even on the question of flooding in Pakistan, all he could talk about was how Pakistan's bomb was so relevant to global security. Embarrassing really. More embarrassing perhaps is the fact that we went into that country 9 years ago partly to end atrocities like this, and yet we have so little to show for it.