Violence up in Afghanistan, UN warns

Afghanistan is seeing higher levels of violence this year than last year at this time, with 20% more civilians killed and the number of "security incidents" up by 66%, the United Nations says in a new report.

The number of civilians killed by the United States and its allies was lower, but insurgent attacks are significantly higher, meaning the overall number of civilian deaths is up.

More than 2,400 civilians were killed, and more than 3,800 injured in the first 10 months of this year, the report says.

More than three out of four of the casualties were caused by "anti-government elements," it says.

That's a 25 percent increase on last year, it said. Deaths caused by U.S. troops and their allies were down 18 percent.

"Assassinations" of civilians and police reached "unprecedented numbers" in August, and there were an average of three suicide attacks per week, the U.N. said in its quarterly report.

The United Nations report, which was finalized December 10, also tracked widespread kidnapping of aid workers.

A total of 134 were abducted between June and the end of October, the U.N. said. Most were freed quickly, but one Afghan was killed by his captors, the world body said.

A British aid worker was also killed this year by U.S. special forces trying to rescue her from kidnappers. Linda Norgrove, 36, was killed by an American grenade thrown by a rescuer who did not realize she was there.

U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the top international military commander in Afghanistan until he was fired in June, urged his troops to avoid civilian casualties in order to avoid making enemies of the population.

"It is better to miss a target than to cause civilian casualties," McChrystal said in December 2009. "We can always target enemy leaders later. We can't make up for the fact that we killed civilians."

But there continued to be high-profile incidents, including one where 23 civilians were killed in a NATO airstrike in February.

McChrystal personally apologized to Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai for those killings and ordered an investigation. It concluded that troops needed more training.

McChrystal's dismissal was not related to the incident. He was fired over disrespectful comments his inner circle made about top White House officials in a profile of the general in Rolling Stone magazine.

The United Nations report was prepared for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

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Taliban says Afghan stress weakened Holbrooke

The Afghan Taliban said on Tuesday diplomat Richard Holbrooke was a "giant of American politics and diplomacy" but had been weakened by the challenge of trying to end a war that has dragged on for nearly a decade.

Taliban Spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s caused the death of their leaders, although he did not cite medical evidence, and added the conflict may mean other U.S. officials follow Holbrooke to "lighten their burden by simply going to the other world".

"The protracted Afghan war and the descending trajectory of the Americans' handling of the warfare in the country had had a lethal dent on Holbrooke's health as a high-ranking American official," Ahmadi said in a emailed English-language statement.

"He was grappling with a constant psychological stress."

The Taliban, hardline Islamists who are the leading group in the insurgency that Holbrooke was trying to end, governed most of Afghanistan from 1996 until they were ousted by U.S.-backed troops after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

Their fight has gained momentum in recent years, with the conflict spreading to once relatively peaceful parts of the country. This has also been the bloodiest year of the war, with record civilian and foreign troop casualties.

Holbrooke, who negotiated the 1995 accord that ended the Balkans war and was U.S. President Barack Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Monday at age 69, after surgery to repair a tear in his aorta.

Ahmadi said Holbrooke was the latest in a long line of senior officials who were devastated by the effort of running a war in Afghanistan, citing the deaths of Soviet leaders Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko and Leonid Brezhnev.

"They relieved themselves of the hard task of the Afghan mission by retreating into the lap of death," he said.

"The recent symptoms are indicating that an outbreak of the same epidemic diseases has started in the political and military echelons of America," he added.

General David Petraeus, top U.S. and NATO commander for Afghanistan, briefly collapsed at a Senate hearing in June but blamed dehydration and skipping breakfast.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview published in August that he aimed to retire next year, although his press secretary shot the comments down as no more than "musings" over a wish to quit, which Gates has done before.

"Some of them lighten their burden by simply going to the other world and others, while being still alive, choose to avoid shouldering the mission," Ahmadi added.

The American embassy in Kabul did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the statement.

No decisive victory one year into Afghan surge

One year after President Barack Obama ordered a troop buildup to halt the Taliban's momentum, the war in Afghanistan has not broken decisively in favor of U.S.-led forces — at least not yet.

While NATO forces have routed insurgents from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's strongest region, the militants have opened new fronts in the north and west and have stepped up attacks in the east.

At the same time, the surge has exacted a high price: More than 680 international troops, including at least 472 Americans, have been killed in 2010, making it the deadliest year of the war. Hundreds of Afghan civilians have also died, most as a result of Taliban attacks.

There has been little progress in dislodging the militants from their sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan. A corrupt and ineffectual Afghan government remains a fragile pillar of the U.S. war strategy. And many Afghans expect the Taliban to return to their southern strongholds when the winter snows melt.

"Will they come back? This will be answered in the spring," said Sadeek Dhottani, a 41-year-old farmer in Marjah. "What I think is yes they probably will because when spring appears, the Taliban always show up with greater force and enthusiasm."

The White House's year-end report on the war, to be released this week, is expected to express confidence that Afghan forces can take the lead in securing the country by the end of 2014, but also raise troubling questions about Pakistan's efforts to root out militants.

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called for patience, saying that the extra 30,000 U.S. troops, along with about 10,000 additional NATO forces, just finished arriving at the end of August — roughly nine months after Obama ordered the buildup on Dec. 1, 2009.

Patience as the war plods on, however, is something Afghans are running short of. Tired of the fighting, they wonder why their daily lives have not markedly improved despite billions of dollars in foreign assistance and thousands of foreign troops on their soil for more than nine years.

"I am not able to calmly come to my shop from my house," Sayed Rahmat, a 27-year-old shopkeeper in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, which has not seen the tentative security gains that Afghan and NATO troops have achieved in the south.

"If we don't have security, then we don't have work opportunities," Rahmat told The Associated Press. "Every day that passes, the security situation is getting worse. The government is not in a position to bring peace. Every day, the Taliban are getting more powerful than the government."

In northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces, hideouts for the Taliban, al-Qaida and fighters from other militant factions, including the Haqqani network.

Using Badghis province as a hub, the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts.

Petraeus says that in the past few months the coalition has arrested the Taliban's momentum in some parts of eastern Afghanistan and in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the focus of the U.S.-led campaign. According to the coalition, 2,469 insurgents were captured and 952 were killed during the 90-day period ending Dec. 2.

The coalition also has ramped up the air war in Afghanistan since this summer. In the first 11 months of the year, coalition aircraft have used 5,465 bombs and Hellfire missiles, exceeding the 4,184 dropped in all of last year.

Whether the counterinsurgency strategy — clearing militants from a territory, holding it, developing it and then transferring it to the Afghans — will ultimately be deemed successful depends a lot on perception. Local government officials can tout a development project, but a few high-profile bombings can fuel the insurgents' fear and intimidation campaign. It's hard for Afghans to back foreigners if they think they're going to be killed as a result.

According to a quarterly report by the coalition, number of Afghans who rate their security situation as "bad" is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend is likely a result of the steady rise in violence since the beginning of the year, the report said.

"The situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country," more than 30 academics, aid workers and others working in Afghanistan wrote in an open letter to Obama last week.

"It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition."

The Obama administration plans to begin a modest withdrawal of troops next July although the White House insists it will not abandon Afghanistan. There are currently about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But key players have been hedging their bets, uncertain whether the administration is prepared to stay for the long haul, will move quickly to exit an increasingly unpopular conflict, or something in between.

Pakistan, America's nominal ally, says it's fighting insurgents. But it still tolerates al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban militants hiding out on its soil — out of reach of U.S.-led NATO ground forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has opened communication channels with insurgents interested in reconciling, but no formal peace talks are on the horizon.

There are other significant challenges off the battleground.

Bribery, graft and political payoffs are commonplace all the way up to the highest levels of the Afghan government, undermining the people's confidence in its ability to protect them and provide services.

The growth of the Afghan security forces has exceeded goals, but a shortfall of 770 international trainers threatens to impede plans for Afghan soldiers and police to take the lead in securing the country by 2014.

Improvements in governance and development — the second phase of Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy — are uneven and lag security gains.

"The foreigners seem more focused on providing us services, said Ismail Jalal Zai, a 23-year-old day laborer in the southern Afghan district of Marjah. "If you ask about the local government, I can barely see their interest in providing for us. Their attitude is about the same as before."

Nevertheless, security has improved in Marjah, where the police once were so corrupt that residents feared them more than the Taliban. A major offensive in February to rout the Taliban yielded slower than expected returns, but the troop buildup later in the year has pushed insurgents to the outskirts of the main center of the district.

"We sure can see the difference if we compare today with last year when just moving in and out of Marjah was difficult and dangerous and we barely traveled," Zai said.

Security also has improved elsewhere in central Helmand province, particularly Nawa, where Afghan security forces now outnumber U.S. troops. But the coalition remains engaged in fierce fighting in Sangin district in the northern part of the province. British forces suffered heavy casualties in Sangin, and the U.S. has lost at least 38 service members since it took over in September.

This summer, tens of thousands of Afghan and international troops flooded neighboring Kandahar province. The forces established checkpoints around Kandahar city, where gunmen had assassinated the deputy mayor in April as he knelt for evening prayers in a mosque — one of several government officials who have been slain.

"You can see that it's working because for many months we have not heard an explosion in the city," said Kandahar Mayor Gulam Hamidi.

That was until Saturday, when a car bomb exploded outside police headquarters, wounding two civilians and four policemen and blowing out windows up to a mile (1.5 kilometers) away. Hamidi, who travels in a bulletproof vehicle, said the bombing was carried out by insurgents aided by corrupt Afghan policemen.

"A few policemen sold out their souls to the insurgents," he said.

There also has been heavy fighting in the surrounding districts of Zhari, Arghandab and Panjwai, once the home turf of the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Omar. Coalition and Afghan forces have conducted night raids and airstrikes, destroyed weapons and bomb-making factories and cleared roadside mines.

On Sunday, the Taliban retaliated. A minibus packed with explosives blew up the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base in Zhari. Two Afghan soldiers died in the blast. Six American servicemen will return home in coffins.

German minister under fire for Afghan 'PR' trip

Germany's defence minister, touted as a possible future chancellor, was accused Monday of turning a trip to Afghanistan into a publicity stunt after taking his wife and a talkshow host with him.

The visit to northern Afghanistan by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, his wife Stephanie and chatshow supremo Johannes B. Kerner shows the couple "is more about show than substance", the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger daily said.

Hannelore Kraft, a deputy leader of the opposition Social Democrats, accused the couple of behaving as though the 39-year-old had already succeeded fellow conservative Angela Merkel as chancellor.

"When politics is staged it makes people more fed with up politics," Kraft told the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. "This is particularly so when it comes to our soldiers' dangerous mission in Afghanistan."

Greens party co-head Claudia Roth called the trip "crude self-promotion" while the far-left pacifist Die Linke said the minister should have taken to Germany's 4,600 troops in Afghanistan "orders to come home, not his PR retinue".

Zu Guttenberg touched down Monday in Mazar-i-Sharif, command headquarters for the northern region, where most of the 4,500 German soldiers deployed to Afghanistan are stationed, before going to the Kunduz military camp, the defence ministry said.

"I would simply like, before Christmas, to say thank you to the soldiers," he said when questioned on arrival by German ARD television.

The aristocratic zu Guttenberg -- or Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, to give him his full name -- is Germany's most popular politician.

Zu Guttenberg's noble family goes back to the Middle Ages, with a castle and a coat of arms, and his wife is a direct descendent of Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century "Iron Chancellor" and father of the modern German state.

Nicknamed "the rocking baron" for his love of rock music, he became economy minister in February 2009 and moved to defence after Merkel's re-election seven months later, and he is widely seen as having ambitions for the top job.

But Merkel's leadership is unchallenged, as other figures once seen as potential rivals have been sidelined over the years, and this is not the first time that zu Guttenberg has found himself under fire.

His wife has no political role but has risen in prominence in recent months, most notably spearheading a campaign against child pornography.

Germany forms the third largest contingent of foreign troops in Afghanistan after the United States and Britain, but the mission is unpopular among voters, surveys show. Forty-four German troops have been killed.

A government report to the German parliament made public on Monday said that the conditions were in place for there to be a "definite turning point" in the mission in 2011.

The report attacked however high levels of corruption within Afghanistan, as well as a lack of determination, a random decision-making process and insufficient government personnel.

No decisive victory one year into Afghan surge

One year after President Barack Obama ordered a troop buildup to halt the Taliban's momentum, the war in Afghanistan has not broken decisively in favor of U.S.-led forces — at least not yet.

While NATO forces have routed insurgents from their strongholds in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban's strongest region, the militants have opened new fronts in the north and west and have stepped up attacks in the east.

At the same time, the surge has exacted a high price: More than 680 international troops, including at least 472 Americans, have been killed in 2010, making it the deadliest year of the war. Hundreds of Afghan civilians have also died, most as a result of Taliban attacks.

There has been little progress in dislodging the militants from their sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan. A corrupt and ineffectual Afghan government remains a fragile pillar of the U.S. war strategy. And many Afghans expect the Taliban to return to their southern strongholds when the winter snows melt.

"Will they come back? This will be answered in the spring," said Sadeek Dhottani, a 41-year-old farmer in Marjah. "What I think is yes they probably will because when spring appears, the Taliban always show up with greater force and enthusiasm."

The White House's year-end report on the war, to be released this week, is expected to express confidence that Afghan forces can take the lead in securing the country by the end of 2014, but also raise troubling questions about Pakistan's efforts to root out militants.

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has called for patience, saying that the extra 30,000 U.S. troops, along with about 10,000 additional NATO forces, just finished arriving at the end of August — roughly nine months after Obama ordered the buildup on Dec. 1, 2009.

Patience as the war plods on, however, is something Afghans are running short of. Tired of the fighting, they wonder why their daily lives have not markedly improved despite billions of dollars in foreign assistance and thousands of foreign troops on their soil for more than nine years.

"I am not able to calmly come to my shop from my house," Sayed Rahmat, a 27-year-old shopkeeper in Ghazni province in eastern Afghanistan, which has not seen the tentative security gains that Afghan and NATO troops have achieved in the south.

"If we don't have security, then we don't have work opportunities," Rahmat told The Associated Press. "Every day that passes, the security situation is getting worse. The government is not in a position to bring peace. Every day, the Taliban are getting more powerful than the government."

In northern Afghanistan, security has been deteriorating for the past two years in Kunduz and surrounding provinces, hideouts for the Taliban, al-Qaida and fighters from other militant factions, including the Haqqani network.

Using Badghis province as a hub, the Taliban also have spread their influence in western Afghanistan and now control several districts.

Petraeus says that in the past few months the coalition has arrested the Taliban's momentum in some parts of eastern Afghanistan and in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the focus of the U.S.-led campaign. According to the coalition, 2,469 insurgents were captured and 952 were killed during the 90-day period ending Dec. 2.

The coalition also has ramped up the air war in Afghanistan since this summer. In the first 11 months of the year, coalition aircraft have used 5,465 bombs and Hellfire missiles, exceeding the 4,184 dropped in all of last year.

Whether the counterinsurgency strategy — clearing militants from a territory, holding it, developing it and then transferring it to the Afghans — will ultimately be deemed successful depends a lot on perception. Local government officials can tout a development project, but a few high-profile bombings can fuel the insurgents' fear and intimidation campaign. It's hard for Afghans to back foreigners if they think they're going to be killed as a result.

According to a quarterly report by the coalition, number of Afghans who rate their security situation as "bad" is the highest since the nationwide survey began in September 2008. This downward trend is likely a result of the steady rise in violence since the beginning of the year, the report said.

"The situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country," more than 30 academics, aid workers and others working in Afghanistan wrote in an open letter to Obama last week.

"It is now very difficult to work outside the cities or even move around Afghanistan by road. The insurgents have built momentum, exploiting the shortcomings of the Afghan government and the mistakes of the coalition."

The Obama administration plans to begin a modest withdrawal of troops next July although the White House insists it will not abandon Afghanistan. There are currently about 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But key players have been hedging their bets, uncertain whether the administration is prepared to stay for the long haul, will move quickly to exit an increasingly unpopular conflict, or something in between.

Pakistan, America's nominal ally, says it's fighting insurgents. But it still tolerates al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban militants hiding out on its soil — out of reach of U.S.-led NATO ground forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has opened communication channels with insurgents interested in reconciling, but no formal peace talks are on the horizon.

There are other significant challenges off the battleground.

Bribery, graft and political payoffs are commonplace all the way up to the highest levels of the Afghan government, undermining the people's confidence in its ability to protect them and provide services.

The growth of the Afghan security forces has exceeded goals, but a shortfall of 770 international trainers threatens to impede plans for Afghan soldiers and police to take the lead in securing the country by 2014.

Improvements in governance and development — the second phase of Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy — are uneven and lag security gains.

"The foreigners seem more focused on providing us services, said Ismail Jalal Zai, a 23-year-old day laborer in the southern Afghan district of Marjah. "If you ask about the local government, I can barely see their interest in providing for us. Their attitude is about the same as before."

Nevertheless, security has improved in Marjah, where the police once were so corrupt that residents feared them more than the Taliban. A major offensive in February to rout the Taliban yielded slower than expected returns, but the troop buildup later in the year has pushed insurgents to the outskirts of the main center of the district.

"We sure can see the difference if we compare today with last year when just moving in and out of Marjah was difficult and dangerous and we barely traveled," Zai said.

Security also has improved elsewhere in central Helmand province, particularly Nawa, where Afghan security forces now outnumber U.S. troops. But the coalition remains engaged in fierce fighting in Sangin district in the northern part of the province. British forces suffered heavy casualties in Sangin, and the U.S. has lost at least 38 service members since it took over in September.

This summer, tens of thousands of Afghan and international troops flooded neighboring Kandahar province. The forces established checkpoints around Kandahar city, where gunmen had assassinated the deputy mayor in April as he knelt for evening prayers in a mosque — one of several government officials who have been slain.

"You can see that it's working because for many months we have not heard an explosion in the city," said Kandahar Mayor Gulam Hamidi.

That was until Saturday, when a car bomb exploded outside police headquarters, wounding two civilians and four policemen and blowing out windows up to a mile (1.5 kilometers) away. Hamidi, who travels in a bulletproof vehicle, said the bombing was carried out by insurgents aided by corrupt Afghan policemen.

"A few policemen sold out their souls to the insurgents," he said.

There also has been heavy fighting in the surrounding districts of Zhari, Arghandab and Panjwai, once the home turf of the Taliban's one-eyed leader, Mullah Omar. Coalition and Afghan forces have conducted night raids and airstrikes, destroyed weapons and bomb-making factories and cleared roadside mines.

On Sunday, the Taliban retaliated. A minibus packed with explosives blew up the entrance of a joint NATO-Afghan base in Zhari. Two Afghan soldiers died in the blast. Six American servicemen will return home in coffins.

WH: Obama to discuss Afghanistan policy Thursday

The White House says President Barack Obama will make a statement Thursday about the results of a one-year review of his Afghanistan war strategy.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama is confident that the United States is making progress. It was the latest signal that Obama is not expected to unveil any major policy changes.

[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]


Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others will likely brief reporters after Obama's statement. The White House also will release a public version of the review.

Afghan, NATO forces detain several people after weekend suicide attack

Afghan and coalition forces have detained several people after a weekend suicide attack that killed six Americans, officials said Monday.

The attack took place Sunday in southern Afghanistan and all six NATO service members who were killed were Americans, a U.S. military source said.

In the attack, a suicide bomber driving a minibus attacked a joint NATO and Afghan national army compound, the governor's office in the southern province of Kandahar said.

The blast also killed a child, two Afghan national army soldiers and wounded six other Afghan soldiers, the governor's office said.

Following the attack, Afghan and coalition forces carried out two operations in Kandahar and Helmand provinces Sunday to look for a person connected to the incident, the International Security Assistance Force said.

The force detained several people in the raids. Asked if the targeted person was among those taken into custody, a spokesman for the U.S. military said officials were "still assessing the individuals detained."

The person who was targeted not only coordinates attacks but also acquires and supplies weapons throughout central Kandahar, the security force said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. defense department has identified two Amricans who died Wednesday of wounds suffered when an insurgent attacked their unit with a bomb.

The victims are Sgt. James A. Ayube II, 25, of Salem, Massachussetts; and Spc. Kelly J. Mixon, 23, of Yulee, Florida, the U.S. defense department said.

The soldiers were assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany.

Civilians killed in Afghan fighting

Seven people thought to be civilians died in an eastern Afghanistan military operation, and bombers targeting security forces in the north and the south left several people wounded, authorities told CNN on Saturday.

The fighting erupted on Saturday as NATO-led forces pressed on against militants in the Afghanistan, a battle-scarred country that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called "tough terrain" this week.

It also comes a day after 15 civilians were killed and four others were wounded when a roadside bomb ripped through a village in Helmand province.

The latest incident occurred in Paktia province, where Abdul Rahman Mangal, the deputy provincial governor, told CNN that seven road construction workers mistakenly killed in a joint NATO-Afghan military operation.

He said forces were working to arrest a suspected insurgent who was near the people.

"The suspected insurgent was arrested, and investigation is under way to getting more details," Mangal said.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force said it is investigating allegations that the dead civilians were seven members of a private security company.

ISAF said the force was hunting down a militant linked to a recent suicide attack at a base near Gardez City.

After the militant -- a member of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network -- was detained, the forces "moved to a follow-on target nearby to investigate suspected insurgent activity," ISAF said.

Using a bullhorn and speaking in Pashtun, occupants of a targeted vehicle and compound were told to leave peacefully.

"During the call-out, a male exited an SUV with an AK-47 and moved toward the security force. The security force assessed the individual to be hostile and shot him. Multiple other armed individuals then engaged the force, which resulted in a total of seven individuals killed," ISAF said.

The security force is looking into who the people were, why they were armed, and why they were in the area, ISAF said.

Violence also ripped through Kunduz province, an increasingly unstable region of northern Afghanistan where militant and criminal violence has increased lately.

A suicide attacker targeted an Afghan army post in the Dobandi area of Chardra district with a police vehicle captured last year during fighting. Nine civilians, including women and children, and four soldiers were wounded, a provincial official told CNN.

In Kandahar province, a long volatile southern region, an improvised explosive device attack 100 meters from police headquarters injured six people.