Afghan progress being made despite tragic incidents, NATO leader says
Incidents similar to this week's fatal shooting of six U.S. troops should not overshadow the progress American forces have made in turning security over to the Afghans, NATO's supreme commander says.
The six were shot Monday by a gunman wearing an Afghan Border Police uniform.
Last summer, two U.S. civilians and an Afghan soldier were reported shot to death by another Afghan soldier. A "rogue" Afghan policeman was blamed for the November 2009 shootings deaths of five British troops in Helmand province.
"Afghanistan is going to be a roller coaster," Adm. James Stavridis, NATO's supreme commander, said Monday. "We're going to see ups and downs. I see gradual, steady progress in Afghanistan, and I remain cautiously optimistic that we're going to succeed in Afghanistan. And I think one of the keys is transition. It is turning security over to the Afghans themselves."
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Reporter recounts Taliban kidnapping
In 2008, David Rohde was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan. He was held for seven months before escaping.
He details his ordeal in his new book co-written with his wife, "A Rope and a Prayer: A Kidnapping from Two Sides," which goes on sale Tuesday. The book chronicles the story of Rohde's kidnapping from two perspectives: David in the hands of the Taliban and his wife Kristen Mulvihill doing whatever she can to free him.
Galbraith: Karzai 'emotional, unstable'
Former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith says leaked classified documents confirm his assessment of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
WikiLeaks: Karzai's brother denies drug dealing
Two of the cables released by the WikiLeaks website this week paint an unflattering and somewhat unexpected portrait of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In a meeting with a senior U.S. diplomat last February, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is the Kandahar provincial council chief, made the case that he, not the governor of Kandahar, was "the most powerful official in Kandahar and could deliver whatever is needed," according to a cable about the meeting leaked Sunday by WikiLeaks. His comments came just as the U.S. was about to focus its military efforts on Kandahar. FULL POST
Soldier to face court martial for alleged role in sport killings
Military officials have referred charges against Staff Sgt. David Bram - in relation to a larger case involving five soldiers accused of killing Afghan citizens for sport - to a general court martial, officials at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington said Monday.
Bram is charged with conspiracy to commit assault and battery, unlawfully striking another soldier, violating a lawful order, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreament and endeavoring to impede an investigation. He is not accused of murder or conspiracy to commit murder. FULL POST
6 dead after gunman turns weapon on troops in Afghanistan
A gunman in an Afghan Border Police uniform opened fire on NATO-led service members Monday, killing six of them, the International Security Assistance Force said.
The incident happened during a training mission in eastern Afghanistan, ISAF said in a statement. A joint Afghan and ISAF team are investigating.
The suspect was also killed in the incident, the statement said.
Twin suicide bombings kill at least 8 in Afghanistan
At least eight people were killed Saturday when two suicide bombers attacked the police headquarters in southeastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a police official said.
The first attacker detonated his explosives around 11:30 a.m. (2 a.m. ET) and the second attacker struck half an hour later, said Gen. Daud Andrabi, director of the Police Coordination Center in southeastern Afghanistan.
There were other reports of more casualties, Andrabi said, and it was also not clear how many of the victims were police officers and how many were civilians.
In the east, a NATO-led service member was killed in a bombing on Saturday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said. ISAF didn't specify the precise location or identify the person's nationality.
Afghanistan investigates charges of election fraud
Four people have been arrested on suspicion of fraudulent activities during Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, the attorney general's office said Thursday.
Two are suspected of taking money from candidates running for parliamentary seats during the September vote, Deputy Attorney General Rahmatiullah Nazari said. FULL POST
An Afghan Thanksgiving
U.S. soldiers celebrate Thanksgiving in the Afghanistan war zone. CNN's Nic Robertson reports.
Desperate women burn themselves
This is not hard to write; it's cathartic. Shooting the story though was anything but: raw emotions accumulated - anger, sorrow, revulsion, and anger again, jumbled in some subconscious store to be sifted and sorted later.
It was a story about Afghan women, their oppression and their desperation.
For a few moments, some of these oppressed voices surface, enter our conscience, before sinking back into the social morass. They are absorbed and returned to the bosom of inhumanity, disappearing without trace, beyond reach, back to the isolated hell whence they came.
Afghan society is closed to outsiders. Even to neighbors. But if you are a woman here you risk entrapment, sealed off more completely inside the home than out. FULL POST
