Insider attack leaves 1 dead
An Afghan soldier opened fire on coalition forces in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday morning, killing one soldier and wounding at least four others in the first so-called insider attack in more than a month, officials said.The Afghan soldier began firing at a passing convoy of coalition vehicles from a tower at Kandahar Air Field around 10:30 a.m., according to Abdul Raziq Shirzai, commander of the Afghan air force brigade in Kandahar. Officials said they did not think the Taliban were responsible for the attack, but rather that the soldier, identified as Lamber Khan, was disgruntled with the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. The American-led military coalition said only that one service member had died; it declined to identify the nationality of the deceased or wounded. The shooting was the sixth reported insider attack — also called green-on-blue violence — in Afghanistan this year, with a total of nine coalition deaths so far.
Bomb kills 17, mostly women and children
A roadside bomb struck a motorcycle-drawn cart carrying women and children between two villages Tuesday in western Afghanistan, killing all 17 people on board, a grim reminder of the dangers facing Afghan civilians ahead of the 2014 withdrawal of foreign combat troops. The bomb that struck the cart was aimed at stopping a joint patrol of Afghan soldiers and police that was pursuing a group of Taliban militants in the western province of Herat, local police Lt. Sher Agha said. But the bomb exploded next to the cart carrying the villagers, killing 12 women, four children and a man, Agha said.
Afghanistan’s Taliban have shuttered a newly opened office in the Gulf state of Qatar, vowing to fight on against President Hamid Karzai’s government while abandoning a diplomatic approach seen as the best hope of finding a political end to the protracted 12-year war.
Experts said Tuesday that the final withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014 offered the Taliban the hope of a military victory while limiting their incentive to press ahead with peace talks. The Taliban, they said, envisioned the talks more as a means of gaining legitimacy than as a road to peace.
“I think the big gorilla in the room is the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. It decreases the likelihood of a settlement because it raises the prospects of Taliban military gains,” said Seth Jones, a counterinsurgency expert at the Rand Corp., a Washington-based think tank that receives U.S. funding. “Settlements usually occur when both sides reach a stalemate and see little prospect for change in the foreseeable future.”
The Taliban office, which opened less than a month ago to facilitate peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan government, was mired in controversy from the outset after the religious movement was accused of trying to set up a government-in-exile by identifying its office as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. It also hoisted the same white flag flown during the Taliban’s five-year rule of Afghanistan that ended with the 2001 American-led invasion.
Karzai reacted furiously and the Taliban lowered the flag and removed the sign. Both the U.S. and Qatar quickly chastised the Taliban and accused them of reneging on a promise to refrain from using either the name or the flag.
Now the office itself has been temporarily closed, a Taliban official familiar with the talks in Qatar said.
“They (the Taliban) do not go out of their homes in Doha and have not gone to the office since the removal of the flag and the plaque,” the Taliban official said in a telephone interview. He said the Taliban blamed Karzai and the U.S. for the breakdown in talks, accusing both of using the name and the flag as an excuse.
A diplomat in the region who is also familiar with the negotiations said: “The (Taliban) Political Commission has stopped all international political meetings and is not using the office.”
Both the Taliban official and the diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject and because neither was authorized to speak publicly with journalists.
In Washington U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed the office closure.
“We know the office has been closed,” she said. “But, again, we’re going to continue to work through the bumpy road, and we’re hopeful that we can get it back on track.”
In Doha, the office remained guarded Tuesday by Qatari-appointed security along the outside walls. There were no signs of the flag or former sign. The gates to the compound were open, but there was no evidence of Taliban officials inside.
The two Taliban spokesmen at the Doha office did not respond to telephone calls Tuesday from The Associated Press. The Taliban official said all communications with the movement’s negotiators have been cut.
White House press secretary James Carney said reconciliation would not be easy.
“It has been a difficult process, and will continue to be,” Carney told reporters Tuesday. “And if this effort, the Doha office effort, does not succeed, we will pursue other means and other avenues for peace. Because, ultimately, peace in Afghanistan depends on a reconciliation between Afghans.”
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