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Afghan News Roundup

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 5 months ago

Obama Promises Support for Afghanistan

Associated Press

 

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Obama pledged in a telephone conversation with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to increase U.S. (economic and military) aid to Afghanistan and said fighting terrorism in the region would be a top priority, Karzai's office said Sunday.

 

 

The U.S. has 32,000 American forces in Afghanistan, a number that is to be increased by thousands next year. The current NATO commander, U.S. Gen. David McKiernan, has requested an additional 20,000 troops.

 

Fighting terrorism and the insurgency "in Afghanistan, the region and the world is a top priority," Karzai's office quoted Obama as saying.

 

Afghanistan has long pressed the U.S. to tackle what it calls the bases of terrorism in neighboring Pakistan, and Obama's reported pledge will likely please Mr. Karzai, who has accused Pakistan's intelligence service of supporting the Taliban in plotting bombings and other attacks in Afghanistan. Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. war on terror, flatly denies the allegation.

 

 Obama in the past has expressed frustration with Pakistan's efforts to go after militants in its territory. During the presidential campaign he said that, "If Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high-level terrorist targets like (Osama) bin Laden if we have them in our sights."

 

Cross-border U.S. missile strikes as well as ground operations by U.S. forces along the border have increased significantly in recent months.

 

Last week U.S. troops launched a barrage of artillery at insurgents attacking their position from inside Pakistan's volatile tribal region, and since mid-August, the United States is suspected of launching at least 20 missiles from unmanned drones based in Afghanistan, killing scores of suspected extremists and angering the Pakistani government.

 

Over the past month, NATO and Pakistani forces have been cooperating in so-called Operation Lion Heart -- a series of complementary operations that involve the Pakistani military and Frontier Corps, and NATO on the Afghan side.

 

The top spokesman for the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said Sunday that cooperation between Afghan, NATO and Pakistani troops is "the best it has ever been."

 

"You finally have those who are really conducting the operations, the soldiers who know exactly where on the other side the operations are happening, so you can have a movement which you could compare to the movement of a hammer and an anvil," he said.

 

Obama has chided Karzai and his government in the past, saying it had "not gotten out of the bunker" and helped to organize the country or its political and security institutions.
 
Latest Military Actions
 

In the latest violence, U.S. and Afghan troops killed 17 militants in Kandahar province Saturday;  helicopters carried the troops into "a known insurgent safe haven" to attack "enemy supplies and personnel." Elsewhere in Kandahar province, Afghan and coalition troops killed 11 militants traveling in two vehicles Saturday.

 

In neighboring Helmand province, NATO-led troops killed a senior Taliban commander, Mullah Assad, on Wednesday. Assad was linked to attacks in Helmand's Garmser district, an area of southern Afghanistan rife with insurgent activity. The U.S. also said it killed two militants and a female civilian in Zabul province Thursday.

 

 

  • Afghan Leader Criticizes U.S. on Taliban

    NOV 26. 2008
    • CAIRO, Egypt – Al Qaeda's No. 2 slurred Barack Obama with a demeaning racial term for a black American who does the bidding of whites in a new Web message Nov. 19 intended to dent the president-elect's popularity among Arabs and Muslims and claim he will not change U.S. policy.
    video 

    Al Qaeda Warns Obama

    2:07

    Al Qaeda's second-in-command urges Muslims to keep up attacks on the U.S. and slams President-elect Barack Obama for promising to back Israel. Ayman al-Zawahri also warns Obama not to follow President Bush's policies. Video courtesy of Reuters. (Nov. 20)

     

    Ayman al-Zawahri's speech was al Qaeda's first reaction to Obama's election victory -- and it suggested the terror network is worried the new American leader could undermine its rallying cry that the U.S. is an enemy oppressor.

     

    Obama has been welcomed by many in the Middle East who hope he will end what they see as American aggression against Muslims and Arabs under President George W. Bush. Some believe his race and Muslim family connections could make him more understanding of the developing world's concerns.

    View Full Image

    Ayman al Zawahri
    Associated Press

    An image grabbed from an April 2006 video of al-Zawahri.

     Zawahri dug into U.S. racial history to try to directly knock down that belief and argue Obama will be no more sympathetic than white leaders to what the al-Qaeda leader called "the oppressed" of the world.

    He said Obama was the "direct opposite of honorable black Americans'' like Malcolm X, the 1960s Muslim African-American rights leader, who is known among some in the Arab world and seen as a symbol of anti-imperialism.

     

     Zawahri also called Obama -- along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice -- "house Negroes."

     

    The video included old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites and discrimination.

     

     

     

    An analyst with Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, said Zawahri's message suggests al Qaeda leaders are worried "that Obama could be effective in rebuilding America's image."

    "They hated Bush, but Bush was good for them in many ways because he was such a polarizing figure. But Obama seems at the moment to be a more uniting figure," the analyst said. "Al Qaeda very much would like the U.S. to stay with its old policies that put it in opposition to much of the Muslim world."

     

    Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University, said Zawahri aimed specifically to keep the Islamic militant base energized. He's sending them a message, "don't believe all this stuff about a big 'change', we have to fight just as hard as ever," Hoffman said.

     

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