Counting the Dead in Afghanistan [Science Exclusive]
10 March 2011
A few independent organizations, including the United Nations, have published their own reports on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, but only for illustrating broad trends. The data underlying their reports have never been released. For the first time, those data are now publicly available. In January, ISAF provided Science with a database of civilian casualties called CIVCAS. It is the military's internal record of the death and injury of...
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Nato Troops "Kill Afghan President's Cousin"
10 March 2011
At a time of unprecedented tension between the west and Hamid Karzai over the killing of civilians, Nato has accidentally shot dead one of the Afghan president's own family members during a botched night raid. Officials in the southern province of Kandahar said Haji Yar Mohammad Karzai, a second cousin of the president, was killed during an operation by US special forces in Karz, the ancestral Karzai home on the outskirts of Kandahar city. In what...
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Afghan Forces to Start Taking Charge of Up to Six Sites
10 March 2011
Afghan forces will soon replace NATO-led troops in charge of security at six sites across Afghanistan — the first step in a transition that Afghan President Hamid Karzai hopes will leave his troops in control across the nation by the end of 2014, The Associated Press has learned. The provincial capitals of Lashkar Gah in volatile southern Afghanistan, Herat in the west and Mazar-i-Sharif in the north are slated for the first phase of transition...
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Suicide Bomber Kills Kunduz Police Chief
10 March 2011
A suicide bomber jumped on the police chief of Kunduz Province on Thursday as he patrolled just 150 feet from his headquarters, killing him and two other officers, Afghan officials said. The governor of Kunduz, Mohammad Anwar Jigdalak, confirmed the attack, which also wounded the deputy police chief and seven others, including two civilians, in the city of Kunduz, the provincial capital. The province, in the north, has increasingly been the scene...
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