Gunmen Kidnap Construction Crew in N. Afghanistan
18 March 2011
A team of three Pakistanis and three Afghans who were working on a road building project in northern Afghanistan have been kidnapped, a local official said Friday. The five construction engineers and their Afghan driver were abducted as they travelled by convoy in the relatively peaceful north of the country late Thursday, the local director of public works told AFP. [...] The governor of Sari Pul province, Sayed Anwar Rahmati, said police had been...
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2011 UN Mine Action Projects: Afghanistan
18 March 2011
The Portfolio of Mine Action Projects is a resource tool and reference document for donors, policy-makers, advocates, and national and international mine action implementers. The country and territory-specific proposals in the portfolio reflect strategic responses developed in the field to address all aspects of the problem of landmines and explosive remnants of war (ERW). This country and territory-based approach aims to present as comprehensive...
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Witnesses Accuse US-Backed Afghan Police Chief of Campaign of Terror
18 March 2011
An Afghan warlord backed by US special forces faces persistent allegations that he launched a two-year spate of violence involving burglary, rape and murder of civilians, desecration of mosques and mutilation of corpses. Yet, despite repeated warnings about the atrocities Commander Azizullah is alleged to have committed, he has remained on the payroll of the US military as an "Afghan security guard", a select band of mercenaries described by some...
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Pakistan Pulls Out of Talks with US on Afghan War Following Deadly Drone Strike
18 March 2011
Pakistan on Friday pulled out of upcoming talks with the U.S. on the war in Afghanistan, a move meant to convey Islamabad's anger over an American drone missile strike that it says killed a gathering of civilians along the Afghan border. The U.S. and Pakistan disagree on who was killed in the strike Thursday in North Waziristan, a volatile tribal region that serves as a stronghold for an array of militant groups, including Al Qaeda, the Pakistani...
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Moscow-led Group Worried about Early Afghan Drawdown
18 March 2011
A Russian-led regional security body said on Thursday it was too early to withdraw NATO troops from Afghanistan without risking instability in the former Soviet republics in central Asia. "I believe that today Afghanistan on its own is unable to resist the threats existing there now," Nikolai Bordyuzha, secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) pact, told a news conference in the Tajik capital. "To pull out troops now...
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