"In Afghan shift, sectarian attacks on holiday kill 63; Pakistani group says it’s behind the bombings" December 07, 2011|By Rod Nordland, New York Times
KABUL - A Pakistan-based extremist group claimed responsibility for a series of coordinated attacks aimed at Afghan Shi’ites yesterday, in what many feared was an attempt to further destabilize Afghanistan by adding a new dimension of strife to a country that, though battered by a decade of war, had been free of sectarian conflict.
The attacks, among the war’s deadliest, struck three Afghan cities - Kabul, Kandahar, and Mazar-e-Sharif - almost simultaneously and killed at least 63 Shi’ite worshipers on Ashura, which marks the death of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest martyr.
The feeling here is not even the most pious Al Qaeda would do this.
Now, Al-CIA-Duh, on the other hand....
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That is who is paying to bring you the "news."
Targeted strikes by Sunnis against Shi’ites are alien to Afghanistan. So it was no surprise to Afghans when responsibility was claimed by a Sunni extremist group from Pakistan, where Sunnis and Shi’ites have been energetically killing one another for decades.
LIES!!
The group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, had not previously claimed or carried out attacks in Afghanistan, however, and its emergence fueled suspicions that Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Pakistan’s spy agency - or some combination of those three - had teamed up with the group to send the message that Afghanistan’s future stability remained deeply tenuous and indeed dependent on the cooperation of outside forces.
UNREAL!! The attack has ALL the HALLMARKS of an INTELLIGENCE AGENCY OPERATION, and here the paper is basically confirming it.
“Never in our history have there been such cruel attacks on religious observances,’’ said President Hamid Karzai, in a statement released by his office. “The enemies of Afghanistan do not want us to live under one roof with peace and harmony.’’
The timing of the attacks was especially pointed, coming a day after an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn that had been viewed as an opportunity for Afghanistan to cement long-term support from the West.
But the conference fell considerably short of the objectives that officials had envisioned because Taliban insurgents and Pakistani diplomats did not attend. Pakistan pulled out of the conference as a protest over the deaths of 24 of its soldiers in a US airstrike, launched from Afghan territory, which US officials have depicted as the result of a misunderstanding.
Critics of Pakistan were quick to read both Monday’s boycott and yesterday’s bombings as a signal from the Pakistanis, delivered by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, that Afghanistan could not ignore Pakistan.
“Pakistan is our historical enemy and wants us to never live in peace,’’ said Noor Mohammad, one of the wounded worshipers, who was covered in blood.
Abdul Qayou Sajadi, a Hazara member of Parliament, made similar assumptions, though he did not mention Pakistan by name. “As you know, the peace efforts by our government and the international community are going on, but some of our neighboring countries failed in this regard,’’ he said. “Now they are trying to divide our people along religious lines and create another war among Afghans as they did in the past.’’
While members of Afghanistan’s Shi’ite minority, mostly ethnic Hazaras, faced savage discrimination during the years of Taliban rule, they had not been singled out for attacks during the current insurgency.
The three bombings all took place around midday as Shi’ite devotees marched in processions to honor the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, the holiest of specifically Shi’ite holidays....
The deadliest attack occurred in Kabul’s crowded Murad Khani neighborhood, when a suicide bomber infiltrated a procession in front of the Abul Fazal Abbas Shrine. The powerful blast killed scores of worshipers and damaged the mosque. Many people, terrified of a follow-up attack, jumped into the nearby Kabul River, which is choked with sewage.
What is in the river?
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"Afghan blast a setback to US plans; Fallout damages Kabul’s relations with Pakistan" December 08, 2011|By Amir Shah and Deb Riechmann, Associated Press
KABUL - The fallout from this week’s deadly suicide bombing in Kabul has further splintered Afghanistan’s relations with neighboring Pakistan and set back the US-led military campaign to stabilize the region before international troops leave at the end of 2014.
The attack, which killed 56 people and wounded more than 160 others outside a Shi’ite shrine, highlighted a marked decline in security in the Afghan capital over the past year.
And here we have been told we are winning.
Afghan forces, who have been in charge of security in Kabul for more than a year, have had successes in foiling plots and minimizing casualties, but insurgents increasingly slip through checkpoints and conduct complex assaults.
Ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan were already frayed when President Hamid Karzai blamed a Pakistan-based extremist group yesterday for the bombing at the shrine. Pakistan challenged Karzai to provide hard evidence.
The evidence, Karzai suggested, was that a man claiming to be from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, a Pakistan-based splinter group of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi that has carried out attacks against Shi’ite Muslims in Pakistan, called various media outlets Tuesday to claim responsibility for the Kabul bombing and a nearly simultaneous attack that killed four Shi’ites in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif....
Until now, the decadelong Afghan war has largely been spared sectarian violence, in which civilians are targeted simply for their membership in a particular religious group.
Which MAKES THIS STINK to HIGH HEAVEN!!
Tuesday’s attack suggests that at least some militant groups may have shifted tactics, taking aim at ethnic minorities such as the Hazara, who are largely Shi’ite and support the Afghan government and its Western partners.
But there was some doubt that a little-known splinter group could carry out the coordinated bombings in Afghanistan, where neither it nor the main Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has a history of conducting operations....
There ya go!
General Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman, dismissed any suggestions that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has links to the country’s intelligence agencies or that the government was not doing everything it could to quash the group.
“Lashkar-e-Janghvi has declared war on the security forces in Pakistan,’’ Abbas said. He said the group has been implicated in some of the worst attacks on Pakistani security forces. “They are being hunted down,’’ he said.
Karzai began to sharpen his criticism of Pakistan several months ago after a suicide bomber, who was pretending to be a peace emissary from the Taliban, assassinated former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading Afghan efforts to broker a deal with the insurgency.
Afghan officials said the Sept. 20 assassination was planned on the southern outskirts of Quetta, the Pakistani city where key Taliban leaders are based. Afghan officials shared evidence with Pakistani officials, but Afghan-Pakistan cooperation on the investigation into Rabbani’s killing so far has been tenuous.
See: Rubbing Out Rabbani
US-Pakistan ties are deeply scarred, too. To protest recent NATO airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops along the Afghan border, Islamabad boycotted this week’s conference in Bonn on the future of Afghanistan.
Pakistan also closed down routes that NATO members use to deliver supplies to the 130,000-strong coalition force in landlocked Afghanistan.
The recent events have left the three main players in the decade-old conflict - Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States - at odds at a time when the West is trying to secure Afghanistan’s future - and convince its people that their security forces can keep the peace when most foreign troops go home in three years.
Previous attacks in Kabul have been blamed on the Haqqani militant network, which is based in Afghanistan and is thought to have ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and Pakistan’s spy agency.
To the mourners burying the dead in Kabul and planting red flags in dusty cemeteries to mark the fresh graves, achieving stability in Afghanistan is more important than which militant group was responsible for the latest attacks.
Mohaqeq Zada, a member of the Shi’ite council in Kabul, said the bombing showed no one can count on the government for protection.
“There have been so many attacks, even against government officials, and still they can’t stop these things,’’ Zada said.
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"Toll in attack on Afghan Shi’ites rises to 80" December 12, 2011|Associated Press
KABUL - Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, blamed the attacks on the “foreign occupation’’ of the country but was not specific. In an e-mail sent to the media, he said the Taliban leadership called for the unity of Afghans and had ordered all its fighters to be on the alert and “prevent these kinds of attacks.’’
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"CIA worker killed during attack in Kabul; Afghan assailant dies; Assaults grow on US forces, allied officials" September 27, 2011|By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press
KABUL - Political tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan continued to mount yesterday. The Afghan Foreign Ministry warned that relations with its neighbor will suffer if cross-border artillery attacks hitting eastern Afghanistan continue.
The Afghan government has said that an unknown number of Afghan civilians have been killed by the shelling coming from Pakistani territory in recent days. The attacks have allegedly destroyed several houses and mosques and displaced hundreds of people.
The Foreign Ministry quoted Mohammad Sadeq, Pakistan’s ambassador in Kabul, as saying that the attacks were not intentional.
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"The Afghan government urged neighboring Pakistan yesterday to take concrete steps to help end the Taliban insurgency and use its influence to bring the militants to direct peace talks....
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