"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 - An Afghan working for the US government killed a CIA contractor and wounded another American in an attack on the intelligence agency’s office in Kabul, officials said yesterday, making it the latest in a series of high-profile attacks this month on US targets.
There has been a growing number of attacks this year by Afghans working with international forces in the country. Some assailants have turned out to be Taliban sleeper agents, while others have been motivated by personal grievances.
The assailant in Sunday evening’s shooting was killed, and it was not yet clear if he acted alone or if he belonged to an insurgent group.
A US official in Washington said the Afghan attacker was providing security to the CIA office and that the American who died was working as a contractor for the CIA. The official requested anonymity because he was speaking about intelligence matters.
The CIA declined to comment....
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"In northern Afghanistan, a small, stubborn Taliban" by Joshua Partlow Washington Post / October 2, 2011
MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - In Balkh Province, the Taliban persists doggedly, exerting what some believe is a tightening grip on life in the area’s farmlands and villages. The situation is similar across much of northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is not so much surging into new territory but stubbornly refusing to go away.
Well, they do live there.
“The foreign troops think they can suppress the Taliban,’’ said Mawlavi Hejran, who claims to command 200 men, having inherited the reins last month when his brother was killed by a US airstrike. “But as long as the foreigners are here, the guerrilla war will continue.’’
The war in Balkh, far from the Taliban strongholds of Afghanistan’s south and east, offers an explanation for the intractability of this conflict. Insurgents here do not mass to fight the Afghan, US, or German troops in the region. Among the ethnic Tajiks and Hazaras who predominate here, the largely Pashtun Taliban has found little support.
But the insurgents evade and calculate, picking targets for assassinations and suicide bombings.
Outside the city, insurgents have posted directives in mosques, using Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan stationery, ordering residents to give them 10 percent of their crops. The insurgents make late-night house calls to enforce the demand. “They give you two or three days, then they beat you,’’ said one resident, who gave his share. Other fliers, bearing images of a sword, pistol, and noose, warn Afghans not to send their daughters to school.
“When the sun goes down, they don’t care about the government,’’ said the resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety. “They are ruling the districts and villages.’’
In recent months, Afghan forces working with US Special Operations troops have conducted night raids, capturing or killing at least 10 Taliban leaders in the province, according to a senior Afghan intelligence official. But Taliban members and Afghan officials agree that a core group of 300 to 400 insurgents, who retreat to Pakistan for training and winter refuge, still circulates in Balkh.
“If we didn’t do these operations, the enemy would definitely be trying more commando-style attacks,’’ said the intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “But no matter how much pressure they’re under, how big their losses, they still fight.’’
Three Taliban members interviewed separately here offered consistent explanations for why they fight. They said they consider the Afghan government corrupt and rapacious. The US and NATO troops, they said, are occupiers waging a war against Islam. The three Taliban members are all Pashtuns, a minority group in Balkh, and they described feeling discriminated against by the locally powerful Tajiks.
“How can it be that the other ethnic groups are human but Pashtuns are not human?’’ asked Saleh Mohammad, who was secretary to the provincial governor during the Taliban’s 1996-2001 reign. He said that he stayed with the Taliban because he was imprisoned after the group was ousted and that Pashtuns have been excluded from the economic spoils by the current governor, Attah Mohammed Noor, a Tajik.
Mohammad described a vibrant underground support network for the insurgency in Balkh, with residents, including powerful businessmen, funneling money, motorcycles, weapons, and food to the fighters.
Related: US arming Afghan villagers against Taliban
Arms Given by U.S. to Afghan Forces May Be Leaking to Taliban
Sure is a good way to keep a war going, huh?
But he acknowledged the Taliban’s relative weakness in the north compared with other areas.
“The process of Talibanization is new in Balkh. We are at the stage of propaganda: inspiring people, inviting them to jihad, preaching in mosques,’’ he said. “Nowadays everyone is praying against the Americans.’’
We call it a newspaper here.
The Taliban’s expanded use of assassinations as a tactic has exacted its most obvious toll in Kandahar Province - where President Hamid Karzai’s half brother and the mayor of Kandahar city were killed - but it has also destabilized the north.
Also see: Karzai's Brother Killed in Kandahar
Noor, the Balkh governor, lives amid elaborate security. The top police official in the north, General Daud Daud, was killed this year in a bombing. The police chief of Kunduz was killed in March, five months after the province’s governor died in a mosque bombing.
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Starting to wake up:
"Taliban shift tactics, put focus on intimidating population" October 05, 2011|By Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - This exemplifies the Taliban’s new and more subtle ways of asserting themselves, even as NATO generals portray the insurgents as a diminished force less able to hold ground. The question is whether the Taliban need to hold territory as they once did in order to influence the population. Increasingly, it seems, the answer is no.
Tactics like the cellphone offensive have allowed the Taliban to project their presence in far more insidious and sophisticated ways, using the instruments of modernity that they once shunned. The shutoff sends a daily reminder to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Afghans that the Taliban still hold substantial sway over their future.
It is just one part of a broader shift in Taliban strategy that has focused on intimidation, carefully chosen assassinations, and limited but spectacular assaults.
They must be using Amerika's playbook.
While often avoiding large-scale combat with NATO forces, the Taliban and their allies in the Haqqani network have effectively undermined peace talks with the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai and sought to pave the way for a gradual return to power as the US-led forces begin scaling back military operations in the country.
Attacks like the rocket attack on the US Embassy in Kabul on Sept. 13, for which US officials blamed the Haqqanis, effectively shift the fight to cities, where it is harder for NATO to respond with air power for fear of harming civilians. They also allow the Taliban to capture the airwaves for hours, especially in media-saturated urban areas, and fuel an aura of crisis.
Imitating AmeriKan newspapers are they?
Likewise, the assassination Sept. 20 in Kabul of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the head of Afghanistan’s peace council, dominated the news and reopened dangerous fissures between the country’s Dari-speaking north and the Pashtun south, in a single calculated blow.
See: Rubbing Out Rabbani
So Taliban are working for the CIA now?
The new Taliban do not aspire to kill a lot of people, it seems; just a select few in the right places and in positions of power.
The Rabbani assassination not only demonstrated the insurgents’ rejection of the peace process but also reminded people of their ability to shape the next chapter in the country’s history as the Americans prepare to leave. Similarly, the Taliban have sought to remake their image this year as a way of positioning themselves to play a prominent role in Afghanistan’s future. It is a two-track strategy.
Interviews with dozens of Afghans suggest that throughout the country the Taliban have married locally tailored terrorist campaigns with new flexibility on issues such as education and business development.
The combination plays on the uncertainty gnawing at Afghans about the looming US withdrawal, while making the most of the insurgency’s limited resources.
The aim is to undermine the Afghan government by making people question whether it can protect them, while trying to project the image of a group that is more open to the world than when the Taliban ruled the country in the 1990s.
For now, especially in ethnic Pashtun areas of the country, the Taliban, who are also ethnic Pashtuns, appear to be achieving their goal of making the future seems up for grabs....
But we're winning.
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Related: Taliban chief tells fighters to spare civilians
Time to go back to bed.
