Daily brief: NATO’s deadliest day in Afghanistan this year

Must-watch: National Geographic’s documentary "Talibanistan" is airing tonight at 10:00pm EST (Nat Geo). National Geographic was in Pakistan and Afghanistan during last fall’s Pakistani military offensive in South Waziristan, documenting the fight on the ground and in the skies above.

This bloody stroke

In NATO’s deadliest day in Afghanistan this year, 10 soldiers were killed across the country yesterday, including seven Americans, a Frenchman, and two Australians; two more civilian contractors training police also died in southern Afghanistan during a suicide attack on an Afghan police training center in Kandahar (AP, AFP, AJE, NYT, Pajhwok, AP, AFP, BBC, Tel, Wash Post). Late Monday night, Taliban fighters attacked the headquarters of the Afghan Civil Order Police in Kandahar city with guns and rockets, fleeing before carrying out any injuries, and two more U.S soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb earlier today (Pajhwok, AP).

Reuters interviewed an Afghan Army officer, Lt. Ali Hussain, who is worried about the morale of his soldiers, the equipment his troops need once the U.S. forces leave Kandahar, and gathering local intelligence on Taliban fighters in his area of southern Afghanistan (Reuters). Just 11 police recruits turned up recently in Marjah, a town in Helmand province that was the site of a major coalition offensive earlier this spring, out of the U.S.’s set goal of 80 new recruits (Time). And the influx of U.S. troops in the south is decreasing the influence of Canada and the U.K., which had responsibility for Kandahar and Helmand, respectively, and "lacked the strength to check the insurgency’s spread" (WSJ).

Alissa Rubin analyzes the forced resignations of Afghanistan’s spy chief and interior minister as "another worrying sign" of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s "increasingly impulsive decision making and deepening isolation" from Western officials and Afghan government allies (NYT). U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Amb. Richard Holbrooke said at a meeting of Afghanistan envoys in Madrid that the Afghan government has to explain how international funding for any Taliban reintegration plans will be administered and overseen before the funds are distributed (AFP).
 
Traveling

Some 300 to 1,200 foreign fighters — including some from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the U.S. — are currently gaining influence in Somalia’s al-Shabaab and act as the "main link" to al-Qaeda central (Wash Post). Shabaab’s main rival in Somalia, Hezb-i-Islam, has also professed support for Osama bin Laden.

Britain’s Border Agency is setting up a four million pound "reintegration center" in Afghanistan reportedly so it can deport children who have sought asylum in the U.K., with a goal of sending back approximately 12 teenagers a month (Guardian). Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands are also reportedly planning "reception centers" in Kabul for child migrants.
 
Justice in the tribal areas

After a Taliban court in North Waziristan convicted a 25 year old of murder, a cousin of the two brothers he allegedly killed shot him in front of a crowd in Miram Shah, the main town in the tribal agency (AFP, Reuters). And in the first instance of cross-country score-settling, the Taliban from Darra Adam Khel have reportedly killed the Karachi-based brother of an anti-Taliban tribal lashkar leader in Peshawar (ET).

The LA Times has today’s must-read describing how the U.S. military is seeking to imitate the technology that allows the NFL to use "text-tags" find and show replays, display first-down markers, and jot Madden-style notes on the screens of the 24 million minutes of archived Predator drone footage it has in storage (LAT). The Air Force has also considered what it might learn from the production techniques of reality television shows.

Worth a try?

After last week’s deadly attack on Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital, the hospital’s management sacrificed three black goats in hopes of warding off future assaults (ET). The hospital’s CEO sacrificed the goats in front of the emergency room, where the attack took place.

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