Daily brief: Afghan soldier kills 3 British troops

Turned A rogue Afghan soldier fired a rocket propelled grenade and killed three British troops in Babaji, near the provincial capital of Helmand province, the second reported time in the last eight months an Afghan soldier has turned against British forces (NYT, AP, BBC, AFP, Wash Post). Afghan President Hamid Karzai promptly sent a letter ...

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images
SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

Turned

Turned

A rogue Afghan soldier fired a rocket propelled grenade and killed three British troops in Babaji, near the provincial capital of Helmand province, the second reported time in the last eight months an Afghan soldier has turned against British forces (NYT, AP, BBC, AFP, Wash Post). Afghan President Hamid Karzai promptly sent a letter of apology to the British government, and top Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus urged unity among coalition forces. Gen. Petraeus and Karzai are reportedly meeting today to continue discussions to assuage Karzai’s concerns over developing local armed forces (NYT).

The U.N. is reportedly considering removing ten former Taliban senior officials from its terrorism blacklist, far fewer than the up to 50 pushed forward by Karzai (AP, Times). At next week’s international conference in Kabul, the Telegraph reports that an "international trust fund," used to pay for an Afghan Peace and Reconciliation Program designed to reintegrate some 36,000 former fighters in 22 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces within five years, will be announced (Tel).

The Afghan government has reportedly freed a group of 28 alleged Taliban fighters from prison as a good will gesture toward the insurgency (Reuters). A new report from Human Rights Watch discusses the concerns of Afghan women about Taliban reconciliation plans (HRW, AJE, Pajhwok, Reuters). And the Afghan cabinet has approved a measure which would allow the creation of special tribunals to try Afghan officials accused of corruption (AFP).

Yaroslav Trofimov has today’s must-read describing how the U.S.-funded upgrade of the Kajaki dam in southern Afghanistan has provided electricity to areas directly controlled by the Taliban, where locals pay their monthly bills to the insurgents (WSJ). The government of Helmand reportedly estimated that it loses out on $4 million of funding a year in electricity revenue to the Taliban, who charge a flat fee of 1,000 Pakistani rupees per month.

Petraeus to Pakistan

In his first visit to Pakistan since assuming the Afghan command, Gen. Petraeus visited the chief of Pakistan’s army. Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and praised Pakistan’s anti-Taliban military efforts (AP, Dawn). Pakistani police have reportedly arrested more than 400 suspected militants in a wide sweep across Peshawar, and militants blew up a school in the northwestern tribal area of Bajaur (Daily Times, ET, Daily Times).

Prime minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan, the top official in Pakistani Kashmir, vowed earlier today to fight Indian control of the area at a rally organized by the United Jihad Council in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir (AP). The United Jihad Council is a coalition of a dozen anti-India militant groups. A march has been planned for today in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir (ET). Bonus read: dispatch from Srinagar (FP).

Monkey militants

The Taliban are reportedly training monkeys in Pakistan’s Waziristan region to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan with AK-47s and Bren light machine guns (People’s Daily). The insurgency’s interest in weaponizing other animals is unknown.

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