Daily brief: Taliban attack Kabul, Kunduz

Kabul and Kunduz under fire

Two Taliban insurgents, one reportedly a suicide bomber, attacked a bus carrying Afghan soldiers outside an Afghan National Army recruitment center yesterday morning in the center of Kabul, killing at least five and breaking the Afghan capital’s seven months of relative quiet (Pajhwok, AP, AFP, WSJ, NYT, AJE, Tel). The Taliban also claimed responsibility for an attack on another army recruitment center in the northern province of Kunduz, carried out by at least four assailants armed with guns and suicide vests (LAT, Tolo, BBC, Guardian). The Kunduz attacks, which reportedly involved several foreign fighters, sparked a gunfight that lasted 12 hours and left at least eight Afghan soldiers and policemen dead (Pajhwok). Late Friday, gunmen attacked a South Korean-operated construction site in the north, killing one Bangladeshi worker and holding several others hostage; two have since been freed (AFP, AP, AFP).

Two Afghan district leaders had near misses this weekend: a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near the convoy of Dand’s Ahmadullah Nazak in the southern province of Kandahar, and a roadside bomb claimed by the Taliban targeted the chief of Kunduz’s Chardara district, Abdul Wahid Omarkhel (AFP, Pajhwok). The governor of the eastern province of Kunar has also reportedly survived an armed attack on his motorcade (Pajhwok).

NATO reportedly killed more than 20 militants after calling in airstrikes after a patrol came under attack in the Tagab district of Kapisa on Saturday, and an airstrike in Badghis is believed to have killed the Quetta Shura-appointed Taliban leader Mullah Tor Jan (AP). And Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel visited northern Afghanistan, where Germany’s roughly 4,700 troops are based, over the weekend, to thank German soldiers and meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whom she said did not give her many assurances about how his government is dealing with corruption (AP, NYT, AFP). More than 700 foreign troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year, after 2009’s 521 (Reuters, Pajhwok, Times). Afghan security forces have suffered far higher casualties, but the Afghan government does not release precise figures.

Karzai will reportedly open Afghanistan’s parliament on January 20, more than four months after the fraud-riddled election (Reuters, AP). An official with the Electoral Complaints Commission in the northern province of Takhar was shot late last night; no claims of responsibility have been issued yet (Pajhwok).  

On supply lines

Hezb-i-Islami, the smallest of the three main insurgent factions in Afghanistan, has announced that it supports the TAPI pipeline, which is being constructed to bring gas from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, and volunteered to help protect the pipeline in areas where it has influence (Reuters). HIG, led by former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, does not control most of the intended route.

Matthew Rosenberg reports that Afghan officials are investigating whether some of the biggest international companies operating in Afghanistan that provide supplies to coalition forces, including the Amsterdam-based multinational Supreme Group, are skirting paying duty fees to the Afghan government and diverting supplies to local markets (WSJ). Coalition officials reportedly say the amounts in question are small, but the issue is critical "because it deprives Afghanistan’s treasury of desperately needed revenue from import duties."

Deny, deny, deny

Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, has denied leaking the name of the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who was recently identified in a lawsuit filed by a North Waziristan tribesman seeking damages for the alleged deaths of his relatives in a suspected U.S. drone strike last year and reportedly received threats to his life following the exposure (Post, NYT, LAT, CNN, LAT, AP). U.S. officials have suggested that the ISI may have leaked the man’s identity in retaliation for a civil suit in New York last month that accused ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha of involvement in the deadly 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The number of fatalities from Friday’s reported drone strikes in Khyber agency has risen to at least 54, an unusually high count that is said to include a senior commander in the Swat Taliban, Ibne Amin, an al-Qaeda linked lieutenant of the Swat Taliban’s leader Maulana Fazlullah (AP, The News). Militants reportedly destroyed two NATO tankers in Khyber earlier today, and traffic along the supply route has been suspended (AFP, AP).

Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao signed up to $35 billion worth of trade deals over the next five years with Pakistan this weekend on a three-day visit to the country, where he also praised Pakistan’s efforts to fight terrorism and affirmed China’s commitment to good relations with Pakistan (NYT, AFP, ET, Daily Times, AJE, FT, Geo, The News). Wen signed $16 billion in deals with India before his arrival in Islamabad Friday.

By comparison

A new study from Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that through early December, four percent of American news coverage in major outlets discussed the war in Afghanistan, down from five percent over the same time last year (NYT). In 2007 and 2008, the Afghan war accounted for about one percent of the news.

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