NATO troops see second green-on-blue attack in one week

Unfriendly fire

In the second "green-on-blue" attack this week, two Afghan soldiers opened fire on a group of NATO soldiers outside a "coordination center" for Afghan and international forces in the eastern province of Laghman on Thursday, but a NATO spokesman said no international troops were killed (AP, VOA). One of the Afghan attackers was killed and the other wounded by return fire from the NATO troops.

The head of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council, Salahuddin Rabbani, delayed a trip to Islamabad scheduled for Wednesday, during which he planned to reach out to Taliban leaders based in Pakistan (AP, ET). Another member of the HPC said it would be inappropriate for a council member to travel to Pakistan while relations between the two countries are strained over recent cross-border rocket attacks that Afghan officials have blamed on the Pakistani military.

The Times’ Alissa J. Rubin reports Thursday on the resilience of the Afghan Taliban demonstrated by two recent high-profile attacks in Afghanistan’s restive Kunar Province, located at the border with Pakistan’s militant-infested tribal regions, (NYT). The U.S. State Department on Wednesday listed a senior Saudi al-Qaeda leader known as Mansur al-Harbi, who once trained militants in Afghanistan, as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" (CNN, WSJ).

Liberal infidels

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said Thursday that the group’s leaders would debate whether to allow Pakistani politician Imran Khan to hold a march in the tribal regions to protest U.S. drone strikes there (AP, Dawn). Ahsan denied earlier Associated Press reports that he had threatened to kill Khan, but confirmed that the TTP doesn’t "have any sympathy with Imran Khan" because he "claims to be liberal and we see liberals as infidels."

A remote-detonated bomb killed one Special Forces soldier in Pakistan’s northwestern Mohmand Agency on Thursday, and elsewhere in Mohmand insurgents destroyed a girls’ school (Dawn). 

Better luck next time

Around 10,000 students gathered at University Road in Karachi on Tuesday in an attempt to break the world record for most people singing a national anthem (ET). Though Karachiites held the record last year with 5,857 people singing in Khadda market, this time they were unable to beat the record set in India earlier this year, when 15,243 people sang together.