KABUL — Amid intelligence reports alleging that Taliban insurgents are holding civilians as hostages, American and Afghan forces moved cautiously through the Taliban stronghold of Marjah on Monday as they pressed the biggest offensive since the U.S. landed troops in Afghanistan more than eight years ago.

The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had issued an apology Sunday for the deaths of 12 civilians who were killed in Marjah, saying that an American rocket “failed to hit intended target” and struck a house 300 yards away. U.S. and Afghan forces in a mixed unit had come under sustained fire before American troops fired the rocket.  Read more... (367 words, 1 image, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

KABUL, Afghanistan — The current U.S.-led military operation in Helmand province is a trial run for what could be the decisive clash with the Taliban in Afghanistan this summer in the area that is its spiritual home — Kandahar.

Officials at the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) say the focus of the coalition will shift from Helmand to Kandahar — the big prize for both the Taliban and the coalition. Kandahar city is home to around 1 million people, while Marjah, the target of the massive ongoing offensive in Helmand, is an obscure dusty town of 85,000 inhabitants that had turned into a Taliban stronghold.  Read more... (588 words, 1 image, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

The London conference on Afghanistan was being billed as a dud – hastily conceived, under prepared and potentially a political face-saver for two unpopular leaders, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai.

Instead the conference has united the international community for a further commitment to Afghanistan’s future – albeit for a shortened period.

Even more significant, there is broad agreement that talking to the Taliban is the only way to bring the insurgency to an end.  Read more... (720 words, 1 image, estimated 2:53 mins reading time)

Family and comrades of Lance Sergeant David Walker honour the memory of a ‘terrific’ family man and ‘rock-hard’ soldier

Tributes have been paid to Lance Sergeant David Walker, of 1st Battalion Scots Guards, who was killed in Afghanistan while fighting the Taliban.

Walker, 36, died on Thursday in Nad-e-Ali, an insurgent stronghold in Helmand province. He was the third British solder killed while taking part in Operation Moshtarak – a joint UK, US and Afghan assault against the Taliban.

His family released a statement which read: “We are devastated by the loss of David, who was a terrific husband and father.  Read more... (496 words, 1 image, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed virtually all Canadian soldiers will leave Afghanistan by the end of 2011, making some of his most definitive statements yet on Canada’s future role there in an interview Wednesday with Canwest News Service.

Parliament has already decided the combat mission, involving about 2,500 troops centred around Kandahar, will end in 2011. The Department of National Defence has started preparing plans to bring the soldiers home.

But at various times over the past two years since that decision was made, there has been some discussion about using Canadian Forces personnel in a non-combat capacity or to station soldiers in a more peaceful part of the country.  Read more... (944 words, 1 image, estimated 3:47 mins reading time)

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — U.S. border agents spotted possible extremist links of the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner and had singled him out to be questioned when the plane landed, an administration official said.

In a routine check of passengers scheduled to arrive in the country, Customs and Border Protection officers discovered Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was in a federal database of people who may have ties to terrorists and decided to interview him before allowing him admission to the U.S., the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.  Read more... (778 words, 1 image, estimated 3:07 mins reading time)

There’s been plenty of resistance to the new full-body scanners that have been installed in airports all over the world in the wake of The Great Underwear-Bomb Scare of 2009. Our own Scott Carmichael worried just last week that images of nude children could surface and find their way into the hands of pedophiles.

After Alan Johnson, the UK Home Secretary, announced yesterday that full-body scanners would be introduced at Heathrow Airport in about three weeks, many in the UK have grown concerned that a full-body scan of a child would break laws against child pornography. The law in question is the Protection of Children Act from 1978, which prohibits creating an indecent image or “psuedo-image” of a child.  Read more... (245 words, 1 image, estimated 59 secs reading time)

Janet Napolitano says the system worked. No, we were brave and lucky.

A U.S. government that has barred the phrase “war on terror” has nonetheless acknowledged that a failed Christmas day bomb attack on an airliner was a terrorist attempt. Can we all now drop the pretense that we stopped fighting a war once Dick Cheney and George W. Bush left the White House?  Read more... (866 words, 1 image, estimated 3:28 mins reading time)

Fears that al-Qaeda is planning a wave of suicide attacks with syringe bombs have been heightened after it emerged that a Somali man tried to board an aircraft last month carrying the same type of device as that used by the Detroit bomber.

Police in Somalia said the terrorist was caught “red handed” in Mogadishu trying to take powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe onto a commercial airliner bound for Dubai. The suspect had 1kg of chemical powder – more than 12 times as much as the Detroit bomber – though the exact composition of the chemicals is not yet known.  Read more... (561 words, 1 image, estimated 2:15 mins reading time)

Britain has been accused of being a “menace to the outside world” as American anger over the UK’s perceived failure to tackle Islamic extremism intensified.

Senior policymakers in the United States said the attempted suicide bomb attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is thought to have become radicalised in London, was further evidence that one of the biggest threats to US security came from Britain, where the capital has been dubbed “Londonistan” by critics.  Read more... (536 words, 1 image, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)