KABUL (AFP) – On walls around Afghanistan’s scrappy capital, where million-dollar mansions line rutted roads, anonymous graffiti artists are daubing their disapproving take on the devastating cost of war.

Styled after the anonymous British vandal-artist Banksy, Kabul’s streetwise stealth stencillers go by the moniker “Talibanksy”, a reference to the Islamist Taliban who have been waging war in Afghanistan for almost nine years.

The street art forms a commentary on the cost in blood and treasure of the war, which has brought 126,000 US and NATO troops to Afghanistan and kills about 2,000 Afghan civilians a year, according to the UN.  Read more... (747 words, 1 image, estimated 2:59 mins reading time)

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is doubling Australia‘s civilian commitment in Afghanistan to assist with diplomacy, aid and policing efforts.

He will send an extra 50 people, which is about double the number already there.

Mr Rudd made the announcement on Saturday at Canberra’s Australian National University, where he spoke about the importance of Australia’s efforts in Afghanistan.

He used it as an opportunity to take a potshot at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who has pledged to send more troops given the withdrawal of Dutch soldiers later this year.  Read more... (252 words, 1 image, estimated 1:00 mins 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)

Instead of body scanners and ethnic profiling we need patience and resilience to tackle terrorism

Not long after the attacks of 11 September 2001, I went to hear the Arab-American stand-up comedian Ahmed Ahmed riff on the perils of airport security. “All you white people have it easy,” he joked with the crowd. “You guys get to the airport like an hour, two hours before your flight. It takes me a month and a half.”  Read more... (1084 words, 1 image, estimated 4:20 mins reading time)

First Published ecember 31, 2009 11:21 a.m. EST

CNN) — A man described as “one of al Qaeda‘s most dangerous members” was arrested in Yemen, the Yemeni military, an embassy official and state-run news agency Saba said.

Mohammed Abdu Saleh al-Haudali, 35, is “one of the most dangerous terrorists wanted by the security forces,” according to a Yemeni military Web site, citing a security source.

Al-Haudali was arrested Wednesday in the village of Deer Jaber in the Bajel district, northeast of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, said Mohammed Albasha, spokesman for the Yemen Embassy in Washington.  Read more... (359 words, 1 image, estimated 1:26 mins reading time)

Mark Hosenball
President Barack Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the US, Newsweek has learned. The briefing was centered on a written report, produced by US intelligence agencies, entitled “Key Homeland Threats”, a senior US official said.

The senior Administration official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that nowhere in this document was there any mention of Yemen, whose Al-Qaeda affiliate is now believed to have been behind the unsuccessful Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a transatlantic airliner with a bomb hidden in his underpants. However, the official declined to disclose any other information about the substance of the briefing, including what kind of specific warnings, if any, the President was given about possibly holiday attacks and whether Yemen came up during oral discussions.  Read more... (826 words, 1 image, estimated 3:18 mins reading time)

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities on Saturday charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, and officials said the suspect told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with Al Qaeda. The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was burned in his failed attempt to bring down the airliner and is in a hospital in Michigan. But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect’s account was “plausible,” and that he saw “no reason to discount it.”  Read more... (1186 words, 1 image, estimated 4:45 mins reading time)

Decades of war have ravaged the zoo in Afghanistan‘s capital. As it tries to rebuild with help from foreign groups, it still provides a crucial public space for women and children.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – At the Kabul Zoo, even the empty enclosures are a draw: They’re quiet.

Off a busy street leading to the city’s commercial center, the zoo is no longer the city’s pride, but it does provide a refuge from the traffic, noise and chaos of the Afghan capital.

Parents bring children here to walk amid the tall trees and gaze at the animals — even the empty enclosures. Women in pale blue burkas stroll the grounds.  Read more... (673 words, 1 image, estimated 2:42 mins reading time)

With Yemen apparently on the verge of becoming the world’s next failed state and a regional base for al-Qaeda, a series of U.S.-assisted air and ground assaults that shook pockets of Yemen last week might have seemed like a positive development in the troubled country’s otherwise downward spiral. But the dramatic action, which appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties, may not right the situation at all. “The U.S. has been growing very concerned about al-Qaeda in recent years, but it seems as though the U.S. is coming rather late to the party,” says Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen, who contends last week’s attacks would ultimately prove counterproductive.  Read more... (990 words, 1 image, estimated 3:58 mins reading time)

“More than 15,000 protestors, including members of al-Qaeda, gathered in Al-Majanah village, which had been attacked by the Yemeni Air Force … Al-Qaeda members announced at the public protest that their war is against the United States, and not the Yemeni Army.”

By Mohammed bin Sallam
December 24, 2009

Human rights activists and members of parliament have gathered in front of the cabinet building to protest what they call, “unfair government behavior” and condemning the government’s military attack on Abyan last week.  Read more... (689 words, 1 image, estimated 2:45 mins reading time)