U.S. missiles killed four alleged Taliban insurgents on Monday in northwest Pakistan, while three other militant suspects were slain in a shootout with local security forces elsewhere in the region, officials said.

Three missiles struck a house in the Khaisur area of the North Waziristan tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, said two intelligence officials on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. The identities of the dead were not known.  Read more... (260 words, 1 image, estimated 1:02 mins reading time)

India faces Pakistan in sometimes-bloody shadow war in Afghanistan.

cross Afghanistan, behind the obvious battles fought for this country’s soul, a shadow war is being quietly waged. It’s being fought with spies and proxies, with hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money and ominous diplomatic threats.

The fight pits nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan against one another in a battle for influence that will almost certainly gain traction as the clock ticks down toward America’s military withdrawal, which President Barack Obama has announced will begin next year.  Read more... (1588 words, 1 image, estimated 6:21 mins reading time)

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)

Nato foreign ministers have snubbed Gordon Brown‘s plans for a staged withdrawal from the districts of Helmand by agreeing to handover reponsibility to local officials on a province by province basis.

British troops could be the last to leave Afghanistan after it emerged that a new “road map” for handing over control would not include the southern provinces.  Read more... (404 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)

In Sangin, says a farmer, ‘people are sick of night raids and being treated badly by the foreigners’

As with so many of the Helmand towns where the British are present the bazaar in Sangin is officially “thriving”.

Indeed, recent visitors have to admit that there are signs of commerce in the long thin strip of shops. But the rest, says David Gill, a photographer who visited Sangin three times last year, is like “a ghost town in Death Valley where you drive through and all you see is a sign flapping in the wind”.  Read more... (709 words, 1 image, estimated 2:50 mins reading time)

Pakistan‘s main intelligence agency has eased restrictions for US investigators to interrogate a top Afghan Taliban commander, officials have told the BBC.

Security sources say the Americans began getting “limited access” to Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar last month.

He was caught in late January during a raid on a madrassa near Karachi.

Mullah Baradar’s capture came amid a major Nato-led offensive against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and was hailed as a significant breakthrough.

US media reports suggest the Americans are satisfied with the information they are getting from the detained Taliban leader.  Read more... (523 words, 1 image, estimated 2:06 mins reading time)

ISLAMABAD—Militants ambushed a Pakistani army convoy traveling in a tribal region that is mostly home to insurgent groups focused on the war in neighboring Afghanistan, killing eight soldiers, the military said Friday.

The attack could raise pressure on Islamabad to wage an offensive in North Waziristan, which has largely escaped Pakistani army action in recent years despite U.S. pressure for a crackdown. Militant attacks on troops in the region have also been rare.  Read more... (459 words, 1 image, estimated 1:50 mins reading time)

At least seven soldiers have been killed in an ambush by militants in the Pakistani tribal region of North Waziristan, officials say.

The insurgents ambushed the troops on Thursday in the Dattakhel area. At least 16 soldiers were injured.

The area is part of the lawless tribal region bordering Afghanistan and is a Taliban and al-Qaeda stronghold.

Meanwhile suspected Taliban militants in the same region have killed four men they accused of spying for the US.

The BBC’s Haroon Rashid in Islamabad says that all of North Waziristan is extremely tense and a curfew has been imposed there.  Read more... (160 words, 1 image, estimated 38 secs reading time)

KITCHENER — The thought that he will soon be heading to Afghanistan, that his life will be on the line, that he’s going to a place where other Canadian soldiers have died, doesn’t seem to worry Private Chuck Fernandes at all.

It’s what the 24-year-old Kitchener native has spent nearly three years preparing for.

Thirteen weeks of arduous basic training in St. Jean, Que., followed by 13 weeks of battle school at Canadian Forces Base Meaford. Then nearly two years of military exercises and drills at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa near Ottawa.  Read more... (616 words, 1 image, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)

Defence Minister John Faulkner has visited Australian troops in Afghanistan on Anzac Day during a three-day visit to the country to discuss the war effort there.

Senator Faulkner visited Australian commanders and military and police personnel in Tarin Kowt and Kandahar as part of the visit, which included talks in Kabul with Afghan Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar and Defence Minister Mohammad Rahim Wardak in Kabul to discuss Australia’s training mission in Oruzgan province.  Read more... (187 words, 1 image, estimated 45 secs reading time)