Infinite Unknown

Admiral Mike Mullen — the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff

KABUL (AFP) - The United States plans to send between 20,000 and 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan by next summer, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said here Saturday.

General David McKiernan, the US commander in Afghanistan, has asked for more than 20,000 extra US soldiers to counter a rise in insurgent violence, seven years after US forces first invaded the country to oust the Taliban from power.

But the potential deployment of 30,000 extra troops discussed by Mullen — the highest-ranking US military officer — would nearly double the US military presence in Afghanistan, which currently stands at 31,000.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Government, Hamid Karzai, Michael Mullen, Military, Politics, Taliban, U.S.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a meeting of the General Assembly on the Culture of Peace at the United Nations in New York November 12, 2008.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday he would bring down U.S. planes bombing villages if he could, in a sign of growing tension between Afghanistan and its Western backers as the Taliban insurgency grows in strength.

As Western dissatisfaction with Karzai has grown over his failure to crack down on corruption and govern effectively, the Afghan president, facing elections next year, has hit back over the killing of dozens of civilians in foreign air strikes.

In recent weeks, Karzai has repeatedly blamed the West for the worsening security in Afghanistan, saying NATO failed to target Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan and calling for the war to be taken out of Afghan villages.

“We have no other choice, we have no power to stop the planes, if we could, if I could … we would stop them and bring them down,” Karzai told a news conference.

He said that if he had something like the rock attached to a piece of string, known as a chelak in Dari, used to bring down kites in Afghanistan, he would use it.

“If we had a chelak, we would throw it and stop the American aircraft. We have no radar to stop them in the sky, we have no planes,” he said. “I wish I could intercept the planes that are going to bomb Afghan villages, but that’s not in my hands.”

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Tags: Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaida, Hamid Karzai, Military, NATO, Politics, Taliban, U.S., War

British officials covered up evidence that a Taliban commander killed by special forces in Helmand last year was in fact a Pakistani military officer, according to highly placed Afghan officials.

The commander, targeted in a compound in the Sangin valley, was one of six killed in the past year by SAS and SBS forces. When the British soldiers entered the compound they discovered a Pakistani military ID on the body.

It was the first physical evidence of covert Pakistani military operations against British forces in Afghanistan even though Islamabad insists it is a close ally in the war against terror.

Britain’s refusal to make the incident public led to a row with the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who has long accused London of viewing Afghanistan through the eyes of Pakistani military intelligence, which is widely believed to have been helping the Taliban.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Gordon Brown, Hamid Karzai, Military, Pakistan, Politics, SAS, Taliban, War